Writing Excuses Transcripts

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-46-now-go-write-break-all-the-rules-part-2

Key points: Show, don't tell? Or not? Compress or expand. Using telling to establish important points. Systemless magic? ACES: Access, Causality, Ease, Strangeness. 

[Season 20, Episode 46]

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[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 20, Episode 46]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, now go Write - break all the rules ( part 2).

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] And I'm Erin.

[Erin] Okay. We are back. We have two numbers remaining in my rule breaking thing that I'm doing.

[Mary Robinette] Three.

[Erin] 3. Okay. telling instead of showing. So, this is, like, interestingly, I think, show don't tell, became very popular and then very, like, unpopular, and is now maybe resurging. I don't know how you feel about... Do you think people still tell people show don't tell, or has that fallen out of favor in [many theaters]?

[Mary Robinette] I see it...

[DongWon] [garbled] hear it all the time.

[Mary Robinette] They do.

[Erin] Okay.

[Mary Robinette] They do. So part of the thing that drives me crazy about show don't tell is that it's not a real quote, people quote it as if it's Chekhov and he didn't actually ever say it. The closest we get... What we have is actually a summary of someone else's interpretation of a letter that he wrote to his brother. And if we look at the actual thing he wrote, it's much more limited and focused in application. So, "in descriptions of nature, we must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes, he gets a picture." For instance, you'll have a moonlit night. If you write that on the mill dam  a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star and the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past it like a ball. So what he meant was that you can use those details to create an image. But he's not saying don't tell people about things. Like, that's not what he's saying.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Not even a little bit.

[Erin] And...

[DongWon] Yeah. The advice of show don't tell is the way that like [garbled] faster than anything else. Right? Because the thing is about a novel is that it is mostly the writer telling us stuff.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] That's what writing is, is people telling people other things.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And also, like, that is storytelling.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Most of the time, most of the stories you are told, like, when we're not reading something...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] If your friend is like, Ah can't believe it, like, aliens landed and then zombies attacked me. Like, a lot of what they're... They're just going to be telling you what happened to them.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] They cannot show you the thing has happened.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And the really good storytellers... You could have three friends. Something... The same amazing thing happened to them. And one friend you know would just be much better at conveying it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And, like, one friend would make it really boring even if it was like the biggest thing.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because some people know how to tell in a really interesting way, and some just are working on that.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I find that I tend to, instead of saying show don't tell, I tend to talk more about compressing and expanding.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That the things that usually, things that are not emotionally important, we're going to compress so we can get past them faster. And things that are emotionally important, we're going to expand and unpack so we can live them. But there are times when you want to compress something that is a nice emotional and important thing to give more space for the reader to come in. So, Stephen King, I'm going to quote this not quite right, but in On Writing, he talks about you can expand, you can describe the amount of pain someone is in. The white hot pick lancing through his... like, you can describe all of that, or you can say they ripped off his thumbnail. And, like, that immediately makes people...

[DongWon] Ow!

[Mary Robinette] Go... Right! Right, but I just told you that, I didn't des... I didn't show it. Right? But it invites, it leaves space for the reader...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] To come in and bring their own experience there. So there are places where you do, I think, want to compress so that the reader will fill in the gaps.

[DongWon] And it goes back to what we were talking about in the first half of this episode, of the  karaoke singer who just belts the whole time. Right? You need to have that variance. Right? And sometimes, the most effective thing is to zoom really all the way in on the quietest, most nothing moment, the bug crawling across a leaf, because that can be a rich metaphorical image for what's about to happen. And then you'll speed up, and be like, and then he went about his whole day and did X, Y,  and Z, blah blah blah blah blah. Right? And, like, sometimes that zooming in and zooming out is you communicating to your reader the information you want them to have in various ways, and sometimes it's not obvious what needs to be written out in extreme detail, and sometimes it's obvious what needs to be told to them to skip past.

[Mary Robinette] There's... I did the translation for Hildurknutsdotter's The Night Guest. And in it, like, stuff goes wrong, as you might guess from the title, at night. And there's this one chapter, and the entirety of the chapter is, I have decided to stop sleeping.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Right?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That's not good.

[Mary Robinette] No. No. And it's just this cold thing. And then it's just blank pages. And then you turn...

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] And like it's... But again, it's that leaving space, it's the deciding the one detail that I'm going to tell you and then you get to build everything else from that.

[Erin] Yeah. I love all of that. And I think one other thing I think telling can be really good at is establishing rules of the world when you're not sure what people...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] May take away. If there's something that's like a fundamental, like, load-bearing wall of your setting, and you're like, I really think it's important that everyone understand that this is like underwater. Like, I think there are times...

