Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-52-end-of-year-reflections-navigating-speedbumps 

 

Key Points: Life's speedbumps! Career, body, circumstances... Slow down, and rattle and shake over it? Rent a backhoe and scrape it off before driving? Break everything into smaller pieces and celebrate any progress. Sometimes you do it to yourself! Choose to move, and... disruptive, cascading issues. Depression and panic disorder? Brain shingles! In a grocery store without a cart, just picking up items and juggling! Strategies! Self-medicating with sugar? No, talk to everyone about it and talk about how to do something more healthy. Don't go too far with ergonomics, but if something is causing you pain, is there a quick and easy way to fix it? Identify obstacles. Beware, your brain confuses happy off-balance and frustrated or sad off-balance. Having trouble with decisions? Lists! Two hand choices. Eliminate repeated options that aren't working. Pie slices! How big is it, and how many do you want? Think of yourself! Move from triage dealing with fires to sustainable, balanced approaches. Replace "you can't have it all" with "you don't actually want it all!" Focus on what you want most, and ignore the rest. Be honest with people about what you need, and can do, before you hit a crisis. Count, and give yourself time before you answer. Say not to the projects that you don't want to do, because sometimes you'll have to say not to the ones you want to do. Give yourself a restorative.

 

[Season 19, Episode 52]

 

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

 

[Season 19, Episode 52]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] End of Year Reflections: Navigating Speedbumps.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] As the year comes to a close, we've been talking about a lot of things, but one of the things we haven't really been talking about is kind of how you keep going when life has thrown you speedbumps. This can be a lot of different things. It can be a career speedbump, it can be your body, it can be circumstances around you. So we're all going to just kind of talk about some of the speedbumps that we've been encountering and some of the strategies that we've used to navigate around them.

[Howard] You know what, I… The speedbump metaphor I think may have been mine when we originally set this up, because as a younger, healthier man, speedbumps were things that I would just maybe slow down for a little and then just rattle and shake on my way over them. I'll just plow through it. I'll just muscle through this. I will just… I'll put in the extra hours. I'll put in the less sleep, whatever. Over the last couple of years, I've realized that that approach is no longer the option. The vehicle I am driving over the speedbumps is now a 72 station wagon…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] That does not have… Well, 68 station wagon, if we're actually talking my model year, so it does have wood panels on the sides, with a bad suspension, and the back of the station wagon is full of poorly packed glassware.

[Laughter]

[Howard] If I decide to hit the speedbump at 30 miles an hour, I am going to break things, and it's a mess. So, my life over the last couple of years has been built around activities that look a lot like, metaphorically speaking, pulling up to the speedbump, stepping out of the car, renting somebody's backhoe, scraping the speedbump off the street, getting back in the car, and then driving forward. If it sounds like I move more slowly than I used to… Yes. Yes I do.

 

[Mary Robinette] I have been dealing with an emotional speedbump. Last year, 2023, is what my family has taken to calling the year of five deaths. Which… I'm not going to go into a great deal of detail about that, because as you can tell, it's a little bit of a downer. But I kept… It was… My life is badly paced and badly plotted and maybe that… The author kept reaching for the same trick. It's like, come on. But we couldn't wait two months. My mom was one of the people who I lost last year. Each time, I kept thinking, okay, I just have to get through this, and then after that I'm going to be able… And there was never an after. So what I had to do was come up with ways to be able to keep moving while things were falling apart around me. I turned in Martian Contingency a week before mom died. I had to have my cat put down on my birthday. I mean, it was like… But it sucked. And I had deadlines. So it was… I… The renting of the backhoe, it's like that is a strategy to get around the thing. For me, because it mostly messed with my executive function, making decisions, any of that was just incredibly difficult. And I had competing priorities. I wound up having to break everything down into smaller and smaller pieces in order to make any progress at all, and learning to celebrate making any progress was hugely important. This year, which I thought, ha ha, has been a different set of things. We had an unexpected move this year because of different family health things. And the coping skills that I learned last year have been very, very useful with these speedbumps. It's been… Yeah. So, there you go. I could keep talking…

[Laughter] [garbled]

[Howard] Breaking things down into smaller and smaller pieces… Would you like to peer through the boxes of glassware…

[Mary Robinette] Oh, yeah.

[Howard] In the back of my station wagon?

[Laughter]

 

[DongWon] It's funny, because speedbumps, in these cases that we're talking about so far, can be very hard things, very difficult things, and sometimes they can be something that you do to yourself. So, in my case, I made the bright choice to move across the country this year. I packed up my life in New York and I moved to Southern California. And it's been a really wonderful decision for me. It's been the right choice, and I'm really, really delighted by where my life is at in a lot of ways. But also, talk about a god damned speedbump.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] It was so much more disruptive than I anticipated, and it definitely caused a cascade of issues in my life, some of them professional and some of them personal. There's a way in which all of this has been really joyful to do, but also, that doesn't mean it wasn't a speedbump. It doesn't mean that I didn't need to make space for myself, make space for the people around me, and adjust to certain realities of what it was going to be to go through that level of disruption. Right? So, how you plan for, and how you respond to speedbumps is, like, hugely important and I maybe learned a small lesson of I'm not in my twenties anymore, or even in my thirties anymore, and I need to maybe make more space for certain disruptions that I needed to even five years ago. So, it's been an interesting moment of reflection as I'm looking at building a new life here, building a new community here, things like that. But also, how to keep plates spinning, keep balls in the air, while doing multiple things at once.

 

[Dan] My major speedbump this year, and last year, has been a recent diagnosis of depression and panic disorder. Both of which recently upgraded… We'll use that word… To severe depression and severe panic disorder. Which is just delightful. That's… Like DongWon was saying about planning for disruptions, that's the reason you haven't really heard from me throughout the year. I was on a few episodes that we recorded very early on, but I did hit a point, actually and 22, where I realized that my choices were to either back away temporarily from this podcast or quit it all together. Which I did… Absolutely did not want to do. But that's the state that my brain was in and to some extent, continues to be in. I hope to be on, and will be on, many, many more episodes next year. But… Yeah. We call this the brain shingles. I got the brain shingles.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] [garbled]

[Howard] And it's not the good kind of shingles that keep rain off of things.

[Mary Robinette] No.

[Dan] No. Not at all.

 

[Erin] It's interesting, listening to all of this, because I feel like I… Knock on wood… I, in 2024, like, had not had as a huge, like, speedbump of that kind. Whether unanticipated, whether…

[DongWon] Self-Inflicted?

[Erin] Self-inflicted.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] I… Like, so is somebody who does not drive…

[Laughter]

[Erin] I like to think about something that I do in my life where I create my own sort of speedbumps or cracks in the sidewalk to be tripped over. Like, somebody in a grocery store who doesn't get a cart and starts getting items off the shelf. Right?

[Laughter]

[Erin] It works a bit. Like, you're like, okay, I can hold this can, I can hold this soda, okay, what's… Okay, if I just rearrange this, I can put this thing on top. And you never know what will be the either item, obstacle in your path where it's a very small obstacle, but you're holding a lot of things, and it's a very delicate balance, and if something can throw it off, and now, all of a sudden, things are going everywhere and you're trying to hold on to everything and not drop any of the items and create a spill on aisle five.

[DongWon] I feel personally attacked and called out right now.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] I don't think you even… [Garbled]

[Howard] It's not so much that you are your own worst enemy as it is that we are all our own that exact same worst enemy.

[Mary Robinette] Erin is, I will say, an extreme example of it.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Having been in a bar with her, watching her continuing to work…

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] While on a cruise ship. I'm like, no, no. Erin has a bigger capacity for stacking things and believing that she can continue to carry them then I… Than anyone I've ever met.

[Erin] Yay?

[Laughter]

[Erin] Like, on the plus side, there are things that you can do to, like, learn yourself. You know what I mean? Like, I know this about myself. So, thinking about what are the strategies… Like, to figure out… Like, what are the things that we need to do? I know that we are coming up on a break, so maybe the time to talk about the strategies is on the other side of it? Question mark?

[Mary Robinette] That is exactly what I was thinking. So, let's take a quick break.

 

[DongWon] So, my thing this week is I want to talk about the movie Furiosa. Which I really love. I sort of feel like there aren't enough people talking about it. I feel like it didn't get quite the love that I hoped it would. Mad Max: Fury Road, one of my favorite films, I think we can all agree that it's an absolute masterpiece of action cinema, and finally, they released the follow-up to that which is actually a prequel, but tells the story of Furiosa's childhood and early life as she sort of becomes the imperator that we meet in Fury Road. One thing that's really interesting is this movie is structured so differently from Fury Road. I think a lot of people went into it with the expectation of getting that same hit, getting that same high, and instead, it's a slower, quieter, more traditional drama in certain ways as we watch this person grow up and develop into this… Into the sort of force of nature we meet in the future. And Chris Hemsworth is also in it, playing opposite Anya Taylor Joy. Chris Hemsworth plays the villain, a character named Dementus. It's some of the best performances I've ever seen from him, that he brings a weirdness and a humor to it, but also a deep unsettling menace by the end of it. So, I highly recommend Furiosa. Remind yourself that this isn't Fury Road, it's its own thing. Manage your expectations around that. But just some absolute killer action sequences that I really love, some great character work, and great performances. George Miller is like nobody else out there and anything he does, I will show up for.

