Writing Excuses 19.51: And That Was That

Dec. 25th, 2024 02:40 pm
mbarker: (Me typing?)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 19.51: And That Was That
 
 
Key points: Endings! Climax, plus wrap up (aka denouement). Compare end to the beginning. Not just a return to home, but something that reminds us of the beginning, but shows the change. Who, where, what, why do I care? Surprising, yet inevitable, with a lean towards inevitable. Don't just stop, let us see the characters settling into their new status quo. Give the reader a little dessert, some candy! Beware the new question or problem ending! Sometimes cliffhangers are okay. Just make sure the ending is satisfying to the reader. Watch out for shoving the unanswered stuff in the closet! Cliffhangers... how do you give a sense of conclusion while the plot is still open, and there are still big questions hanging? Different kinds of questions: character/relationship questions versus plot/world questions. Use the M.I.C.E. quotient! Lingering effect. Resolving shots. Where will the reader's head canon take them? Think about things you have read that you liked the way they made you feel. Emotional beats, body beats. Playlists! 
 
[Season 19, Episode 51]
 
[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 19, Episode 51]
 
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] And That Was That.
[Erin] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
 
[Erin] So, we're going to talk a little bit about endings and how you have your big moment of climactic excitement and then how you wrap it all up for your reader. When I started thinking about this, I was really thinking about fantasy fiction. Because I feel like in fantasy, the world , like, often changes in these very big, dramatic, like, big ways, and then has... You have to make sense of all that and still bring it back to something that hits home for the reader.So I'm worndering how you all do that?
[Dan] Well, earlier this month we talked about Toy Story, and Toy Story does this wonderfully. That birthday scene at the beginning where they're all freaking out, oh, no, we're going to get a new toy, how is it going to disrupt our status quo? We get that exact scene at the very end, but we get it instead of we need to see if Buzz Lightyear is the new toy, and instead it is Buzz Lightyear is my best friend and we're working together to see what the next toy is going to be. What this is doing, and what I try to do in my writing, is compare the end to the beginning. It doesn't have to be a let's go back to the Shire and see how we've changed. That mythological return to home kind of idea. It can just be something that reminds us of the beginning but shows that it has changed. Recontextualizes it, sees it from a different perspective, so that we can go, oh, okay. Things have changed. A doesn't exactly equal A anymore, because we've added B to it.
[Mary Robinette] I found that I… I do a very similar thing, that I try to look for those resonance moments. I often think about it as doing like the beginning and inverse. And at the beginning of a story, a novel you're attempting to do, to ground the reader with who, where, what, why do I care. At the end, I find that I actually also need to hit those beats again. That I need to let people know who we are with, like, how my character change… Has changed, who they are now. Where we are. Sometimes it's a literal different place, but also, like, what the environment is. And then, the reason to care. It's like why is this important to my character and in giving some aspect of interiority to the character, really helps, for me, like to bring that sense of oh, we're home. This is the return. Even in stories where it's not, oh, and happily ever after. But this is moment.
[Howard] I'm a big fan of the surprising yet inevitable. And if I have to choose between surprising and inevitable, I will choose inevitable. Because that lets the reader feel smart. If I choose surprising, but non sequitur, then I often just make the reader angry. And so… Am I always clever enough to surprise the reader? No. Frankly, I'm not. So I look at surprising, yet inevitable, as the high bar, and reach for inevitability first.
[DongWon] When I think about authors who are famously bad at endings, or at least people complain about their endings a lot…
[Laughter]
[DongWon] So… The safest one to mention is Steven King, for example. Right? People hate Steven King's endings. Especially in his earlier novels. The thing that I notice about these is that they end abruptly. They don't give space for the dénouement, to use the fancy term for it. Right? That beat past the declining action where we get to see the characters entering their new status quo. The reason… I think that that is so unsatisfying. Right? And I think you guys are talking about really excellent points in terms of closing these parentheses, referring back to the initial moments, but also, as the reader, I want my candy now. Right? Like, I've eaten the full meal, but I do want dessert at this point. I want that last bite to leave with that gives me a sense of this was all worth it. Right? And sometimes that bite is a reward of, like, seeing the happy ending for them. Right? To go to Lord of the Rings, Samwise Gamgee getting married, having a good time. That is a candy for Sam. For me, also, the candy is Frodo having to leave the Shire, because he's too traumatized. Right? Because that's something that tells me this journey meant something. It was so weighty and so difficult that poor sweet Frodo is shattered at the end of it. Right? To me, that makes so much of the arc of the whole story feel so heavy and rich and bountiful to me. Because I had that emotional moment at the end. People complain all the time that Lord of the Rings has four endings. I think it's important that it has each of those endings. It tells us that this… I spent the last however many months of my life reading these massive books or however many hours watching these movies that I did something worthwhile. Because the writers took me seriously enough to make sure that I felt good at the end of it.
 
[Mary Robinette] This is something that I had a hard time with when I transitioned from writing short stories to novels, is that I would hit the landing and I'd get out, and I wouldn't give the audience time to breathe and to have that candy. I love that metaphor of the way to describe it. One of the things that I see people do who are historically bad at endings, in addition to the and now we just stop, is that they will introduce a new question, a new problem. And this is very tempting to do all the time, especially, I think, with fantasy. It's like, and what about the other dragon?
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] And it's like, uhuh. Because that's… You're gearing up for a sequel. Not every book has to have a sequel. Often, if you do that, it doesn't feel like the book's ended. So try not to introduce a new story question at the end, trying not to like wrap… Ramp the tension up as you're heading towards the end. So the trick that I've found for myself is that I write that last chapter, my dénouement, my epilogue, I kind of write it as a standalone short story with the same characters and on the same theme.
[Howard] For… [Sigh] Okay. There are a bazillion different structures that we could be working within. And, primarily, when I talk about satisfying readers, I'm talking about satisfying myself and my own familiarity with structures that are primarily Western. And so within those structures, I try to make sure that for the first two thirds… After I hit two thirds of the book, I'm not allowed to introduce new characters, new technologies, new settings, new anything, because I don't want to do that exact thing, Mary Robinette. I don't want to drop a big fat question at the end, and I don't want to drop something that feels like a deus ex machina. The last third of the book, I have to use the toys that I put on the table in the first two thirds. And for me, for the structures and genres that I work within, that's pretty effective for forcing me to narrow my options for an ending.
[Dan] Well, I think it's important to remember that there is a difference between an open-ended ending and a cliffhanger ending. Look at the first Star Wars movie. We know when the Death Star goes down that the Empire's much bigger than this. We know that Darth Vader is still alive. But because of the order in which they present that information to us, we end on an incredibly final satisfying note. It doesn't feel like a stretch to keep telling this story in more movies. But also, we're not left with lingering questions. There's no last minute stinger scene of Darth Vader tumbling in his tie fighter and we go, dumdum-dum, he's still alive. We already know that because that was given to us during the climax. So you can have these kinds of things. You just need to end us on that moment that helps us feel resolved and satisfied.
[Erin] That's sort of reminds me of something we said all the way back when we were talking about beginnings, which is about building reader trust by asking questions and then answering them. I think there's a little bit of that at the end, too. Like, you want to make sure you've answered enough questions in this book that if you raise, like, one additional… Not raise, but if there is an additional piece of information out there, there's more to the world, it feels as if the reader's still got the questions that they had for this book answered, and that they trust that you will answer those questions, like, in the future. I will say that, like, as a… I am… People who are horrible at endings, it me.
[Laughter]
[Erin] So I… Like, one of the things that I do that's a, like, an in between mistake, is the shove everything in a closet. So, this is, like, you're cleaning your room, and you get to the point where you've taken a lot of things out because you were organizing everything, but it looks really bad at that moment. You're like, oh, gosh, everything is everywhere. You could put things in the new places you've picked for them, or you could shove it all in a closet and then, like, close the door. So, sometimes, when things feel like they've ended… When I've written endings and I'm like, this feels unsatisfying… It's because there are things I just didn't want to deal with. Like, I was like, I just didn't really want to answer how they got to this place. So I just decided to ignore it.
[Laughter]
[Howard] In act one, you hang a snow shovel and a trash compactor on the mantle, and everything will fit in the closet in act three.
[Erin] Exactly.
[DongWon] Well, speaking of unsatisfying endings, I think we need to go to break for a couple minutes, and then we'll be right back.
 
