Writing Excuses 17.52: The WXR 2022 Q&A

Dec. 30th, 2022 04:03 pm
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Writing Excuses 17.52: The WXR 2022 Q&A
 
 
Q&A Points:
Q: What strategies can you use to make the reader aware of the complexities of your world without infodumping?
A: Drop bits of reference into the dialogue without details. Pick themes that your characters are passionate about. Add stuff that is not vital to the plot. Let the character interact with them.
Q: How do you balance a sense of progress with an unreliable narrator?
A: With a goal that they are aiming for. Why are you using an unreliable narrator? Knowing that, and being deliberate about it, allows you to mix it with progress. Progress is asking questions and answering them, which is not necessarily connected to whatever the narrator may be lying about. 
Q: How can I make two magic systems work in the same setting when one is very underpowered compared to the other, and the protagonist uses the weaker magic?
A: That's the best way to do it! Because it has conflict. Show that they are the underdog, but they use their skills better. This builds sympathy and rooting interest. 
Q: Have you ever based a character on yourself or someone that you know? If so, did you find that more or less difficult to write?
A: Yes, every character is a reflection of me, in some way. No, not actively base on myself, that I consider to be me. Basing a character on someone you know? Strip out the details, keep the patterns of mannerisms. Base on a struggle or a conflict. Tuckerizations!
Q: So, on book adaptations, Dan, as someone who has had a book adapted, can you talk a little bit about what the process looks like and things to keep in mind when working on adaptations?
A: New and innovative is better than faithful. Script form, on screen, is not the same as novel form. 
Q: Do you have any recommendations for conventions or other writing events an aspiring author should attend for networking purposes?
A: Surrey International Writers Conference. Nebula conference. Check your local conventions.
World Fantasy. World Con. Story Makers and Pikes Peak. 
Q: Do you use any particular methods to calibrate how detailed your scientific or technical terms are for each series or audience or genre?
A: Consider a cheese sandwich. If all it does is feed the character, you don't say much about it. If the character is a chef, you may say more. Technical jargon is the same. Think about the structural purpose they serve in your story.
Q: How do you cultivate an audience, specifically how do you interact with fans responsibly, especially starting out when they may number less than 10 and are essentially your peers?
A: Try to add value to every group, every conversation you have. Marketing is a minus value, so add value to the group before you try to market to them. Make a contribution, be interesting, make sure people enjoy spending time with you first. Consider a street team! 
 
[Season 17, Episode 52]
 
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Q&A on the Writing Excuses Cruise 2022.
[Dan] 15 minutes long.
[Mary Robinette] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Howard] And you guys are going to ask us questions, despite our not-smartness.
[Chuckles]
 
[Brandon] Go ahead. First question.
[Julie] Hey, can you hear me?
[Dan] Yup.
[Julie] I'm Julie. What strategies can you use to make the reader aware of the complexities of your world without infodumping?
[Howard] What strategy… I love this question, and James Sutter gave us a great answer to that a couple seasons ago. Just by dropping little lines of dialogue, "the screaming hills" or "The monks of whatever" as little bits of reference without any additional details. These are just things that exist, that the characters know about, and that gets sprinkled into the dialogue, and then off they go with the plot.
[Brandon] I would pick a few themes for your book. In specific, things that you are going to… That your characters are passionate about. Right? Everybody… Kind of because Tolkien did Tolkien's thing wants to pick the ones that Tolkien did, which is not a bad idea. But your character might be a calligrapher, and they might be interested in the history of fonts on your world. They can talk about the history of fonts, and drop those hints in, not at length, not infodumps, but mentions here and there. Which will give the same sense of depth in history to your world, and be relevant to your character and their passions, rather than that same character talking about the history of that fort over there, which might be something that Tolkien would have done. Pick the ones that your characters are passionate about.
[Dan] I think so much of what provides depth to a story is stuff that is not vital to the plot. If we… If the only information we ever get is the information we require in order to understand the current story taking place, then the world is only as big as the current story taking place. Whereas, if we have other things, other history, other cultural details that have nothing to do with the current story, then that makes the world very large.
[Mary Robinette] I pick them based on whether or not my character is interacting with them. So if the character is interacting with the food, then I can describe that food. If they aren't interacting with the food, then I do not describe the national dish of whatever fiction fantasy world I have.
 
[Brandon] All right. Question number two, by the person in the excellent T-shirt. One of mine.
[Todd] Ah, yes. I'm Todd, and I'm currently wearing the same shirt as Brandon, but… For my question, I'm wondering how do you balance a sense of progress with an unreliable narrator?
[Brandon] Uh…
[Mary Robinette] Ah…
[Brandon] How do you balance… Oh, that's… I don't have to repeat them because…
[Mary Robinette] Um… So, your character can still have a goal that they're aiming for. Frequently, that unreliability is about some aspect of self. So, you don't… You can still be honest to the reader by having the character react in ways that are consistent with whatever that secret is. Which allows you to make that forward progress and then kind of drop clues before you do the big reveal about what the unreliability is.
[Brandon] Yup. I would agree. Unreliable narrators should always be a feature, not a bug. Right? Like, if you're using it, you should be using it for a reason. What is your goal in using the unreliable narrator? What are you achieving? Well, that will then tell you how you can intermix that with progress. Because you can cheat and really fun ways with an unreliable narrator. There can be several… I mean, a character that I wrote who lost several years of time in their memory, or parts of the time in their memory, becomes unreliable not because of them hiding from the reader, but they legit don't know. This then becomes a cool reveal. So highlighting those things… The thing that I would say you most want the reader to pick up on is that you as an author are doing this on purpose. The character is unreliable on purpose, not on accident. They will give you all kinds of accommodation if they know it's on purpose. As soon as they suspect it's on accident, you start to lose them.
[Howard] I think that the sense of progress and the narrator might be a false concomitance here, that those are not necessarily related. For me, the sense of progress comes from a question being asked and then later being answered. Every time I get an answer to a question I had, to a question posed by the story, I feel like we've made progress. That, for me, is completely disconnected from who the narrator may or may not be lying about.
[Mary Robinette] I just realized part of why I think they may have asked this question. That if you're writing something like a heist where…
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] The narrator has a secret goal.
[Brandon] Right, right. In a lot of heists, they do. That's a very good point to bring out. A lot of times, your character will have a secret goal. Again, I still think it comes back to make sure the reader knows that it was done on purpose. So they can start to suspect and put things together. I always feel like if you're heisting the reader, the clues should have been there all along. Now, there are really brilliant ones were you're not supposed to notice anything is wrong until the last minute before it happens. But in that case, you need to have created a narrative that has payoffs all along, otherwise it's suspicious.
 
[Brandon] Question?
[Unknown] How can I make two magic systems work in the same setting when one is very underpowered compared to the other, and the protagonist uses the weaker magic?
[Brandon] Ooo. That's the better way to do it, usually.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Why?
[Brandon] Because conflict. Stories are about conflict and what you can and can't do. I'm glad you're asking this question, but the answer is actually pretty simple in that you don't have to really worry about power level in books, particularly if your character is the weaker party. The answer is how do you do this is you make it very clear that they're the weaker party, they're the underdog, and you show them using their skills better than those who are overpowered. Right? The whole idea of I am not as strong, so therefore I must be very tactical in how I apply the strength I do have, builds enormous amounts of sympathy and rooting interest for a character. If you have a character that's superstrong, it's actually much harder because building that rooting interest when they are from a position of power means that the conflict has to be approached differently. So I would say present these kind of magic systems in an interesting way that reinforces what you're doing. Right? If the powerful magic system is in the control of the elite, and the week magic system… I mean, this is the most obvious one, but it's a good example… Is in the hands of the underdogs, both socially and narratively, then you will… It'll be… It'll flow from there.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The plucky hero is a common trope, but one of the things that you often see in superhero movies is that the super villain is ridiculously overpowered compared to the superhero. Those are essentially two different magic systems.
[Dan] Yeah. Well, also, when you start to think about what counts as a magic system in the kind of grand metaphor of just character power, look at something like the Star Wars series. The original trilogy has one Jedi, but that doesn't make the other characters not interesting. Right? Han Solo's magic system is that he can attack people from range and he can fly through space. He does that with other things. It's not as powerful as being a Jedi, but it's not on interesting and it still is vital to the story and to the society that they live in.
 
