Writing Excuses 17.39: Writing Bodies and Intimacy, with K. M. Szpara

Sep. 28th, 2022 05:54 pm
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[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 17.39: Writing Bodies and Intimacy, with K. M. Szpara
 
 
Key points: Content warning. Bodies and intimacy, without euphemisms. The intimacy of what you and your partner call body parts is rich with knowing yourself and/or character growth. Communication is key, and the growth of trust. Think about how the context of the scene changes the action. Think of intimate scenes as fight scenes or conversations. Or as dances? Metaphoric language, fade to black, or simple direct descriptions?
 
[Season 17, Episode 39]
 
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, Writing Bodies and Intimacy, with special guest, K. M. Szpara.
[Dongwon] 15 minutes long.
[Piper] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon Song.
[Piper] I'm Piper J. Drake.
[Howard] I'm Howard Tayler.
[Mary Robinette] We are here live on the Writing Excuses cruise with a live audience of writers.
[Applause]
[Mary Robinette] Also, our special guest, K. M. Szpara. Kellan, say hello.
[Kellan] Hi. This is my first Writing Excuses cruise. I am the author of books such as Docile as K. M. Szpara, and I write a lot about like sex and vampires and blood.
 
[Mary Robinette] So, we are going to actually give you a content warning for this particular episode. We're going to be talking about bodies and intimacy, and we're not going to be using euphemisms. We're going to be talking about adult acts that adults do with actual adult bodies. Adult bodies run in a full range.
[Kellan] Yes. Which is to say that as somebody who writes queer and trans bodies a lot, if this episode might trigger you on any of those axes, please take care of yourself.
 
[Mary Robinette] All right. So with that, let's dive into the actual content. So you pitched this episode to us, Kellan. What are some of the things that you think about when you're thinking about like writing bodies and intimacy? What are some important aspects of that?
[Kellan] Sure. I mean, for me, it's so important to show especially queer and trans bodies. There's such a mystery sort of around us, even to our own selves sometimes. We do a lot of manifesting of our own bodies when we are alone with others. I have sat down and struggled with what do I call these character's genitals that makes me feel okay and makes the character feel okay and makes the character's partner feel okay. Or what conflict does that bring up. So, for me, like settling on that intimacy between one or more people and being alone or with others with your body is so rich with your inner external conflict tension, but also a sense of knowing yourself and/or character growth.
[Piper] I love that. Because communication is so key. You can really see that in the development of the relationships through the course of the book, because you can find during different moments through the story that they're more likely to trust, and there is a building of trust over time as they feel more comfortable communicating with each other and also being self-aware. Like you said. Just aware of themselves and what they need.
[Kellan] Yeah. It's funny because I was talking earlier on this retreat with my agent, actually, and I brought up how when I first started writing, I learned to sort of like the meat and then there's unresolved sexual tension for the entire book and they kiss at the end and that's the prize for the reader and the characters. That was real bad for me. I've instead fallen into the thing which I think is very queer, which is very queer not applicable to everyone all the time, but, for me and many other people, which is that there's sex first. Intimate moments first. Then, sort of like dealing with the emotional and/or communications that lead right up to it. Also the falling out, and how that manifests over the course of the rest of the novel or story.
[Piper] Oh, yeah. Definitely. Because I know that we think of romance in particular as being rather structured in the order, and I have even taught how there is often a progression of intimacy that happens. But once you know what that progression kind of is expected, you can also explore how it happens not quite in that order, and what that does to the character, that reaction time, and that thinking about it and exploring what works for them. I love that.
[Kellan] For me, in real life, there is no order. Right? So we do different things with different people at different times. It's really important to me that characters feel like emotionally true. So, yeah. I mean, yeah.
 
[Mary Robinette] So, one of the things that as you're talking about this, as emotional truth, I'm thinking about some of the scenes in Docile and the way the context of the scene changes the action. You want to talk a little bit about how you communicate context and safety or not safety?
[Kellan] Sure. The context is interesting because my first thought was like where is the sex happening.
[Chuckles]
[Kellan] Sometimes it happens in your like executive office at work, which I guess you're allowed to do if you're the CEO. But I think the actual context is who are you having sex with, what kind of sex you're having, what are the power dynamics between you. So, for example, even though there are many sex scenes in Docile, there's the blow job scene, there's, as my editor has once said, one ass-eating scene per book as mandated by God.
[Laughter]
[Piper] Only one? Are we like limited to one or is it at least one?
[Kellan] No, it just happens that way.
[Piper] Okay.
[Kellan] So. But the point of that is the sort of context is… It is, for Elijah, the protagonist, it is I am being asked to do something versus something is being done to me, and, do you feel like more of a willing participant if you are doing the thing, which presents a whole different struggle emotionally than lying back and having something happen to you. Then, later on in the novel, he gets to have his first like real consensual sexual experience and navigates that with a totally different context using language she'd never had access to before, feeling emotions he's never felt, trying to deal with how to go about having some of the same experiences physically that you had the first time, but with somebody who is being very respectful about it.
 
