Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-44-nanowrimo-week-1-getting-started 

 

Key Points: NaNoWriMo, writing 50,000 words. How do you get started? Writing your opening? Meet the characters and set promises for the readers. Confidence and authority, voice! And information! Promises to me, to motivate me! Voice, character, or setting. Voice driven or action driven? Hook the reader! Write a little, then ask what excites me about that. Do some freewriting, meet the character or setting or voice, before starting. [If you don't start, you can't finish.] Give readers reasons to care, to connect. Think about who, what, when, where, why, and how. Breadcrumbs, not infodumps! Character stakes, what is at risk. Where are we, who are we with, and what genre is this? Within 13 lines, what is the character's goal? Remember, Nano is a time to play, to try out things. Dive in!

 

[Season 18, Episode 44]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] NaNoWriMo Week 1 - Getting Started.

[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.

 

[Mary Robinette] We're going to be talking about National Novel Writing Month. All month, in fact. For those of you who haven't participated in this, National Novel Writing Month is a month-long challenge in the month of November, where you attempt to write a novel or 50,000 words, depending on how you want to define that. So what we're going to be talking about is what you need to do in order to try to have something that's vaguely coherent at the end of the month. These are tools that you can use the rest of the time when you're working on novels or short stories, but we're going to talk this week about getting started.

[Pause]

[Erin] So, how do we do that?

[Laughter]

[Erin] I mean, it's like…

[Mary Robinette] Surely, someone else will start talking now?

[Erin] That's often the problem…

 

[Dan] Getting started is hard.

[Mary Robinette] Getting started is hard. So, in getting started, what we're talking about on day one is that you're going to be writing your opening. This is where you meet your characters and you set promises for your readers. So we're going to be talking about both stuff that you need to establish, but the order in which you establish things is very much up to you. So, what do you all find are some, like, consistent things that make an opening, like, that first page?

[DongWon] I personally really love openings. They are my favorite part of the book. As a literary agent, I'm mostly looking at openings as I'm going through queries and new projects and things like that. So, for me, the thing I'm looking for in that first page, in those opening sections, is a sense that the author knows what they're doing, and they're going to take me on a journey that I'm excited to go on with them. Right? So, projecting a certain amount of confidence and a certain amount of authority in those opening pages are really important. Some of the best tools to do this is with your actual voice. The words that you're using and the sentence structure that you have is a great way to bring readers in and project that kind of confidence that you are going to be telling us a story that we're going to be excited to read. That can be everything from word choice to sentence structure to a kind of musicality and rhythm that you have in those opening sentences. But that really needs to be balanced with all of the information that you need to give to your readers. Right? It can't all just be voice-y beautiful prose, you also need to be communicating a ton of information in those opening pages.

[Howard] I'm a sucker for a good first line. It can take a long time to write a first line that you're happy with. Often, the first week of NaNoWriMo is not a great time to grind on that.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Howard] Caveat. If the first line is good enough to excite me, the first line might be good enough to continue to excite you. So, I always try and fill my first page with things that are not just promises to the readers, but are promises to me, to get me motivated, to remind me how much fun this story's going to be.

[DongWon] Right. This is Nano. You're not here to make perfect prose, you're not here to make sure everything's super refined and edited to perfection, you're here to get words on the page. Right? So, I'm telling you this as ways to think about what your goals are for the opening, but don't stress about anything that I'm saying right now.

[Dan] Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned voice. Voice is one of the 3 things that I try to do in an opening. You don't need to do all of these 3. Really, your goal is to hook the reader and get them interested. The way I think about it, you can do that with a really great interesting voice, or with a compelling character, or with a fascinating world or setting. One of those 3 is going to grab that reader in the want to learn more about it and come on in. If you can do all 3, that's even better, but…

[DongWon] Yeah, you can only do…

[Dan] Do one of the 3.

[DongWon] Some combo of those. Right? It's not going to be pure voice. If it was pure voice, then they're like, "What is this story about? I'm out." If it… But you want to have character in their. It's sort of like you're readjusting the levels to sort of fit the story you're trying to tell.