[Brandon] All right. Next question.
[Lisha] Hi. I'm Lisha Bickard. Have you ever based a character on yourself or someone that you know? If so, did you find that more or less difficult to write?
[Brandon] Okay. Let's split that into two questions. First, have you based a character on yourself?
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Howard] Yup.
[Dan] No.
[Brandon] I would say every character I write as a piece of me. Some aspect of my personality comes out. It's inevitable.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] Yeah. That's… Same here. I've given up on trying to say, "Oh, this character is nothing like me." Because I am alive to write what they say, so, at some level, they're at least a little bit like me.
[Dan] But I feel like that's a very different question from have you actively based one on yourself versus do elements of yourself bleed through.
[Brandon] Okay.
[Dan] I don't think I've ever written a character who I consider to be me.
[Brandon] I would agree that I have not done that, either. There's no… I mean, I don't know if you're talking about self inserts, but, like the Dirk Pitt books, Clive Cussler always shows up in them as a character. I've never done that.
[Mary Robinette] No, I haven't done that either. But I have given my character… Like Ellena, I've talked very openly about in Calculating Stars, that while I don't have an experience personally with anxiety, my experience with depression is her experience with anxiety. That I mapped that. Also, there's several other things that I'm just like, and that's… The other thing I talk about is her experience with Parker is based exactly on someone that I used to work with. So I have done that.
 
[Brandon] Let's take the second half of this one. Basing a character on someone you know? Have you done this? Pitfalls? How did you approach it? These sorts of things.
[Mary Robinette] Again, so, Parker is based on somebody that I know. I strip out the identifying details, and what you're left with is the patterns of mannerisms. In Glamorous Histories, I've often talked about the fact that Mr. Vincent is heavily based on my husband, who I frequently describe as the love child of Mr. Darcy and Eeyore. Mr. Vincent and Rob do not have the same back story in any way, shape, or form. But they have the same mannerisms. They have many of the same interests and attitudes.
[Brandon] It's kind of uncanny.
[Mary Robinette] It really… Yeah.
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Howard] There was this one time where, as a favor to a friend, I wrote a character into a story, and then had him kill his own dang self. Really stupidly, and… That was a lot of fun both for me and for my friend.
[Brandon] I don't generally base on… Well, I do and I don't. I base on a conflict often. If I have a friend who has a struggle or a conflict, I will put that in. The only characters that are based on friends more overtly than that are Tuckerizations, where they get to say they make an appearance in the books.
[Dan] Yeah. I often auction off for service auctions and charities and things the ability to be brutally murdered in a Dan Wells book. That's not so much copying the mannerisms as just, "Hey, look. You can show all your friends that…
[Mary Robinette] Your name.
[Dan] A monster killed you."
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Your name is in this book. Frequently, with Tuckerizations, they are not anything like the person, they just have a name in common.
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] One of the pitfalls is that if you have not cleared it with them ahead of time, that it can be… Like, my husband knows that I put his mannerisms into books. I have a friend who was a Tuckerization, and then I was like, "Oh, I'm very sorry, but your Tuckerization is actually going to be a villain in the next book. Is that okay?"
[Brandon] Yeah. The Tuckerizations I do of friends stay in the background almost exclusively. If it's an unflattering Tuckerization of someone I know, I always change the name and the description, and it's then just kind of the concept becomes on inspiration.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. This is what happens when you write something that you think is a standalone and they ask you for a sequel.
[Dan] And then they ask for more. I had a character, there was a teacher, a schoolteacher in the John Cleaver books, that was named after a friend of mine who is a schoolteacher. Before that went to print, I realized, oh, wait. In the next book I'm going to turn this guy into a pedophile. So I'm going to change that name really quick and make sure that that does not come back to bite him in any way.
 
[Brandon] So, let's stop for our book of the week. Our book of the week is my book.
[Yay!]
[Brandon] So, 15 years ago plus, I started writing a little series called Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians as a way to take a break between the Mistborn books. It's as different from Mistborn as I could possibly get inside my brain. About kids who have weird magical talents that sound like drawbacks until they use them. Like being late for things or being bad at dancing or things like that. Now, long-awaited last book, last secret book of the series. I actually pitched this book to my editor. I said, "I want to do five books, and then end on a horrible, horrible cliffhanger. Because there kind of comedic, and that's what the character's been warning them. Then pretend there's going to be no sixth book because the main character refuses to write the book. Then I want to have a sixth book which is finally coming out written by another character in the series to give the actual ending because the main character was a dweeb and would not write the ending of his series, where he actually kind of proves to be a little bit more heroic than he's been telling people all along. So we have Bastille versus The Evil Librarians, written with my good friend Janci Patterson, who's been on the podcast a number of times. Who helped me get the voice right, because I was struggling with it, which is part of what took so long. It is finally out and you can get it. The series is now finished.
[Mary Robinette] Yay!
[Dan] Hooray!
[Howard] Huzzah!
 
[Brandon] All right. So, let's go to the next question.
[Unknown] Awesome. So, on book adaptations, Dan, as someone who has had a book adapted, can you talk a little bit about what the process looks like and things to keep in mind when working on adaptations?
[Dan] Yeah. So, my general theory of adaptations is that I am far more interested in something that is new and innovative rather than endlessly faithful. That is an assertion that gets sorely tested when it is your own little baby…
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Being adapted. I did not have creative control over the Serial Killer movie, but I did get the chance to read all the drafts of the script and be involved with casting and things like that. The initial drafts of the script, and even the final shooting script, included some changes that I disagreed with pretty wildly. Fortunately, I had, over the process, become good friends with the director to the point that he was able to just say, "Hey, trust me. This is an art form that I am familiar with and you are not. Give me the benefit of the doubt here." I did, and ultimately realized, oh, the changes he was making would not have worked in the book. They would not have been effective in novel form. But the changes I was suggesting he make to his script would not have worked in script form. They would not have worked on the screen. So I was right and he was right, and he was smart enough to know that that's why I was arguing with him, is because it was simply an art form that I didn't know as well. The final product, he made the right calls on those adaptive changes, and I made the right call in that I stopped making a stink about it.
 
