Writing Excuses 18.37: Mandatory Failure

Sep. 13th, 2023 05:28 pm
mbarker: (BrainUnderRepair)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 18.37: Mandatory Failure
 
 
Key Points: Deep dive into Mandatory Failure, book 18 of the Schlock Mercenary mega-arc. Book 1 of the three-book finale! Start with an explosion, due to enemy action that continues through the last three books. This book focuses on a refugee crisis that the mercenaries are dragged into help resolve. Setting up a big galaxy event, with a logistics problem? Big problems matter when you see the effect in small places. People growing up and stepping up. How should we behave in a crisis? The world's worst apology. A comedic tool, cascading failure. Emotional for you, the writer, versus emotional for the reader? Check your alpha reader, crit partner, or reasonable facsimile. Do figure out what level of feedback you need. Authentic emotion versus manufactured emotion? Balance emotion and craft. Mandatory failure -- you are going to fail. But don't let that stop you.
 
[Season 18, Episode 37]
 
[1:30 minutes inaudible advertising Hello Fresh]
 
[1:51]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, Deep Dive, Mandatory Failure.
[DongWon] 15 minutes long.
[Erin] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
 
[Howard] We have reached that point in this eight episode miniseries where we're actually doing the deep dive part and diving into the books. Mandatory Failure is the 18th Schlock Mercenary story and is book 1 of what I structured as a sort of a three book finale to the 20 book mega-arc. So that's really the way I think of it, or the way I thought of it. Yes, it's the 18th book in a thing, but it is the first book in a trilogy that will end in a big way the fellow cast members here have just read it, and I'm sure have bazillions of questions for me. I'm anxious to not be able to answer them.
[Chuckles]
[Erin] I'll just start. The question that I have actually comes from what you just said, which is knowing that this… You meant this to be its own sort of self-contained thing within the larger. How did you decide where to start? To make it a satisfying beginning for the trilogy?
[Howard] I gave it a prologue with an explosion, and the explosion in the prologue was an explosion… It was enemy action, and it is enemy action that continues throughout the trilogy. But in this case, it sets off a very specific local series of events that this book focuses on. So the fact that the enemy action… We have non-baryonic entities, the Pa'anuri in the Andromeda galaxy, and, oh, no, they have actually developed a weapon that lets them fire plasma through hyperspace and destroy targets kind of at will, and there's nothing we can do about it. That drives the next three books. That is… They have a plan, and that drives the next three books. But for this book, the first thing that they hit creates a disaster, creates a refugee crisis, and our heroes, the mercenaries, get dragged in to… It's not very mercenary-ish, they get dragged into help the refugees.
[Mary Robinette] They were voluntold, I mean, really.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] They were voluntold.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Well, I mean, they were voluntold, and the way… It was fun to create it that way. One of the mercenaries is related to someone who's there on the scene, and because of the weird and very very racist laws in place in that system, they couldn't hire outside help unless they were related to somebody who lived there. So she makes a call to her sister, and her sister talks to the CO, and off we go, as mercenaries that nobody wants to have.
 
[DongWon] It's such an interesting, almost counter-intuitive plot decision that you made because you know that you're setting up this big galaxy event. Where you start is an entire volume that's really focused on a logistics problem in a very specific area of how do we deal with all of these corpses, I guess. They're kind of corpses.
[Howard] Yeah.
[DongWon] So much of that initial section is taken up with the mechanical logistics. How do we harvest them? How do we bring them back? How do we feed them? Then, also the political problem of how do we make this… How do we not start three wars or whatever it is, by doing this thing? You know you want to get to point C. What made you decide to spend so much time in this very narrow slice? That is not a critique, I think it works beautifully, but…
[Howard] It was a lesson that I learned early on, which is big problems don't matter until you see the effect in small places. Famine? Yes, that's a disaster. Me being hungry? Is an F-ing catastrophe. So that's… I wanted to drill as far down as I could. Having refugees begin waking up before we're ready for them and wonder where their family members are. That is extremely poignant, extremely relevant to millions of people on the planet Earth right now. It was difficult for me to write because it was so raw. But by doing it that way, when I blow up more and more things later on, you can extrapolate. People have already felt it in the small space, and now they can project it on the big screen, and I make you feel even worse. As an author, that's kind of how we think. What can I do to make you feel worse than you feel right now.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. You did a good job of that.
[Howard] Thank you.
 
[Mary Robinette] Really, I like that… Like, one of the things that I want to just draw attention to is that… DongWon, you mentioned a number of different things that you're doing with that, but you're also doing like you've got these character arcs that are also happening for multiple different characters. So you set up this thing with Peri where she is pretending to be in charge and is like trying to figure out the balance of where power is. What is too much, what is comfortable? That's again reflecting like this larger power struggle that's going on.
[Howard] Well, it's one of the themes, one of the quiet themes which were actually going to try and reflect in the cover art. These books aren't in print yet. Book 17 features Capt. Tagon on the front cover, front and center, there really aren't any other characters there. Books 18, 19, and 20 will feature other characters in the center positions, and Capt. Tagon's picture gets smaller with each volume. Because part of what is happening here, and maybe this is the parent in me, is that his company is… These people are growing up. These people are stepping up. Having a corporal need to take charge and actually boss people around as if she is a flag officer, that's kind of huge.
[DongWon] It really effectively set up the narrative rhyming, or the thematic rhyming we're going to see over the next three volumes of who gets to have power, who should have power, and who takes power. Right? Over and over again, we see entities, people, taking control who shouldn't, people trying to resist that, people getting control when they deserve it. I don't know. You keep asking this question from all these different angles in each of these different scenarios. What I love about this disaster and the logistics is A, it sets up sort of the moral stakes in a certain way, of like this is how people should behave, this trying to care for each other in this type of crisis, which then when things go off the rails in the future, it gives us that grounding. But also really sets up this understanding of thinking about power, thinking about authority, in these ways, because we get to see the characters thinking about it in a very explicit on page way.
 
[Mary Robinette] One of the other things along these lines that I also thought was really lovely in the first book is how that question of power dynamics is playing out, not just in the hierarchical nature of the ship, but also in the marriage, the Foxworthy. Like, the scene where he realizes that he has… Where he's trying to apologize to his wife for casting a shadow, and then he's like, "No, wait. That's wrong because that's still centering me."
[DongWon] The world's worst apology.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Such a bad apology. So bad. But it's also the kind of thing that you encounter in real life, and again, it's that becoming aware that you have power, that you have been exercising in ways that you really should not have.
[Howard] When we come back from the break, I want to talk about why that apology was so important. Why that was one of the most difficult scenes I've ever written.
 
[Erin] I am so excited to talk about Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Which is one of those novels that I think lots of people are talking about and I came to it late. My main question was why did I not read this sooner. So, it's a book, it's a historical fiction novel, that follows the descendents of one woman who has two children, one of whom marries the governor in Ghana, in present-day Ghana, and basically helps to oversee a slave castle, and the other one who is one of the slaves sent over to America. It basically continues to track their families. So each chapter, you go one generation down as you see what happens to the half of the family that remained in Africa and the half of the family that went through slavery all the way down to the present day. I'll warn you, it's a bit brutal at times, it does not shrink away from its subject matter. But it's beautifully written, and each individual descendents story is just this wonderful sort of short story life experience that really puts you in the mindset of the character as she tells this amazing historical fiction tale. So, again, that's Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
 
[Howard] So. I'm going to go ahead and confess, full confession here. When Kevin apologizes to Elf, I wrote and rewrote and rewrote that. I must have broken down into tears half a dozen times while doing it. Because I kept trying to tap into that relationship and into the experiences of someone who knows he has unjustly but accidentally exercised power over someone else, is preventing them from becoming what they could be, and wants to fix it, but the very act of trying to fix it is itself an exercise of power. Wading through that… It was fun to write, in that… DongWon, you said worst apology ever. Clumsiest apology ever.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Howard] But the whole time I was writing it, I could tell that for Elf, it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever received because it was so genuine.
[DongWon] Well, that's a wonderful end to the scene, [garbled] of the scene of her tearing up. It just shows how much it landed, even though we, as the reader, have that… The comedy in the scene is him trying to explain this thing that is so… He keeps, like, apologizing for the thing he just said in the scene. Right?
[Howard] It's… That is a comedic tool, the cascading failure… The cascading failure where it's…
[DongWon] The mandatory failure.
[Laughter]
[Howard] I love that tool. But here's the thing. When I was writing it, I knew that part of what I was creating was a character moment that made this Kevin precious, and I was about to kill him, and he would never come back. Elf would forever have this memory of something her husband had done for her, and even if we are able to restore her husband from a backup, that backup doesn't include this data. As she says later in the story… Schlock says, "The doctor can bring him back." She says, "I want the one who apologized."
[DongWon] It's a heartbreaking moment.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It's so… Yeah. It's like…
[Howard] I had been waiting… No lie. I had been waiting five books for the opportunity to put paid on that… This promise that, hey, just because I've introduced a form of immortality doesn't mean death is cheap.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] Doesn't mean there's no cost to it. I think it was book 13 where Schlock dies and they try and bring him back from bits they can find and end up having to restore him from backup. We actually had a conversation in a Writing Excuses retreat, and I remember the cast staring at me kind of wide-eyed like, "You know what you've done?" My response then was, "I think I know what I've done. I… You're making it sound worse than I thought it really was. Maybe I should pay more attention."
[Laughter]
[Howard] Yeah, it took me five books to find the point where I could really turn the screws on the poor reader.
 