[Mary Robinette] Hey, friends. The 2025 retreat registration is open. We have two amazing writing retreats coming up and we cordially invite you to enroll in them. For those of you who sign up before January 12, 2025… How is that even a real date? We're off… [Background noise] As you can probably hear, my cat says we've got a special treat for our friends. We are offering a little something special to sweeten the pot. You'll be able to join several of my fellow Writing Excuses hosts and me on a Zoom earlybird meet and greet call to chit chat, meet fellow writers, ask questions, get even more excited about Writing Excuses retreats. To qualify to join the earlybird meet and greet, all you need to do is register to join a Writing Excuses retreat. Either our Regenerate Retreat in June or our annual cruise in September 2025. Just register by January 12. Learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats.
 
[Erin] Chants of Sennaar is one of my favorite games that I've played in the last year. I'm not the only one. It was nominated for the Nebula award for game writing. So it is a great experience for anyone. Here's what happens. You basically show up in a tower, and people are speaking to you, and it's like, "Mum, mum, mummum." You're just seeing symbols and you have to figure out from context what their words mean. That's what the gameplay is. You're figuring out, oh, okay. Mammut means plant, and blah blah blah blah means upstairs. And you're figuring it out and you're putting it together. And then, you move to another level where people are saying cheek check bawk bawk… Whatever. They're using a completely different language, and whatever it is, you have to figure out that one. Then you have to figure out how to understand what each of these different level people are doing, what their language is, and figure out that, like, tick-tock in one language means rawr rawr in another, and bring people together through puzzle solving and language. It's amazing. The art is great, the music is great. And if you've ever thought hey, writing can drive people wild, this is a game that I know that you'll love. So, check out Chants of Sennaar.
 
[DongWon] Okay. So we were talking about this a little bit before the break. But I was wondering if we could talk about cliffhangers more specifically. Right? Because I think there's a specific art to ending on big open questions leading into book 2, leading into book 3, whatever it is, but still giving readers a sense of completion. Right? I was thinking… I re-watched the second Spiderverse movie the other day, which ends on an incredible cliffhanger. But also I… When I watch that movie, it's such a satisfying sense of completion, because questions were answered about the characters. Things were closed off about when Stacy started here, she ends here. Miles starts here, Miles ends here. So how do you get people… Characters to a sense of conclusion while the overall plot clearly is still hanging open and there's huge questions about what's going to happen to these people?
[Erin] I think… I love the Spiderverse as well as an example, for one thing, because it's just a great movie.
[DongWon] It's incredible.
[Erin] Also, it reminded me that there are different types of questions. I think sometimes we forget that. That there are character questions and relationship questions that we're answering that are different than plot questions or world questions. So I think figuring out what the core is of the story, going back and looking at the beginning. What was the promise you were making? I feel like Spiderverse, for example, is a movie that promises an emotional… That there's going to be an emotional and character development. And since it delivers that and answers some of those questions, I don't care as much about the theory dangling plot questions that are going to be…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] Answered in the next movie.
[Dan] Yeah. For me, a lot of this comes down to making sure that you really know what your story is about. I… For example, and this is a very thin example. I'm sure I could think of better ones if I tried. But, Fellowship of the Rings… The movie, in particular, ends on this, well, and now we are out of time. Please come back next year. But that's the plot. Emotionally, what most of this story has been about is Frodo trying to decide is he in control of his own destiny, and is he willing to put other people in danger? And that emotional plot conflict gets resolved very solidly at the end when he's like, yes, I am in control. No, I won't put anyone else in danger. I'm going to go do this myself. So, from that perspective, it does feel done and satisfying. Because we have tied off a major thread. Even though there's clearly many others. So… Fellowship, I think, is an example where they could have tied that off better if that had been a priority for them. But making sure that you know what the story is actually about. I just watched a really wonderful movie called Polite Society which is a Pakistani British action comedy thing about sisters. These two sisters start off best friends, and then this huge rift shows up and it ends up with this giant like martial arts punch out. They defeat the villain, and a lesser movie would end there. This movie remembered, nope, this is a story about sisters. So we get that breathing room denouement at the end where they are back together, best friends, doing the things they used to do, and that lets us know that the real story is over.
 
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I will surprise no one. So, the M.I.C.E. quotient…
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] But, the M.I.C.E. quotient is a very useful tool for thinking about these and categorizing them. So. Sometimes what I will do at the end is I will sit down and look, okay, I started with an event story and then I've got a character story. Most of my middle is actually spent in a milieu, and then I wrap that up. But then I still have my event and character that I have to wrap up at the end. And I will often make a plan to go back and revise the beginning so I'm opening things in different orders. But at the end, going back to something Dan said earlier about the order in which you present the information to the reader, that's what I think about most when I'm doing these endings is what emotion do I want the reader to walk away with. If you think of it like a drug, what is the lingering effect? Like, you put up with a bunch of side effects, but there's this one long term effect that you want. What is that one long term effect? So, for cliffhangers, the long term effect that I want is what happens next? So that's the beat that I'm going to land on at the very very end. And if I don't want that cliffhanger, the what happens next, then I'm either going to not raise that question at all or I am going to put it earlier so that the beat of oh, I feel good about these characters and they seem healthy right now.
 
[Dan] We have talked so much this year about establishing shots. But we haven't really talked about this kind of resolving shot. The satisfying shot at the end. How do you want… What promises do you want to make at the beginning, but then what emotions do you want to leave them with at the end? I think that's a really smart thing to think about, and I'm going to call it a resolving shot.
[Mary Robinette] That's great. I'm going to claim that and copyright it right now.
[Laughter]
 
[Howard] One of the questions I ask myself when I'm writing and ending… And I ask myself this question because I'm the sort of person who consumes a thing and then immediately does what I'm going to get to in a moment, and that is where will the reader's head canon take them after they read the last line? What's the story they are automatically going to try to tell themselves next? I don't control that. I… They're going to take what I wrote and then they're going to… If I don't write an ending, they're going to write their own ending. If I write an ending they don't like, they're going to email me.
[Laughter]
[Howard] If I… But what is the head canon that I want to leave them with. And often, that… Using that as a framing for the resolving shot, that's… The cowboys riding off into the sunset. Well, you know, there's another Silverado down the road that will need their help, and that's the head canon that we get for that kind of thing.
[Erin] I'm wondering in setting up these sort of resolving shots, how do we know? I think that we've been assuming that you know exactly the feeling that you want to end with. But what if you're not sure? Is there anything you can look to, sort of in your writing so far, in order to figure out what is the best way to end things? Where… What is the thing that will satisfy the reader and yourself as the writer?
[Howard] For young writers, and when I say young, I mean writers who are new to writing, what are the things that you read that you liked the way it made you feel? Model your writing on the feeling map of those things, and… That's a great place to start. For writers who are more advanced, you already have a million techniques that are better than anything I can tell you.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Just write.
 