[Brandon] All right. Next question.
[Unknown] Hi. Do you have any recommendations for conventions or other writing events an aspiring author should attend for networking purposes?
[Brandon] Oh. Specifically for networking purposes.
[Mary Robinette] There are two major ones that I would recommend. Surrey International Writers Conference in Surrey, B. C., Which is my favorite writers conference besides the… Including the ones that I run, actually. The one that were currently on, Writing Excuses, we constantly tell our students that the best thing they get out of this is the interactions, but you know that because you're here. Then, the Nebula conference is designed specifically to be a thing for developing and professional authors.
[Brandon] I met my agent at the Nebula conference 20 years ago. And he's still my agent.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So those are the big things for me. But I would also look at your local conventions. Because you don't have to travel places. And also, you don't have to go to conventions to network. You can network online. Also, you don't have to network to be successful. There are plenty of authors who are successful who are complete recluses. There are a number of things that it helps with. But you can also have a career without doing that, if it is something that you're not comfortable with.
[Brandon] indeed, I'd say it's the least important it's ever been before breaking into the business. Not to say it can't still be useful, but as in the publishing is happening… Happened, as publishing has started to spread out and move out of New York a little bit more, and things like that, the need to network has decreased a little.
[Dan] Let me ask a question. One con we always used to recommend as a really fantastic networking con was World Fantasy. It is my perception that that is no longer as helpful of a networking con as it used to be. Is that… Would you agree with that, or am I wrong?
[Mary Robinette] You are correct. Yeah, you're correct. The… That was David Hartwell's home convention. He always asked his fellow editors and his author stable to attend the convention. With his passing, while networking still happens, there is not quite the same presence...
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] There since that. They also had some other issues that often happen when you move a convention from place to place. World Con is another one of those which depending on where World Con is… And this is also true with World Fantasy. Depending on which group of volunteers are running it, they can be more helpful than others. But you have to be pretty deep into the community already to know which one is going to be a good one. So when they're close to you, absolutely go to them. But I wouldn't always recommend making the trip for it.
[Dan] Yeah.
[Brandon] If you are in the inner mountain West, the Story Makers Conference tends to be our best conference in the Salt Lake area.
[Mary Robinette] Oh, Pikes Peak in Colorado is very good as well.
[Dan] Yeah.
[Howard] The one piece of counsel I'd offer when thinking about networking is that if you are slightly impatient, and what you are looking for is someone a few rungs up to help you really launch the career, that's challenging, and that's a hard relationship to build. If you're willing to be patient, if you're willing to network and make friends with people who are at your level in career launching or in book writing or whatever, and you begin to grow with those people, in many cases these are the relationships which five years or even 10 years down the road, these are the relationships that will redefine your career when somebody comes to you and says, "Oh, hey, by the way, I just got a show green lit, and I need a script doctor, and I know you can do it." It's… I love to see people just willing to make friends. Those friendships that you make are going to be more genuine and I think they're going to be more helpful to you.
 
[Brandon] All right. Go ahead.
[Unknown] Do you use any particular methods to calibrate how detailed your scientific or technical terms are for each series or audience or genre?
[Mary Robinette] My cheese sandwich analogy. So, if you've got a cheese sandwich and it is in a scene where everyone knows what a cheese sandwich is in the cheese sandwich serves only the function of feeding the character, you don't need to describe it deeply. If your character is a chef and they are doing something exquisite with the cheese sandwich, you need to describe it more deeply, because the character is going to have a different relationship with it. It's the same with the technical jargon that you throw out. If you've got an alien that is… Has never experienced a cheese sandwich before, what often happens to a reader, to an early career writer, is that they want to say, "All right. So a cheese sandwich is made out of cheese and bread." The alien is like, "But, okay, what is bread?" You're like, "Bread comes from wheat, which is grown in…" Like, none of that is actually useful. What you want to say is a cheese sandwich is something that you hold in your hands and you eat it and it's tasty. So when you're thinking about the jargon, you're thinking about the structural purpose… The mechanical research details… You're thinking about the structural purpose that they serve in the story. I often just put in a bracket that says technical detail goes here. Or jargon goes here. Because frequently the only reason it's there is to demonstrate competence porn.
 
[Brandon] All right. This is going to be our last question for this episode. So, hit us.
[Qwamai] Hello. My name is Qwamai Simmons. How do you cultivate an audience, specifically how do you interact with fans responsibly, especially starting out when they may number less than 10 and are essentially your peers?
[Brandon] Mmm. That's an excellent question. So, interacting with an audience. There's a couple tips that I would be… If they are your peers, in particular, but… You always want to be value adding to any group that you're part of. Marketing generally value negatives, so keep in mind that it's like your value to a group is going to earn you chances to occasionally network. The sorts of things that I don't like seeing our social media feeds that are just… Network is the wrong term. That was from before.
[Dan] Market.
[Brandon] Market. Are just marketing, are just big marketing. You'll see this sometimes on Internet forums or things. People pop in and be like, "Hey, I just sold my first book. Here it is." And it's the first time you've even seen them. If you're not value adding, don't be doing that. Try to be adding something to every group you're part of and every conversation you're part of.
[Dan] Yeah. Think of your community of readers as a group of friends that you interact with. Not necessarily close friends that you invite to your house all the time, but people that you want to hang out with and that you want to pay attention to you. If you and your friend group, all you ever say is, "Hey, I have a lot of shirts for sale on my website," you won't get invited to parties anymore. Whereas, if you are contributing things, if you are interesting, if people enjoy spending time with you, then, suddenly, you are a valuable friend that people love to hang out with.
[Howard] This comes back to what I said earlier about patience. We're all inherently impatient to some degree, we want to launch ourselves from zero readers to 20,000 readers. I don't have a magic bullet for that. I don't have a magic trick for that. The thing that I have found is that it is… Doing marketing where I am asking the marketing under something, that's exhausting. I just allow myself to be myself with my audience and be silly. Then, every so often, I let them know that I'm doing a thing. Is that effective? I don't know if it's effective, I don't know if I'm actually good at this. But I know that I'm way more comfortable with that than I am with the other approaches.
[Mary Robinette] The last thing that I would say about this is that it's very easy to sound very calculating when you're thinking about this. I've heard people talk about it as a social bank. You have to put things into the social bank in order to have a withdrawal later. That is true. Also, being a good person, which is what we're talking about, being a value add, is not transactional. It's like when you are a good, contributing member of the community, you're not doing it because, well, then they're going to be nice to me.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] That is the wrong way to approach it. The way you approach it is by being genuinely interested in other people. Finding the community that you want to be part of. That's the piece that you're doing. The people that you want to be part of, that you're genuinely interested in, they don't owe you friendship in return. Right? They don't owe you anything. You're doing that because it is something that you find satisfying. You kind of have to approach it that way. Otherwise, you are going to be angry and bitter, because you've entered a transactional relationship that no one else agreed to.
[Dan] Yeah. I do want to point out that there's kind of a community building thing that I have seen a lot of authors use. This has become pretty common over the last two or three years, at least in some of the circles that I move in, called the street team. I'm sure that there are other authors that have different names for it. This is something that is kind of overtly transactional in a way that avoids the problems Mary Robinette is talking about. Saying… Assembling a group of people and saying, "Hey, I will give you an advance manuscript or I will give you these other things because you're a super fan and I would love to have you help me spread the word about my books." That's something that I see… Maybe it's mostly in YA. I don't know if this is something the rest of you have run across. But it is a system that if you handle it correctly works well to build a community that way. Like, you're part of my club now. Here's all the benefits of the club. Then, also, you're going to help.
[Howard] I was standing at my booth at World Con and a super fan had bought a book from me and someone else came up to the booth and was kind of like, "What's this?" Super fan launched into a fantastic pitch for my stuff. I very calculatedly, very carefully, did zero things to stop them.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Are you overselling me? I don't care. You dearly love this, and you love this in a way that I would love for other people to love this. So go. Run. Do the thing.
[Mary Robinette] I'm going to put in a quick plug for my Lady Astronaut club. Which is, basically, I have built a community. You can send away a self-addressed stamped envelope, you can be a member of my Patreon, someone can vouch for you in the community. We call it the kindest corner of the Internet. It is a place where I get to interact, but also, it is, at times, a street team. Like, if I come in and say, "Hello, I really need help with X." But I never approach it with the expectation that they will do these things for me.
 
