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Writing Excuses 20.40: Mary Robinette Kowal's Personal Writing Process

From writingexcuses.com/20-40-mary-robinette-kowals-personal-writing-process

Key points: What is your writing process? Random schedule. Fitting writing in the gaps. Retrain yourself to work with your brain. Chaotic and gremlins. Write every day? Reshape habits. A thing you do or what you are? Habit or practice? Hyperfocus. Novel, interesting, challenging, urgent. Microsessions. Rice or eggs? Deadlines. Interruptions. White noise, and travel spaces. Defend your writing time. Today's three tasks and timeline. Reward yourself with the next bit of writing fun. Keep learning, it is never a solved problem.

[Season 20, Episode 40]

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

[Season 20, Episode 40]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Mary Robinette Kowal's Personal Writing Process.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Mary Robinette] So, we had this thought. I hear a lot of people say, "But what is your writing process?" and as successful writers, people who are published, what is your writing process? As if it is a key to being able to write. The idea here is that you're going to hear from each of the hosts. We're going to tell you what our personal writing process is. The other people are probably going to look at us like that's what you do? And the idea is that the only important process is the one that works for you. And that that's going to change over the course of your career, over the course of the project that you're working on. So...

[Howard] And by way of clarification, when we say you're going to hear from each of the hosts about this, on this episode we're talking about Mary Robinette's writing process.

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[Howard] And each of us are going to point fingers and say but how can that even work? Because I do not know how that can even work.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So my writing process is based on having a completely random schedule, but also having started with a random schedule, where I was putting writing in the gaps of everything else I was doing. I started writing novels sitting in a white cargo van in a passenger seat writing long hand while I was on puppetry tours. Because that was the thing that I could do. And then I had this ancient se... I mean, at the time, it was new... This sewing machine of a portable computer. And so then my process was I would transcribe things. The idea of doing that now seems like how did I even. But the kind of lingering effects of that is that I tend to write best in transit still. I love writing on an airplane, a train is amazing. And then at home, my writing process used to work best when I went to coffee shops. And then pandemic completely interrupted that. So, for me, I... I've gone through phases where I'm like I will write every day and I will have this word count. And now it's much more of a... I am having a reasonably good brain day, there are... This is a day of fewer distractions, some of the things that have shifted in my life is that I've had to do a bunch of Elder Care. So I went through a phase where I felt like every time I sat down to write that I would in some way punish the writing. Not by someone in specific, but that if I sat down to write, my mom was going to fall. And so I started to develop this real avoidance of wanting to get into the mode, because something traumatic kept happening. So where I am now with my writing process is that I am trying to retrain my brain and retrain my... I should say I'm trying to retrain myself to work with my brain, because I have an understanding of the fact that I have ADHD, I have depression. I didn't know those things when I started writing. And so, like, I'm trying to learn how to trigger hyper-focus on demand, and how to turn it off, or how to be okay with having hyper-focus broken. So a lot of my writing process now is using binaural sound to say, oh, this is writing time. Or making sure that I have lined up dates with other people. So there's a lot of hacking of my brain that goes on. But people ask me, what is my writing process?

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I'm like it is completely chaotic and gremlins.

[Dan] Right out of the gate, I love this. Because one lesson that gets taught all the time, and I hate it, is that you have to write every single day if you want to be a real writer. And that's not how you work. That's not how I work, either. And being able to recognize, well, this is a good day, this is a good time, and other days and other times, you might have something more important to do. And that's okay. it doesn't make you a bad writer, it doesn't make you an inherently unprofessional writer. It's just how life is sometimes..

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] I want to rewind to an earlier thing, though, because the thought that I had as you're describing it is cargo vans don't have very good suspension.

[laughter]

[DongWon] So writing by hand in the passenger seat of a moving cargo van seems like your penmanship is quite remarkable, and I begin to understand why.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I didn't actually think about that. Something that you said, Dan, about the writing every day, reminds me of a thing that I learned for myself, which is that there is value in saying I write every day for me, because one of the things that I struggle with is executive function. And the I write every day reduces the level of executive function, because it means that's a decision I didn't have to make. So I've definitely... and I've preached this on the podcast, I try to write three sentences every day. That's actually not true for where I am right now. I don't actually do that. but that does make it much easier to... For my habit to be I have some free time, I'm going to go on Instagram rather than I'm going to sit down to write. And so that's a lot of what I'm trying to balance is learning how to reshape habits so that I lean towards oh, I have free time, I'm going to write, which is what I used to do. Like, my second novel, I literally wrote, like, probably half of it using a Palm Pilot and graffiti on the New York subways. I was just fitting it into the cracks on everything else I had to do. And now, like, I can arrange my schedule so that I can write anytime I want to, but, like, I have cat videos to edit.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Two things. One, I really love this idea that, like, you fit it into the cracks of your life, and I'm curious about that. But first, I actually read this book on habits, and one of the things that they said is that what habits do is move something that you're doing from a thing you do to a thing you are. And so, for example, people say I am a writer who writes every day versus, like, I need to write every day. And that if you do a habit long enough, that's why people would be, like, I'm a runner versus I am someone who runs daily. And that then shifts so that it just feels like such a baseline of who you are that you go ahead and, like, do it because it feels like it's part of your identity. That can be good or bad. It can become, like, a prison of identity. But that's something that, like... I think that's why sometimes people like that feeling of, like, I am a daily writer.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] The way I think about it is the difference between a habit and a practice. Right? A habit is something that you feel you need to do every day, it's on your calendar, or whatever it is, and if you fall off of that, then it feels like a failure. And I think that failure state often prevents people from returning. Versus a practice is something that you're always working at. Right? You're not expected to be perfect at it. You try to do it every day. And then tomorrow's always another opportunity to be the person that you see yourself as. Right? So, I am a writer, I practice writing. That means that you are making time and space in an intentional way, but not holding yourself to an unrealizable standard. Because I think very few people who say they write every day actually write every day. Right? Stuff happens. Right? There are emergencies, vacations, there's travel, there's all these other things, and quite frankly, I think you should be making time for those things, other interests in your life, other people in your life. And so it's okay if... Even if you are a daily writer, that you are not literally writing every day. Right? And so I think a lot of us can get really hung up on this like completionist perfection, and I think the idea of a practice can make that space for you to still see yourself as that thing and doing the thing without beating yourself up.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And I have some other ideas about, like, some of the ways that I have found to go in and out of a daily writing practice. And I will talk about those more after the break.

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[Mary Robinette] So, before we took our break, I said that I was interested in exploring how I go in and out of a daily writing practice. Because one of the things that I realized, as someone who has ADHD, and, like, in hindsight so many of my career choices make sense because... One of the things that fuels an ADHD brain, or that we respond well to, is new things. But we also really enjoy, like, hyperfocus is a pleasurable thing for us. And so in hindsight, it's... I was choosing careers where I was in theater, so I had a new project every couple of months. Novel, interesting, challenging, and urgent. Those are the triggers. And I love doing those things. And so a new novel, very exciting. So I've realized that when I started, I was still participating in the late lamented Nano. And that is binge writing. That is hyperfocus for a month on a thing. And so now I recognize that,, actually, it's okay for me to say I'm going to focus on this for this period of time. But if I'm in a situation where I have to switch tracks, that I have to be able to learn how to take myself in and back out again for that. And so one of the things that I've been working on is micro sessions. Because I think one of the things that happens to someone who enjoys hyperfocus is that you think,, I'm going to get into that and I'm either going to be punished because I will miss... I'll be late to do something else or someone's going to interrupt me and that'll be frustrating. And so I've been doing... Setting timers and saying, okay, 5 minutes. And that will just... Like, look, I got a lot of words done. I can do this in 5 minute bursts. And then kind of building up. So that if I've been in a phase where I haven't been writing for a while, I can ramp myself up into it. Instead of having, like, a day where i'm like, okay, it's time for me to write, I'm going to write 2,000 words. Because that's what I write when I'm writing at pace, and then I'm exhausted because I haven't been writing daily, and then I don't write. So, like, learning to use these micro sessions to ramp up has been helpful.

[Howard] There's a famous object lesson involving a mason jar and eggs and rice, in which you want to get everything into the jar. And if you pour the rice in first, there isn't room for the eggs. If you put the eggs in first, then the rice will fill the gaps. And the object lesson is find out what's important to you, put the important things in your life first, and then let everything else fill the gaps. And what you've described with some of the catch as catch can writing process, is learning to... And I'm going to extend and then break the metaphor because I'm me... Learning to be the monk who can write on a grain of rice. Turn your writing process into something that can fill the cracks. That can be on the grains of rice. Sometimes you want it to be an egg. Sometimes you want to block out 4 hours and just write. But you have to have the ability... I say you... For your process, you have to have the ability to write on a grain of rice on some days.

[Mary Robinette] Right. And so that is actually part of the thing is that when I have a deadline, which is, again, triggers the urgency thing, it's so much easier for me to do time blocking and stick to it. Otherwise, I'm very likely to block things out on my calendar and then be like, oh, well, we can move that.

[Erin] Thinking a lot again about the cracks and you writing on the modes of transit, which I think is fascinating, as somebody who has occasionally, like, written on the subway. What I wonder about this is, like, there's so many interruptions. Like, so, being on any form of transit, like, at any moment, like, things could be happening, a road sign, a thing. But it's like things that you anticipate happening. So it's like an interruption that you... Sometimes it's like an interruption that you have internalized is going to happen versus an unexpected interruption. Do you know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like... And I'm wondering, like, if that's something that you've played around with or thought about?

[Mary Robinette] So I think that the interruptions that happen in modes of transit are either things that you're expecting, so you can plan for them, because I know my stop is coming up. Or they're things that you don't actually have to engage with. The interruptions that I was dealing with were things that I had to engage with. Like I am... My mom passed in 2023. We live in a basement apartment. There are three dogs. I hear something hit the ground. And I still have this trauma response of I need to go deal with that. I'm like 100% don't. The dogs are fine. So I think some of that is the difference between interruptions you have to engage with and the ones you don't. But I think the other thing that, again, in hindsight, was happening for me was that there was just enough white noise, just enough stimulus happening either in the train or the coffee shop, that I had to focus harder, and that made it easier to ignore all of the other chat... Like, in the process of I have to ignore all of this other stuff, it made me also ignore all of the other random chatter in my brain, because I had to focus to block everything else out.

[DongWon] Well, one thing that's interesting, and I was thinking about this as we are talking about fitting the writing in the cracks, but also, your life is very demanding. Right? There's a lot of travel, there's a lot of interruptions. And so the question I had was how do you defend your time? And as you were talking about this last bit, I realized, oh, travel, because it's this liminal space...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Where you're sort of... You know how you walk into an airport and suddenly all societal rules are off?

