Entries tagged with fear

Entry tags:

Writing Excuses 20.34: Deep Dive into "All the Birds in the Sky" -- Using the Lens of Who

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-34-deep-dive-into-all-the-birds-in-the-sky-using-the-lens-of-who

Key points: Who? What makes up a character, what makes up our experience of them? History and community, motivation and goals, stakes and fears. How do they react to things? What is our proximity to them?

[Season 20, Episode 34]

[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 34]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Deep Dive on "All the Birds in the Sky" -- Using the Lens of Who

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Mary Robinette] So, what we wanted to do is take this… These things that we've been talking about, the who and the way there and why the when, and take one work and look at how a single work is deploying all of these things. Last season, we took different works to represent different concepts. This season, we're taking one work, because, in reality, when you're writing, you're doing it all in a single work. We're going to start with this lens of who, and I'm just going to briefly remind you of some of the tools that we were talking about. When we were talking about the lens of who, we were talking about, like, what makes up a character, what makes up our experience of them. There's the idea of history and community, motivation and goals, what their stakes and fears are, how they react to things, and then there's also our proximity to the character. Are we looking at them in first person or third person, third person omniscient? Those are the kinds of things that we're thinking about. There's the mechanics of it, the… Which voice we're using. But there's also the… Their… Our experience of them as a person. One of the reasons that I pitched this particular book to the group, All the Birds in the Sky, is because it takes a look at our two main characters, Patricia and Lawrence, at three different points in their life. There is their childhood, when they're like six years old. Then we see them in middle school, which, as we all know, is a brutal time. And then we get to see them… Actually, I guess it's four different times. We get to see a little bit of their teenage years. And then we get to see them as adults. So, one of the things that I liked about it is that there is this opportunity to talk about who and talk about… And we see the impact of their history as we move through the book. So I think one of the questions for me for you all is, when you are thinking about how these characters move through this book, I'm taking things kind of sequentially, when we think about history and community, how is Charlie Jane using those to shape our understanding of the characters through the book?

[DongWon] I love that we're starting with the lens of who, because to me that is the primary question of this book. Right? This book, more than anything else, is a character study about a relationship between two characters. And using the time jumps is such a beautiful way for us to get a sense of how things that happen to them in early childhood influenced the adults they became and the choices that they make. Right? So, seeing these lenses evolve over time is, to me, the joy of reading this, of this deep commitment to asking questions about who are these people and why are they the way they are. Which starts with… At home… It starts with their family lives. Who are their parents, who are their siblings? And the community that they're embedded in from the very, very start.

[Howard] There's a tendency for readers to… Just because this is the character who is my point-of-view character, and because these two characters have had a moment together, as a reader who is reading a thing that the author has just given me this moment, I will inflate the importance of that moment way beyond what in the real world that moment might be like. And that's one of the reasons why I so love a point later in this book where Lawrence and Patricia are talking, and they've kind of been… They've been apart and they realize they have a very different perspective on some of the things that happened as children. As a reader, I'm like, oh, that was hugely formative, that's critically important to the rest of the book. And one of the characters is like, ah, that was just this thing I did one time. And then someone else says that was the most important thing that you… You saved my life.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] And I love that, because it grounded me in my experiences of growing up. I have memories of things that were super important to me, and the other people are like, oh, that was just a Tuesday.

[Erin] Yeah. I also think, though, one thing that I find very interesting about this book is, like, picking… What you're talking about, Howard, is like picking the moments, also, as a writer, what are the moments in your characters' lives that you choose to dramatize. And there's a moment later in the book in which… I can't remember which one of them says something like I realize that may be, like, I recontextualized my entire life through the lens of this relationship. And this entire book is that. The book actually recontextualizes their lives through the lens of this relationship. There are whole periods of their life that are really important that either get told way later, or, like the schooling part, like all the interesting parts where they were growing their separate selves, and instead, it's the moments when they are together which tell you what's the arc of the story that we're trying to read. And so, there's so many things that happen in your characters' lives that you can focus on, but this book knows what it's about, and therefore picks the specific moments that make that point.

[DongWon] Yeah. 100 percent. And then this also plays into the unreliability later in the narrative. Right? When they're young adults out in the dating world trying to build relationships, there are a couple moments that I really loved where someone would break up with the character or the character would break up with somebody. I'm thinking about this with Patricia and Kevin, I think his name was, the guy that she was seeing. Where she was like, yeah, I don't know what this relationship is. Is it a relationship? We keep trying to talk about it and not talking about it. And then he breaks up with her, being like, hey, I tried to talk to you about this so many times. You wouldn't talk to me about it. And just seeing that inversion, and… Because we have all this context of where she comes from, we understand why her communication style is like this, we understand the trauma that she went through, this like rupture she had with her best friend who was the only person who saw her, and then ran away. And just her fear of commitment makes so much sense. And being able to put us in the moment of that inversion, of her having to step back and be like, oh, no, I see it now of what happened here. I think would have been a hard trick to pull off if we'd just been in this story about adults. But because we know what her relationship with Lawrence was like as kids, we can see the echoes of that reverberating throughout that. And Lawrence's relationship with his girlfriend, that he like puts on a pedestal, which is like a little bit how he related to Patricia when they were children. And, like, all of these different elements. And it just creates all this really rich, interesting context for us to understand relationship dynamics of young twentysomethings in San Francisco in whatever era this is. I don't know. That really, really works for me.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And there's something that Patricia says when they're in their middle school years. In narrative, this was a metaphor for how it was with Lawrence, Patricia realized. He would be supportive and friendly as long as something seemed like a grand adventure, but the moment you got stuck or things got weird, he would take off. And it is… I don't know that that is necessarily true of Lawrence all the time, but I think that that is how she has assigned him in her brain. We…

[DongWon] It makes the heartbreak later makes so much sense.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The other thing that struck me as I was reading was that both… Because I had read the book initially, and then I was doing a reread to prep for this. And one of the things that I was struck by was that both kids have this incredibly special moment when they're little, when they're six, where they feel… Or not six. Patricia's is when she's six, Lawrence is a little bit older. But where they feel like they belong. And that they are seen and they're understood and that they have a gift and that they are special. And then they spend the rest of their life trying to get back to that place. And that is frustrating, like watching the frustration and how that manifests and they're both… They both are pushing against it in different ways because of the… Who they are, but they're both pushing against it… Pushing against the same kind of thing.

[Erin] I think that's a really interesting lesson to maybe take from this is that… We've talked before, I believe, on the podcast about sort of essence expression, like what something is at its core versus how it's being shown in the world right now. And I think sometimes it can be really easy as you're trying to make a story or a book go forward to get really focused on expression. What is the character's goal in this moment? What are they trying to achieve, did they achieve it? Did the thing blow up? But why they are doing it is really interesting and also, like, should be really consistent, I think, or have a real reason for changing. And so I think sometimes, like, the character arc can become an arc of action as opposed to an arc of reason for action, and what's interesting about this is this book really focuses on all the things they do are, like, watching a friend, like, make the same kind of mistake, but differently. It's like if you know a friend who has a specific, like, dating habit. They date different guys, but it's like the same thing. You're like, oh, you're doing this again, but in a slightly different way.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, you learned this lesson, but not the underlying lesson.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And I think that is the thing that's really interesting to focus on, and to take away as a writer.