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, friends. The 2025 retreat registration is open. We have two amazing writing retreats coming up and we cordially invite you to enroll in them. For those of you who sign up before January 12, 2025… How is that even a real date? We're off… [Background noise... Friend?] As you can probably hear, my cat says we've got a special treat for our friends. We are offering a little something special to sweeten the pot. You'll be able to join several of my fellow Writing Excuses hosts and me on a Zoom earlybird meet and greet call to chit chat, meet fellow writers, ask questions, get even more excited about Writing Excuses retreats. To qualify to join the earlybird meet and greet, all you need to do is register to join a Writing Excuses retreat. Either our Regenerate Retreat in June or our annual cruise in September 2025. Just register by January 12. Learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Mary Robinette] Strategies are one of the things that actually keep us going. I think all of us have strategies that are probably overlapping and some things that are wildly different. I would love to hear about some of the strategies that you've found that have kept you functional while you have been trying not to drop things in a grocery store.

[Laughter]

[Dan] One of the strategies that I learned accidentally was, the beginning of this year, I decided, as a New Year's resolution, that I was going to stop eating sugar. Because I was snacking on sugar constantly, especially at work. And the depression skyrocketed over the course of about two or three weeks. I realized that without knowing it, I had been self-medicating with sugar as a way of getting through the day. I'm still kind of sort of trying to do that, but sweeter. The lesson to learn from this, the way this turns from an accidental thing into an actual coping strategy, is, once I realized that that had become an important part of my process, then that became a thing to discuss more directly with my family, with my employer, with my psychiatrist, and say, well, this is what I have been doing. What can I do instead that is healthier than that? Well, what are ways that I can manage this depression without just sugaring up and muscling through it?

 

[Howard] Years ago, we, on this very podcast, we would joke about the… It may have been an April Fools episode… The excuses we make instead of writing. I think one of them was, oh, gosh, I sure need to vacuum my keyboard. I've looked at, this last couple of years, I've spent a lot of time rebuilding literally where my keyboard sits. Where my monitors sit. Where I sit. I didn't get very much writing or much work done, because I was spending so much time paying attention to a very small pain point. Oh, I have to reach for this thing, and I'm reaching further than I think I should. How do I fix that? I'm going to take the time right now to fix it. And I ended up building an entire 2C stand, two big… Three boom rig surrounding a zero gravity chair where I don't have to turn my head much, I don't have to stretch my arms much, but I can do everything I need to do from that chair. It took a long time to build, and the strategy really amounted to, Howard, if you don't make time to move that piece of speedbump now, then you're going to wear a hole in yourself reaching a little extra far or having to get up and do a thing. It's sort of like ergonomics, and I don't counsel everybody, yeah, look at your workspace and go fully ergonomic contextual inquiry. But, at the same time, if something is causing you a little bit of pain, there might be a very easy way to make it stop doing that so you can get more work done later.

 

[Mary Robinette] That's been one of the strategies that has worked well for me, is identifying the obstacle. What is the thing that is causing me problems? I also want to say that, while we're talking about speedbumps, I just want to quickly put a flag in this, that the speedbump can be a happy thing, as DongWon referred to. That sometimes, like, if you just won an award or had a short story accepted for the first time, that can become an obstacle, because your brain is very bad, it will just say, you're off-balance. But it cannot always tell the difference between happy off-balance and frustrated sad off-balance. So I identify obstacles, and one of the obstacles for me, the biggest one, was executive function. That I was just having a hard time making decisions and holding things in my brain. So because of that, I started doing lists. When the lists got to be too much, I backed off of that, and started doing something that I called two hand choice. Which is actually a trick that I learned from… Through animal stuff. When you've got a nonverbal animal, you can offer them two hands, each hand represents a choice. Do you want to go inside or do you want to go outside? I learned that with my mom during her last weeks, when she became nonverbal but still quite present. I could offer her a two hand choice and she could still respond, even when she got to the point where she was only looking at the thing. But if I offered her… Like, if I said, what do you want to wear and I showed her a closet full of things, she couldn't… She had no way of letting me know. But if I held up two things, she could let me know blue dress, then, just looking at the left-hand. With that, the other piece that I learned was that if she never chose the gray dress, I stopped offering it to her. So what I started doing with myself was when I came up on a thing and I'm… I was tempted into procrastinating or having difficulty making a decision, I'm like, which of those two choices has served me before? That would be the choice that I would go with, and I would stop offering myself the choice that wasn't serving me. That got me through some times where things were very hard.

 

[Erin] Yeah, I think… I love that. I think… I'm thinking about pie, all of a sudden, and…

[Dan] That happens to me a lot.

[Laughter] [Yeah]

[Erin] And it's always…

[Howard] The food or the infinitely repeating irrational number?

[Erin] Both. No, just kidding. The food. The food pie. Because I'm thinking…

[Howard] Now I'm sad.

[Erin] Sorry. I think about a lot as like… Thinking back to the past, like, what have you been able to handle also. So, what has served you, and also, like, where… What was the one slice of pie [committed?] Like, when the pie's delicious, you want to eat all the slices. Sometimes, it takes time to figure out. Like, okay, two, and I really wish I'd had more. Like, I actually did have enough room for a third piece of pie.

[Mary Robinette] The dessert pointer.

[Erin] But, like, 10, it turns out, was not good. Was not a good idea. So, somewhere between 10 and three is, like, the right thing. I do that with projects. It's, especially, when you repeat projects, I know, like, sort of how big a slice it is. Like, this thing, if I do this one thing, I'm only going to have room for one or two other things. When I'm teaching a college class, like, that is something that takes a lot of time to prep the lessons and talk to students. So, early on when I started teaching, I was like, oh, teaching. It'll just take a minute. Then, later, I learned, no. That's big. I can only do, like, maybe one or two side projects and teach and still get sleep and still…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Drink water and still work at other things that make me happy. I think… For me, that's a second lesson, which is, like, think of yourself. Like, you are an important part of the equation. If you are not here, you cannot carry the same… True story, you cannot eat the pie. So I think that it can be easy to neglect the you in the equation, and think, like, I will just outwork it, I will out do it, I will under sleep it, I will figure it out. But ultimately, like, when you take the time for yourself, I think it gives you the strength sometimes to be able to do more by taking a pause and putting yourself first. So when I bring work to a bar, while that sounds wild, part of that is me saying if I finish this amount of work, I really like socializing with my friends, and I'm going to get to do that after I finish this. As opposed to doing it in my room and then just working and working and working and never leaving the house.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So it's a way for me to keep myself in mind if only by moving my location.

 

[DongWon] I'm completely in agreement with everything you've just said, and I've been going through a similar process, probably starting in… I'm thinking of the last two years, as whenever I think of as the triage years. Like, starting in 2020, kind of up until sometime this year, has been a real era of, like, me realizing how overbalanced I was in terms of the worklife balance, and how much I needed to keep up with the current treadmill I put myself on. Right? So a lot of it was… That's why I've been closed to submissions for a long time and things like that, of figuring out, okay, how do I rebalance in some way that moves from this triage mode of taking care of what's on fire in front of me to being able to approach my life in a more sustainable and a more balanced way. Right? So the kind of thing which is a little similar to what you're talking about in terms of like now what slices of pie can I actually handle, and how do I make space for the things in my life that are restorative to me that aren't just work focused. Right? How do I have friends who aren't just publishing people, how do I have hobbies outside of the space that I work in, and how do I have other kinds of creative projects that sustain me? Right? So, balancing all of those things has been really important. And, maybe even more importantly than all of that, being patient with myself even as I know that this has been a multiple year process, and that I can say now, coming up on the end of this year, of, like, oh, I moved out of triage, I'm doing this. That's probably not true, there's probably still going to be moments when that comes up, where that may extend further. As I build towards sustainability, that's going to require all of these different kinds of shifts in myself and checking in with myself. How do I feel about this? How does my body feel when I'm working at this level? How, emotionally, in my balancing the needs of my clients versus my own needs versus the needs of the people I care about in my life? Right? So, juggling all of these things has required a lot of therapy, no small amount of medication, and a lot of just work on myself to figure out how to approach that in a healthier way.

 

[Howard] In many cases, for me, I think it comes down to the graduation from the early wisdom, which is you can't have it all, to the later wisdom of dude, you don't actually want it all.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] That second piece of wisdom is incredibly liberating. The realization that, hey, you know what, I… A lot of these things that I've been reaching for, if I stop reaching for them and just reach for the things that I want the very most, I will be happier. Because I didn't really want those things. Maybe other people told me I wanted those things. Maybe TV told me… I don't know what the psychology is behind it. I just know that by narrowing my focus a little bit and saying the thing that I want most is the thing that I'm going to keep in front of me, and the thing that I'm going to keep aiming myself at, and everything else, I'm going to let myself ignore if I need to.

[Erin] I think, as you do that… It can be really difficult.

[Howard] Yeah.

 

[Erin] Because I think we're taught that anything we let go of, A) will never come again, B) was the best thing ever, C) that our lives will never be the same without it. But I think a lot of times, like, once that decision moment is past, you move on with the life you have. That is something that's really important, and also, to remember that other people are often much kinder to you than you are to yourself. It can be hard to say, like, I need to step back from this, I can't do that. I think a lot of times you think people will judge you. But, people are kind of, like, if you tell people, hey, I need X. Like, 99 out of 100 times, they'll be like okay, great. Like, let me know what I can do to be a part of that. Let me know how I can help. The one out of 100 is somebody who you don't need in your life anyway.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think telling people that before you hit a crisis point also helps you not need more. Because you are in a healthier place. And it also places less emotional burden on them.

[Howard] The shopping cart teaches us that we are our own worst enemy.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Writing teaches us that we are our own worst critic.