[Mary Robinette] So, I find that what you're talking about, I see as kind of 2 different paths into a story. That you can have something that's kind of voice driven, where the voices doing all of the lifting and carrying, or you can have something that's action driven, where the character is in the middle of doing something. That… There's overlap between those 2 things. Like, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, nobody is doing anything. It's all voice driven. Whereas, if you look at the beginning of Ghost Talkers, using my own novel, that begins with a character saying, "The Germans were flanking us at Delville Wood when I died." Ginger Stuyvesant was sitting with the spirit circle… I don't remember the rest of my actual lines…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But she's in the middle of doing something. But it is that hook, that both of these have different ways of hooking the reader and pulling them in.

 

[Erin] I would say that you may not know which of these you're doing because it is Nano and you're just trying to figure it out. So one thing that I find really fun during Nano is to write a little bit of a beginning and then go like, "What could this be? What excites me about it? Like, what about the voice that I've just written is really interesting? What about the action that's happening is really intriguing?" It's a great way later in the month if you get stuck to go back and look at what are 2 or 3 things that I was really excited about, like Howard said, right at the start, that can continue to motivate me when I'm not sure, like, where I went or how the story has taken a twist or a turn.

[Dan] Well. One thing that I do, and I've talked about this on the show before, but I still do it, and I still think it's valuable, is I will do free writing before I start a book. I will write some dialogue, let a character talk for a couple of pages. Or I will describe the world. I will describe my favorite aspects of the world, the part of the setting that gets me excited. I will try to write something and nail down a tone of voice, or find a weird turn of phrase. Never intending to actually use any of this in the novel, but just to kind of get me into the right headspace so I can hit the ground running when the actual writing starts.

[Mary Robinette] I do something similar, that I will often do a couple of exploratory attempts. Sometimes I am planning for it to be the first chapter, but it's just me saying, "What is this? What is going on here?" Much like Erin does, also. It's just like is there something here that excites me? For those of you who are doing NaNoWriMo seriously, all of these exploratory attempts count towards your total word count.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Save them. No writing is wasted.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things about Nano is that it really teaches you that no writing is wasted. When we come back from our break, what were going to be talking about are some of the pieces of information that you're going to need to pass to your reader. But, right now, let's take a brief break.

 

[Mary Robinette] NaNoWriMo is just around the corner, and it's time to start planning. If you're aiming for 1600 words a day, it's easy to de-prioritize eating. But you need to keep the brain fueled. During Nano, I turn to meal kits. Hello Fresh makes whipping up a home-cooked meal a nice break from writing with quick and easy options, including their 15 minute meals. With everything pre-proportioned and delivered right to your door every week, it takes way less time than it takes to get a delivery. I find that stepping away from the keyboard to cook gives my brain time to rest. I love that with Hello Fresh, I can plan my meals for the month before NaNoWriMo begins, and then, I can save all of my decision-making for the story. With so many in season ingredients, you'll taste all the freshness of fall in every bite of Hello Fresh chef crafted recipes. Produce travels from the farm to your door for peak freshness you can taste. Go to hellofresh.com/50WX and use the code 50WX for 50% off plus free shipping! Yeah, that's right. 50WX, 50 for 50% off and WX for Writing eXcuses. We are terrible with puns. Just visit hellofresh.com/50WX and try America's number one meal kit.

 

[Howard] It's the first week of NaNoWriMo. It is time to get started. I'm going to throw a couple of aphorisms at you. You must be present to win. You miss 100% of the pitches you don't swing at. [Sigh] If you don't start, you'll never get to finish. I speak as someone who has never actually won at NaNoWriMo. I've started it several times. I think one time, I actually got 30,000 words in on a project. But I've never actually completed something that I would consider to be a first draft of a novel during NaNoWriMo. Do I feel bad about it? No. Do I feel in the least bit conflicted about encouraging you to start NaNoWriMo? Absolutely not. I am giving you permission to start and maybe fail. Because that happens to the best of us. I don't want to suggest that I'm the best of us. There are way better than me who have failed at NaNoWriMo. But you miss 100% of the pitches you don't swing at. Sit down at the keyboard and write something. Let the words flow, or let the words don't flow. Because until you try it, you won't know whether or not you can do it. [Sigh] I've heard it said that the limitations that affect most people are what they believe their limitations to be, rather than what their limitations actually are. So, whether or not you think you can finish NaNoWriMo, I think you should start.