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Like you're like, oh, I can eat lunch at 9:00 in the morning...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And you see people drinking like three martinis and you're like, what is happening right now?

[Chuckles]

[Howard] It's breakfast.

[DongWon] It's breakfast. Right? But there is this thing about, like, airports and planes and trains and subways where because it's like dead time in between other things...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] No one can actually really interrupt you in that time because you're traveling.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You're free in that space. Right? You're protected. So you're... I could see with how much you travel, like, let you have this sort of defended space. But when you're at home, do you have strategies for protecting your time? How are you keeping all the daily demands of your life a little bit at bay for, like, these 20 minutes, this 2 hours, whatever it is?

[Mary Robinette] No one can schedule a meeting with me before noon. Except in very rare occasions, where it's like a time sensitive thing, and that's... And even then, I have let my assistant do that. I don't get to make that call, because I will give my time away. And no one can make a meeting with me after 6:00 p.m.. So I have these windows in which meetings can happen. No one can make a meeting with me on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. And so those are some things that I've done to try to carve out a little bit more time. I also... This is ridiculous, but I've... But it has worked. I have trained Elsie and Guppy that when I am at my desk, and I say, Mary Robinette working now, that they will both mostly curl up and go to sleep. Because they know that they will get treats and that I will play with them when I'm done. And that has made a huge difference. Because as much as I love the fact that I have taught my cat to talk, she is a toddler and needs a lot of attention.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But those are the things that give me the ability to have space to write. The person I have to defend my writing space from the most is actually myself. So...

[Howard] Say that again for the people sitting in the back.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] The person I have to defend my writing time from the most is myself. Because I will give it away. I will think, oh, I can do it later. I will prioritize other things. So I've found that the best practice for me is that I get up in the morning, and when I've managed to do this, I have a really good day. Or I'm already in a good brain space. So I'm able to do it. Cause-correlation. Who knows? But I write down these are the things... The time-sensitive things that I have to do today. Here's the places I need to be. Here are three tasks that I'm going to try to accomplish. And if I don't write down writing as one of those three tasks, I will... I have effectively given my time away. But then I do a timeline for myself of what I'm going to be doing. So what I'm basically doing is I'm clumping my executive function at the beginning of the day when it... When I have the most of it. So that when I finish a task, I can look at my notebook, and go, oh, now I'm supposed to move to this... Move on to this... Now I'm supposed to write. And reframing it as... I just said supposed to. I've been trying to reframe it as now I get to write. Because supposed to comes with a certain amount of shame and guilt if you don't do it. So, now I get to write. And then I have a couple of things that I only get... Like, I have this candle that I love and I only get to light the candle when I am writing. I have a playlist of music that I really like, but I only turn that playlist on when I'm writing. So I have a couple of things. And then there's usually... the other thing that I've found that works very well for my brain is to have another piece of writing that is my reward for finishing this piece of writing. It's like once I finish this, then I get to do that. And once I finished that, then I get to do, like... Then I get to write the scene where they make out, and then I get to do the scene where the dragons are flying. And then I get to that... seeing the next bit of writing as the reward for this bit of writing helps me... It's like linked excitement.

[Dan] The thing that I really love about this, and I suspect that we will find it is true for all of us, is that your writing process is continually evolving.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Dan] It's not one thing that works for you. It's things that are changing. And some of that is your circumstances have changed, who you are living with, what job you have, but a lot of it is just you are learning more about yourself. You just said that you... Something you have found...

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Dan] About yourself. Giving yourself a reward. You are an incredibly accomplished and experienced writer, and you are still discovering things about yourself and your process. And that is, I hope, really beneficial for aspiring writers to hear. That on the one hand, maybe the downside, is that you never hit the point where you've perfected everything. It's never a solved problem. But the upside is that you are continually learning, you are continually growing, you're continually figuring out new things that work well for you.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, that's our hope for you, our listeners, as you are listening to us talk about our writing processes. Because all of us are going to have... All of us have different brains and all of us have different strategies and challenges and goals.

[Mary Robinette] For you, I have some homework. What helps you want to do the things that you aren't writing? The other things in your life, the other tasks, the other joys that you have. What helps you with those? Because the tools that you use for those also work with writing. So is there anything that you use, like, is it lists, is it spreadsheets, is it by doubling? What is it that helps you want to do something? And can you use those same things to guide your writing process?

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

mbarker

Writing Excuses 19.30: A Close Reading on Character: Agency vs. Choices

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-30-a-close-reading-on-character-agency-vs-choices

Key points: Agency, the ability to take action, choices, interior decisions. Many fantasy stories focus on going adventuring, but sometimes the people who stay home also live interesting lives. You don't have to be in the character's head to see them struggling with choices. Often characters will fall back into old patterns. What is this a fantasy of? DREAM: denial, resistance, exploration, acceptance, and manifestation. Look at the timing of these stages.

[Season 19, Episode 30]

[Howard] You're invited to the Writing Excuses Cruise, an annual event for writers who want dedicated time to focus on honing their craft, connecting with their peers, and getting away from the grind of daily life. Join the full cast of Writing Excuses as we sail from Los Angeles aboard the Navigator of the Seas from September 19th through 27th in 2024, with stops in Ensenada, Cabo San Lucas, and Mazatlán. The cruise offers seminars, exercises, and group sessions, an ideal blend of relaxation, learning, and writing, all while sailing the Mexican Riviera. For tickets and more information, visit writingexcuses.com/retreats.

[Season 19, Episode 30]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Close Reading on Character: Agency Versus Choices.

[Erin] 15 minutes long, 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] I'm Howard.

[Erin] You had a lot of agency to that.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] I made some choices. That was to…

[Howard] I chose to pause. Pause on purpose.

[Erin] Speaking of… What do we mean by agency and choices? Let's probably start by defining those terms a little bit.

[Mary Robinette] So, in my mind, agency is the ability to take action, and choices are more about the interior life of the character. I will admit that some of my understanding of this comes from my talking cat…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Who does not actually have an enormous amount of agency. My dog doesn't… Also doesn't have an enormous amount of agency. I decide when they're going to eat and all of that. My cat, when she goes up to her button board will press the buttons and it's like, "I'm concerned about the fate of the world." My dog goes up to the button board and is like, "Here! Here, here, here. Friend!" So my cat has this interior life. My dog really does not. My cat makes choices. My dog just kind of reacts to things. When I think about characters, I think about characters… I used to think that I needed to pick the character that had the agency, the one that could make the most change in their life. But I realized that from reading things like Matthew Satesses Craft in the Real World that that was causing me to remove characters who were incarcerated or otherwise in oppressed communities, because they didn't have a lot of agency. But the characters that are interesting are the ones that have rich interior lives. The ones who can make choices even as they are constrained by a lack of agency..

[Erin] Yeah. There's a great essay that I read about this called We Are the Mountain by Vida Cruz. It talks about how so many fantasy stories will be about somebody like leaving the small town to go, like, off in adventuring. But what about the people when their town is destroyed by a dragon, but what about the people who are still living in the town destroyed by a dragon were just having to get by, and those people are also living very interesting lives. But… It's because they have to make small choices about how they'll react, how they'll respond, how they'll think about their lives in the midst of all this Dragon destruction. I think that that relates really well to the story that we're talking about today, Your Eyes, My Beacon, which actually starts with someone on an adventure that doesn't quite go sort of the way that they planned.

[DongWon] Yeah. I love this framework because both characters in this story are deeply constrained. One is constrained both to her role as the lighthouse keeper and being the light in the lighthouse herself, and there's no one else who can take that role. She's the only person who can do this and is also trapped in a fascist state, which is explicitly hunting down and eliminating people like her. Right? She's so constrained, she's so trapped, and needs a certain medication also to survive. Right? Still, we get this rich character who's capable of making choices, who has interior wants and needs and desires. On the other side, we have this character who is this adventurer character who comes in, is wounded, is stuck here for other reasons. So, watching these two people interact and make their choices even though… Kind of going back to last week's episode, there's so many barriers in their way, there's so many different things that are preventing them from accomplishing their goals, that suddenly they're… Even what their goals are comes into question. What are they trying to accomplish becomes very fuzzy in the middle of the story in a way that I really enjoy because there's so many constraints on them that it's hard for them to figure out what it is that they want, which then leads to all the interesting choices made in the back half of the story, which are kind of heartbreaking in various ways.

[Howard] Absent any sort of support mechanism, the lighthouse keeper… Lighthouse keeper lives alone. Absent any support, the lighthouse keeper doesn't really have much of a choice as to whether or not the light stays on. They're doing everything they can, but when they reach the limits of their ability, there isn't anyone to help them. So they don't have a choice when the light goes out. That light going out removes agency from the entire crew of the ship. Suddenly, the only choices they have are figure out how to swim out of a shattered on the rocks ship, and many of them, their agency ends forever because they no longer have any choice, because dead.

[Erin] Sh… Sorry. That is sad, but also for some reason…

[Laughter]

[Howard] If you say it correctly, it's a joke.

[Erin] The way you said it tickled me. But I… What I was thinking about, also, both of what you're saying is… This story is not at all about how to stop the hunting of lighthouse keepers, about what the high court is doing, the characters don't even think about it. Like, their agency is so far removed… Sort of the way that when the light is removed, you're just trying to swim to shore. They're not trying to change the system or take down the man. They're really just trying to make connection. Like, the biggest choice is do I let another person into my flawed self or my flawed life, not do I change the way that my life is flawed. Which I think is poignant and beautiful.

[DongWon] Well, I love you bringing up the essay and going back to this idea of leaving the village versus staying in the village. Right? In a traditional epic fantasy, it falls into what I think of as a restoration fantasy, which is about fixing the world and restoring it to its prior state. Which kind of traps fantasy sometimes in a backward looking mode. So when you give characters full agency in the world, when they can change the fate of the whole world, then there's so much responsibility that goes on that character that weirdly, you remove choice from them. Because if you have infinite power, how could you not try and fix things? Right? Versus, it can sometimes be so much more interesting to put people in extreme constraints, to take away their agency, and then we get to see what does this character do in this circumstance. Right? We see that in this story where they're not trying to fix the world, they're just trying to save each other. It becomes so much more poignant and powerful. We see this across all three stories. In The Cook, no one's trying to stop this war. It's how do I survive till the next meal, how do I take care of this person who needs to be fed? In You Perfect, Broken Thing, it's how do I survive this race? No one, again, is trying to undo the systems that they're trapped in, they're trying to survive those systems. I think that's why he's made such wonderful character studies, because it's what do people do under duress, not what do people do when they have infinite power.

[Mary Robinette] One of the other things that I want to point out is that you can demonstrate these even when you're not in the character's head.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] That's also something that I love about this story. There's a moment, shortly after our protagonist wakes up, when she's asking about the light, the light went out. So we're in first person, and we're viewing the other character. You can see the choice that is made.

