Writing Excuses 21.29: How to Make a Scene

Jul. 21st, 2026 05:57 pm
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Writing Excuses 21.29: How to Make a Scene 


From https://writingexcuses.com/21-29-how-to-make-a-scene


Key Points: What's a scene? Scene-sequel, active happening and processing what happened. Sequence of continuous action. Beats and scenes. RPG scenes. Narrative constraint. Shifts in time, person/POV, or place. Framing. Editing. Scene prompts: Purpose, what are they doing, Who, where, when, mood, goal, afraid of, consequences. Vibe. Ground the reader, and start the action. Flashbacks. Scene-wich. Memories. Troubleshooting. 


[Season 21, Episode 29]


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[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 21, Episode 29]


[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] How to make a scene.

[Erin] Tools, not rules.

[Howard] For writers, by writers.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.


[Erin] And I'm really excited about this particular episode because I feel like the word scene is... you ever say a word so many times that it loses all meaning and you have no idea what the heck it even is anymore. That's how I feel about the word scene. We say it a lot, but I'm not 100% sure I 100% grok what it is other than sort of a feeling. So...

[Howard] Having seen the scene full of scenery, I... Yeah, it's a very overburdened.

[chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard[ I'm so sorry.

[Erin] Before we get into how to make a scene, let's go with what the heck a scene first.

[Mary Robinette] I...

[Howard] Let me briefly say that I cite scene-sequel format a lot. And in that terminology, scene-sequel might better be defined as portion of story where stuff is actively happening and portion of story where we are processing what has actively happened. Scene-sequel, that pattern can happen within a scene. It can happen multiple times within a scene.

[Mary Robinette] And when we say within a scene, typically speaking, in theater, in cinema and other places, the definition of scene is basically a sequence of continuous action. And that's it.


[DongWon] Do we think of a scene as separate from a beat?

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Okay.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. Because you can have multiple beats within a scene. You can have multiple beats within a sequence of continuous action.

[DongWon] Can you have multiple scenes within a beat?

[Mary Robinette] Yes, I believe you can also have multiple scenes within a beat.

[DongWon] Okay.

[Mary Robinette] For instance, if one of your character beats is the long dark... the dark night of the soul...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That is a character beat that can sometimes... you have the scene where the character is sobbing into their drink in a bar. You have the scene where they are talking to their BFF and they're trying to encourage them to go back out and kill the evil overlord. And then, so you can have all of those within a single beat.

[DongWon] The reason I was asking is a really common technique is to lay out the plot of your project, whether it's screenplay, novel, whatever it is, on note cards, right? And there's two different ways to approach that. One is beat by beat, so like dark night of the soul kind of moments or the character conflict moments or things like that. And there's other ways to do it that are scene by scene, right? And so I was trying to wrap my head around the granular differences between those two things, right? And so... I think I tend to think of books more in terms of beats rather than scenes. But that makes sense for me coming at it from a more 10,000 foot structural view.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And I think that if you think about the beats as a folder that you're putting the scenes into...

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] That... brought to you by me using Scribner a lot.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] That I think it's easier to kind of wrap your head around how both can happen.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But like I don't think... a scene does not require an arc. I don't think it requires a conflict to be a scene. And I think that you can have a scene that is a letter.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Or so it's just... it's a sequence of continuous action. That's it.


[Howard] In tabletop... in like tabletop roleplay. The game master in some systems I've worked with, we talk about adventure design in terms of scenes.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] The characters are going to come into the tavern. The ta... this is going to be a scene. Here are the pieces for the scene, and now we roleplay it.

[DongWon] And just on that note, I had an interesting challenge this year of... I recorded a many, many hours long campaign in basically one session in a week. We did a recording camp where we did 30 some hours of recording. And so going into that as the GM, I had to sort of have enough framework that on day three I wouldn't be caught out even though the players would make a lot of decisions that go different ways. And so the way I did that was each session note was a beat basically. I would write, here's the dominant emotion of this session. Here's the vibe. So it comes with an evocative title like Into the Wilds or something like that.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And then I let individual scenes emerge more organically, and then think about, okay, what's the next beat emotionally that I want to flow into for the next episode in this campaign?

[Erin] I hear you.

[Mary Robinette] And also.


[Erin] However, when you said a scene is a sequence of continuous events, I thought life is but a scene. I mean what I... what makes like my entire life from birth to death, not, I mean, in the sense that it is a sequence of continuous events. Something then it feels like continuous is the thing that stops one scene... like, when one scene stops and another one starts, what makes it no longer continuous within the theory...

[Howard] Bedtime.

[Erin] That you're pitching?

[Howard] Bedtime and scene.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. But this is a... this is a really good point that... that real life is continuous action. From birth to... I mean, yes, sleeping, but a scene is a narrative constraint. And what it does is, it has an artificial beginning and it has an artificial end. The character's life continues outside of that scene theoretically. What we're doing is that we are... we're doing one of two things when we decide where to start and stop. We're either using it as a frame or we are using those breaks to move us in time, space, or change POV.

[Erin] I think that's the thing that I was really in some ways asking, which is like, then it sounds like what stops something from being continuous is a shift in time, a shift in person or POV, and a shift in... or a shift in place.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Erin] That's what means it's no longer continuous. Therefore, a scene theoretically has ended at that moment.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. But you can also do it as a frame, where you break continuous action. Like the scene where something shocking happens, and there's a break, and then you come back and you're still in the same moment, but it is a new scene because it's serving as a frame.

[DongWon] I would introduce one other frame element that you can use which is simply a shift in mood or energy. Right? So you can have a scene that continues to take place immediately after, but you have a scene break or even a chapter break between those, because some revelation has happened and now you're in consequence rather than a sort of ascending tension, right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] So you can have a fight, the fight can... there's no time gap. There's no location shift. Often shifting those things is very useful as a signal to the reader, but it is possible to do it with just an emotional shift.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. 

[DongWon] But the thing is there needs to be some disjunction is what we're getting at.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] When I was studying music form and analysis a bazillion years ago, the instructor was grilling us and he was... he was hard on us. He was grilling us about where does this next movement begin? And somebody said, "Well, it begins right here at the double bar." And he says, "Yeah, but you can't hear the double bar. You're listening to music. As somebody who's reading the music, sure you can see that there's a double bar there, but what can you hear?" And I raised my hand. I said, "Well, at the double bar, the key changes and the very first note across the bar line is... would be an accidental in the previous movement, but now it's part of the new key signature." And so the very first note we hear is something that is reflected with that change. And that has stuck with me. There are things that you do on the page that,,, the way the book might flow in an e-reader won't be noticeable, but the tone of the words that you use can completely change and make it obvious, oh, we've changed scenes.


[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think that it's... what you're talking about there is, for me, a form of framing because you're saying this is the tone or the mood that we're going to have with this. And in a lot of ways when I think about scenes... I will flag that we are going to talk about transitions in the next episode, but when I think about starting a scene, whether it's the scene at the beginning of a work or somewhere later, I am thinking about what am I setting up here? That in the same ways that I'm thinking about what promises am I making at the beginning of a story? It's a micro version of that. It's like here I need to ground you so that you know where you are. I need to give you a sense of the mood. And then likewise at the end of a scene, you also need that frame that helps with understanding. So, can I do an example?

[Erin] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Okay. So, this is an example of a frame from Calculating Stars. The opening line is, do you remember where you were when the meteor hit? And the closing line of that, and it's all one scene straight through, is, later when I saw where he had been standing, I was amazed that he had been able to speak at all, But of Washington itself nothing remains. So this frames all the action that happens in the scene. And it serves to contextualize everything that has happened for the reader. And that's one of the things that you can do when you're thinking about these scenes, is like, what... why am I doing this as a discrete individual unit?


[Howard] I want to point out that... I mean, we have talked a lot about defining what a scene is and why scenes exist. And it can be daunting at first and I think a lot about when I'm trying to tidy my office. There's a million things in here. There's a million things you want to put in your book. It's full of ideas and I can't even see how to organize this. At the outset, it's really not that important to label all of the boxes. It's just important to know that I have boxes and I will start putting things into boxes as I go, and as I am doing that, it begins to make sense. And so in many cases, for me, how to make a scene is... it starts with, look, I don't know the exact shape of this, but I'm going to start putting things into boxes kind of chronologically, And then halfway through the writing, the organization makes sense...

[DongWon] Right.

[Howard] And some of these more complex, more fascinating structures emerge, and I get to explore those in an edit.

[DongWon] Well, I think one thing that really emerges from what you're saying and also kind of going back to Mary Robinette in terms of your framing, this goes back to a conversation we had a few episodes ago about microcosm macrocosm, right? Because a scene functions with a lot of the same rules that your entire story does, in terms of it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. You need an introduction and you kind of need a conclusion. These are very short because it's a scene. I think your one line there at the opening and at the end kind of do that, like, essay introduction of, like, I'm going to tell you about the thing. Here's the thing that we're talking about. Here's a topic sentence, and then here's a here's what you take away from this, which is DC is gone, right? And so I think giving that framing really allows the reader to experience the middle and know very clearly what it was that we were accomplishing by that middle section.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. 