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Erin] When you don't...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] To just be so showy...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That people miss it.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] And then they're like, wait, this was underwater the whole... 

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That changed everything.

[DongWon] Or the opposite happens. The biggest mistake I see show don't tell mis-applied is in the opening of books. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Oh, my goodness.

[DongWon] The first page of a book, where people be like, oh, I'm just going to show them how the rules of this world work. But I'm like, I'm a baby, I don't understand...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Anything yet. I don't know, are we underwater? Are we above water? And you can say a thing that is a metaphorical beautiful image, and I will take it so literally and be like, wait, this isn't an underwater site, that was a metaphor?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You know what I mean? Because I don't know enough yet to not know that that wasn't literal. Right? And so the openings of books is a place to be telling people information, and you want to do it in ways that are engaging and well written and captivating. But you can tell people stuff in interesting ways. Just because it's telling doesn't mean it's inherently boring or doesn't have layered information or doesn't have thematic resonance. You just gotta get better at telling people stuff.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I called this playing coy with the reader.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Where it's like I just want you to figure it out. It's like... I'm like, or we can communicate.

[Erin] If you think about it as a baby, it's great.

[laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] like, well, like how do you walk? Well, you figure it out. Like, you know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] There's a certain amount of that you can do, but at a certain point, I think, you do have to like eventually tell the babies a few things once they understand language.

[DongWon] Or at least don't get mad at the baby when it walks into a table...

[laughter]

[DongWon] You didn't tell it about tables. You know what I mean? One area where I think this really comes from is because so much of our narrative language has become visual. Right? We talk about movies... I mean, you'll hear me do it on this podcast constantly, of using movies and TV as reference points for how we tell stories. Right? The problem is that a book is wildly different...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] From a visual medium, because they only know literally what you tell them. They don't know anything other than what words you put on the page versus when you're watching an image on a screen, you're  absorbing a ton of information about what are they wearing, what's the lighting like, all of these different things. All these other departments are coming into play in a way in which you don't necessarily get in a book.

[Mary Robinette] But that actually is one of the places that show don't tell has come from...

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] Is that one of the things that people took it from, like, this whole Chekhov idea was during the transition from silent films to talkies. And the show don't tell was don't use narration cards... Or not silent films to talkies, but to silent films. Don't use narration cards when you can just... When you can show it, because they were like, this is a visual medium, you should be using those tools. We also say, in puppet theater, it's a puppet show, not a puppet tell...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Because...

[DongWon] Yeah, well, Chekhov was a playwright.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he was a playwright. But... Yeah.

[Erin] And I do think there are times when, like, you can... I think sometimes the positive of show don't tell is if you're used to visual media and you're trying to, like, write that way, you may forget to include some of the stuff that you take away...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] From... Like, when you see an actor, like with a single tear going down their eye, like, as they watch a sunset, you're filling in a lot... You're telling yourself, like, a little bit of the story. And sometimes that part of the telling gets lost.

[Mary Robinette, DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But a lot of times, I think, it is about telling really well, and we're... We're running long. But I will say that I think some of the ways that you can tell well are think about the way you pace,...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] The way you're telling things. Watch really good kind of stand-up comedians, who are... Who tell really interesting stories that lead to a joke. They use the rule of threes, they sort of increase in their cadence and pace as they get closer to the big thing that they want you to understand. They  use really interesting words when they're telling you something. I mean, I'm completely... not to judge your friends at home, but if you think about the way your not as good at  telling things friends might tell you something versus your friend who could tell you a trip to the grocery store and make it sound like the most epic adventure ever, it's because they... A lot that they're telling you, they use language that makes it sound very exciting. And so you can use all of those tools as a thing.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And I think also the very fun thing about telling is that it reveals the teller.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So the way somebody tells a story says a lot about the way they see the world.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And when you want to reveal something about your protagonist, having them tell the reader something also tells the reader something...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] About who they are.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Speaking of telling you things, you do your final number...

[Erin] I will do my final number, which is one, and this is one I'm going to... This is my, like, most controversial number. And I'm just going to run through it and tell you, because I have a saying that I believe, that magic doesn't have to have a system, is my last one. I think system magic is fine, but I'm a huge fan of systemless magic, or magic just exists in the world. And the way that I think about this is through a framework that I call ACES. Which is, A is access. So you're thinking about how magic is going to work in your world. A is access, who can do the magic? Can everyone do it? Can only people from the bloodline of Rohisla do it? Which apparently is now a family. Can like...