 

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I learned also over the past year because… That I've been applying from last year. My mom… Parkinson's slows the brain down. So it just takes longer to answer something. The temptation when you ask a question is to fill the gap, to feel that… We're so trained in conversation that there shouldn't be a silence or… So you want to help. What I realized was that I did ask mom a question, and I would have to count in order to give her time… In my head, count… To give her time to respond. I realized that I actually needed to do that with myself so that other people… My anticipation of what they wanted didn't fill the voids. So I set a rule for myself that I've been deploying for 2024 which has made things much healthier for me, that when an exciting opportunity comes up or when I'm getting… Actually, I set the… I do what Erin's talking about, is, I tell people what I need right at the beginning. I sit down to have a conversation with someone about, like, this new project, and it's very interesting, and I tell them at the front, I'm like, you're going to hear me talk about it in ways that make it sound like I want to get involved, and I do, in the moment, but I'm not allowed to give you an answer for 24 hours. Because if I do, my sense of FOMO, my sense of excitement, is going to override my sense of what I actually need. I have been doing that this year, and I have felt like, as were coming up on the end of the year, have felt much, much better.

[Erin] I would say, just the last thing on this, is like… It is, in project terms also, I have been shocked like that a lot of times, people would rather you be honest than it turn out you can't do it.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, people would rather you say…

[Mary Robinette] So true.

[Erin] Somebody comes to me, they're like, come on, write 10,000 words of this game. I'm like, actually, I think I've got like 1000 words in me. So many times, they will be like, okay, that's fine. We'll find somebody else...

[Howard] Half of them are bad words right now.

[Erin] For the other 9000. Then, like… Then the next year, they'll come back and be like, oh, can you do 1000 again? Or, hey, maybe you can do more? Versus if I tried to take the 10,000, it's 10 years late, and then they are feeling like they are in a worse situation. So if you can, always be honest. But, yeah, before a crisis point, and really knowing yourself is… You said something once a long time ago, I think it was Dan, at a… On a cruise. You said, say no to the projects that you don't want to do because at some point, you'll have to say no to the ones you want to do. I love that wisdom.

 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, with that, let me take you to your homework. I want you to use this time, the end of the calendar year, the end of the season, to think about what would be the restorative for you. Don't think about what other people think are restorative. Like, if you don't like the beach, beaches are not restorative. Think about something that would be restorative for you. And then take a step to actually doing that. Yes, I am in fact giving you a writing excuses.

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. Now go rest.

 

[Howard] Have you ever wanted to ask one of the Writing Excuses hosts for very specific, very you-focused help. There's an offering on the Writing Excuses Patreon that will let you do exactly that. The Private Instruction tier includes everything from the lower tiers plus a quarterly, one-on-one Zoom meeting with a host of your choice. You might choose, for example, to work with me on your humorous prose, engage DongWon's expertise on your worldbuilding, or study with Erin to level up your game writing. Visit patreon.com/writingexcuses for more details.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-31-a-close-reading-on-character-tying-it-all-together 

 

Key points: Recap. Personal stakes engage readers. Specificity. Embodied. Sensory details. Voice. Muscular prose can be both forceful and sensory oriented, with poetics and imagery and rich language. Ability, role, relationship, and status. DREAM: denial, resistance, exploration, acceptance, manifestation. Make a choice! Pick the protagonist who is least suited to solve the problem. 

 

[Season 19, Episode 31]

 

[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.

 

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

 

[Season 19, Episode 31]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Close Reading on Character: Tying It All Together.

[Erin] 15 minutes long, because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] So, we have been looking at the short stories of C. L. Clark. We've looked at three of them, and we've been using them to examine character. This is the episode where we take the kind of higher view and just talk about the techniques that we've been looking at and how you can apply them to your own work. So, kind of think of this as a summary recap. What are some of the techniques that you were kind of most excited about as they are embodied in these stories?

[Howard] The first, and it's probably the most concrete for me because I actually have an example for it, is the blending of tools about agency and choice and barriers versus stakes. Because when you talk about a character choosing a thing, the stakes have to matter, not just to the character, but to the reader. At the end of the lighthouse story, our Sigo has chosen to return to the lighthouse with medication for the lighthouse keeper, for Audei. This has two sets of attached stakes. One is, yay, ships won't crash, and the other is, oh, Audei won't be lonely. I'm making light of both of them, but only one of them resonates with me. That is that Audei won't be lonely. It's the personal stake that resonates for me. The lesson that… The piece of tape that I would use to label the tool for myself is that personal stakes will engage the reader. Impersonal stakes might be fun for worldbuilding, might be cool for scope of story, but if you want to engage the reader, making… Letting characters make choices that have personal stakes is… That's the tool. That's…

[Mary Robinette] It is about the specificity, I think. The specificity and tying it to individuals. As humans, we tend to respond to stories about people. So if you read about there's a war that's going on in another country, that's very sad. But when you see the photo of the child who has been orphaned, that makes it much more immediate, because you can imagine that child. That a specific child who's lost specific parents. You can also, I think, tie it to an experience that you have yourself. So any time you can kind of create space for the reader to insert themselves by having those common experiences, those are times when that specificity of the author choice is going to make the character seem richer and more alive.

[DongWon] Well, this is the thing that Clark does so well. I've mentioned this a few times on past episodes, but the way that they write embodied characters, the way they use sensory details, physicality. Because those things are very relatable. I don't need to have been a warrior going off to war to understand the pleasure of smelling rosemary in a kitchen, of tasting a beautifully cooked potato, to have exercised to the point that I'm having trouble walking down the stairs. Right? These are all things that we can experience in our own lives. Those sensory details carry us into these fantastical situations. The way they use external information to give deep, deep interiority into the character is really fascinating to me. For me, because we have very little access to what these characters are thinking and feeling necessarily, but a lot about what they are doing.

[Erin] What you said about embodiment also made me realize that all three stories, I believe, have a sex scene.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] But they're all in… some are very embodied and there's sex happening, which is a very embodied act…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] And yet it feels so dreamlike in its own way…

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] In each of the stories.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It feels, in some ways more to me personal, and it resonates more than an… A really explicit scene might. Because it… The way in which each of these characters view their bodies comes through in the way they view using their body in that way. So, you have the… In You Perfect, Broken Thing, it's about the stretching and the concentric and the muscles, because this is somebody who's actually going up and using their muscles. For The Cook, I think it's a lot more of, there's like food involved…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because it's about feeding someone. So each of these things are about the way… In the lightkeeper, it's about the light in some ways…

[DongWon] And the burn.

[Erin] And the fire and the burning. I love the way that it's not just embodied, but it's embodied in different ways. In seeing the same act take place in three different stories really shows you how different those characters are, and how embodiment can be different from one story to the next.

 

[Mary Robinette] The other thing is… That I just want to point out is that C. L. Clark is using a tool that we've talked about in our first series, which is voice. The specific language choices are underscoring the choices that the characters are making, not just the now we're going to be talking about food, but in You Perfect, Broken Thing, that wonderful section when the character is actually running the race. We're just like, "Punctuation? What is that even?" Like, we are breathless, we are… It is nonstop, it is completely in the moment. I love that. It's again, one of those things where I'm like, am I being too… Is there someplace where I should just pull all the punctuation out?

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] It is something that I got very excited about.

 

[DongWon] I think when we talk about muscular prose, people have this idea of, like, Hemingway. Six word sentences. Very short sentences, that are very to the point and very grounded in literal. I just want to point out the way in which C. L. Clark has incredibly muscular prose. Like, very forceful, very clear, very sensory oriented, but still incredible poetics in it, incredible imagery and richness of language and word choice. These stories are incredibly beautiful on in imagery and sense level, and the fact that those things don't have to be in tension with each other. I think sometimes people talk about it as if they are.

[Mary Robinette] So, since we've just drifted over into language, because we get very excited about it.

[Chuckles]

 

[Mary Robinette] Some of the tools we've been talking about our ability, role, relationship, and status. The thing that I… This is a tool that I find so much fun, and that they use in all of the stories to shift kind of what the characters focus is, what their motivation is, by shifting which aspect of self is most important to them, which one is highlighted on the page, at any given moment. That's something that you can do. Look at your work in progress. This isn't even homework. This is just like a good practice. Look at your work in progress. If you're stuck in your scene, take a look at it, and just jot down, like, what is challenging my character's ability right now? What is challenging the tasks that they have to do? What responsibilities are they feeling like right now? How can that break for them? Which loyalties are being tugged on in this scene? How is their status affected? Just… By… A quick reminder for you, status involves a lot of different things. If you have imposter syndrome, that's a status issue. That's where your internal status does not match the external status. Where your idea of what you can do is very different from what other people think you can do.

[Howard] If you turn that upside down, imposter syndrome, you have Dunning-Kruger effect.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Yes. So those are things that you can play with in your own fiction, whether writing short form or longform. These… This is a tool that works at any length that you're playing in.

[Erin] What I also liked in looking at all these, because a lot of these are tools that are, like, newer to me, so I'm always like trying to figure out how they work and like get inside of them. I think thinking about that, you can… It's like twisting the facet like of a diamond, and looking at different facets. But also, that you can create, when we were talking about barriers, I was thinking, you can create different barriers on all of these axes, you can create different stakes on all of these axes. You can have them, like, fight each other. You can have a story where it's my ability against my status, and I've got to pick one or the other, and that's the choice that I'm making, and that's the agency that I have in the story. So I think with all of these tools, no tool is static. It's, like, you can take a tool and use it to do a lot of different things. So I've had a lot of fun thinking about how can we use these tools in very different ways and think about them in our own stories.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. You actually just made me go, oh, yeah. Actually, one of the things that's happening in the lighthouse is that we have the role of I am a pirate in the relationship of Audei, and these are in direct conflict with each other. Yeah. That's smart.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Well, let's take a moment. We're going to pause, and when we come back, we're going to talk about some more of the tools and how you can apply them to your own fiction.

 

[DongWon] I've talked before in our thing of the week about Rude Tales of Magic. But it's one of my very favorite podcasts. It's nominally a D&D actual play show, but the cast takes D&D more as an inspiration and runs from there, and tells hilarious improvised stories that still find a way to have deep character work and heartfelt storytelling. I'm talking about it again because we just started a new season last fall, so it's a great time to jump in and discover how delightful a rude tale can be.