[Erin] And I think as I'm sort of dividing myself, like, instinctively between scene and another scene, a lot of it is if I start telling myself the events of my story... like, if I'm like, okay, and this happens and that happens and that happens, a lot of times I will naturally say, like, and then, like, across town she did this and this and this, or, and then after everybody had taken a breath. Like, I feel like I naturally... that's not the way that I would actually put the scenes together or transition between them in my head, but at some point I feel like, oh, something has changed.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Let me mark that in the way that I am explaining to myself. Like, what do I actually need to put in this story? And each time that I kind of naturally have some sort of break in the way that I say it to myself, that feels like where a scene break...

[Howard] Yeah.

[Erin] Should go.

[Howard] Time to drop it in a different box.

[Erin] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And speaking of, it is time for us to take a scene break. and then we will be back.


[Mary Robinette] At Gen Con this year, Writing Excuses is doing a new thing. We're hosting something called Network the Gathering along with the Ray Bradberry Center and Maurice Bratis. This is going to be on Thursday, July 30th at 8:00 in Ballroom 4 in the Marriott. Part of this is something you can participate in. I mean, besides networking, we're going to have something called lightning readings, which we do on our cruises. This is like a sampler pack of readers. Each person does a two-minute reading, just enough to get a nice taste. Come listen, network, and then stick around for prizes. You can get a ticket in the Gen Con scheduling system for Network: The Gathering Thursday, July 30th at 8:00 p.m. in Ballroom 4 at the Marriott. 


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[Erin] Okay, I feel like I now have a good understanding of what a scene is. And...

[Howard] I'm glad we straightened that out for you because it's nice that you'll be able to start writing.

[laughter]

[Erin] It's nice. I feel really seen and hurt.

[DongWon] Oh boy.

[Mary Robinette] Sorry.

[Erin] Straight to jail. But I now want to know how to make a scene, which we started getting into. You started talking a little bit, Howard, about, like, putting things into boxes. But, like, if you've decided, okay, I think this is the scene. I think this is, like, the frame that I've got. How do you make sure that your reader agrees with you, that this is in fact a scene and that it feels like a scene or anything else that's required in making it?

[Mary Robinette] I have a series of scene prompts that I use when I'm writing, because I run into this. Like, I will have written down that I've got... that they need to do something like, they go back to the planet, and that's all I've got. It's like I know that they're going back to the planet, but what happens there? Sometimes I know, it's like they find a bunker. Well, okay, great. Where do they find it and how? So, I have these scene prompts, and I'll say right up front that these are not things that you have to have. These are just prompts that I use for myself to make sure I'm thinking about stuff. The first is what is the purpose of this scene? Like, what narrative function is this scene serving? Why is it here? And often a scene will have more than one narrative function. Then I think about what are they doing? So I might have finding a bunker, but what are they doing when they find the bunker? Are they actively looking for it? Are they searching for seashells on the beach? Like, what are they doing? I think about who is present. I think about where we are. I think about when we are. I think about the mood that I'm trying to evoke for the reader. And then sometimes also the character's mood, which is often synonymous. And then what their goal is because their goal is sometimes like not to find the bunker. They need to find it in the scene, but that's not their goal. Their goal is to get like the perfect sea shell for their grandmother. So, what is their goal and what is their action? And then, sometimes, the purpose of the scene is the barrier, the interruption. And sometimes their purpose is to find the... so, like, I think about these things as a series of prompts. And then I have two that I use sometimes and sometimes not. Sometimes I'll use afraid of, like, where is their angst sitting. And then sometimes I'll use what are the consequences of this? Sometimes I decide that before I go into the scene and sometimes I decide it later.

[DongWon] Yeah. I love that thinking about the plot function of a scene, right? And I think that list is incredibly useful in terms of how are we finding our way into that plot function...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.


[DongWon] Right? Of understanding where this fits in the overall arcing narrative. One other thing I wanted to bring up in terms of thinking about scenes is... this might be a distinction without a difference, but in my head, it's like a book has a mood, but a scene has a vibe, right? And the vibe of the scene does not need to match the mood of your book, right? Your book can be contemplative or spooky or whatever or romantic, but an individual scene can have a vibe of humor, of being scary, of being depressing, like, you can have these moments that are more about what are the characters experiencing in this particular scene that will overall serve the mood of the entire book. But the... if it is consistent throughout, the same vibe from scene to scene to scene, it's going to feel very flat. You want different energy in different moments. Some is like a high energy action beat, some is a very scary beat. I don't know. Just think about that as terms of like making your scene distinct from the scenes around it by also deciding not just what the plot function is, what's the vibe?


[Howard] In cinema and in comics, anytime you change scenes, you have to pull the camera back far enough that we can see that we've changed locations, we've changed characters. I found this a lot when writing Schlock Mercenary is that I couldn't lead with what I called inset panels, close-ups on faces. I can't begin a scene that way. Because you don't know where that face is. You don't... you just have an orange or a red background. That's not enough information. And so when I think scenes, one of the first things that comes to mind for me is what do I need to put on the page in order to ground the reader in the new mood/vibe/beat/whatever? What do I need to do there? And the second thing is... because I watch a lot of movies, I guess... the idea of in late out early... the idea that I don't want to spend... I don't want to spend a whole page writing my way into a scene before things get moving. I might have to because I don't yet know what's happening. But my goal...

[Mary Robinette] You don't want to read it.

[Howard] I don't want to... I don't want to make you read it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Yeah, my goal is to start things as quickly as possible. And so there's those two competing ideas. I have to ground you, but I do not want to spend so much time doing it that you feel punished for me having made a scene change.

[Mary Robinette] And I will say that the rules, I think, are a little bit different on the page because you don't always have to pull the camera back. That often you can start in on a single close detail, but you absolutely have to have it be a grounding detail.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Yes.

[Erin] I think one thing... I love the idea of the vibe, because I think... I was listening to your list, Mary Robinette, and I was like, so organized, much wow.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] But I'm like, meanwhile, in chaos zone. Because I think a lot of times I will just... I put a new scene in because it feels like the thing that the character kind of wants to do...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Which is the same thing you're saying...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Just a lot less like... well, it's a lot less organized in my head, and a lot of that is I go back and do a lot of reverse outlining and figuring out, okay, I guess I made a scene here. Is it working for me? And so I will... I have a piece that I was working on where this woman wants to confront the other woman, like her boyfriend's other girlfriend. And so she's in a whole scene being really mad about this girlfriend. So I was like, "Oh, I guess she's like, 'I'm going to find her.'" I was like, "Okay, well, I guess I guess she probably does that." So she's like, "I found her." I'm like, "Okay, so this is that part...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Where she finds that woman and then stuff happens." And...

[Howard] So you're literally making a scene about someone making a scene.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Exactly. Exactly. She's going to go and, like, scope her out at the bar or whatever she does. And that scene didn't work for me. As I was going back and rereading my entire story, I felt like the vibe was off...

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[Erin] Of, like, this part. I was like, something about this thing where she finds the other woman is just like... it's like dying on the page. Like, I'm reading it and I don't want to read it and I'm writing it. Like, and I really love these characters. So then I'll... I will go back and feel like, what is missing? What, like... what did I really love about this scene? Like, I love the way she sauntered into the bar and that was really cool, but then, I don't know, the other woman's really boring after being built up in her head. I feel like she's boring in this scene.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So, I was like, "Okay, let me go back and, like, when I redo it, I will try to make her more interesting." Which then changes scenes down the road...

[Mary Robinette, DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because I'm like, "If I make her more interesting because... this is not true... she is petting a fluffy white cat and cackling." Then she now has a fluffy white cat that I have to account for in scenes down the road.

[DongWon] Okay. We all love a bar cat.

[Howard] I will... I have run into that exact circumstance where I...

[Mary Robinette] Really?  Putting a fluffy white cat in a bar? [garbled]

[Howard] Okay. It wasn't a bar.

[laughter]

[Howard] It was... the circumstance where I have a scene, an important piece of the story that I feel needs to be told. and I try to tell it, and I don't love it. It breaks the mood. It breaks the vibe. It breaks the flow. It breaks something. And I lean into my humor toolbox and the tool I call noises off, which is the story you tell yourself about that scene is going to be way more interesting than the story I told myself. And so I skip the scene entirely and have... to use your example, she reports back, yep, found her in the bar. And she has, like, toilet paper in her nose. She got punched in the face...

[DongWon] Right.

[Howard] And that's all we know. Yep, I found her. We talked. I'm done. Had enough. And then we move on with the rest of the story.

[DongWon] Yeah. Well, one thing I want to also point out is we've been talking about scenes in a very contained way, right? An individual scene is an indiv... a moment in time, a series of actions that happen in this continuous way. There are ways to complicate that...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? There's ways... one other solution you can add to that is, like Howard was saying is skip the scene and then sort of layer in flashback of how the scene at the bar unfolded, inside the action of what she's doing after that. Right? So you can mix consequence and whatever the event was as you're unfolding it, right? So you don't have to think... I mean the spine of the scene is still continuous events, right? The spine of the scene is still what is happening moving forward in time. But you can deeply complicate that in different ways as you're thinking about how to construct a scene.


[Mary Robinette] I'm going to be really problematic for this and say that I actually think that flashbacks are separate scenes within a... and the reason is we'll talk about this when we get to transitions because I think there's a difference between a scene break and what I call a through scene, which is where one scene flows directly into another scene.