[Brandon] All right. We are out of time. Thank you all for the excellent questions here at the Writing Excuses Cruise.
[Applause]
[Brandon] Your homework is to write out a few questions. To think about it, think about what are the things you need help most on in your writing career right now. Now, we are unavailable to answer your questions because we are off somewhere else. But I find that formulating these things, sitting and thinking what do I need, really helps you kind of put a point on what you need to do, where you need to learn, where you need to grow. That's going to help you get those answers. So, ask yourself the question, what is holding me back the most in my writing career, and what question would I have for the team if I were able to ask it. Maybe you will eventually be able to do so. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 14.36: Languages and Naming

Sep. 11th, 2019 03:29 pm
mbarker: (Fireworks Delight)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 14.36: Languages and Naming

 
 

Key points: How do you name things? How do you come up with names? Baby name websites! Sanskrit or foreign languages. Read the credits on movies. Internally consistent, and different. Borrow names from other countries. How do you approach constructed languages, dialect, or jargon in stories? A few words go a long way. Read it out loud. Make sure readers can tell your names apart! Consider using the language as a source of conflicts, either because people don't speak the same language, or because of the way their language makes them see the world. Misunderstandings and cultural expectations can lead to conflicts. What does this do in your story? What's the role it plays in the plot? Can you use dialect or wording to help with setting?
 

[Transcriber's note: Apologies to the Ursumari, Hindi, and Korean for any mistakes in the transcription of names and words in those languages.]
 

[Mary Robinette] Season 13, Episode 36.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Languages and Naming.
[Dan] 15 minutes long.
[Howard] Because you're in a hurry.
[Mahtab] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] [pause] I'm… Okay, I'll tell you my name. I'm Howard.
[Mahtab] I'm Mahtab.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] She won't make you work for it. Like Howard does.
 

[Brandon] Languages and naming. So. I would say the number one question I get, usually from younger writers who come through my line is, "How do you name things?" So, I'm going to actually point this at you first, Mahtab, because I think they've probably heard us answer this question. How do you come up with names for your stories?
[Mahtab] Well, I consult a lot of websites. Especially, I start with baby names. But Sanskrit is also a really good source, because… Really, I mean, writing for a North American audience… And since most of my books are published in English, even if I threw in a few Hindi words, it would seem, like, exotic. But, for example, in The Third Eye, I used the word Zarku, which is… It means, in Sanskrit, it means evil. Which is… So I would do Google translate and take keywords off… Which personify the character that I'm naming and try and find the right word. Play around with it. Just, as I said, Google some interesting names and see… And and say it out loud to see what sounds good.
[Howard] Reading… For starters, you should all be staying through the end of the credits of all of the movies you see. But reading the names on the credits is a great way to read a bunch of names that you're probably unfamiliar with. It's also a great way to realize that wow, portions of this film were produced or managed in, I think that's Southeast Asia, or I see a lot of Indian names. I like that. I like seeing that in the films, but seeing that variety opens me up to naming things, because… I mean, just the way we name other human people is hugely diverse.
[Brandon] Now, you were talking about one of the naming conventions you came up with for one of the races in Schlock Mercenary.
[Howard] Yeah, I… The role-playing book, the Planet Mercenary role-playing book, one of the things that we realized is that if people are going to role-play, they're going to want to be able to name their characters. What are the naming conventions for these different species of alien? The first thing that I did was panic, because, how am I going to come up with seven different naming conventions? The second thing I did was, well, I'm going to start subtractively. So I looked at my own language and said, all right, they will never have some of these sounds in their names. I used a different set of subtractions for each of them. One of the groups, one of the races, all names are 10 syllables long. They are all 10 syllables long, and this is how the construction works, and this is where the accenting works, and this is where the pieces of the names come from. It was still familial, which is something we're all familiar with, but it created these names that just looked incredibly alien. But after I knew how to build them, I could suddenly rattle off 10 syllable names very quickly. It made them start to seem real. I think that's, for me, the most important aspect of naming and language stuff in worldbuilding, is that once you have some of the words that your aliens are your monsters or your whatevers use, they become different than you, and they begin to develop their own voice.
[Dan] I think a key part of that, that a lot of as you said especially young writers are overwhelmed by, is making a lot of those decisions. They can be meaningless or random at the point where you're establishing those rules, as long as you come up with something that is con… Internally consistent and that is different, it's going to feel cool. The readers don't necessarily need to know, oh, he just pulled those letters out of the alphabet at random and disallowed them, or however it is that you're building these. You don't need to overthink that initial process. There doesn't need to be some kind of divine foundation for where these names come from, as long as you come up with consistent rules that sound cool and unique.
[Howard] The uplifted polar bears in Planet Mercenary. What I said was the first two generations of uplifted polar bears, it was very common to give them Inuit names, Siberian names, those were very common. Then the polar bears realized you're just naming us after the humans who live near us. That's awful. So for two generations, all of their names are a little more blended. The whole reason for that was so that I could tell the joke of oh, some common Ursumari names are Jones, [Ketchikan, Ggrrnnkk!]
[Laughter)
[Howard] But as I was writing it, I realized that's probably exactly how the bears would do it.
 
 
[Mahtab] It's also a very good idea to borrow names from other countries. To point out an example, Avatar. It still sounds weird in my mouth, because it is basically avataar in Hindi, which is just a version of… Most gods and goddesses in the Indian… Hindu mythology have various forms are various versions which are avataars. So when I say avatar, it's like, that is not the correct pronunciation.
[Chuckles]
[Mahtab] The other thing that I also remembered was tsehelyu [sa-hey-loo?] which is the bonding of the horse and the person. It's… I thought it was spelled differently, but I looked it up, it spelled t-s-e-h-e-l-y-u. But it sounds so close to [sahelee?] which is friend in Hindi. It's just a friend bonding. So you can use existing words. Change the spelling, change the pronunciation, and you have a totally different word.
[Brandon] [garbled] This is how language works. It really does. Like my son was assigned… They're doing a Christmas thing at school, and they said all the kids are going to say Merry Christmas in different languages. He came to me and said, "I chose Korean. How do you say Merry Christmas in Korean?" I'm like, "Merry Christmas. That's what they say."
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Now I… There is actually a way to say it in Korean, but I had to go look it up, because when Christmas time was around, everyone just said Merry Christmas because even though it's not in Korean…
[Howard] It's Western…
[Brandon] It's a Western holiday. They just use the English words.
[Dan] We borrow stuff from each other all the time. I will say, following from what Mahtab said about kind of borrowing words and names from other cultures, use a really wide variety of them. I made a world map for a fantasy series that I wanted to put together. I realized, after I had kind of named 15 or so nations on this map, that most of them were kind of the obvious this is based on German or Welsh or maybe some Russian if I was feeling saucy. Why did I not have some more Southeast Asian? Some Chinese? A lot of these other completely different sounds that are not as European and not as obvious that we tend to skip over?
[Brandon] One of my favorite things… We're on a side tangent here, but with making maps, is to think about who's making the map. Because if you make the map, that country's names for all the countries in the world, are going to be that country-ized, that country-ize. Like, we call Korea Korea, right? In Korea, it's Hangug. It's… The Koryo dynasty was years and years ago, but that's the name that stuck for us. All countries do this, right? They don't call us America, they call us migug. That's just how… When whoever's making the map is going to use their biases to create all of the names for all the countries. That is a lot of fun for me, for worldbuilding aspects.
[Dan] Because a lot of those names will come from the first person that they encountered from that region, or, like with Korea, whoever was in charge at the time we decided to codify the name.
 

[Howard] It is important to be careful with this. The apocryphal possibly story of a games workshop sending their materials to be translated in German, and the Germans coming back and saying, "Okay. We need to work on naming with you, because you've literally named the villain villain.
[Laughter]
[Howard] You've named the hero hero. You've just…
[Dan] Yes.
[Howard] Taking these words from German and naming them as your characters in English, because you think it sounds exotic, is not going to work well because it spoils the surprise for everybody here…
[Laughter]
[Howard] Who can read German.
[Dan] Yeah, which is why I liked, again, what Mahtab said about changing the spelling, changing the pronunciation. Use it as a base and then make it your own.
 