[DongWon] Yeah, I mean, really it is digging down to what is the emotional thing that you want to leave. Right? Like, what's the thing that will make your reader feel the book in their body, when you leave them with it. Because that's the thing they're going to be the most excited about. So, if you're me, how do you make them as sad as possible in the last scene?
[Laughter]
[DongWon] Right? Or, in the case of Spiderverse, ending on a beat that is so exciting everyone's jumping out of their chairs and yelling. Right? Like, it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. But I think leaning into the genres of the body is the way to go for these last beats. Making them laugh, making them cheer, making them cry. Those are the kinds of things. Or making… Feeling a saccharine sweetness. Right? I think that's… When you want to leave that lingering taste, think about how do you do it with this kind of intensity.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I want to say that that feeling in the body is really the key because sometimes I will see writers say I want them to think, ah, that was a really clever twist. It's like, that's not… That's a… That's not a…
[Dan] That's not an emotion.
[Mary Robinette] That's a beat and a moment, and it's not something that lingers with you. It is not something that you necessarily feel in your body. Sometimes… But, ah, that writer was clever. It's like that's not… That's not a useful goal.
[Howard] Yes. Surprising yet inevitable is not satisfying if it doesn't also have the body shot…
[DongWon] Right.
[Howard] Accompanying it.
[DongWon] Horror movies end on that last jump scare because they want you feeling bad and nervous as you walk to your car as you leave the theater. They want you to be afraid as you leave because that is going to be the thing you remember about that movie. If you feel that way, then you're going to get home and be like, yo, you gotta go watch that movie. I was so scared the whole time. Even if you were only scared in the last 10 minutes of it. Right?
 
[Mary Robinette] One of the things that you can do if you're… We've talked about looking at other media that you consume, but the other thing that's really simple is you can make yourself a playlist.
[Yeah]
[Mary Robinette] That encapsulates the moods that you want. If you listen to a song and you're like, that! That's what I want my book to feel like. A lot of times it is because you're feeling that song in your body, and you can start to reach for what are the tools that I can use. Some of the tools that we talked about earlier when we were talking about character, some of the tools that are coming… That were coming out of language. These are all tools that you can use to manipulate that last moment and, yes, manipulate your reader so that they have that body feeling.
[DongWon] Think about mood [garbled], think about playlists, those kinds of things.
[Erin] What I love about all this is we talked earlier about looking at the beginning, and then look at the beginning and the ending. I love that, because I'm thinking on my playlist, maybe I want to relisten to that first song…
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] That got me excited at the very end. Because that reminds me of the feeling that got me into the story, and that's maybe the feeling that I want my reader to have going out of it.
 
[Erin] And, with that, I have your homework for the week. Which is going to be to think of how your story, how your novel, how what you've been writing this month is going to end. Think of the first ending you can think of, and then think what might be the next scene, then write that. And then, the very last thing that we want you to do, is to celebrate yourself. Because no matter where you started, no matter where you end up, you have tried something really difficult this month, and we're really excited for you, proud of you, and really want to see whatever story that you have. I can't wait to read it.
 
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
[Howard] Have you ever wanted to ask one of the Writing Excuses hosts for very specific, very you-focused help. There's an offering on the Writing Excuses Patreon that will let you do exactly that. The Private Instruction tier includes everything from the lower tiers plus a quarterly, one-on-one Zoom meeting with a host of your choice. You might choose, for example, to work with me on your humorous prose, engage DongWon's expertise on your worldbuilding, or study with Erin to level up your game writing. Visit patreon.com/writingexcuses for more details.
 
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Writing Excuses 18.47: NaNoWriMo Week 4 - Climaxes, or OH MY GOD NO

Nov. 22nd, 2023 07:08 pm
mbarker: (Fireworks Delight)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 18.47: NaNoWriMo Week 4 - Climaxes, or OH MY GOD NO
 
 
Key Points: Making the turn from opening to closing. Beware the three-quarters mark! Switching modes, from opening questions, introducing new problems, etc. to solving problems and wrapping things up. Treat yourself with candy bar scenes! Switch from yes-but to yes-and. Keep track of the questions and promises from the beginning. Use the MICE Quotient! What's the impossible choice the character faces here? Concentric circles of nested problems! Write yourself notes. Leave notes in square brackets. Ask your writing group what you forgot. Ask yourself what new goals your character has.
 
[Season 18, Episode 47]
 
[DongWon] Hello, writers. Whether you're doing NaNoWriMo, editing your newest project, or just desperately trying to keep up with your TBR pile, it's hard to find the time to plan and cook healthy and nutritious meals to keep you energized on these jam-packed days. So, I'm here to tell you about Factor, America's number one ready to eat meal delivery service. They can help you fuel up fast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with chef prepared, dietitian-approved, ready to eat meals delivered straight to your door. You'll save time, eat well, and stay on track with one less excuse to keep you from writing. This November, get Factor and enjoy eating well without the hassle. Simply choose your meals and enjoy fresh, flavor-packed deliveries right to your door. Ready in just 2 minutes, no prep and no mess. Head to factormeals.com/WX50 and use code WX50 to get 50% off. That's code WX50 at factormeals.com/WX50 to get 50% off.
 
[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 18, Episode 47]
 
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] NaNoWriMo Week 4. The three-quarter mark. Making the turn from opening to closing.
[Erin] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Erin] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[Dan] And I'm Dan.
 
[Erin] Today, we're going to talk about, as we move from the opening part, the gallop away of writing through NaNoWriMo, to the end. Which is near. But my question for you all is what is the difference between the way that you write when you're starting something in the way that you write when you're ending something? Because we're going to be transitioning between these two. What are we transitioning between?
[Mary Robinette] So, this is a thing that it took me forever to figure out. Why I always bogged down at the three-quarter mark. I think it's because you're switching modes. So, for me, what I find is at the beginning, I am opening questions, I'm throwing out possibilities, I'm making things worse. I'm introducing new problems. At the end, I have to start solving problems and wrapping things up. It's like the difference between when you arrive on vacation and you've got a bag and you just open it and you pull your stuff out, and then when it's time to go home and you have to somehow get everything back into the suitcase. It never goes back into the suitcase the way you think it's going to. But also, you don't want to. Because you just want to keep pulling things out. So, for me, it's the difference between asking questions, in a general sense, and answering them.
[Erin] That makes sense, but it almost sounds like it's the anticipation of that ending part. So, like, it's not the last… You're not throwing the things in the suitcase yet, but you're figuring out what you're going to wear the day before the last day, and you're like, "Oh, gosh. There's stuff all over this hotel room."
[Chuckles]
[Erin] All over this cruise cabin, and at some point, I'm going to have to do it. It can almost make you not enjoy the thing that you're doing right now, as you're like thinking ahead to what's coming.
 
[Dan] One of my favorite stories about writing is an interview Neil Gaiman gave when he was writing… I think it was Coraline, it might have been The Graveyard Book… He said that he hit this point in the book where he just hated everything, the book was not working, the characters didn't work, the story was terrible. He called his agent and he said, "I'm sorry, I don't think I can write this. It's awful." She laughed and said, "Oh, you're at the three-quarter's mark aren't you?"
[Chuckles]
[Dan] "You call me every single time and give me the same thing. Keep going, you'll be fine." A lot of it is just our tendency to get inside of our own heads and to think I'm almost to the end of the tight rope. Of course, I'm going to fall off these last few feet. No you're not. You're doing great. We have to… Like Mary Robinette said, start answering questions instead of asking them. Asking questions is so easy because we can ask anything we want. That's a problem for future Dan...
[gasp]
[Dan] But then…
[DongWon] Now you're future Dan.
[Dan] Now I'm future Dan, and some jerk asked a bunch of questions. I have to find not only answers, but good answers that make sense and pull all the threads together that I've been carefully laying out and make them into this beautiful, beautiful perfect ending. It can be incredibly overwhelming even if it isn't actually difficult. It's just it looks like it's going to be so hard.
[DongWon] I can't tell you how many times I've had that exact same phone call…
[Chuckles]
[DongWon] Where I told my writers, "It's okay. You're most of the way through a book. You're two thirds, you're three quarters. It just feels not great sometimes when you're there." I do think it's really interesting to hear from your perspective why that is, that making this turn from rising action, where you get to be introducing things, and now you start having to answer the questions that you've asked. Right? So, I guess my question for you guys is how do you start answering those? Right? Like, how do you start bringing people moving away from each other and having to have them re-intersect, having your villains and your heroes, your antagonists, romantic interests, whatever it is, start actually reaching the point that they're on their collision paths and start colliding?
 