[Mary Robinette] There's another thing that Charlie Jane does that I thought was kind of subtle and interesting. And I will talk to you about that when we come back from the break.

[Mary Robinette] Welcome back. There's this thing that she does where there are multiple times where Lawrence and Patricia define, even though, like, one is fantasy and one is science-fiction, where they define the thing that they want is the way the other one moves through the world. So there is the example of this is I wish I could sleep for five years and wake up as a grown-up, except I would know all the stuff you're supposed to learn in high school by sleep learning. So that's a science-based solution for her problem. But then Lawrence has a magic based thing, I wish I could turn invisible and maybe become a shapeshifter. Life would be pretty cool if I was a shapeshifter. And it's the idea of, like, even though they are very different people, they are the other… They want what the other one has. And they both see the other one as you have it figured out. I wish I could have it figured out like that.

[Howard] I think one of the most powerful things that Charlie Jane accomplishes with these two characters, and it relates to what you just described, in the world building, these characters have to see the magic, see the science-fiction. And the way they are differently embedded in that universe is… I found it very, very immersive. From the first chapter, where Patricia is in the woods, I was there. And I think that's… That use of POV in order to communicate the world building was very, very well done.

[Mary Robinette] Let's actually talk about that a little bit more, because that's one of the other lenses that we use, is that proximity to the character. That's something that I think Charlie Jane plays with a fair bit through the thing, that there are places where we go omniscient and all the dialogue is reported. And then Patricia said… Not and then Patricia said. And then Patricia told him about everything that had happened. But there are other times where we do go deep into it, and we live it, and we have all the tactile experiences. What do you think about the ways that that's being manipulated?

[Dan] So, one of the things that impressed me the most about this book was the way that she was able to immediately, in one or two sentences, tell me exactly who the side characters were.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] Even though we never really get close proximity to any of them. This is so focused on Patricia and Lawrence, and to a lesser degree, Theodolphus. But I remember being so delighted early on, in like the first or second chapter, when she illustrates this beautifully that both kids are messed up by their parents, and have a terrible relationship with their parents, but into completely different ways. And if I remember correctly, it's Lawrence's parents are kind of distant and don't pay a lot of attention, whereas Patricia's parents demand perfection. And we just get that in, I think, one sentence each. And it's so powerful when you immediately know exactly who these characters are, and why they are problematic for our leads.

[Erin] Well, I also wonder… It's funny, thinking about POV, like how… Like, if you were an outsider, like, looking at these parents and kids, like… There's something very childlike in the way they perceive the punishment. Like, do they really send Patricia to her room for like 18 years and only passed sandwiches under the door? Maybe they did or maybe… But that also sounds like something like a kid would say. Like, and then for like a year, I had to like only eat sandwiches with one bread. And, like, how much of that is in the POV of a child…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And how…

[Howard] Lady, that was 15 minutes.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Laughter]

[Erin] Exactly. You had to go to your room for half an hour. It was not like… But I don't know. Because…

[Howard] Yeah.

[Erin] We're so in the POV that we so get the other characters through this specific lens. And I think that's why they come through so clearly. Because the characters, the main characters, have such a very specific point of view on their parents or on the adults in their life that it comes through super clearly whether or not it's objectively true.

[DongWon] Well in… This goes back to the thing I was talking about earlier, in terms of the inversion around understanding what their relationship was. Because that's a tool of proximity. Right? We're zoomed in so close on each of their experiences of this relationship that we're getting this, like, 20 something I don't know how to date kind of perspective.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And we're embedded in that until suddenly we get that revelation, and then we zoom out. Right? Everything just sort of snaps into focus in this relationship in a very cinematic way where we can look back on the relationship that's been described to us and then, like, oh, yeah, that is how she's been treating that guy, or oh, yeah, he's doing this thing to her, and her experiences of what the hell is happening the entire time. Right? And so I think that is such a masterful use of proximity and creates this feeling that I couldn't shake throughout the book where I wasn't, like, experiencing characters, but, like, I was like, oh, these are like my friends, was this feeling that I had throughout, which was, like, an interesting sensation, and they felt like people I was in community with rather than people I was learning about. And I think it is a little bit of that, trying to parse the thing that your friend is telling me, they were like complaining about their relationship, and you're like, but this is your fault, though? You know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Like that little bit of a thing, of trying to be like figure out how to help your friend, and I'm doing that same math with like how to help Lawrence with this situation? How do I get him to chill out about this girl that he's dating so that he doesn't ruin it? And you're like, my gosh, he's going to ruin it. And the only way he's going to figure it out is by ruining it. So…

[Erin] And, it's funny, is I also see this about the entire world. So we'll probably talk about this more in one of the other lenses, but what I think is so… What I found really interesting and what I highlighted the most in this entire book were all of the horrible things that were happening in the world…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That were asides to the characters' lives. They're like, and then that thing in Haiti, and… I don't know, the thing and the heat and the… And they would just mention it among, like, things that were impacting… They're like, I can't go on a date here because, like, I have to remember to not flush the toilet because of that water crisis…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Back to my date. And so, it's so hyper focused in some ways on their own lives as we all are, that they let the broader parts of the world, which we mostly get in omniscient kind of asides go, until they cannot let it go anymore because it intrudes on their worlds.

[DongWon] The one that really stuck out to me was in the moment where Patricia and Lawrence are like, finally, like connected and they're in the middle of that sex scene… That's very intense and we're in their experience. There's a sideline about the, like, and on the television they're talking about how superstar whatever the name of the star was obliterates half of the East Coast. And I went, damn, that's a really broad way to phrase that. And then forgot about it, because of the intensity of this scene. And then she gets the call that her parents are, like, trapped and dying in this, like, thing. And it's like, oh! Obliterate was used literally and intentionally. They just weren't observing this catastrophe that was happening outside their window. And it's like you feel the heartbreak of experiencing joy while the world is falling apart around you.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And that is… Again, that use of coming in and back out again.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] With the proximity is so interesting. Before we wrap up, I did want to touch about the motivations and goals and the stakes and fears, because… And I realize that I am wrapping like three lenses all into one…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But it informs the way they are reacting through the whole book. How much do you think their motivations, goals, stakes, fears are set up in the beginning and consistent through the book, and how much do you think they change?

[Howard] Um… In the beginning of the book, these were kids who were trying to figure out how to interact with the world, how to survive the world, and they arrived at two completely different toolsets. By the middle of the book, I feel like they've both figured out the world is broken and there are things that they can be doing to help. And they have completely different toolsets. And the fact that they have different toolsets and blind spots… The inability to see what someone else's toolset might provide leads to the conflict at the end where these two characters, who are both the good guys, are each other's antagonists.

[Mary Robinette] All right. I think what you said about how they… One of the things for me was that they… It sets up that they are trying to survive N, and that that's something that they are constantly trying to do. But in the early part of the book, because they are children, their reactions are not how do I survive this thing that is happening to me. And that as we progress through, their reaction becomes how can I influence things so that those things don't happen to me or anyone else again?