[DongWon] Question for you. I mean, I know we're digging into semantics, but that's kind of what this episode is in a certain way. If you have a moment where she's walking down the street, there's two lines of her walking, three lines of her thinking about what happened at the bar, two lines of her walking, are each of those individual scenes, or do you feel like you have two scenes layered on top of each other that you're cutting in between? And that's more of a transition question rather than a scene question.

[Mary Robinette] I think it's...

[Howard] Scene-wich.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, it's a scene-wich. Yes, I'm going to...

[DongWon] It's a scene layer cake.

[Howard] Oh my gosh.

[Mary Robinette] Yes, I think it's a scene-wich. I think it...

[Howard] Do we need to transition into another episode about transitions?

[Erin] Not just yet because I have one pers... more thing, but go with the scene-wich.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So I want to distinguish between memories and flashbacks.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] So memory is, she's thinking about it. That is part of that continuous action.

[DongWon] Right.

[Mary Robinette] It is part of what is happening in that moment, versus a flashback. Sometimes you see them go into italics. Sometimes it's just like where the character... there's a separate thing that happens that is a moment of continuous action.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, for me, those are two scenes that are happening simultaneously that you're cutting back and forth between.

[DongWon] Right. And I guess I was thinking more about memory in this case, right?

[Mary Robinette] Okay. Memory is memory. Memory is part of...

[DongWon] I guess all I'm saying is you can in... you can play with time in... inside this.. an individual scene, and sort of whether or not...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It's a scene-wich or an individual scene. I think it is useful to think about, but also in some ways is a reminder that you can use character interiority to complicate what a scene can feel like in really useful ways for your reader.

[Erin] Yeah. And I think this is kind of pulling back from the scene, which sadly for the moment, but I think one of the things that I will do in figuring out what should be in the scene is somewhat similar to your list, Mary Robinette, but I am a simple woman. And so I will...

[chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I only use the scene on that... I don't use that list all the time.

[Howard] This is the point where the narrator cuts in and says, "No, she's not."

[laughter]

[DongWon] She was not a simple woman...

[Erin] But I often just... I go with my, like, who, what, when, where, why...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And how, which is like... it kind of what you're talking about. But I will say, like, what is off? Because a lot of times, if I'm thinking about a scene, it's because I don't like it. If I'm... if I like it, I don't think about it. It's just like it's part of the story. And so I will think like, where is the issue? Like I was saying, in that scene, the who was the issue, the who was boring. Therefore, I needed to change...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Maybe what they were doing to make the who more interesting.

[Howard] And in the interest of tools, not rules, the tool there is... a lot of the structure that we're talking about with regard to scenes is a troubleshooting tool for you. You only run into it when your brain tells you there's something wrong with what I just wrote.

[Erin] Yeah.

[DongWon] I think what's really interesting is the scene is such an elemental building block of what a story is that each of us individually have expressed very core ideas of how we approach things. Maty Robinette, you have a lot of structure here. I'm vibe forward, right? Like... Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I just want to stress that I have a lot of structure sometimes. Like that is the toolbox that I...

[DongWon] [garbled]

[Mary Robinette] Specifically I am going to call this out. Specifically that toolbox is something that I reach for when I am having a bad brain day. On good brain days, I'm just going on vibes and following the story. But on bad brain days or when I'm trying to do pre-planning and I don't know the story yet, that's a toolbox, and I don't... even there I will sometimes use it as a troubleshooting thing later. I just need to...

[DongWon] No, 100%. I was just... I'm partially making a joke here, but I do think there's also something interesting about there's something so deeply rooted about what a scene is that we're sorting on very internal structures of how we think about our approach to creating things. Anyways...

[Mary Robinette] I just don't want people to think I'm organized.

[laughter]

[Howard] I don't want people to think Erin is simple.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, also true.

[Erin] Well, with that, now that we have judged ourselves thoroughly, it is time for your homework. 


[Erin] And what I want you to do is to sort of take that index card, do a little bit of looking at scenes in something that you have written. However you define scenes is really up to you, because I can't see what you're doing. So take a scene or two and then look at what sort of are the... take through the list that Mary Robbinet had. Do who, what, where, when, why, how. Mark the vibe. Take everything you possibly can and write it out about those scenes and then change something. Look at those and when you look at it, say, "Is there something in here that I can change?" and rewrite that scene.


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

 
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Writing Excuses 20.49: Using Tone and Mood

Dec. 12th, 2025 11:58 am
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Writing Excuses 20.49: Using Tone and Mood 


From https://writingexcuses.com/20-49-using-tone-and-mood


Key points: Plot tells us what happened, structure tells us how it happened, and tone and mood shape the emotional experience of the reader. Tone is the narrator's view of the world, mood is the character's view of the world. Tone is imagery, word choices, sentence structure. Mood is the characters' physical responses, internal reactions, actions they take, and what they pay attention to. Aligned or in conflict? Juxtaposition and contrast! Mood as landscape, and tone is the personal walking there? Control tone through imagery, word choices, and sentence structures. 


[Season 20, Episode 49]


[Erin] Hey, everybody. This is Erin, and I've got a question for you. What have you learned from Writing Excuses that you use for your own writing? Now, we talk a lot about tools, not rules. Which means there are things that we're going to say that you're going to be like, yes, that is for me. That's the tool I'm going to use in my next project. And there are others that you're going to be like, uh,  I'm going to leave that to the side. And what we want to know is which of the things that we're saying have really worked for you? What's the acronym you're always repeating? What's the plot structure you keep coming back to? What's a piece of advice that has carried you forward, when you've been stuck in your work? Or that you've been able to pass on to another writer who's needed advice or help? However you've used something that you've learned from us, we want to know about it, and we want to share it with the broader community. Every month, we're going to put one of your tips or tricks or tools in the newsletter, so that the rest of the community can hear how you have actually taken something that we've talked about and made it work for you. And I'm personally just really excited to learn about those, because a lot of times, y'all take the things that we say and use them in such ingenious and interesting ways to do such amazing writing that I'm just like chomping at the bit to get in these tools and tips and share them with everybody else. So if you're interested, please go to our show notes, and fill out the form there, and be part of this project and just share with us what you're doing, what you've learned, and how are you using it so that we can share with everybody else. Really excited, again, to get all this in because, honestly, what we say is made real and important and meaningful by what y'all do with it. With that, you're out of excuses. Now go tell us what works for you.


[unknown] If the Lenovo gaming  computer's on your holiday list, don't shop around. Just go directly to the source lenovo.com. You'll find exclusive deals on the gaming PCs and tablets you want. Like the powerful Legion 7i Gen 10 laptop and the versatile Legion tab. So avoid all that shopping chaos and price comparisons, and just go directly to the source lenovo.com, where you can unlock exclusive savings. That's lenovo.com. [singing Lenovo, Lenovo]


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


[Season 20, Episode  49]


[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon]  Using tone and mood.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.


[Mary Robinette] And I have brought this topic to the table because it's a class that I taught for my Patreon because I started thinking about what tone and mood did. And that they are one of the most powerful storytelling tools. But we always talk about structure or character arc or things like that. Here is why I think it's important, and then we're going to... We're going to tell it... We're going to... I will let other people talk at some point.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Yay!

[Mary Robinette] Basically, I think plot tells us what happened, structure tells us how it happened, and tone and mood shape the emotional experience of the reader. And my example of this, I've got two of them for you, is that Wizard of Oz is structurally a heist. So, you have the catalyst, which is the tornado, you have scouting the territory, Welcome to Oz, you have gathering the team, meet the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and The Wizard, you have practice and prep for the heist, which is the Merry Old Land of Oz song, you have committed to the heist, the wizard sends them to get the broom, they're forced to alter the plan, there's flying monkeys. Then the plan comes together, the team rescues Dorothy, everything goes wrong, they get chased by guards and the witch through the castle, they're at an apparent total loss where they're caught, and the scarecrow catches on fire, and then the actual win, which is the witch is melted and we have the true plan revealed, which is that that was the wizard's goal all along. So...

[Howard] More heist movies need flying monkeys.

[Mary Robinette] Right?

[Howard] Wow!

[Mary Robinette] But it doesn't feel like a heist, because tonally, it is a wonder tale and it's a coming-of-age story. And then Pride and Prejudice? Actually, secretly a mystery. You've got the crime, Mr Darcy is an asshole, the investigation, Lizzy investigates and continues to find proof that he's an asshole, and you have the twist, Wickham runs away with Lydia, and the breakthrough, like, what, Darcy saved Lydia from ruin? And then the conclusion, that he's not an asshole and that they're in love. And then you have marriage. So... But, again, it... Tonally, it's a... It's not that. So...

[DongWon] This connects to fundamental genres in certain ways. Okay.


[Mary Robinette] Exactly. This gets into Elemental genres. But I think that tone and mood are things that we can play with. So what I want to do is talk about tone in this first half of the episode, and mood in the second. And my thinking is that tone is about the narrator's view of the world, and that mood is about the character's view of the world. So, I am curious what... Having just spewed at you, here's my thinking, I'm very excited about that idea...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] What do you think about that? And, like, I think there's a number of different ways that we control tone, and so I'm curious what you think, now that I've been like, hello, here's a thing.