 

[Mary Robinette] Right. So. Now that we're back, what I'd like us to talk about is some of the information that you want to try to get to the reader early, early in your novel or short story. One of the reasons you want to do that is that part of the promises in all of those things is that you're giving the reader reasons to care and to connect. Readers are desperately trying to ground themselves at the beginning, and they will grab hold of any piece of information that you give them and begin to build a world. So you want to make sure that you are giving them information in order to build that world in their head.

[DongWon] One of the biggest mistakes I see in openings is not giving enough information. Right? A lack of information density can make for an opening that feels incredibly slow. It's just not pulling me into the world. It's not giving me information about the character and not giving me a sense of what the shape of the story is going to be. So, the way I always talk about opening pages is I want them to be like a layer cake. Right? Where there's so much stuff put into those opening pages that are giving me a sense of world and character and all these things. So one way to do that is to kind of play with your voice a little bit and play with time and interiority and perspective to be able to give us lots of different pieces of information from lots of different angles as quickly as possible.

[Erin] Sometimes I actually like to think about this is literally the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Like, these are the things that your reader's going to want to know in the beginning. You don't have to give them all in one sentence. Though, if you can, that's exciting. But, really, I like to think about when am I answering like, who. Who is this happening to? What. Like, what is actually going on at this moment? When and where is our setting. Like, when and where are we? Then, for why and how, how is a lot of tone. Like, how is this story going to be told? Is this humor, is this a light touch, is this like dark and foreboding? Like, how is the story being told? Why is a little bit of sort of the if there's any theme that I want to put in there, that I want to seed early on. Sometimes, I'll actually go through the pages of a story and be like when our each of these elements clear? If one is clear very, very far down, then, am I doing that for a reason? If I'm not, can I bring it up, and at least suggest what's going on so that it doesn't feel missing?

[Howard] On that point, or to that point, I love the idea of descriptions as being either additive or corrective. I see corrective as inherently problematic. If I've given you some description, you're going to start building independently of me continuing to write things. If I lead you in one direction and you keep running in that direction, but that's not what is actually happening, the next piece of description I give you is corrective instead of additive. Every time you do that, you are breaking a trust with the reader. Now, in a humor novel, you can absolutely get away with it. In fact, it's a fantastic technique. But, I started thinking about it in this way, where, yes, I want to order things, the who, what, when, where, why, but I also want to make sure that if I start people down a path, I don't let them run far enough that I have to correct my description later.

[Dan] I think it's important to point out… We don't want to freak you out with this thought that you have to explain everything in your first couple of pages. That's not what we're talking about. Think of it as providing evidence of what's going on, rather than providing us answers for what's going on. You don't need to explain your entire magic system, for example. But you do need to give us the information that pertains to the scene itself. If your first scene is a fight between wizards, then, yeah, we need to understand some of the magic system. If it's not, you can just drop hints here and there, give us some breadcrumbs, and explain the rest of it later.

[DongWon] One thing I always say is that I need character stakes in the opening scene, I need some sense of, like, what's at risk here. The other thing I always say is these can be lies.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] This goes a little counter to what Howard was saying, but this doesn't have to be your main character's biggest problem. This can be a minor set of stakes that they need to get through for this scene, that will then lead them into bigger inciting incidents. Right? So, I need a sense of the shape of the story. Don't feel pressured to communicate your whole novel to me in this moment. I just need a story, a subplot, a little something for me to chew on that's going to pull me into the rest of the book.

[Howard] Coming back to additive versus corrective real quick. If you tell me someone is desperately trying to get a hold of someone else, but can't, and you don't tell me why, I… Well, if you tell me because my cell phone has no charge, then you grounded me in the 21st-century. If you tell me that I can't get to a pay phone, whatever, then you grounded me maybe a couple decades earlier. Or smoke signals or whatever. I need to know if we're in Civil War era or 21st century fairly early on with the descriptions end up being very, very corrective when you deliver them.