[DongWon] I think my one critique of the book, or my major critique of the book, I think comes to some of the stakes questions. Right? Because we have these world stakes in terms of the world is getting worse, and we have this sort of tech bro attitude of, like, I can save the world, in which… The Sam Bankman-Fried kind of perspective…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Which we've seen the flaws of. And we have this other perspective from her coming from this more holistic magical thing. Sometimes that felt a little… Like, there's a version of this book that I would have really enjoyed which is a contemporary realist novel about these two kids growing up and then living in San Francisco and experiencing this tension that is really core of what's going on in this city and has been going on in this city, especially when this book was written. And so sometimes, I felt a little disconnected to me from the supernatural state. Right? Because we have this thing where the tree at the beginning of the book asks this question, and that it establishes as a major stake. We have the AI that he builds in the closet. That's established as a major stakes. And so by the time those two things come back in, I've been thinking about them this whole time, and kind of wondering where they are, and knowing in the back of my mind that those are the stakes that are going to matter at the end of the day. But there a little disconnected from the moment to moment action. Right? And, like… They are connected to the characters motivations in that they are central to the questions that they are interested in in terms of conductivity, community, helping people, in terms of Patricia, and these technological solutions and sort of abstract ideas in terms of Lawrence. But in the specificity of those two things which are important for the end, they disappear for a very long time. But because they're highlighted at the very beginning, I never forgot about them. So there was a little bit of friction around the stakes of the story in that way. Even though the emotional stakes were so well rendered and so established, the plot stakes felt… I felt a gap…

[Howard] I agree. I look at that problem and I think, dang it, Charlie Jane Anders wants me to read smarter than I want to read.

[DongWon] Yeah. I think that's true in so many ways. What I loved about the way the character interaction works in this book feels very queer to me in a specific way, because it is about holding empathy and understanding for the characters, while also holding them accountable for the things that they're doing. Which is a thing I think we strive for in the queer community. I think we strive for it in a lot of communities, but it's a thing that I observed, and something about the way the dy… Social dynamics work and the way the characters talk to each other felt so familiar to me in a certain way that I really appreciated about this book. Because I think she is asking a lot of us to hold in our heads, here's who this character was as a child, here's who this character is now, and keep that empathy, while also holding them accountable.

[Mary Robinette] [garbled] So what's interesting, and I see that Dan has something…

[Dan] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That he wants to say, but I'm just going to slip this in. One of the things that I particularly liked about the tree and the AI was that both of them were things that would be explained away as childhood make-believe. Because I remember Eliza, the computer, and the way ChangeMe is described at the beginning does not seem any different than Eliza. Right? But they are pretending that she's… That this is real and this is… And so I liked the tension.

[DongWon] For the context, Eliza's one of the first chatbots which was used… Claimed to be used as a therapeutic tool because it was responding in a humanistic way, but it is just canned responses.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, it's just… Yeah.

[DongWon] So… Wish [garbled]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Also, ChatGPT. That it gives the illusion of intelligence, but it isn't actually intelligent. The thing that happened to her as a child could have been a dream that she had.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And so I liked that… You describe it as stakes, but for me it falls back into the history thing. It's that there's an imaginary friend that they both had that is shaping a lot of the decisions that they make. But then it turns out maybe not so imaginary.

[Dan] Yeah. So, I'm glad you brought up critique. Full disclosure, I did not love this book. I'm kind of the dissenting voice here on the podcast to an extent. But specifically talking about what the stakes were, one of the realizations that I had partway through, and maybe this is a very different interpretation than some of the others had, is that what was going on in the world was really kind of beside the point. And a lot of the stuff with the tree and all of that, those stakes were there, but the real core of it was just who they were as people. And every time I would say this book is so boring, nothing is happening, I would have to stop and say, no, actually, there's a lot happening. It's just all internal to who they are. This is not a book where there are big action scenes. There are action scenes in it. But it is a book where… Like, the breakup with Kevin was a really big deal. And these kind of smaller moments were actually, for me, the real stakes of the book is who these people are, and what are the milestones of their progress on to becoming somebody different.

[Erin] And I think when it comes to stakes, one of the things that I took away from it was the idea that, like, you want to think that your life is so important and maybe it isn't. Even though these characters are in fact important to the world in some way, they felt like they were being… It felt, for me, for a lot of the book, that they were tools of greater movements they didn't understand. They were tools of people who had big plans that they would never tell them, and so they were just trying to, like, do the best they could to get from moment to moment of happiness, because everything they were doing was at somebody else's behest. Like, both of them were working for organizations they didn't fully understand, doing things that they didn't fully get, until it was happening. And so, I felt like in some ways maybe it's like… And there's all that thing about aggrandizement and, like, whether or not you're supposed to think you are the driver of the story or not in a story that's so focused on two characters. It's like this interesting contrast between how much does one person change the world and how much are they just trying to remain in the world as it changes around them.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think that one of the things that worked for me was that I did come in reading it as a character story. And so, because there were so many other things in the world that were happening in the background, the fact that other… That action that I was interested in was also happening in the background, just kind of felt like part of the texture. That, for me, this was two characters who both just wanted to belong, and they also wanted to stop feeling insignificant.

[DongWon] One thing that… And I think Dan and I are sort of coming at the same critique from different directions. I think we had different eventual emotional responses to it. But one simple rubric I have, and this is very reductive, so don't yell at me, but, like, is the distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction is often around this idea of literary fiction being primarily about portraiture, and genre fiction being primarily about building out a model. Right? It's about asking a question and answering it. Right? And this novel is, I think, attempting to do both. In that it is writing the literary and genre line in a certain way, and I appreciated its instincts to try and do both, but I think there's a little bit of friction between those, in terms of the overall question of how do we solve world problems. It's about connection, it's about integration, it is about, like, organic [garbled] network kind of things, which is the eventual… hybridizing community approach and technological approaches. Right? That is sort of the thing that she's arguing for at the end of the book. But then the substance of the book is primarily about character portrait and relationship portrait of two people feeling and bonding and coming together in this thing. And that becomes the metaphor, that becomes like the synthesis in this dialectical approach of these two different things. That relationship encompasses those two things. But what I loved about the book was primarily the literary project of portraiture.

[Mary Robinette] I'm just going to say that I wonder now how much of that is intentional. Because what you just described is actually what's happening in the book.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] The conflict between fantasy and science fiction, the conflict between two genres of understanding, the technical and the touchy-feely.

[Dongwon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And with that, I think it is time for us to give you your homework.

[Mary Robinette] So, for your homework, since we are focusing on the lens of who, and one of the things that I found most compelling about these two is how they are shaped by the other person. Who does your character envy? And why? And what action can they take to act on that desire?

