Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses 21.28: Narrative Transitions

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-28-narrative-transitions

Key Points: Transitions. Through scene, break, interruption. Underline what happened or launch next scene. Question, bad, okay. Common tone key or match cut. End of a scene? Stop writing, then fix the transition later. Eight types of fun: sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression, submission. Transitions as pacing. Edit pass techniques. Bracket notes. 

[Season 21, Episode 28]

[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. 

[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 28]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Narrative transitions.

[Erin] Tools, not rules.

[Howard] For writers, by writers.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[DongWon] So, this week, after having dug into what makes a scene last week, we're going to start talking about transitions. How do you move from one scene to the next? How do you move across that shift in location, POV, energy, whatever it is? And that can be moving from scene to scene. It can be moving from chapter to chapter or section to section, right? And so, what are the elements that you think about when you are trying to figure out how do I get from here to over there?

[Mary Robinette] So I think about what kind of transition I'm planning on using. And I think of them as sort of coming in three modes. There's what I call a through scene, and then there's a break, and then there's an interruption. So a through scene is where you use narration to transition us from one place to another. Like, we walked for many miles before arriving. And so it is technically the... you're just summarizing all of the offstage stuff is what's happening there. And then a scene break is the hashtag and you jump in time and space. And an interruption is where we stay in the same time and space, but interrupt the action in order to punctuate a moment. This is  often the dun-dun-dun...

[DongWon] The knock at the door.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, the knock at the door. Yeah.

[Howard] I...

[dun...]

[Laughter] 

[Howard] Years. That was...

[Erin] Figure that out.

[Howard] That was... that was easy. Years and years and years ago, I wrote a movie review for the movie Blood Rain, which was not good. and which did not advance from scene to scene very cleanly. And I described them moving the plot forward. Instead of it, like, flowing like a river, the cast all ganged up behind this boulder and manually pushed it down a dry riverbed. And it's the difference between something flowing smoothly and something looking like it's just too much work. It... you... it shouldn't look to the reader like you worked really hard to move between these scenes.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] It should feel, to my tastes anyway, it should feel like like running water.

[DongWon] It should feel deliberate, right? First and foremost. And I think one of the big risks in transitions is if you have too much falling action at the end of a scene and then too much rising action at the start of the next scene, you end up in a valley where it's very easy for the reader to put the book down, right? You can have a disjunction between the scenes, but this is a little bit just another way to talk about get in early, get... or...

[Howard] In late, out early.

[DongWon] In late, out early. Thank you.

[Mary Robinette] I think about it as do I want to underline what has just happened or do I want to launch to the next scene? And sometimes you do both.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, an underline is like a reaction shot, which I describe reaction shots through what I've learned from Nathan Fillian. Have I done the Nathan Fillian? Okay. I couldn't remember if I had talked at length about this before.

[Erin] Is this the Nathan Fillian soap opera...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Thing? I love it. Remind us.

[Mary Robinette] All right. So, he said that at the end of a scene in soaps, the camera is going to push in on you. And this older soap star said, "You are out of things to do. So you do... there are three faces you make. Did I leave the stove on? Oh, I did leave the stove on. No, I turned the stove off." And that basically what this says is...

[chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I have questions. Things are bad. Things are going to be okay. And it helps the reader understand what is ha... and contextualize what has happened before. So I sometimes will get to the end of a scene, like, when it's not working. I'm, like, reading back through it and, like, why is this not working? And I'll look at it and go, is the stove on or off right now? Or do we have questions about it? Is this...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And sometimes just like adding a single line about that. It doesn't have to be like this entire big thing. It's just that single moment can...

[Howard] Okay. I have a quick personal question to ask.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Howard] When you reach that moment, do you make the face? Do you make the stove on/ stove off face?

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Sometimes. Yeah.

[Howard] I... because I've... I have caught myself, when I am writing, when I am drawing sometimes, I am stuck until I make the face my character would be making and feel what the character is feeling and then I can put the thing on the page. And that probably has no bearing on the conversation, but it fascinates me.

[Mary Robinette] No, but I do... I think it does to a degree because I think for me it is like I talk about these mechanical things, but it really is about chasing the vibes.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And like the... for me the stove on or stove off is like this is kind of the underline. It's the but is the stove on or off is often the launch into the next scene because you're raising this new question. Which was one of the problems that I ran into when I was starting to shift from short stories to novels is that I kept ending everything with a solid sort of, ah, everything is fine now, or, everything is terrible. And it's one of the reasons that you sometimes use a through scene, or you want to end with a question. Because otherwise you are giving the reader a chance to leave. In theater terms, one of the problems with a blackout is that it's an opportunity for an audience member to escape.

[Erin] Wow. And you don't want that.

[Mary Robinette] You do not want... You want to keep them.

[Erin] I'm thinking a little bit about songs again, which is that... have you ever been listening to a song, I don't know why, but the wobble is coming into my head. The wobble is a song where you think that song has ended because they go into a long repetition as many songs do where things get quieter and you're like, "Wow, that was great. I had a lot of fun doing the wobble dance." And then they're like, "Just kidding. There's still three more minutes of song."

[Laughter] 

[Erin] They just, like, come back and you're like, "Wait, there was no... Why? I don't understand. You, like, prepped me, like, to exit the song."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And I'm thinking, like, scenes are similar. Like, what you said, DongWon, about not wanting falling action and then too much rising action, is like a fade out in a song...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Which telling people, like, this is the end, and then, weirdly, a fade in into the next verse and you're like, wait, that's an odd thing. In songs, a lot of times where you go from one scene or one part of a song to the next, it's after a strong moment. It is a long belt.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin[ It is like the moment of emotion in the song and then you're like, okay, quiet down, let me tell you the next part of this story. And so it carries the listener through.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And I think similarly, like, having an ending that's really strong, allows you to then start in another place, because that strong thing... the audience is still thinking about during the blackout, oh, my gosh, there was a gunshot, and then it went to a blackout.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Who could have shot it? By the time they think, oh, and also maybe I have to pee, you're already in the next scene...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And they don't have a chance to escape.

[Howard] The movie Corpse Bride, the song Remains of the Day by Danny Elfman has a crazy key change between the verse and the chorus. And there is what we call a common tone modulation between it. He sings, our jubiliciously lovely corpse bride. And the note that he's holding on bride is the same note that he begins the lyrics, die, die, we all pass away. But the whole key change has modulated around that one note. It's what we call a common tone key change. In cinema, there's a similar technique where very similar actions or very similar colors or whatever are cut between, it's called a match cut. And in prose, the technique is... I don't know what to call it. I would call it a match cut or a common tone modulation.

[Mary Robinette] I mean reaction shot comes out [garbled] ...