[Howard] I am...  One, I'm reluctant to disagree because this is very well thought out, and I love it. But, two,  I think that tone might be... Yeah, might be the structure and so on and so forth, and mood might be a more readerly thing that comes  into the narrative because, in the context of what I bring to sitting down to watch Wizard of Oz, Wizard of Oz doesn't feel like a heist, it feels like a wonder tale. But if I'd never seen, if I didn't have that context, Wizard of Oz might feel like... Might feel more like a heist. And so mood might be more related to the conversation... We talked about this earlier this year... The conversation that your piece is having with other pieces that are similar in the mood that you're shooting for.

[Mary Robinette] I see what you're saying. I think the question is, if we're thinking about this as being an intentional thing that we can control...

[Howard] Yes. And that's why... That's the other reason I'm reluctant to do this. How would I control that? I don't know.

[Mary Robinette] Well, and I think the reason you can... The way you control that is through how the character feels. Like, Dorothy, when she walks into Oz, when she steps out into Oz, her reaction to being in Oz tells us how we should feel about it.

[DongWon] So, that's the mood.

[Mary Robinette] That's the mood.

[DongWon] And the tone is the heist structure of it.  The...

[Mary Robinette] No, the tone... The structure is this thing that's happening. The tone is... So, the tone is the narrator's view of the world, it's the imagery that we use.

[DongWon] Okay.

[Mary Robinette] So it's... In fiction, it's the word choices, it's the sentence structure. And in Wizard of Oz, it's the color palette and things like that.

[Erin] I was going to... Actually say what you would say for mood, and then... I have a theoretical analogy.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, okay. so, for mood, the tools that I think we're using to control things are the characters' physical responses, their internal reactions, the actions that they take and the things they pay attention to.

[DongWon] I see. Okay.

[Erin] The way that I'm thinking about this, of course, is with karaoke.

[Mary Robinette] I love it.

[Erin] So, I'm thinking, like, so the tone... Because to me what you're saying is the tone is the way that... it's how the teller tells the tale. And so when you sing a song, like, you can decide... Like, if you... It could be the weirdest song ever, that's like, who knows, could be the most emo [trumo] song, and if instead of screaming it, you decide to sing it in a sultry jazz voice, like, you have changed the tone of the song. That song's trying to do what it's doing, but you have put your foot down and said, this is the way that I'm going to do it. I say everything is a sultry jazz number, and I don't care what it is. And that's the part of the experience that you're going to  have. And then the mood, to me, is more like the crowd. Like, the mood is like I'm telling the tale this way, and the mood is like looking around and seeing, like, is everyone polka-ing? That's going to give a different mood.

[DongWon] Yeah. Right.


[Erin] Then no matter what. So... And then those two things intersect. And one of the things I think is interesting, number one, is to see does that even work for you as an analogy, and number two, then, like, what happens if the tone and the mood... Like, do they always have to line up? Or can they be in conflict with each other?

[Mary Robinette] They don't [garbled]

[DongWon] I have a great example, I think, of where they diverge. What's fun about this episode is you brought up this idea and we didn't talk about it much offline. So this is sort of a little bit of a class situation...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] For us, and a little bit of, like, let's interrogate the instructor and find out what this means.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] For me, this is let's kick the tires on that. Yes. No, I love it. Okay. So. Mike Flanagan, who's a horror director, made a adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story called The Fall of the House of Usher. The tone of this is this big dark family drama horror story of a man being haunted by the deaths of his children that are happening over the course of weeks, where all of his children die in increasingly horror... Or not increasingly, but all equally horrible ways. The tone of this story is told in this, like, bombastic way, this. like. big grand family drama. And then the experience of watching this show is almost horror comedy. It's campy,  it's over the top, and I think a lot of people reacted badly to the show because of this. But it's a deeply unserious show with a serious core message. But it's a deeply unserious show... You watch these characters die in increasingly ludicrous ways. In ways that feel very Edgar Allan Poe, in terms of being wildly over the top, of watching a guy go insane because he thinks there's a cat in the wall. Right? Like...  and it's... To me, it was an utterly delightful experience. We were like howling and cackling through the whole thing. But it strikes me that there is a real difference between the tone and the mood, where the tone is like reading Edgar Allan Poe poems, like, verbatim as narration, with, like, this somber music behind it, and then you're watching someone run around with a sledgehammer trying to find a cat. And it's, like, fantastic, but there's such a difference between those two experiences. And the... I think the dissonance between them led to so much of the space for Flanagan to say the serious things he wanted to say, while also entertaining the hell out of us watching a bunch of awful, incredibly wealthy people get got in ways that they deserved.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, to Erin's point about can these two... Can these things work in opposition to each other, can you create a juxtaposition and contrast? Yes. Absolutely. One of the things that I was thinking about is that in This is How You Lose the Time War, the tea shop scene, the tone of that is like, look at how lovely Britain is, and how beautiful this is, and the mood of the characters is quite different from that. While the character is there to enjoy that, the character is inhabiting it as a this is quaint, this is... And I'm also having all these big feels about this person that I'm having these battles with. This is a battleground. That's the mood that's going on. One of my other favorite examples is Jane Austen. You do not have to read the entire novel. But if you take a look at Northanger Abbey, chapter 21 and 22, in 20... It's basically the character arrives, and she's in this room, and she's like, oh, no, this room is so Gothic and terrible and it's really frightening and there's mysteries in it. And the author, the tone of it is that Jane Austen, the author's voice, is gently mocking the character, while the character is having genuine feels. And in chapter 22, she wakes up in the morning and discovers that the terrible scratching at the window was actually a beautiful rose bush and that the wardrobe that she thought was locked was actually unlocked, and that she had locked it, and that that was why it was hard to get open. So the tone remains quite consistent, I'm gently mocking you, while the character's mood switches, and so it causes you to experience the same room in two very, very different ways.

[Erin] The thought I'm having is that it seems like mood, in some ways in terms of tools and how you work with it, that mood is a more primal... It seems like it's more of a lizard brain thing. And by that, I mean, things are scary. There are certain things, like when things..., a scary mood plays on things that we are afraid of. It is dark, there is a strange sound. There are a lot of ways to bring different tones, because we can do a lot more [garbled] control over the way our narrator thinks about it and talks about it. But things like hitting a wall with sledgehammers looking for a cat... Like, if you frame that well, like, there's something that we will just think that's funny because there's something funny in the visual that puts us on that kind of level. And so I'm kind of curious, like, how you... Speaking for myself, how to set up that kind of, like, this is the landscape, in some ways? Like, mood is the landscape, and tone is the person walking through the landscape? And so we can control how they see it and what they say about it, if they make fun of it or whatever. But in some ways, the landscape is still there. And if you want to change the mood, you're making broader changes to the landscape [garbled].

[Mary Robinette] That sounds like a great thing for us to talk about when we come back from the break.


[DongWon] For more than a decade, we've hosted Writing Excuses at sea, an annual workshop and retreat in a cruise ship. You're invited to our final cruise in 2026. It's a chance to learn, connect, and grow, all while sailing along the stunning Alaskan and Canadian coast. Join us, the hosts of Writing Excuses, and spend dedicated time leveling up your writing craft. Attend classes, join small group breakout sessions, learn from instructors one on one at office hours, and meet with all the writers from around the world. During the week-long retreat, we'll also dock at 3 Alaskan ports, Juneau, Sitka, and Skagway, as well as Victoria, British Columbia. Use this time to write on the ship or choose excursions that allow you to get up close and personal with glaciers, go whale watching, and learn more about the rich history of the region and more. Next year will be our grand finale after over 10 years of successful retreats at sea. Whether you're a long time alumni or a newcomer, we would love to see you on board. Early bird pricing is currently available, and we also offer scholarships. You can learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats.


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[unknown] If a Lenovo computer's on your holiday list, don't shop around. Just go directly to the source Lenovo.com. You'll find exclusive deals on the gaming PCs and tablets you want. Like the powerful Legion 7i gen 10 laptop and the versatile Legion tab. So avoid all that shopping chaos and price comparisons, and just go directly to the source Lenovo.com, where you can unlock exclusive savings. That's lenovo.com. [singing Lenovo, Lenovo]


[Mary Robinette] So I love this idea of thinking about it as a landscape, and I think the reason that I have been thinking about  mood is that... As a thing that is very character centered, is because different people react differently to the same landscape. And so the narrator has set for me, it's like, okay, here's your landscape. I'm going to... maybe I'll set up some fog, and some scary lighting, and this is amazing. And the character is like, I love fog and scary lighting. And then another character's like, no, this is much worse. And that's the... For me, a lot of the... What a character does when we are in tight third person or first person is that they are my viewpoint into the story. They're my way of imagining how I would feel in that, and it does activate my lizard brain. So I think that that's... It's an interesting way to think about it.

[Howard] You bring that up... I went through a haunted house once a couple of decades ago, and the mood that I brought with me was I have heard that they have spent a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of effort and they've got really good... They got a really good team working on this, and it's being hosted at what used to be the actual mental hospital up on the hillside in Utah. And I was giggling, generally joyful, happy the whole time. And somebody does a thing where they pull down a lever and crush a dummy. And something squirted on my face. And I squealed with laughter. And one of the cast members stepped up to me, just right in my ear, like, dude, what's wrong with you?