 

[Mary Robinette] Welcome back.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Okay. We are back now. So, one of the things I got so excited about I didn't even know how to express it in words was the DREAM…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because I think this is the first time that I've been hearing about it. My bad, I'd forgotten about it and having it come back was really exciting for me. I was thinking about how that all works. So, that was a tool that I think… I know it was just in our last episode, but… What was it again?

[Mary Robinette] Denial, resistance, exploration, acceptance, and manifestation. I learned about this from Elizabeth Boyle, who was describing romances. So you… The thing that I have been enjoying about this series is that previously when I have talked about it, I've had to use really, like, very loose examples of it, but I think seeing it applied to a story makes it much more concrete. I got super excited when I was in Elizabeth's class and learned about it. So, denial, resistance, exploration, acceptance, and manifestation.

[DongWon] Yeah. I love this framework, because I can see how it came from romance. Right? I can… When we talked about it last episode, we were applying it to a romance arc. But I can see this applying to so many character arcs. Right? Because accepting your role in the world, accepting your limitations, accepting the various aspects of the other framework we were talking about in terms of… accepting what your status is, what your ability is. Then, getting to that point of manifestation. All of these things are stages of any character arc along any of the axes we've talked about before. Right? So, again, we're not talking about these tools in isolation. They are all mix-and-match, and you pull from different aspects and apply them to other aspects. That's how you get a rich nuanced character, like the ones that we're meeting in these stories.

[Mary Robinette] You'll see that again, also, in You Perfect, Broken Thing. Like, yeah, I can totally do this race. I'm going to be tired and exhausted, but I will do it. Then, oh, actually, no, maybe I can't, maybe I in fact dying. Okay, what happens if I run this race for someone else entirely? Yes, that is what I am doing, I am going to win this race for someone else. Then, the manifestation of you take the shot.

[DongWon] Then in The Cook, it's the same thing. The stages are externalized into we're going off to war and coming back, more and more traumatized, more and more injured, as she's forced to accept the condition of her life until she can get to a place of manifestation.

[Howard] At risk of briefly confusing and conflating the tools, it's easy to look at DREAM and to see symmetries between that and the very popularized stages of grief. What I love about DREAM is that we don't and with acceptance. We and with manifestation. Because this isn't for how to recover from grieving, this is for a writer who wants to make that plot turn or that character turn or whatever towards the end of the story and then and the story with something that is hopefully satisfying.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] Acceptance, in and of itself, can be satisfying, but a manifestation of it that meets… Surprising yet inevitable or that mirrors… Creates a bookend from something at the beginning of the story… That's where I start blending these tools together.

[Mary Robinette] I should say that Elizabeth actually got this from an anger management class. She tells this when she's teaching the class.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] That she was forced to go to an anger management class while she was working for Microsoft, and she's like, "Well, this is ridiculous. I don't need to be here." Still in denial. Then, as soon as the teacher put that up on the board, she's like, "Hum, I suddenly became the best student. Sat in the front…"

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Because it's like that is a romance arc right there.

 

[DongWon] Well, what's great about the manifestation point, as you were talking about it, Howard, is it's a framework to getting the character to make a choice.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Because manifestation is about claiming one's agency, claiming one's choices. So that is a character arc. An arc has to end with a character choosing something. That choosing may be accepting their fate in some way, in which case acceptance and manifestation are very close together. But it's getting a character to make a choice is the thing that you're really trying to do to get us to understand and empathize with a character's journey.

[Howard] In You Perfect, Broken Thing, the acceptance is I will choose to give my prize to others so that they can live. The manifestation is, for me anyway, the surprising yet inevitable of somebody else did the same thing. Other people are now looking at this, and are now sharing the gift. The character already made their choice. They are now helpless to further influence the story. But other people begin choosing things that carry that choice even further, that make it manifest as a satisfying ending.

[Mary Robinette] You made me think of a thing that I'm going to talk about, because one of the things that people ask me about when I teach this elsewhere is how it applies to series. We've been saying all along that you can take all of the tools that we've been talking about and you can use them anywhere. So we've been talking about a tool in short story. But DREAM will work for novel length, but it will also work for series. Basically, whatever manifestation point your character winds up at at the end kind of becomes the problem for them for the next thing. Or, another way to look at it is, they think they've solved the problem, but it only lasts for a moment. The best example that I can give this for you is extremely rude.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So, denial. I'm not a writer. Resistance. Well, okay, so I've written some things. But I'm really not a writer. Exploration. Okay. Maybe I'll try finishing something. Acceptance. Oh, I finished it. I finished. I think I a writer. Manifestation. I'm going to show it to somebody. But I'm not really a writer, because I haven't submitted anything yet. Okay. So maybe I'll submit it to a market, but I'm going to get rejected immediately. Okay, fine. So I submitted it to a market. Then acceptance, I got rejected. But I'm going to submit it again, because getting rejection means I'm a writer. Manifestation. I sent it out again. But I'm still not a writer. This is a thing where every time you think I have solve this thing, you haven't. Because what you're shifting here with this DREAM are these things we've been talking about before, this ability, role, relationship, and status. You level up, but then there are new monsters in front of you.

[DongWon] Think of this as a try-fail cycle.

[Howard] You level up, but…

[Mary Robinette] Exactly.

[Howard] So your imposter syndrome leveled up with you.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yes. Exactly. So you can do that over a series, that every time they level up, they… That core problem in them, that hole in them, is still there.

[Erin] Something that's really relatable about that is that this is… Like, you're saying this is what humans do. We tend to, like, go through something, it's like extending a long rubber band. Then, the minute you get to manifestation, you kind of forget…

[Laughter]

[Erin] Like, all of the difficulties that happened. You snap the rubber band back and you're like, "Oh, I manifested it. So it couldn't have been that hard to do. All that stuff I did was obviously meaningless. Like, now, I'll never be able to stretch this next rubber band." So, when characters are doing that, there's something that, even if they're going through something will never experience in our lifetimes, we understand it a little bit and it feels very human. It keeps people wanting to be invested in your character and in the story.

[DongWon] Giving your readers these micro arcs are the things that are so satisfying that ultimately, as you stack those arcs on arcs on arcs, ends up feeling like a fully realized three-dimensional character, as we call it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. You can also… I'm glad you said the word micro arcs, because you can also use DREAM within a single paragraph.

[DongWon] Exactly. Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] It's a lovely tool. I… It's… I… Also, I'm not going to pull them out in the text, I'm going to let you all do that. But there are multiple examples in all of these stories where there are… The DREAM arc happening within a single paragraph. Also, things where the different ability… Different aspects of self are tugging on each other. It's… These stories are just fun. I really enjoyed this.

[DongWon] They're wonderful stories. I found them also meaningful in the way that the characters always come back to community and connection over everything else. Right? As we were talking about last time, seeing that resistance to the call to adventure and sort of that disruption of traditional fantasy narratives, you can get there by routing it in character. When you root it so deeply in a person's perspective and wants and needs, then when they're making those choices that run counter to our expectations of here's how a fantasy story is supposed to go, it feels organic and exciting. Nothing is more thrilling than in the lighthouse story, her choosing to come back to the lighthouse, her choosing not to be living the life of adventure. It is… And then she has to do this difficult task. She has to prove herself, by climbing the wall and getting the herbs and things like that. It really rewards us for that journey that were going on with her, even though it's a nontraditional one.

 

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I learned from a class on writing middle grades was that you should pick the protagonist who was least suited to solve the problem. That was fascinating to me, because previously, I had heard that you should pick the protagonist to… Only they can solve the problem. But thinking about who is least suited. It causes the character to have to make different choices that constrain to the agency that you were talking about. So who is the least suited to win a race? Someone who is dying of a disease. Who is least suited to stay in the lighthouse? An adventurer who is… Who chooses to go from place to place. Realizing that by introducing these characters and this… The people who are least suited to this thing. Who is least suited to stay in a kitchen? Barbarian warrior. But those…

[Howard] Hygiene? Come on.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Those… That kind of shift of discovering that something is more important to them, to me, is significantly more interesting than the stories where we start with a character who is deeply flawed, so flawed that they are an ass hole that I don't want to spend any time with…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] On the page. That's something that I love about these, is that these are complicated characters, but it's about them learning what they value.

[Howard] And there's more to it than just us connecting with the story. There's also the fact that you as a human person, us as human people, we were not cut out perfectly to be the best possible person to solve the problems that will face us. Life does not follow that sort of narrative. So these kinds of stories where a character makes choices, where they choose between different sets of stakes, where they exercise their agency in ways that hadn't occurred to them earlier, in order to bring about positive change. Boy! I would like us all to be able to do that kind of thing, and… This, there might be a little bit of envy speaking here… I want to be able to write the kind of story that makes other people feel that way.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] I want to be able to write things that make you feel like you can change in amazing ways.

 

[Mary Robinette] Well, you'll be happy to know that I have homework that's going to feed into that. So, for your homework, I want you to write a character study. This does not have to be a full story, but, as you've seen with The Cook, it can be. Write a character study in which two characters meet twice. Something momentous has happened in between the meetings. It's offstage, and I want you to imply it by the way these characters have changed, using all of the tools that we've been talking about.