[Howard] Yeah, reaction shot. She cried into her cupped hands, at the end of a scene, and the next scene begins with he sipped his cup of noodles. And that transition to me is so... it's such a useful trick because I can have two scenes with completely different moods, completely different rising falling action, completely different settings, completely different characters, but that one common tone, that one match in the cut is enough to stitch them together so that it feels like the river is flowing instead of I'm sisyphus-ing a rock down the dry riverbed.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] I think what a lot of this comes down to is, going back once again to the idea of macrocosm and microcosm, which I think about a lot when it comes to books clearly, like the fractal structure of things is a scene needs to have a beginning and an ending, right? And when you move from your ending to the beginning of the next one, whether you're looking for an interruption, whether you're looking for the match cut, building a bridge for the reader across that break, what you need to be communicating is intention. I meant to end the scene here. I mean to start the next scene here, and I'm going to grab you by the collar and move you from one to the other in a way that I think feels very deliberate and communicate something to the reader of A, how am I supposed to feel about the thing that just happened? and B, how should I feel about the scene that's about to happen?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And this is one of the things that makes ending a scene so hard is because you often don't really know the next scene, especially if you are discovery writing. Sometimes...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] You end it because you're like, "Oh, I've got that, it's good vibe for ending here, but I actually don't know what I'm aiming people towards."

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the the hacks that I have learned in the last 2 or 3 years, and I'm pretty deep into my career at this point, is that when you've accomplished everything that you need to accomplish in a scene, you can actually just stop writing it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And then come back and fix the transition later.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, don't like... don't let all of our, like, you have to do these things or this is very useful to do. Like, don't let that make you feel like you can't end a scene. If you're having trouble, it's probably just you don't know what the next one is yet. Figure that out and come back.

[DongWon] Exactly. And speaking of abruptly stopping a scene, we're going to transition into our break.

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[Erin] So, I have a theory... now that we're back... about... I don't know if you all have ever heard of the eight types of fun.

[Mary Robinette] I've heard of some types of fun. I think when we...

[Howard] I've only heard of two.

[Erin] Which... what two have you heard of?

[Howard] Whee, this is fun, and Okay. No shit.There I was.

[Erin] So, this is a thing that comes out of games and they said like, why do people play games? And there are eight types of fun that you can actually be having when you're playing a game. And the reason... you might be like, what does this have to do? This transition is real... is real rough.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] But the reason is that when you were talking about the match cut, I was thinking, what is it that people like about that, especially in prose? And part of it is, I actually think it allows you to come outside of the story with a small part of your brain and be clever. Because you see the... like, even on some subconscious level, you're like, oh cup and cup, I get it, and it's not anything that's happening in the story on the page. It's... but it allows you...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] To make a bridge yourself, and I was thinking, well, what is that exactly?

[DongWon] It's a meta participation in the story. Yeah.

[Erin] Exactly, and a lot of times, games think about how do you meta participate...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] In the play. So the eight types of fun, I'm wondering if some of these are things that could carry you from one scene to the next. And I'm making it up in real time.

[Mary Robinette] I am so excited by this.

[DongWon] Yeah, I love this idea. Go on.

[Erin] But they are sensation, so the engagement of your senses.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] Fantasy, just like escapism. Narrative, drama and story. Challenge, which is an obstacle to overcome. Fellowship, which is feeling sort of a social framework or feeling like you're with these characters or with this thing.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Discovery. Expression and comfort and repetition.

[Mary Robinette] I love this so much. I love this like... when I think...

[DongWon] I play games for all those reasons. That's all.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I'm like...

[Howard] I eat food for all those reasons.

[Mary Robinette] I just exist for all of those reasons. This is like... and this is literally one of the things that I love about games and about writing is that the reason it works is that it mirrors stuff that we do in the real world.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] And I'm sitting here thinking about the way... I talked in the previous chapter, previous chapter, sure, the previous episode about my my little to-do list...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] My prompts and purpose of scene. Like, I love the idea of adding that in as like, okay, but what is this... is this scene...

[Howard] What kind of fun?

[Mary Robinette] What kind of fun is this scene promising? And then using that as a kind of framing tool to pull you in, to suck you into the scene a little bit faster, and then probably lie to them if we tell them it's comfort.

[Chuckle]

[Howard] And in the interest of meta... in the interest of metataxonomy, I think your eight types of fun are almost all type one fun. Except maybe challenge will sometimes fall into the type two category.

[DongWon] Narrative can be type two, challenge can be type two. Fantasy, even if you're playing Resident Evil 4, you know what I mean? Like, I think type one, type two is a really useful concept that I use constantly. And again, type one fun, it's fun while you do it. It's fun when you think about it later. Type two fun, which comes up a lot in backpacking and hiking and other outdoor sports, is it was not fun while I was doing it. I was cold and wet and miserable, but it's still... it's fun when I think back on it, and I'm glad that I did it.

[Erin] Well, one of the things, like, the comfort one type of fun is partly what they use to describe when people are grinding in a game...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] When you're repeating something...

[DongWon] [garbled]

[Erin] Over and over again in order to get the item. And it is like the hiking.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So, it's like in some ways, you're doing it and it's not fun at the time, but actually the ritual of doing it over and over again becomes a weird kind of comfort.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] It's a thing you know you have to do. Like if you could, like, fast forward through all the hiking and just be at the spot, maybe you would do it. But you might feel like I missed something because in some ways the, like, struggling to get there is what makes the reward. It's that contrast...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Between like oh the slog and oh my gosh like I got the item or I got to the place I wanted to.

[DongWon] Well, and comfort.. Oh, go ahead.

[Mary Robinette] Well, when you're hiking, there's a whole bunch of those micro moments on the way to the place.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] It's like, this is pretty, that's pretty. So, a whole bunch of small rewards on the way there. Because if you were having to do that same slog through like a... the same length...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] And the same ups and downs through a featureless concrete obstacle course, none of that... that would not be fun to look back on.

[DongWon] Yeah. Well, this is why people talk about a roadwalk or desert hiking as some of the toughest hiking because it's very repetitive with very little distinction from moment to moment. But yeah.

[Erin] Yeah. And so I think one of the things for the transition of it all is that, like, you can maybe use these feelings or these things to figure out how to bridge the gap. So you can be like, I'm going to bridge the gap with sensation...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] With like a sensory detail that will focus. I'm going to bridge the gap with discovery. Oh my gosh, something new is here. And then you can change everything else, the people, the vibe, the etc. But something about that type of fun...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Or that type of emotion that's happening from the reader is actually carrying you across.

[Howard] I was rereading the final books of Schlock Mercenary in preparation for putting them into print and realized... I actually realized it just now from the memory of having reread it that I used the match cuts, the common tone modulations, much more commonly in act three when I am making scene changes while everything is more intense. Because the way the match cuts worked there, it was a pacing tool. It and... I hadn't thought about that until right now, but the kind of transition you use can be a throttle for accelerating the pace or for pulling back on the pace.