[DongWon] This brings me to one another point is to be a little careful of metaphor in these opening pages. Because everything… I don't know anything about your world, so sometimes somebody… I'll run [inaudible into fantasy?] where somebody puts a metaphor in and I'll think, "Oh, literally, people are fish in this world." Not they were like a fish in this moment.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] You know what I mean? You can take stuff that is completely wild because I am… It's all open skies for me. I don't know what it is I'm engaging with yet. So, those metaphors can be taken incredibly literally in those opening pages. So, something to be a little careful about.

[Mary Robinette] I… I… I'm going to give like some metrics for a really mechanical way to do this. For people who like rules and are feeling freaked out. I want to be really clear that this is exercise stuff, this is not books must be written this way. But if you're like, "I don't know, this is too much." Using Erin's idea of who, what, where, why, I do something very similar. That is, I try to make sure that my character's… My readers know where we are, who we're with, and something about the genre or mood. I count when as part of the where. I try to do that within the first 3 sentences. So that I'm just like giving… And it's not that… When I say who, it's not that you have to know my character's entire back story. It's just giving a little bit of an idea of whose eyes we're going to be looking through, who we're going to be connecting to. Then, within the first 13 lines, I try to make sure that we know something about my character's goal. The reason I say the first 13 lines is an entirely mechanical and mercenary thing, which is that it's about the first half page of a manuscript, and that's about how long you have to hook an agent or an editor when they are in the slush pile. So if you can give them something that your reader… Your character wants. To DongWon's point, it doesn't have to be the big thing, but something that's, like, somehow thematically linked. Like, if we're going to be on a big quest later, they're just looking for the remote control right now. But something that they want.

[Erin] Let's say 2 things about that. One is that I think those small things, like looking for the remote control, build the trust that Howard was talking about earlier. You show that, like, I'm going to show you something and I'm going to deliver on it. Then you don't have to deliver on it as quickly the next time, because you've built that trust. But also, to be like a chaos gremlin…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Like, in opposition of what you're saying, I also feel like one of the things that's nice about Nano, it's, like, a time to play around and find out what…

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Surely.

[Erin] And find out what happens if you break all these rules. Do you want to write 50,000 words where no one knows where they are the entire time, including the reader? Hey, go for it. You may find out that you've discovered a new way of writing fiction, or you may find out that it's confusing and you need to go back and add that in. But this is a great time too, like, play around with what you're doing and how you're doing it.

[Mary Robinette] I actually completely agree with that. So we're in great shape. And, I think, that we've set you up to begin your first nano day. Hopefully. So, dive in. All of the words you count write.… All of the words you write count! Now, we're going to give you a little bit of homework.

 

[Mary Robinette] So, your homework assignment is that I want you to write 2 different openings. The first one is going to be more action driven, where your character is doing a thing. The 2nd one is going to be voice driven, where you are ruminating on something and kind of just exploring voice. You may wind up using neither of these, both of them count. You can do them in any order you want. But explore 2 different ways of opening that novel.

 

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

 

[Mary Robinette] Do you have a book or a short story that you need help with? We're now offering an introductory tier on Patreon called Office Hours. Once a month, you can join a group of your peers and the hosts of Writing Excuses to ask questions.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2019/07/14/14-29-field-research/

 

Key points: Field research is mostly about the stuff you can't get from books, the tiny details. Do your research before you go. Identify an expert who can help you. Offer an honorarium. Then go and experience visceral sensory details. Use the framework, known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns (a.k.a. Howard's realm). Nothing replaces walking down a street thinking I'm going to have to describe this someday, what are the little details that can convince a reader of the large details. Try free writing everywhere you go, capturing sensory details. Do analog field research! Don't forget, sights, sounds, smells, get it all. Tell your readers what someone else is feeling, so they can also enjoy the experience.

 

[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 29.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Field Research.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Margaret] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And field research is going to take more than 15 minutes to do.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Margaret] I'm Margaret.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

 

[Brandon] We're talking about field research. The fun, fun part of our job where we get to go places and write it off.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] It's… It is actually my favorite part of the job.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I remember talking to Jessica Day George, who we've had on the podcast before, who said… Basically, tweeted and said, "I'm going to Europe and I can't tell you where because it's all about my next book." She was going to look at castles and to look at historical stuff. That is not the field research that I get to do, but I remember looking at it and thinking, "Oh, that's actually a thing, isn't it?"