 

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-08-nanowrimo-revision-with-ali-fisher-working-with-an-editor 

 

Key Points: Working with an editor or agent! First, your agent and your editor and you are all on the same team, trying to make your book a better book. What's an edit letter? There are stages of editing, starting with developmental or structural. This tends to be broad structural questions. E.g. this character arc doesn't seem to line up with the rest of the book. These are often phone conversations, not letters. Edit letters should be a compliment sandwich, starting with what is good about the book, and ending with more things that are working. When the editor asks you to do something, can you say no? Absolutely. That helps the editor or agent know what is important to you. When the editor or agent offers a suggestion, they are asking whether you can come up with a better idea. Sometimes they offer ideas that they know are not good ideas, to help you react and find a direction. Suggestions identify that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Ask questions! Sometimes "no, this is a terrible idea" shows that you are tired, and it's time to take a break. Editors and agents are people, too. Alignment comes with asking questions.

 

[Season 19, Episode 08]

 

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

 

[Season 19, Episode 08]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A mini-series on revision, with Ali Fisher. Working with an Editor.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Ali] And I'm Ali Fisher.

 

[Mary Robinette] Now, I am very excited about this episode. Let me tell you what we are about to do. I'm about to ask DongWon and Ali all of the questions that I wish I'd been able to ask an agent and an editor before I had published a novel.

[Ali] [garbled]

[laughter]

[DongWon] We are so excited to answer these questions. I wish I could transmit from my brain all the information I know about how this process goes to every writer in the world. Because that's the whole point of this. We want them to feel comfortable coming into the process and see how it's not scary. Even though it is difficult at times, that we're all pulling for the same goal at the end of the day.

[Ali] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yes. I will say, one of the things that's straight off the bat, dear writers, that you should know is that your agent and your editor and you are all on the same team.

[Ali] Yes. It's true.

[Mary Robinette] You're all trying to make the same book a better book.

[Ali] Amen.

[DongWon] One of the reasons I wanted to have Ali on in particular is that we are working together on several projects at this point.

[Ali] Yes.

[DongWon] Having a sense of Ali's perspective, but also so that you guys can hear a little bit of the working relationship between an agent and an editor working together. I think there is this idea that is the agent versus the publishing house sometimes, and that it's the author versus everybody sometimes. The more that, I think, if we can find ways that… To be clear, that we are all trying to accomplish the same thing. That doesn't mean that conflict doesn't happen, that doesn't mean that there aren't problems. But at least we're starting from a place of understanding and conversation and alignment in what our goals are.

[Ali] Yeah. Yeah. Which doesn't mean that your agent won't advocate for you when needed and it doesn't mean that there aren't going to be conflicts of sort of ideas or like [garbled thoughts on] campaign, etc. Like, that's just smart people working together. But when it comes to the book itself and especially… I don't know, overall, I think, there's no question that success of the book is a win win win for the whole team.

 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yes. So, writers, you've probably heard that at some point you're going to get something that's called an edit letter. What's an edit letter?

[Chuckles]

[Ali] Never heard of it. Sounds suspicious.

[DongWon] Sounds like to me…

[Ali] Well, DongWon, do you want to start with the types of, like letters or calls you do before I do?

[DongWon] Yes. So, I think, there are different stages of editing. Right? What we sort of think of as developmental or structural. Then, sort of like editing. What I tend to do is very much on the developmental stages. I love to be involved early in a project. Or when a submission comes to me, and it's a debut, then I'm doing a lot of structural edits working with the editor to make sure that the book is in a great place before we send it off to the publishing house. So I'm asking… I tend to be asking incredibly broad questions, like big structural questions, word count questions, of, like, can we add 20,000 words? Can we cut 30,000 words? Right? Like, that's scale of question tends to be what I'm doing. So, often times…

[Mary Robinette] Can you give some examples of what a structural question is?

[DongWon] Yeah. So, a structural question can be as much like, "Hey, I'm not sure this arc for this character is lining up with sort of the central themes of the book." Right? I'm being a little bit abstract. I'd say it more specifically of like, "This character's situation feels really disconnected with our protagonist's situation. Can we make that feel more connected, or should this be here?" Like, what are… What was your intention with writing this character into this book, and how are they tying into the rest of it? So that might be a structural question I'm asking that could affect an entire character arc, which is… A solution set could be rewriting that character's entire central conflict so that there arc ties more closely in. It could be cutting that character entirely, because we all realize that they're extraneous and were vestigial from a previous draft. Or it could be changing the central thematics of the book, because that character is actually really important and their arc is more important than the protagonist's arc, and we need to make those pull into alignment in a different way. Right? So, when I'm asking these structural questions, they are kind of that big and that broad about, like, "Hey, the pacing doesn't feel great here. The act two turn, the big reveal, isn't landing in an exciting way. This character isn't feeling like they're exciting and connected. This romance isn't working right, these 2 characters don't come together in the way that I kind of wish." So that's kind of what I'm doing at that stage. Because they're such big broad questions, and because I really do frame them as questions, not like, "Hey, do XYZ," I tend to do that is a conversation. So I'll get on the phone with the author. I know, everyone's dreaded phone call. I will have edit conversations that are 2, 3, 4 hours, sometimes. As we're really just talking through the book, like, what were you trying to do, what… How does this work? What are possible solutions? For me, those are some of the most exciting, most fun conversations I have. They're very difficult and stressful for me, and for the author, but in ways that I think are really energizing when they go well.

[Ali] Yes. So, not dis-similarly, by the time it comes to me, normally, it's in more polished condition or it is… It fits more firmly within the expectations of the types of things that the house that I work at publishes. Right? So, like, it tends to be in a state that is quite recognizable to me. Then I do a lot of the same things. I'm a different reader, different eye… A different sense of… Understanding about where the author's coming from or, probably a lot less understanding of where the authors coming from, and probably just a lot more sort of like generic reader experience. I'll ask a lot of the same questions, very high structural things. You mentioned worst-case scenario twice, and we never saw it. Which made me want to see it. So, something like that. Right? Then, all the way down to sometimes through sentence level style questions or suggestions, mostly for matching things up or, like smoothness, that kind of thing. Just, for anyone out there who's curious, I am an acquisitions editor and an editor, and not a copy editor. Bless them, because I am not nearly qualified enough to make sure a book could actually go to print. But, so a lot of the same things, a lot of the same questions. So brace yourselves, this is also a part where, I think, the agent turns into a little more handholding as someone's going back into…

[Chuckles]

[Ali] Revisions after they felt like we just finished, and then we went out and the book sold, it's so exciting. So, sometimes that happens. Similarly, I also… I love and I offer a phone call as often as I possibly can because an edit letter, even though those are really fantastic, and I've also obviously found that authors with audio processing issues or who just need the time… They just need to read it, they need to think about it, and otherwise it's just not a free flow conversation. Happy to write it down. But if we get the chance to have that conversation, you avoid sort of the asynchronous issue of my assumptions running through the entire thing, whereas there can be a quick, like, "Oh, I actually intended this," and then that changes a lot of my responses. Right? So, I guess all I'm doing is sort of pitching the concept of if you can muster the confidence or the desire to get on the phone with an agent or an editor, I do think it's a really helpful thing. If you can't, that's totally fine too. Edit letters themselves look really different, editor to editor, and, for me, book to book. Sometimes it is… I go through… I have big chunks that's like character A, character B. I'll have worldbuilding questions. Then, sometimes, they're 2 pages long, and it's like bullet points of, like, this is where I cried, this is… My one big question is this. And can you add like a whole section where she's getting from here to here? Because I was desperate to know more.

[DongWon] Yeah. Sometimes they can be really brief, like you were saying, like, one or 2 pages. I think my longest edit letter, back when I was at Orbit, I think was 25 pages.

[Ali] Whoa!

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] I think sometimes…

[Ali] Oh, my God.

[DongWon] Hey, I know people who wrote longer letters. You ask [garbled] sometime what the longest letter she wrote was…

[Ali] No.

[DongWon] So, sometimes, like having… Sometimes you just need to dig into lots of detailed things. Especially if you're going chronologically through the book, of, like, chapter 1, Chapter 2, like, breaking things down. Depending on the writer and what they need and what kind of conversation and what kind of changes you're suggesting, sometimes, a lot of details was called for. But the long edit letter, I think, is very rare, don't let that scare you. That was something that was produced in conversation with the author, I didn't just spring that on them.

[Chuckles]

 

[DongWon] But one thing that I wanted to point out about edit letters that's really important is what I think of as the compliment sandwich. Right? Where you start your letter with talking about the things that are good about the book, and hopefully you end the letter also with reminding the author, here are the things that I liked about the book, here's the things that are working. Right? I think… I see sometimes younger editors, newer editors, skip that. I think that's a huge mistake to do so. Because it's not just… We're not just like blowing smoke and we're not just complimenting you for no reason. It is… Kind of going back to what we were talking about last episode, it's showing that we are in alignment about what your intentions with the book are. If I'm telling you, here are the things that I think are working, and you read that and say, "That isn't the book I wrote. That's not what I was trying to do." Then nothing in between that compliment section matters anymore. Right? Because I don't understand what you were trying to accomplish, so all of my critiques aren't going to land now. Right? So those alignment sections are… Perhaps as important if not more important than all the critical stuff in between. It's not just to make you feel good. It is to make sure that I understand as deeply as I can what it was you were trying to accomplish, so I can help you write the book that you meant to write. To make it the best version of the thing that you want it to. So don't skim those compliments, don't cut them, don't not give them, if you're an editor yourself. I think they're really, really important and really interesting, and very fruitful conversations come out of them.

[Ali] Also, that's… I think I flagged this in our last episode, so we share credit, but it's also where I say, like, please don't cut this. Like, I love this. Like, I might be telling you to make some sweeping changes, and this could get caught up in that, and I don't want to lose it. So those are genuinely… I find those very important.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. As a writer, I can also say, that now I recognize that those compliments are some of the most useful things, because it is telling you what I'm doing well, and, as writers, we are spectacularly bad at understanding what our strengths are, because those strengths are usually things that come easy to us, so we don't acknowledge them as being valuable. Having someone else recognize that allows us to be like, "Oh. Okay. So that's something I'm good at. I should look for more places where I can do the thing that I'm good at."