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

Entry tags:

Writing Excuses 20.08: Identity 3 - Stakes & Fears

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-08-identity-3-stakes-and-fears

Key points: Stakes and fears. Relationships? What will make the character feel less about themselves? A friend might die? Your parent will be disappointed? Stakes often are what will I lose, rather than what will I gain. Sometimes stakes are small. Low stakes sometimes become important. What is the worst thing that could happen? Sometimes big stakes aren't as important as small ones. What fears do you give a character? There's a hole, an absence in the character. Do we fear the unknown, or do we fear knowing it? Be obvious. Courage is picking up a flashlight and looking in the dark corner. Trauma points, along axes of safety, connection, and empowerment.

[Season 20, Episode 08]

[DongWon] We're excited to announce that our 2025 retreats are open for registration. Join us in Minnesota June 15th through 21st for a regenerate retreat where you will learn new skills, generate new ideas, or focus on your writing. With lots of opportunities for restoration and networking, you'll leave refreshed and reinvigorated. Tickets start at $1500 per person. You can also sail the high seas September 18th through 26th. We'll sail out of Los Angeles on the Royal Caribbean Navigator of the Seas and explore the Mexican Riviera while refining your writing. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or tweaking your prose, you'll leave more confident in your current story. Tickets start at 2650 for writers and 2350 for family members. To learn more, visit writingexcuses.com/retreats.

[Season 20, Episode 08]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Character stakes and fears.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[DongWon] This week, we're continuijng our conversation about sort of the lenses of who, talking about character. The thing that I wanted to focus on this week is talking about how the fears that a character has and the stakes that a character faces help move them through the story, and help create the story that exists around them. Right? So, last time, we talked a lot about motivation and goals. The way I think about motivation and goals is very internal. Right? That is how the character's relating to themselves. When it comes to stakes, now we are getting to the parts where we're starting to feel tension, where the audience is relating to the character, we understand what their goals are, but now are feeling the pressure that they're facing and how that's moving them through the world. So when I think about stakes, I don't necessarily think necessarily about failure or danger, because we are all… Your readers are all people. As people, we tend to care about other people. So, what we care about are relationships more than we care about physical danger. Right? So, starting in an action scene can sometimes feel a little flat. But if you put a relationship under pressure in that, that's where a little bit more of that juice can come from. So, how do you guys think about creating stakes, especially initially when you're jumping into a story?

[Mary Robinette] I usually think about something that makes… Will make the character feel like less of themselves. So I find that early on, and then I say this with early career writers, that I would say, well, this… The goal is to have the eight gems of Rovisla…

[Laughter]

[Erin] We got a C in it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Sorry. I do pronounce…

[Howard] That letter's supposed to be an apostrophe.

[Mary Robinette] I do pronounce the apostrophes. It's a regional variation. So… If they fail, then they don't have the eight gems. An inverse of the goal is not… Like, that's not compelling. Or they're like… And then they might die, which is actually, like, the least compelling…

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Thing. I think, then, a friend might die. But that's…

[DongWon] Or your parent will think you're a failure because you didn't bring the eight gems back.

[Mary Robinette] Yep. That's significantly worse for most people.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] You do not want someone to be disappointed in you.

[Dan] Yeah. I think a lot of stakes often come down to what do I stand to lose rather than what do I stand to gain. It's not so much about gaining those gems. This is how the D&D movie starts, is look at this great life that I had before everything went wrong. We see him throughout the movie trying to get back to zero. Just trying to struggle back to regain the things that he lost in the first place.

[Mary Robinette] Sometimes the stake can be really kind of small. Like, when you look at… Back at, This Is How You Lose the Timewar, that initial stake was if I don't check this, I'm going to be curious for the rest of my immortal life. Just that, oh, what am I going to miss? It's a small thing, but it is the thing that also is the catalyst.

[DongWon] Then, the stakes of that so quickly become what does this other person think of me? They might think I'm not a worthy competitor. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Not think I'm a worthy companion by the end of it. The evolution of that stake is the thing that gives so much of the tension to that little novel.

[Erin] One thing I really like is when something feels low stakes, and then it turns out that it was worse than you thought. When the thing…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, oh, I'm just, like, trying to, like, get my cup of coffee so that I can make it through the day. But actually it turns out that there's something about… I cannot think what that would be… About getting that cup of coffee that is, like, suddenly the most important thing. Because when you're doing something low stakes, like, if you're doing a low stakes mission in life, you're not super prepared, you're just, like, I need to do this one thing. I'm only bringing what I need to get this small thing done. If that small thing becomes huge, then, all of a sudden, you are unprepared, you're afraid that you will fail, you feel like you have not brought your best self maybe to the table. Then it taps into those deeper fears about who am I, what will people think of me. It's sort of the same thing that gets people to often… When I go to karaoke, people will talk about how bad their voice is today. You don't want people to think that you're doing your best and you failed. You're either…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It's like, I could have done better if things had been set up differently for me.

[Mary Robinette] I see this in critique groups. I actually have my critique or's do a ritual apology before we begin where everybody apologizes all at the same time. Because all of them are afraid that people will think that they're not a good writer, and that they are lesser. I… When I'm sometimes talking to a student who's having a little bit of a meltdown, I'm like, okay, but what is actually the worst thing that could go wrong if someone doesn't like your story? They're like, it doesn't get published. I'm like, and what's the worst thing that can go wrong if it doesn't get published? I write a new story? I'm like, great.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Is that a bad outcome? No?

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Dan] Yeah.

[[DongWon] For an example, I'm going back to your sort of coffee thing becoming bigger stakes. One of my favorite escalation of stakes scenes in a movie is in The Devil Wears Prada. Where, early on, and he goes to get coffee for her boss and brings it back, and, kind of like is in a meeting about… I can't remember exactly what it's about… And she kind of snickers at something. There's this incredible speech that Miranda goes through about the color of the sweater that Andy is wearing in this scene, the periwinkle blue speech, and it's like this thing that goes from the stakes of my job are absurd, I'm getting coffee for someone who runs a fashion magazine, to understanding the perspective of the people who run this magazine and why clothes and fashion and aesthetics matter in the world and the context of that, and her realizing that, oh, no, I want the positive regard of this woman who is now yelling at me because I didn't take this seriously enough. So that slow escalation as we understand the terms of the movie and the stakes of everything that's going to come in the rest of the movie is just a masterfully done scene.

[Dan] At the same time, one of my favorite tropes is the complete opposite of this. Where we realize that what we thought were the big big stakes really aren't as important as the small stakes.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] The Perdiem Chronicles does this really well.

[DongWon] Oh, yeah.

[Dan] Throughout, where… For the several books, they don't need him to be a hero. They need him to be an assistant pig keeper.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Because the pig's the hero, and they need him to do that. In book 4, this kind of comes to ahead with one of my favorite lines where he's trying to work with the witches, and they say, "Any hero can soar with the eagles. But let's see him scratch for his own worms." Like, learning how to be a person, learning how to fend for yourself, how to survive in the world is so much more important than one or two acts of heroism.

[Howard] I got to thinking about the stakes and the fears in the very first Iron Man movie. Because the movie begins and Tony Stark wants for nothing. He can afford to blow the deal, he can afford to… He can afford to screw up because he's so rich. It just doesn't matter. Then the very first set of stakes he's presented with are now you might die. Now you need to invent or die. Those aren't the big stakes. He invents, he saves his life, and then he puts the whole company at risk. Now it is… Now he might not have money. Then we find out what was really happening here is someone's trying to take the company from you, and they're going to find another way to kill you. The final battle in the movie is because Tony doesn't want them to hurt Pepper. It comes back to a personal thing. It is not I need to where the Iron Man suit to save the world or to save the company or to save my life. It is because my friend might die.