[laughter]

[DongWon] [garbled we need to?] hire you.

[Howard] Would you like to work here? Because you're frightening all of us. And so, yeah, for me, the tone and the mood are dependent a lot on what I bring into that landscape.


[DongWon] I'd love to turn at this point to talking a little bit about how we can use this as a tool.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? I think understanding... We've gotten to a little point where we kind of understand the terms here. How do you deploy this in your fiction, or how should we think about this as an active use?

[Mary Robinette] Let me actually use an example from an early, early piece of my own writing. This is one of the pieces that made me understand that tone was something that I should be consciously manipulating. So, there's a short story called Cerbo in Vitra ujo, which was the first horror story that I sold. And I'm like, this is... I'm not very deep into my career. I have... I don't have novels out at this point. And... So I'm going to read you the first paragraph or so. For 3 sentences ish. And then I'm going to read you the revision of it after I talked to Ellen Datlow who gave me some lessons about horror. So...


Behind the steady drone of the garden's humidifiers, Greta caught the whoosh snick as the airlock door opened. She kept pruning her Sunset Glory rose bush to give Kai a chance to sneak up on her. He barreled around Noholen's Emperor artichoke without a hint of stealth. Something was wrong. Greta's breath quickened to match his. Kai's dark skin seemed covered by a layer of ash.


So, this is what Ellen said when she read that, was that there was nothing visceral about it. There was nothing about the language... The tone of my language. Right now, I'm setting up something that could just be a meet cute kind of thing. He could be about, like, oh, my goodness, I'm about to propose marriage. Like, anything could be happening right now. So when I revised it, all of the actions are exactly the same. But I've switched my language.


Greta snipped a diseased branch off her Sunset Glory rose bush, like she was a body harvester looking for the perfect part.


So you can see... I'm not even going to bother reading the rest of it. But you can see immediately that the tone switch that that makes. So, for me, when I'm thinking about tone, I'm thinking about the imagery that I use, and that was one of the things that Ellen said, was that I needed... That there needed to be something diseased or something like... Why was there a perfect rose bush? So imagery, the word choices, like body harvester, choosing that, sentence structures, whether you're doing something that's flowing and languid or, like, choppy and breathy.

[Howard] And I think that's where, to my original attempt to argue with you, I think that's where we have control over what the reader brings to the experience. Because when you say body harvester, that's the sort of phrase that is going to resonate with people, whether or not they had experience in sci-fi or horror...

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Howard] Really well.

[Mary Robinette] What I'm going to point out is that my character does not know that she's in a horror story, and that's why I think mood is a separate thing.

[DongWon] Yeah. So, if mood is the landscape, as Erin sort of described, I'm seeing tone as the score. Like the movie score that's running underneath it. Right? Like, you have a scene of a group of characters laughing with upbeatness behind it, you are in a comedy, you put a discordant ambient sound underneath it, it is a horror movie now.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? Howard showed me a YouTube video the other day of the trailer for Mad Max, remixed to the Yakety Yak song. And it changed the tone, let's say. While the mood of the characters remained the same because the landscape is the same.


[Erin] This is not important to writing, but this is why I have always wanted... If I were going to have a superpower, for it to be to be able to hear the orchestration of my own life.

[laughter]

[Erin] So that I would know when to be afraid, when to be happy, when I'm like meeting a romance. Because it would come through and let me know that, like, while I may be in this place, something completely different is happening all together.

[DongWon] You know what, Erin, I think you're empowered to choose the music that is behind your own life.

[Erin] I love it. But I would say the other thing that's not to do with my own life is I think we, a lot of times, play around with this with contrast. I asked that question about the contrast and the example that I thought of was, like, your old school Law and Order episodes where, like, someone has been killed in some horrific way, and then Lenny Bristol is like, guess he's not making it home for dinner.

[laughter]

[Erin] You know what I mean? [garbled] like, it cuts because you're like, oh, no, like... And it is a... But it brings you to, like, this is a show that's about procedure and we're kind of having a fun time. It's not a horror.

[yeah]

[Erin] Law and Order  is not a horror show.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] But that would be interesting. And it teaches you a little bit, but also, it makes you laugh.  because the mood sets up one expectation, and the tone comes in contrast to that, and contrast, I've learned from Howard, is one of the tools, I think, that you can use to make humor happen.

[DongWon] Yeah.


[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Absolutely. And that's... It's also one of the things that you can use to make tension happen, too, which we've been talking about in a lot of other places. That placing two things in contrast to each other. That's why you so often see the, hello, it's a giant battle scene, the [garbled]... Like, the classic one is, it's... What a Wonderful World, and Good Morning, Vietnam. And that's the thing that I think is fun to play with on a conscious level. I think a lot of us do it unconsciously, but I think it is as important to think about  as plot.

[DongWon] Yeah, I totally agree.

[Howard] The tools that I find myself using are white space and sentence length. Where, when I want to make a shift, and I think about that in terms of it, Erin, as you suggested, the score. because the song of, the music of, the poetry of, the prose on the page is so dependent on where the breaths land, that by adding white space, by shortening sentences, I can change the breath of what's happening, and govern the mood in the same way that an orchestral score might.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So I think when you're looking at it, that you kind of have two choices. You can either... When you're combining tone and mood, that you can either have them match, or you can have them in juxtaposition. And when they match, you get what Edgar Allan Poe called unity of affect, where you are reinforcing an underlining this is... Things are really bad or things are good. And in juxtaposition, when they don't match, you can create tension by a contrast between the narration and the character. If the narration is like, oh, there is... Bad stuff is going down, and the character is like, I love this place. You're like, uh-huh, things are... No. It creates that anticipation.

[DongWon] It's funny that you mention that because the Fall of the House of Usher show that I was talking about, there's one moment towards the end when the tone and the mood match, and it is a devastating brutal beat in a show that has been mostly about yucks up until that point, where he just kicks you in the heart. And it's when those align.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] That's the trick he pulls. It suddenly aligns, and then we slip out of that again for the finale, but it's interesting to point that out. I'm like, oh, that is a good trick to pull.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.


[Mary Robinette] So, I have got some homework for you. Your homework is that I just want you to take a mystery structure, and a mystery structure is five parts. You have a crime, an investigation, a twist, a breakthrough, and then the conclusion. I want you to take that structure, and I want you to write something that is not obviously a mystery.


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

 
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Writing Excuses 18.11: Turning Up the Contrast With Juxtaposition

Mar. 16th, 2023 01:55 pm
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[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 18.11: Turning Up the Contrast With Juxtaposition
 
 
Key points: Juxtaposition adds tension from the contrast between two things. Good news, bad news framing. Hallelujah moments in movies, with something horrible happening and beautiful music playing. Juxtaposition works with mood and emotion, instead of conflict. Horror often juxtaposes monsters and pastoral settings. Juxtaposition can add depth and context. It can add tension to a character. You can use it to show the reader how the character doesn't fit, or that this person has hidden depths. Cozies juxtapose cozy elements with murder.
 
[Season 18, Episode 11]
 
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] Turning Up the Contrast With Juxtaposition.
[Erin] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
 
[Mary Robinette] We are going to be talking about juxtaposition this week, and how to use it. I'm actually going to tell a personal story to kick us off, because the first time I taught this as a topic, I was at a conference and my phone rings and it is my husband. I'm like, "What's going on?" He's like, "Well, there's been a family medical thing at home." I'm like, "Oh. Okay." He's just updating me. Everything does turn out fine. It does have a happy ending. But I then had to go back into the room and teach. The thing is that this added a certain amount of tension to this thing. Because there was nothing that I could solve. I was in a different country. There was nothing that anyone in the room could solve, because they didn't even know about it. But there was this juxtaposition between hello, I have to teach this class, and there's this thing that's going on at home. They're two unrelated things. The tension comes from the contrast between those two things.
[Howard] A common example of this is the good news, bad news framing of things. Again, a real-life story. Sandra and I were at Gen Con, and we get a call from one of the kids who's holding down the house. He says, "So, good news and bad news. Good news is I learned how to defrost the freezer."
[Chuckles]
[Howard] "The bad news is I didn't do it on purpose."
[Laughter]
[Howard] That juxtaposition right there has told us an entire story that we're going to have fun unraveling. So I often think of juxtaposition first in terms of the good news, bad news. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the juxtaposition of the Steward of Gondor eating while the soldiers are going to war is completely different. That's just bad news, bad news.
[Chuckles]
[Erin] I often think of the hallelujah moment, which is where something horrible is happening and a cover of Hallelujah plays in a movie.
[Dan] Yeah.
[Erin] If you ever hear Hallelujah playing, run. You know what I mean? Something bad is happening. But it's something about the beauty of that song, or any sort of piece of music that is very beautiful, with something horrible happening underneath that's [garbled]
[Howard] Ave Maria in Hitman.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The first time I saw that was in Good Morning Vietnam with It's a Wonderful World… Or It's a Beautiful World… Trees of green and like bombings are happening in the background. It can be overplayed. Because in… They tried to do that in Downtown Abbey, where it's like, "Oh, look, the new baby…" This beautiful music is playing, and someone is having a car crash in the background. It fundamentally didn't work because it was so clear that that was what they were trying to do.
[Dan] Yeah. Music is such a great way to do this. One of my very favorites is actually the finale of the first act of the Steven Sondheim musical Gypsy in which everything has gone wrong. The little sister has run away, and now the family isn't going to travel around anymore. The older sister, she's the main character, she thinks, "Oh, great. This is perfect. This is exactly what I want. Now I get to have a normal life with a normal mom and a normal dad." Then the mom sings Everything's Coming up Roses which is this huge triumphant don't worry, we're going to make this work, I'm going to make you a star. Which is 100% not what the main character wants out of her life. It is a triumphant and wonderful song juxtaposed against the absolute world crushing tragedy of what it means for this girl. It's horrible and delicious and I love it when a story is able to do that.
 