[Mary Robinette] Can we talk about some tools that we can use to do this well? Like, one of the most useful frameworks that I was given when I was first writing the kind of intimate scenes that I do, which frequently resolve into fade to black, but was to think of them as either a conversation or a fight scene. That with a fight scene, I have to think about the geography and things that human bodies will actually do. And that with a conversation, that there is something that each person is trying to communicate to the other through the physical actions of their body.
[Dongwon] Yeah. I think a lot about fight scenes when it sort of comes to these kinds of moments in books. In part because we live in a society that can be very prudent… Not prudent, prudish and prurient about bodies and about sex and about intimacy. But we're a society that also glorifies violence. We have lots of scenes in movies that have very extreme explicit details about what happens to a body when violence happens to it. So, so much of fiction is already engaging with the collision of bodies in these high intensity emotional moments. We're just only allowed to talk about certain kinds of that versus what is a scene of intimacy versus a scene of violence. Functionally, in the narrative, they often perform a similar thing where two characters enter a scene with different goals, different emotional states, and they exit that scene having resolved some aspects of that, or evolved into a different emotional state. So there's a way in which I think of these functionally as performing the same thing in the narrative, hopefully with different outcomes, hopefully one of them's not dead by the end of it. But I think there is a way in which that, from a high level, mechanically they can be very, very similar. It really comes down to how we, as a society, can think about and interact with bodies in that way.
[Piper] Actually, I want to provide a contrasting approach. Because I'm really well known for fight scenes, especially in my romantic suspense, and body count, especially a lot of my other work. But I write romance. One of the things is while I have combat scenes and fight scenes in my stories, I often think about moments of intimacy as dance. It's one of those things that I didn't do on purpose, but because I was a dancer, and I was in dance from age 3 to 28 actively, and also, it's a part of my meet cute with my partner, Matthew J. Drake, that we danced together and we both enjoyed West Coast swing and blues fusion, that I often think of intimacy scenes and how I choreograph them as dance. Whether that's horizontal or standing up…
[Chuckles]
[Piper] Or a little bit of both and also the logistics of lifts. Right? Like it actually translates better for me. If it involves more than two partners, also, choreography helps a lot for that because what bodies can do. Right? Like, one person may be very bendy and one person may not be very bendy, and also, like, what are the logistics of actually being able to lift two people. Like a lot more of that actually translates better in my head to dance choreography. So that's another alternative.
[Dongwon] I think of fight scenes is also being about dance, right? It's about that movement and control and… In part, I love martial arts movies. I know we're wondering further off-topic at this point.
[Chuckles]
[Dongwon] But I do think dance is a really useful thing to think about in terms of that interaction and that give-and-take in that interplay of power and connection and emotion are all things that flow back and forth in this.
[Howard] Let me circle this back real quick. One of my favorite MCU fight scenes is the one in Civil War where Falcon says to Spidey, "Have you ever been in a fight before? Usually there's not this much talking." Conversation during intimacy to me is one of the most wonderful things to read. I don't just want the choreography, I want dialogue. I want… It's a conversation. It's much more than just blocking. Much more than that.
 
[Kellan] I am also somebody who's deeply in love with a first-person present point of view. I can get away with it as much as I can. But I feel like not everyone chooses it and uses it to their full advantage. So, for me, like being in a different first-person point of view for a sex scene, and then flopping the points of view for the next sex scene, like, you are not just getting the… You, the reader, gets to see the conversation between the two people, but then you get to see later how the other character might have experienced that sex or contact totally different from the other character. I had a story out with two trends boyfriends. They both had different physical needs when it came to sex. So you really got to live in their heads and in the dialogue.
[Piper] Yeah. I think the progression is also important through the course of the story, because, again, we're also seeing the progression of how they work together. To come back to the point about communication as well, and dialogue, I think it's amazing and awesome, and I love it. I'm so into it. It's also really hot, I think, in romance that there is consent not just upfront, but repeatedly through each step of that interaction, and, if there's not, what are the reactions to it.
 
[Mary Robinette] These are, I think, wonderful points. Let's take a moment to pause for our book of the week, which is actually by Kellan.
[Kellan] Wow, what a surprise.
[Laughter]
[Kellan] That book would be First Become Ashes. It is a novel whose pitch I did not practice before this. It takes place in a cult. In the first chapter, they are all liberated from the cold against their wills. They were raised to believe that you could do magic. So when the FBI says you cannot do magic, and also, everything you believe is fake, one of them, Lark, spends the rest of the novel sort of unraveling what that means for him as a person, grappling with beliefs and his own body, especially since he took sort of like a sacred chastity vow with a literal chastity device. So, there's some really interesting sex that comes out on the other end of that.
[Mary Robinette] That sounds very exciting. It's called First Become Ashes by K. M. Szpara.
 
[Mary Robinette] So, let's move on to one of my favorite things, which is talking about how things can go terribly wrong. So let's talk about some tropes and euphemisms and ways of discussing this that are maybe not the most intimate. For instance, I had to narrate a book that literally had the line, "She released his love snake from its denim prison."
[Laughter]
[Piper] Purple prose.
[Kellan] I mean, if you say that during sex and the other person doesn't laugh and then you will have a great time… That would be a cool scene.
[Piper] I mean, yeah. Or is it monster f-ing? I would drop in f-bombs. We are going adult. All right. So, monster fucking is a thing. It is a very… It's rising in popularity right now. I know of at least two books with a prehensile penis going on. So, love snake would be applicable.
[Laughter]
[Kellan] Yeah. I mean, people ask me this a lot, like, how do you keep writing so many sex scenes? Does the language get stale? How do you… Like, I name this very bluntly. I usually use cock in sexual situations, but then you'll see that I use dick when someone's just like alone thinking about their bodies. I… One ass eating per book. It's like does butt sound sexy enough? Like, I do want it to be hot, right? So, like, sex is both about characters and tension and intimacy, but also butts. So, like, for me, it's picking these words that titillate not just for the reader but for you as the author. I mean, I am…
[Garbled]
[Kellan] Be turned on by what you write, is, like, sort of a mantra that I think.
[Mary Robinette] Well, I think that's true with any emotion that you're trying to provoke in a reader, that you are your own first reader. So I think that's a very natural thing. Not something that people should be ashamed of even though we are constantly told by different forms of media, especially anything that is remotely off of mainstream, that you shouldn't do that thing and should somehow be ashamed of it.
[Kellan] I actually thought I was a little bit odd because I have… I don't like to write the word butt because it's not pretty to me. So I like bum or behind or ass better as like a hotter thing when I'm writing. I'll actually have an editor call me up, and be like, "Do you have a problem with butt?" I'm like, "No. It just… I don't like the way the word looks."
[Mary Robinette] It is not a pretty word on the page. Like with the Regency, I get a lot… It's buttocks.
[Laughter]
[Kellan] Yeah, buttocks is almost hotter to me. Or bum is more hot, hotter to me. Behind can be really hot, but then it gets confusing.
[Howard] I've found great uses for it, but they haven't been intimate uses.
[Laughter]
[Kellan] Well, the words I struggle with are always like what do we call testicles. Balls, which is also not like a super sexy word. Then, like, apple, which makes me sound like you're saying you're an apple.
[Garbled]
[Mary Robinette] Weird side note. In Icelandic, a euphemism, or a term of endearment, for like when you're looking at a little baby and it's like, "Oh, how cute you are. Aren't you a little ass hole? What a cute little ass hole you are. What a little raisin ass hole."
[Wow]
[Piper] Yeah. The visual that I just had.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah, yeah.
[Kellan] Quite…
[Mary Robinette] My gift to you. My gift.
 