[DongWon] So, while we all contemplate what we're all afraid of enough to make us a hero, let's take a break.

[DongWon] Welcome back. So we've been talking sort of about character stakes and how that relates to relationships. Right? One of the things that comes into that idea of stakes is the concept of fear. Right? We often have seen fear in stories as a negative to be overcome. But when you're thinking of how you're constructing character arc, how you're constructing a character, how are you thinking of what do I want to make this character afraid of? What fears are you putting into your characters that will help move them forward through the story?

[Mary Robinette] So this is why we wanted to tie these episodes together, because I will often look at their goals and motivations. What I find is that there's something that the character… There's a hole, there is an absence in the character, there's something. They are either rushing towards things, which are their goals, to try to fill it, or they are running away from the goal. So the… Having to confront, oh, this is a lack in myself is something that a lot of people are afraid of. Like, no one wants to confront their failings, their… No one wants to confront the fact that they're vain. Or no one wants to confront the fact that they're insecure. No one wants to confront, like, people want to be self-sufficient. So if I can create a fear and a reason to trigger that fear in them, that causes them to have to confront that or, to, like, flee from it. It's like I don't want to believe that I'm selfish, so I'm going to help these people. But they're constantly, like, but maybe I don't help them…

[Howard] We talk a lot about how people tend to fear the unknown. I don't think were actually afraid of the unknown. I think were afraid of knowing it. I… There's a thing out there that I don't know anything about and I would prefer not to. It may be a truth about me. It may be the fact that layoffs are coming. But there is a dark corner out there that I don't want to peer into, because it has information in it that is going to force me onto a new path, and I would rather continue to live with ignorance as bliss. Ignorance isn't actually bliss. But it's not the fear of the unknown, it's the fear of learning a thing that will now force me to change.

[DongWon] I would say it's even more than that. It's the fear of how other people see you changing.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Right? That in encountering the unknown, you will be forced to change in some way through that encounter and what your partner thinks or what your children think of you, what your friends think of you, what your boss thinks of you, all these will change when that layoff comes. The thing you're afraid of is how do I survive that? Is that a survivable encounter? So I think that tapping into that fear is going to be the thing that will drive your characters forward. The thing I want to emphasize about when we talk about character fears like this, there's an instruction in the game dialect that's a player instruction that I love a lot. The instruction is very simple, it just says be obvious. As a player, when you're making choices, make really obvious choices. That will lead to complexity through the interaction of everyone at the table making obvious choices. Not overthinking it. So leaning into what your character's afraid of in a Broadway will lead to specificity because of all the other stuff we've talked about in this section when were talking about the lens of who as they bounce off the other characters in your plot. But don't be afraid of them being afraid of a really broad thing, of, oh, my partner's not going to like me, my parents won't love me anymore. My sister will hate me now. Right? Like, those are really juicy, really powerful motivators that I think drive most people as they move through the world.

[Dan] Well, it's not just those choices that can be really obvious. But the resolutions, the ways of dealing with them, can be really blunt and obvious as well. Going back to a previous episode, we talked about Toy Story… Or I talked about Toy Story…

[Laughter]

[Dan] His… What he really fears there is that he has no value. Unless he… And he… Once again, he misinterprets that by saying, I will have value if I am the favorite toy. That all comes to a head when he gives the huge speech to Buzz. You're a cool toy. That is not only the moment where he convinces Buzz that it's okay to be a toy instead of an actual spaceman, that is very clearly and obviously the moment where Woody is convincing himself, being a cool toy is awesome even if I'm not the favorite toy. I don't need to find external validation. I can just love me for who I am. Whether I'm the favorite toy or not.

[Mary Robinette] It's occurring to me that what we're talking about here is basically give your character imposter syndrome.

[Laughter]

[Howard] One of the thoughts that I had just a moment ago, after talking about the fear of the unknown, the fear of knowing the unknown. Courage, to me, has always been defined as moving forward despite fear. Not an absence of fear, it's moving forward despite fear. I love the idea that if were not afraid of the unknown, we're afraid of knowing what's there, then courage is picking up the flashlight and looking at what's in the corner. That, just as a metaphor for me feels like an easy sort of litmus test, lens if you will, for looking at what my character's doing and deciding, well, in act one, they're staying away from the corner. They're not peering into the shadows, and things are coming out of the shadows and they are reacting. In act two, Act III, they're picking up the flashlight and they are staring at what they were afraid to stare at before.

[Mary Robinette] I sometimes look at really primal fears as a thing to give a character. But I was having… I was talking to my therapist and she started talking about trauma points. I'm like, I'm sorry, sorry, can you repeat those? I'm just going to start taking notes right now…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I'm like, stop doing a therapy session and started being a… This is really useful.

[Howard] I no longer need therapy, I have a professional interest in the information you're providing.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So she said that most people have these trauma points where something bad happened in childhood. Most of the time, you are not actually aware of what that is, because it happened when you were fairly young. But it was a long one of three axes, safety, connection, and empowerment. When we are looking at our Tony Stark example, the thing for him, his trauma point was connection, because of his damaged relationship with his mom… With his dad. You can see that. It's, like, how does he handle that? He makes Jeeves, who's in artificial intelligence… Boo, hiss… Artificial intelligence connection. He buys friends, essentially. Then when he realizes he has genuine friends, that then becomes the most vulnerable thing for him, because it's something he absolutely cannot lose.

[Erin] I think that doesn't necessarily mean that every… I mean, we can traumatize every character, and we should…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] But we don't have to actually, because sometimes I think some of that is based on traumatic experiences, but also some of it's just a staying alive lizard brain, like, human response. Like… Safety, like, every creature has a desire to stay alive. Like, as a species, like, they do things that will help to keep them alive.

[Howard] Whether you're a mother or whether you're a brother…

[Erin] Exactly.

[Howard] Staying alive…

[Oo, oo, oo…]

[Laughter]

[Erin] Like, I think of, like, my cat… Like every… Cats want to get high. Like when I…

[Laughter]

[Erin] There's a tornado warning… Yes, they do, in every sense. No, but whenever… When there's a tornado warning…

[DongWon] I've lost many a spider plant to cats, so, yes.