[Brandon] Yeah. It is great.

[Margaret] You get to embed with a space mercenary fleet, though, right?

[Chuckles]

 

[Brandon] So, I guess my first question for us is, when we're talking specifically about field research, you're going to go someplace and do a thing or interview someone for a primary source, how do you approach it? What is your methodology? How do you take the notes, how do you decide where you are going to go, that sort of thing?

[Mary Robinette] So the… I've done this both as a writer and then also come at it from puppet theater. A lot of what you're looking at is the stuff that you can't get out of the books. Most of this is going to be tiny details. So, what I do first is, I do a ton of research before I go, so that I'm not asking the stupid 101 questions. Because that's a waste of everybody's time. The other thing that I do is, I, in the process of doing that research, I usually identify an expert that I can reach out to. For instance, we were working on a play about Mary Anning, who is the first widely recognized paleontologist, or fossilist, excuse me. Was born in 1799. So I found Dr. Hugh Torrins, wrote to him, said we're doing this, I'd love to… We're going to be coming to London to do research, I would love to connect with you. This is the honorarium that I can offer. It's not a big honorarium. It was like $150. For that $150, he went with us to Lyme Regis, he was delighted to talk about this thing that was his passion. He introduced us to the paleontologist that he knew, he introduced us to the fossilists that he knew. He told us which fossil… Fossilists were worth talking to, which fossil sites to go and look at, what details were relevant. So we went and did those things. Having an expert to give you kind of a targeted in about the stuff that you don't know about was incredibly useful. That… From that, we were able to bring back a lot of visceral sensory details. Similarly, when we did the NASA thing, I got to go into the NASA museums a lot, but the difference between doing that and being taken on a tour by an astronaut…

[Brandon] Right. Climbing through the replica of the ISS…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It's a totally different thing. So you can go without an expert, but for me, if you can find someone who is an expert or knows the area, you're going to get a lot more out of it. Among other things, they're going to help you shift your lens, so that you're seeing things the way they see them.

 

[Howard] Circling back real quick on the honorarium, it's worth noting that what you are paying for with 150 or $200 is not their time. You are buying their belief that you are serious about this. It's a small sum, but by offering it… Experts often know to look for that. Oh, there's an honorarium. Oh, you want to learn things from me. Okay, cool. I'm happy to do this.

[Margaret] Depending on where you are in your career and what you're doing and who the expert is that you're approaching, the definition of small sum can become flexible.

[Mary Robinette] Very much so.

[Margaret] If you're going to a local university because you would like information from someone who is a professor there, or something like that, take them out, buy their coffee. That can be a perfectly appropriate honorarium for something like that. Especially if you're in the early stages of your career and you're doing something that's basically on spec for you.

[Mary Robinette] When I was getting information about meteor strikes, I thought I only had one question. So I took a person out for coffee, and then it turned out that I had more than one question.

[Laughter]

 

[Howard] There's a framework that I use for a lot of things knowledge-related. Which is this grid that says there are the things that we know that we know. There are the things that we know we don't know, the known unknowns. There are the things that we don't know that we know. We have information, but we don't know how to categorize it. Then there's the unknown unknowns. I don't know… I don't even know how to ask the question that will get me the information that I need. Acknowledging upfront to yourself that there are unknown unknowns… Mary, you said you don't want to ask the bonehead questions, you don't want to ask the stupid questions. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that I'm going to ask some stupid questions because I just don't know how this works. But you own that upfront, and then when you get thrown a curveball… You wanted to ask one question about meteor strikes and now suddenly you have 100. You're not surprised by that happening. You accept, "Oh. Oh, my goodness, the unknown unknowns' space was larger than I wanted it to be. Now I have a known unknowns space and a long list of questions, and I am prepared to forge ahead into that."

[Mary Robinette] When I say I don't want to ask the bonehead questions, again, working on Calculating Stars, there was no way I was going to learn the amount of orbital mechanics that I needed to know for those books. But I knew the area of information. Like, I knew this is the kind of thing, these are the effects I'm coming for. Whereas what happens to me a lot as a puppeteer is that I'll get people who will email me and say, "Can you tell me how to make a puppet?" I'm like, "Okay. So there's five different types, five different major branches of puppetry. Within each branch, there are subtypes. What is your budget? How… What is…" Like, that's a question I cannot answer. I mean, there are books and books and books about that.