“No,” I say. “The light. It went out.”

The other woman looks askance at the cup in her hand.

“I…was sick. I—the flame went out.” She doesn’t look at me as she says it. Ashamed-like, and why not?

So this is a fascinating moment, because the… Our main character, our viewpoint character, misinterprets what is happening there. The character is choosing to lie about why the flame went out. Our character believes that she is looking askance, she is hesitating, she's coming up with excuses just because of shame. It's more than that. But you are able to see that because of these small choices that that character is making. Even though our character… Our POV character is misinterpreting them.

[Howard] I'd like to draw a parallel between the opening of this story and some of the spatial worldbuilding in Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire. The idea of constriction and then expansion. At the end of the first section of this story, these three lines.

I have only two coherent thoughts in the frigid darkness.

Do not get hit by the ship.

Where did the light go?

In that moment, she really only has one choice. Swim in a direction that gets me hit by the ship or swim in a direction that doesn't get me hit by the ship. Because there's no light, I don't even know which choice I'm making. It is very desperate. It is… Arguably, it is the most desperate possible narrowing of a person's choices. Because you get to make a choice, but you don't even know what it will do. When we get to the end of the story, where we are answering her questions, finally, where did the light go? She makes a choice to do something about the light, and it's a whole series of choices. There's a myriad options that she has, along this path, in answer to the question, and to help make sure that nobody else has to make the choice about swimming or not swimming out from under the ship.

[Erin] With that, we are going to make a choice to take a break, and then we will be right back.

[Mary Robinette] I have a new short story out in Uncanny Magazine. It's called Marginalia and it gets its name and setting from the doodles in medieval manuscripts. Have you seen the ones with nights fighting giant snails? So I thought, what if the reason those were in so many manuscripts was that there were actually giant snails and knights had to defend against them, and we don't know about them today because they were just hunted to extinction. I'd love it if you'd just hop over to Uncanny and read it. That's Marginalia by me, Mary Robinette Kowal.

[DongWon] Yeah. Picking up with what Howard was talking about before the break, taking this idea of compression and expansion into this story, and how it applies to agency and choice is also, I think, really fascinating, because the pivotal moment in this story is when agency is restored to our protagonist. Right? When the pirate gets to rejoin her crew and go back out into the world and live the life that she ostensibly wants. One of the heartbreaking moments is that she chooses that. She chooses to do that instead of staying with the lighthouse keeper, instead of staying with Audei. She goes out into the world and reclaims her agency, and it's a terrible choice and it doesn't work and she suffers for it, and Audei suffers for it, and then people can't pass through this area, so that their suffering for it, too. It's such an interesting moment, again, where C. L. Clark is so good at this thing where I understand… It's, oh, of course she chose that. How could I have expected her to choose differently? But it's still so disappointing and heartbreaking that she does.

[Mary Robinette] This is a thing that's really great with character stories, is that often a character will fall back into their old wants and goals, their old patterns. It's something we see with people, too. That there's a pattern that has served you that is comfortable, and if a character is stressed or pressured, they don't really examine whether or not that still going to serve them. If Sigo had paused to examine it, like, had really taken the time to say, "Wait. Is this what I still want?" Then may have made a different choice. But, confronted with, oh, this is familiar, goes with the familiar, goes with the old pattern, and leaves.

[Howard] In many story forms, we see the… What we've called… In Writing Excuses episodes, we've use the term arm bar where… A term that comes to us from hand to hand combat, you put someone in an arm bar and you are now compelling them to move in a certain direction, you're restricting their agency. We talk about arm bars as moments in the first act of a three act format, where the protagonist now has to choose to protag. The flipside of that is what we see in this story. There is no arm bar, she makes what we would argue is the wrong choice, and then looks at the consequences of that choice and examines her life, and because of the breadth of agency she still retains, is able to make the choice that answers the question about where the light went.

[DongWon] I love how resistant these are to traditional ideas of the hero's journey. Right? Resisting, refusing the call to adventure, is the right choice in all three stories. All three stories are about choosing domesticity, choosing love, choosing care over choosing heroism and violence and participating in the systems that are oppressing people. I think that's so beautiful, the way the author contrasts the agency and the choice in that way.

[Erin] Yeah. It makes me think about what is this a fantasy of? So a lot of time I think of big hero's journey as being the power fantasy, I have a fantasy to change the world. I can do that in this book. To me, this is a fantasy of vulnerability and it's a fantasy of connection. I think that in some ways, it is almost scarier, because that's the thing that we can relate to. At least, I can more in my individual life. The choice to let someone in, the choice to do the thing where you are vulnerable to another person, is more my life experience than the ability to change the entire nature of reality. I think that knowing what your story is a fantasy of and that there are many different things that it can be. It can be a story of, like, big stakes or big changes, or big stakes and small changes. But the stakes are no less large for that difference.

[DongWon] Yeah. It's so fragile. Right? Audei needs medication. There's such a strong metaphor for chronic illness. They're at threat from the state. There's all of these things where Sigo is making these choices to… That are so counter to going off on adventure and the way it's portrayed here is it so much scarier than going into the world and raiding whatever… Whatever she's doing on this ship, that Audei thinks of as being a pirate. Right?

[Mary Robinette] The other thing also with Audei and Sigo is that Audei also has a full character story.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Also is… Even though her sections are much shorter, they're in third person, she is making choices in every single one of those. So there's an acronym that I've used in previous seasons called DREAM, which is denial, resistance, exploration, acceptance, and manifestation. This happens for Audei. When we first start, in that first section, she's very much like I do this alone, and I can do this alone. She's in denial that she needs help. She's in denial that this is something that is more than one person. She had a family, she's doing alone, she's in denial. Then, when the stranger comes, when Sigo… She goes into resistance. But she still alone. She still believes that she can do the job alone, but she doesn't object to having company. So, when we are in resistance, she's not upset at the prospect of company, when the storm blows in. That's that… She's still in resistance, but she starting to let the idea of someone else exist. Then we get to exploration, where we try out the idea of what would it be like if someone else knew. That's when… That exploration is as she's letting Sigo help around the property doing the different chores. It's like, oh, this does make it easier. Then we get to acceptance.

[DongWon] There's such a moment here that I really love, and it's when Sigo stepped away to go get the medicine from town. We know that she's not going to… Or, I guess we don't know at this point she's not going to come back. But that's the next moment.

The sudden crush of loneliness is too much to bear, but there is also hope and patience. Sigo will come back soon. She will come back and Audei will ask her to stay.

That moment of her accepting, like, oh, no, I do need this person, I'm going to ask her to stay. But she hasn't done it yet. So the choice that Sigo's about to make we know is the wrong one, we know that Sigo knows it's the wrong one. But, Audei never actually asked her to stay.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. This is, I think, also one of the things that brings that idea of choice back in. Had Audei made that choice to ask, then the tragedy would not have continued to unfold. By leaving, Sigo has removed that tiny piece of agency from Audei, because now she no longer has the ability to ask. So that's part of what happens there. It's not until Sigo returns that we actually get the manifestation where we see what they do with the knowledge that they are working together. It is the last line of the story.

They are light. They are light, together, they are light.

That's the manifestation, which is so lovely that I am sitting here, as we're podcasting, trying not to actually cry…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Again, because of this story. But it's… This beautiful little arc that is all about the choices that the character is making and the times that they have agency and when agency is removed from them.

[Erin] But that makes me think that I think is fascinating is thinking about the span of time on the page between the letters of DREAM. So, here, sort of, we get the first four in, not like rapid pace, but they're coming pretty regularly. Then there's this delayed manifestation. Because that's what the story is driving towards, that's what it's about. Are they able to… They realize, I think, both of them, even in making the wrong choices, what they are to each other, what are they able to manifest, and that's the question that the story is answering.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So, thinking about a different story, like, that's telling… A different tale, might have a big gap before acceptance, or a big gap before any of the other letters in DREAM. So it just makes me think where can you put those gaps in your story and where have you put them maybe not even thinking about it, and what does that tell you about the kind of story you're trying to tell?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Each of them has a try fail cycle where the character's trying to hold onto their character, to their self-identity, and when they fail to do that, that's the catalyst that moves them to the next level. But sometimes a character will get stuck. Like, they will just be doing resistance over and over again. Those are the character stories that feel very flat. Or the ones where we jump straight from dream to manifestation, without the character demonstrating change through the choices that they're making.

[Erin] All right. With that, I'll take you to the homework. Which is to write a scene in which your character has very little agency for whatever reason, but still must make a choice. Do your best to make that choice feel exciting, feel high-stakes, feel real for the reader.

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

[Erin] Are you struggling to find time and energy for creative work or writing? Sandra Tayler has a new book that might help. Structuring Life to Support Creativity is a resource book for creative people who want to make more space in the life that they have for the creative work they want to do. This book is drawn from 30 years experience in juggling creative work along with everything else life throws at us. Inside the book, you can find such topics as managing your mental load, arranging your physical space, how to come back to your creative work after life goes sideways, the problem of motivation, and more. The whole book is written with a focus on adapting for how your brain works instead of trying to change you to fit expectations. The book is not prescriptive. Instead, it provides concepts and tools so you can find the ones that work for you. This makes the book autism, ADHD, and neurodivergent friendly. Preorder your copy today at sandratayler.com. Just make sure that Tayler has an e r in the Tayler.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 16.40: Nesting Threads in the M.I.C.E. Quotient

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/10/03/16-40-nesting-threads-in-the-m-i-c-e-quotient/

Key points: Nesting threads, or first in, last out. Symmetry! When you close a thread, there is a tension drop. You need two or more threads to give most stories an interesting dynamic. You don't have to use them all, and pay attention to how much weight you give each one. Pairing M.I.C.E. thread types can work well. Be careful about braiding too many, though.

[Season 16, Episode 40]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, talking about the M.I.C.E. Quotient, Nesting Threads.

[C.L.] 15 minutes long.

[Charlotte] Because you're in a hurry.

[Mary Robinette] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[C.L.] I'm C. L.

[Charlotte] I'm Charlotte.

[Mary Robinette] And I'm Mary Robinette, with Elsie, who is purring very loudly.

[Dan] Hello, Elsie.

[Dan] I am very excited for this episode. We have been circling the concept of nesting threads for five episodes now. Here we are in episode six. We get to dig into it in detail. So, what do we need to know that we haven't already talked about with nesting threads?