[Erin] Yeah, like you're like… I'll be like, no, we have to, like, get it in a lower part of the house.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] Because there's a tornado. But the cats, just, like, something is weird in the air and the best way to get away from weird things is to get as high as possible where I cannot possibly care anymore. No, to get to like a higher elevation where I can keep an eye on everything. It's just kind of baked in. We have our own thing with that. We are also safer in numbers. Humans as a species have, like, not very good, like, actual personal defenses. Like we don't have, like, really tough hides or really sharp teeth. We've got these opposable thumbs and the ability to come together in a group and build tools that help to keep us safe. So all of these things are things that are very baked in, I think, is very primal fears.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Empowerment, being able to take action to change the environment around you, because we don't necessarily physically adapt to our environments the way that, like, a reptile might.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So I think it's really nice to think about, like, those primal fears. I also just wanted to say that… I love to write, like, horrible people as characters. So I'm, like, they don't do that, like, when they… They let their fears get the best of them. So, a lot of times, I love thinking about what happens if the character does not overcome their fears. What if they do the thing… They're like I'm afraid that no one will love me so I won't let anyone, or, I will put up a wall. That's just going to be my character arc is becoming a worse version of myself. So it can be something that drives your characters positively or negatively.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. That's something that, like, as you were talking, was making me think about Sour Milk Girls, and how, like, the fear absolutely takes over that character. For listeners who are just joining us, you can hear a deep dive about that in season 18.

[DongWon] Yeah. It's what makes a truly relatable villain pop off the page…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Is understanding where they're coming from, understanding where what their fears are rooted in. It's also what allows you to give a hero a truly believable low point. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] The low point of them giving into a fear that you've seen them grapple with and understand intimately over the course of the series, that let you buy into the moment where the hero does fail. Because so often we see those moments and they fall flat, because it's not connected to anything. There was nothing actually at stake for the hero when things went off the rails. So, giving them things to care about, giving them goals and motivation, but then giving them fears that go alongside those, that is the thing that I think really can juice your story and get it to that next level.

[Mary Robinette] I will say also that going back to the idea of the traumas, the trauma does not have to be a big trauma.

[DongWon] Oh, yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Like, my… I don't know what some of… Like, what my trauma triggers are. But knowing the axes that it's on can really help clarify how a character reacts to things. Which again can help you shape the plot when you apply that lens to your story.

[DongWon] Exactly. On that note, I think we should go to some homework.

[Mary Robinette] I think that sounds like a great idea.

[Dan] Absolutely.

[DongWon] To traumatize our listeners a little bit more.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] So the first thing I want you to do is to make a note of all the major things that your main character is afraid of. List out those things, the fears that they have. Then, take your MC and draw a little map of all the characters that there connected to, and describe their connections to these other characters in one sentence or less. Now compare the list of relationships you've made to the list of fears that you've made for that character, and see if those two lists are in conversation with each other. Are they supporting each other, or are they completely disconnected? If they are disconnected, start thinking about how do I bring these two closer together to sort of get that feedback loop between relationship and fear?

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

Entry tags:

Writing Excuses 13.20: Fear and Writing, with Emma Newman

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/05/20/13-20-fear-and-writing-with-emma-newman/

Key points: BIC (butt in chair) is not that easy! Between the desire to write and the ability to begin writing, we need to unpack the reasons why we procrastinate, and look at ways to handle them. Specifically, what are the fears that keep us from writing. Sometimes you may also find depression or other blocks, and need different tools for those. Watch out for unprocessed wounds from one's past, the fear of failure, and the fear of success. Be aware of what's happening. Try using one fear to combat another, e.g. fear of regret overcoming fear of success. Give yourself permission to be selfish, to carve out time for your work. Negotiate with your fears, trick them. Think about the advice you would give a friend who was suffering from your fears. Promise your inner toddler a reward when you finish!

( What else could go wrong? )

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Fear and Writing, with Emma Newman.

[Mary] 15 minutes long.

[Aliette] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're terrified.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mary] I'm Mary.

[Aliette] I'm Aliette.

[Howard] [squeak]

[laughter]

[Dan] With us, we have our special guest, who's terrifying Howard so much, Emma Newman. Emma, I'm excited that you're here. Tell us about yourself.

[Emma] Hello. I'm an author, an audiobook narrator, and a podcaster. And also a role player.

[Dan] Well, awesome.

[Mary] Yay!

[Dan] Okay…

[Emma] I think I paid for the latter one, though.

[Dan] We… Dear audience, who is not actually here with us while recording. We are currently on the Writing Excuses retreat. Let's get some love from the audience here.

[Whoo! Applause!]

[Dan] Okay. One of the things that we have heard nonstop… This is the last day of our weeklong thing. Emma's was the very first class at the retreat, and people have not stopped raving about it. So we want to talk about fear and writing. What do we want to talk about here?

[Emma] Well, the whole reason I created the talk that I did at the beginning of the week was just sheer rage at all of the people who I saw tweeting or blogging who were professional authors who were saying, "Well, all you need to do to be a professional author is to just sit down and write. Like, butt in chair, darling." I would just get so furious because it's not that easy for everybody. I don't actually believe it is easy for anyone, and that's just a very glib thing for them to say, to kind of emphasize the fact that there is an element of self-discipline. I understand that, but I feel that it kind of shut a lot of things out of the dialogue that we need to have about what nee… What work you need to do between the desire to write and the ability to actually begin writing. So the talk kind of unpacked all of the reasons why we procrastinate, and then what we can do when we've identified those underlying reasons, on a practical level and an emotional level, to enable us to be able to write as much as we want to.

[Dan] Awesome.

[Mary] I was really glad to hear you give that talk. I think that you were absolutely right to have it at the beginning of the week. One of the things that I want to highlight for you listeners is one of the things that can happen to you when you start to unpack the reasons that you are not writing is that you can discover that there's some other stuff going on. I went on this journey myself, and I've alluded to it on the podcast, that I for years was like, "Oh, I'm… I'm a procrastinator, and sometimes I get burnt out, or I'm in a funk." Then realized, after hearing other people talk about it, that actually what I was dealing with was depression, and that I needed different tools to deal with that, because it was getting in the way of me writing. The analogy that I often use is that it's much like having dysentery. That you're afraid to leave the house. It makes everything a mess. You're miserable. And no one wants to talk about it.

[Howard] And you're going to lose the game of Oregon Trail.

[Laughter]

[Mary] And you're going to lose the game of Oregon Trail. So that's one of the reasons that I was so excited to have you on, is because people talking about the various aspects of fear and depression is what got me to go to the doctor, at the age of 45. So hopefully, listeners, this… Don't be… Hopefully this will help you, and don't be surprised if you're listening to this and thinking, "Oh, no, this doesn't concern me." And then suddenly go, "Oh. Oh, this is me."

[Emma] One of the things that I wanted to achieve with the talk was opening a dialogue about mental illness as well. I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, so I was kind of speaking from experience with writing despite pretty much constant anxiety. And to continue the metaphor, to extend the metaphor with dysentery, there is also the fear that it will happen again.

[Mary] Yes.

[Chuckles]

[Emma] And that, at least, if you have a really terrible stomach bug, there's always the worry that it'll happen again at the worst time. It is exactly the same with mental illness. When you're feeling better again, and if you can feel yourself returning to that state that where you were incapacitated the first time, one of the things that is oddly reassuring about going through a cyclic journey with your own mental illness is that when it happens again and again, you can say, "Actually, I did recover the last time, and this too shall pass." But the first time that that happens, you don't have that experience or that kind of knowledge. So there's the fear of being afraid, as well, that has to be unpacked in all of this process. That's important as well.