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our book of the week.
[Mahtab] Yes. I would love to recommend Binti by Nnedi Okorofor. I hope I'm not butchering her name. But it's a novella. An excellent mix of African culture and science fiction. It centers around Binti, who is from the Himsa [Himba?] tribe. She has been offered this place in this university. It's called the Oomza University. Which is a place of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept this, she has to leave her people. So when she does, and against everyone's wishes, against the family's wishes, she decides to go. But the one thing that she takes with her as something to remind her of home is this earth, which the Himsa people tend to apply on their hair and their skin. It turns out that this is something that helps her when there is a war that the University is with, with the Meduse people which is an alien race. I'm not going to, again, give away the ending. It's a short novella, but it's beautifully written. It's, as I said, a very good mix of an African culture, science-fiction, and a must read.
[Brandon] It won the Hugo and the Nebula. It's free to read on Tor.com, I believe. Maybe it's not free.
[Mahtab] I don't think so.
[Brandon] Yeah, it's actually one of the Tor.com novella programs. But it is a novella that you can get very cheaply online, and well worth a read.
[Mahtab] Excellent. Excellent book.
 

[Brandon] Let's stray a little bit from naming towards language conventions. So let's talk about conlangs, which is kind of the word for constructed languages that you use in your books, or your own kind of feel on how to use dialect or jargon in your stories to kind of enhance the authenticity or the worldbuilding of your story. So how do you approach coming up with languages and things like this?
[Dan] Let's start by saying that we did an entire episode on conlangs with a linguistic professor last year. So, for a much more full discussion, look that up.
[Brandon] Excellent.
[Dan] But now I got nothing.
[Laughter]
[Mahtab] I can start, because I was very taken up with Dothraki, which was invented by David J. Peterson. I was listening to a TED talk of his in terms of how he came up with it. So what he said is he used the text George R. R. Martin wrote and he used certain words. He kind of broke them apart. So words like cow and ruck and hudge, cuss, which is consonant vowel consonant. He kind of used that as a base and then he developed a language. Of course, there is a lot between using those words and what he came up with. But just writing for younger readers, I think one has to be very careful because large paragraphs or large texts in a very weird language could actually pull the reader out. Which is why I appreciated just a few words of parsel tongue in the Harry Potter movies, or just a couple of words here and there, because you do not want to trip up young readers. If you do come up with interesting words or made-up words, I would read it out loud. Just to see if you're tripping up, which is what would happen with the… With your readers.
[Howard] Or if phonetically you're saying something you don't want to say.
[Mahtab] Yeah.
[Chuckles]
 

[Howard] One of the tricks that I look at is… Primarily for naming things, but if you're making up a language, English readers… I don't know if this is a problem in other languages, but I know it's a problem in English. English readers will tend to conflate foreign looking words that all begin with the same letter for each other. You have three six letter names that all begin with F. They're all going to be kind of read as the same person. So you may want to find a set of rules for your language that allows you to have different first letters. That's a… It's a silly sort of constraint, because you may have a language where all of the first letters are the same. Every word begins with F.
[Brandon] Orson Scott Card has a really great essay on his website about naming, where he talks about this sort of concept. Varying the length of the names, varying the… Some of them being… Sounding like a word, like calling someone Bean as opposed to calling someone Ender which will… Ways that different names stick in people's heads. It is well worth reading.
[Howard] But with regard to language, specifically, if you are going to be dropping snippets of your alien foreign whatever made-up language in your book, having the words… Let us be able to tell the difference between the words. So that if one of those words shows up later, in a chapter heading, maybe we'll recognize it as a word we've seen before. Maybe that's a plot point. Maybe it's a significant touchstone for us as readers. There needs to be a reason for you to have gone to all this trouble to construct your own language.
[Brandon] I, when I'm building books, I'll use a couple of different styles. It's going to depend, for me, on how much time I want to spend with the language being a source of conflicts. Last month we talked about this idea of cultural setting as conflict. In some of my books, the fact that people don't speak the same language, or the ways that their linguistics work informs the way they see the world becomes a conflict in the story or at least a way that characters are not quite understanding each other or the cultural expectations are being expressed. In those worlds, I spend a lot more time on my worldbuilding and my language. I am not a linguist. Fortunately, my editorial director, Peter, is a linguist. I've taken enough classes that I can be dangerous in this field, so to speak. But you don't need to be a linguist to be able to do this. I really do approach it results-oriented. Why am I doing this? Like Howard said, what is the function of this in my story? Why am I having this happen? In the Stormlight Archive, I have one character who uses a lot of words in a different language. It is to reinforce that his culture is really important to him, and the way that he sees the world involves giving people nicknames from his language. Which really changes the way that the reader and the other characters interact with this character, and has been wonderful for using those linguistics. But the actual linguistics don't matter as much to me as what the role… The role they're taking in the plot.
[Mahtab] Dialect or using certain words can also help you… Help give you a setting, a time. Like, for example, Feed by M. T. Anderson. They use words like unit, which is wow. Or "This is really meg." Words like this. Which was… Although the book was written in 2002, it was an indication that this is a society in the future. I was just reading To Kill a Mockingbird. One of the lines that Miss Maudie says is, "Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy." People don't normally speak that way. So if you use a dialect, or if you use a certain way of putting words, and the order in which you put them could also help you describe whether it's southern US that you're talking about or even India. There are so many dialects. By using it, you can say so much more without saying it. Because that's the way the people in that area talk.
 

[Brandon] Excellent. We are out of time on this episode. Howard, you have our homework.
[Howard] Yes. You are probably familiar, fair listener, with the way human beings name each other. We name each other after our progenitors. We have first names, we have last names. They all sort of run in families. Come up with a naming convention for aliens or fantasy races, whatever. Come up with a naming convention that has nothing to do with family and is completely, completely different.
[Brandon] Completely removed from the way that we do our naming.
[Howard] Completely removed from the way that we name each other.
[Brandon] Awesome. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 13.30: Project in Depth, THE CALCULATING STARS, with Kjell Lindgren.

Aug. 3rd, 2018 11:21 am
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Writing Excuses 13.30: Project in Depth, THE CALCULATING STARS, with Kjell Lindgren.
 
 
Key points: (Beware of Spoilers) The Calculating Stars. Set During Mercury/Apollo era space travel. Start with We Interrupt This Broadcast, an alternate history about slamming a meteor into Chesapeake Bay in the 1950s. Add Lady Astronaut of Mars, an anthology piece that starts with the first line of Wizard of Oz. Then drop back to write the prequel, 40 years before! And you have The Calculating Stars. Decide that the loving relationship, the commitment, is not going to be a conflict point, although stuff going on around them can strain the relationship. Going up there and doing cool astronaut things is actually a very small part of the adventure for the whole team and the family. Put the focus on emotional reactions and societal pressures more than technical pressures. Survival training. Terminology. The emotional reactions to events, the visceral reactions. The vividness of your first launch. Get experts to fill in the jargon.  
 
( What did they say? )
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Project in Depth, The Calculating Stars.
[Mary] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Brandon] And we're not that smart. I'm Brandon.
[Mary] I'm Mary.
[Dan] I'm wondering what evil plague you have in your lungs…
[Laughter]
[Dan] Over there, Brandon.
[Brandon] I don't know how many of these have aired yet, but I haven't been on the NASA episodes yet. You can tell why. I've been on book tour for a week and also caught a head cold.
[Dan] He was sick, so we had to quarantine him from the mission so the rest of us could carry it out.
[Brandon] But I'm stepping in for this one because we're going to talk about Mary's book and we have a special guest star, Kjell Lindgren. Say hi to the audience.
[Kjell] Hello, audience. I'm excited to be here.
[Dan] Welcome back.
[Kjell] Thank you.
 