[Erin] I was thinking about what you just said about writing the apology itself and how it made you feel. I often hear people talk about I was crying… I know I wrote this, and it was working because I was crying while I was writing it. It never happens to me because I'm cold inside.
[Laughter]
[Erin] But I'm wondering…
[Howard] Yeah, just dead inside.
[Erin] Chaotic dead inside. But I'm wondering, how do you know in that situation, like, if what you are writing is emotionally landing for you versus emotionally landing for the reader? Because I think you got in the place you needed to in the end, but, like, how do you separate the you who's experiencing it from the you who's trying to craft it?
[Howard] I have a cheat that is not available to anyone else. I'd been using it for a decade by the time I got there. I would write the scripts, and then I would hand them to Sandra, and I would watch Sandra read. I could see… I mean, I learned… I mean, I already knew a lot of the body language and the things… Micro expressions and whatever else. We've been married now, as of this recording session, we are coming up on 30 years of marriage. This is someone I'm very, very close to. I would watch her read. I watched her read this scene, and she teared up and she giggled, and she teared up and she giggled. Then she handed it back to me and said, "I want pictures." I knew, okay, this one's right. This one is right. I could not have created the Schlock Mercenary that I did without Sandra as the pre-alpha feedback loop. Because many times I would hand her a script and should look at it and she'd say, "Okay. Yeah, no, I think with a picture…" I would snatch it from her and say, "Stop! Just stop talking. I can tell it's wrong because you have confusion and there should be no confusion at this point. The words should be enough." I'd storm off to my office and I'd make it better. Then I'd bring it back, and she would look at it and say, "Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. Now I…" So…
[DongWon] I will say, you say this is not available to other people. But it is, maybe not in the exact form like…
[Mary Robinette] Sandra is not available.
[DongWon] [garbled a third of your marriage is not available]
[Howard] You can't have my Sandra. No.
[DongWon] But people… You can have a beta reader. You can have a crit partner. You can have a collaborator in some ways. I think having those people in your life that you can rely on to be early readers or even people just to bounce ideas off of. That… I mean, that is available to people in certain ways.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I've heard it called an ideal reader, which is that you think about the person that you want, that you are writing for. So, like, I with the Lady Astronaut books in particular in writing for [Alessandra?] and I'm looking for the moment where she is like… Where I'm like, "Oh, she's going to hate this so much. She's going to be so mad at me." I'm like, "Yes!" That's what I'm writing for is a lot of times is will it provoke that? It gives me a way to kind of AB test things in my own brain even before I commit them to the page by thinking about how the person is likely to react to it.
[Howard] I actually struggle when I'm submitting things to writing groups because when I get their responses, it's already been filtered. No. I wanted to watch your eyes while you read. I wanted to watch everything happen so that I knew… So that's… It's difficult to find.
[DongWon] That is too much feedback for some people. Right? For some people that is to intensive of a process to feel that disappointment immediately in that way, to filter is necessary. So, no for yourself, as you're figuring out who your crit partner is, who to work with, what writing groups to work with, what level of feedback you need.
[Howard] But coming back to Erin's question, I could not know that I got things right until I checked it with Sandra. That one especially, because it's a relationship between a man and a woman, and he's famous and she's not, and draw whatever parallels there you care to, I really needed to make sure that it worked. Once I had her approval, I knew that it did.
[DongWon] It felt like a very personal authentic moment. I felt a realness in that scene as I read it, but I think that comes through very well.
 
[Erin] Yeah. I think… A secondary question, I think, that was lurking beneath my question, is authentic emotion versus manufactured emotion. Because I think sometimes… Like, for example, when I'm not being cold and dead inside, I might cry at like a Hallmark movie when the music swells, but I don't think that's… That's just like I can feel the thing working on me. You know what I mean? It doesn't feel like it comes from a genuine place, it comes from like all the things that are happening around it that are telling me to react in a specific way. Like, when the music changes in a horror movie, it might not be scary, but the thing is telling you is scary. There's a difference between that and when the emotion is genuine and it's coming from a real place. Being able to tell the difference between when you're writing a more surface, and there's room for all levels… But when you're writing a more surface level emotion, and when you're really getting to the heart of things, I think can be really difficult because they both feel emotional.
[Mary Robinette] So the… I hear what you're saying, and the reason I'm over here making faces that if we had a video feed, the viewers would be like, "Ooo, what's going on there?" is because i think that when… I think that… For a long time, I would say, "Oh, yes, you can feel it." That there's this idea, but there are some people who don't have those reactions. Like, when I'm writing with depression, I am strictly crafting my way through that, and I know from experience that the reader cannot tell. Then, people with varying forms of autism often don't have the same kinds of reactions, so it's much like telling someone that you have to read your work aloud in order to know whether or not it flows, which is not a process that's going to work for a deaf writer.
[DongWon] It's just another tool in the set. Right?
[Mary Robinette] It's another tool.
[DongWon] Being able…
[Mary Robinette] It's a tool that can't… I understand what you're…
[Erin] Let me just… My question is actually less about the emotion and more about the craft, though. What I'm saying is you can fool yourself into thinking you are writing something because you are putting all the emotions into it on a surface level. How do you ensure that the craft under it is doing the emotional work needed so that you may be making yourself cry on a surface level, but in fact, you're not getting to something else because you are… It sounds right, if that makes sense…
[DongWon] Right.
[Erin] But it is not right. So it's actually the opposite.
[DongWon] That is tricky. Especially the things that are so raw in a way that's… It's so intense of an emotional place that there's not enough craft on it to make it legible to me or connect to me. Sometimes it just feels… I'm so inside someone else's experience that I'm like, "I don't know how to take this in or respond to it." So you always need that balance. Right? You always need to… The score has to be right, the lighting has to be right, all these different things. Right? I think what's so interesting about this conversation is we're seeing that it really is finding that balance point between something that feels very true to you, and something that is rooted in however many years of craft you apply to it. You've got to that moment, Howard, not just by tapping into the emotion of it, but also you've been drawing these characters for years and years and years.
[Howard] Oh. So much, so much craft.
[DongWon] You know how to hone a joke. You know how to do this. And you edit it and reworked it and all those things.
[Howard] So much craft. There was… Gosh, eight years ago, I don't know exactly. I was asked to narrate a Christmas program. The way it had been written was very we are going to tell the congregation how they should feel. I objected to that on several levels. But the uppermost level was my writer brain. It was like, "No. No. We can do this so much better." So I asked them permission. I said, "Can I rework some of this? I think I can trim it a little bit and make it a little smoother. Do you mind?" "Okay, fine." I took all of the tell statements out of it and reframed everything in ways that encourage people to begin imagining feelings for themselves without telling them to do that. The response from the person who created it was, "Ah! Can I have this? Can this be the new edition of… Can I just use these?" I'm like, "Fine. It is my gift to you." It was all craft. It was all craft. It was very much the toolbox of I'm just going to remove all of the statements that tell you how you should feel, and include characters feelings.
 
[DongWon] Can we talk about the title real quick? This idea of mandatory failure. The reason it… Your comments made me think of it was, so much of learning craft, so much of learning how to do all these things, is simply like doing it over and over again. Right? You have to learn by doing. Now, the reason I love this title and I love this idea is inherently you are going to be failing, especially at the early stages, to do the thing that you're trying to do. To access that emotional state, to set the stage properly to execute on all these different emotional levels. Failure is not just part of the process. It is a mandatory piece for success. Or at least that's how I'm interpreting what you said.
[Howard] No, that's exactly right. The quote… And the quote grew out of a subversion of the NASA statement. Failure is not an option. Which is a way of saying this is too important to make any mistakes on. This is the piece we absolutely have to get right. But so many people misuse that and say failure is not an option all the time. I subverted it. Failure is not an option, it's mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do.
[DongWon] Exactly.
[Howard] That is my favorite of the 70 maxims. It is maxim 70. It's where the series ends. Putting in here nicely set up for me… I mean, it's sort of a theme in my own life. I'm going to have to fail at stuff over and over and over again in order to get it right. These characters are going to have to fail at stuff over and over and over again before they get it right. In this book, in the next book, and in the trilogy that wraps things up. Speaking of wrapping things up, we should homework.
 
[DongWon] Our homework this week is going to be a writing prompt for you. So what we would like you to do is imagine a major disaster has just occurred. Write a scene directly in the aftermath of this incident.
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
[Howard] This episode was made possible by our amazing Patreon supporters. To support this podcast and get exclusive access to Q&A's, livestreams, and bonus content, visit the link in our show notes or go to patreon.com/writingexcuses.
 