[Mary] I think that one of the things that you listeners should pay attention to is that a lot of the coping tools that we're going to be talking about, and a lot of this is something that you will have experienced or have already experienced… We label it as imposter syndrome. But it is completely… That imposter syndrome is basically anxiety about writing and depression about your skill level as a writer, all in a really ugly little bundle.

[Chuckles]

[Mary] Life is a terrible user interface.

[Aliette] I mean… Sorry.

[Dan] Nope. Please.

[Aliette] Part of what strikes me about that some of the corners of Twitter that you mentioned was always like people are mentioning like there's this narrative that you can conquer your fears and that you can… Like, this is like a battle, you're at war with like your fears, your depression, and then there's this kind of definite victory. I'm like, "This isn't how this works." Like, you're afraid, and you still write. This is how this works. Like, it's… Well, you know, you mentioned about cycles, it's like… It's always there lurking, somewhere. Then you have to… Either it's like very strong or very weak, but then you have to find tools to deal with that.

[Emma] Yes. Because it isn't a linear progression, and there are so many narratives that [garbled]

[Aliette] It's not a videogame.

[Emma] Exactly. It's not a videogame. There are so many narratives where you encounter that monster and then you can go and find the thing that will enable you to go in destroy the monster and then everyone lives happily ever after. But it's like doing that over and over and over and over and over again. Until you die.

[Laughter]

[Emma] I'm really sorry about that.

[Mary] Of dysentery.

[Aliette] Really like Oregon Trail.

[Dan] Fantastic. I have some very specific questions I want to ask, but this is a great time to break first for book of the week.

[Emma] Everyone's looking at me. So, the book of the week, that I feel slightly embarrassed about suggesting because it's my own, is After Atlas. That is a sci-fi crime. It's set 80 years in the future. It follows a detective, Carlos Moreno, who has been assigned to investigate the murder of a cult leader. The reason he's been assigned is because he escaped that cult when he was a child, but also because he isn't an average detective. He's an indentured slave to a corporation. So as he unravels the mystery behind the death of the cult leader, he is also processing a lot of issues.

[Mary] It is a fantastic book. I recently got a… Got my hands on a copy of it and basically was like, "Oh, great. Emma's got a new book. I'm just going to read the first chapter… I have to pee now because I've been sitting in this chair for days."

[Laughter]

[Mary] It's really good. Highly recommended. I also have to say that you do not have to have read the previous book, I think, to read this one. You can step into it cold. There's obviously some nuance that you get from having read the previous one, but absolutely… It stands on its own. It's fantastic.

[Emma] Thank you.

[Dan] Awesome. So it's After Atlas by Emma Newman. What was the first book called?

[Emma] The first book is Planetfall.

[Dan] Planetfall.

[Emma] So they're both set in the same universe, but they are genuinely standalone.

[Dan] Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you very much.

[Dan] All right. So I would love you to tell us some of these specific things, like you did in the talk. What are the reasons that we don't write?

[Emma] So, what I think of when I talk about the fear that underpins procrastination is that procrastination is kind of symptomatic of something that lies beneath. So it can take all sorts of forms, but it's the roots that are important. I see that there are kind of three primary roots, and then lots of little sub-ones. But the three primary ones are unprocessed wounds from one's past, the fear of failure, and the fear of success. Perfectionism is kind of like clinging onto the coattails of all of these. But those are the main kind of roots where it all comes from. If you start to kind of unpack all of those, then you can increase your own conscious awareness of what is actually happening, what is causing the procrastination behavior. Then I have kind of practical tools for, like once you figured out some of it, or even before you figured it out consciously, things you can actively due to be able to work despite the fear.

[Howard] One of the most difficult ones for folks often to wrap their head around is the fear of success. It's related to the paralysis of choice that happens when you're at a buffet and everything is delicious, but you do just have to pick one. If you succeed, suddenly you will have to make a decision about whether to pursue this as a career or perhaps whether to quit the day job. It opens a door and… You know, our caveman ancestors, when they opened the door and stepped outside… Well, there wasn't a door, but when they stepped outside…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The first thing they had to do was make sure they weren't going to get eaten by something new. Success is scary. It's like… It opens a whole new world of things to be afraid of.

[Emma] It does. For me, the fear of success is very much having to leave the house.

[Laughter]

[Emma] I hate leaving the house. I'm on a cruise ship, I'm on a stage in front of people, so there's a bit of me now that is absolutely furious that I have done things that have brought me into this situation.

[Laughter]

[Emma] Even though I welcome this and I love it and I'm very happy to be here. I've had a fabulous week. It's that kind of weird, they live against each other and rub against each other, that you are actively working to invite these things in, that you also maybe don't want. This is not my natural state. My natural state is to be alone at home, writing, when no one can see me. I hate being seen. So that is where the fear of success plays out worse for me.

[Dan] Awesome. So you said you had some specific tools? What is one, for example, with fear of success, that you could give our listeners, of how to deal with that?

[Emma] So, for me, I think about whether I would be able to live with myself if I allowed the fear to win and didn't achieve the goals that I have. So it's kind of the well, you could… You can stay at home. Thank you, fear, for wanting to keep me safe and being at home. But am I genuinely going to be happy in that state? Or in my going to be there on my deathbed regretting everything? So I kind of use one kind of fear and repurpose it, and fire it at the other fear. So the fear of living with regret often outweighs the fear of having to go and do all of this. I also remind myself that a lot of things that I actively fear are all totally manufactured by my awful brain. So I actively remind myself intellectually that this is not real. It's like somebody said to me this week, "Oh, it's like Labyrinth, when she turns and says you have no power over me." That there is an element of that process going on. It's really hard, and sometimes I will be really grumpy with my husband for days because I have to leave the house at the end of the week and go and be in front of people. Then I go, "Oh. It's because I have to leave the house and go be in front of people…"

[Chuckles]

[Emma] "I'm really sorry."

[Dan] That is brilliant, using fears against each other. They deserve it.

[Howard] If you have one problem, you need to find a solution. If you have two problems, make them fight.

[Emma?] Yep. [Garbled] it's like [tried and tested for grabbing roles?] Well, not on me…

[Dan] All right. I want to try this, and maybe this'll be a disaster, but… Aliette, why don't you give us some of the reasons that you find to not write? And we'll see what Emma can do to help.

[Aliette] There's always something that needs to be done in the house, oddly enough. The lawn needs to be done, and I should prepare the meals for the kids, and then maybe I will sit down at my computer and I will like go… Maybe I can go on to Twitter because I need a break now…

[Laughter]

[Mary] Ah, Twitter.

[Emma] It always… It never ceases to amaze me how pressing those domestic chores become at the moment you're about to start writing.