[Mary Robinette] That is exactly why I use the difference...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Between a through scene and a scene break. Like, the thing about it... So, if you think about... if you've ever gone to see a musical or a stage show, Hamilton does this a number of times where they don't do a blackout as they move from one scene to another. The dancers and the actors are still on stage. They are the ones moving the scenery. There's still an action that is happening. And so, you keep this sense of forward movement. Even though it actually takes longer, it doesn't provide you with an exit point. And so it's one of those things that you can use when you do a through scene like, we traveled for many miles. It is both slower and also keeps you more engaged than if you do a scene break and come back.

[DongWon] Well, one thing I think about too along those lines and kind of connecting back to this idea of eight types of fun is you need that difference from beat to beat for your reader to also process what just happened, right? Not to continue too much on my risotto hating, but when one bite is exactly the same as the bite before, at some point that repetition becomes hard to bear and it's hard to process what makes each individual bite exciting and wonderful, right? So if you go from an action scene directly into another action scene into another action scene, and I see people trying to do this because, like, oh, I'm writing an action book. This is a thriller. It needs to be fight, fight, fight. When you do that, I can't enjoy any of the fights, because I need that moment, that sort of transition moment, of the actors are on stage moving things around. It gives me a breather...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] To process the emotional thing I just experienced.

[Howard] Well, that's the principle we talked about at the very beginning of the previous episode...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] The conflation of the word scene in scene-sequel format, where sometimes we are transitioning between action and action and sometimes we're transitioning between action and hey let's take a breath and process the action that just took place.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And this is also the thing, for me... like when we were talking in the last episode about flashbacks and if those were two... if that was a scene-wich...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Or if those were different scenes. And, for me, the reason that they're a scene-wich is because you're using these through scenes to transition... these small, very small, micro transitions to move in and out of those. But it is... it's the same idea as when you are, I'm in this place and then we travel and then we're in this other place. Those are two different scenes.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But we stitch them together with this through scene text.

[Erin] Yeah, that makes sense. I think... I was actually thinking about, like, because I love, like, scenes where there's a slight memory or we move a little bit in time, but we're still in the same scene. And I think, like, what's interesting is thinking about how the difference... what the difference is in the transition technique between the two of them. And I feel like it's like same technique, softer hand. You know what I mean? Like, if you, like, land like... if every single memory overwhelms the scene that it's in, then it feels more like a flashback...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Because it's like that memory is, like, punching you in the face. Whereas, as often happens in our own lives, if you're remembering something while still doing another action, that memory is a lot less like it didn't stop you from doing what you're currently doing. It's just something you're noting often because it informs what you are doing. Like, and I think the way... I was actually thinking about that going from one action scene to the next to the next to the next, to randomly transition in the middle of my thought, which is that one of the things I love about fight scenes is what you learn about the fighter...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] From the way that they fight and what happens. And having a second to process I'm not as good a fighter as I thought I was. Oh no, the next fight is beginning, is... makes that next fight more resonant than if it's just like I'm not even going to think about that. I'm just going and going and going. And I think that a lot of times when we use a memory, it's to add that additional context...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Without having to h... you don't have to show the whole my last fight showed me I was quite bad at this. You actually just do that with a small memory of being hit...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Or a flinch that happens within the character and they're thinking, "Oh my gosh, like, this is just going to be like another... this is going to be like last time." This is adding extra depth and extra context...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] To the current scene by having that small transition that brings the rest of the world of the story into the scene that you're in.

[Howard] If our listeners are anything like me, this episode contains a whole bunch of new and exciting thoughts about how to stitch scenes together. And I just want to present all of you, fair listeners, with the strategy that I'm giving myself, which is I'm going to apply these cool new transition between scenes techniques as edit pass techniques. I'm going to let myself...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Write the scenes first and then I am going to go back and look at the order of them and then I am going... once I know they're in the right order, then I'm going to worry about the prose that stitches the scenes together.

[Mary Robinette] I have... which I will put... we'll put in the liner notes on the website. I have examples of what it looks like when you do the same scene with a through scene versus a break. Because it is an edit pass thing that you can do later.

[Erin] Actually, to build on that, I am a big fan of using transitions, which I often struggle with because they're hard and that's why we're doing a whole episode about it, by making myself fun bracket notes as I'm writing. Like, I'll be like, and then she goes to the bar to confront that woman in a much more interesting way than I've got right now. And I'll put it within brackets so that I can find it and it doesn't end up in the final version of the story. But what I love about that is it allows me when I'm going on my edit pass to like almost have transi... like, give myself a little note of fun and a little giggle that makes the transitions feel like something fun that I get to do...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] As opposed to something annoying that I have to do.

[Mary Robinette] I do this too. I actually picked this up from C. L. Polk that they will write in brackets at the beginning of a scene or the end of a scene sometimes. Amazing closing line goes here that summarizes everything that's happened and sends us into... makes us excited to go into the next thing. I'm like, so just leaving a placeholder for yourself. It's like this is what I want to happen. I just don't know how it works right now.

[DongWon] Wow.

[Howard] My brackets are all self-nagging. My brackets are tell better joke here. This was cool. Write it again.

[Mary Robinette] You're like positive self talk is very...

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] It's super important.

[DongWon] Yeah. Well, and all this kind of points to... I mean there's a thing that they say in film and TV which is... and this is especially true in documentary work, which is you find the movie in the edit bed, right? You... the shooting process and the script process is kind of your intentions but what actually emerges at the end is what happens in the editing process, right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And I don't think books are that extreme in that way. But I think everybody's really spot on here in terms of as you're writing your first draft, as you're drafting as a process, don't worry too much about these transitions. These transitions can be layered in later. If you're somebody who does it as you go through, fantastic, right? We're not telling you not to do that. But if you're stressed out by hearing all of this, being like, I'm barely able to, like, write the scene that I'm in. I don't want to think about how do I get to the next scene yet? You can do that later. 

[DongWon] And on that note, I have a little bit of homework for you, which is to kind of do the thing that Mary Robinette was talking about. I want you to take two scenes from your current work in progress and think about different ways to transition them and then try them, right? I want you to transition from scene to scene as a through scene, as a break, and as an interruption. Try all three of these and deliberately go through, reread them, make some notes about what worked better, what didn't work as well. Why was that happening? Why does that work for this scene and not for this other scene? So, that's your homework for now. Try some different transitions and see how it goes.

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

Writing Excuses 21.26: Setting the Pace

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-26-setting-the-pace

Key Points: Controlling pace: Cadence, transitions, tone. Dialogue. Informational beats. Rubber banding. Short period of time, but great detail. Contrast.