[Erin] I think that's a great question. But, actually even before that, just to kill this metaphor of the vacation, is that there's something nice about like you've got the outfit that you feel really great in for that particular day, and it's that you want to find something that you can treat yourself with in this part of the book. Like, there's something at the three quarters mark that you get to do, which is that the big huge explosions, whatever those are, whether they're literal explosions or emotional explosions, like those get to happen at this moment. There's a person that I know calls them candy bar scenes. The scenes that you're sort of waiting for that are rewarding yourself. So, if you think, yes, I do have to bring everything back together, but also, this is the part where I get to open and eat this candy, it's a way to keep yourself excited while you answer that question of how you're going to pull everything back together.
 
[Mary Robinette] I think that's a great idea. I've talked before about how there's scenes that I've been waiting to get to. Like, just eager to write. One of the tricks that I use is that I shift the way that I'm handling try-fail cycles. So, up to about this point, I've been doing the yes, they succeed, but something goes wrong. So if you think about yes as a progress towards a goal, and no as progress away from a goal. Reversals. But you think about and as a continuation of motion, and but as a reversal. So, I switch from going yes-but to yes-and. So I start giving my characters bonus actions. Like, we're trying to break into this safe. Does it work? Yes. And there's also this other piece of secret information in the safe that we weren't expecting to find. So I'll give them bonus actions. With the no, it's like are we able… If, instead I'd been like, are we able to get into the safe? No. But in the process of doing that, we accidentally set off the alarms, which is now preventing the cops from getting to us. So we have extra time. So, like that, giving them that tiny bonus action, I start sprinkling those in. So when I'm starting to move to the end and I can sort of feel story bloat happening, I will look at it and be like, "Okay. How can you give them success and a little bit of a bonus action?" If  I want to keep the tension going, then I give them no and then a little bit of a bonus action.
[DongWon] I love this idea of candy bar scenes. This plays really well into what you're saying in terms of switching from one model to the yes-and. Because there should be joy as you're heading into the climax. There should be emotional resolution. Right? I was thinking about the Spider-Man into the Spiderverse. Right? Where before you get to the big climactic battle, there are all of these like incredibly heartfelt emotional scenes that lead to this... one of the most triumphant scenes I've ever seen in cinema, when Miles like finally owns his own power and does an incredible jump off the building. That's such an iconic shot. It's like you have these incredible emotional highs in that that come from getting to have… The candy bars of his dad telling him that he loves him and he's proud of him and all these things. Of him believing in himself. Like, we've been going through it with him for so long and so hungry for that, that by the time we get that treat, it's a whole feast. It's such a powerful moment. So, I think when you're thinking about how to go into… We started by talking about why this is also hard. This doesn't make it easy necessarily, but I love this idea of framing it as a treat for you, the writer, a treat for the character, and a treat for the audience. This is the reward we've been hanging out for this entire time.
[Dan] It always helps me to remember that so many writers are also bad at this.
[Laughter]
[Dan] Right? We talk so much about movies. How many action movies have you seen that have two acts, an hour and a half, whatever, of brilliant dialogue and funny stuff, and then Act III is just a gunfight or a chase scene and then it ends? Right? Like, most of the Marvel movies are this way. Incredibly interesting questions in Winter Soldier about the… Where's the line between safety and security? How far can we push this? What are we going to do? What's the answer to this question? At the end, the movie doesn't answer that question, it just has a big fight scene. But then, one of the ones where they did it really well was in Endgame. Where, yes, the 3rd act is a giant fight scene, but it is filled with these candy bar scenes, these character moments. That's when we get on your left, and all the people show up. That's when we get Avengers Assemble that we've been waiting 23 movies for. That's when we get all these little heroic stand up and cheer moments. So it's not just a fight scene, it's more than that.
[Erin] And, at this moment, we're going to take a break. When we come back, more candy.
 
[Mary Robinette] NaNoWriMo is just around the corner and it's time to start planning. If you're aiming for 1600 words a day, it's easy to de-prioritize eating, but you need to keep the brain fueled. During Nano, I turn to meal kits. Hello Fresh makes whipping up a home-cooked meal a nice break from writing with quick and easy options, including their 15 minute meals. With everything pre-proportioned and delivered right to your door every week, it takes way less time than it takes to get a delivery. I find that stepping away from the keyboard to cook gives my brain time to rest. I love that with Hello Fresh, I can plan my meals for the month before NaNoWriMo begins, and then, I can save all my decision-making for the stories. With so many in season ingredients, you'll taste all the freshness of fall in every bite of Hello Fresh's chef crafted recipes. Produce travels from the farm to your door for peak ripeness you can taste. Go to hellofresh.com/50WX and use the code 50WX for 50% off plus free shipping. Yeah, that's right. 50WX. 50 for 50% off and WX for Writing eXcuses. We are terrible with puns. Just visit hellofresh.com/50WX and try America's number one meal kit.
 
[DongWon] Hey, writers. You're doing a hard and difficult thing. I'm sure at this point it feels like you've been doing it forever, and will be doing it forever. That said, I'm not going to tell you it gets better. I'm here to tell you that you can survive this. Doing hard things is hard. That's okay. Making art should be hard. Especially in the middle of it when you're past the initial rush of starting and you can't yet see the finish line. It's like walking a very long way. When you're doing something like that, I think a lot about the mile markers. For me, they're a blessing and a curse. They remind me of how far I've come, and how far I have to go. For me, surviving any kind of endurance activity requires focusing on the present moment. Thinking about the next step that's in front of me and putting out of my mind how far away the end is. So, sometimes I try to ignore the mile markers. To refuse to acknowledge how long I've been walking and how long I will be walking. But the problem with that is it means I forget to have joy in the process. I forget the mile marker means I've accomplished something great, I walked another mile. I took another step. If the answer is to be truly present in the moment, that also means honoring what it means to have made it this far. So, I'm asking you now to stay in the moment. I want you to celebrate today's word count. Don't focus on the total. Focus on the accomplishment. Focus on what you've done. I know it's hard. I know it's long. But you've come this far, and I'm so proud of you for doing so. You've got this. Keep taking that next step. Keep putting the next word down and keep going. I'll see you at the end.
 