[Laughter]

[Emma] I can ignore a pile of laundry for days, until the moment comes when I really have to sit down and finish that thing. I think there is also a dialogue we have to have with ourselves about giving ourselves permission to be selfish, and to not give all of our time to the domestic sphere and to our families and to all of the other people in our lives. To say, "No, it is okay to carve out this time, and to have this time just for my work." Yeah, mostly I'm driven to domestic chores when I am actively trying to run away from writing. It's not so much being driven towards them. It's actively sprinting away from the looming word count need behind me. But again, in those situations, I always say become aware of it. If you stop yourself… If you're in the middle of washing up and saying, "Well, why am I doing this at this time, when it is the designated time I was going to write?" Becoming aware that you're actually being a victim of the fear, and then saying, "No. I would actually like to negotiate now." And saying, "Okay. I am afraid of this. Is this something I genuinely need to be afraid of?" Can you negotiate with it? Sometimes, can you trick yourself? Because sometimes, I find myself being terrified that the next book I'm going to write is going to be a terrible failure. So I trick myself into saying, "Well, no, I'm not actually writing my next book. I'm just messing about with the first scene. That is not what I have to worry about." You kind of trick yourself. Trick your own fears.

[Mary] Sometimes… I have two tricks that I use when I am sitting down to write and then suddenly find myself in the kitchen doing the dishes. Which happens a lot. One of them is a phrase that my therapist gave me when I was going in first. She said, "What advice would you give to a friend who was going through this?" I was like, "Oh. That's a dirty trick."

[Laughter]

[Mary] Because I do, in fact, know the answer to these things. I just forget that I can apply that advice to myself. So, that's one thing. The other thing is that I will say, "Well, why don't you sit down and write about why you're not writing?" I'm like, "Okay, so what are the barriers that stand between me and the next scene that I need to write?" Eventually, what winds up happening is that I start noodling on the scene, and then suddenly the part of my brain that is delighted by writing is like, "Oh, wait. Waitwaitwait. Can I have the driver's seat now?" And away I go.

[Emma] If you can tailor it to whatever the fear is. But I do genuinely believe that a lot of it is either negotiating like adults or cajoling a toddler.

[Laughter]

[Emma] It's somewhere between the two, the kind of the inner toddler, like, "Well, I know you really don't want to do this now, but if you do this, then…" And then you can reward yourself. But the key is to try to constantly experiment and to be agile in your negotiations with your own fears.

[Howard] My… The place where I noticed fear the most in my own work is when I am moving from pencils to inks. I've laid down a bunch of pencil, and now I need to begin inking, which is the point at which I am committing to one of these many, many lines and deciding that the rest of them are wrong. We could brand that as a fear of commitment, if we wanted to tell a joke that's been told a million times. It's really the fear of being wrong. It's the fear of having made the wrong decision. The thing that broke me out of this was I found a good source of white gel pens. I tell myself, "You know what! I'm not actually committing. If this line is wrong, I'll just color over it with some white and make another line." Will Eisner did that, and he was using white paint and scraps of paper glued to his comic. I've seen those originals. The best people do this. I'm not actually committing. Then I will sit down and burn through white pens like they're candles.

[Chuckles]

[Emma] Well, that's the…

[Aliette] I actually have this file that's called like bits and pieces of the story. I will like put bits and pieces that I cut off, and also like the bits and pieces that I'm just noodling on. You know what, I'm not really writing, right? The funny thing is, with all the bits and pieces that I'm cutting off that never make it back into the story and all the noodling that actually does…

[Laughter]

[Aliette] It's just a crutch. I don't care. It gets me writing.

[Dan] I just finished a huge revision pass on one of my novels, and I did that. I kept… Because my editor says, "Cut this. It's unnecessary." But I love it. So instead of deleting it, I put it in a different folder. That kind of gives me permission to cut it out of the main work. I know I'm never going to go and use it. But now I have permission to cut it out of the work.

[Mary] I was just working on something that needed to be 45 seconds long. I got it down to 60 seconds. I'm like, "Oh, but I'm going to… I love these two lines that I have to cut to get it to 45." So I just turned in a 60 second version and a 45 second version. I'll let them make the choice about that. They chose the 45 second version. It's fine, like you don't miss the two lines. But I couldn't cut them myself. I had to let someone else do it. Which is often what it means by just putting it over in the folder.

[Dan] So, I'm sure, five authors up here, we could talk for hours about all the reasons we don't do stuff. But we need to be done with the episode. So, Emma, do you have some homework for us?

[Emma] Yes. So, aside from unpacking your own fears and trying very hard to overcome those, I would like to invite you to read a poem called The Listeners by Walter de la Mare. It was mentioned in a talk yesterday by Justin Ford, and it reminded me of how much I love it. I'd like to invite you to read it, and to write the back story that is implied in the poem.

[Dan] Nice. Okay. That is The Listeners by…

[Emma] Walter de la Mare.

[Dan] Awesome. So. That is excellent homework. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

Entry tags:

Writing Excuses 12.31: What Makes a Good Monster, with Courtney Alameda

Writing Excuses 12.31: What Makes a Good Monster, with Courtney Alameda

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/07/30/12-31-what-makes-a-good-monster-with-courtney-alameda/

Key Points: The best monsters subvert the status quo and remind us that we are not the top of the food chain. Frightening means posing a threat to the protagonist or that culture. Some monsters are people, too. Subverting expectations. Monsters also reflect or represent other aspects of the stories. But beware of parallelism that turns into too on-the-nose, or pushing the subversion beyond fear into comedy. Building a monster? Start with folklore from all over. Look at the role of the monster in the story, themes, and symbolism. Think about fears, and what frightens you, and then spin that into a monster. Make the protagonist super-competent, but let the monster be powerful in ways that leave the protagonist incapable of responding. Look for the patterns that cross cultures, the fears that are universal (Yungian!). Then make them your monster. And shiver a bit.

( Did you hear something clank? )

[Howard] Well, on that note, we should probably wrap this up. Because we don't want to leave our listeners just terrified all night. Susan, can you give us a writing prompt?
[Susan] Yeah. It's funny, because Courtney actually mentioned the writing prompt that I was thinking about. Which is that Neil Gaiman's American Gods kind of envisioned like an American monster… I'm sorry, American Gods, like what using all of the different mythologies and kind of coming to America and kind of creating a uniquely American God. So I would like you to write about a uniquely American monster. Whether or not he has orange hair and [inaudible]
[laughter]
[Susan] I'll leave up to you.
[Courtney] Really great. I mean, really great.
[Howard] I love it.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Fair listener, you are out of excuses. Now go write.

Current Mood: screaming

Entry tags:

Writing Excuses 5.26: Scared for the Characters

Writing Excuses 5.26: Scared for the Characters

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/02/27/writing-excuses-5-26-scared-for-the-characters/

Key Points: Make your readers care about the character, then put them through the wringer. Funny characters, characters with a bad life, or capable characters are interesting. When readers identify with a character, they don't want them to fail. Power imbalance can make horror. Horror where you don't expect it, in the midst of banality, can be terrifying.
( What's behind the curtain? )
[Howard] I have not done a writing prompt for you yet. Ok. Horror. You mentioned Lovecraft, which is at this point public domain. To an extent, right?
[Brandon] Yes. Ah. Let's just pretend it is. I know it is. My agent actually represents one of the Lovecraft estates, but even he says, "Yeah, we're not sure if this is even valid." So you can go ahead.
[Howard] Take a Lovecraftian beastie and shove him into the Shire.
[Brandon] Ok. Frodo vs. Cthulu.
[Sherri] There you go.
[Brandon] I like it. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.