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Writing Excuses 18.21: The Empathy Gap: How to Understand What Your Publisher is Telling You

May. 25th, 2023 03:53 pm
mbarker: (ISeeYou2)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 18.21: The Empathy Gap: How to Understand What Your Publisher is Telling You
 
 
Key Points: Bridging the Empathy Gap, between what publishers are doing and thinking, and what the writer experiences. Home cook or professional chef? Inevitable injuries or toxic conditions? Different people need different levels of empathy. How much of your blood is on the wall? Read between the lines, feedback isn't always clear. Assume they are writing in good faith, and if it's upsetting, give yourself a break. Rejection letters! Set rejection goals, and rejection plans. Send the next one out! Don't read too much into any one rejection.
 
[Season 18, Episode 21]
 
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] The Empathy Gap: How to Understand What Your Publisher is Telling You.
[Erin] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
 
[DongWon] So, this is an interesting one. I wrote an essay some time ago called The Empathy Gap. It was really a meditation for me on kind of what I'm trying to do with the newsletter, what I'm trying to do as… In my role in the industry outside of just like doing my job. Right? One of the things I really want to do is help writers understand what publishers are doing and thinking, and encourage publishers to think about what the writer experiences. For everyone to like build a little bridge of empathy between those two audiences. Right? So the metaphor I use in the essay is about the difference between being a home cook and being a professional cook. Right? Accidents happen in the kitchen. You're going to cut yourself, you're going to burn yourself. Right? If you're a professional chef working in a kitchen, that happens every day. You have scars, you have burns, you're like, "Ah. I burned myself again." You will watch like professional chefs grab a hot pan out of the oven and not flinch, versus, like me, as a home chef, I'm like I need every mitt in my space to like touch anything vaguely warm.
[Laughter]
[DongWon] So, for me, sometimes as an industry person, I feel like that professional chef, and a writer will come to me and be like, "Oh, I burned myself." I'll be like, "Huh. That sucks. So, what are you doing next?" Right? Or like, "Get back, we got orders coming up."
[Howard] Oh, you still have nerves in your hand. That's cool for you.
[DongWon] Exactly. So there is this difference of… Me, I see dozens of careers, I see dozens of books come out. I've seen every iteration of things going wrong. Right? So when it goes wrong, sometimes in a big way, sometimes in a small way, my reaction is… My knee-jerk reaction is sometimes like, "Yeah. That sucks. Tough luck. Bad day. What's tomorrow?"
[Chuckles]
[DongWon] Right? So, for me, it's forcing myself to take a step back and remember what is this person experiencing right now. This is the book that they've spent 10 years working on, this is their career. Things look dire, they don't have my experience and know that tomorrow will be okay. That there are more books to be written. That there is a future for their career. So how do we communicate that in a way that is more rooted in empathy for the other person, but still communicating the important information?
[Dan] I really love this metaphor because I think it is such a neat way for the aspiring writer to think about it, like, you love cooking, but do you really want to own a restaurant? That's the step up that you're talking about. Becoming a professional writer and suddenly putting your work in front of people, having to constantly be critiqued about it. So if you think about it in those terms, think, "Well, yes, I really do love this enough that I'm willing to burn off all my fingertips and cut myself on the knife every day," Then, yeah. Take that plunge and become the professional chef.
[DongWon] Absolutely.
 
[Mary Robinette] There's a difference between inevitable injuries… Like it's inevitable that if you are pulling out sheet pans often enough, that you're going to hit a rack at some point, versus toxic. Like, unsafe working conditions. Because there are also things that will happen in a professional kitchen that people are just like, "No. Of course. What you don't know that you have to step over the missing stair?" There are things that shouldn't be allowed, that OSHA would shut down, that people can get socialized into accepting as just like, "Oh, this is the way things are supposed to be, and I shouldn't try to do anything to fix it."
[DongWon] I've seen that a lot from both sides. I've been in work environments that were unsafe in certain ways, that had practices that we worked really hard to change over time. The industry has made a lot of progress. It's hard to see that sometimes, but the behavior that I saw coming up… I'm not going to call them out specifically, but stories that we would tell at drinks after work, there were some very intense things that people were experiencing that today it would be a huge scandal and the shock versus then, it was sort of everyday behavior. I remember we all went to go see The Devil Wears Pravda together…
[Chuckles]
[DongWon] As a little bit of like solidarity. We went, "What was she complaining about?"
[Laughter]
[DongWon] "None of that seems out of pocket to us." Right?
[Oh, dear] [garbled]
[DongWon] "What a baby." You know what I mean. I'm like, I think, that is something to keep in mind at… A lot of us are coming from these experiences of having been in toxic environments growing up… Or coming up in the industry, not my household growing up. But, like, in a professional way. So, figuring out how do we make things safer for people, how do we build things with more empathy, is one of the big challenges I think the industry is facing today, and one of the conflicts that we're seeing. Right? So, trying to find that balance for myself in how I communicate with people is an ongoing challenge.
 
[Erin] Makes me think… Different people need different levels of empathy. As an author, you might need like… You might need a lot of care, you might be like, "I'm hardened to this world and I need nothing." How do you figure out what you need and who's the best fit for you? Working with publishing to make sure that, like, that the gap is matching the amount that they're able to leap? So to speak.
[DongWon] Totally. I think that is an important thing for you to know about yourself, and it's a hard thing to figure out. I have an explicit conversation about it with my writers. Right? Like, when I send something out on sub, I actually ask the writer, "Hey, how much do you want to hear about this process? Do you want to know every rejection that comes through? Do you only want to know the good news? Do you only want the news at the end?" Right? Some people will say, "Why don't you just tell me the good stuff." I also worked with one writer who's always… Every time I give editorial feedback, I talk about the nice things and I talk about the negative things. When I start talking about the nice things, she's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get to the other stuff." You know what I mean? She doesn't want to hear the nice stuff on some level. She wants… She feels it's almost insincere, her not getting into the nitty-gritty. So, those explicit conversations, I've been encouraging her to listen to the nice stuff. I think it's important. But those conversations about what people need in terms of like that communication style is really important. Finding an agent who will work with you on that, finding editors who will work with you on that, is really important. For me, sometimes when I'm picking what editor to sub to for a writer, I will think about, that editor's kind of rough in how they communicate, or like… Which isn't necessarily bad, it's just they're very direct. Right? I'm like, that writer, that's a bad fit. That is not a relationship that's going to be productive versus sometimes I know, "Oh, this person is really good with somebody who like needs a little extra care, who needs a little bit more of that deep dive in the emotional work," and that produces better fiction at the end of the day. So that's a really good pairing. Right? Those are things that I'm thinking about very explicitly. I am trying to draw that out from the writers when I talked to them. But it also helps me when the writer shows up having a little bit of that sensibility. How do you figure that out for yourself? That's between you and your therapist, I think.
[Chuckles]
[DongWon] I think that's a little bit of like what your experiences are, that's learning from interacting with the industry, interacting with other writers.
 
[Howard] I think… Honestly, I think of it as an episode of Dexter, where you want to know how thick-skinned you are? Analyze the splatter patterns after you're done talking to your editor.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Howard] No, seriously. Analyze it. How much of your blood is on the wall? Oh, a lot. Okay, this didn't go well for you. Write that down. Describe how you feel about it, so that you have a metric for it as time goes on. So that you understand, "Oh, wait. I actually am pretty thick-skinned, it's just that editor has a very, very sharp knife." It's something you have to learn about yourself, whether or not you have a therapist.
[DongWon] Share that with your team. Right? Especially your agent. That is my job is to manage not just what conversations are happening, but how those conversations are happening. I've had to pull editors aside and be like, "Hey. You can't communicate to this writer that way. It's not producing great results." Or, if I felt it was inappropriate, I've said that, too. I've been like, "I don't like that that's how you talk to my writer." Right? There are other times where I've been like, "Hey, we're going a little soft here, and they need to be pushed a little bit more. I need you to be more direct about what's going on, because they're feeling confused right now." Right? So, I can't do that work in less I know what's going on. So, as always, my advice is always please tell your agent everything. They need to know this stuff. Because we can't do anything unless we know about it. Right? So do that analysis, but then don't forget to share it.
[Howard] After the break, I have a story about how to read between the lines.
[DongWon] Great. Let's take that break, and then we'll get back to that story.
 
[Mary Robinette] I want to tell you about Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen. So, this is a murder mystery set in 1950s San Francisco. It feels like something Dashiell Hammett wrote. It is also a coming-of-age story for an adult gay man. It is found family. It is glamour, it is steeped… Steeped with evocative descriptions. It's set in a soap family. Like, they built their empire with soap. So every page is just like laden with scent. It's so good. It manages to succeed on multiple levels. I loved it to bits. Highly recommend this whether you're looking for a heartwarming story about family, a story about someone who is finding themselves. He was a beat cop and they caught him in a raid, and he's now a private detective. Then there's a tightly plotted murder mystery. It is beautifully told. Highly recommended. The Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen.
 