[Erin] All right. So we are back from our break. I actually want us to answer… Sort of answer a little more the question, DongWon, that you asked earlier before we got distracted. Which was how do you actually start bringing things back in. So you're treating yourself, but you can't treat yourself so much that you forget the story that you're telling. I think one way, actually, is to be more explicit about the questions that you're asking. Because I think what happens in those action movies, Dan, that you were talking about is that sometimes the story gets so excited by the treats that it forgets the questions that it's set up in the first half and actually doesn't think to answer them because there's so much like, "Oh, I've gotta do this," or, "I've gotta get to the ending." But you forget that you left out the questions about safety and security, or these bigger thematic issues. So, I'm curious, how do you keep track of like the promises that you made at the beginning and sort of how to make sure that you're keeping track of them as you move towards the end?
[Mary Robinette] I mean, this is why I lean on the M.I.C.E. Quotient so much. Because it… Usually, there's a fairly clear question-y kind of thing at the beginning and… So, like… I often describe this area of the book is one of the places where the character has to face an impossible choice between their goal and a failure state, or between which goal they're willing to sacrifice in order to obtain the other. So, like, if they're afraid of heights, they're absolutely going to have to go out on a ledge right now. So, I will often look back at what I have at the front of the book. Part of my mechanical process, which is harder doing Nano, but I will often pause at the three quarters point and read through what I've already written. Then keep going with the pieces I'm excited about, knowing that some of the stuff I've written I'm going to discard because it's less exciting to me. So it's less candy. But, for me, those are some things. The other thing, for me, mechanically, is something that Dan taught me, which is the 7 point plot structure. This is the point where I'm going to look at Dan meaningfully…
[Dan] Oh.
[Laughter]
[Dan] I was excited for you to just talk about how smart I am for a while.
[Mary Robinette] so, yeah, the 7 point plot structure is specifically… There's the point where, right around in here, the hero finally has all of the tools that they need in order to solve the problem. So, recognizing… It's like, "Oh. This is something that I can do on purpose. I can look for what does my main character need? What are the problems? What is the goal and the failure state?" They're going to have to make that impossible choice. Then, like, what tools… we're coming up on that impossible choice. What tools do I need to have in their hand so that when they get to that choice, they can make it?
[Dan] Yeah. I love to think of these choices specifically as like kind of concentric circles of nested problems. The example that leaps to mind is The Nice Guys. That's probably my favorite detective movie ever. So we start with this kind of outside problem. Here's a weird mystery, we need to solve it. Then, we introduce, here's this detective who's an absolute mess and his daughter doesn't respect him. Then we introduce here's this other detective who the daughter thinks is probably a bad guy. Then we're going to resolve those in opposite order. In the final fight scene, we get Mr.… Is it Haley or Holly, whatever his name is… If you kill that man, I will never speak to you again. Of course, at this point in the movie, that means something coming from this 12-year-old girl. We love her. She's the best character in the story. So he leaves the person alive, and we get… We've tied off that inner circle. He has proved himself a good person to this girl. Then we tie off the next one. Ryan Ghosling succeeds, he saves the day, he doesn't screw up for the first time in his life, and his daughter smiles at him. Okay. We've got that respect. Then, at the very end, we tie off the whole thing, we've solved the mystery, we know what's going on. So if you think about it in those terms, of there's not just one conflict, there's several, you can nest them like that and then solve them in reverse order. That gives your ending a lot of structure that you might not have known was already there.
[DongWon] This really ties into one of the things we were talking about last week when we were discussing raising the stakes, which is introducing multiple threads of stakes. Right? This gives you the opportunity to build to your… Keep increasing the tension and ratcheting things up, even though you're closing things off, because if you do have those nested stakes, if you do have that multiple thread, your heroes can defeat a mini bot, have an emotional resolution. The big conflict is still coming, the last sort of act of this is still playing out, but you have these beats to give you those candy scenes, to give you those points of resolution. The more you have those little things closing off, that is a signal to your audience that, okay, we are in the denoue… Not denouement, but we're making the turn here. Right? We're in the three quarters mark, we're moving towards the big climax here. So giving people those little signals can be a great way to build tension as well.
 
[Erin] This can be difficult, definitely, all of this during Nano because you're just… You're moving at a pace. You're going really quickly. But one thing that I like doing during a Nano project is actually writing myself notes about what threads might be or what the concentric circles might be as I'm going. So, like, at the end of the day, I might write, like, one note of, like, the coolest thing that I randomly wrote that day. Like, I'll be like, "He [garbled smashed?] the spider."
[Laughter garbled comments]
[Erin] Maybe that doesn't come up again because I forget about it but then when I get to that three quarters mark, I can't do the thing Mary Robinette was talking about, where you read the whole book, but I can read back a page of very slightly incoherent notes, and be like, "Oh, yes, that is a spider…"
[Chuckles]
[Erin] "This is a chance for me to like make that kind of come back."
[DongWon] Erin, I'm not sure about this Spider-Man reboot. I know it's like any other one, but this one might be a little tough for me.
[Dan] I'm hoping this is part of the "the house is full of bees" universe.
[Laughter]
[Erin] It is.
[Mary Robinette] That's why it's so traumatic for him. I do a very similar thing during Nano because, as you say, I do not have time to read through the whole thing at this point. But I… All through the process, I am leaving notes for myself in square brackets. So I will, at this point, just look for any note that I have left for myself to see, like, what great idea I had earlier that I'd totally forgotten about by the time I get to this. Because you've probably left something to yourself, a note someplace. It doesn't make any sense. That's okay. You can still, like, try to fold it in here.
 
[Erin] Yeah. Even if you haven't left a note to yourself, a lot of times people work collaboratively during Nano so if you have any friends that you're working with in your writing group, you can ask them, "Is there something I was mentioning like 2 weeks ago maybe…"
[Laughter]
[Erin] "That you haven't heard me say anything about recently?" They'll be like, "Yes. There was a spider dead." You're like, "Yes. The time is now."
[DongWon] That's what it was.
[Erin] Spider dead and the bees.
[Laughter]
[Dan] That's one of the reasons I find writing group so useful, is because if there's something you forgotten about, they haven't. Because you have asked this intriguing question and they really want to know the answer to it. They'll be like, "Why haven't we ever gotten back to his dad being a spider?" Like, "Oh! Yes! Don't worry, I have some really cool plans."
[DongWon] Again, all of the things we're talking about our big structural tools. Right? These are stuff that will be as useful to you in editing and in drafting when maybe you are trying to hit this insane deadline every week of getting certain words out. But, hopefully, all of this is at least giving you some framework and some ways to think about, "Okay. How am I approaching this week of work?" Right? Now that we're in week 4, how am I thinking about the words I'm going to get down on the page?
[Mary Robinette] One of the other things that you can do, particularly as a Nano thing and if you're discovery writing, remember way back when we were talking about objective and super objective, one of the things that will happen to the character is that their goals will shift as they change. So you can look at it now and say what new goal does my character have based on their new understanding of who they are. Because… Like, it still needs to be tied to that super objective and to those initial opening questions, but, like, what is their new solution? That will often help you get towards the final final climactic battle because the new solution is an easier thing to solve. Or their new… Like, oh, this is what I can do. Their new goal is an easier thing to solve then whatever thing they have been continually failing at.
[DongWon] Right.
[Erin] This sounds like a great point to get some homework.
 
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, this is a trick that I picked up from Dan. Which is, read through what you wrote the session before. Not the day, not everything, but just the session. So if you wrote for 10 minutes, that's all you get to reread. You can make minor edits if you're adding words. But you can't cut anything because it's Nano and every word counts. Use brackets to make notes to yourself about stuff you want to go back and plant earlier, things that you are going to need for your character to solve what's coming up, but you don't have to actually go back and do that right now. You're just going to use this as a launching pad to move on.
 
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
[Mary Robinette] Do you have a book or a short story that you need help with? We're now offering an interactive tier on Patreon called Office Hours. Once a month, you can join a group of your peers and the hosts of Writing Excuses to ask questions.
 