[Dongwon] One thing I was thinking about is something you touched on very briefly before, Kellan. I think there's a way in which… There's a demand and hunger for queer stories, but a lot of times, those queer stories elide over queer bodies. Right? I am also trans and queer myself, and one of the things that I become frustrated with is somehow… Sometimes that metaphoric language, sometimes that fade to black, sometimes being a little bit more clever about how you're describing certain body parts can kind of unintentionally erase the bodies of the people who are being presented on the page. Right? So, how much do you find that that directness is useful or not? I mean, because there's also kind of things where sometimes there are inevitably gender valences attached to certain body parts. That's become complicated.
[Kellan] I got you. I mean, one of the reasons I keep writing very explicit sex scenes, especially for my trans characters and my queer characters, there is this air of like are you exploiting bodies that are already exploited a lot. Like, us trans people, it's very much like the what's in your pants question. I answer that repeatedly because I want these characters to have agency over their bodies. Like, for example, in the novelette I wrote, Small Changes over Long Periods of Time, we have a trans character who… He's a trans man, he calls his clit a clit, he calls it… At one point, like, engorged like a swollen tick. Which is, like, not necessarily something that's like superhot, but, like, is the vibe for him right now. It's like sometimes our bodies, like, do feel like hot, but also kind of weird and gross at the same time. I have this agenda, which is not simply to write sex scenes because I think they're hot, but also because I want other people to think that I'm hot. I want other people to think that people like me are hot, and know that we are having good sex. Like, queer and trans sex is experimental in that we don't learn about it growing up necessarily. We are putting ourselves on the map as we go. I feel so honored to be part of that conversation.
 
[Mary Robinette] I think that's wonderful. I also think that that segues us really nicely into our homework assignment.
[Kellan] Yes. So, for homework, I would like you to write a character undressing, either alone or with others.
[Mary Robinette] So, you're going to do a little bit of exploration.
[Wolf whistle]
[Whee!]
[Mary Robinette] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 14.25: Choosing Your Agent

Jun. 27th, 2019 10:43 am
mbarker: (Fireworks Delight)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 14.25: Choosing Your Agent
 
 
Key points: Your agent works for you. You have a choice, make it a good one. Think about who you want to work with, who is going to be the right business partner in the long run. Someone who can help you run your business. Who do you want as part of your brand? Make sure they can do a good job. Look at online resources, talk to your network. Ask the agent to talk to their other authors. You may need to change agents as your career changes, or their career changes. Keep the lines of communication open, talk about goals, figure out what you both need. To find an agent, look for authors who have a similar communication style, and talk to them about their agents! Think about someone who can fill in your weak spots. Check which genres the agent works in, and what level of editorial involvement you want. What communications style, how frequent do you want contact? Remember, charisma is not a dump stat. Consider the Kowal relationship axes, mind, manners, money, morals… Murder! Or the Marx Brothers.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 25.
[Howard] This is Writing Excuses, Choosing Your Agent.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Dongwon] And we're not that smart.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.
 