[Season 21, Episode 26]

[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 26]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses. Setting the Pace.

[Erin] Tools, not rules.

[Howard] For writers, by writers.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Howard] And I get to set the pace. For this episode, I am sitting in the driver's seat of the pace car with my foot on the virtual gas or maybe the virtual brake. And I'd like to talk about how we find those pebbles in our fiction. How do you make the pace car go faster? How do you make it go slower? How do you swerve it out of the way so that they can have a race? The metamor... metaphor may have fallen apart 

[laughter] 

[Howard] at this point. Um, but where's the gas? Where's the brake?

[Mary Robinette] I find that there are so many different tools that you can use to control the pace. Like a lot of what we've been talking about already through the season are just secretly different ways of controlling pace. And I want to go ahead and say right up front that fast does not equal good. Slow does not equal bad. But the three kind of big umbrellas... and then we can if anyone wants to drill into them deeper. The three sort of big umbrella areas that I use when I'm controlling pace are the cadence, like fast versus slow scenes, transitions, how I move from one thing to another, and then tone.

[Erin] That makes sense to me.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] I mean, I would not want to put holes in any of those umbrellas.

[Mary Robinette] Amazing. 

[Erin] Because then they won't function as well. 

[laughter]

[Erin] But I'm curious when you're talking about cadence, like, it's interesting. Cadence is such a word to me that's speech associated.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] How fast you speak. I have the fast cadence of somebody who grew up in New York City. Other people have slower cadences and some of that has to do with where you're from, how your family speaks. But a story's cadence is determined by the writer. And so I'm wondering, like, what kind of tools are you using in sort of creating that cadence?

[Mary Robinette] I'm glad that you said that you think of cadence in terms of speech, because I always go back to the fact that writing developed to convey the spoken language. Like, the whole idea of storytelling began when people were just telling stories. So, for me, it's the same things that I use when I am trying to control dialogue on a page. But you can do it on a macro scale. There's, like, the length of a sentence, the length of a scene, the length of a paragraph, the length of a chapter. Punctuation, punctuation or white space. That exists to control breath and pauses. So it's how long you talk, how long you pause, and then the contrast between things.

[Howard] I love the... just the statement that writing developed to convey spoken language. Because one of the things that is really useful for controlling pace, and then within it there are lots of pacing elements, is dialogue. If you have... if you want it to sound like people are interrupting one another as they speak, they are stepping on the ends of each other's sentences as they talk, there's the double dash that commonly gets used in comics. I don't know what they use in prose?

[Mary Robinette] M-dash.

[Howard] Yeah, m-dash. Where you... instead of a period or a question mark, you get interrupted with an m-dash and then the next line of dialogue begins. And that's... I mean yes, that creates that pace, but if you throw in a said bookism, that so and so interrupted, then you've dragged the pace back because you added words for me to read. And so in order to use that tool effectively, you have to have established ahead of time for the reader the voice of each of the characters so that it is very clear who is talking without you having to drop those cues because you want the conversation to go fast. You have to leave those bits out.

[Mary Robinette] Well, and part of what happens there also is that when you're doing that, you're leaving more white space on the page. So the reader is literally reading less and that's one of the things that you can control that if the reader is... I mean they are literally spending more time reading words, it can often slow things down. Like if you want to do a slow-mo moment in a book, you can describe, like, the way the bead of water dripped down the side of the glass, each pebbled indentation in the glass catching it... And it's like, oh my god. But you can slow it down that way and you're just literally spending more words on it.

[Erin] What I think is really interesting is that can work both ways.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. 

[Erin] So if somebody is freaking out, like, about something, they will speak quickly in long run-on sentences. But the thing that you're talking about, which is also more words on the page, feels slow. And I actually think a lot of it is about the speed in which new informational beats hit the reader within that. So you talked about the bead of water, but everything else you're saying is, like, more about the bead, more about the water, and so it feels slow because it's long, but it's all one thing.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Erin] Whereas somebody who is having, like, a panic attack or really excited about something will skip from topic to topic very rapidly in that long period of things, which then feels like information is hitting you faster and so therefore it is a faster paced moment for you.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, I am so glad you brought this up because this is one of the things I always think about Flounder and Little Mermaid. There's this moment in the movie where he's like, "So, there was a shark and then he chased us and we went into a hole and we came back out and it was and then, then we were safe. Whew!" 

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] And there's no punctuation in that. So, like, it is... You can do that on the page. Like, I think that that's such a good observation about the jumping from topic to topic as moving you through things faster. Which. again, if you go to a macro scale, also happens if you do a montage, like the training sequence. You hit a bunch of different things, but each one is just like five sentences long, and then you go into the next one.

[Erin] It's almost... It reminds me of driving. Now, I don't drive...

[laughter]

[Erin] But I love driving.

[Howard] It reminds me of this thing that I don't actually do, but I've heard a lot about...

[Erin] But I'm often in the car while other people are doing it very successfully, and I have time to look at the scenery around me because I don't have to look at the road. And I think a lot of times, if you are in, like, a not exciting scenery place, where everything is, like, flat. There are, like, those places in the US where it's, like, flat and no crops are grown and there's no interesting geological features and you're just going and you're like in desert land.

[Howard] I drove through those from Utah to Los Angeles. 

[laughter]

[Erin] And it's, like, there's no change, and I think that's what the difference is.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Whereas if you are driving that same distance, but you're in a city and there's, like, thousands of different buildings and there's billboards and there's a mountain and there's a valley. All that stuff makes it feel like you're getting somewhere faster, even though you are not, because there's so much to distract you and to bring you along.

[Mary Robinette] And I think this is also what happens when you put too much information into something. We're going to talk about exposition next week, but I do want to flag that I think there is a limit to how much new information a reader can take in. And if you try to cram too much of it into a moment, that it feels rushed, even if nothing is actually happening in the scene. You can lose the reader because they're like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. I don't have enough time to take everything in."

[Erin] This makes me think of a montage. I'm so sorry. And then I'll be done. This makes me think of a montage, which is... A montage is a way of taking a lot of information and creating a boundary around it, like driving through Vegas and seeing casino after casino after casino. After a while, they just become the casino part of Vegas...

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[Erin] As opposed to you noticing necessarily each one. except for maybe one that stands out. And so I think that in order to not make it feel like it's overwhelming, the montage tells us, we're going to get a lot of rapid things, but it all's going to take place in one really cool box that you... The only thing you have to pay attention to is that box.