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Writing Excuses 17.40: Questions & Answers About Structure, with Special Guest Peng Shepherd

Oct. 7th, 2022 05:10 pm
mbarker: (BrainUnderRepair)
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Writing Excuses 17.40: Questions & Answers About Structure, with Special Guest Peng Shepherd
 
 
Q&A Summary:
Q: How can I avoid putting too few or too many plot threads into my story? How do I know when I have the right number of them?
A: Put them in priority order. Big overarching storyline, big B story, then... Every MICE Quotient major thread makes a story roughly half again as long. Practice. If you lose track of the plot threads while writing, there are too many threads.
Q: How do you spread the structure of a plot line over several books? How do you know when to split it structurally in order to get the right payoffs?
A: Beware publishers splitting books. Each book, and each section, needs a satisfying ending. 
Q: How do you ensure that smaller plots or smaller POVs don't make the reader lose sight of the main plot or feel like the subplot is an unwanted diversion?
A: Character attention can direct reader attention. Watch out for repetition. Make your A plot your shopping trip, and any subplots are impulse purchases that need to be attached to the shopping.
Q: What are some strategies or lines of questioning we can use to better align the character goals, the villain goals, and the overall problem of the story?
A: The character and villain goals should come into conflict. Think about why the character and villain want these things, and how those come into conflict. Often the character needs to give up the want for the need, and you need to tie that to the greater need. 
Q: Besides studying successful story structures for guidance, are there clear do's and don'ts when it comes to story structure? What are they?
A: No. Whatever works for you and keeps you writing. Watch out for characters that do what's in the outline, but it hasn't been motivated or signposted for the reader. 
Q: What methods of assembling structure do you use? 
A: 3x5 cards laid out based on plot thread elements. Cat plotting. Scrivener notecards. 
 
[Season 17, Episode 40]
 
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, Questions & Answers About Structure, with Special Guest Peng Shepherd.
[Dan] 15 minutes long.
[Brandon] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
[Mary Robinette] We have our special guest with us, Peng Shepherd.
[Peng] Hi, everybody. I'm Peng. I'm very glad to be here.
[Mary Robinette] Remind our listeners a little bit about who you are. You did a wonderful master class with us about structure, and we wanted to bring you back to do a questions and answers. So can you just remind folks a little bit about who you are?
[Peng] Sure. I am a novelist. I am the author of The Book of M, and most recently, The Cartographers. I'm very excited to be back, because I just love… So we did the whole master class about structure, and I had said many times in many of the episodes, "I am such a structure nerd." I went away and I thought about it and I wondered, why am I such a structure nerd? I think that because I'm also a discovery writer, structure is kind of my outline in a way that an outline is an outline for an outliner. So I think I might… I depend on it the way that a plotter might depend on an outline.
[Mary Robinette] Yep.
[Howard] I loved the structure master class. My only regret is that I came away from it a day later with all kinds of epiphanies about microstructures, and ended up deploying brand-new techniques that I didn't even have names for through the current project, my current work in progress, as a result of having a podcast conversation where we're all supposedly knowledgeable and stuff. I just learned things and didn't say any of them into the microphone.
[Mary Robinette] One of the things that listeners who listen to that podcast might remember is me having a moment where I said, "Oo, I think you just solved the next novel that I'm working on." I am pleased to report that the… That is true.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] And that I did use the calendar structure. I am using the calendar structure that we talked about for The Martian Contingency. Now you might be wondering where these questions are coming from and how you can ask questions on a podcast. The answer is that we are doing this podcast live in front of the attendees of the Writing Excuses workshop and cruise.
[Cheers]
[Mary Robinette] So, these are their questions. Dan, what's our first question?
 
[Dan] Our first question is very basic, but it's something that a lot of people have. This is a common one. This comes from Corinne Flynn. How can I avoid putting too few or too many plot threads into my story? How do I know when I have the right number of them?
[Peng] That's a good question. I would advise putting them, I think, in priority order first. Because you've got to have one overarching storyline that's going to carry you through. Then there is usually a pretty big B story. Then, after that, there's not necessarily a lot of room. I mean, how many plot lines have you had in a…
[Mary Robinette] Well, it depends on the story. The thing that I… Because you all know that I talk about the MICE Quotient incessantly. But the thing that I say is that every MICE Quotient ele… Like, major thread can make a story roughly half again as long. But not every plot thread is a major plot thread. So. How do you handle it, Brandon?
[Brandon] My last Stormlight book first draft was 400… 520,000 words long. I have a lot of plot threads going on…
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] In one of these books. But I would say, early on, practice is just what got me there. Unfortunately, that's the answer to so many things. My first book that I tried writing when I was a brand-new baby writer, I got like 200,000 words in, and I'm like, "That feels like an ending," and then just had a fight.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] Didn't resolve very much at all. I'm like, "And it's book one!" I didn't know I was writing book one, but there it is. Over time, the more I wrote, the more I came to understand what a plot thread requires from me to do it in a way that I find a satisfying narrative. That's why I can now, decades later, right 400+ thousand word books with a lot of different plot threads, because I know how much they each take.
[Mary Robinette] I just want to double check. Was that 400,000 words in addition to the five secret novels?
[Brandon] So this is the Stormlight book I released before I launched into those.
[Mary Robinette] Okay. Great.
[Brandon] Right.
[Mary Robinette] Thank you.
[Brandon] So…
[Mary Robinette] I just wanted to know where to…
[Brandon] Sounds cooler. Each of the secret novels were between 90 and 110,000. I'm sure it's kind of the same with you folks, that as you write, you get a feel for how long a story takes you. So you're like, "I know that this one's going to be around 100,000 words," and you just launch towards that, whether you have an outline or not, and you are consistently in that same range. This is an experience thing.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] If I'm losing track of the plot threads while I'm writing it, then structure notwithstanding, that's too many plot threads. Maybe I'll get better at it and be able to do more, but for my own part, it's what fits in my head and works for me.
 
[Dan] All right. I want to have a follow-up question, because something Brandon just said is right in line with another one of our audience questions here. This one comes from Roy Radien. How do you spread the structure of a plot line over several books? How do you know when to split it structurally in order to get the right payoffs? Now, Brandon, you said when you first started, you just kind of stopped when you were done. But how do you know when is the best place? How do you do that now?
[Brandon] Yeah. So, I can tell when an author has done this. These days, I don't know if you've had this experience, but it happens more often when the publisher's like, "Yeah. Split this book." Then it's just… It's always unsatisfying. Okay. I say always…
[Mary Robinette] No, Brandon…
[Brandon] Mary Robinette's like, "Wait. I may have done it once."
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] But for me, I'm always looking at each book needs a satisfying ending, and each section of a book needs something satisfying. So when I'm building a novel, I'm asking… When I'm building a series, I'm asking what is the satisfying part of every installment. We've seen a lot of people try to launch, in movies recently, big long series where the first one wasn't satisfying. This is, I think, a huge misstep, a huge mistake, and a huge mistake I made in that first book that I tried writing, where I just kind of ended it. So, if we're talking structure, knowing what your book is trying to do, knowing what's going to make a satisfying ending, and knowing that's your primary job. Then you can start saying, "All right, these sub threads I can raise, hang a lantern on the fact that I'm not going to answer them yet, the characters are too inexperienced." Then that will be sort of the passes, the balls I'm throwing to myself to catch in a future novel.
[Mary Robinette] So the… The reason I raised my hand, like wait, was that I… Calculating Stars was originally supposed to be one book that we split into two. The reason that I knew I needed to split it into two was because I was having to jump important emotional beats…
[Brandon] Right.
[Mary Robinette] In order to save them for the second book, or the second part of the story, in ways that were going to be unsatisfying and frustrating.
[Brandon] Yeah. I should define that better. When it's poorly is when you turn in the book and the publisher splits it.
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Brandon] I've split books before, as I've been working on them. I've been like, "No, no. This is a trilogy," and expanded them. That works just fine. It's when you turn them in and the publisher's like, "No. Too long. Here's the halfway point. Now you've got two books."
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Because when I split mine, as you say, I had to unpack and expand.
[Dan] The most egregious example I can think of of the publisher quote unquote splitting a story partway through is the end of the second hobbit movie, which is named after Smaug, the entire thing is about Smaug, and the movie ends five minutes before they kill him, which happens in the third movie. It's shockingly incompetent.
 