[Mary Robinette] I think… You just reminded me of something that Erin had talked about previously, which is that the tension is coming from the emotion. I think that one of the things about juxtaposition is that it is so much about mood and emotion. Very specifically those things, rather than the conflict. An example that Howard gave previously was the eating of the food during the… Juxtaposed with the battle. That those two things spoke to each other, but that they were a contrast as well.
[Howard] When I teach my humor class, I talk about juxtaposition, but the sort… The kind that I use is what I call forced congruence. Which is when you juxtapose two things in such a way as to force them into congruence one with another. The example I use is from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "the Vogon ships hovered in the air in much the same way that bricks don't." Which is hilarious and it forces bricks hovering to be the same as the Vogon ships. Paints a very clear picture, and, for me, manages to be hilarious.
 
[DongWon] You also see this used to extremely great effect in horror. Again, I think horror and comedy are sort of two sides of the same coin. I'm really thinking about Bong Joon-ho's movie The Host, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. The first time we see the monster is running along the banks of the Han River through this park area where people are picnicking, having a lovely time, it's a lovely day. The grass is green. Then this monster comes bursting out of the Han River, causing chaos and mayhem. It's a very visceral terrifying scene with this intruding thing into this very pastoral imaging. Throughout the entire thing, the visual thing that drives all of that is the juxtaposition of horror and this family pastoral thing, which ties into the theme of the whole movie as it is very much a family drama of a family trying to figure out how to come together in the face of tragedy in the middle of this apocalyptic thing happening in this major metropolitan area. He uses just… Bong Joon-ho, in particular, is so masterful at using juxtaposition to drive narrative throughout all of his movies.
 
[Erin] I think one of the things… Because sort of a lot of our examples are movies and our visual media because they have… There's so many great tools of juxtaposition in terms of showing two images together or using music. I was thinking about what is a good textual… Another textual example. I recently reread The Ones Who Walked Away from Omalas. It starts with like the equivalent of a beautiful musical piece in describing this utopia in such lyrical… In such a lyrical way that it almost feels like you're listening to music, which makes the juxtaposition with the reality of Omalas hit so hard. So it's something you can do, like with text, as well as in a visual and sort of a medium that has sound besides.
[DongWon] Absolutely.
[Mary Robinette] I used it in Spare Man in what I will call the singing toilet scene. In which I have a conflict, straight up conflict, but it is happening in a bathroom that has singing toilets. It is one of my favorite things that I've ever written.
[DongWon] Well, I would argue that one of the driving impulses of the… Or one of the driving things about the book in general is that juxtaposition of the humorous surreality that is a cruise ship or a space liner in this one against this serious drama and murder and interpersonal drama. It… That tension between those two things, the discordance between the ridiculousness that is a cruise ship that all of us know very well versus a very serious thing happening, which… That is so much this like generative engine in the book. It's like… It almost feels like a gear slipping, but you're doing it on purpose. So we keep like running into it, and having to be like, "Wait. How does this work? Why is this like this? Oh, that is so weird that this murder is happening here, but also it's so weird that this service person is talking to them in this way right now."
 
[Howard] It calls back to anticipation, because if you are juxtaposing, especially if you are juxtaposing where there is a forced congruence happening. If one of the elements is one with which we're familiar and we know how it unfolds, the juxtaposition forces us to anticipate what is going to happen with the second element. I don't have a good example off the top of my head, but if you think of Beethoven's… Is it the ninth that ends with the da da da da da da dat dah dah? And then the cannons?
[Mary Robinette] Oh, yeah.
[Howard] I think that's… Is it the ninth or is that the third?
[Dan] The beginning, the 1812 overture.
[Howard] 1812 overture! It's the overture. Okay. Thank you. Gah. Music major. They can have their degree back. Find.
[Mary Robinette] Juxtaposition is…
[Howard] [garbled]
[Mary Robinette] Happening in your brain right now.
[Howard] When you hear that ba ba ba... The next thing that's going to happen is an explosion. If you're watching a movie, something's about to blow up. Because the forced congruence and the anticipation has told us what's coming next.
 
[Mary Robinette] Well, what's coming next right now is our thing of the week. Our thing of the week is When Franny Stands Up by Eden Robins. I loved this book a lot. It is set immediately or shortly after the end of World War II. It's in the 1950s. Franny is a young Jewish woman and she wants to do stand up comedy. If you think that's Marvelous Mrs. Mazel, this is not Marvelous Mrs. Mazel with magic. That's not what this is. The only thing it has in common are the words that I have said thus far. It is a story about intergenerational trauma. It is a story about the search for comedy. It is also with… Has this wonderful magical element. It's at the juxtaposition between stand up comedy and the very real PTSD that Franny's brother is dealing with, that she herself is dealing with. Those two things play off each other so beautifully. It's funny and it's moving. I highly recommend When Franny Stands Up by Eden Robins.
 
[Dan] So can I talk about another example of juxtaposition? We have in our notes beautiful music playing over a fight scene. One of the ones that I love is in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. The opening stunt, the opening fight scene, they have the music Ain't That a Kick in the Head, which I believe is a Dean Martin song. It's very funny, ha ha, fight scene with this, but you realize very quickly that that music is diegetic, that music is happening inside of the story and all of the characters can hear it. It's being broadcast over the PA during a prison break. So there is the juxtaposition of tone, but also we realize that the characters are using it as a countdown. So it becomes this form of creating tension in the story. What's going to happen when we get to the end of that song? So it's kind of adding two or three things at once, and doing them very effectively.
[Howard] The fourth thing that it's doing is finally doing right what Hudson Hawk tried to do for the entire movie where the two of them are singing the same song in order to try and time their heist. But it was never as cool as it was in Mission Impossible 4.
 
[DongWon] One more thing I want to bring up in terms of juxtaposition is it is incredibly useful as a technique to add depth and context to a scene. I often talk about fiction and particularly novels as a layer cake. You want to add as many layers as you can to make sure that the reader's getting the most amount of information as possible in a given moment. Right? So, going back to examples Erin used last time in terms of making sure there is tension rather than conflict, a way to add tension into opening with a fight scene, opening with an action scene, is you're giving us flashbacks, you're giving us different POVs, to tell us about the character and what they care about. If you start with a gun fight, and halfway through, you do a flashback to realizing that the main… The protagonist's sister has been kidnapped and that's what they're trying to do, then that adds tension in a way that wouldn't be there initially. So, using juxtaposition can add so much more meaning or depth. Also, like the Aldhani… Climactic Aldhani scenes in Andor is a great example because they're cutting between this religious ceremony that's happening by these colonized people and this heist for the revolution that is going to eventually free them. The tension between those two images is adding all this thematic and narrative depth that elevates what's happening on the screen to a different level versus what we would have seen if it was just a heist happening in a vault.
[Dan] Well, if I add to that… I know, Erin, you want to say something. But, just before we leave Andor, one of the things I loved about the tension created in that juxtaposition at the end is that we know that all of the fallout and all of the consequences of this heist are going to fall on those indigenous people and not on our main characters. They're the ones that the Empire is going to crack down on, they're the ones that are going to have horrible consequences. So it adds this extra layer of really bitter tension to what's going on. It drains all of the joy that we normally expect from a heist, and all of the triumph is completely gone, because we know that those people are going to suffer for it.
[Mary Robinette] Erin, what were you going to say?
[DongWon] But we also know that… Oh, sorry.
[Erin] No, no. Keep going. That's fine.
[DongWon] But we also know though that this is the thing that is going to lead to their eventual liberation. This single act leads directly in a chain of events to the destruction of the Death Star and the fall of the Empire. Which is anticipation coming… Juxtaposition, anticipation, all these things are layered in there in this beautiful example. Anyways, we'll stop talking about Andor now because we would do that for six hours.
[Chuckles]
 
[Erin] I was just going to say that in addition to adding tension to a scene, that juxtaposition can also add tension to a character. It's a great way of signaling an unreliable narrator or a character that makes you feel weird in a bad way.
[Chuckles]
[Erin] Which is that, if someone, for example… If something really horrible is happening, but a character… Their interior thoughts about it are way off from what we think… They're like, "Kicking puppies? Eh, fine." That juxtaposition of our… What we believe would be the normal, or, like, within a set of reactions to a situation and what the character is experiencing, it can show things that are bad, things that are good, but I think it really adds some tension, because the next time you see this character, you're not sure how they're going to react to something, because they didn't react in the way that you were anticipating that they might.
[DongWon] This is Javier Bardon calling people friendo in No Country for Old Men. Terrifying.
[Chuckles]
 