[Mary] So I am especially excited about this specific Project in Depth, because it has two unique circumstances for you listeners. So, first of all, this is a reminder that in the Project in Depth's, we go full on spoilers. The Calculating Stars is not a heavy book to be spoiled, but if you're one of those people don't want to know anything ahead of time, read the book first, come back and listen. But the reason I'm excited about it is that we are doing this at an interesting point in the process. I have not yet finished… My editor has done all of the structural stuff on it, but we haven't done the line edits, which means that I'm actually going to be able to incorporate any changes that come up during this conversation.
[Ooo]
[Mary] And because this book is set during Mercury and Apollo era space, and it's involving my Lady Astronaut universe, and we have an actual astronaut here, this is also an opportunity for you to kind of hear sort of what it's like to have a sensitivity reader or a specific expert in to talk about a book. This is kind of what this process is like, although obviously usually it's not done in a podcast format.
[Laughter]
 
[Brandon] So, let's address, at least for me, what the elephant in the room is for this. This is a stor… A novel based on a novella that you wrote. Why did you decide to do it? How did you approach it? Like, just that concept? What's going on here?
[Mary] Okay. So what started with this… For most people. Most people first became aware of this through the Lady Astronaut of Mars. Which is not actually the first book in this series… In this universe that I wrote. I call this my punchcard punk universe. The first story I wrote in this was from a writing prompt. It's called We Interrupt This Broadcast. It was about slamming a meteor into the Chesapeake Bay in the 1950s. That one was… That idea I had was it would be really cool if there was a mad scientist and things went slightly wrong because he had forgotten to account for leap year. That was how that started. Then, Lady Astronaut began when I was asked to write something for an anthology called Ripoff in which we had to begin our story with a famous first line. So I began with the first line of Wizard of Oz, which is why I have the International Aerospace Coalition launching rockets from Kansas…
[Laughter]
[Mary] Because I got locked into that.
[Brandon] Did that ever feel like… I don't know…
[Mary] A giant mistake?
[Laughter]
[Brandon] [inaudible restriction?]
[Mary] Yes. Because it doesn't make any sense at all to launch rockets from Kansas. You want to be as close to the equator as you can be. It's nice to have a big body of water in case something goes wrong. I've got none of that in Kansas. So what happened with the novel is that it's set 40 years before the novella with the same character… Same main character. So there was a lot of stuff that I had to justify in the world that I was locked into. There's also stuff that I just… I looked at and like, "Oh, boy, that timeline was wrong." So Elma in Lady Astronaut of Mars just misremembered the dates on that. 'Cause…
[Chuckles]
[Mary] It doesn't make any sense.
[Brandon] Locked into some character things, right? You've got the relationship which... we know what happens in 40 years. So we know that they're going to be in a loving relationship for another 40 years and things like this. Like, there are certain things... Did that ma… Was this the sort of restrictions breed creativity sort of thing or was this a man, I wish I could just toss this continuity?
[Mary] There were times when I… Mostly timeline issues with continuity. The timeline does not actually make sense. But we just, as I say, handwaved past that. The character stuff, there were things about it… I was committed to having a loving relationship. That's… I liked…
[Brandon] That's one of my favorite parts about the book.
[Mary] Thank you. I feel like it's not depicted often enough. So I… One of the things that I knew going into it was that their commitment to each other was never going to be a conflict point. But that all of the stuff that was going on around them would cause stress… Would put strain on the relationship, but not in the OMG, are they going to break up? I never wanted that to be a plot point.
 
[Dan] So, before we get too far into this, I feel like we may have missed a link in this chain earlier. Where was the point where you decided, "Okay, I've written these two shorts. Now I'm going to go back and write a novel." How was that decision made?
[Mary] I don't actually remember completely.
[Laughter]
[Mary] I suspect that it was something along the lines of, "Hey. That just won a Hugo award."
[Laughter]
[Mary] "Can I market that?"
[Dan] Let's capitalize on this thing.
[Mary] Which is really crass. But it was… To a certain degree, it was looking at some of my favorite works. Like Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider… The Ship Who Sang, which was a short story that got expanded and some other things.
[Brandon] Even Dragonflight won the Hugo before it was finished as a novel.
[Mary] Yeah. So I was interested in what that process was like. The other thing was that I have these characters and they've got this really interesting backstory that I haven't explored. Like, I talk about in the novella that Elma was one of the first women… The first people on Mars. How does that come about in the 1950s? How do you get to a point where you have women in space since it took a long time in the real world for that to happen? So how do I make it happen faster? So there was a lot of it that there were just pieces of it that I was interested in, but I don't actually remember what it was that made me go, "This is a good idea."
[Chuckles]
 
[Brandon] So, let's get the astronaut, first thing.
[Laughter]
[Mary] Thank you. Because I've been looking at Kjell. I'm like, so… Yes. Tell… So…
[Kjell] I'm coming at this from a completely blank slate. So, not having read the sequel that was first written, I get to kind of follow this chronologically from when Elma first becomes an astronaut. So… I have to say that the relationship between Elma and Nathaniel is one that… There's clearly a very loving relationship, and frankly, Nathaniel sets a very high bar…
[Laughter]
[Kjell] For husbands everywhere. But it's clear there that that is kind of the emotional core from which Elma draws her strength. I think that that really resonates for those of us that undertake these sometimes… Well, not sometimes. These very risky missions. That we, I think, largely recognize that we could not do this, we could not go through selection and go through training and do all that travel and do the mission as a single entity. It requires support at home from the family. Your spouse has to be on board with this. Your kids have to be on board and understand what all this entails. So, for me, personally, and I see that in Elma also, is that it is an adventure for the team, for the family. The other part of it is that you clearly are showing behind the scenes, that it's not just the astronaut that is going up there and getting to do…
[Mary] Really cool astronauty things.
[Kjell] Yeah, cool astronaut things. In fact, that is a very, very small part of…
[Brandon] Well, that's the book, right?
[Kjell] That's real life.
[Brandon] [inaudible]
[Kjell] That's true, that's true. I mean… So, that is real, also. In a typical astronaut career of… I don't know if you can call 20 years typical, that's maybe six months, maybe a year in space. So most of that time is spent on the ground, with this larger team that makes that possible. That is reflected in these… You know, the calculators that are doing the work and mission control and the engineers and all that. So that is, I thought, really well depicted and reflected in the book.
[Mary] Whew!
[Brandon] I'm going to build off this and ask you a question, because this is one of the most interesting things about this book to me. When you first started talking about it, I remember brainstorming with you. What is now two books was one book. A lot of the things you talked about were going to be… All ended up in the second book, right? The quote unquote exciting parts. Right? The actual flying, the rocketship, and [inaudible]
[Mary] Right!
[Brandon] Yet, this book is very compelling. You made an extremely compelling book out of quote unquote the boring parts. It's not boring at all. In fact, it feels breakneck to me throughout the entire story. So, how did you structure this, knowing that what everyone expected to be the book wasn't going to come until the second book, and how did you keep it paced and exciting?
[Mary] So, this was… when we were talking about it was… My plan was that I was going to structure it like three novellas. That novella one was dealing with the asteroid strike, novella two was the push to the moon, and novella three was the push to Mars. As I got into it and started… Was working on it, there were sections that… Because I knew I was going to be doing them in novella three with the Mars, that I was needing to skip in novella two, the push to the moon, because they felt… It felt… It was going to be repetitive. But it also meant skipping things that were really emotionally important. So I talked with my editor and said I feel like I have made a structural mistake and that this is actually two different books. As soon as we did that, and moved Mars to being its own book, that freed me up to deal with a lot of the unsexy stuff. But the things about… That I had been reading about in all of these different autobiographies by astronauts, talking about the selection process and getting the call and the first time that you do… The first training flights that you do and all of these different things that are these emotional points. So what I was trying to work with was… With this was not so much the question of… It's never a question of is she going to the moon? Is she going into space? That's never… But how and when and what is she going to have to push against? So what I wound up doing was trying to focus more on her emotional reactions to stuff, and also the societal pressures, rather than the technical pressures. The technical pressures, I felt like, well, this is our job, this is what we're doing, this is the thing we do. Then, the societal pressures were kind of more my major plot points. Because it's set in the 1950s, which is in the middle of the civil rights era.
 