[Dan] Here is another question. Once again talking about subplots and how many plots you have. This is from Sarah Hippel. How do you ensure that smaller plots or smaller POVs don't make the reader lose sight of the main plot or feel like the subplot is an unwanted diversion?
[Brandon] That is an excellent question. I would say one quick tip is character attention is something that often directs reader attention. When the characters care about it, particularly in books we can show from their viewpoint how invested they are, if you can take that character and have them spin it into the larger story in some way, this helps a ton.
[Peng] Yeah. They also have to be… I love writing multiple perspectives and I often end up with far too many. So I do have this problem where I've got like 15 people and I need about four, and I think it really is as you go back, you can see when you've got too many people, some of them are repeating each other in some way. Like they're both looking at the same thing with the same mindset. So you want… You only want that one mindset or from that one perspective or only that one person has that knowledge. So that has helped me clean it out, to make sure there's no repetition and that everyone has a reason for being there.
[Howard] I layer it and I think about it in terms of the impulse purchase on a shopping trip. The shopping trip is the A plot. The impulse purchase is the C, D, E, whatever plot. But because it is attached to the shopping trip, we haven't lost sight of things.
 
[Mary Robinette] Let's take another question.
[Dan] All right. So this one comes from Daydream. What are some strategies or lines of questioning we can use to better align the character goals, the villain goals, and the overall problem of the story?
[Mary Robinette] Well, you know my favorite thing about the MICE Quotient…
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] Is that it helps you define kind of the process, the types of conflict that they're doing. So one of the things about a character goal and a villain goal, is that they… That these goals come into conflict. The character has the simplest possible goal, the villain has the simplest possible goal, and then their actions mess each other up.
[Peng] One of the ways I really like to think about character goals is what makes it unique, and it's usually the why. So, a character and a villain, they both want something, and they both get a cost to not achieving what they want. But it's always the reasoning behind it. Like, the mis-belief they've got about the world or about themselves that is preventing them from easily getting the want, and coming into conflict with their opposing party.
[Brandon] Yeah. On those lines, a lot of times, what the character is doing is revising their own goals as they go through the plot, mature, see what's going on. In this case, showing the character giving up the want for the need, which is kind of a classic story archetype, you are very easily able to spiral that into the need is the greater need, the narrative's need, the world's need. The character then giving up the want becomes a great tie-in to that when you do it right. That one isn't that hard, if you're looking at the scope and expanding the scope of your story through the middle.
 
[Dan] So, I want to talk a little bit more about what Howard said, of making sure that the different plots A, B, C… The impulse buys are connected to that central thread. Because of the pop cultural medium we exist in right now, superhero movies are the examples that are leaping to mind. So, for example, Amazing Spider-Man 2 brought in so many villains. None of them had anything to do with each other. They were people who were causing problems. They each had their own plans. But they were not related to each other in any meaningful way. The story of Electro did not really connect to the story of Green Goblin, etc., etc. Compare that to the Dark Knight. The Christopher Nolan one. Where we have multiple villains, the two main ones being Two Face and Joker. In that case, the writers used Two Face specifically as a linking element between the other stories. So the goal of Batman was to get Harvey Dent on his side. The goal of Joker was to ruin Harvey Dent and turn him into a monster. So they did the same thing, they had multiple villains in the story, but they were very deeply connected because the goals were so close.
[Mary Robinette] That's a great example.
 
[Mary Robinette] We are going to pause for the book of the week. We are running long for this episode because we've got so many great questions. The book of the week this week is actually my book. Whee hee! It's called The Spare Man. It's basically The Thin Man in space. So if you have not seen The Thin Man movies, they're amazing. But this is a happily married couple, their small dog, solving murder mystery on an interplanetary cruise ship, which is definitely not at all inspired by the boat that I am on right now. There's a small dog which lives because I know the rules. Banter, cocktail recipes, including [Vera approved] cocktail recipes, and did I mention murder?
[Brandon] Not of a dog.
[Mary Robinette] But not of a dog.
[Dan] Not of the dog.
[Mary Robinette] Not of a dog.
[Howard] And a conference room with really uncomfortable chairs.
[Mary Robinette] Really uncomfortable chairs.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] So that's The Spare Man, available from fine bookstores everywhere.
 
[Dan] All right. This question is from Dorinda. This is much more of kind of a wide-angle question. Besides studying successful story structures for guidance, are there clear do's and don'ts when it comes to story structure? I guess the follow-up, what are they?
[Howard] Two answers. Answer number one, no. Answer number two, what works for you and keeps you writing is the right answer.
[Brandon] Yeah. I mean, that's the very… It's the truth, right? Every… You can find an exception to every rule, except that rule.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Right? I… Now, I can give some pitfalls for me, personally, right? Like, I can say, "Hey, here's things I've run into that my writing style… When I find that I've done something wrong." With me, that is usually comes down to me knowing what needs to happen in the outline, so the characters know what needs to happen in the outline, so the characters do what's in the outline, and that's not properly motivated and/or signposted for the reader, and a lot of times what I'm fixing after beta reads is things like this. I've kind of noticed that that's a thing that sometimes I do. It's very common for outline writers. Right? You've got… There's the joke a lot of… You see this in criticism of movies, where characters do things and the joke is, "Oh, they have the scripts, so they know what they're supposed to do." The characters know what they're supposed to do, they have the outline. That I want to avoid, and I watch out for it.
[Peng] Can I ask you a question, Brandon?
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Peng] These days, how often do you ever get surprised and then deviate from the outline that you've written? Does that ever happen anymore?
[Brandon] So, surprised never happened to me. The way that my just psychology works, I'm always searching for the better answer. The outline is a guide to try to get there, that's what past Brandon, the best that past Brandon could do. Without the experience of having written the book. As I'm writing the book, I'm always saying, "What can be better?" I'm working on the next Stormlight book right now. I hit a thing where I'm like, "This just isn't good enough." Right? It just isn't good enough. So I dig back into it, and I dig deeper, and I'm like, "Let's try something else." That happens a ton. It's not that I get surprised, it's more that I get disappointed. I'm like, "No. This is… I need more." Then I dig. Once in a while, I'm like, "Oh. This is a better connection." But I don't even see it as a surprise. I see it as current Brandon can take what past Brandon did, but has more experience now, is older and wiser.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] By a few weeks. I can now change that up and go forward with something new that is going to work better.
[Dan] I do have an example. This was a question for Brandon. I'm going to answer it. I do have an example of something that surprised me. This was a book, a horror novel that I wrote a couple of years ago, which none of you have read because of this thing I'm about to tell you. I realized at some point in chapter 4, five, six, whatever it was, that it would be a much stronger story if abruptly the monster ate the love interest.
[Hah-hah-hah-hah]
[Dan] On the one hand, I was right. It was way better, it was much more interesting to turn that obvious love interest into a red herring, then he gets eaten, and then we move on. The problem that I had not properly dealt with at the time was, well, what do I do about my ending now? Because the love interest was part of the thread that was going to lead their. I didn't take the time to properly recalibrate the trajectory of the story to account for his absence which left a very unsatisfying ending. Even though he wasn't in 80% of the book.
[Brandon] I've got an answer for you after the podcast. It might be too spoilery.
[Dan] Oh, I'm excited.
[Brandon] I've seen this happen really well. [Garbled] to say, "Oo, have you thought about this?"
 