[Mary Robinette] All right. So, nesting threads is basically first in, last out. It works because of the length of time that we have to invest emotional energy into a problem. So, there's a couple of things to know about the way people are wired. I am going to say that this is specifically Western storytelling style. There's many different traditions, but the way we are trained is that when a quest… When we ask a question, we want an answer to it. Right? We also want symmetry. Humans tend… And babies tend to respond really well to symmetry. We like recognizing patterns. So it is helpful to have this kind of mirroring thing happen in your story, by having, like, if you begin milieu and then you open an inquiry, to close the inquiry and then you close the milieu. People recognize patterns. The other piece, and this is the more important piece, I think, is the amount of emotional energy that you've invested into something. So going back to my idea of elastics, the longer you stretch an elastic, the more tension it's going to be on it. So if you got something that you start to stretch on page 1 and you don't release it until page 597 if you're Brandon, then that's going to have… There's going to be a lot of tension remaining on that. Whereas if you have another thread that you start on page 100, you have 100 fewer pages to spread that over the span. So knowing that, what happens is if you release the tension on the one… That longest thread before… So, let's say my longest one is milieu, and I release that before I release the one on inquiry, what happens is that there's a tension drop. So when I get my… When I get that other answer, I haven't had as much time to invest in it. Thinking about Wizard of Oz, which you have all watched now, hopefully, when you get to the end, we close things out in sequence. That Dorothy exits Oz… She gets the answer, ruby slippers will carry you home, she exits Oz, she gets back to Kansas, everything is fine, she didn't have to live in a… Kansas farms are all yay and happy. If you remember in the witch's castle when Dorothy is looking at the hourglass, and we see Aunt Em sitting on the porch… Or looking around frantically going, "Dorothy? Dorothy?" That exists to remind you that the status quo is still disrupted. If instead in that hourglass what we see is Aunt Em sitting on the porch, everything about the farm has been restored, status quo is reestablished, that closes that event thread early. So when Dorothy gets out of Oz and goes back to Kansas, it's no big deal. You get a dramatic tension drop because the status quo… We already know that the status quo is restored. There's no… There's no doubt about that in the reader's mind. So that's why nesting threads are very… And thinking about this first in, last out concept is very useful for maintaining that tension through the story. I'm talking about the frame of the story, not the stuff that's happening in the middle.

[Dan] Yeah. Let me use another example. I'm going to talk about my book, Ghost Station, again. So it begins with this… It's about spies in Berlin in 1961. It begins with the message that comes in from a double agent that is gibberish nonsense. So the main thrust of the novel is figuring out what is actually going on. Why was this message weird? What does that mean? Etc. Then it hits a point where the main character and another one he's working with cross over the wall into East Berlin. Then it becomes a milieu section, inside of the larger inquiry section. They are trying to survive in East Berlin and then escape back out again. While inside… Big spoilers for this book… The person that he is working with attacks him. It has this event of, "Oh, no. The person I thought I could trust, I no longer can trust." There's this event that takes place inside of there. Then we tie them off in reverse order. He learns that, "Oh, yes, that person actually I can trust. There were very good reasons for that attack." Then he escapes out of East Berlin. Then he solves the overall problem of what's going on and what this message means. Using what you were just saying, Mary Robinette, if we had resolved those in reverse order. If he had, for example, solved the entire problem of the message and gotten that taken care of while he was still in East Berlin, then it would feel very unsatisfying. Like, well, yes, you've solved this problem, you dope, but now you're stuck on the wrong side. It would be this kind of dragged out ending of, well, the real story is over but he's still in a pickle and he's gotta get himself home and we have a few more obnoxious chapters of that. I had not thought of it in those terms, until you described it that way. But that makes perfect sense as to why you need to close the brackets in the same order you opened them.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. We've… You've all seen films or things where you're like, "Ah, it's over. No, no, still going." Usually that's because they're closing things out in the wrong order.

[Dan] Yeah. That is really interesting.

[C.L.] I was just going to say that there is something that I have been trying very hard to hold back while you've been going through the previous episodes. It's this. I'm thinking maybe that calling a particular story simply a milieu story or an inquiry story, etc., can't really accurately describe a story because you do need a second ingredient to give the story kind of like… An interesting dynamic?

[Mary Robinette] So, yes, C. It is exactly that. That you have all of these things going on all the time. With like my book, Ghost Talkers, which is coincidentally our book of the week, that has multiple things going on in it. It is an inquiry story. It's a murder mystery, whodunit. But it's also an event story. Because it's a wartime novel. There's constant status quo disruptions. And it is a character story, because the character is learning to… Learning things about themselves and how they move through the world. But it's primarily event inquiry. Those are the major drivers. This helps me… The M.I.C.E. Quotient helps me understand what things, what elements to bring into that story and which ones to focus on. It helps me understand how to end it in a way that was going to be satisfying. While, at the same time, trying to do things that were fulfilling these promises, but hopefully in unexpected ways.

[Mary Robinette] But, Ghost Talkers, for people… Since it is book of the week. It is probably actually my favorite of my novels, and it is the one that the fewest people have read.

[Dan] It is actually my favorite of your novels.

[Mary Robinette] Thank you. It…

[C.L.] I love Ghost Talkers.

[Mary Robinette] I went on book tour… My book tour started on election day in 2016, and weirdly… Weirdly!

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] There was just not a lot of interest in books at that point. I don't know what was going on them. But it is a World War I spy novel in which mediums work as advertised. The soldiers are trained, conditioned, that when they die, they have to report in as ghosts. So you have the Spirit Corp. Then things go wrong. Someone gets killed, and they aren't supposed to. Not that anyone is necessarily supposed to get killed, but… You know what I mean. But it kicks off this murder mystery. Then it's a look for who the betrayal… The person who… That's the spy and the saboteur is. So World War I spy novel with ghosts is basically it. Ghost Talkers.

[Mary Robinette] But when you listen to it or read it, one of the things that I think you'll notice is that I could have weighted it differently. Because all of those elements are there, and I could have made different choices about where I was putting the emphasis in the story. That would have shifted dramatically the direction of the story and the way the ending plays out.

[Charlotte] That's great. I mean, what I'm hearing is that you can have as many M.I.C.E. threads as you want, and actually maybe it's a good idea to have more than one for a little bit of spice, a little bit of texture as C was talking about. I remember, when I was plotting my novel, I was like I'm going to… It starts with character, then it leads into event, and then it goes into milieu, and then it goes into inquiry. I remember talking it through with you, Mary Robinette, and you were like, "You don't have to have them all." I was like, "Oh. I don't?" So maybe it's a question of how many and also what weight you put on each quotient?

[Mary Robinette] Right. Yes, exactly. It's… It is how heavily you weight them. Because you can… Like, all of these things will exist in the story. It's just how much of them are you letting drive? That's… That is the thing that is tricky to figure out. So what I have found when you're doing this is that one of the things that works well is to pair disparate M.I.C.E. thread types. So one of the things that will happen, particularly in multiple POV books, you've got one major plot and then the other one feels extraneous. You're annoyed every time you have to switch over to the B plot. What I find is that frequently when that is happening, it is because they are the same M.I.C.E. thread. So that they are… Or the same M.I.C.E. type. That they are, say, both events. But one of the events is lower stakes than the other. So it is difficult to care as much. So it always feels like a tension drop. Whereas, if you have one event and one character one, they can intersect each other in different ways. But the other thing that they can do is that they can have comparable stake levels. So that when you move from one to the other, you don't have that same tension drop.

[Dan] Would you also suggest or recommend that when you are nesting them, not so much multiple POV's, but nested inside of each other, that they be different types of elements as well? If you've got a milieu inside of a different milieu, it can start to feel repetitive. We have to escape from this place, and now we have to escape from this other place, with no variation in tone.

[Mary Robinette] So, the… Yes and no. Mostly what happens when you do that is that it just reads as an extension of the original problem. So in Star Wars, the rescuing the princess, they have to get in, they have to get the princess, they have to get back out. While they're in there, Storm Troopers… Surprise! So they have to escape by jumping into a garbage… A chute. Does that work? Yes, it does. But it is a garbage chute. So now they have another milieu within the larger milieu that they have to escape. So that… That's just a long series of obstacles… Consequences, obstacles, that's just an extension of that original one.

[Dan] Okay.

[Mary Robinette] So that's… Actually, blowing up the Death Star itself is, we have to get in, drop this package off… Which is this bomb, and then get back out without being killed. I mean, it's still, that's… It's… There's just a lot of milieu driving that. But that is not, I would say, the major driver. What are you thinking, C?

[C.L.] I was just thinking about like the idea of having like the two milieu stories in one. Because I was thinking about like the Lord of the Rings where it's like basically they're going on a journey to reverse heist a ring into a volcano. But, like, the first part of the story is about them leaving Hobbiton. It's just like the segments of, like, we're in a place, we're going to leave a place. We're traveling across a place in order to get to a place. I think it works. Generally. What I was thinking about was you want the variety of story type things going on in order to have some variety, but at the same time, I always try to think of my different plot threads as they have to be braidable. Like, they have to… Like, if I have an inquiry thread and I have a character thread, then each one has to affect the other one.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[C.L.] So it's just like two strands twisted together, like a rope. But if I add a third one, then it has to… Then things get a little bit more complicated, because each one has to affect the other two. Then, if you add a fourth one…

[Chuckles]

[C.L.] Like, lots of people know how to do three strand braids, but not a lot of people know how to do four strand braids.

[Mary Robinette] Yup. Exactly. That's a great analogy. We're going to be talking about that when we get to the next one, which is the middles and conflicts. We're going to be talking about how to braid the stuff in the middle. The nesting stuff is mostly like where do you start the thing and where do you end it. But, yeah, you're exactly right, the more you layer in there, the harder it is to juggle all of those things.

[Mary Robinette] So. This brings us to our homework. Take your fairytale. What I want you to do is I want you to look at two M.I.C.E. threads. You're going to… Now you get to do it with two of them. Okay? So maybe you decide that you're going to do character and event, or you might decide that you're going to do milieu and inquiry, or milieu and character. Whatever. So I want you to figure that out and nest it neatly, so that you begin with character, then… So, Goldilocks is tired of being treated like a child, then she enters the Bears' house, does some investigating, and decides that actually maybe she should go home, so she goes home and then she's like, "I am actually happy being a child and my home is much nicer than the place I explored." So we have this very nice little nested thing. So you're going to do a two strand thing like that. Then the thing that I want you to do is I want you to take those tags and I want you to invert them. So, in mine, Goldilocks would enter the Bears' house, and while she's in the Bears' house, she would make a discovery about herself because of her exploration that would then cause her to go home. As opposed to the other way around. So, your job is to do a two strand version of whatever your fairytale is. Then, after you've written that out… You don't have to write the entire story, you can just bullet point it. Flip that, flip the tags, and do it the other way. See what that does to where the conflicts land and how the beginning and end feel.