[Howard] Okay. So it's early 2018, and I'm drawing Munchkin Star Finder cards for Steve Jackson games who is licensing the Star Finder intellectual property from Paizo. I had an art director, a game designer, and a Paizo IP editor all in the approval chain, but the only one who would talk to me was the art director. The art director kept coming back to me on this one illustration saying, "Uh, Matt says the wrench is too big." I do a redraw, Matt says the wrench is still too big. Matt's third time around, Matt says the wrench is still too big. Well, I was drawing a very small character with a cartoonishly large wrench. I realized it's not that the wrench is too big. It's that Matt doesn't like the idea of a cartoonishly large wrench in the hands of this small character. But Matt is not willing to tell me that he doesn't like the joke. He just doesn't like the… Maybe he doesn't know how to say it, maybe he doesn't want to say it. But I managed to read between the lines. I told this to the art director. "Shelley," I said. "Matt just doesn't like the joke altogether. He's wrecking the symmetry of the picture by changing the size of the wrench. So I'm going to replace the wrench with a flamethrower and fill the volume that the wrench was in with smoke. Ask Matt if that's okay. Then I will draw the picture one more time." What went through the approval chain was, "Oh, Matt loves that idea." The point here is that realizing that the feedback may be coming from a place that is not being accurately described to you is a critically important skill. Your editor may not always know how to tell you why something isn't working.
[DongWon] This is such a great point, because it's a reminder that the empathy gap goes both ways. We've talked a lot about how publishers or me can sometimes struggle to remember to be sensitive to the author's experience, but in the other direction, as well, I always appreciate it when I can feel that a writer has remembered that I'm just a person. Right? I'm not a single source of authority, I don't know everything, I'm not perfect. Shocking everyone, hearing now. But I think one thing that could have happened there was Matt may not have realized that that was the issue. He may have just been like, "Oh, I don't like this wrench." And not had the extra thought process of understanding why. So you putting yourself in Matt's shoes a little bit I think helped solve that problem. Writers can do that too. I think there is this idea that like, oh, publishers have all the authority, it's all flowing in my direction, I need to adapt to whatever they say. That's not true. It is a relationship between individuals. Right? You are interacting. They're representing this big organization. But you are a person, and the person you are talking to is a person. Sometimes you can like shortcut some of that by tapping into the humanity of the person that you're talking to.
[Mary Robinette] I find that when I'm reading something that's coming to me that it helps if I think, "Okay. Read this as if they are writing it in good faith." The second thing is that if I find myself getting angry about a lot of different points, that I will walk away from it, and then come back and reread. Because there's a fair chance that what's happened is that my defensiveness has just been triggered. Because it's hard to read people telling you unpleasant things. That I come back then, and then say, "Okay, now read it again as if it's written in good faith." Most of the time when I do that, it is something that I can then at least respond to in a way that's going to be productive as opposed to responding in a way that will be an angry escalation and a shutting down of conversation.
[DongWon] Exactly.
[Mary Robinette] Even if my… Even if I come back and I'm still mad.
[DongWon] You can still be mad. Right? Responding that way is a valid response. Sometimes what you need to do is have the conflict. Right? But as a first step, remembering this person is busy. This person is overworked and underpaid. They're very stressed out all the time. Now, in that mindset, they wrote this email. What does that mean? Right? Did they intend to say the thing that I'm taking away from it? Or did they mean to say something else? That doesn't mean you forgive them for doing the thing. But it might help you understand a little bit what's actually happening. Right? So much of what I do is translate publisher emails to my clients, of, like, they said this. Here's what that means. Right? So much of my job is like a little bit of mind-reading and interpretation between those two audiences. Right? I think it's why I see this gap so much is because I kind of live in it. 
 
[DongWon] I want to switch a little bit to something very specific and concrete. Especially for new writers, for people getting into the industry. Your main interaction in your early days is going to be rejection letters. So I want to talk a little bit about what it feels like to receive a rejection letter. And also what it feels like to send one. Right?
[Mary Robinette] Oh, rejectomancy.
[DongWon] I know. Exactly. So, it's a point of conflict. It's a point of friction. I guess I'm a little bit curious, like, what was you all's like first experience of receiving rejections in the industry? Were those like really blunt, awful things? Were people cruel to you? Is there anything that really stands out from those early days?
[Erin] I think the thing that I remember the most was just collecting them in a cool way. Like, so one thing that I did with a group of friends really early on was we set rejection goals for ourselves, like, to get a certain number of rejections, and had a lovely little… Like, everyone picked a thing that they would do every time that they got a rejection. So, I will take a nice bath and collect my rejection and celebrate it with my peers. Then send the next thing, like, already have the next place maybe for a story that I want it to go. Basically, assume that rejection is a thing that will happen, that it's part of the process, and that it moves you closer to acceptance as opposed to that it is a thing telling you to stop, to leave, and to run away. So I remember sort of cheering on, like, with other people, "Oh, you went out and you sent it out." If you got 10 more rejections, that means you sent it 10 more places, and that's hard work. We will celebrate the work because that's what happened. So I remember that more than any particular rejection. I think it helped me to have something else to focus on. A piece of advice that I often give for dating, which is not what this podcast is about, is that when you go on a date, have a secondary objective. So, like I used to collect songs from people I went on dates with. So, if the date's bad, at least I learned about a new song, and that's interesting. It gives me a way to not live in like this date was a failure. But my song list went up, and that's a success. Similarly, in the writing world, by having, like, these rituals and these things that I work with other people, I can no longer remember any particular rejection, just the bath and the celebration with my friends.
[DongWon] I love that. I love that so much. One thing that's important is… We often fall into dating metaphors when talking about finding an agent, rejection, or placing a story or whatever it is, because you're always trying to find that exact right fit. The one thing that I want to point out that's really different from dating in the publishing process. There's many things that are different. But, when as an agent, I'm seeing hundreds of query letters. Right? There's an asymmetry to what's happening. When you're dating, it's like one to one. You're both hopefully seeing a number of people over time. Whatever. But, like, it's not one person submitting a thing amid hundreds of other things. I'm not spending two hours rejecting 200 dates. Right?
[Mary Robinette] The dating analogy still works, it's just that the slush pile is your Tinder profile.
[DongWon] Right. Exactly. So for you, I think submitting it feels really important, and that rejection letter feels so significant in that way. So I love taking the sting out of it a little bit by making a ritual around it and celebrating getting rejection which I think is also important. But, from my perspective, it's like I spend 100 of these in a row. Right? So I think understanding a little bit what that process looks like for us on our side will help frame a little bit what is actually in that letter. I see writers sometimes on Twitter being confused or pushing back on particular phrases that you see in rejection letters a lot of the time. Which is… Or, something along the lines of, like, "I'm sure you'll find a home for this elsewhere," or "I really love this, but it's not a good fit." Not a good fit is a thing I see a push back on a lot, when it's probably the most honest thing in the letter.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Actually. It's the thing that saying, "It's not that this is bad, it's just that it's not right for me." Often times I haven't even seen enough to know whether it's good or bad, but I have seen enough to know I'm not the audience for it, I'm not the agent for it. So I think understanding that a little bit, that this letter's coming from somebody who's in a position who's trying to accomplish specific goals can help quite a bit.
[Dan] Yeah. The it's not a good fit… I think one of the reasons that authors hate that one so much… I should say, aspiring authors hate that one so much is because there's really nothing they can do about it. Right? You get that and you realize it doesn't matter, all the work and the effort I put into writing this and to revising it into making it the best thing it could be, none of that mattered. Because this person just doesn't like it. Like…
[Mary Robinette] You can't revise it… [Garbled]
[Dan] Yeah. I can't revise it and solve this problem. The only solution to this problem is to keep doing the submission process, over and over again, which I'm sick of already and I hate. As an experienced writer, who's done this several times, I love getting that, because I know that I don't want my book to be with someone who doesn't love it.
[DongWon] Exactly.
[Dan] That is such a hard thing for the new writer still trying to break in to really get their head around. They think, "No. Please. Even if you don't love this, take it anyway. I'll do anything, I just want to be published." No, you don't. It is worth waiting for the right fit.
[Howard] We had, in 2006… I say we. Sandra and I, we shopped Schlock Mercenary with an agent to see if anybody in the sci-fi market would pick it up and publish it. After a few months, the agent came back to us and said, "Well, we got two kinds of responses. Response number one was oh, Schlock Mercenary. I love this comic strip, but we have no idea how we would publish it. The second response was I don't know what Schlock Mercenary is, but it looks like a comic strip. We have no idea how we would publish it. That was actually super useful feedback, because what it told me is there is a hole in the sci-fi publishing space that maybe I'll have to fill myself by printing our own books, and the sci-fi market is ready for Schlock Mercenary to be a thing that they love, because editors are already reading it and enjoying it.
[Erin] I think that's a gap that can exist in many different ways.
[Oh, yes]
[Erin] I think one of the reasons that it's not a good fit can have a sting to it is that sometimes it really just means, hey, it's not the right fit for me, and sometimes it's a surface level that can hide some deeper inequities, an inability to read marginalized folks in the way that they should be read, and to identify where an audience is for a book in the way that we wish the publishing industry did.
[Totally]
[Erin] So sometimes hearing that time and time again sounds like there isn't space for me at the table versus that I haven't found that seat at the table yet. It's hard to tell what the difference is when you're just reading these words on the page.
[DongWon] So, I think the thing that will encourage people a lot is not to try and read too much into any one rejection letter. Right? I think one of the hardest… Listen, we're all storytellers. Right? We all want to build little stories about anything that we see. So, sometimes when you see that in a letter, as Dan was talking about, like, you want to do something about it, you want to say, "Oh. Then I can edit it this way. I can do that." When the reality is you've been given no data. That's fine. Right? I was having this conversation with a writer just the other day that, like, no, numbers were not exactly where we wanted them to be. They were talking about, like, "What can I do about that? I want to do something." And all this. I said, "There's nothing to be done at this time. We have a plan, we're going to continue with that plan, because we don't know enough yet to change." Right? I could really lay it out. Here are the buttons, here are the levers that we have to pull. These are our options. We're not ready to make a decision on any of these things yet. So what Howard's talking about is when you have the full set of rejections, when you've gone through a number of people, you're getting consistent feedback, that tells you something. What Erin is talking about in terms of like realizing that there isn't space in the market because of this reason, because publishing isn't making space for it, that's a different response. For an individual letter, though, I would really encourage people to be very careful about thinking that this form letter or this short rejection letter is telling me something very specific. If an editor has written you something longer, has given you very specific feedback, that's something you can respond to. But when it's something a little bit more general, I'd caution you to be careful of over indexing on it.
[Mary Robinette] There's a… I took a workshop with Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She told this story. Which is that she had… She keeps a meticulous log of where she sent stories, and for reasons, she doesn't do revisions after she starts sending them out. So, she sent it to a place, and then accidentally sometime… It got rejected. Accidentally, sometime later, she sent it to the same place. As she was reaching out to say, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to send it to you a second time," they emailed her with an acceptance. The acceptance said, "I really loved the changes that you made to the story." To a story that she had not revised at all. What she learned from that was… The take away is not that you should keep submitting things to the same place. It's that when a story is rejected, it is not the right fit for that market and that editor on that day. That it's not the quality of the writing… Sometimes it is, to be clear. When you're early career, sometimes it is the quality of the writing. But it's not that, it's whether or not it is serving the need of them on that day and what mood that they're in even when they read it. So just be gentle with yourself.
[DongWon] One way in which I approach the empathy gap is making sure I'm hydrated, fed, and rested when I'm doing… When I'm looking at queries. Right? I don't want to be in a bad mood. I never… If I'm like… I am grumpy, this is not the time to be looking at queries. Because I won't be fair. Right? But something to remember on the other side of it is, and I know that hearing things are so random can be very difficult to hear. Again, I have empathy for that. I get it. It's frustrating. But the person on the other end of that, the person sending the rejection, whether it's a short story, whether it's an agent, whatever it is, they're going fast, they're doing this, they're doing their job. They're in a workflow of processing the pile of rejections that is… Or pile of submissions that is building up, then trying to get them out the door. Right? They're trying to get responses back to you in a timely way. That's the other thing is there's a lot of pressure on me to do it fast. In addition, people want responses. I'm very busy, I got a lot going on, I've got hundreds of these queries to get through. It takes me time to do it, because it's hard to find a block of time that I can sit down and do this. So, there's all of those like pressures on it that I would encourage writers to think about when they receive that letter. You feel that disappointment, but then remember, this may not mean anything. This isn't a critique of the story necessarily even or of me as a person. This is an interaction I had with an individual at a point in time. That's okay. Let's move on to the next one. Let's take that bath. Let's celebrate with my friends. Then, what's the next step? So, on that note, I would love to move to our homework.
 