[Ali] Yeah. It… A lot of parts of the process to focus on what could be improved or, like, what opportunities are there that aren't here yet. So it's very important to focus on the things that are there and that are working and can be expanded, like you're saying.

[DongWon] Yeah. Again, flagging the things that, like, this is great. This made me cry. This made me laugh. Like, as you go through the manuscript, are just really helpful, because getting… Somebody telling you the stuff that doesn't work about your book over and over again for a long period of time can be quite demoralizing. We understand that. So I encourage any people who are trying to be editors or agents out there to really remember that. Even [garbled] just like have your little notes of like, "Yay, thumbs up," like, this part is so important just to make the whole process go more smoothly. Whenever I see an edit letter that's like too harsh and sometimes even sarcastic a little bit, it's like, "Uhh, this is not working, we can't do this. We gotta switch up how we're approaching this writer."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, when we come back, I will ask my 2nd question.

[Laughter]

 

[Ali] My things of the week are 2 incredible podcasts. One is called Rude Tales of Magic, and the other is called Oh These, Those Stars of Space. Both of these podcasts just so happen to feature me regularly on almost every episode. So if you like the sound of this, what's happening now, I simply must recommend Rude Tales of Magic and Oh These, Those Stars of Space. Rude Tales of Magic is mostly fantasy. It's a collaborative live-action role-playing…

[DongWon] I believe the phrase I said earlier is that it's a collaborative improvised storyteller podcast that is…

[Ali] Yes.

[DongWon] Roughly using the rules of Dungeons & Dragons to lightly flavor the type of story that you're telling.

[Ali] Correct. Then, Oh These, Those Stars of Space is the science-fiction version of that. Also, we have so much great merch. Go to rudetalesofmagic.com/store, get a sweatshirt, and don't listen. It's entirely up to you. The sweatshirts are so soft. I'm wearing one right now. Thank you.

[DongWon] I can attest to the quality of the merch. As someone who owns some. I'm a huge fan of the podcasts myself. As you can tell, as I'm stepping all over Ali's pitch here. But, Rude Tales in particular is a really wonderful podcast if you like things like critical roll and Dimension 20, then absolutely you should check out Rude Tales. It is much more irreverent than those, but it is a group of truly hilarious comedians and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

[Ali] Yes. Thank you.

[Laughter]

 

[Mary Robinette] I… As… I'm just going to flagged here for our listeners, even editors can be really bad pitching their own stuff.

[Laughter]

[Ali] What do you mean?

[Chuckles]

[Ali] Yeah.

[DongWon] I promise we're all better at talking about other people's stuff…

[Ali] I know.

[DongWon] Then our own stuff.

[Ali] That's… Other people's stuff…

[DongWon] That's why we do what we do.

[Ali] Exactly.

 

[Mary Robinette] Anyway. All right. As we come back in, I'm going to ask another question. So, we talked about what the edit letter is. One of the things I just wanted to draw a line under is that a lot of the edit letters that I get and that you all have talked about is really about the editor asking questions rather than giving an answer to the author. It really is about the… A trust between the editor or the agent and the author. But when you're a new author, you don't necessarily know that that trust is there, and you don't know what the rules are. So they've asked you a question, they've asked if you can add more of this and more of that, can you really say no?

[Ali] [deep breath] I don't know. What do you think, DongWon?

[Chuckles]

[That's really tough]

[DongWon] No. Absolutely. Please say no. [Garbled] people say no all the time. You have to say no. It's your project, you know it better than us. Know what you… This goes back to what I was saying earlier about loving your darlings, know what you can change and what you're not willing to change. Right? Know what the things are that are untouchable to you. That's fine. We will work around that, because what we want to know is what do you care about and why have you written the book that you've written and how can we make that the best version it can be. Right? So we will constantly be poking at stuff, and you say, "No. Actually, I don't want to do that." My best case scenario is I make a suggestion of how to fix something and the author does something completely different. They do answer the question, but they just run off into the distance and come back with something wildly different. That's always more exciting than whatever stupid idea that I had.

[Chuckles]

 

[Ali] Yeah. Oh, 100%. I have a piece of text that I put at the beginning of all of the edit letters that I send to new authors that I'm working with. I really hope it gets through. This is what it says. It says, "I'm trusting you to safeguard what makes this story for you. When I offer you suggestions for changes and opportunities for deeper exploration, I'm hoping to initiate your creative process. I fully expect you to come up with better ideas than the examples and suggestions I come up with to illustrate my thinking." Because that is really how I think of it, which is, when I'm offering a suggestion, or like a directly actionable specific recommendation, I'm really saying, like, "can you think of something better, actually?"

[DongWon] I love that so much.

[Ali] This is kind of what I mean, is, really what I'm trying to say.

 

[DongWon] There's a thing that I'll do, and this sounds worse than it actually is. But there's a thing that I do sometimes where I will suggest something that I know is not a good idea because… And that the author will also recognize is not a good idea. Because then, they'll have a reaction to it. Right? When you have a reaction, now you have a direction. Right? I do this a lot with titles most clearly. I'll just start suggesting the worst titles in the world…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] So that they'll bounce off of it, and in bouncing off of it, a direction is going to start to emerge, because, like, they keep running in this direction, like, "No, that's too comedic, it has to be more like this…" Then I'm like, "Okay. Now we have more information that we can start building around." So, the… When I make a suggestion about an edit, I mean, usually it is sincere of, like, what if we did this, what if we thought about it this way, but really what I'm looking for is a reaction to the suggestion, not an execution of the suggestion.

[Ali] Yes. 100%. Did you see Hannibal? The show?

[DongWon] Not that much of it. Only the first few episodes.

[Ali] Okay. Well, in the first season, there's an episode where Hannibal commits a murder in the style of a murderer…

[Chuckles]

[Ali] To show Will Graham, like, what it isn't. Like, what is actually special about that. I think about that all the time. How I'm committing bad murders to show…

[Chuckles]

[Ali] How their murders… This other murderer to try to figure out that's actually like this.

[DongWon] If you take nothing else away from this episode, please remember that we are the Hannibal to your Will Graham.

[Ali] Yes. That's all I'm saying.

[Mary Robinette] That's beautiful, and I'm making notes about being alone in a room with both of you.

[Chuckles]

 

[Mary Robinette] But it is… I will say that, as an author, the thing for me is, is that suggestion, for me, it identifies that there is a problem that I need to address, and the suggestion is usually wildly wrong. But the problem is usually one that's present. So, when I don't understand why a suggestion has been made, I will go back to the editor and I will ask clarifying questions.

[Ali] Beautiful.

[DongWon] Yes. I think if there's anything you truly do take a away, not joking this time, is that if you don't understand what the editor is asking you to do, or if you don't feel it's right, just ask questions. Just start a conversation.

[Ali] Yes. Please.

[DongWon] Whether it's your agent, whether it's your editor, if you feel that you cannot go to them and have a conversation about what is going well and what's not going well, then there's something that needs to be tweaked about that relationship. Because it's your book at the end of the day, and you should feel empowered to make sure that your writing the book that you want to be writing. That means asking questions, advocating for yourself, advocating for your ideas. If there is something you really care about that they're really pushing back against, then that should be at least a conversation, if not an adjustment that everyone's working around what your goal is.

[Ali] Yeah. I remind myself all the time, it's your name on the cover. Right? Nobody else that you're working with, their name's going to be on the cover. So, that's your… It is your vision, it is your job to safeguard things and to also, like, keep your ears open and be really honest with yourself if something causes friction within you. But that discomfort might settle into a realization of an opportunity. Right? So, sometimes our initial reaction can be really intense, and we thank you for your 3 day waiting period before telling us.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Right. That too.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, I'm going to give writers a quick moment of perspective from some of my experience. And then a tool that's extremely valuable. The first is that, with my first series, I would hit things that my editor would say, and I'd be like, "No. This is very wrong, and I'm doing this for a reason, I'm going to keep it." I only did that a couple of times, but without exception… Without exception, my editor was right, there was a problem, and that is a thing that got [garbled] in reviews, that people would say… It would get brought up. So, my editor's suggestion on how to fix it was the thing that I was objecting to. I didn't recognize that at the time. But now, when I get a suggestion and I don't agree with it, I will ask for more clarification, but I will see if I can dig into it and find a way to do something that makes me happy that addresses whatever the problem is. The other piece of that is that sometimes the reason that you are having the no, this is a terrible idea, is just because you're tired. You're feeling a little bit defensive, because your baby… Someone has come in and told you that your baby is ugly. So if you hit 3 editor notes in a row that you think are stupid, walk away from the edit letter. Go take a walk. Go do something else, you're just tired and angry.

[Ali] I mean, clear your vent. Tell them how stupid we are. Get mad. Be… It's…

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Ali] It's totally, absolutely appropriate and shows that you give a shit about your book if you're mad at… Like, suggestions that don't feel right immediately.

[DongWon] I would encourage you to do that in private.

[Ali] In private.

[DongWon] And not on Twitter or Blue Sky.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Ali] yes.

[DongWon] That is a thing that I don't recommend you do.

[Ali] Ideally in private. Rage in private. But then come back and then see what still feels bad. Or feels different.