[Dan] And you are out of excuses. Now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 16.27: Nobody Wants to Read a Book

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/07/04/16-27-nobody-wants-to-read-a-book/

Key points: How do you start a novel? What kind of first page do you need? How do you keep them from throwing the book away? Three sales tools, the cover, the jacket copy, and the first page or first paragraph. That first experience is what closes the deal. Make sure you don't bury the good stuff 30 pages in. Procedurally, give yourself the freedom to write the bits you think you will love, and what leads into that. Then, later, see if you have a hook, and go back and write that. The opening needs to communicate to the reader what kind of rollercoaster they are getting on. Set the hook and pull people into your story. Don't start at the beginning! That's often boring. Start with the interesting part. Don't jump too fast to the big action, though. You may want to use an ice monster prologue, or cold open. Think musical theater overtures!

[Season 16, Episode 27]

[Dongwon] This is Writing Excuses, Nobody Wants to Read a Book.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And I don't want to read your book.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And you can't make me.

[Mary Robinette] That's Howard.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] So this is the start of our new intensive course, brand-new subject with a brand-new teacher. Dongwon, tell us very briefly a little bit about yourself and about what we're going to learn about for the next two months.

[Dongwon] Yeah. So, I'm Dongwon Song. I'm a literary agent with the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. I do mostly science fiction and fantasy for adults, YA, middle grade. Some graphic novels [garbled] as well. So, we're going to be talking about here how to start a novel. The importance of first pages, some of the techniques that really work, and we're going to sort of break down different aspects and then get into some examples over the course of the next few episodes.

[Dan] Awesome. We're excited. Dongwon's also kind of the fifth Beatle, so to speak. I think…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] You've been in more Writing Excuses episodes than anyone except the four core hosts. So, we're always happy to have you.

[Dongwon] I've done a couple of them. It's always a delight to be here, so thank you.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. As you were asking him to introduce himself, I'm like, "I'm pretty sure these folks know him by now."

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Well, take it away.

[Dongwon] I get a lot of emails that say I know you from Writing Excuses. So it's quite lovely. But…

[Mary Robinette] Tell us about first pages, because we've got novels to write and we have to convince Howard to read them.

[Howard] Good luck with that.

[Dongwon] Well, so I picked a slightly controversial title for the start of this one, which is Nobody Wants to Read a Book. I pulled that from a quote that crossed my feet recently. There was an interview with this legendary comics writer, John Schwartzwelder, who's mostly known for his work on The Simpsons. I'm going to read you the quote that was in this interview that was in the New Yorker. It's "Nobody wants to read a book. You've got to catch their eye with something exciting in the first paragraph, while they're in the process of throwing the book away. If it's exciting enough, they'll stop and read it." This just like perfectly encapsulated how I think about the way you need to start a book. You sort of have to assume that the person who's picked it up is not interested in what you have. Because in that moment, but they're really doing is trying to make a decision about am I going to invest in this book. I think we think about that in the bookstore in terms of like I'm going to pay $20, $10, five dollars, whatever it is. But really, the thing you're asking them to do is to give up hours of their life to spend with your words and your story. There's a lot of things people can be doing with their time. They could be playing video games, they could be hanging out with their family, playing with their kids. So to get them to do that is a really big task.

[Mary Robinette] True story. Andy Weir gets a ton of ARCs. He got mine and was literally in the process of throwing it away. Like, it was in his hand on the way to the trashcan. Like, the trashcan was below it. He read the back cover copy and he's like, "Hang on a minute. Apollo era science fiction? That sounds like my jam."

[Dongwon] Because, I think… That's a great example, because you really have three major sales tools to convince a reader. One is the cover of your book, right? Whatever shiny image is on there tells them this is the genre, this is the category, this looks cool to me. I like this painted Dragon, right? You have your jacket copy, which, as Mary Robinette was just talking about, is like that opportunity to be like this is what the book's about in a really concrete way. But, I think the thing that really clinches it, the thing that closes the deal is they open it and they read that first page and say, "Yes, this is for me. This is exciting. I like this voice, I like these words." So, really, if you think about it… I never encourage you to think about your audience as like a hostile engagement, but in this one case, if you think thinking about it on the way to the trashcan like flying out of their hands, how are you going to grab them in that moment, is such a useful way to approach it. So, I think, when you're thinking about that, as you're going into the publishing process, it's not just readers in the bookstore, right? It's agents, it's editors, it's really everyone in the process. When I'm looking at queries, I look at your pitch, and that is the first thing. But the thing I almost always do, even if I don't like the pitch, 90% of the time, unless it's like something truly terrible, I will scroll down and just read the first few sentences. Just to check, just to see, do you have the thing or not. Right? So, often times, even if I don't like the pitch, if I like those first lines, I'm going to dig in more, I'm going to read that whole sample. I'm [inaudible] right? That is really the opportunity for me and so many people like me to make your case as clearly as possible of why you should be… Why I should be spending this time with you. Why I should be investing all this time and energy into reading your project, in your book, and probably going forward.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. One of the things, when I was… That was super instructive when I was… Before I had started selling novels was I had this children's book, and I let a friend of mine… A friend of mine's wife was an editor at a major house. She's like, "Well, let me take a look at it." Because I was sitting in… We were in a green room situation, and she's like, "Well, hand me the manuscript. Let me take a look at it, and I'll show you how I read things." She's like, "I want to make it clear, this is not me reading your manuscript. This is me demonstrating how I do it." She started reading it. She read about the first page. Then she scrolled ahead real fast and she said, "Yeah. So, I always jump ahead 30 pages because what I find is that most debut authors bury the good stuff 30 pages in."

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] "Because the first part of the book is actually them writing their way into figuring out what the book is. Then they don't cut it later."

[Dongwon] Absolutely.

[Howard] Procedurally, the thing that I was going to offer, the tool that I use… I have a reason that I want to write a book. I have a reason I want to tell a story. There's something about it that has hooked me. Often, my first sessions of writing are an effort to articulate that so that I remain hooked. Those are rarely really good first pages. They're usually a voice, a couple of chapters in or something. So I allow myself the luxury of writing some of the bits that I think I will love. Then, writing the beginning material that leads into that. Then, at some point, I have chapters, I have scenes, I have material, I have whatever. Much of which deserves to be cut, because it's a draft. But this discussion of what are the words that I want to put on the page that will prevent Andy Weir from dropping the book actually into the garbage… What are the things that will hook a reader? I don't lead with that. Because coming up with that bit first is really difficult. But, once I have voice and worldbuilding and character and whatever else, the hook, whatever that hook is going to be, has often revealed itself and it's not what I would have thought of at first blush.

[Mary Robinette] Which I think is a great segue for us to talking about our book of the week. Which is, The Last Watch by J. S. Dewes. I'm going to just… I'm going to give you a word picture of the cover. The cover is a deep black infinite space with words, The Last Watch, Advanced Reader Copy. But there's a spaceship that is in the process of exploding. There's a diagonal stripe of brilliant blue white light. On one half, the ship is exploding, and on the other half, it's perfectly sound. Then, the blurb is, or the tagline is They're Humanity's Last Chance. So, this is the first line of the book, and this is part of… Or the first paragraph of the book. You'll be getting a lot of these this episode, but this is part of why I was like, "Well, I'm going to keep reading this."

“Spread your legs and bend over.”

Cavalon’s face flushed. Actually flushed. Embarrassing Cavalon Mercer was a feat few could boast. He was a little impressed.

He looked over his shoulder to grin at the guard, but the sour-faced man narrowed his eyes and jabbed Cavalon’s hip with his shock baton. A jolt of electricity shot along the nerves of his leg.

“Spread ‘em, soldier.”

[Mary Robinette] So what's fun about this, and part of the reason I was like, "Oh, I'm in," is because of… She's just great with the voice of the character. He's snarky all the way through. She's also good at unexpected turns. Like, that paragraph goes… That opening goes several different places that you aren't expecting it. The entire book is very much like that. It is not a predictable read. I just… It's space opera, it's great fun. It's also heartbreaking and super fast-paced. Like these poor people, I think… Anyone who lives to the end of this and… There's… Spoilers. People die in this book.

[What!]

[Mary Robinette] Anyone who lives to the end of this book has got to be just packed with PTSD. But… They have snarky breaks. I'm getting there.

[Dongwon] I mean, I think that's a great example, because so much of what you want to do in the opening of a book is to really communicate to the reader what kind of roller coaster ride they're getting on. Right? You want to tell them up front this is the kind of book you're going to be reading. So communicating that it's snarky, there's going to be twists, there is a sense of fun, but also there's a real sense of menace and violence, right? That paragraph gets all of those elements across in very little space which is exactly what you need to be doing. We're going to talk about this more in detail later, but, like that first paragraph, that first page needs to be doing so much work. It's going to sound really intimidating as we talk about it, like, "Wait, how do we get all of those things in there," but there are techniques to do this and there are ways to do this. I think the more you think about how do I put more into this opening page without overwhelming the reader, the more successful you're going to be at like setting that hook and pulling people into your story.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It's so tempting to get right into that, right away, but I know that we're going to be talking about these tools as we get deeper in.

[Dongwon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, let's, I think, continue to focus on it from a reader experience. Which is, as you're saying, the things that cause people to toss a novel away.

[Dongwon] Well, one thing I wanted to hit on, and, Mary Robinette, you and Howard are both touching on this, is a thing that I say a lot is, that the beginning is a terrible place to start. Right? Where the story begins for the characters is often incredibly boring for us as readers. Because nothing's happening yet. Right? Where the characters are starting their story, they're entering into the situation, so they're not in a place that's intrinsically interesting. There aren't any stakes for them yet. There's no tension for them there yet. So one thing I like to think about is how do you skip that proverbial 30 pages ahead, how do you skip to the part where the book is really happening now, and then backfill the information that you need that got the characters to that point? Which is, start at the interesting part. Start with the interesting, don't start with the beginning.

[Mary Robinette] By the same token, you can start too quickly. One of the pieces of advice that I got specifically for murder mysteries from Hallie Ephron was that mostly the most common thing that she sees is that people start with the body drop, and that you actually have to take a little bit of time to let people see what normal is like before everything starts going completely sideways. So it is this fine line where it's so tempting to start mise en place, which is… Or mise en scene, which is what this book does, where we are right in the middle of action. But this action that he's right in the middle of sets promises, but it's not the big action that is driving the book itself. It's these breadcrumbs that you want to lay.

[Dongwon] Yeah, the tension in that scene feels like it's a microcosm of what's going to be happening, right? There are stakes in that scene of he's under threat, he's being shocked by the baton, he's under some kind of investigation. But we as readers already feel that this is going to be a small thing inside of the greater space of the story. I think being able to communicate that is one of the ways to be really effective.