[Erin] Perfect. Because, the homework is to put yourself on the other side of the empathy gap. Find a piece of fiction that you really, really enjoy. Then write a kind, personal rejection for it. Think about what you would be doing if this wasn't the right fit for you, despite the fact that this is something that you really, on a personal level, love as a story experience.
[Mary Robinette] In the next episode of Writing Excuses, we discussed the difference between mentorship and solidarity, and how to be a gate opener, not a gatekeeper. Until then, you're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.51: Feedback -- When to Listen, and When to Ignore, with special guest Mahtab Nar

Dec. 23rd, 2020 11:33 am
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Writing Excuses 15.51: Feedback -- When to Listen, and When to Ignore, with special guest Mahtab Narsimhan
 
 
Key Points: Prescriptive advice, suggestions about how to do it, are going to come your way. But when do you look for it? Until you show me you can articulate your reactions in a way I understand, I may not accept your advice on how to rewrite a scene. Tell me how you feel, then tell me how to rewrite the scene. Arrange your readers by the type of advice you want. Subject matter experts, sensitivity readers, tell me what's wrong and how to fix it. Most readers, just tell me your reaction. Editors, suggest how to fix a problem. When you get feedback, you decide whether to accept it or not. Follow your vision. How do you find people you trust to tell you what to do? Professionals. Agent, editor, writing group. Organizations can help, but you have to pick and choose. Audition, or vetting, process. Start with media you both consume, and see what they think of that. Reactions, fresh perspectives, the feedback echo chamber... stay true to your vision. You know how to fix your story better than anybody else. But be open to brilliant ideas from someone. 
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 51.
[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Feedback -- When to Listen, and When to Ignore, with Mahtab Narsimhan.
[Howard] 15 minutes long.
[Mahtab] Because you're in a hurry.
[Brandon] And we're not that smart.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
[Mahtab] I'm Mahtab.
[Brandon] And I'm Brandon. Which I keep telling you and I'd like you to take that feedback.
[Chuckles]
 
[Dan] So, we talk all the time about how to give feedback, how to construct a good writing group, how to train your alpha and beta readers, and one of the points we hit on a lot is that what you're looking for in that feedback stage is reactions rather than specific prescriptive advice. But, as one of our listeners pointed out in an email, asking this question, "Prescriptive advice is incredibly valuable and we all do it and we all get it." So, we're clearly not saying ignore every suggestion that comes to you. What we need to talk about now, then, is how do you decide which pieces of advice you're going to listen to and which ones you're going to discard. When should you actively seek out that kind of specifically prescriptive feedback? So, first ideas, like, when do you seek it out? At what point do you say, "Hey, I need you to answer this question for me?"
[Howard] Approaching it from a different angle, until I have gotten reader reactions from someone and they been able to articulate their reaction to me in a way that I understand, I'm not going to accept feedback from them. If someone hasn't yet told me that this scene made them feel a certain way, I'm not ready to accept their feedback on how to rewrite the scene. I want to know that you can tell me how you feel before you tell me how to rewrite the scene so that you feel what you're supposed to.
[Brandon] Yeah. That's a good piece of advice. Although one thing I do is I kind of arrange my readers by what type of advice I want them to give me. For example, when I use a subject matter expert… I recently wrote a story about someone who's paraplegic. I went and I hired several people to read this story. To them, I said… They were paraplegic and I said, "I want you to tell me what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it, specifically, how this differs from your life experience in the life experience that you know other disabled people have. I want you to tell me." For other readers, though, I say I just want to know your reaction. I want to know if my characters are working and my story's working. The way you help me with that is by telling me your just feedback emotionally. I'm looking for different things from different people. From my editor, I want them to tell me what they suggest I do to fix a problem when they've noticed it, because I might not take that, but there's a much better chance that I will take it when it comes from an editor who really knows what they're doing.
 
[Dan] Let me follow up on that subject matter expert thing. When you've got feedback from them, how much of that feedback was just kind of the mechanics of daily life of a para… Someone who is paraplegic and how much of that was the story or the characterization are broken, and here's how you can fix those? Because that seems like it kind of straddles that line between subject matter and storytelling.
[Brandon] It was actually weighted toward the latter. I would have thought it would be weighted toward the former. But those things are very easy to fix. When someone says, "I usually keep a pole next to me so I reach things and pull them across the desk to me," that's like, "Oh, that's really handy. I will do that. That's an easy fix." But when they say something along the lines of… A piece of feedback I got on this piece which was really helpful was all of them noticed… They say, "We work in a community. We talk to other people." A lot of people write… When they write a story like I had done, they talk about this person in isolation, which is not how we do it. It makes it seem like this person is the only person who is paraplegic in the whole world. That's very common. I hadn't realized that's what you do, but of course, you're part of a community. I'm part of a community of writers. I'm part of a community of people who share a faith with me. I'm part of a community of people who are parenting. We look for people who have a shared life experience so we can help each other. This is something that I had done flat-out wrong that required a really big revisitation of how I was viewing the character and the story because it was just… It was flat-out wrong. That sort of thing was a harder revision, but it was also more surprising to me, and it's the sort of thing that needed a subject matter expert to explain to me.
[Mahtab] Okay. I would call those instead sensitivity readers. I mean, that's what happens when you're writing a piece, middle grade YA fiction, and your writing someone with whom you don't share the identity or a marginalized status or what have you. I mean, you just… You do not have a similar background. That's when you get someone who we call like a sensitivity reader, who's going to look at your story and tell you, "Okay. This is what it is," or "This is what you need to think about as you write." You said, Brandon, they're not in isolation, but sometimes when we're writing from an outsider's perspective, we almost make that kind of an issue story or the issue with that character is their disability or whatever. Sometimes having someone with that background read it often gives you a whole different perspective because they do not see it as an issue, because they're part of a community where this is not the center stage. You can get other feedback from it, but just coming back to your point, Dan, as to when do you seek feedback. When I've taken a story to a certain level and I do no more with it, is when I would actually send it out to my critique group. One of the good things is I have a group that has different strengths. Someone is really good with the big picture perspective. So they would like really look at the forest. There are some who actually look at the trees, and they go down to the bush level, and they will absolutely look at the pacing and the plot and the characterization. So that's when you take the feedback from these people which is… Each one gives you a different idea or a different facet of what your story is. Then once it comes back to you, I think the onus is on you, and it goes with your gut feel of should I accept this feedback or shouldn't I. If it does not fit with your vision, no matter who's given it to me, I would probably not follow it.
 