[Dan] So, one of those kind of emotional arcs that you do in this book is her overcoming this kind of very intense anxiety disorder that she has. I am wondering how much of that was presaged by the previous books, or is that just you felt like it was important for her character and you created it for this one?
[Mary] It was something that I created for this. By 40 years later, she's got that pretty much under control. In part, because the specific anxiety that she has is a social anxiety disorder. You have things… You strap her on a rocket, she's fine. But you ask her to speak to a large room, she's like, "I'm not okay with that." That is true for a lot of people. Also, oddly, people with things like social anxiety disorder tend to be really good in a crisis situation because they're used to managing low level… Or high-level anxiety all the time. So they're actually quite levelheaded when things are going wrong. I added that because I had a character who was hyper competent. That was this canon thing. She's a pilot, she's this computer… Mathematician. I needed to give her a breaking point, a weakness. That one was a very obvious one for a number of reasons. One of which is that it also allowed me to highlight some of, again, those societal pressures. Because she's bucking against what it is that she's supposed to be doing, the hole that people keep trying to fit her in. So that was one of the reasons I added that to her character.
[Brandon] Oh, go ahead.
[Kjell] I have to say that that societal part was something that it was hard to read. The reactions to… The introduction of the female astronauts, and photos of them powdering their nose in the cockpit, or as they're doing a dunker test, putting them in bikinis. So from today's perspective, I have a really hard time with that. But when I think back to the 50s, and you've just introduced a new astronaut class and you ask this group about cooking in space and this cook about what they're going to accomplish during a mission. I mean, of course, that is very foreign to the experience… I hope is very foreign to our experience now, but it really brings you into the era that we're talking about.
[Mary] It was… That was based on two things, which are both unfortunately real world. One is the way the WASPs were treated in World War II, and a lot of the early women airline pilots… Just even becoming airline pilots. But there was… One of the things that they would have to do… I read about… I think this is in Jerry Cobb's book… But in one of the books about early women pilots, they would talk about how they would fly, and they would own their own company, or they would be… The captain. They would get in the craft, they would fly it to wherever they were going, and then they would have to slide their trousers off and slide a skirt on before they got out, because the people wanted to see them in skirts and heels. That they would have to powder their nose in the craft and put on the lipstick before they got out because that's what the client expected to see. Some of the first women astronauts talked about the different questions that they got from the press. You can read them and you're like, "Yup." I mean, I've pushed it a little, but not very far.
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for the book of the week. You were going to tell us about Riding Rockets?
[Mary] Yes. So this is one of the books that Eileen known very heavily when I was writing this. There were a number of them which we've talked about on other podcasts. But Riding The Rocket… Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane, who is a shuttle era astronaut. It is a fantastic autobiography. One of the things that's great about it is that he came into the program when a lot of the Mercury and Apollo people were still there. So he's got this perspective, where he's looking at the way the program is changing, and also he's a really compelling storyteller and very good with sensory details. I pulled a lot of stuff from that.
[Kjell] I really enjoyed that book as well. It's a great shuttle era book.
 
[Brandon] Let me ask you, Kjell, did you get freezing water squirted in your ear?
[Kjell] I did not get freezing water squirted in my ear. I spent three days and two nights in a freezing Russian forest. But I did not get surprised with a…
[Mary] Yeah. That was… I so wanted… That was one of the things that I wanted to fit into the book and just there wasn't a structural spot for it, was the wilderness survival stuff.
[Kjell] You bet.
[Chuckles]
[Mary] Ah, I wanted that in there. So I'm going to do…
[Brandon] What do you mean by that? Like, you actually… They make you do wilderness survival?
[Kjell] Absolutely. So they did it back in the Apollo days. In fact, there's a great photo of… Actually, I think it's the Mercury 7 out in a desert. They've cut up a parachute and tied it on their heads, they're in various states of undress, because they're out doing essentially desert survival.
[Mary] They weren't sure where they were going to come down.
[Kjell] Right.
[Brandon] Okay.
[Kjell] So, as a part of our training, we do water survival and winter survival to prepare us for the possibility of one, landing in water. The Soyuz spacecraft is designed to land on land. So a water landing requires some additional procedures and training. Then winter survival, because… I did in fact at the end of my mission land in the middle of the night in a blizzard. So had the team not been able to track us, then we would have to have been able to fend for ourselves for a little while. That technology's improved since the days that we really kind of started this training. We have GPS, we have satellite phones. So the fact that we would… The team wouldn't be able to find us is fairly remote at this point. But the winter survival training is a little bit of a… A little bit of a haze.
[Chuckles]
[Kjell] Just to kind… It's that Type II fun that I think in a previous podcast…
[Laughter]
[Kjell] That Tom Washburn was talking about. Type I fun being the fun that you're having in the moment, and the Type II fun the experience that you think back at and you're like, "It's fun, that that is done. That is over."
[Mary] Well, it's also… My father-in-law was Air Force, Vietnam-era fighter pilot, and they did survival training with them as well as a teambuilding…
[Kjell] Sure.
[Mary] And ways to test how you react under pressure situations without the safety net of well, I'm in a simulation. Like, no you're actually…
[Dan] No, you're not…
[Mary] You could actually die out here.
 
[Brandon] So, let's talk about the climax, because we're running… We only have a few minutes left. This book pushes toward lift off quite effectively. I wanted to ask, Kjell, this is your chance. What did she get right, what did she get wrong?
[Kjell] Well, let me tell you, it's clear that you've done your research, because the terminology that you use, even the tempo of the use of that terminology, is really good. The acronyms, people railing against acronyms…
[Chuckles]
[Kjell] That's all… That is all very common to the experience. So in the biographies that you've read, the pieces that you've borrowed, that feels very familiar and sounds very familiar. But you don't dwell on that. That is background. I really appreciate that. What you do… I thought you did a great job of is really focusing on the emotional reaction to various events. Talking… The description of taking off in a T-38 and the ground falling away below, and the same with her other flights, that sensation of taking off. Then the launch. It's not so much a description of necessarily what's happening. You certainly let the reader know what's going on. But it is that visceral reaction, it is the explanation of how she's feeling as she experiences these various milestones as they climb into orbit. That is really what rang true to me, is the description of the person that's going through it, and not so much the technical description of okay, now this is where the rocket is. So not just the launch, and not just taking off. Sitting in Mission Control. How you feel when you see a rocket explode. All these things rang very emotionally true to me.
[Mary] Oh, good. So, here are the hacks that I used to get that.
[Laughter]
[Mary] One is that I noticed in a number of the autobiographies when the astronaut began talking about their launch, their first launch, they switched to present tense. Chris Hadfield's… In his Astronauts' Guide to Life on Earth, says that he's switching to present tense because it is that vivid, that it feels like something that he has just done, because it is unlike… It doesn't fit… It doesn't get blended into other memories.
[Kjell] It's interesting that description of it. I see it in your book as well, is that it is not a narrative of… Like this is my launch narrative, this is what happened when I took off. It is snapshots of memories and emotions that you had at a particular time. So I remember the whole launch sequence, when the engines started, and that there are various specific times, when the launch shroud pulled away so we were able to see out the window for the first time. My first glimpse of the Earth, the arc of the Earth and the blues and whites contrasted against the sky. When… The first time I opened the hatch to get ready to do a spacewalk. Just various specific snapshots. It does feel very present and it's not… You can string those things together as a story, but… Yeah, these are very brief glimpses in time that you remember and just are able to relive.
[Mary] So, let me tell one other hack that I used… Or two other hacks. Because these will be useful for readers. Or for writers. One is that I basically grabbed the Mercury… Because NASA has these online. The transcripts of the Mercury launches and the Apollo launches. And used them as the outline for the scene, and wrote on top of it. Pulling up some stuff to… I'm like, "And we're going to skip past this very long thing." Then the other thing is that… Which Kjell is well aware of… I would write sections and be like, "Then the captain turned and said jargon."
[Laughter]
[Mary] "And he handled his jargon." Then I sent them off to experts. So I would email Kjell and I had a rocket scientist and for Fated Sky, I also had the person who does the algorithms to figure out where the landers should land. I would send it off to them and say, "Can you just play MadLibs with this?"
[Laughter]
[Mary] Katie Coleman also, who's a shuttle era astronaut. So, technically speaking, sections of this book were written by an astronaut.
[Brandon] Or multiple astronauts.
[Mary] Or multiple astronauts.
 