 

[DongWon] One more thing I just want to point out that may be too obvious to bring up, but editors, agents, are people. Right? There individuals with strengths and weaknesses. Yeah, I know, we're…

[Questionable]

[DongWon] We're all just robots and… Yeah, very questionable. But have their own personality quirks, have their own modes of communication, have their own styles. Right? One thing that may be happening if you're feeling really frustrated is an editor might just have an abrasive style or a style that just doesn't vibe with you. Sometimes I will get an email from a client being like, "Hey, I got notes from this editor. Can you take a look at them and tell me what's happening here?" Sometimes the answer is, "Oh, they're missing XYZ," or sometimes I'm just like, "They just kind of talk like that, and that is rubbing you the wrong way." I've seen that both go in the too harsh and too nice directions. Right? I've seen both send up a flag for the writer. So much of this is matching personality, matching style, matching how we communicate, how we connect. Again, that alignment stuff I'm talking about, this is where it becomes really important. So, sometimes, if your editor has left or you didn't choose your editor or for whatever reason, you might be stuck with someone for a second that… And you need to find a way to work it out. But other times, it is a question of, like, make sure that you're working with someone you're excited to work with. Don't just be taking the first thing that's offered to you or the biggest number that was offered to you when you don't like the person. The connection with your team is so important to making sure that everyone is happy with the end result.

 

[Mary Robinette] So how do you get that alignment with… Between the writer and the editor on a project? Like, are there tools that are useful to make sure that everyone's actually on the same page?

[DongWon] I mean, I think it's asking questions. Right? We kind of keep coming back to the same things in certain ways, but it's that… The compliment section of the edit letter, not to sum up what's wrong, but talking about what's going right. Sometimes it's taste stuff, right, like sometimes even talking about other books, other movies, and things that you both like can be really useful, because then that gives you a shared language of, like, "Okay, we both love Hannibal. So our series [murder] like, we want it to feel more like Hannibal than we do like Scream." Right? So having that shorthand of vibes that you both are feeling can be really, really helpful to think about it.

[Ali] Yeah. Even on that… If you have that initial call with an editor who's interested in your book, you can ask mildly irrelevant questions. Obviously, nothing like to personal or inappropriate, right. Because that's probably not your business. But you can ask questions, because the more someone talks, the more they display their values and their interests and their thoughts, and, like, it's kind of just reaching out and touching someone else's mind for a little while and seeing if you like it.

[Mary Robinette] Right. Well, with that, let's segue to our homework as we try to touch the minds of our listeners.

[Ali] Yes, yes.

[Mary Robinette] Not creepy at all.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Not creepy at all.

[Ali] For my final style…

[DongWon] Exactly.

 

[DongWon] So, I have our homework this week. I would like you… Thinking about this alignment question, I would like you to take a work you haven't written, and come up with 3 questions you would ask the writer to help them clarify their intention in the text. Whether this is a project your beta reading for a friend, a short story, even like a movie that you've seen, take a piece, a story that you engaged with and really figure out what are the questions I would ask the creator of this to really help them understand better what it was that they were going for. Then, for bonus points, I want you to apply those questions to your own work in progress.

 

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

 

[DongWon] Hey. Have you sold a short story or finished your first novel? Congratulations. Also, let us know. We'd love hearing from you about how you've applied the stuff we've been talking about to craft your own success stories. Use the hashtag WXsuccess on social media or drop us a line at success@writingexcuses.com.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/06/26/17-26-hanging-separately/

 

Key Points: What can go wrong with an ensemble story? Waiting too long to bring them together. Breach of promise. No cohesion or lack of bond. Ensembles need both arguments with each other, and we are a found family. If you fail, make the arguments shallow, but make the family strong. There may be one character who needs to change or just be tossed out. Listen to your readers, then figure out what the real problem is.

 

[Season 17, Episode 26]

 

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Hanging Separately.

[Zoraida] 15 minutes long.

[Kaela] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we should be hanging together.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Zoraida] I'm Zoraida.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Howard] I'm Howard, and I'm stealing the thunder of our whole title.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Sorry, Dan.

[Dan] Awww.

[Howard] Who was it who said that?

[Dan] That was Benjamin Franklin.

[Howard] If we don't hang together, we will...

[Dan] He said when they were plotting the revolution. If we do not hang together, we shall all hang separately. Or some variation of that.

 

[Dan] So we want to talk about this time the pitfalls of on ensemble. If the ensemble fails, if the characters don't mesh, there's lots of different ways this can go wrong. We are going to talk about it. So, let's start with that first. What are some ways that ensemble can go wrong?

[Howard] I want to clarify here that we're not talking about the pros and cons… The cons of an ensemble. We've already established that you're going to try and write an ensemble. What are the common mistakes? What are the disasters? What are the failure points? For me, the most common failure point is when we wait too long to bring them together or to bring them back together.

[Zoraida] Right.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Zoraida] I have some examples.

[Dan] Okay, let's hear them.

[Zoraida] One example to me which is… I guess this teeters on the success/failure rate for me. I think that The Defenders was a great show in the second half of the show. But as an ensemble… I… To me, it failed to ach… Like, the adhesion of the characters waited too long. If I hadn't gotten deep enough into episode four, which I think is too late, I would have turned it off.

 

[Dan] Yeah. I do think that there is room in the world for slow burn stories about teams coming together. Season one of Heroes did the same thing. But a lot of it comes down to promise. Heroes promised, look, people all over the world are suddenly developing powers for no reason. Over the course of the season, we're going to very slowly watch them begin to come together. The Defenders promised us, hey, all these other shows you love? This is the show where they team up. Then it didn't give us that for way too long, so it felt like a breach of promise.

[Howard] One of the things… This isn't necessarily an apologist approach to The Defenders…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But one of the things that made Daredevil so strong in its first season was that the four act format of TV with commercial breaks wasn't being adhered to. So, the flow of the show was much different. Conversations went on longer than they would have in broadcast TV had this been something that had commercials in it. So I feel like they leaned into that when they built The Defenders and shouldn't have. We needed to put people together sooner. But talking about the promise, the first Suicide Squad movie, the trailers promised me witty banter and antics. What I got was a depressing movie about criminals with bombs in their heads.

[Laughter]

[Dan] There's room in the world for depressing stories about…

[Talking about bombs]

[Dan] Criminals with bombs in their heads. But that's not what anybody wanted or thought they were getting from that particular story.

[Zoraida] Right.

[Dan] So what are some other ways…

[Zoraida] For me.

[Dan] What are some other examples of ensembles that… Ensemble stories that failed in some way?

[Zoraida] Kaela, you were starting to talk.

[Kaela] Yeah.

[I'm going into depression, sorry.]

[Argh…]

[Dan] You didn't want to go on public record bashing somebody's arc?

[Howard] Look, I went on the record saying that I loved the Hobbit movies.

[Laughter]

[Howard] So nobody's heating you more than they hate me.

[Zoraida] I love them too. I really dig them.

[Kaela] I like a lot about them, but at the same time…

[Zoraida] Look, honestly, I feel like I most creator's ideal target, because I really just watch to be entertained. Right. Like, I will have a good time almost anywhere. Right? I enjoy so much that I feel like my friends who have, in their opinions, more discriminating tastes…

[Laughter]

 

[Zoraida] But, so, like I… So when something like lets me down, I feel really like passionate about it. I actually watched Oceans 8, and I think that like as an ensemble cast, I wasn't invested in them at all. I think it's like a powerhouse [garbled actresses], then there was like… It's like there was… The tension that was there, there was no cohesion. I think that when you don't have that bond between all of your ensemble, it just feels like there's just somebody there doing a job as opposed to we are… As opposed to, like, we said in previous episodes, we're all in this together.

[Kaela] Yes. I was going to say, I think that the big draw of an ensemble story is the bond between the characters and how their bond affects the plot and how they have to come together in different ways in order to accomplish the thing that needs to be accomplished. So when you have characters who, like, don't care about each other, particularly, or don't get to a place where they care about each other, that's a big let down. If you have characters who you're like, "I literally don't even know why you're here." You know?

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] Like, they just showed up in your house and you're like, "Why are you here? Get out. Please." Except it's the movie or it's the book, like, I think [garbled]

[Howard] I'm a drummer and you had a couch.

[Kaela] Yeah. Exactly. You're like, "What? Why are you here, man?" Anything that does that, one, it throws you out of the story, of course, like most flaws will in a story. But, two, like those are the things like in an ensemble, everything gets compounded when you make mistakes in characterization or in the way that the characters affect plot. Because it will like keep pinging around all of the other characters in the ensemble. It would be a domino effect of, like, one character here doesn't have their motivation figured out, we don't know why they're here, and everyone interacting with them either has to address that is like an actual character point or it gets confusing why these other capable characters aren't addressing that, and why, like, all of their decision-making processes get affected by this person who we're like, "Why are you here, though?"

[Laughter]

 

[Howard] I'm trying to create a dichotomy here. This is… This might just be the medication talking…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But you're familiar with the phrase surprising yet inevitable. When you write surprising yet inevitable, if you fail at inevitable, you've got deus ex machina and we hate you. If you fail at surprising, we might just feel smarter than you, and that's actually not a bad thing if I've bought the book. So I lean toward if I'm going to fail at surprising yet inevitable, I want to fail on the surprise, I don't want to fail on the inevitability. The dichotomy I'm reaching for is what are the poles… Surprising on one pole, inevitable on the other pole. What are the poles for an ensemble? Like, we hate each other, but we're a family. Or something. If you have to pick which one to fail at, which one do you pick? Which one is worse? I feel like if there's that thing where we argue with each other, but we are a family… Boy, howdy, let's err on the side of we're a family and make the arguments feel a little shallow, rather than make the arguments feel just unovercomeable. Oh, man, there's not enough medication…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] In the world for me to parse all these thoughts at once. I don't want to fail on that, because, at the end, I don't have an ensemble, I have a group of angry people who all got to be in a book together.

[Zoraida] Like a structural Thanksgiving.

 

[Dan] We're going to pause here and talk about an ensemble that absolutely worked, and did not fail. The Expanse.

[Howard] Oh. My. Goodness. Which one of us was going to pitch that?

[Dan] Zoraida.