[Howard] So there's this experience that I had numerous times back in the days when I commuted, which is that I would start my drive and arrive at work and realize that I didn't remember the drive. The drive was about 15 minutes long. And at first, you know, I was very afraid. Did I fall asleep? Was I not paying attention? What happened? And I developed a pet theory which may or may not be supported by actual neuroscience, which is that short-term memory has to get committed at some point to long-term memory for us to remember things. And there are anesthesias that will prevent that from happening. You communicate just fine, but you have no long-term memory of the conversation. And the pet theory is this. If my short-term memory is being filled up with things that I've seen a thousand times before and short-term memory compares to long-term memory and says it's the same stretch freeway as it was yesterday. Nothing interesting has happened. There were no threats. We don't actually need to remember the details. We just need to know what we got there and it doesn't get committed. And then I arrive. And the point here is that for readers with the pacing, sometimes we don't want to commit things to the long-term memory. We just want to get them there.

[Mary Robinette] You will be happy to know that your theory is actually backed up by science. They have studied this.

[Howard] Yay.

[Mary Robinette] And basically what happens is that we will put similar things into the same box. So if you've done this thing, your memory will be like, "Oh, I know this. This gets filed here with all of the other drives." Which is why when you're writing, that if you... If everything is fast or everything is slow, that the pace is going to feel off. It's going to feel rushed as opposed to I'm excited, when you're in the failure mode of one of those." And that's also why having contrast is so important. And one of the contrasts that we personally can do is a break.

[Howard] Do you want to sail with us for the Writing Excuses Retreat at sea this September? Well, the ship has sold out, but occasionally there are cancellations. If you want to be able to jump into a suddenly empty slot, you can, but you'll need to join our waiting list. Visit writingexcuses.com/retreats and follow the instructions to join the wait list. You'll receive an email within a few days to tell you more about current pricing and availability. This is our final annual cruise. We would be delighted to have you join us along the breathtaking Alaskan coast. So, don't hesitate. Visit writingexcuses.com/retreats. And you can also join our mailing list there to learn about future events.

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[Erin] I'm going to be a horrible person right now and refuse to contrast because I'm so excited about something... 

[laughter]

[Erin] That Howard said before the break that I'm just going to drag us back there.

[Mary Robinette] I love this.

[Erin] Which is that I've always thought of that thing where you, like, something feels like it took a lot of time when it was happening, but then it snaps into one small memory as rubber banding. And I thought about this when I trained for a marathon, and, for context, I'm extraordinarily slow and so, like, I would go on these 4 hour runs. And it's like... Actually they were, I guess, different every time, but I don't really enjoy running, I was just doing it because it was on my bucket list. So I'd just be like, man, I'm running, and then during the run, I would have lots of really small micro thoughts that were interesting and kept me upright. But as soon as I got back home I was like, oh, I did that thing, and I just put it all in the box, unless, to contrast with my normal run, something particularly interesting happened that caught my eye. Something that stopped me from doing the thing that I would always be doing. And so I wonder if kind of thinking about our structure and something you said earlier, Howard, we kind of establish this, like, cadence, this feeling like you said with dialogue of what the thing is normally, so that when we have that moment of contrast, it actually does stick out...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Because we've established this is the pace, this is the pace, ah! This is different.

[Howard] One of the most commonly deployed pacing mechanisms... applications of pacing is when the things that are taking place are happening across a very short period of time, but we are describing them in great detail, which mirrors a thing that I've seen happen in my own brain, which is that I had an experience which couldn't have lasted more than 10 seconds. But the description of it takes 5 minutes. It was an icy road thing, where I discovered that the car in front of me had the brake lights on, but it was accelerating away. And I realized, oh, there's black ice on the hill. And I looked down at the bottom of the hill and think, well, I'm going to have to find a way to go around this person because they're in trouble. And... but there's cars that are turning on either side of the road down... No, wait, they're not turning. There's piles of cars down there with hazard lights on. And, oh, no, there are like three traffic accidents at the bottom of this hill. I need to make a decision. And the decision I made was I'm going to drive on the wrong side of the road. And I slide over to the wrong side of the road, and realize, wow, there's not even any traction over here. And the road bends a little bit. That driveway, I bet, doesn't have black ice on it, and the yard doesn't have black ice on it. And so I'm going to drive through this person's yard while oncoming traffic passes me, and then I'm going to cut back onto the road. And the whole thing worked. This was on my commute...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] One morning in Utah. The whole thing worked. I've driven past that location countless times and looked at it and I cannot understand how I had time to think all of those things, in time to do any of those things.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] But I know that it happened. And as a fiction tool, the ability to take a fight scene and to take the compressed time of a fight and to taffy it out into a description and make it believable that everybody's actually reacting and thinking in this way.

[Mary Robinette] It is. I've had similar things where I come out of an accident and it's just a series of snapshots. Or when something goes wrong backstage. My tour partner and I will have entire long paragraphs of conversation, that are basically, in real time, us looking at each other and going, "Yeah, okay." And then we both know what to do. And I think that one of the things that is happening there is, as you say, it's unusual. It's different. But that takes me back to this tool of contrast. So when I was an art major, my teacher told me that if I wanted to make something brighter on the canvas, that I needed to make the area immediately around it darker. And that... I think it works in text, too. You see varying versions of it. When things go terribly wrong on the page, then it's... or you're watching a film and it's like, oh, they're all laughing right now and it's a horror movie. Well, we got a jump scare coming up. Sometimes it's predictable. But it doesn't mean that everything has to contrast. Like the way I think about it is that when I'm writing, there's high contrast and then there's low contrast. So low contrast is where I want to group similar scenes to do what Edgar Allen Poe calls, like, unity of effect. If you want to create a creeping sense of dread, then whoo... things just... you just keep piling that on. But then you also have high contrast scenes, which is like having a fast scene and a slow scene next to each other, or having a happy moment and a sad moment next to each other. Sometimes in the same scene, sometimes butting up against each other. And that contrast causes you to experience time differently than when you have low contrast. Both I think are useful. It's just kind of where you want to where you want to push the audience.

[Erin] I really like when you can find that contrast also between, like, the... I don't know why I'm always wanting a difference between what the reader's experiencing and what characters experiencing, but when characters are in one emotional moment and the reader is in another. So, for example, if the reader knows that one love interest, like, was unfaithful to the other, but they're having this, like, amazing moment of, like, coming together, or actually there's the musical The Last Five Years, which is about... or, I think it's called The Last Five Years, which is about a couple basically going from loving each other to the divorce and they go separately in time. So, you start when one person is happy and the other person is sad and you end with the woman singing this amazing song about like, I'm so excited. I met this guy. He's the best and we're going to be happy forever. And he's singing the song that where he's leaving her, which will immediately lead into her like fir... first song that we experienced at the very beginning. And I think it's one of the most, like, beautiful and tragic things,,,

[Mary Robinette] Oh, yeah.