[Dan] There's a principle that I talk about a lot, that I refer to as the ice monster prologue, which I stole from the first Game of Thrones book. Not that he calls it that, but that's where I came up with this. Because sometimes I think you're right and I would say most of the time, you need to jump ahead, skip those 30 pages and get to where the story gets good. But a lot of the time, especially if what you're telling is an epic, you want to take a lot of time to establish the character and establish their life and let it breathe before things really get big. So, think about, for example, the opening of Star Wars: A New Hope. Like, if we started with Luke, we would be on a farm in a desert and there would be a good half hour before anything really interesting happened. So instead, they start a little bit before that, and we get a big space battle in the star destroyer and people shooting and droids escaping. It's only about 10 minutes, but it helps us… It establishes that promise early on, like, stick with me. Were about to go to the boring farm stuff, and it's obviously… It's not boring. But just don't worry. This is the kind of story that has space battles in robots and lasers in it. You just have to trust me while we get through this early farmboy sequence.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. James Bond actually does the same thing with the… It's called a cold open.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Where he is wrapping up another mission. Because if you actually start at the beginning of this mission, it's a lot of office building.

[uh-hum. yup.]

[Dongwon] Law & Order is the other great example of you always start with that cold open of… You do have the body drop, but then you can wind back to the detective getting coffee or starting their whatever it is. Prologues are their own huge topic, but I think these are great examples of ways to quickly establish stakes and tone before you get into the characters going about their lives in a very… More gradually warming up to them and warming up to the world.

[Howard] In a… Procedurally, for the writer, I think it's useful to look at musical theater overtures. If you've ever listened to one of those, those overtures will always have elements of some of your favorite pieces in the whole musical, strung together in this sort of medley that then leads into our first scene. That can't be written, that can't be composed until the rest of the musical has been written. That's how hard these first pages may be for you to write.

[Mary Robinette] Metaphorically speaking, the other reason that that's a good example is that the overtures were originally composed literally to get the audience into their seats. They were there to play while the audience was sitting down. So…

[Howard] Oh, wait. Early Apollo era trombone?

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So I think that that brings us to the end of the episode. Which means that we should give you some homework to prepare for next week. Dongwon, you have that for us, don't you?

[Dongwon] Yeah. So, what I want all of you to do is to go back to the last three books that you read. Sit down and read that first page. Read the first paragraph. Read that first line. Then sit down with a notepad and take notes in a very literal way about what did you find exciting about them. What works for you and what didn't work for you? What works about a first page is very subjective. So I want you to think about why did I decide to keep reading this or what almost made me throw this book in the trash. Right? What almost kicked you out of the experience in that way? I think as you start to be really analytical about that, you'll be able to take some lessons and apply that to your own work.

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

mbarker

Writing Excuses 15.30: Write What You Want to Know, with Laurell K. Hamilton

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/07/26/15-30-write-what-you-want-to-know-with-laurell-k-hamilton/

Key Points: Write what you want to know! Dragons, fantastic things! What interests you, what moves you emotionally? Write about that. When you want to know about it, you are passionate about it. Do the research, so you know what's real, but you can also use the cool. Have fun! Find out what you love and write about that. Do your research, with books, multiple sources, and then experts. Pay attention to the Dunning-Kruger effect - are you too dumb to know how dumb you are? Look for encyclopedias, dictionaries, and bibliographies.

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 30.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Write What You Want to Know, with Laurell K. Hamilton.

[Howard] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Brandon] And we're not that smart.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Brandon] And we have special guest star, Laurell K. Hamilton.

[Woo hoo]

[Laurell] Hi, everybody. Glad to be here today.

[Brandon] We are recording live at SpikeCon.

[Whoo! Applause.]

[Howard] SpikeCon, which, this year, 2019, is also the host of the North American Science Fiction Convention, NASFIC.

[Brandon] We are very happy to be here. So. Write what you want to know. Laurell, you're the one who pitched this idea to us. It was really pithy and we loved it.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] Where did you come up with this phrase and what does it mean?

[Laurell] One of the things that I have always had a bugaboo about, since college, is one of the things they tell you in the writing courses is write what you know. They say, "Write what you know." Well, I was a Midwestern girl, raised in farm country, raised below the poverty level. I didn't want to write what I knew. I wanted to write about fantasy things. I wanted to write about dragons, like Anne McCaffrey. Dragons of Pern. I wanted to write about the fantastic. Well, there was a lot of fantastic in my life. So I get to college and they tell you write what you know. The teachers get mad at you that you wanted to write something that didn't exist. So, I thought, no. I want to know about X, or Y. I want to know about… Like, for… When I sat down to write the Anita Blake series, I didn't know anything about guns. I'd shot one gun in my entire life. I had a series where she carries a gun to work with the police. I had to go out and find out about guns and do research. I found out about what I wanted to know. So, pick something you want to know. What you're interested in as a writer. If you're… Most of us who write fantasy and science fiction, we want to write about something that makes us happy or that we're fascinated by or that horrifies us. Something that moves us emotionally. For those of us who write in the genre, that is going to be something that we're not going to be able to do in our real life, so we have to write about what we want to know.

[Howard] One of the things that I love about this concept is that… I mean, when I've heard it spun before, it's been, oh, don't bother with write what you know, you can go research and figure out the stuff that you don't know. The difference here is the passion that's going to go into what you want to know. Yeah, you want to write about dragons, you want to write a hard fantasy novel that has something to do with the way in which dragons fly? If that's what you're passionate about, you're going to study bird wings and bat wings and some aerodynamics and pieces of your story… Because that's what you're excited about. Pieces of your story are going to grow out of that research in ways that will grab readers because it grabbed you. You were passionate about it. It's what you wanted to know.

[Laurell] One of the things I found is as you research ru... Like, I wanted to put zombies. My main character raises zombies. So I actually researched voodoo. There are no such things as shambling dead in real voodoo. I'm just going to say that upfront. It doesn't exist. I'm sorry. But no matter what the movies say, it doesn't exist. But I did my research in real voodoo. It came up with other ideas. I finally… Somebody was in an audience and had… It was a part… Or this was their religion. I was waiting for them to lambaste me, and he came up, he says, "Thank you for doing the research in my faith." He says, "Most people ignore it and treat it like it doesn't exist and they don't do real research." I said, "Yes. But the shambling movie zombies, I still use them." He says, "Yeah, but they're so cool."

[Laughter]

[Laurell] So, if you do your research, you find out other ideas and things. Also, people will forgive you going that one step further. I wanted to write about the monsters in the real world as everybody knowing them. I am still having a great time. Give yourself enough toys when you're writing. Don't… You want to be having fun. Think of yourself at seven and you want all your toys. Well, if I wrote a straight mystery series, I don't think I'd be in the 20 plus book of the series. Because I wouldn't be having fun. I have a great time, every time I sit down to write, because I gave myself enough toys that interest me. Be passionate about your writing. You have to be interested.

[Dan] I like to think that research has kind of two main benefits. That story you told shows both of them. Number one, you're getting the right stuff right. People who know what they're talking about are not going to throw the book across the room because you wrote guns or horses or whatever it is wrong. The other thing is, you are buying goodwill with that research. So that then you can get other stuff wrong and people will go along with it, because it's cool.

[Laurell] Yes. Very, very much so. But think about… Make a list of the things. As a beginning writer, make a list of the things that interest you. Look at what you love. Look at what you've loved since you were small. Make a list of that. Because, think about it. Not only can you be a writer, but you can write about the things that… At five, I would beg to stay up and watch Boris Karloff in the original Frankenstein. By myself, because nobody would watch it with me.

[Chuckles]

[Laurell] I was begging at five to watch a monster movie. Now, here I am, all these years later, and that's what I write. Find out what you love and do that.

[Brandon] Dan taught me this lesson. Actually, because it goes back to the origin of I Am Not a Serial Killer, his first novel that was published. If we can kind of look at our careers, when we were young, in this way, like, we thought that we just needed to write what was being published. Right? The things that we read a lot, we were trying to mimic those. Which is how a lot of writers begin. You read a lot, you mimic what's being published. But we hadn't kind of hit upon yet was what are we going to add to this? What little aspect of the genre is really fascinating to us, that we can balloon into being our thing. For me, it was the magic systems. For Dan, it was a conversation on the way home from writing group, where we were talking about his fascination with serial killers. Dan, you'd always been writing epic fantasy.

[Dan] A very healthy thing.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Yeah. I grew up reading fantasy and assumed that I would be a fantasy author. Wrote five really terrible fantasy novels.

[Brandon] They were not really terrible.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] They were just moderately terrible, like all of ours were at that time.

[Dan] But it wasn't until I learned this lesson that Laurell's talking about, of what are you passionate about. Well. Serial killers. I'm not ashamed of that. Sitting down saying… I think what Brandon said was, "You always talk about this stuff, why don't you just stop flirting with it and write about it?" I don't know if those are the words he used, but that's the message. I did. Some of that, I didn't have to do a lot of research on, because I'd kind of spent my whole life learning everything I could about abnormal psychology and serial killer behavior. Other parts, I had to do copious amounts of research, so that a mortician would not, again, throw the book across the room when I talk about an embalming or something like that to make sure I got it right.

[Howard] The homeless population in our town dropped by like 80%.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Lots of hands-on research.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Okay. On that, let's stop for our book of the week.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Laurell, you're going to tell us about Noir Fatale.

[Laurell] Sorry, you just distracted me. I'm going, "Wait…"

[Chuckles]

[Laurell] I am in a short story anthology called Noir Fatale. It just came out about a month ago, I think. It has, for me, an original Anita Blake short story called Sweet Seduction. Larry Correia is in it, David Weber is in it… I am blanking. I'm going… I'm terrible with names. I can see everybody's face. Nope.

[Brandon] Lots of really great writers.

[Laurell] It is lots of really great writers. It's based on the idea of the femme fatale from the old movies. Old noir movies. The femme fatale, in any way you wanted to do it. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror. So we're taking the genre of the detective, part detective, Sam Spade and everything, and mixing it with our genre and what we love most. So, it was a lot of fun to sit down and try to do something short where I usually get to write so long. I love short stories. One of the things… A short story anthology is like one of those compilations that they used to do before you could download every song. You would find musicians you had not heard before, and sometimes things you really love. Anthologies are like that. It's like a preview. You buy it for one person, and then you find somebody else that you love. Then you have a new author to follow.

[Brandon] Awesome. So, Noir Fatale.

[Dan] Noir Fatale…

[Brandon] Baen Books put that out.

[Dan] So if you are here at the con, there's a whole page ad for that book in the program book. So look that up. If you're listening to this online, you can find it everywhere, I assume.

[Brandon] So, Laurell, we'll… For my next… Kind of, the next part of the podcast, let's talk about your process of doing research. Let's say you've come up with something you want to know. It's a… There's a bit of it that you're really fascinated by. You've always wanted to learn more about it. What is your first step, where do you go?