[Howard] Dongwon is joining us again. This is his third episode with us. Dongwon, I understand that you have spent some time working as an agent.
[Chuckles]
[Dongwon] I have. I actually started my career as an agent, and then wandered off for many years doing other tasks in the industry, and have come back to being an agent in the past 3 and a 1/2 years now.
[Howard] Well, this morning, we had the opportunity to hear you talk about the publishing business. One of the parts that was most interesting to me was that opening salvo of choosing your agent and what that relationship ends up looking like.
[Dongwon] One thing I like to talk about a lot is making it really clear to writers that your agent works for you. If you're in the query trenches right now, the power dynamic feels very weighted towards the agent's side. You're trying to get their attention, you're trying to get someone to pay attention to you and make an offer of representation. But one of the things I like to really drive home is once that offer of representation has been made, the power dynamic completely inverts. Now, what the agent wants is for you to choose them. One of the reasons that we chose this phrasing for the episode title is the idea that you have a choice in this relationship is a really important one. It's one that I think a lot of writers lose sight of, because they're just so focused on getting an agent, any agent. Instead, what I'd like people to do is start thinking very carefully about who they want to work with. Who's going to be the right business partner to them over the course of their career? Ideally, an author-agent relationship will go on for years, and hopefully decades. Optimally, it's the course of both of your careers. You need to think carefully about who you're going to be working with over that period of time, and who you want to be helping you run your business.
[Mary Robinette] This is… I want to say, something that I stumbled on, you've heard me talk about on previous episodes, where my first… My very first agent was not a good agent. We often people say, "A bad agent is worse than no agent." The concrete thing that I had happened was that my first agent… I was… I had warning flags that went off. But it was an agent, and they were excited about my work. I had heard so much about how difficult it was to get an agent. So, even though I had some warning flags that this person might be flaky, I went ahead and signed. What happened was they sat on my novel for a year without sending it out. That was a year in which it was ready. So this was a… actively holding me back. The other thing that can happen with a bad agent, or with an agent who's… This is… These are people who are just like not good at their job, is that if they try to sell your work incompetently to a publishing house, and then you leave them and you come back, it's going to be very difficult to sell that same title later.
[Howard] That's the… There's a principle here that… It's a broader business principle, harkening back to, Dongwon, what you said earlier about you're choosing a business partner. This business partner is carrying your authorial brand as the flag when they march into the office. If they misbehave, if they do a bad job with the pitch, if they happen to be somebody that's for whatever reason, that editorial team, publishing team, just really doesn't like having in the room…
[Mary Robinette] That one actually is less of an issue, because, as long as they've got good taste…
[Howard] As long as they've got good taste. But you just know that whoever you are picking, a portion of who they are ends up as part of your brand, at least to the editors and publishers.
[Dongwon] A lot of the industry's interaction with you will be filtered through your agent. So if your agent has a certain reputation, has a certain way of operating, that is going to influence how people see you. It's not entire. You will have your own brand, and, I know, many writers have the opposite reputation of their agents. But Howard is absolutely right, that in those initial contacts, those initial meetings, that would definitely color it. So, sort of… The first step in choosing an agent is don't choose someone who's bad at their job. This last year, there were… Have been a couple sort of highly publicized incidents of agents who turned out to be acting against their own writers' interests. That's been a very challenging moment. My heart goes out to all of those writers. It can be hard to spot that person. There's some online resources that you can use to check out, like query tracker or query shark, but really, your best defense is having a good network. Talking to your friends, making friends with other writers, and asking around about somebody's reputation before you make a decision to go forward with them.
[Dan] You're also well within your rights to ask that agent if you can talk to some of their other authors. I get a lot of requests from my agent, "Hey, could you talk to this person? I would like to acquire their book." I'm always happy to recommend my agent. If you get an agent whose authors are not happy to recommend her, maybe stay away.
[Howard] Are you still with the agent you were with a year ago?
[Dan] Yes. Sarah Crowe. She's amazing.
 
[Mary Robinette] So I just… I actually just changed agents in the last year. The reason I did that was not because I had a bad agent. My agent was very good. But my career trajectory was such that I needed a different type of agent than I did at the beginning of my career. So the thing that was happening with my career trajectory was… The reason that I felt like I needed someone who was a little more aggressive, was that I was in the downward spiral. This happens to a number of writers in the course of their career, that there's what they call the death… The series' death spiral. So I'd had that happen. Then I had a novel that came out, and my book tour began on election day in 2016, which was a fraud year regardless of where you were. Book sales generally were declining. But when people are looking at your numbers, they don't look at the current events that are going on around it. They just look at the numbers. So I needed someone who was more aggressive. It was a difficult choice, because it would have been easier if my agent was doing things that were actively wrong. That wasn't the case. It was just I needed a different style. This is one of the things that I think you have to… While it's ideal to have an agent that stays with you over the course of your career, it's also important to know kind of what you need going into it.
[Howard] That is… And again, coming back to the general principle of business partners, there is this point of diminishing returns between what I need out of a new agent, what I lose if I don't switch, and the cost of switching. It's easy for us… in crossing that chasm, it's easy for us to overestimate the size of the peril, and just, out of fear of changing, stay in the same place.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] It's difficult.
[Dongwon] Many, many writers will have multiple agents over the course of their careers. There's nothing… There's no inherent problem to that. Like any long-term relationship, what you need out of it will change over time. It's also important to remember that your agent is also not a fixed point. They're evolving in their career as well, and how they operate, what circumstances they're in, what agency they're at, all those things can shift and change over time. Those changes will impact, and impact how the business operates. So it's very important to keep that line of communication open, and be talking about your goals, and are they being met in this relationship or not, and then figure out what you need out of that.
[Mary Robinette] That was very much the case with my agent, my previous agent, was that they had had a promotion at work, and were suddenly handling more things than they had been. So the attention that they were able to give to individual authors was shifting. Like, none of us were being neglected, it was just the communication style had changed. The aggression, I think, had shifted, or at least my perception of it. So that was one thing that was also going on there, was that a change in my agent's life as well.
 
[Howard] Let's take a quick break and talk about a book. Dongwon?
[Dongwon] Yeah. This week, I want to talk about Sarah Gailey's Magic for Liars. This is Sarah Gailey's debut novel, coming out from Tor Books. It should have just come out on June Fourth. It is a murderer-mystery set at a magical school for teenagers. It is not a young adult novel. It is a very adult novel about a woman who is called in to investigate a murder of a faculty member at this school. The protagonist's twin sister also is a teacher at this school. As you would have it, that sister is magic and she is not. She needs to figure out what happened and unpack this really gruesome murder and figure out why teenagers are so goddamned terrifying.
[Laughter]
[Dongwon] Especially when they have magic powers.
[Howard] Okay. As the father of two current teenagers, I would love to know the answer to that question.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey. I'm a big fan of Sarah's. Their cowboy hippopotamus books.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Loved those so much.
 