[Erin] Because you get that contrast at the very beginning, because it's always happening in the show, but by the last moment you fully understand why she is so wrong to be so happy in this moment. And that knowledge as the person watching makes it feel like the fast pace of her thing is, like, also feels like the creeping dread of the rest of the show.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] Probably the most powerful application of contrast... of pacing contrast in what I've read was the three shakes chapter in Tom Clancy's Sum of All Fears. We end the chapter previous with a nuclear weapon has just been set off at a football stadium. It's a huge disaster. Okay. And there's a lot of tension building up to this and as the reader you're like, oh my gosh, a thing... it's, wow, what's gonna happen? And then the three shakes chapter is all about physics and it describes at a minute level what happens... the first wave of neutrinos, the first wave of high energy neutrons, the first wave of electrons, the fact that these electrons... that there are TV satellite antennas aimed at the stadium, where the because the TV trucks were there, and that those were like one of the first things that gets hit by these antennas, causing an information blackout over the stadium. And all of these details, and as I'm reading it, I'm fascinated. I don't know how long the chapter is. I think it's only like three or four pages. But it totally puts the brakes on. We just set off a nuke. And the aftermath of that doesn't happen until after I've gotten three pages of physics level aftermath describing the consequences that are going to unfold when the next chapter begins. 

[Mary Robinette] You have just reminded me that two days from now... as in two days from when you all are listening to this, as opposed to two days from when we are recording it... a new book by Hilder Nut... Knutsdottir is coming out which I translated and it has one of the best examples of this that I have ever seen.

[Howard] Ooh.

[Mary Robinette] It's called Dead Weight, and I can tell you about this without doing any spoilers. But a really horrific thing happens, and she slows down and gives you every, like, deep description of the really horrific thing. And then there are also places in that same scene where time for the protagonist moves so fast that she doesn't actually realize that she has moved or not moved because everything... it's really upsetting and she takes her time. She does this beautiful thing and then the next chapter the entirety of the chapter is, I made the tea. And it is this... the contrast of this complete mundane experience with everything that happened right before it. You know... there's so much white space around that moment. There's so much stillness that you are like, oh yeah, that is what shock feels like. You can only concentrate on this one thing directly in front of you. And it was like, experiencing it as the translator, and hitting that moment for the first time. I was like, hoh, and then I have been desperate for people to read it. So I'm so excited that all of you can.

[Howard] So the book is called Dead Weight?

[Mary Robinette] Dead Weight by Hilder Knutsdottir. I just went... I was like, as we were recording, I was like, hang on, I think this book is about to come out. Yes.

[Howard] Outstanding. Well, really the next big subject here with regard to pacing is the tool of exposition. And that is such a big tool, we're just going to put it in its own episode. So, I think it's homework time. 

[Howard] Here's your homework. Take a scene, take an event, and write it in two ways. Write it so that it is paced so that the reading of the event takes about as long as you imagine the event itself taking. And now, write it so that the pace is... the amount of time it takes to read it is like 20 times what the event took. Like someone was seeing photons moving in slow motion. Write it in both ways, and have that experience for yourself because it'll be fun. 

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

Writing Excuses 21.06: Begin and the Beginning

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-06-begin-and-the-beginning

Key Points: Begin at the beginning. Ground the reader. Set expectations for the ride. Pace, tone. Action-driven openings or voice-driven openings. How will you pull the reader through the story (aka hook or frame). Interesting, unique details. DIY slushpiles. Going into a house for a party. Start at the interesting. Where are we, who should we care about, and what's happening? Taste and an offering. A microcosm of the greater story. Make a promise and keep it, or ask a question and answer it. Welcome snacks! You don't need to get it right at first! Party planning with time travel. 

[Season 21, Episode 06]

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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 06]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Begin at the beginning.

[Erin] Tools, not rules.

[Mary Robinette] For writers, by writers.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'mErin.

[DongWon] And, this week we're going to talk about beginnings. This is one of my very favorite topics... I think I've said that like three episodes in a row.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] But I do love talking about beginnings. I overindex on them. I think in part it's because of my job as an agent, when I'm looking at queries and I'm looking at samples, I'm always looking at beginnings of stories and trying to make a judgment call on them. So, I have read thousands upon thousands of beginnings of books and had to make judgment calls about is this working or not. Right? And I think they're really, really important. I think readers are also reading beginnings of stories and making a decision of do I buy this book, do I keep reading this book? Right? And so many times that's where you lose somebody. Right? Because... Now sometimes for good reasons, which is, oh, this book isn't for me, I'm not the reader for this, I thought it was going to be something else and it's not. The cover... I made an assumption from the cover that isn't true. Right? But a lot of times, it's people who would enjoy the rest of your book, but bounced off of it because it didn't quite do what it... The beginning needs to be doing. It's a very difficult section because your reader's coming in cold, they know nothing about what's happening, they don't know your characters, your stakes, your world, and you need to communicate an enormous amount of information to them very quickly without losing them because of a lack of action or too complex prose or whatever it is.

[Mary Robinette] So this episode is kind of going to give you an overview. And then we're going to have some follow-up episodes where we're going to kind of dive into a lot of these things. But generally, when I'm thinking about beginnings, I think about grounding the reader. I think about setting their expectations for the kind of ride they're going to be on. I think about the pace and the tone of the overall thing. So, sometimes, I'm going to do something that's called an action driven opening, and sometimes I'm going to do something that's called a voice driven opening. And I think about sort of what questions I want to set up that are going to... Like, how am I going to pull the reader through the story? Sometimes we call this a hook, sometimes we call this a frame. There's a bunch of different words for it. But, like, what is it that makes the reader say, do I care about this?

[Erin] I recently did an event in which we read the beginnings of people's works. And so what happened is there was a panel and we read the first few pages. I was one of the readers. We actually couldn't see the panel. And when three of them raised their hands, saying I would stop reading here, we stopped. And so it was really an interesting way... Like, and we read them completely, like, no prep at all.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And it was an interesting way to see what was catching people's attention. And to me, it was, like, something that felt unique, something that people hadn't necessarily heard of before, with interesting details. I found that pieces that had really interesting details, especially if it was like one key detail that felt unique and felt like something that you could really understand, grabbed people's interest and kept them going through the whole beginning. Whereas other ones did not have that same sort of grab.

[Mary Robinette] I've been the reader for this kind of event. And I've also learned that there's a way you can set up this experience at home with friends, which is you can create kind of a slush pile experience. We do something with my short story cohort where we do... The... We get... We take the first 13 lines, which is the first page in standard manuscript format, and we chunk all of the first 13 lines that we have written in a period of time into a single document. And then we go through and read it as if we're reading through a slush pile. And mark which ones kept us and why. We don't mark which ones we hate... We don't do any of that. It's just a I love this, I love that. And one of the things that will happen for the writer is that often everyone will gravitate towards one, and the writer is like that's really fascinating because I know that this other one that no one has picked is way more interesting deeper into the story.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And so then they can look at it and compare, like, what am I doing in this one that everyone is gravitating towards? And so that's the thing that you can do with your writing friends. You can create your own slush pile. You can even create a slush pile by just grabbing the first 13 lines out of existing material that's not even yours to create this experience of what is it that consistently catches me? And it's... You'll find that it is different with each of them, but that a lot of it is that there is something in it that makes you... And this is so amorphous... But there is something in it that makes you lean in.