[Howard] It's the same measure of complexity as can you teach me to build a bicycle.

[Margaret] Or the… I feel like the equivalent in my area of the biz. "So, how did you get started in the business?" Or, "How can I break into television?" Like there are a lot of blogs and a lot of books and a lot of information on that topic out there. If someone approaches me with that question, I'm sort of like, "Uh, Google is your friend." If you have… If someone has done their homework and they have a more specific question, that's when it's like, "Oh. Yeah. I can help you out with that."

[Mary Robinette] I just spent hours answering the "How do you build a wing?" Because they had watched a video and they came to me with a specific question. Then we did some follow-up stuff. Totally happy to do that.

[Brandon] This is 100% my experience as well, writing on books. Like, I just recently did a fighter jet book. I thought I had done my 101.

[Mary Robinette] Ha Ha. Oh, yeah.

[Brandon] Then I went to the fighter pilots and it turns out I was full of questions I didn't know that I didn't know, in Howard's realm. But at least approaching it, once my eyes were opened, I was able to kind of get it closer, send it to the fighter pilots, have them say, "No, you still got it wrong, but your closer. Here's this and this and this." Kind of just work towards getting it right.

[Howard] You just named the unknown unknowns space Howard's realm.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Yeah, Howard's realm.

[Howard] Thank you. Thank you for that. When I sat down to draw the Munchkin Star Finder deck… I'm going to take this into a visual space for a moment. I needed lots of… I needed ways to do shorthand for a space pistol, shorthand for a helmet, shorthand for a Velcro pocket. Where with just a very few lines, I could do a thing. So I found myself googling a lot cartoon image noun. Then I would look at clipart, I would look at things so that I could get silhouettes of them. My favorite example of that was in the Star Finder book, there is this giant space creature that we just kind of acknowledge is a space whale. I wanted an iconic whale, that everyone would look at and just see whale. I ended up with the silhouette of the whale that eats Pinocchio and Geppetto. I used that as the silhouette. It looks incredibly simple when you look at it, but there's 2 1/2 hours of research that went into that card because there were so many options for things which, when I simplified them, started looking less like a whale and more like a shark.

 

[Brandon] All right. Let's stop for our book of the week. Which is actually not a book. It is... Howard.

[Howard] It's not a Howard, either. It's a podcast.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] PBS Spacetime. We'll post the link in the liner notes. The original host was Gabe Perez-Giz. He never actually says his last name. Gabe. The current host, Matthew O'Dowd. These are astrophysicists, who, for about 15 minutes, talk about astrophysics. They go into the math. It is hard-core stuff. But the very first episode, introductory episode, is Gabe talking about let's look at the Super Mario games and determine what the gravity is on the planet of Super Mario.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] What's funny, the answer is it's a lot heavier than Earth. Because he comes down so quickly.

[Oooo]

[Howard] Which means Mario's legs are like rocket engines. But there's another thing that I'll put in the liner notes is my playlist of chronological episodes. They been doing this, I think, since 2013 weekly. At the end of each episode, there's an astrophysics problem for you to look at and try to answer. If you get to the problem… I didn't do any of the problems. I don't do math, I draw pictures. But I would listen to the problem very carefully and ask myself, "What realm does the solution lie in? Am I going to have to do calculus? Am I going to have to do astronomy?" Then, at the end of the next episode, they give you the answers to the questions from the previous. It's super educational.

[Brandon] Awesome.

[Yeah]

[Howard] Super educational.

 

[Brandon] So, we're talking technically about field research. We've kind of strayed a little bit. I knew that we would with this topic. Let's talk about going places. I find that nothing can replace just walking down the street with the mindset of I'm going to have to describe this someday. What are the little details that I'm going to notice? We've spoken many times on the podcast about how small details can convince a reader of a larger reality. If you get the little details right, they will actually assume the large details. So, for me, even if it's I'm going to put this specific café in my book, and it's a café down the street from me, it doesn't mean I'm having to go to Paris. Just saying I'm going to put this building in, what do I notice that's real about this building, has been super helpful for me.