[Howard] Okay. I want to talk about your toolbox as an author. I'm big on the toolbox metaphor. What are the tools that authors have at their disposal to start searching for agents who meet their criteria?
[Mary Robinette] We've talked about a couple of them on previous podcasts. The advice that I'm often given… Had been given and often give is to pay attention to what authors are happy with their agents. Specifically, looking for authors… There's… We always are told to look at the authors whose work is similar. But I actually think you should also try to look at the author… Authors whose process is similar. Because that's going to be people with whom you have a similar communication style. I'm going to continue using myself as a useful representative example. When I left my previous agent and moved on, because of where I am in my career and I am… I do have multiple Hugos. I am marketable. I had the good fortune of having a couple of choices. I was doing due diligence, and I went into it expecting that at the end of having done due diligence that I would be signing with Dongwon. I was just like, "But I'm going to check with some other people just in case."
[Howard] Oh, she went there.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] I cleared it… I cleared this with him before, before we got into it. It was a really hard choice. Because, like the authors that he represents are people that I like, there people that I have a lot in common with. I think he's wicked smart, and there were all these different things. When it finally came down to, Dongwon and Seth Fishman, who is my agent now, was I realized that what I needed was someone who filled my weaknesses. The difference between their agenting styles, in a lot of ways, they're both very good with developmental stuff and things like that, but Dongwon is about building relationships, and Seth is a shark.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] And…
[Dongwon] I'm a nice shar… No.
[Mary Robinette] I know. Well, that's the thing. It's like you're the nursemaid shark. He's… There is nothing…
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] But it was basically, I was, like I'm good at relationships. That's not the spot that I need bolstering. So both of them would have been a good choice, but it was really about learning what I needed. It's quite possible that that is what I needed early in my career as well, but I didn't know myself as well, as an author and what my process and how I was going to fit into the industry was. So when you're looking at the toolbox, it's important, yes, to be able to find the agent, but just knowing a list of agent's names is not as useful as knowing what it is you need out of the agents. So, Absolute Write is a good source for checking to make sure that the agent isn't shady. I also find that if you type in the agent's name and scam afterwards…
[Dan] And hope there's no hits.
[Mary Robinette] Hope there's no hits, yes. Harassment after that. These are… Scandal. These are good words to just kind of…
[Howard] Good things to not be attached to.
[Mary Robinette] Then, looking at Publisher's Weekly, Locus. Looking at who made sales, and…
 
[Howard] In 2006, I, we played with the idea of having Schlock Mercenary represented, agented, shipped out to a publisher, because self-pubbing actual paper books that weigh actual tons of actual mass is hard work. My friend Rodney had written a technical manual a few years earlier, and had an agent… His experience with the agent was funny. He said, "Yeah, I've already sold the book. I can't mess with… There's nothing you can do." She said, "I tell you what. Let me represent you. I know the contract's been signed, but let me represent you." She went in. She got him a 50% raise on the book. Her 15% came out of that, and Rodney was like, "Oh. Oh, I do need an agent." Rodney introduced me to that agency, which was the Barbara Bova agency, which does a lot of science fiction. So I came into this from outside the industry, through a contact to was just somebody I knew in the tech world. Part of the toolbox is talking to people and listening to their experiences. That experience of Rodney's… Like, I want that to happen to me. That agency… The results were the best possible results. Which were… Everybody we talked to said, "We love this, but it's not what we do." Or, "I mean, we already read it, but it's not what we do." And, "Wow, this sounds awesome, but it's not what we do." The agent went out and determined that the market I wanted at the time didn't exist. The relationship's over now, because the agent's not going to make any money. But that is… I consider that a success story.
[Dongwon] It really is.
[Howard] Because I found an agent who, in the space of six months, told me that the business plan that I already had was the right one.
 
[Dan] So, let's expand this toolbox a little bit more. When you're talking to people, when you're talking to other authors, what are some of the questions you can ask them to find out how they work with their agent? Two of the big ones for me. First of all, is what genres does your agent work in? Because I got the… I started with Sarah because I had written a horror novel, but I knew that I wanted to write more than that. One of the reasons that she and I work so well together is that she covers horror, but also science-fiction and also YA and middle grade, which kind of covers all of the playgrounds that I wanted to play in. Not every agent does. So finding someone who's willing to go with you when you start hopping genres is valuable, if that's what you want to do. One of the other ones is what level of editorial involvement do you want your agent to have. Because different agents do it differently, different authors want different things. So if you want an agent who will be very hands-on or very hands-off, ask their authors what that relationship is like.
[Dongwon] That's one that you should also ask the agent directly. Going back to Mary's example, we had a series of very long conversations. I mean, we probably spent upwards of seven or eight hours on the phone over the course of a few weeks talking a lot of this through. When… I get nervous when I'm signing a new client if they're not asking me questions, then I start to have a little bit of a hesitation in my mind, actually. Just because I'm worried that they're not putting the work in to make sure that this relationship is going to work out, and that I'm going to be right for them. Really, at the core of this, is communication style is really one of the most important things. Do you want someone who's very formal in their communications? Do you want a letter that's laid out? Do you want something that's very casual? Do you want to be… Talk to your agent once a week, once a month, once every six months? I have certain clients I talk to almost daily, and there certain clients I talk to about every three or four months. It depends on what it is. I am very informal in how I relate to a lot of my clients. I think, for certain people, that would drive them nuts, right? There's certain people who really appreciate that, and sort of need that ability to check in periodically and be like, "Hey, is everything okay? Am I on the right track? Is this going well? What's happening with this?"
[Howard] At risk of going over-general again, this is the… Your reminder that charisma is not a dump stat.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] The ability to have a conversation with someone in which the two of you connect and determine what you expect out of this kind of relationship… You can build that skill set without talking to agents. Learning that skill set when your feet are in the fire is frightening.
 