[DongWon] Yeah. I think that thing is control. The thing I think about the most when I'm looking at the opening pages of a book is: is the author in control of this story? Are they in control of their prose? And I think about this in terms of... We've turned to the metaphor a few times this season, but Amal el Mohtar's idea of a book as an act of hospitality. Right? And I think in terms of when you walk into someone's house, you can feel if this was a space designed with intention. If it's clean and orderly and set up for a good experience for you. Right? When you walk into someone's house and it's chaotic, there's stuff all over the place, there's no clear place for you to sit, there's no... If you don't know how to get water or you don't know how to be comfortable here, it puts you in a more... It puts you on your back foot. Right? And so when you walk into a story, you want to feel that this is a roller coaster ride, and that roller coaster is well built and I'm not going to fall off of it. Right? And so I think finding ways to communicate that in the opening pages of you're in good hands, I got you, is incredibly important. And I think a lot of people think it's important to start with action, you have to start in media res, it has to be thrilling and exciting. But sometimes, for me, the strongest openings are ones that are very, very quiet. The ones that are just describing something for a long time, but they're doing it in a way that is demonstrating in micro you're going to like my prose, I have control over the pacing, I'm going to build tension, and you're going to be interested in it even though nothing is happening yet.

[Erin] Yeah. It is kind of like going into a house, like, for a party...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, you can come in the middle of a party and it... Definitely things will be going on, it'll be interesting, but if you don't know anyone there, you can sometimes feel like very like, I don't understand, I just want to stand in the corner of the wall, I don't know why this person is dancing with that person, or what's happening. But if you come to a house before the party has begun, you get a chance to, like, take in, like, oh, this is the place, here's the person, here's the host, now I have, like, a little bit of a sense...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Of it. And I think that's why details, to me, like, stuck out as one of the things that worked really well in the openings that I was reading. Because, like in a house, if you have too many knick knacks, like, it's just like... It's hard to focus. Same way, if you have, like, too many details... If you're trying to describe a scene, and it's like this amazing detail, that amazing detail... It's like, wow, I can't focus. But if you're controlled and you're like, let me take your eye to this one really important thing that, like, resonates with the story and is really going to catch your attention, like having that one really great art wall in your house, that is something that says I understand how to move you through this space, move you through this story, and give you something that's going to be worth seeing. worth reading.

[DongWon] Because, even if you show up in the middle of a party, if there's a clear idea, oh, snacks are here, drink station is here, music is there, and that's clearly legible. Or the host comes over and says, hey, let me take you around, then you can have a great time in the middle of the party. You can show up in media res if you're being well taken care of.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. By the same token, if you arrive too early, there's that incredibly awkward thing...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Where you just stand around while the host is getting things ready. That's when... Those are the books that you read where the... They've just started it too soon.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] It's like they are still doing the [grope] which often you need to do while you are writing, and there is nothing wrong with doing that in draft. Like, do not think that your first draft has to have the perfect opening, like, the first time around. Very few of mine do, I have to tell you that.

[laughter]

[DongWon] It's funny, I almost suggested changing the title of the episode, but my proposal would have made no sense, which is the beginning is a terrible place to start.

[laughter]

[DongWon] Because sometimes... I run this... This is a very, very common mistake is that the writer is starting the story for where the character's story starts. Which is, like, waking up, going to school, before the inciting incident happened. So a lot of times, what I'll say is, hey, jump forward, start where something interesting is happening... Don't start at the beginning, start at the interesting. But the challenge of that is exactly what we're talking about, of you don't have any context and it's all pretty chaotic. And I think there's like a lot of techniques to help ease the reader in. Like we've talked about high level, of like how you want the reader to feel, and when we come back from the break, I want to start talking about some of the techniques that we use to make sure that that feels good to them.

[DongWon] Okay. DongWon here. I wanted to remind you that in September, our last annual cruise will set sail for Alaska. And on February 15th, ticket prices will increase. The hosts are teaching classes on the business of publishing, world building, conversational storytelling, and game writing. You can sign up and learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats. Hope to see you there.

[DongWon] Okay. Welcome back. In the first half of this, we've been talking about how do you make the reader feel comfortable in the story, How do you communicate authority and control as they're reading the opening lines of your work. Let's start talking about the techniques that are useful here. How do you play with getting enough information into those opening pages that they accomplish all the goals that you set out, Mary Robinette, and the reader feels well grounded in the story and has a sense of the shape of what's to come?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And we will get into this, like, a lot more when we get to the grounding...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] The reader episode. But... High level, I think about... That the reader wants to know kind of where they are, and where can include a when. They want to know what they're supposed to care about, whether that's a person or an idea. And they want to know sort of what is happening. Which can sometimes, in an action-driven story, be like literally what is the character doing? But in a voice driven opening, that can... Like Hitchhiker's Guide is an example of this. They want to know, like, what is the deal with the watches? And the digital watches and why they're a pretty neat idea? Going back to the... I jotted something down while Erin was talking before the break about arriving at a party and how you know that someone is in control. Because I'm like, yeah, I want a sense of control, that the author is in control, but, like, what is that? And I think the things that we're looking at are intention, the order, that it isn't just a chaotic thing. Sometimes, if you have everything everywhere all at once, but that doesn't start chaotically. Chaos comes in that. Taste, a sense of the author's taste. And then a good host comes with an offering.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And so I think if you kind of think about those things... It's like, what is your intention with this opening? What order are you going to present the information in so that they build a picture in their head? What is the tone, the taste that you're trying to demonstrate? And what is the thing that you're offering that entices them to come further in?

[DongWon] The thing I think about a lot is a really useful thing to do is to create a microcosm of the greater story. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] You build a tiny little micro taster of... The Douglas Adams thing that you're talking about, in terms of that opening, the reason it works is it's him being like, hey, you like this? Get ready for a lot more of it. Right? And sometimes just giving a little taste sample of what's going to come is the most useful thing you can do. My favorite opening of all time is The Haunting of Hill House. And it starts with this, like, abstract idea, goes into a long description of a house, just very normal description of a house, and then ends on an incredibly creepy line. Right? And so what that is, is an absolute outline of the book we're about to read. Of kind of abstract, gets into talking about a house for a long time, and then gets really weird. Right? And so I think sometimes setting the reader up and putting them through the paces of your story in a filtered way, in a microcosm way, is a great way to be like do you like this? You're going to like this book.