[Dan] All right. I have one more question. Okay? This one was written to me about a role-playing game that I ran earlier on the cruise. But I think we can apply it more widely. It says, "Dan Wells, after playing in one of your homebrew games, I was intrigued on how you prep or colorcode the different pieces of the game." This is something that I do when I run games in person, is, in order to streamline certain things, I take a lot of the rules of the game and a lot of the elements of character and I put them onto cards so I can just pass them out. Then that makes decision-making much easier and we get into the story much more quickly. But if we can put that into a broader question, what methods of assembling structure do you use? I've seen people on this cruise arranging Post-it notes in different orders. Mary Robinette, I know you do 3 x 5 cards that you can shuffle physically.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Different people use different methods of organizing the tools that they have so that they can see the story.
[Mary Robinette] So I am going to mention, because I can't remember if I have mentioned this on the podcast before. With the 3 x 5 cards and The Spare Man, I laid them out based on plot thread elements that I needed to include. I was re-jiggering because I had made a change about who the villain was going to be. Then my cats ran across the notecards. I looked at it and was like, "That's actually a better sequence."
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] So, technically, part of this book is plotted by cat. Which I highly recommend is a plotting method.
[Peng] See, I would even say the opposite, because I start… I'm very visual and I like to be able to see the plot visually. I started with notecards and I also have a cat, but it didn't go that way.
[Laughter]
[Peng] It did not. So now I use Scrivener. I think, it feels to me like the same thing, because you can drag notecards around on the screen, and my cat can't type.
[Chuckles]
[Peng] So it really works for me.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Dan] Can't type well.
[Brandon] I want to… Yeah. My cat walked across my laptop when I was working on the Wheel of Time, and I kept the letter E. So my cat typed one letter in The Wheel of Time.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] When you're reading those books, you can know that it was partially cat-produced.
[Mary Robinette] So what you're learning here, dear listeners, is that if you want to be successful, you need a cat.
[Brandon] Yeah. Preferably multiples, who are trained as well as your cats, Mary Robinette. I use a Word document.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Even still. Just a single document that is my outline that I have built using my tools for outlining. No notecards, no fancy Scriveners, even though I've had a lot of people tell me that I should move to Scrivener. I believe them. I'm just old and stubborn.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] Everybody's looking at me like I have a solution here. I love the cat thing because that's how natural selection and evolution works is the random introduction of mutations. If it's a mutation that is successful, then we keep it. So go team random cat.
 
[Mary Robinette] Well, as Elsie would say, we are all done. So, if I can get a homework assignment?
[Peng] Yes. Your homework for today is to try writing a piece of fiction outside your usual length. So if you're a novelist, try to write a micro fiction story. If you are a short story writer, try to write a chapter or two of a novel. Something that doesn't end is long. See how the size of the idea and the length of the story influences how you end up structuring that exercise.
[Mary Robinette] Thank you so much for joining us.
[Peng] Thank you for having me.
[Mary Robinette] All right. Thank you to our lovely live audience for your questions.
[Cheers]
[Mary Robinette] You are out of excuses. Now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 12.3: Project In Depth, "Risk Assessment," by Sandra Tayler

Jan. 18th, 2017 11:28 am
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 12.3: Project In Depth, "Risk Assessment," by Sandra Tayler

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/01/15/12-3-project-in-depth-risk-assessment-by-sandra-tayler/

Key points: Doing the bonus story was a surprise because it meant crossing the roles, stepping into Howard's space. Also, Sandra had never written comics. The story? How did the grandparents of Captain Kaff Tagon meet, as told by Bristlecone, the gunship AI. A mil sci-fi meet cute! Adorable with explosions! Doing the collaboration, Howard tried to stay hands-off, and let Sandra do it. Mostly helping to pare the story down to seven pages of comic, leaving dead darlings everywhere, but keeping the core story of a cautious person doing something brave because it was needed. One of the keys to this collaboration was Sandra spending a weekend with Mary, where Mary talked about MICE quotient and other ways to get a handle on a story. Another part was Howard pointing out that you can write the story with all the normal narrative bits, then prune it to a comic script (dialogue plus side notes for the artist). Working with the artist meant Howard tutoring on terminology to use. The biggest lesson in doing it is comics are hard. And Howard deserves a big round of applause for being willing to take the risk of letting someone else step into his space and do something without interfering.

( Behind the curtains, we find... )
[Brandon] I think we are going to call it here. Sandra, you had a writing prompt for us?
[Sandra] I do. One of these that really appealed to me, about this writing story was the beginnings of things. The beginnings of things really, really matter to people. The beginnings of relationships, in particular, which is why we have the meet cute as a thing that happens in so much fiction. Because how people meet and how they become friends or lovers or spouses matters. It informs the entire rest of the relationship. So what I would like you to do is take a pair of characters that you are working with who have a long-standing relationship, and I want you to write, not necessarily the moment that they met, but that foundational meeting. Because I met Howard before I actually… Before we really connected. A couple of times. But there's this… Always this moment that is the foundational moment in a relationship. I want you to write that up. I want you to think about how that moment influences the stuff that actually is in your story.
[Brandon] All right. I want to thank the people on the Writing Excuses cruise this year.
[Whoo!]
[Brandon] I want to thank Sandra for joining us on the podcast.
[Sandra] You're welcome. This is fun.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
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Writing Excuses 11.26: Elemental Mystery Q&A

Jun. 29th, 2016 11:53 am
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 11.26: Elemental Mystery Q&A

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/06/26/11-26-elemental-mystery-qa/

Q&A Summary:
Q: How do you balance between two mysteries in the same story? Should you even try?
A: Yes. Especially small mysteries. A plot, B plot. Be aware of when you open and close each one, and the proportion of time spent on each. Sequential, with the answer to the first mystery introducing the real problem.
Q: What types of mysteries can fit as subplots? For example, when does a murder work as a subplot rather than as a main plot?
A: Any mystery can be a subplot, just set the scope and number of clues. A subplot find the murderer can heighten tension and build characters. Make sure your murder is a complication, that it changes things for the characters.
Q: When the beta readers all figure out the mystery too early, how can I tweak it so that my readers won't have the same experience as my beta readers?
A: Ask the beta readers what tipped them off, then take that out. All mysteries in first draft are either too obtuse or too obvious, and you have to add and remove to get it right. A good red herring that gets pulled out from under everyone helps.
Q: In terms of the MICE quotient, do all mystery plots have to be idea based?
A: Yes.
Q: How do you write a protagonist that is smarter than yourself?
A: Use revision, young writer! Accelerated thinking through rewriting. Jump to a conclusion, then explain the process of thought and clues -- it was not a guess! Extra mysteries with quick solutions to show how smart we are.
Q: So you've made your protagonist really smart, smarter than the average reader and the other characters. How do you still have it be a struggle for them to solve the mystery without losing people or ruining the story just by having it all internal inside of the protagonist's head?
A: Let them make mistakes. Use red herrings that mislead them, too. Make the cost of being wrong really steep. Lack of resources, or other kinds of obstacles.
Q: How do you keep a kidnapping victim from just being a MacGuffin if they aren't recovered until the end of the story?
A: Given them a point of view, and agency through trying to rescue themselves.
Q: How intellectually stimulating can you make a genre mystery? How literary or serious can it be?
A: There's what's happening (the story) and how you tell it. These are not intrinsically related! You can tell any story with any method. Genre, especially elemental genre, does not dictate method of writing.
( All the questions... and answers, too! )

[Brandon] So, your homework. I've got your homework this time. One of the things when we were discussing these episodes we realized is mysteries are embedded so much in our stories. There are often so many of them, a surprising number. So I would like you to take a book or film that you enjoy and just jot down every mystery you can see. From who drank my milk to who killed this person or how does the magic work. Whatever it is, write down every one, and you'll start to see that the curiosity of solving a mystery is integral to almost every story that's been written. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
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