[Dan] Okay. I want to pause now for the book of the week, which we get from Howard.
[Howard] Yes. It's not really related to the topic, but I really, really enjoyed Dan Rather's book What Unites Us. Dan Rather has been a fixture in American and, let's be honest, world news broadcasts for… I want to say 50 years, at least 40 years. His experiences… It's kind of a retrospective of the way he sees the American nation and the people who are in it. I really loved it. I needed it when I listened to it. I don't know if you do, but the audiobook was quite good, and that was the way I experienced it. So I can't speak to reading the words on the paper with my own eyeballs and brain.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] That's for other people to discover. But the book is called What Unites Us by Dan Rather.
[Dan] Thank you.
 
[Dan] Now, the common thread between all of your comments in the first half of the episode were heavily kind of focused around this idea that you have curated your groups of people that you get feedback from and that you… When you look for specific feedback, you are trying to get it from specific people and for specific reasons. So let's talk just really quick about that. How do you find these people that you trust… Not talking about specifically subject matter experts or sensitivity readers, but just, in general, how do you find those people and how do you decide, yes, I trust what this person is going to tell me to do?
[Brandon] Well, with beta readers in particular, them, it doesn't matter, right? Because I'm not asking them to tell me what to do. So, people who tell me what to do, that I let… That I'm looking for, are professionals. Right? Which is a different sort of thing. I find my beta readers, generally, they are people who have been long-term friends, people who are active in fandom, or people that other beta readers have recommended. We do that a lot. We try to add a few new people every book that I do and not have everyone do every book, right? So we shake it up. It's just a process of watching who makes astute comments on forum posts about the books, who are active on our Facebook posts, those are the people I look for. But for alpha readers, they're giving me direct, fix this, I'm generally only looking at like my agent, my editor, or my writing group for that.
[Mahtab] I think, for me, I join a lot of organizations, and again, we've got forums, so you can connect with people on the forums and say, "Okay, I'm looking for… I'm looking for a critique partner," and everyone kind of just exchanges emails and then goes for it. In case… That's how I started with, but then, over the years, I kind of got closer to a group of people because they write similar stuff that I do, and I like their work and they like my work. So we kind of broke off and formed our own groups. But if you're looking at the children's section, SCBWI, CANSCAIP, these are the… I guess for the US, it's SCBWI, you join those groups, there are areas where you can exchange information and find critique partners. I would say, start out with maybe a chapter or two, see what the feedback is like, see if they're on the same wavelength as you are, before you go deeper down the rabbit hole, and then become good critique partners, because sometimes… What if you're not at a similar level or if the level of feedback that you're getting is not what you're looking for? Then that relationship or that critique is not really helping you. So you also have to pick and choose. Don't just say yes to anyone who says they're going to give you feedback.
[Dan] That kind of audition process, so to speak, I think is really important. Because, we've talked before about how to find fellow writers and form your little groups and things, but going through that kind of vetting process, of saying, "Okay. You know what, I really like your feedback," or "You're giving me feedback that I don't think is valuable," that's a big step. It can be difficult to say, "You know what, this relationship isn't working. I think we should break up."
[Howard] There is… To my mind, there is an easier and much lower pressure way to get to that point. That is to socialize… And I guess Zoom may be the way that we're doing this for the foreseeable future… Socialize with people right and who consume media that you consume, and talk about the things that you're consuming. If Dan and I both sit down and talk about The Mandalorian, and I say, "Oh, my gosh, it's my favorite Star Wars ever, because it's like a cowboy movie Star Wars," and I don't know what Dan's going to say about it. But if Dan's feedback about Mandalorian makes me feel like the two of us watched a completely different show, he's out of my group.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Because… Not because he's wrong, but because connecting might be so very, very difficult. Initially, for seeking feedback, I want to get feedback from people whose critiques I'm able to understand. We both watched a movie and we both agreed, "Wow. The protagonist fails to protag for the entire first act, and by the time the second showed up, we were… We didn't like him anymore," and we both get that. Oh, yes, this is someone I… Because when they critique my work, I'll be like, "Oh. Oh, yes. You're right." And when you prescribe something to me, I'm more likely to get it. Now that, that initially is going to create kind of a bubble, and you want to branch out from that. But start friendly first, I think.
[Mahtab] Yes.
 
[Dan] Yeah. It is a very tricky line to walk, because you don't want to get into that feedback echo chamber. I always really value opinions that are different from my own. Because that, I think, is going to help me look for new solutions and new answers. But on the other hand, someone who is constantly suggesting ideas that don't fit with my style at all, that's not going to be valuable to me. So, it all comes back to this idea of just very carefully deciding who you're going to talk to. Well, I guess, who you're going to get that prescriptive feedback from. The person whose ideas are super different from mine, yes, give me all your reactions. Please. But when it comes to how am I actually going to change this, that's when I do tend rely on people who have similar sensibilities to mine.
[Brandon] Or, I would add, the further someone gets in the professional field of writing and storytelling, the more it seems they are able to help a story become a better version of itself, rather than trying to push it one direction or another. That's not to say that all agents and editors are perfect at this, or even all writing group members, but I've noticed that people who write a lot… For instance, Dan tends to be better at looking at one of my books and saying, "Here's what I think you're trying to do. Here's how to make it better." Where there are other people who are longtime writing group members of mine who like my books, who often give good feedback. But if you give them a book that's outside their normal reading comfort level, they'll give bad feedback on it. Where I've never gotten bad feedback from Dan, because as an industry professional, he reads a lot of things and even things he doesn't like, he can say, "Here's how I think you can make a better version of this thing that I don't necessarily like." Which is a really great skill for a storyteller to learn, I think. But it is not something you can expect from your average even writing group member, I think.
[Dan] I want to print up business cards that say, "Dan Wells. I will help you make a better version of a thing that you're doing that I don't like, even though you're doing a thing that I don't like."
[Mahtab] Where do I sign up?
[Laughter]
[Mahtab] But just very quickly to say something about what you said, Dan, was sometimes you can get that same feedback from the same group that you're with. So getting a totally fresh perspective, even if it does not gel with your own thinking, I think is very valuable. But at the end of the day, you have to decide am I taking it or leaving it, and that decision rests entirely with you. So you just stay true to your vision. No matter who gives you feedback.
[Dan] Yeah, well and…
[Howard] One of… Sorry. One of the things that Brandon said, the ability to say… As a critiquer, the ability to say, for instance, it feels like in this scene you are presenting me with a red herring and you want me to feel doubt about this and you want me to become convinced of this. If that's the case, you need to punch this bit up more and punch that bit down a little bit in order to adjust the balance. But if this isn't meant for a red herring, whatever, then ignore everything that I said. I will give feedback like that to Bob all the time, because I don't know where Bob's book is going. But I will tell him this is my response and this is where I think maybe your levels need to be set. Bob will smile and nod, and I have no idea if he's going to take my advice or not. But he knows what to do with it.
 
[Dan] So, as a final word, I suppose more than anything else, I just want to give you as a writer permission to get prescriptive feedback, to take suggestions from other people. Don't feel like we have told you you're not allowed to. I do believe that at the end of the day, you know how to fix your story better than anybody else. But that doesn't mean that someone is not going to come along with a brilliant idea that will solve your problems for you. That does happen, and absolutely be open to those experiences.
 