[Laurell] First step is books and reading about it. For the Merry Gentry series, I researched anthropology. Okay. First of all, I grew up with a… My grandmother… We were Scotch Irish, so she would tell me the bogeyman… If I wasn't good, that Bloody Bones would get me. Raw Head Bloody Bones would get me. Which is a Scottish nursery boggle from the border countries of Scotland. Of all the things for my family to keep, that one bit of folklore actually narrows the geographic area where my family comes from for generations. I thought, growing up like that, I thought I knew something about the Fae in Scotland and Ireland and England. No, not really. I thought I did. So, I started with what I thought I knew and then go to books. One of the things I do is I make sure that I… Books, not. The. Internet.

[Chuckles]

[Laurell] I'm sorry, you can start with the Internet, it's a stepping off point, but you also have to make sure it is a book and not someone's opinion on the Internet. Because contrary to popular opinion, just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it real. So, don't just take one source either. Take multiple sources. So, start off with books. Then, if you need an expert… I would have talked to an anthropologist or a psychologist about the belief in fairies and how that had affected people and is it… How is it treated? Is it still thought of as a delusion? Or do people still believe? Like, I went back to the 1700s, to a folklorist who went out and interviewed people who had actually seen the high court of the Fae. Not as a delusion, but actually said, "No, they came to my farm. They rode by." So, first, do your book research before you talk to a person that you're taking their time up for. I really sincerely believe… So you have better questions. Don't just go to somebody and say, "Tell me everything you know about X or Y." You need good questions, because you don't want to waste their time. Their time is valuable. So start with books. I now have two shelves of books on the fairies, on Fae, and anthropology and archaeology and anything in that area. It is… It's taught me things about my own folklore that I grew up with, with my grandmother, that I realize now that some of it, she made up.

[Chuckles]

[Laurell] She started with a little kernel of truth, and then she kind of built on it, or my grandfather, great-grandfather did. Because she believed everything my great-grandfather said was gospel. So somebody in my family told a few big windy's…

[Chuckles]

[Laurell] As they used to say. I guess it runs in the family.

[Howard] When I'm starting research on anything, I try to remember the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is when you don't know enough to know just how little you know. You're too dumb to know how dumb you are. Imagine, for a moment, that you are sitting in a car and there's a place you want to be and there's a person standing next to the car, and you ask them for directions. They give you directions. You don't know how to drive the car.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Okay. That's Dunning-Kruger. The directions you just got will not get you there, because you don't even know where to start. One of the things that I've learned, a skill that I have developed, when I search for things on the Internet, and I search for a lot of things on the Internet. Sorry, Laurell. When I search for things on the Internet, one of the first things that comes up is going to be the Wikipedia page. I've gotten really good at skimming it and looking for keywords that I don't recognize that are linked. I will click them to pop open new tabs. All I'm doing now is learning about steering wheels and driveshafts and stick shifts and… Oh, wait, automatic transmission, that's going to make it easier… And filling my head with that. Then I jump down into the bibliography and start finding books. But I'm not actually looking for the books, because I'm way too lazy to go get a book. What I'm looking for is the names of the people who wrote the books. Because often what I can find is that person's blog in which they will say something about this topic. After… Okay, this is time consuming. I'm four hours in at this point, depending on the topic. But at this point, I know enough of the keywords that when I start reading those blog pages, the knowledge is dropping and I have hooks to hang it on. Now, if I go talk to somebody, I'm going to be able to get directions to ShopCo and make the car go there.

[Laurell] One of the things is for… You can use Internet as a jumping off point, you just can't stop there. The other thing you cannot do is use other people's fiction as your only research.

[Dan] Yeah, yeah.

[Laurell] You'd be amazed at how many people try to do that. But I also start with, like, a book that has in its title Encyclopedia or Dictionary of… The Dictionary of Fairies and… There's a long title that goes with it. Catherine Briggs. That was one of the jumping off points for the Merry books. Encyclopedia or dictionary, you have, usually, a lot of information, small bits, and they have a great bibliography. If it doesn't have a great bibliography, don't use it for your research, because you don't know if they did their research or not. I could never do it the way you do it, Howard, my dyslexia would slaughter me.

[Chuckles]

[Laurell] I can't do keywords, I can't skim that fast.

[Howard] I… About… Oh, gosh, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, I recognized that I had an I/O problem. I didn't type fast enough and I didn't read fast enough. So I learned to touch type the Dvorak and learned to speed read and it's saved us some time.

[Laurell] I can… I touch type just fine, but I have trouble skimming.

[Howard] Yeah.

[Laurell] Because of dyslexia. So, yes. I am dyslexic. Lucky for me, it's the middle of the word that moves, the ends of the words stay still for me. That means I can kind of figure it out, what it says and what it reads. For those who have dyslexia where the whole word moves, that's much harder.

[Brandon] We are actually out of time. This has been a great topic, and a great audience. Thank you, audience from SpikeCon.

[Applause]

[Brandon] Laurell, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Do you have, by chance, a writing prompt you can give our audience?

[Laurell] Do I have a writing prompt? I was walking home from work one day. Start with anything. Start with anything, any sentence. Start with anything. Write from there. Because what I've found that stops a lot of beginning writers is they don't have… They stop themselves before they start. Sometimes, they have the fish head, and the fish head is what you chop off so you have a fish you can cook. Until you sit there and write, you don't know how… You don't know if you are writing fish head or story. But to get your whole fish to fry up for your story, you have to write the stuff at the beginning. Just get started. Take that first step.

[Howard] So our fish head prompt is, "I was walking home from work one day."

[Brandon] And go.

[Laurell] Yup.

[Dan] Awesome.

[Brandon] Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

[Dan] Thank you very much.

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

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.47: Q&A on Fixing Characters

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/11/25/13-47-qa-on-fixing-characters/

Q&A Summary:

Q: How do you approach changing/refining character voices when you realize that two are too similar?

A: Redefine in your head who they are. Give them a different background and personality. Do you need the extra character? If not, combine them. Try a vocabulary fix.

Q: How can you tell if a character is the problem? How do you go about defining this?

A: Watch for the reactions in writing group. Is writing them keeping you engaged, or are they boring? Try looking at them from somebody else's viewpoint. An honest critique partner.

Q: How do you maintain interest in a character who is largely inactive?

A: A reluctant hero, or a protagonist who has not yet protagged, may mean it's time to focus on somebody else, or that the story hasn't started yet. What is the character excited or interested in? Protagging is good, but fascinations can also work.

Q: How do you write interesting bad guys when your POV characters are just the good guys?

A: Why are the people around you interesting? Use second-hand sources, clues, and the POV characters thinking or talking about it.

Q: How do you give a powerful character meaningful challenges and relatability?

A: Identify things they are not good at, and put the challenges there. A really big bad guy. Delve into their emotional side, what they care about.

Q: How can I make alien characters charming and mysterious?

A: Listen to the podcast on writing alien characters. [Season 13, Episode 44]

Q: How can I make a normal everyday person an interesting character without giving them some sort of Mary Sue trait? I.e., child of prophecy or magically superior?

A: Consider what you find interesting in the normal people around you. Listen to people -- the knowledge, background, even the way they talk. Passions and interests are strengths.

Q: How do I give my characters interests that mesh with the plot after writing half a draft and realizing they have no interests?

A: Use a spreadsheet. What are the plot points, and the interests or abilities that you need? Now add the characters, and see who needs what.

Q: Who is Cheeto McFlair, and why are they writing on our spreadsheet?

[Mary] Season 13, Episode 47.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Q&A on Fixing Characters.

[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 Broken.

[Brandon] Well, hopefully we can fix you, Howard.

[Brandon] Jonathan asks, "How do you approach changing/refining character voices when you realize that two are too similar?"

[Dan] Oh, man. Okay. So I did this. I talked earlier in the year about how all of my boy best friend characters tended to be very similar. So the most recent one, since it's not out yet, I have the chance to go through and fix it. Really had to kind of fundamentally redefine in my head who he was. He couldn't just be the snarky guy who cracks the jokes I would make if I were in the scene. He had to have something else. So, I made sure that I gave him a very different background and a very different personality than the other character, and his language started coming out differently.

[Valynne] One of the things that I've done is when I have two characters in the same book who are sounding very similar, I've just had to decide, "Do I really need this extra character?" A lot of times, I can just combine them into one. So I kill them off.

[Howard] It's a good thing that that doesn't happen in real life.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Howard, you sound just like Dan. Die now.

[Dan] We don't need both of you!

[Laughter]

[Howard] My solution for this is often a vocabulary fix, where I'll pick words that are unique to each side. One character is willing to use metaphors in their speech, and the other won't use metaphors, they'll use something else. That often is enough to differentiate it.

[Brandon] All right. Darcy Cole, longtime friend of the podcast…

[Dan] Friend of ours in real life.

[Brandon] And friend in real life, asks us, "How can you tell if a character is the problem? How do you go about defining this?" I've had a moment to look at this, so I'll start us off. You guys can think about it. I've had a couple of times where the character was the problem. It took a little while to notice it. What would happen is in writing group, people were not wanting to get back to that character when their scene came up. This happens in all stories where you've got a large cast and you're switching between them. Sometimes people are going to be like, "I'm not excited to get back to this character." But what was happening with this one was habitually, people were like, "Oh, that one was a downer, too." Like it wasn't just like they were sad to get back to it. They were not excited when they were done with it, and they were happy to get off of it and back to other characters. Usually…

[Howard] Reading these chapters is like homework.

[Brandon] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I was running into that. So that was one way I identified, "Okay. This character's a problem."

[Howard] If writing them isn't keeping you engaged, there's probably a problem. If it's boring, if it's…

[Dan] I find… I rarely write things from multiple viewpoints, but when I do, it's very easy in those cases to pop out, "Oh, this character doesn't work," when they're in somebody else's viewpoint. Because suddenly they become very boring. I realize that I haven't built enough of a personality for them. So when I'm seeing them from the outside, they're incredibly flat.

[Brandon] Sometimes it's just helpful to have someone like Dan read your book who will tell you…

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Because he told me before, "This character's boring." I'm like, "Oh, yeah, they are."

[Valynne] I think a lot of times I just have to have a beta reader or someone point it out to me. Because I'm too close to the project and can't see what's not working. So get an honest critique partner.

[Dan] Don't be afraid of honest critique, because you're going to get those critiques inevitably. In Partials, I got a character… The character Marcus. He… Everyone hated him. That's the kind of thing that a good writing group could have caught. Our writing group didn't. So then all the reviews and all the feedback from readers is, "Hey, this is great, but this guy's awful."