[Mary Robinette] So you remember in a previous episode, I talked about the Kowal relationship axes, which my mother-in-law came up with as a way to describe someone that you're dating. That you want to be roughly aligned on intelligence, you want to be roughly aligned on where you feel money is important, morals… Actually, you want your… You want a moral agent. Towards you!
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] But manners, similar communications style. These apply to your agent as well as to a character. There's a really good agent that is someone that I could have gotten because they are… They're the agent of a friend, they're very successful. I would have run a fire poker through them within two minutes of conversation. Because our communication styles are wildly out of alignment. At the same time, you're not looking for a best friend. Right? It is a business partner. It's good if you can be friends. But that's not… You need someone who is good at their job first, and then someone you can communicate with second.
[Howard] Mind, manners, money, morals, murder…
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] Marx Brothers. We try to be more positive about it.
[Howard] All right…
[Dongwon] I will say, I often try to avoid the romantic relationship analogy when talking about finding your agent, but it is inevitable that it comes up at some point, because I think there are a lot of similarities and parallels.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
 
[Howard] There definitely are. On those notes, Dongwon, do you have homework you can assign to our listeners?
[Dongwon] Yeah. So, your homework assignment is going to be a little bit of self-examination. I want you to think about your career and what's important to you and how you like to operate. Think about times you've been in a business setting, at a job, in a meeting, and think about the things that you found very frustrating, and what you would find your dating to work with over a long period of time with somebody who is working with some of the most important work to you. Make a list of those attributes. What are you looking for in an agent? What kind of communication style? Do you want someone who edits you, do you want someone who doesn't? How would you like them to pursue a deal? Do you want them to go all out all the time, or do you want them to build relationships and be very targeted? Those are questions you should ask yourself, and start making that list of the attributes that are important to you.
[Howard] Make the list. You gotta write this down, because this is Writing Excuses, and you're out of excuses. Now, go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 14.23: Governments Large and Small

Jun. 12th, 2019 10:00 am
mbarker: (Burp)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 14.23: Governments Large and Small
 
 
Key points: Bureaucracy, meritocracy, monarchy, Howardarchy, rabbits? How do you worldbuild governments? Look at the power structures in which you live, the expressions of power, the expressions of control. Autocratic, democratic, meritocratic? How do you make political intrigue interesting? Someone to hate, to vilify, a villain! How do you enforce things? Drama can be how do you navigate the system and overcome the constraints. Worldbuilding elements? How do you design and enforce laws? Taxes! The allocation of resources. Four estates: executive, judiciary, legislative, and the press. Where does power come from, who holds it? Communications. Succession.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 23.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Governments Large and Small.
[Dan] 15 minutes long.
[Howard] Because you're in a hurry.
[Mahtab] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
[Mahtab] I'm Mahtab.
 
[Brandon] We are in a bureaucracy. No, we're really not. We have a lot of paper, though.
[Howard] We're in a meritocracy.
[Brandon] I wish.
[Dan] No. We wouldn't be on the show anymore.
[Brandon] Actually…
[Dan] It would just be our guest cohosts.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] Government.
[Howard] That's… What kind of ocracy are we in? We're not here by merit. We're here because we got here first.
[Brandon] That's right.
[Dan] Okay.
[Brandon] There's a government for us. We started it, so… It's our thing.
[Howard] It is… What do you call it, inherited power?
[Dan] [garbled There's a white guy dipped in there somewhere]
[Howard] Besides monarchy, but that's not… It's not monarchy, it's…
[Dan] [garbled]
[Brandon] We're just going to call this a Howardarchy…
[Laughter]
[Brandon] That…
[Dan] That's a great word.
[Howard] That's terrible.
[Brandon] So…
[Dan] It sounds like a great name for a rabbit.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Okay. So we're talking about governments large and small.
[Brandon] Yes.
[Howard] And looking at if you're going to worldbuild governments, start by looking at power structures in which you live. Because… I mean, the very word government. Governing is an expression of power, an expression of control. What are the methods by which your family is governed? What are the methods by which you personally govern yourself? What are the methods by which your workplace is governed? Are these things… Does it feel autocratic, does it feel democratic? Does it feel meritocratic? People got here because they know how to do things well, so we all kind of agreed that they should be in charge because they do it better than anybody else? Looking at those things at the level where you live is probably the fastest way to learn how to make it interesting when you're trying to write about it in stories.
[Brandon] Well. That's… This has been Writing Excuses…
[Laughter]
[Howard] [garbled That was autocracy]
 