[Dan] So, let's end with some homework from Howard.
[Howard] Okay. Bear with me.
[Laughter]
[Howard] You're going to want to do this with a friend. Okay? Step one. Each of you prepare a quick written critique of a movie. Maybe one… I mean, they can be different movies, but something that you've watched and has problems that you're willing to critique. Now. Share your critiques with each other, swap them. Now you take the critique that your friend gave of this movie… Oh, and when you wrote the critiques, you anonymized it, you didn't say like character name, you just say like protagonist or antagonist. Anyway. So you get this feedback from this movie. Now. File as many of the serial numbers off as you can. Set it down next to your manuscript and treat this bit of random, utterly random, feedback as if it was aimed at your manuscript. Why are you doing this? So that you can see what absolute nonsense looks like with regard to your manuscript AND so that you can have the broken watch is right twice a day experience of "Oh, my gosh. That thing that you said about the phantom menace applies to my book."
[Laughter]
[Howard] Oh, no. It may seem really weird, but by doing this, what you're going to do is refine your filters for the sort of feedback you receive and it's going to knock you out of the box and maybe make some of your writing better.
[Dan] I really like this homework. I think it is a cool idea to teach you how to sort through the value of a bunch of feedback. So, cool. Anyway, that's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 13.38: How to Find and Use Alpha Readers

Sep. 26th, 2018 01:29 pm
mbarker: (Me typing?)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 13.38: How to Find and Use Alpha Readers

 
 

Key points: Alpha and beta readers? Alpha readers, you trust to read a rough draft, to be honest and give you helpful feedback. Beta readers read a more polished version and you get their feedback. Or, alpha readers are industry professionals, while beta readers are test audience. Alpha readers are agents and writing groups. "You'll have your own definitions." Alpha readers understand the form. Where do you get them? Writing conferences. Book clubs. Face-to-face or online critiques? For alpha readers, back-and-forth, face-to-face is better. Beta readers, online feedback is okay. Don't forget targeted experts! Be aware that bad critiquing can ruin books! To get the right feedback? Make sure you and the other person can argue and articulate different opinions and understand what the other person is saying. Send it to the right people. Ask your readers to just give you their reaction, you will diagnose the problem. Look for people whose strengths complement your weaknesses. Use tiered questions, get their reaction, then drill down for specifics. Put pins in the good parts! Use targeted beta readers, who are as close to the character's experience as possible.
 
Expand( Who wants to read this? )
[Valynne] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Valynne] I'm Valynne.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] I'm… Um… I haven't actually finished today's chapter yet.
[Chuckles]
 
 
[Brandon] Valynne, you were going to define for us alpha, beta readers, that sort of thing.
[Valynne] I think sometimes people call them… Use that… Use alpha beta interchangeably. To me, on alpha reader is generally maybe one person whom you trust to read what you're writing. It's not polished, it's just rough draft. You throw it at them, they tell you what they like. You trust them to be honest and trust that they will give you feedback that is helpful. Beta readers, I would say, I like… I consider a beta reader someone… It's at the… Your manuscript is at the stage where you've gone through, you've done some edits, you've polished it a little bit more, and then you're sending it to beta readers to get their feedback. These people can be other writers in a critique group, it can be family members, it can be friends. I think it's good to have someone who is going to give you honest feedback and good feedback such as other writers in a critique group.
[Brandon] We'll talk about how to get that out of them.
[Chuckles]
[Valynne] Then, also, have a cheerleader. Someone who just loves everything you write. I think writing can be hard, so it's nice just to have someone who tells you what things they absolutely love about your writing.
[Brandon] So, today we'll talk about kind of alpha and beta readers. Because you'll have your own definitions, listeners. I have a starker line between them than Valynne. Alpha readers are industry professionals. Beta readers are test audience. For me. So, for me, if you are my agent, you're an alpha reader. You are reading a book before it's done to give me feedback. A beta reader is, you probably aren't an industry professional, you're a fan, you read the book to just give a reader response when it's in a close to finished form.
[Dan] That's kind of how I split them up as well. Because the two groups give very different kinds of feedback. There are people that I use as beta readers that I know if I send them my first draft, all the advice and all the feedback they give me is going to be weird, and often going to be wrong. Because they don't know how to read a first draft. They will identify big problems that I know are big problems and they will start suggesting solutions. That's not what I want. Instead, I send it to my writing group and to my agent.
 

[Brandon] So, let me ask you guys this. Where do you get your alpha and beta readers?
[Valynne] I think that one of the best ways to find critique groups, for example, is to go to writing conferences. Any… You're already among people who write and a lot of times are people looking for critique groups. You can do critique groups online. You don't necessarily have to live close to each other. So, I think that's one of the nice places to find someone to…
[Brandon] So, let me ask you this. Do you usually use… Do you do in face critiques and Internet critiques, or do you do only Internet critiques? How's it for you?
[Valynne] When I first started writing, I used to do a critique group once a month. We would bring pages, we would sit… Everyone would come to the critique group with those pages read, and we would talk about… Give… Go person by person, give the feedback. These days, it's really hard to find the time to do those kinds of critiques, so we are still critiquing each other's work, but sometimes it's more a full draft of something that's about to go to print or something like that. So a lot of it is more online now.
[Brandon] Dan, where do you find them, and is it in person, online for you?
[Dan] My group right now is… My alpha readers are my agent, who I found by querying an agent. Then 2 other authors that I have just met at writing conventions over the years. Wendy Tolliver and Matt Kirby, who are both fantastic YA authors. We got together and formed a writing group. So that was just kind of networking interactions at conventions. A lot of… Like what Valynne's talking about. That's all in-person stuff. My beta readers, I've got a group of about 6 to 8 people that I will send every draft to once I think it's ready for public consumption. That's all online, and they will give me feedback online. I will also, for every book, have a group of kind of targeted experts that I feel like I need specific advice from. That changes book to book, but I think I can talk about that later.
[Brandon] We'll talk about that after the break.
[Howard] For me, alpha is in person, and beta can be in person but functions fine online, asynchronously. Alpha… And that, for me, that's the distinction. It's got to be completely synchronous communication with alpha because there's so much back and forth. When I'm critiquing Bob Defendi's work, often what I am telling him is I think this is what you are trying to accomplish with this chapter. I get the sense that that is what this chapter is for. I feel like it didn't do that job because of this section right here, it's kind of confused me. Bob can then respond and say, "Oh. Well, wow, it's really weird that you got that idea."
[Laughter]
[Howard] And off he goes. That kind of feedback we have to go back and forth, because when Bob brings it, he knows there are things in here that are broken and I need my alpha readers to identify them, and the alpha reader… Brandon, as you said, industry professional alpha reader needs to be somebody who understands the form well enough to be able to say, "I know what this chapter should be trying to do because of the form that I know that we're working within."
 
[Dan] Now, this, I think is dangerous. All of us use industry professionals for alpha readers because we are industry professionals at this point, and it is invaluable. Over the years, I have come to appreciate how important it is to have that back and forth conversation, when I can say, "Okay, this character doesn't work at all and I think it's for these reasons. What do you think?" And then the person, the author, will say, "Well, actually, this is what I intended." Those are very important. But I remember when we, Brandon and I, had our writing group in college. We were trying to do that and we didn't know what we were talking about, and we ended up ruining some books.
[Brandon] Yes.
[Dan] Which I think is maybe just inevitable and part of the learning process, but it is something to watch out for.
[Brandon] It's way more dangerous for discovery writers, I've found, than for outliners. My books didn't get ruined, but I ruined books. Because I said, "Try this." Then they did, and it was the wrong thing entirely. Let me say where I've got mine, and then I want to dig into this question. My alpha readers are still my writing group, the same group that I started with Dan in college, but then he moved away.
[Dan] Ha Ha! I became too big for you. [Chuckles]
[Brandon] We approached Eric James Stone, and they still meet in my house every week in person. In person's really important for me. I have about 70 beta readers. We'll use a group of between 20 and 50 for each book. We do an online Google spreadsheet that goes… That is chapter by chapter with questions for them to fill in. The beta read for Oathbringer ended up being 600,000 words of comments.
[Howard] Comments? Ha ha. Yep.
[Brandon] Fortunately I didn't have to sort through them. I have people that sorted through and pulled out the important ones.
[Dan] I don't have people, so my process is a lot simpler.
 

[Brandon] Let me ask, this one's really important. That gets us into, and you guys are going to appreciate this. How do you get the right feedback from a critique group or from alpha beta readers? How do you get them to give you what you need and not ruin your book?
[Howard] One of the things that I've learned through experience just in talking with people is that I can tell if somebody's going to be a worthwhile critique if that person and I can argue about a book that we have both read and articulate different opinions on the book and understand where each other is coming from, even though we had different responses to it. It's one thing, "Oh, yeah, I loved this book," and then it's just how much we loved this book. But if we are each picking at a different aspect of the book… You know, if you sit down with your friends and have a book club with them where you are reading books together and allowing yourselves to critique the books, you will find alpha and beta readers in that crowd, I think, pretty quickly.
[Dan] When I… One of the things that I try to do is make sure that I am sending it to the right people. So, for example, when I write a horror novel, I will make sure one of my beta readers is Steve Diamond, because he knows that genre inside and out. So I know that the comments I'm getting from him are going to be the kind of comments I'm looking for. Where is when I write like my cyberpunk stuff, I don't usually send it to him, I'll send it to somebody else. So that's kind of an early level just filtering system. Beyond that, I always tell my beta readers, not my alpha readers, just to give me their reaction. Don't try to fix this problem, just point it out to me. Tell me what you liked, what you didn't like, and why. Then let me… You tell me the symptoms and I will diagnose.
[Valynne] The other thing that I like to do is that I am very aware of my weaknesses as a writer. So I like to give it to people whose strengths are opposite of what mine are. I think that is really helpful for me because I know there are things I just miss. If it were up to me, I would write a book that was straight dialogue all the way through. I love writing dialogue, and half the time, my editor is saying, "Where are these people standing? What are they doing?"
[Chuckles]
[Valynne] "What are they wearing?"
[Laughter]
[Valynne] I'm just not good with details like that. So I think it's good to… You know, other people have other strengths. Ultimately, we want to be strong in all the areas, but we still have our own strengths, and so I have someone who is really good at pacing, I have someone who is really good with character development, and that's… If I'm struggling with a particular thing in a book, that's how I send it out to a beta reader.
[Dan] Now, with… Very quickly, when we have those face-to-face conversations with alpha readers, I use Wendy and Matt, and I will sit down and I will ask them tiered questions. "I'm not very happy with this scene. Do you like it?" I won't tell them why I'm not happy. Get their reaction first. Then they'll say, "Oh, yeah. There's something wrong with that." I'll say, "Well, I think it's this. What do you think?" Just kind of get deeper with every question. So that I'm not leading them on, but I can drill in specifically.
[Brandon] We've found… It's very useful to get general reactions from a group, and then ask specific questions. That's a big difference between alpha and beta readers, to me, is alpha readers I can go and say, "All right. This is obviously broken. Why do you think it's broken?" Beta readers, I would never do that.
 