[Brandon] How do you maintain interest in a character who is largely inactive? For example, being afraid to leave the house. It's a classic first act problem, right? That sometimes you have a character who's reacting to stimulus instead of being the proactive one themselves. How do you solve this in your stories? Valynne, we've all talked about this thing a lot. Have you ever run into this, where you wanted to start a character who was reactive and then had to deal with making the story interesting? If you've never done it, it's okay.

[Valynne] I don't know if I have. I'm trying to think of… There's a movie that I'm thinking of that deals with… It's Ryan Reynolds, and he's inside a box, like the whole movie.

[Transcriptionist's note: the movie is Buried]

[Brandon] Okay. [Garbled] thing.

[Valynne] Or Sandra Bullock in the spaceship, like the whole time, and it's like only her. That's kind of what we're talking about, right? Just, you have someone who…

[Howard] Well, I think in this case, what they may be talking about is the reluctant hero. A protagonist who is… Who has not yet protagged. Often, for me, if I'm in a situation like that, it's because it's time for the story to focus on somebody else, where something is happening, or the story hasn't started yet. This person hasn't been moved out of their comfort zone yet. In late, out early. I can come in later.

[Dan] Well, all of these examples that Valynne is pointing out are people who are confined to one location but still very interesting. That's because… Your reluctant hero doesn't want to go on this journey yet, presumably, that's because they've got something else there really interested in doing. So as long as they are excited about something or interested in something or doing something, even if it's not the plot of your book, it still makes the characters seem active, even if they're not doing anything.

[Brandon] We are interested in lots of different things. Conflict… Protagging, as we say… Proactiveness is one of them. But we're also interested in people's fascination. Someone being really interested in something alone can be sometimes enough. But the example was a character that didn't leave the house. That's a conflict. That's a really interesting conflict. How do they work around not leaving the house? You've got a story there, right away.

[Valynne] I think you end up just going deep into that character's head and understanding the thought processes behind, "What if I left?" If… I think there are a lot of things that go on in the head of someone who doesn't feel like he or she can leave the house. So you're going… You have to really analyze those thoughts carefully.

[Brandon] So, also longtime listener, Cheeto McFlair…

[Dan] Good friend, Cheeto McFlair.

[Brandon] Yes. As… There's a lot of Cheeto McFlair in all of us. How do you write interesting bad guys when your POV characters are just the good guys? [Pause] Oh, Cheeto stumped you.

[Dan] I'm trying to think. Because I do this in all the John Cleaver books. We never get a viewpoint from any of the bad guys. But we do see a lot of them.

[Howard] This is… That's just the story of life. You are the POV character in your story. Are there people who are not you who are interesting? Why are they interesting? What did you observe about them that was interesting?

[Valynne] I don't think you write them any differently for the most part. I mean, you still give them strengths and flaws and…

[Dan] It can be hard, though, and I see where the question is coming from, to… How can you get into the head of someone that you're not actually writing them from their point of view? I've run into this problem in some of my books. I really want to explore, for example, this person who is… It's a chase book, and we're trying to chase this person down. Why are they running? I can't say that without getting into their head, and so I had to find other ways of making them interesting and of revealing their story. Sometimes the way to do that is through research, through… Let your characters learn what they can from second-hand sources and let them extemporize on it, talk to each other. Well, maybe it's because of this, or maybe it's because of this. Which increases the mystery while answering questions at the same time.

[Brandon] I had this problem in the Steelheart books. The first one, in particular. Because it's a first-person narrative from a guy's viewpoint, and… If you haven't read the books, he basi… His father's killed by evil Superman, basically. Evil… The Emperor of Chicago, and he… His life's goal is to take this guy down. So I had to have this Emperor of Chicago who was a very powerful individual that my main character could never really interact with, because if he did, he'd be squished. So my response to this, in building the outline, I knew this, and I needed to… Like, I had broadcasts from Steelheart, the Emperor of Chicago… The kind of 1984 style, you have to watch this broadcast, sort of thing, so I could show him. I showed the effects of his rule. Had people talking about him. I built him with some immediate conflict. Not inside of him. But to the reader. Like, when I present him in the opening scene, he's presented as a savior figure, floating down from the ceiling. Then he goes ballistic and it's bad. That kind of self-contradiction of I'm expecting Superman and I got this instead allowed me to make him very memorable in the reader's mind. At least that's my hope. Thank you for the question, Cheeto.

[Brandon] Let's go ahead to our book of the week. Which is actually a TV show Howard's been watching.

[Howard] Not a book at all. Myths and Monsters, which is narrated by Nicholas Day. As of January of 2018, it's available on Netflix. The first episode is a wonderful pop-culture overview on the Campbellian monomyth. The whole series is about mythology… The heroes, the monsters, the settings of legend, and what are the historical and cultural underpinnings of those. Why are so many of them similar? Where are the standouts? It's quite fascinating. One of the things that I love about it is that where no direct footages available, say of Triston and Isolde in real life, they will often use penciled illustrations with halftone shading that are really striking. Really pretty illustrations in the show. Very interesting, and I'm four episodes in and have loved it.

[Brandon] Excellent.

[Howard] Myths and Monsters, narrated by Nicholas Day.

[Brandon] All right. So we get this question a lot. Both in the last Q&A, and we did this one. I'm just going to pitch it at you guys. If you think we've just covered this, we can move on. But the question is how do you give a powerful character meaningful challenges and relatability? This kind of comes into the iconic character thing sometimes, but I think they're talking about someone like Superman. How do you do this? We get this question a lot.

[Howard] Fundamentally, you identify the things that they are not good at, and you put the challenges there.

[Dan] Which works most of the time, but I do think there is something to be said for watching them use their… The things that they're really good at. We like that wish fulfillment of watching Superman just punch something so hard it compresses into diamond or whatever. So sometimes you just… You do just need a really big bad guy.

[Valynne] I think you need to delve into the emotional side of the character as well. What do they care about? Focus on what they care about.

[Brandon] All right. Victoria, you asked, "How can I make alien characters charming and mysterious?" We did an entire podcast on writing alien characters. So hopefully, you've listened to that by now.

[Brandon] I'm going to go to Andrew's question here. "How can I make a normal everyday person an interesting character without giving them some sort of Mary Sue trait? I.e., child of prophecy or magically superior?"

[Howard] I feel very bad that you perhaps don't know any normal people who you find interesting.

[Brandon] See, I understand what you're saying. But I want to be in defense of Andrew here. Sometimes it's very hard to do in writing, right? What are your strategies for doing this?

[Howard] I have spent a long time listening to people. When I was doing my drawing at the comic book shop, I would often ask people, "What do you do? Tell me about it. Describe your job." I always learned… Learning that the smell of pineapple and the smell of cheddar cheese are differentiated by like one chemical from a guy who was studying food science. People know things that I don't. I love learning that. If you recognize that, and begin exploring those aspects of the people on your page, they will become interesting.

[Dan] That applies not just to the knowledge that they have and the background they come from, but also just the ways that they talk. One of my favorite scenes that I wrote in John Cleaver six is he kind of goes on a date at one point, and he's in a taco shop with five other guys, people his age. They're just kind of local kids, about 19 years old, talking. They're all very different, and some of them are obnoxious, and some of them are based on people that I know, and some of them are based on conversations I've had. That kind of stuff is great. Just getting into the gritty details of why does she talk very differently from her? I love that kind of stuff.

[Howard] Now, if we come back to the question and rephrase it, how do you instill a sense of wonder when the character is a normal character without giving them something wondrous? That becomes truly challenging. I… Sense of wonder's tricky.

[Brandon] Well, your books do not have any superpowers or anything. How do you… Do you differentiate your characters? I wouldn't even say that they all were necessarily skilled in anything specific. At least not in a kind of traditional this one has this ability. Like, it was just about a bunch of kids, and they were all really interesting. How did you do that?

[Valynne] I think that you just have to highlight what things characters are passionate about. It's a combination of passion and interest and… Those naturally become strengths for someone. If it's a passion, or interest, you have a lot of knowledge about that area, and not everything is going to be interesting to everyone. But you just have to figure out what you need for your story, and how those characters can contribute based on their knowledge and passions and hobbies. I think that that's the best way to… In most ways, that is sort of their superstrength is what they love.

[Brandon] So, last question comes from Sarah. She says, "I am writing a story. How do I give my characters interests that mesh with the plot after writing half a draft and realizing they have no interests?" So she wants our help fixing her story.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Presumably without throwing away that half a draft.

[Howard] Begin with a spreadsheet. I'm serious. Make notes along one column that are here are the plot points, and here are the interests, abilities, whatever's that would be helpful in making that plot point. Then have your characters be aligned in a different way, and determine who lines up where and what needs to be given to. Then things will start to emerge organically. I start with a spreadsheet, not because I'm going to fix things with a spreadsheet, but because a spreadsheet's going to show me the shape of the problem. Then I can stand back and look at it and say, "Oh. The whole is all right here in Act Two, and it all comes down to three things. I've got three characters, and this is probably a pretty easy fix."

[Brandon] All right. I'm going to give you guys a writing prompt. It's actually a very simple one. Cheeto McFlair. Who is Cheeto McFlair in your mind, and why are they writing on our spreadsheet? We actually know who this person is.

[Laughter]

[Dan] We're not just making fun of a random person.

[Brandon] We're not just making fun of a random person. But I want you to make up who they are. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 6.19: Pitching

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/10/09/writing-excuses-6-19-pitching/

Key points: three pitches, one line, three paragraph, deep conversation. Adding more words to a pitch that's failing will sink it faster -- stop. What's it about? Not a plot synopsis -- what kind of book is it, who would like it. Make them say, "Tell me more." Three paragraph -- one concept, something interesting, something cool. Make them say, "I want to read this book." Deep conversation -- let the other person talk about what they find exciting, what they find interesting. Practice your pitches with friends and family.
( Batter up? Three strikes... )
[Brandon] All right. Howard, you've got a...
[Howard] I've got a writing prompt. Take three of your favorite books. Go ahead and look at the back cover copy if you want to. Take three of your favorite books. Write one of each pitch for each of those books, so you're writing nine things. You're learning to pitch somebody else's stuff. Then, and here's the hard part, you need to make one of your friends read one of those books by using those pitches.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go pitch.
[Howard] To actual other people.

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Writing Excuses Transcripts

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Writing Excuses 20.40: Mary Robinette Kowal's Personal Writing Process

Writing Excuses 19.30: A Close Reading on Character: Agency vs. Choices

Writing Excuses 16.40: Nesting Threads in the M.I.C.E. Quotient

Writing Excuses 16.27: Nobody Wants to Read a Book

Writing Excuses 15.30: Write What You Want to Know, with Laurell K. Hamilton

Writing Excuses 13.47: Q&A on Fixing Characters

Writing Excuses 6.19: Pitching

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