[Brandon] I'm going to… Let's play off of that idea right there. One of the things… Every time I kind of bring up politics is a story… A method of telling a story, people's eyes seem to glaze over. I remember back… Way back when Dan and I were going to conventions and pitching things to people, I pitched to an editor at Delray and I said, "Well, it's a political book with political intrigue and stuff." He's like, "Never lead by telling someone it's a book about political intrigue. They will get so bored so quickly." I'm like, "But lots of books are about political intrigue." That is the entire Game of Thrones series. So how… Obviously, it can be made to be interesting. How do you do that?
[Mahtab] You have one person who you can all hate. Which is why…
[Dan] House of Cards.
[Mahtab] I mean, that can… Yeah. Monarchy. That's why it works so well, is because… That's why I don't think democracies work so well unless you have one person who's the face of the democracy that you can identify as someone who is probably doing wrong, and then… I think you need one person to vilify, basically.
[Brandon] Okay. So for…
[Howard] George Orwell's 1984. You had to have the two minute hate, because we had to have something to center around to not like. I think that we often conflate politics with sociology and economics and ecology and all kinds of other things. Politics is fascinating because it is the way in which power is wielded over other people. You can have a belief that everybody should have free food. You can have a belief that everybody should starve unless they can win a sword fight. You can adopt these two social logical beliefs. How do you enforce that? Do you enforce that was sword fighting? Do you enforce that with money? Do you enforce that… How does that work? That is where it becomes political. For me, when you talk about political intrigue, what you're talking about is people wielding power over other people. Ripping the rug out from under them so that they no longer have the power they thought they had. It's less about political position and more about…
[Brandon] About changes and power dynamics.
[Howard] More about the musculature, more about the arm bar, the…
[Dan] Yeah. What fascinates me about political stories, political fiction, is the movement within the rules. So, earlier I mentioned House of Cards which was the Netflix series which I loved and tell Kevin Spacey imploded. Also, the British series, The Thick of It, which was then remade into the American series Veep. Those are fascinating and fantastic shows that show the inner workings of government. They're fascinating because every episode is more or less we need to accomplish X. How? We can't just go and do it because there's a bureaucracy in the way. So we need to get a favor from this guy. Then we need to get this woman on our side. Then we need to give them a quid pro quo, and do something for them, so that they'll do something for us. Watching all of the hoops that have to be jumped through and watching the political strategizing that goes on, that's what makes it fascinating. So I almost think… There are certain aspects of political fiction in which a single hateful figure, like a dictator are very valuable. I think that's one of the reasons we default to dictators so much, because it gives us a villain. But I think you can get just as much drama out of the constraints placed on how do we navigate this system. So it's not so much that there is a face that we can hate as just the red tape we have to cut through.
[Mahtab] But even though I said it's good to have a monarchy or a dictatorship or you have one person… Just thinking back to rural India, where you do not have one person, but you have a panchayat, which is basically five elders of the village who sit down and mediate. That is their political, or their government, basically. I mean, you do have a federal government, you do have a state government. But in the villages, it is the five people who control the fate of the rest of the villagers. So it could be anything from domestic violence to crime to rape to whatever, and it's these five people. Sometimes they come up with really good solutions, and sometimes they are just as corrupt. So, they could all collude and pass judgment. So, you have to see the framework in which your setting that government. To have a dictatorship in a rural Indian setting may not work. But having this kind… It's good to kind of explore what would work in a certain society based on their culture, their norms, what they believe in, who they look up to. Because elders are respected in India. I don't see that kind of respect in North America where people are questioned, even if they're…
[Dan] We don't respect anybody.
[Chuckles]
[Mahtab] Teachers and elders. I don't see the kind of respect that they get. That comes from the cultural aspect of India where you respect your elders, even if they're wrong, you respect them and you pretty much do what they say.
 
[Brandon] Let's do a book of the week, Dan.
[Dan] So, our book of the week is A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. This is a Tor book that I absolutely love. It gave me the same kind of political espionage science fiction vibe that Dune did. It's a very different book, but it still has that flavor. It's about a diplomat from a space station society who is traveling to the heart of this massive intergalactic Empire to be the new ambassador there in the midst of a huge crisis. It has some really cool technology, it has some incredible cultural stuff. There's kind of ritualized communication and poetry is the way that this big civilization talks to each other. But really, it's kind of a murder mystery that can only be solved by navigating the kind of underbelly of this government. It's just really good. I really love it. The language is beautiful and the culture is fascinating and the politics in it are just vicious.
[Brandon] A Memory Called Empire.
[Dan] Yes.
 
[Brandon] So, next week we're going to dive… Do a deep dive into political intrigue itself. So, for the remainder of this discussion, I want to back up just a little bit and talk about the actual worldbuilding elements. What are things that our listeners need to take into account and consideration when they are worldbuilding specifically a government? I'm talking about, for instance, one of the most important purposes for a government is to design the laws. What is legal, and what is not? Who decides that, how is it arrived upon, and how is it enforced? These sorts of things. What other things do people have to consider when they're building a government?
[Mahtab] Taxes.
[Brandon] Okay.
[Mahtab] Taxes is a… I mean, most people hate taxes, they would question it. Why would people be taxed for certain things, and… If they didn't pay it, or what is the… What are the taxes paid for and how are they paid? That could be a very interesting story. There was a… We were just talking about it, there was a movie called Lagaan, which is taxes raised on villages during the British Empire. The only way to get out of it was for the villagers to play cricket. If they lost, they would have to pay three times the taxes. But because the villagers were so bowed under the weight of it, they took that risk and they went ahe… It's brilliant, but I think taxes is a huge point.
[Howard] Even… Take taxes and pull a step back from that. Ask yourself, what is the… How is the government managing the allocation of resources? Is it possible, in your fiction or science fiction thing, for a government to govern, to operate in a way where resources don't need to be allocated to it? Where it can allocate its own resources? It doesn't need taxes, because it has its own source of power, money, whatever. These are fun questions to ask. The… I guess… I come back around to the way in which power is expressed a lot. I like the model, the four estate model, we talk about a lot in the US, where you have an executive branch where power is expressed in terms of enforcing laws. The military, the police. The execution of judgment. You have a Judiciary branch in which power is expressed through interpretation of law. You have a legislative branch in which power is expressed through the creation of law. You have the fourth estate, where power is expressed through the dissemination of information to the people who vote for all of the people who make, execute, and interpret the laws. It's a really elegant sort of model, that says nothing about conservatism or liberalism or progressivism or green or whatever. It's all about the way in which power is expressed. I love looking at that model, and then finding ways to break it, in the same way that governments break in our world. Which is, when somebody crosses between two domains of expression of power, so they now have more power than they otherwise would.
[Dan] So, another way to look at power is, where does the power come from, and who holds it? I remember reading this really compelling essay about… Talking about the difference between United States government and the European governments that many of us came from. United States government was formed after the invention of the gun. Which means that people were able to defend themselves and did not need a government to protect them. So we have a completely different attitude about the power government should have, the amount of allegiance that we owe to our government, the amount of things we rely on our government for than the European governments that have existed since the feudal times when you needed a lord to protect you. So looking at… Well, when was this government created? How… Under what circumstances was this government created, and how has that affected the way they perceive it?
 