[Howard] The episode that kind of kicked all this off, we were talking about building a mystery, and then we're talking about the tools of tension. Using juxtaposition late in a mystery where a small thing has the same shape as the solution to the puzzle. You juxtapose those things and the detective looks at the small thing and suddenly realizes, "[gasp] Aha! That's the last piece that I need." Even if those pieces aren't related. That is a very common use of juxtaposition in mysteries.
[Dan] So, one way that I have used this, for example, in the John Cleaver books. In the first one, I Am Not a Serial Killer, I used this as a way of showing you how messed up John Cleaver is. This is a lot of what Erin was talking about, is, if we're seeing somebody's reactions are off. I went out of my way to include a lot of slice of life kind of moments. We get to see this kid on the first day of school. We get to see him at Halloween. We get to see him at Christmas. Every time, he is not reacting the way that we expect, and the kind of excitement that we would want to feel at those different moments. The cool high school dance that he gets to go to is this kind of nightmare for him. The Christmas party is just absolutely, kind of unbearably sad, because of the way that no one in the family gets along with each other. So providing those moments of resonance where we recognize what the character is going through, and it should feel one way, but it feels a different way, adds a lot of tension to a character.
[Mary Robinette] You can have that also in the positive, as well. If there's a character who is slightly terrifying, but you actually want the reader to feel sympathy for them or to enjoy… To ultimately think of them as a good guy. Giving them something that they care about, like a Yorky or a teacup poodle, is a way to humanize them by providing that juxtaposition. It remind you that people are not mono-dimensional. The other thing that has occurred to me as we been talking is that this tool of juxtaposition is a key tool in cozy mysteries. That that's one of the reasons that cozies work is because they are juxtaposing a British beautiful little country house with murder. Or baking with murder. That juxtaposition is, in fact, a key element of the cozies.
 
[Mary Robinette] Now, I'm afraid, we're going to juxtapose your homework.
[Erin] Homework.
[Howard] They've been anticipating it.
[Chuckles]
[Erin] All right. For the homework this week, look at your work in progress and find a scene where you may want to add more tension, and add an element of juxtaposition to do that. Any sort of… Any of the ones that we've been talking about, but add some juxtaposition into your work in progress and ramp up that tension.
[Mary Robinette] You are out of excuses. Now go write.
[Behind you!]
[Murder!]
[Laughter]
 
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Writing Excuses 14.16: Your Setting is a Telegraph

Apr. 23rd, 2019 04:42 pm
mbarker: (ISeeYou2)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 14.16: Your Setting is a Telegraph
 
 
Key points: Setting can be used to quickly telegraph the kind of story they are reading, the tone and mood. E.g., a prologue can establish the tone of the entire story. Specific, concrete details can help. Don't forget the Stooges' Law, a coconut cream pie on the mantle in the first act means by the end of the third act, someone will get hit in the face with it. Screenwriting has the opening shot, with a visual setting. Where a meeting is happening, what they're doing, where the events are happening can do a lot to indicate the type of story. If you have a tonal shift, before telegraphing it, consider whether the surprise of the unexpected shift is part of your point or not. When you finish a book, you may need to revise the first chapter and fine-tune the setting to get the tone right. 
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 16.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Your Setting is a Telegraph.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Margaret] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Margaret] I'm Margaret.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
 
[Brandon] Howard, when we were preparing this, you gave us the title. So why don't you explain what you mean by Your Setting is a Telegraph.
[Howard] it comes from the term telegraphing the punch, telegraphing the punchline, telegraphing the joke, whatever. Which is often used negatively. But here we mean your setting is going to telegraph to the reader very, very quickly… You're going to communicate to the reader very, very quickly what kind of a story they're reading. Are they reading a comedy, are they reading military sci-fi, are they reading a puzzle story about alien archaeology, all of those sorts of mood things can be established by your setting, and can actually be established very, very quickly when you introduce them to your setting.
[Brandon] Yeah. You can always, of course, establish these other ways, as well. Through word choice, through what your character is doing, through situation, but this… We're talking about world building this year, and we want to really talk about how to use your descriptions, your settings, or where people are, or things like this to give an immediate and powerful indication of the tone of your story. A lot of times, one of the big questions I get from students is, "Should I use a prologue or should I not?" Which is one of those loaded questions, which is… What kind of juice do you want? Right?
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Should I have a drink of juice or not? Do you like juice? Is it breakfast? Do you want a prologue? Well, one of the reasons you might want a prologue is if you are having trouble with your first chapter establishing the tone of the entire story, then you can use your prologue to do this. Now that's of course dangerous because maybe you need to look at that first chapter and learn how to maybe make that one, but it is one of the things you can do, is… I often use the Wheel of Time as an example of this. In the beginning of the Wheel of Time, in chapter 1, the first few pages take place with the young man on a farm with his father. It's a little bit creepy because he keeps seeing shadows, but that's not a real indication of tone. If you were taking those opening scenes as a promise, it might be, "Oh, this is going to be a pastoral, perhaps horror." So Robert Jordan has a prologue where a madman is wandering through a burning castle, screaming for his dead wife and children, who are at his feet and he can't see them. Things are on fire, and there's been a big war, and it's like, "All right. We're in the middle of a giant war drama with some psychological elements." So that early introduction of tone is very important to set the tone for the entire series. How can we do this? What suggestions do you have to our listeners?
 
[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I find is that if you are specific and concrete with your choices in the beginning, that this does a lot. So, like if I am writing military SF, then having a hand cannon says we're going to be shooting some things. If I'm doing a comedy, then in very broad terms, if there's a coconut cream pie there, we know that at some point… It's the Stooges' law, that if there is a coconut cream pie on the mantle, then by the end of the third act, someone is going to get hit in the face with it. These are the things that happen that can communicate tone to the reader, because we latch onto these concrete details.
[Howard] Well, it's important to recognize that the version of Chekhov's law that Chekhov actually said, which is if you want to fire a gun in act three, you need to show it on the mantle in act one. If you want to hit somebody with a coconut cream pie, you have to show us a coconut cream pie on the mantle in act one, so that we know that this is a story in which there can be a pie fight.
 
[Margaret] I think it's interesting in the difference between fiction and what I'm thinking in terms of screenwriting, because it's your opening shot. Right? It's very hard to avoid establishing setting, because the visual is right there. In screenplay format, the first thing you say is this an interior or an exterior? What is our setting? Is it day or is it night? That's the first thing somebody reading after fade in is going to encounter in a script. In fiction, you have a little more freedom in there. Like, if you're starting with a character, but it's remembering to put the character in a place, because you can get so much lifting done, as you say, in terms of tone by where you're meeting somebody, what they're doing, where these events are happening. A conversation that happens in a diner is different than a conversation that happens in a car that's speeding towards a cliff or in a prison visiting area. All of those start you on three very different types of stories.
[Howard] If I have a science fiction… An opening science-fiction shot that is in the science-fiction equivalent of a mausoleum with data-encoded corpsicles or whatever, and that is what I am describing, the reader has a pretty clear indication that life and the ending thereof is going to be one of the thematic focuses of this story.
[Brandon] One of my favorite episodes of Firefly is the one that starts with Mal in the desert naked. Opening shot.
[Mary Robinette] That's one of my favorites, too.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] That shot indicates wacky hijinks are going to occur. Not just him, desert, naked, but his pose, the way he's talking. He's not, like, lying there, dying of thirst, crawling through the desert. He's like, "Huh." Just one shot. He says something, but you wouldn't even need to. You know that you are going to chuckle and wacky hijinks ensue. I really like this.
[Margaret] Things have gone rapidly out of his control over the course of this episode.
[Brandon] I love when stories can do that.
[Mary Robinette] I think, actually, one of the things about that is that you've got the specific concrete detail, but you also have the character's relationship to that detail. So, one of the examples that I think of is the difference between Star Wars and Space Balls. Both of them say this is science-fiction and they both have the same opening shot, which is ginormous ships scrolling through. But Space Balls, it goes on so long that it becomes comical. That tells you, "Oh, no no no. This…"
[Brandon] You're going to laugh.
[Mary Robinette] You're going to laugh all the way through this.
[Howard] Then there's a bumper sticker on…
[Mary Robinette] There's a bumper sticker.
[Howard] On the back of the spaceship.
[Mary Robinette] Just in case you missed how long it was going on.
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our book of the week, which is Terminal Alliance.
[Howard] Yes. Terminal Alliance by Jim Hines. My family, we bought this book twice. I was on my way back from Cedar City, with Kellianna and I put on the audiobook of Terminal Alliance so we could listen to it. We got home and she said, "Are you going to listen to this in your office while you draw?" I said, "Maybe. But I'm not working yet." She said, "Well, I want to keep going, and the reader is too slow. So do we have a copy of this book in print?" So we bought it in print. No regrets. No regrets. It's a comedy about space janitors and zombie apocalypse. You know, that's kind of all you need to know. If I say space janitors and zombie apocalypse, you have enough setting that I've telegraphed to you the tone of this thing from my friend Jim that you're really going to enjoy.
[Mary Robinette] I'm just going to second that I enjoyed the heck out of this book, too.
[Howard] I think the cover was a Dan Dos Santos. I'm not sure. I love the cover. I love the cover.
 