[Dan] The version of this that you sent to me was early enough that it still had a lot of that in there. I remember in particular, I'm fairly certain it's the sequence early on where she is flying the plane into Kansas, and it just broke, and there was about a half page all in brackets that said, "Okay, I haven't written this scene yet, but here's a bunch of jargon I've already collected." Then you just had some sentences that could be used to fit in as she talks to the tower to make the landing. Which is not something I've ever done. I thought that was a really cool trick too.
[Mary] I found a… Without one, I'm not sure if that's the one. There was one of them where I found a training video of how to… It's an Air Force training video from like the 70s or 80s of how to start a T-38. So there's an instructor talking through it, and it's real-time, and… So I'm just like, "Wait. Gonna pause that. What did they just say?"
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Write all this down.
[Mary] Because it's exactly the thing that I have, where I have a trainer, and I have a… The pilot in the back, and these are the back-and-forth between them. I'm like, "Okay. Noting that." My father-in-law had a number of things that were wrong with the… Which I think were all fixed by the time you guys read it. With some of the piloting stuff. Because he had flown all of the planes that I talked about. He was a test pilot, too. So…
 
[Kjell] So there is one piece, though…
[Mary] Yes.
[Kjell] In chapter 34…
[Dan] Oh. I'm excited.
[Mary] Yes.
[Kjell] Where you talk about… So it looks like a grab from shuttle era description of the TALs, the Transatlantic Abort. Talking about the OMS engine systems. So that is very, very shuttle specific…
[Mary] Ooooo...
[Kjell] So for anyone that knows kind of the shuttle lingo, they will see this as a… This is a shuttle lingo grab. So there may be pieces of that that are applicable. It's kind of the Mercury Gemini Apollo era vehicle. But this is probably some of that terminology. You'd have to really make sure that that fits. Because they didn't have an OMS… The shuttle had an OMS engine, but the…
[Mary] Right.
[Kjell] Apollo era did not.
[Mary] Of course they didn't.
[Kjell] We planned aborts for the shuttle, so that they would actually… Could land, so there's a Transatlantic Abort, there's a Return to Launch Site Abort. If you're aborting off of the capsule, you're basically just going into the drink somewhere.
[Mary] Random.
[Kjell] Along the flight path.
[Mary] Okay. Yeah. So that is… 
[Kjell] So we want to reconcile that with this era of spaceflight.
[Mary] Yeah. Thank you. I will totally go… Readers, you will not see that in there because I'm going to go fix that… And get more details on it.
[Dan] But the original version…
[Mary] The original…
[Dan] Will be available somewhere?
[Mary] We're putting the original version up on the… Of anything that I… Chapter 34, up on the Patreon, so you can see after I… See the Transatlantic Abort… No, that's… Of course. Right. I think I probably grabbed that because I couldn't find any stuff about aborting from Apollo and Mercury because of exactly that. Interesting. Huh. Anything else that I got wrong? Please tell me things.
[Kjell] Oh, boy. So, I just want to say, I really enjoyed this alternate history. Because there were brief glimpses… 
[Mary] That's not a thing I got wrong.
[Kjell] No, that's not.
[Laughter]
[Kjell] No, I'm… I don't have a whole lot…
[Dan] Yes, you did. Dewey loves [inaudible]
[laughter]
[Kjell] That's right. Dewey's in charge, and we hear… We see Aldrin and Armstrong and Collins name in the next… The new class of 35 astronauts. So there are pieces of our history that have been borrowed into this, and I really enjoyed that. I love that it started with a cabin in an earthquake, and that her description of the launch was shaking like a cabin in an earthquake.
[Mary] Yay. Circular stuff.
[Brandon] It is a really good book.
[Mary] Thanks.
[Brandon] You guys all have obviously read it, because we told you you had to, but if for some reason you haven't, you need to read this book, so that you can read the sequel.
[Mary] Right.
[Brandon] Which is…
[Mary] The sequel is all space, all the time. I mean, they have to get to space.
[Dan] Most of the time.
[Mary] Most of the time. Yes, and the sequel has a section that I changed because I was talking to Kjell at a convention and he talked about watching in The Martian movie someone changed direction in midair. I remember that he was continuing to talk, and I'm like, "I am rewriting a scene in my head, while this man is speaking to me."
[Laughter]
 
[Brandon] We are out of time, though. We've already gone about 30 minutes. So, Dan, you've got a writing prompt for us?
[Dan] Yes. Okay. So, what we want you to do is re-create for yourself a little of what Mary did with this. Take something you've already written. It doesn't matter what it is. Something you've already finished. Then write a prequel of that that takes place 40 years earlier.
[Brandon] All right. We want to thank Kjell for being on with us.
[Kjell] Thank you for having me.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 7.25: Writing Capers

Jun. 19th, 2012 02:47 pm
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 7.25: Writing Capers

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/06/17/writing-excuses-7-25-writing-capers/

Key Points:
-- Capers, or heists. Start with a job to do, a mastermind/leader, a team of experts to collect. A talk to set up the plan, and the execution. And then there are twists and breakdowns.
-- Two big variations: don't tell the reader the whole plan, and then twist it into something different at the end, OR reveal the whole plan, then have something go horribly wrong.
-- Almost inverse: knowledge of the plan and degree of things going wrong. Note: not revealing the whole plan can be difficult in writing tight third person.
-- Capers have plenty of witty banter and dialogue, partly to carry the reader through the large amount of setup. Use jargon to make readers feel as if they know more than they actually do.
-- Heist plots aren't always about stealing -- it's the team, plan, preparation, and execution.
-- Don't overload the characters, but give them clear roles.
-- Consider the Xanatos gambit, turning evident failure or things going wrong into victory.
-- Plotting can be complicated, because capers require characters and plan to interlock. One approach is to figure out the plan, then work backwards to the necessary characters. Another is to start with characters, then tailor the plan to their skills.
( Putting the team together, planning, preparation, and pulling it off -- the four Ps of capers! )
[Brandon] But we're out of time. So, Dan, give us a heist...
[Mary] Related writing prompt.
[Brandon] Sort of writing prompt.
[Dan] Okay. Your characters need to perform a heist in reverse, and put jewels into a safe without anyone seeing them.
[Brandon] Nice. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
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