[Brandon] Two things we haven't talked about, also. Historically, one of the main reasons that governments collapsed is that they weren't able to rule a large enough area. They captured more land than they were able to communicate with quickly and maintain control of. So one of the things that I suggest, if you're creating a fantasy government, is look at how is the information getting around. How is this far-off piece of your Empire being governed? How realistic is that? Before you get to easy, quick communication, it's very hard to maintain a large government. It will collapse under its own weight. Or you'll have to do some of the things that they tried in some of the early Western governments, where they would have… There would be three kings, kind of, who all worked as one, and they each had this little part that they were king of. But together they were one government. Find ways to try and rule something bigger than one person can rule. The other thing we haven't talked about is succession. How does the power change hands in this government?
[Howard] Larry Niven's story called One Face, which I love for its expression of… Political intrigue is kind of the wrong way, wrong word, but the succession of power. A spaceship, hyperspace, gets knocked out of hyperspace, they don't know where they are. Their computer isn't working right. The computer is really smart though, but it's not quite working right. They figure out, oh, we actually made it back to Sol system, but the sun got bigger and ate Mercury and Earth now only has one face. All of… So Earth is a dead planet. We have no idea what to do. They ask the computer, "Do you have any suggestions? What should we do?" The computer is dying, and the computer says, "Promote the astrophysicist to Captain." Then it dies. I love that, because what it says is, the wrong person is in charge. You put this person in charge, he can solve the problem. Now I'm dead. The problem is… Well, we gotta find a way to spin Earth again. Because everything you guys need is frozen on the other side of it. You just crashed, and you can't see it yet. But the astrophysicist is going to figure that out. So, I love… Sure, I've spoiled the story for you. But that whole aspect of succession where God, if you will, has said, "Look, he needs to be king. I'm not telling you why. I'm out."
[Mahtab] I'll still read it. It sounds interesting.
[Dan] I love this idea of succession. One of my favorite movies is called The Lion in Winter. Which is about Eleanor of Aquitaine and her husband who is probably named Edward and then their children, Richard the Lion Hearted, Prince Lackland, and the third one no one remembers. The entire story takes place over one night in which the two parents are trying to decide which of their sons will inherit. We have this concept of royal primogeniture, which, yes, existed. But if the wrong son was going to inherit, you had ways of making sure he didn't. So they're trying to decide which one is going to take over when the king dies. It is constant political scheming, backbiting, stabbing, murdering, sleeping around… All in the course of one night. It's fantastic.
 
[Brandon] We are out of time. Howard, you've got some homework for us?
[Howard] Yes. I've been beating on this drum already. But I'm going to let you guys pound on it now. The four estate model. Executive, legislative, judiciary, and the press. Find expressions of power that are outside of that, or that are subdivisions of that. Create your own numbered model in which government, or society, because the four estate model is larger than just government, in which expression of power within your society is categorized and build your governments around that.
[Brandon] Awesome. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 12.18: Gendered Dialect, with J. R. Johansson

May. 2nd, 2017 03:44 pm
mbarker: (ISeeYou2)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 12.18: Gendered Dialect, with J. R. Johansson

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/04/30/12-18-gendered-dialect-with-j-r-johansson/

Key Points: Men and women have different motivations in communication. Women, in general, seek connections, while men seek status. Women use rapport talk, while men use report talk. Men tend to goal-oriented communications, while women are building bonds. When women join other women, the first comment is likely to be a compliment. With men, the first thing is likely to be a joking insult. Relations versus dominance. Most of this is socialization. Be aware that the exceptions are as interesting as the rules! Broad spectrum of engagement. When a woman says, "This is what happened to me," they are looking for empathy, sympathy, where a man is likely to answer, "Let me fix that for you." Women often apologize, are overly polite. They use equivocating, and self-deprecation. To learn the other side, read work written by and for that gender. Get someone to flag your writing. "Spend more time listening than you spend talking."

( All the talk, uncut! )
[Howard] Okay. We are out of time. Susan, do you have a writing prompt for us?
[Susan] Um...
[Mary] I actually…
[Howard] No, Jenn has the writing prompt for us.
[J. R.] I do. I have a writing prompt for you.
[I'm so sorry, I don't.] [Laughter] [We got you covered. Go to it.]
[J. R.] Okay. So, I think it's very, frequently when you see a matriarchy represented in fantasy, sci-fi, any of those type situations… It's really just a patriarchy with women in all of the roles. So write a scene with a matriarchy that has them communicating and dealing with each other in a little more of a female fashion. See how that goes.
[Howard] Outstanding. Fair listener, this has been Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

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Writing Excuses 6.13: World Building Communications Technology

Aug. 30th, 2011 09:22 am
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 6.13: World Building Communications Technology

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/08/28/writing-excuses-6-13-world-building-communications-technology/

Key Points: Consider communications technology when you are planning your stories, as background, as part of the narrative structure, as a part of the conflicts. Don't ignore it, and don't assume that it will always be the way you think of it. Avoid lazy storytelling and idiot plotting. No matter what genre you are writing, speed and availability of communications affects plot. Consider disabling the technology to add complications. Mainly, consider communications, and how it affects your plot, don't just assume something. Oh, and remember Napoleon's giant semaphore robots.
( smoke signals, semaphores, and flags? )
[Howard] Okay. The fax machine. We're starting with a fax machine as the basis.
[Dan] The fax machine, by the way, was posited by Jules Vern [inaudible]
[Howard] That's awesome. So the principle behind the fax machine was we are sending a text message via cell phone networks. Take this communications technology, and instead of faxing things, you are now sending physical objects.
[Dan] Like 3-D printers?
[Howard] Yeah, like 3-D printers. The fax machine as a 3-D printer as a starting point for a short story.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
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