[Brandon] So, kind of riffing off that, Howard, how do you indicate that there are comedic elements in your stories, and how do you indicate sometimes… Sometimes, Schlock Mercenary gets very serious. I feel like you use setting to distinguish these two quite well.
[Howard] There's… Well, first of all, I need to establish that if you're reading Schlock Mercenary and have been reading it for a while, if there isn't a punchline or if things happen and there are no repercussions, there is no serious side of it, you'll feel like I've broken some rules. That's… We've talked in previous episodes about budget. So I have this currency that I have spent to get you to this point. That said, I try to begin every book with some sort of establishing shot, that will tell us this is science-fiction. I'm going to end the strip with a punchline, which, because of the beat, beat, punchline format of things will tell you very quickly we're going to tell a lot of jokes. But I like to establish the scope of the story. In the most recent… I say most recent. When book 19 launched, I did a joke about prologues. We had a prologue in which an alien spaceship is flying and they're saying, "There's a star system ahead, do we need to change course?" "No, we're going to fly through their cloud… Comet cloud, we should be fine." "But anything…" "We're big. Anything we nudge, those inner planets are going to have to deal with." "Sure, they're going to have to deal with it, but it just means millions of years." 8 million years later, we have a little velociraptor with a telescope who looks kind of like Leonardo da Vinci, if he were a feathered velociraptor talking to another velociraptor who also has a similar sort of da Vinci-ish look who is building something. He's saying, "Huh. How soon can your flying machine be ready?" That has told us this is going to be a tragic story about the ends of civilization, but you're going to laugh.
[Brandon] Excellent.
[Howard] That was a very long-winded…
[Brandon] No, that's great.
[Howard] Approach to it, but... I also made so much fun of prologues, and I was thinking of you the whole time.
[Brandon] Thank you very much. I'll have you know that… 
[Margaret] I wanted to giggle at your description, but I didn't want to mess up the audio.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] I've restrained myself, and most of my books only have two now.
[Wha!]
[Brandon] Way of Kings has four prologues.
[Mary Robinette] I know. I know. I'm just… I'm amazed at your restraint.
 
[Brandon] Yes. All right. So. Building off of that, let's say you want to shift tones in your story, you know you're going to do it. You're going to be writing a comedic story that is going to get serious, or you're going at it the other way, you're going to write a serious story but you know you're going to have some comedic elements. How do you indicate that from the beginning? Do you need to indicate that from the beginning?
[Howard] I think the second part of that question is the more important bit. If the surprise that people experience with a tonal shift that they weren't expecting is your point, then you don't need to telegraph it. If, however, you don't want to alienate them… You know there's a tonal shift, and you don't want to alienate them, then you do need to telegraph it.
[Brandon] Okay. I would absolutely agree with that. Though, we're talking specifically about using setting. Right? The methods of using setting. So, let's in our last few minutes here, let's give a few tips. What are things you've done using your setting to indicate your tone?
[Mary Robinette] So, I did this in Calculating Stars. Calculating Stars opens with a couple in the Poconos, and they're having sexy fun times. Then I slam a meteor into the earth.
[Brandon] Right.
[Mary Robinette] So… What I did with that, and I made very, very deliberate choices in that first page. The opening line is "Do you remember where you were when the meteor struck?" That tells you this is going to be a disaster story. Then, the
is "I was in the mountains with Nathaniel, and we were stargazing, by which I mean sex."
[Brandon] Right.
[Mary Robinette] Which gets a laugh. It tells you… Having those two things back to back tells you about the setting that we're in… And, granted, I'm doing this in narration. It is a first-person character. But I'm using the setting there to tell you what this is going to be about. That you can expect a story in which we're dealing with relationships, we're dealing with disaster, and that there's going to be some comedy. It's not going to be disaster all the way down.
 
[Brandon] I often have trouble with first chapters. Not starting them. I've talked about this before in the podcast, though, that when I get done with the book, I feel like my first chapter no longer belongs with the book that I ended up writing. This is coming from someone who architects and outlines a ton. That first chapter, getting that tone right, can be a big deal for just kind of establishing how the whole story's going to play out. I had to do this just with my most recent book, that will have just come out at this point about six months ago. Skyward. Where I wrote the first chapter, I even did readings from it. At the end, it was just not right. Even though when I rewrote it, it was basically the same events happening. I needed to make… They live in a cavern system underground, I needed to make the caverns a little more claustrophobic. I needed to make the stepping on the surface for the first time more full of wonder, because the idea of we as a people are escaping the caverns and getting into the skies, that's the point of the story. It just… I find finishing my book and then going back and saying, "What was my book's tone really about?" And "How can I hit this metaphorically in the first chapter?"
[Mary Robinette] I think that that's a really good point, that… For me, a lot of times, it's about going back in and finessing the specific physical details of the space. I have a story called Cerbo in Vitra ujo which is one of the true horror stories that I've written. When I wrote it initially, it read like it was going to be a teen drama. What I had to go back in and do was bring out… Even though I didn't move the location, I shifted the… They're in a conservatory on a space station, so there's all of these plants around. But I made sure that there is like a broken rose, that there is a diseased rose. That there are elements there that are unsettling in order to indicate that that's where we were going. It was about going back and adjusting the setting to match the tone.
 
[Brandon] So, our homework plays right into this idea. Which you have for us, Mary?
[Mary Robinette] Yes. So what I want you to do is I want you to write an opening. It can be taking an opening of something that you're already working on or just starting from scratch. But I want you to write the first half page. In that first half page, I want you to hit three specific concrete details. I'm picking three as an arbitrary number, because I want you to actually really dig into this. But I watch to pick three specific concrete details that telegraph setting… That telegraph the tone. That telegraph what the mood is. These details are obviously your setting. So I want you to do that. Then I want you to write it again and telegraph a different mood.
[Brandon] Use, maybe, even the same dialogue, but use the setting to indicate a different tone. All right. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 11.35: Elemental Humor Q&A with Victoria Schwab

Aug. 31st, 2016 04:06 pm
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 11.35: Elemental Humor Q&A with Victoria Schwab

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/08/28/11-35-elemental-humor-qa-with-victoria-schwab/

Q&A Summary:
Q: How do you add humor to a serious story without breaking the mood or how do you inject humor into a dramatic scene without breaking the building tension?
A: Humor can be a good pressure valve, to deflate just a bit. You can also have humor fall flat. If a joke relieves tension but makes the situation worse, you have relieved pressure and moved forward. Watch for gallows humor and similar emergency relief.
Q: My sense of humor consists only of dad jokes. How do I get real humor into my writing?
A: Really good puns are doing multiple things in a scene. Read better humor. Make sure the humor suits the context.
Q: How do you make sure your humor is really funny and not just funny to you?
A: Have other people read it.
Q: How does the culture of the world you write in influence the humor?
A: Pay attention to folktales, idioms, and humor. Watch for shared context jokes. Use jokes to tell the reader about the culture.
Q: When is humor necessary in horror? Can you write a horror book without humor?
A: Yes, you can. But you miss all the great jokes. And horror can be darker with a humor contrast.
Q: Where/what is the line between a book whose purpose is to be comedic and a book that could have funny parts in it?
A: Right through Terry Pratchett. What is your book driven by?
Q: How do you make dialogue sound natural but still funny?
A: You may not be able to. Funny and natural is usually character-based, while funny and wordplays are sometimes not very natural. See who can tell that joke naturally. Watch for natural cadence, and see where the joke fits. What function does this serve in the plot? Why would this character say this?
( Who's there? )

[Brandon] We are going to end with a writing prompt. Howard?
[Howard] I came up with this 3 1/2 minutes ago. Write a joke and have each of your characters tell that joke. Find a way for them to tell that joke in their style.
[Brandon] That is perfect. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
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Writing Excuses 6.11: Making Your Descriptions Do More Than One Thing

Aug. 17th, 2011 06:39 pm
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 6.11: Making Your Descriptions Do More Than One Thing

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/08/14/writing-excuses-6-11-making-your-descriptions-do-more-than-one-thing/

Key points: Make your descriptions release information about character or plot, too. Mood, emotion, characterization. Pay attention to word choice. Be economical with words. Watch for unintentional gaffes and gorilla in the phone booth phrases. Don't be purple! Evoke character. What does this description do to advance the story? Use description to imply the setting, not hit your reader over the head with it.
( Red velvet curtains... )
[Brandon] Okay. Let's do a story prompt. As much as I liked Mary Robinette as a koala, let's go ahead and pick something else that has to do with description. I think we'll just go ahead and pick...
[Mary] Can I actually offer one?
[Brandon] Yeah. Go for it.
[Mary] Because this is a writing exercise...
[Dan] Nobody ever volunteers writing prompts!
[Mary] I know. But this actually is a really good one, for description. Which is to focus just on the description. Take yourself someplace and for 30 minutes, describe the environment that you are in. Don't describe the people. Just describe the space. Try to use all five senses. What's going to happen to your brain is that you'll hit a point where you're like, "I cannot possibly describe anything else." That's when you start noticing the little details. The little details are the things that make a story.
[Brandon] All right. Wonderful advice, wonderful writing prompt. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
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