[Mary Robinette] I usually try to do some free writing in whatever place that I go. I give this exercise to my students. It's one of the first exercises, formal writing exercises, I was taught. Which is that you go someplace and you write for half an hour. You don't let your fingers stop moving. You try to capture all of those sensory details. You're basically banking them for narration later. The thing that I would say, also, while were talking about this, is that not everyone can afford to go to NASA or go to Europe. So you can also look for analog field research. So, it's like, I can't go perhaps to Europe, but I can find a narrow street. I can find a narrow street and feel what that's like to walk down. I can't go to that cemetery, but I can go to this other cemetery and I can notice these details about it. I can't go into the NBL pool, but I can go into a pool.

[Margaret] I think, sort of what you're talking about, is getting those sensory details. Because as much as I love my camera, when I'm going out and I'm going to a place, or I'm documenting something for research that I'm doing… It's sort of like when you're going on a vacation and you're snapping so many pictures, you sort of forget to look at things outside the lens. What your camera captures is different than what your eyes capture. So making sure, even if you are photo documenting details, if that's helpful for you, that, sort of, taking a step back, breathing literally and figuratively in the place where you are.

[Howard] One of my favorite research moments… It wasn't really research. Going to Phoenix ComicCon. A bunch of us stepped out of the airport, and, boy, it was hot. We were in the shade, okay. We all commented, "Oh, wow, this is hot." Then we stepped into the sunlight.

[Laughter]

[Howard] David Willis, fellow cartoonist, said, in a very deadpan voice, "We've made a horrible mistake."

[Laughter]

[Howard] Everybody laughs. But that sensory experience, you look at the picture of the line between shade and sunlight, and it looks like that line anywhere that shade and sunlight might fall. But that was not what we experienced.

 

[Brandon] Along those lines, a reminder. Don't just write down what things look like. I have to re-emphasize this time and time again to my students. You will naturally focus on sight, at least most of us will. Try to get the sounds, try to get the smells. Try to get how it feels to step out of an air-conditioned area into the heat. Get those details as well.

[Margaret] I had an apartment fire in the first apartment I was living in after college. The fire was actually in the apartment immediately underneath ours.

[Whoof]

[Margaret] So, our apartment… Not so much. There was some fire, that had come up through the walls, but it was mostly smoke and the fire department coming in and wetting everything down. The most profound memories that I carried forward from cleaning out the apartment after that was the smell of smoky mildew.

[Oof]

[Margaret] Because it is summer in Boston, it is humid, there's no air circulation because all the windows got busted out and are covered in plywood. Whenever I… I was writing something else, I described a fire, and it's like, "The smell of smoke and mildew hung over the place in the following week." It's one of those things…

[Mary Robinette] Very, very evocative. 

[Margaret] I never would have thought about it until I was there, trying to get stuff out of that apartment. So, smells are like hardwired to your memories.

 

[Howard] On the 2017 Writing Excuses Retreat, I got to tour a World War II era Russian submarine. One of the things that I noticed most was not how cramped the large spaces were, but it was when we peered into the cabins and I realized these one… I'm not a tall person, but these people must not have been very tall either, or they were curled up. There's just not much space. A physical description of what you see can convey the size of things, but there is an emotion related to cramped, there is an emotion related to open space. There is an emotion related to all of my things that smell like burnt cheese. That, as writers, is one of the things that is the most critical for us to try to convey. You don't want to tell your reader how to feel. You want to tell your reader how someone else is feeling, so that they can come along for that experience.

 

[Brandon] We are out of time. Hopefully, this has been helpful for you guys. Howard is going to give you some homework to kind of push it along.

[Howard] Yeah. Go someplace close to you, where you've never been. It can… A side street, a store, a restaurant, whatever. Bring your phone… Your phone. Your camera. Take a few pictures. Then go back, look at the pictures, and look for things in the pictures that your eyes didn't notice. Sit down and describe what is in this photograph as if you are writing that is a setting for a story. As if a character is noticing these things. Teach your eyes how to look at the camera and see the things that the camera saw that your eyes didn't see the first time around.

[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.