[Mary Robinette] So that's what the of Rohisla was [garbled]

[Erin] That's right. Like, is it... So who can do it? C is for causality. How direct is you doing anything from you getting what you want? Is it like every time if I clap three times, click my heels three times, and say there's no place like home, I will go home? Or is it like I'm going to wish and like it might not come true exactly the way that I want it to? The more causality you'll find in, like, a D&D style magic where you know exactly what the spell does. But there are... You could have a form of magic, and when it's just like I think it'll do this, but I don't know exactly how to make it happen. E is for ease, how easy is it to do the magic? Do you have to sacrifice your first born child or cut off your toenails every time you need to do magic? Or is it like you could just wake up tomorrow and do it? And then finally strangeness. How weird is what the magic is doing compared to what we are doing? Are you turning people inside out? Are you turning them into a frog? Are you just making them walk slightly faster? Like, how it is. And so thinking about what those things are, and in my essay, I will go into depth about how you can think about those things and use them against each other.

[DongWon] I certainly think Lord of the Rings would be better if Gandalf the White said, I'm casting a level 9 Fireball...

[laughter]

[DongWon] So you consume meta magic sorcery points to make it a maximized style at this range.

[laughter]

[Erin] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I don't disagree with you, because I've read stories where...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And also, I disagree with you only because the people using the magic or existing in that world are usually humans, and humans are pattern seeking creatures, and we will turn everything into a magic system, like the bus. How do you get the bus to come? The spell you cast is you walk away from the bus stop. Like, we will find... Like, don't say that thing out loud. Like, we will systematize things that do not have systems.

[DongWon] But I think superstition is still resistant to systemization. Right? Like, people have ideas of what works and doesn't versus what the narrator is telling us works and doesn't work. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Because, like, there are also times where I knock on wood and then the bad thing happens anyways.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? Am I going to stop knocking on wood? No. Does that... And so I think in so many ways, making magic not numinous and strange and unpredictable can sometimes... For certain kinds of storytelling, bleed something out of it, and then for other kinds of story, I want to know exactly how my magic works in a really detailed way, in the way that I want to know how the engines work in The Expanse.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? But I don't really care how the engines work in Star Trek. You know what I mean? It's just another tool in your kit.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think the difference is that in The Expanse, we want to know how the engines work because it is almost always a plot point.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] And it's never a plot point in Star...

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Trek?

[DongWon] Star Trek. Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I mean, dilithium crystals. But whatever. Like, we know enough. So... And I think, to quote the founder of this podcast, the Sanderson's law, that the... Oh. I can't... I'm not going to quote him, I'm going to paraphrase him. That the definition of the magic system is proportional to the amount of plot that it carries.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, like, if it's like this thing always happens if you do... If you say Beetlejuice three times, like, we don't need to know why that works, we don't need to know any of those things.

[Erin] Yeah. I think, two things I would say. One is I do think we are pattern seeking creatures. But I also think there are a lot of folk traditions, especially like around, like, ghosts and haunts, where, like, people don't really understand it, nor do they want to. I think there's a feeling that this is beyond human understanding, and attempting to understand it will actually make it bad for you.

[Mary Robinette, DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And that we should just sort of, like, leave it out there... Like, will the ghost of your great aunt show up? Maybe. And why is she showing up tonight? I don't know. Like...

[DongWon] None of my business.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] None of my business, and I'm not going to ask.

[DongWon, Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] A lot of questions about that. But she's just there.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] But I do think that the role of plot, to me it's more...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Does it solve problems? Or is it part of the problem? And the way I think about that is gravity. So if gravity, like, if you're like,, I can't move because gravity is too heavy, you probably don't need to know, like, how gravity works in order to just understand its effect. But if you controlling gravity is what's going to fix that problem, then you're going to want to understand...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] How it works.

[Mary Robinette, DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So you can have magic be a problem creator and you just need to understand enough to know, like, oh, no, I said this three times and this person appeared. I guess that's what it does. But what you don't want to have happen, I think, is for the way in which it works to be the solution, but only you the author understand it, it never...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Becomes clear.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] Either to the characters or for the reader.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, basically, I think we... I completely agree with you, I just needed to...

[DongWon] Totally. I think we're really on the same page.

[Mary Robinette] I just needed to poke at it a little bit.

[Erin] What?

[Mary Robinette] I know...

[Erin] It's like we're on a podcast together...

[Mary Robinette] I have opinions that are accepted.

[Erin] Speaking of being on a podcast, we are going to go to the homework. And your homework is to pick one of the four things we talked about. So, systemless magic, inactive protagonist, telling versus showing, or passive voice. Take a scene that you've written and rewrite it where this is the thing that you're doing. And see how much it changes.

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.