[Erin] I also think like... I agree with that. I also think that making a promise and then keeping it...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Really quickly is a great way to show that you understand what's going on, or asking a question and then answering it.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because, like, early on, the reader's like, I don't know if I can trust you to keep your promises or answer the questions. And as the story goes on, you can actually space out a promise from it being fulfilled or a question from it being answered because you've already established that you're doing that. It's like you're showing that, like, I said this was what was going to be, and this is what it's going to be.

[DongWon] I have a friend who calls that welcome snacks. Like when somebody comes to a party, they're immediately like, here's a little thing, here's just a bite you can have. Here's, like a little, like... I don't know, like a sweet popcorn dish or like a chip and a dip. You know what I mean? Just like immediately you walk in, you just get a little mouthful of something. You're like, mmm, that was nice. Okay, let's go.

[Erin] And part of what that does in a party setting... We're also party planners here...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Is that it says, I thought of you.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] When someone has a snack for you when you enter, they say, like, I actually before you arrived thought of something that would make you more comfortable and happy in this moment. I made a promise, I'm going to be your host, and I have immediately fulfilled it by doing something that I wouldn't do if this wasn't a party.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so that is the quick thing that you can put in the story.

[Mary Robinette] Which reminds me of a thing I was talking with a friend who had just gone over to someone's home and it was the first time this person had hosted anyone. And the friend arrived and she's there for an awkward amount of time, and then the person is like, oh, I probably should have had snacks. I should have had snacks. Do we have snacks? I might have snacks. And that is often my first... My experience of reading early career manuscripts.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Where you arrive and there's like nothing really happening, and then at some point, the author is like, oh, something's supposed to happen. And then there's like an explosion out of nowhere, and you don't understand...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Why it's happening or anything. Like, What. Is. Going. On? And you feel a little unsafe and uncomfortable.

[DongWon] One thing I want to point out is I think you can be forgiving of your friend, when it's your friend.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] When that happens. When you go over to your buddy's house, he's like, oh, man, Chuck is always like this. You know what I mean?

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] He doesn't know how to plan a party. But when you are asking someone to pay $20 and give up time away from their family, away from TV and video games and going to the gym or whatever it is, then that is saying come to my professional [garbled]

[Mary Robinette] You don't want the Fire Festival of books.

[DongWon] Exactly. Exactly.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] You don't want to be serving someone white bread with a slice of ham on it, and being like, welcome to my luxury festival. Right? You need to be giving them...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Sorry.

[laughter]

[DongWon] Sorry. We are just losing it. [garbled] But y'all wanted to be part festival, y'all want to be at the White Lotus. Right? You want to be, like, here's the beautiful experience, also someone's getting murdered.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] But I think thinking about... I mean, we really went all around this hospitality metaphor, but I think it's really, really, really useful in thinking about opening of how do you take care of readers as they're coming into your story?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And there's this thing that I want to say about this is that from a writing perspective, from a craft perspective, you 100% don't need to get this right on the first try. And...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] You almost certainly won't. Every now and then you'll get lucky. Like, I've had times where I'm lucky and the opening is, like, lasts through the whole thing. More often than not, I will get into the middle of the book, and then reach the end of the book and realize, oh, this is what that book is actually about, and have to go back and write a new first chapter. Or with a short story, have to reframe the first couple of... Sometimes, the first couple of pages, sometimes it's just a paragraph. Sometimes I have to pull a whole scene at the beginning of it. But it is... It changes. In fact, coming up in... Later, in two episodes, two episodes from now, we're going to be looking at one of my stories, With Her Serpent Locks, and that opening line is not the opening line that I started with. It's an opening line that did not happen until my editor read it, and said, we need this here. And I was like... And I resisted it really... It was like very... Very annoyed. But...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Very correct.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So a lot of... So when you're writing from a craft perspective, think about this as party planning with time travel.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] You get to plan the party, and then you get to have the party, and then you get to time travel back and say, okay, these are the snacks we actually need, these are the things that we... This is who's coming, it turns out this allergy exists and we need to take that snack away and make sure that the AC is running because someone is coming with a fire thing that they're going to do outside...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And then everyone's going to come back inside and be really hot. So, like, you can do all of that, and then throw the party again.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And everyone is comfortable... Same people coming, but they just have a different experience because of the way you framed it at the beginning.

[Erin] And I think you can also learn that you wrote a beginning to the story that you're not actually trying to write.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So, you could be like, oh, I'm going to... In The party planning analogy... I'm going to throw a rager. A rager to end all ragers. with a string quartet, and wine, and cheese. And it's like, is that a rager? Like, if what you want in your party is, like, I actually want people to have really quiet, intimate conversations with each other the entire party. Like, even though in your head, you may want to think, I'm the kind of person who throws epic frat rager... No. You're actually interested in this, like, gentle, like, cocktail party. And that's okay.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because I think sometimes we get ideas in our head of what we want to be as writers and we start writing a beginning using that. And then in the middle, we realize this is not the story that I really want to tell. And it's okay to abandon that and leave that beginning for some other time or some other version of you.

[Mary Robinette] And with that idea, it's also important to note that sometimes we got ideas from seeing other people's parties.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But those parties don't necessarily fit into our house, into our taste or into our budget. Like, when I see people go from novels to short stories, they're trying to write an opening with a novel budget which is a lot more words and they just don't have that big of a budget, and their apartment is also a studio apartment,...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] It's not a mansion.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So you have to make different choices.

[DongWon] And I think another reason to not write your beginning first, or not worry about your beginning being exactly right when you start, is that openings of novels are heightened. Right? They're written in a slightly different way than the rest of the book, because your language is going to be a little bit more dense, you're going to be doing more than you can ease out of this, like, really high octane, High information density. And like often in your opening lines, you're going to be a little more showy then you will be later in the book in terms of prose style. Because you're trying to like really hit people with, like, here's a bang opening line. Here's like... I can write. You know what I mean? Is one thing you're trying to communicate in that early section. And so trying to sustain that over the course of the novel is... Would be a huge mistake, because it would be exhausting for your reader and for you. So I think finding a way to, like, have... To come back and be like, okay, how do I craft something that feels heightened and that's like a special entry to the story, but doesn't have to be sustained throughout? And that kind of gives you the space to do that little microcosm thing that we were talking about.

[Mary Robinette] And I think that's going to bring us to our homework.

[Mary Robinette] And for the homework, what I'd like to ask you to do is to make an artificial slush pile. This is a great exercise that you can do. We're going to be talking about tools, and we're going to give you an opportunity for the rest of this beginning to play with those tools in the homework. But for right now, just take a look, just analyze existing tools and see what works for you and what makes you lean in, what makes you feel welcome at the party.

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