[Brandon] We have to stop for our book of the week. Howard, you're going to tell us about Death by Cliché.
[Howard] Yes. Actually, Death by Cliché 2, Wrath of Con. That's spelled c-o-n. Our hero is trapped in a role-playing game. Like in the game universe, not stuck at the table on Thanksgiving. Trapped in the game universe, and the players, he discovers, are at a convention. But that's… What convention they're at is actually irrelevant, what's relevant is the adventure that's happening in the story, and the horrors of what happens when someone has an artifact that lets them control the weather.
[Brandon] Can I pick up book 2 and read it?
[Howard] Yeah, you can pick up book 2 and read it now. It's… I'm currently offer reading, I think, book 5 for Bob.
[Dan] Do you need to have read book 1?
[Howard] You don't need… Oh, sorry, that's the question. You don't need to read book 1. You don't need to read book 1. It reads very nicely as a comedic fantasy novel.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Somewhere, Bob is shouting, "Yes, you have to read book 1!"
[Howard] But you should buy book 1.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Because supporting living authors.
 

[Howard] One of the things that I wanted to bring up about that whole series from Bob is that our writing group has changed over time as he's written these. What we found is that Sandra is the one he's going to for character motivation and often sensitivity reader issues, and I'm the one he's going to for wordsmithing, joke-smithing, the setups of the funny bits. The most critical piece that we've discovered as we've critiqued is that when there are things that we love, we put smiley faces in the manuscript because… Not just because Bob needs to be told, "Yay. You're a good writer. See, this part didn't suck."
[Chuckles]
[Howard] But because when you are editing, it's easy to lose track of the things that made a chapter wonderful. We want to put pins in those so that they don't get broken during the edit process. That was long, sorry.
[Brandon] That's all right. Bob's a good friend of a lot of us here. We like him. He's funny and his books are funny. So you should all go read them.
 

[Brandon] You mentioned the term sensitivity reader, which Dan mentioned to me has been… kind of people have been shifting away from that.
[Dan] So, sensitivity reader is a phrase that became popular because as we started focusing more and more on diversity, and I know that Valynne wants to talk about this, so let me just say very quickly. We started… The idea is, if you're going to write about say a black person and you are not black, you are going to want to have someone who is read it so they can make sure that you are presenting their culture and their background correctly. However, we're not… Kind of the nomenclature is moving away from sensitivity to targeted beta reader, because really, it's just the same thing as I suck at writing cops, so whenever I write about police, I have two friends who are police officers or family of police officers that I give it to them and say, "Make sure that I got this right." It's the same thing in dealing with another culture or another ethnicity or another religion or whatever. So, just using one blanket term for all of them is a little more common now.
[Valynne] I think that the word targeted is very important because I think especially when were talking about writing diverse characters, we often tend to approach it like it's a paint-by-numbers, which it's not. It's not I know a Japanese person, I'm writing a Japanese character, so this Japanese person I know can represent the entire Japanese culture and everyone in it. For example, I was talking to Brendan's sister-in-law this morning and explaining that I am fourth-generation Japanese. What that means is that I do not speak Japanese. I am pure Japanese, but I do not speak Japanese. My experience is vastly different than someone who is first-generation Japanese whose second language is English. So, targeted means that when you're writing a character, try to find beta readers that are as close to that character's experience as you can get. Because you need to understand like the generation of the character, the geographical location of the character, and how that affects the character. There are so many things that make a huge difference. So the more accurately you can target that to beta readers, the better chance you have of not offending anyone and just presenting it accurately and with respect.
[Howard] At this point, fair listener, you probably recall several episodes we've done this year under the general heading of What Writers Get Wrong About, with that whole idea that as a writer, unless you have a subject matter expert, whether that's an astronaut or a police officer or a third-generation Taiwanese person, you are likely to get things wrong unless you have offer readers in that demographic who can help you get things right.
[Dan] Now I want… What Valynne said about being very specific is very important. I recently had a really interesting experience. I went down to Guadalajara for the book fair there, because I've got, among other things, one of my book series is about a Mexican-American hacker. The Bluescreen series. I used to live in Mexico. I have a lot of friends in Mexico, and importantly to this story, I used my Mexican friends as might targeted beta readers. They are not Mexican-American, they are Mexican. So the character ended up feeling very authentically Mexican, and the books have been huge in Mexico. The Mexican-Americans, like the Latino population here in the US, haven't really picked them up because it doesn't ring true to them. It rings true to Mexico, because that's who I used to make sure I got it right. So specificity is important.
 
 
[Brandon] All right. Let's go ahead and do our homework which Valynne is going to give us. You wanted someone to do this. Right?
[Valynne] Homework is to take something that you have already written. Identify something within your manuscript that you can send to a targeted beta reader for.
[Brandon] And then do it.
[Howard] And then send it to them.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 5.33: Alpha Readers

Apr. 23rd, 2011 12:02 pm
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 5.33: Alpha Readers

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/04/17/writing-excuses-5-33-alpha-readers/

Key Points: Don't look for a secret backdoor. Do look for and cultivate alpha readers. Alpha readers can read your book while still in draft, and encourage you to make it better. Beta readers, on the other hand, can read your completed work and help you polish it. Alphas should help you write YOUR book, not the book they would have written. Alpha readers need to give you the kind of feedback that is useful for you. Encouragement, ripping, whatever it takes. Beware the proofreader! Fine as beta or gamma, but alpha readers need to take a broader view. You find alpha readers through a process, not magic -- like good friends.
Expand( Who's your friend? )
[Brandon] Okay. I'm going to do our writing prompt. If you didn't hear me coughing furiously after Jordo muted my mike, I have a cold still. So I'm going to give you the writing prompt of people who get possessed, catch colds. That's why we catch colds, is any time you have a cold, you're possessed. Go from there.
[Howard] Gesundheit.
[Jordo] [inaudible -- Means all new things?]
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
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Writing Excuses 5.11: Micro-Casting Number Two

Mar. 1st, 2011 12:43 pm
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 5.11: Micro-Casting Number Two

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/11/14/writing-excuses-5-11-micropocasting-2/

Key points:
-- How do you do bad things to your hero character without feeling bad about it?
I do feel their pain.
-- How far into writing a novel should you begin letting others read it for feedback?
When you are finished with the story. Beware of story hijacking.
-- Do the bad things you do to your characters always have to suit the story?
They need to be motivated and properly set up.
-- How do you design frightening monsters?
Take away the eyebrows. Let them do mundane, real things. Keep them in the shadows.
-- How far into the outlining process do you actually start writing?
When I am excited and want to start writing. When I have a good sense of where the story is going, where it needs to end, and more or less how it needs to get there. When it's done.
Expand( And lots more words... )
[Brandon] All right. Well. Let's go ahead and go with our writing prompt. I'm going to say Howard, give it to us.
[Howard] You, in an extremely, extremely spur-of-the-moment sort of living-in-the-moment thing have decided that instead of fight club, it's zoo club. And you have just punched an elephant. Hard. What happens next?
[Dan] You get arrested.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses...
[Howard] Now go to jail.
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Writing Excuses Season Four Episode 23: How to break into the young adult market

Feb. 25th, 2011 11:21 am
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses Season Four Episode 23: How to break into the young adult market

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/06/13/writing-excuses-4-23-how-to-break-in-to-the-young-adult-market/

Key points: To break in, first write the book. In fact, write several. Then pay attention to why it is being rejected, and revise effectively. Don't be afraid to admit that a relationship isn't working. Even when you have a first draft, there's a lot of work ahead. Keep plugging, and pay attention to the feedback you are getting.
Expand( the words... )
[Brandon] All right. I'm going to go ahead and give our writing prompt because something just popped into my head. Don't know if this is going to be a good one, but... write a story where two roommates are living together, and one of them sells a book manuscript, and then vanishes. The other roommate decides to go ahead and pretend that it was their manuscript and finish the book. They sold it on proposal. So they have to finish the book. That's going to be our writing prompt, is the roommate pretending to write the book by the other roommate. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
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