[Howard] I'm talking.

[Dan] Or you.

[Zoraida] You do it.

[Howard] I love the adaptation of the Expanse. It's its own master class in trans media, translation from book to show. But, just as a show, the building of the ensemble, the setting up of the promises, the characterization, it's… It is brilliant and beautiful and I love it. I've watched it end to end… End to end, all the seasons, probably three times. But, like the first four seasons, because they're older, I think I may have gone through those eight times. Just turning it on while I did other things. Because I love the way those characters interact. They are in such horrible trouble so much of the time. They have so many reasons to fight with one another, and yet, they are a found family and they love each other, even their sociopath Amos.

[Zoraida] Yes. Oh, my God. Amos forever. I… So I chose The Expanse too because it… I started reading the book, and the book has one of the best openings that I've read in a very long time. This is like… I'm 10 years late to this book. I started it a month ago. So, it's… For writers who are like worried that their work will never find a reader, like, I'm 10 years late to this series. Okay. One of the things that I found while watch… Switching over to watch the TV show, was that everybody has their own clear motivation and reasons to stay together. I think that when a book doesn't give me that… That's… It's all subjective, because I've read books that are ensemble cast that people love and I'm just like I don't get it. But it's… It really is so tightly woven that I feel like I'm going to have to go and watch it eight more times. Like Howard.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] So, that is The Expanse TV show, that's our thing of the week. It's also a book series, starting with Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. So, go…

[Howard] Real quick, let me just say that the books… The series ended where the books took a big time jump forward. The ensemble would've had to change… For one thing, we'd have to age all the actors up. So, the fact that there isn't an Expanse season that takes us all the way through to the end of the whole proto-molecule galaxy spanning whatever story is nicely illustrative of the understanding that people are watching this, even if they don't know it, they're watching it for the ensemble, and if we break the ensemble in order to push through into the big Galactic story, people will be disappointed. The books can do it. It's really hard to keep that audience on TV though.

[Dan] Yeah. I will say as a closing note, if you are interested, Howard and I did an episode a few years ago with Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who are the authors that make up James S. A. Corey. They wrote the books and they are the show runners for the TV show. So look back through the Writing Excuses archive and you can hear a lot more about how they did that.

[Zoraida] This is me discovering that they are two people.

[Laughter]

[Dan] Yeah. James S. A. Corey is a pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.

[Zoraida] Incredible.

 

[Dan] But let's talk about some more… While Kaela was talking earlier, a really cool example of a failed and then repaired ensemble came to mind, which is the TV show Parks and Recreation.

[Yeah!]

[Dan] In the first season, season and a half, they had Mark. Mark was kind of intended to be… When that show first started, it was basically The Office, but re-done with a government office instead of a corporate office. Mark was supposed to be the sardonic Everyman. He was the Jim of the cast. Then, over time, as they refined their show, as they changed the focus, it stopped being a show about look at all these losers and their terrible job, and it started to be, hey, look at these good people who are trying their best in a crazy system that they have to work within. Once that focus changed, then Mark, the sardonic Everyman, absolutely did not fit in the ensemble anymore. Because his job, his archetype so to speak, was to make fun of everybody else. But we liked everybody else. It was not the Office that was full of misfits and losers anymore. It was full of people we genuinely loved. So he did not fit. They wrote him out of the show completely because he was a failed part of that ensemble. They brought in instead two other characters, Adam Scott and Rob Lowe, whatever their characters are named, I don't remember. They fit better, because they were part of the we're kind of strange people, but we love our jobs which the ensemble had morphed into. So identifying why the ensemble doesn't work… Maybe it's just one character and you can tweak that character or change them completely. Then everything suddenly jells. So what are some other ways to fix on ensemble? If an ensemble is broken, what are some things people can look at to help identify the problem and then fix it?

[Howard] There's a principle here that I learned when I was drawing a Munchkin deck, and that is that the customer always knows when there's a problem, but never knows what the actual problem is.

[Yeah!]

[Howard] Learning to listen to your alpha readers or your beta readers… When they say, "Oh, the story's not working for me. I hate this one character." Does that mean that the character needs to be cut? Does that mean that the character needs to be made likable? Or does that mean that they need someone in the story to agree with them that this character is being a jerk so they can feel vindicated in not liking this character and be okay to move on? It is really tricky to understand that. But, for me, the key piece of the toolbox is having a beta reader or an alpha reader who has been well enough trained to be able to say rather than I think you should get rid of this character to say I don't like what this character is doing. I don't like… I don't feel like these two people would be friends. I don't think that their plan is the smart one, and I don't like reading about stupid people. Whatever. You get them to say what it is that they are feeling so that I can step back and troubleshoot it and find the core of the problem.

[I think that…]

[Howard] Yes, this may be extremely difficult to troubleshoot books that you're writing just on your own. I am exceedingly fortunate in that I have a couple of alpha readers, Sandra Tayler and Bob Defendi, who I know how their opinions work. I know… They know how writing works, and that's awesome. They know how to tell me things in a way that I know what to fix.

 

[Dan] All right. Let's jump to our homework now. Zoraida, you have our homework.

[Zoraida] We have our homework. I would like you to pick an ensemble story that you think fails, and explain how you would have fixed it.

[Dan] There you go. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

 

[Mary Robinette] Oy. Have you checked out the Writing Excuses 2022 cruise yet? We've got all the details about guests, dates, and destinations at writingexcusesretreat.com. This will be the 10th workshop we've done. We'd love to have you join us.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/09/26/16-39-deep-dive-into-event/

 

Key points: Event stories are driven by disruptions of the status quo, the normal. They tend towards externally driven conflicts. Begin with a disruption of the status quo, end either with a restoration of the old or a new status quo. Events happen! But mostly, sequences of breaking, over and over and over. Cascades following one decision. But not just big events, small disruptions too. Obstacles are when each action further disturbs the status quo. Complications are when one problem opens up a different problem. Focus on where the characters are expending effort, what are they trying to solve. External events can be overwhelming, how do you avoid that? First, every try-fail cycle does not need to be the same size, or have the same difficulty. So, control pacing by picking smaller events and consequences, and stacking them. Make a list of possible problems, and slowly escalate them. Consequences are what matters to the character. When you start a story, you have a million choices. When you get to the climax of a story, you only have one. Gradually take away choices, close doors, until there is only one left. Make it a hard choice!

 

[Season 16, Episode 39]

 

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Deep Dive into Event.

[C.L.] 15 minutes long.

[Charlotte] Because you're in a hurry.

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

[Dan] I'm Dan.

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

[Charlotte] I'm Charlotte.

[Mary Robinette] And I'm Mary Robinette.

 

[Dan] We are back with the fifth episode of our M.I.C.E. Quotient master class. So excited to have you all here for it. Today we're going to talk about the fourth and final element, event.

[Mary Robinette] Right. So event stories are driven by disruptions of normal. These are… Tend to be very externally driven conflicts. They began when a status quo is disrupted, and end when it is restored or there's a new status quo. So many things that we think of as plot are actually event. There's a tendency I've noticed among particularly science fiction and fantasy readers to think that the big actions that are happening are all of the plot, and they forget that all of the other pieces are also plot.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But event is all of the things that happen. But it's mostly about things breaking over and over and over again. It's that thing that happens in the real world where you're like, "I'm just…" And I should say, we are having our bathroom remodeled as we are recording this.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] The cascading effect of making one decision to change a status quo, which is, let's have a new bathroom, winds up impacting everything else. Because once you decide that you're going to peel up the floor, then you discover that since your grandfather built the house, that the floor beams are actually two by sixes instead of two by tens which is standard for a floor. So that then in turn breaks their ability to put in water lines and air conditioning because they have to fit them into smaller spaces. Also, then you have to have things reassembled. Then, when you're trying to record a podcast, there are contractors who are constantly coming in and interrupting. None of you have heard any of this because we have solved it by managing to record around things. But it is this cascading chain led from one decision to make one change in the status quo that is then breaking all the rest of my normal. Good times.

 

[Charlotte] Good times. I'm so glad that you said that, because I think certainly for me when I was starting out with event, I always thought of it is something massively big, explosions, a meteor coming, Independence Day type thing, but it can actually be something much, much smaller, like a bathroom or a tap on your sink breaking, something like this. Anything that disrupts the status quo, or your normal. Right?

[Mary Robinette] That is absolutely correct. So, again, as you say, this is… But a lot of times when we think about ramping up the tension in event stories, we think about needing to make things bigger and bigger and bigger. It's really just about this cascade of normal breaking, that you attempt to fix something and not only does it not work, but something else breaks next to it. So, again, in the obstacle versus complication thing, obstacles in this form are when each action causes the status quo to become more disturbed. So, again, in small frame world, if someone has a problem with their boss, that's an external problem. That's not the problems they have with themselves, that's an external problem. So they want to change that status quo. They go to HR to try to resolve it. That action then directly causes them to get fired. So that's an obstacle. It's where they tried to change something and a problem in the same thread line causes it to just go wrong. Complications are when a question opens up to a different problem. So someone has a problem with their boss. They go to HR. That, in turn, leads to them being held prisoner by terrorists. Who are the terrorists? Where did they come from? This is heading things in a completely different way. So these are… This is the kind of thing that you're looking for. I mean, you could make the argument in some cases that this is a continuation of a disruption of status quo. I am thinking of it is kicking off an inquiry thread about who are these people and the milieu of escaping a hostage situation.

 

[Dan] Yeah. I was going to say, event is the one that is the hardest for me to get my head around. Is that your experience as well? Is there something trickier about event, or am I just thinking about it wrong?

[Mary Robinette] I think that it is that… Because event is action driven, everything feels like it's an event. Stories are inherently about change. That's a thing that happens in stories. So when you're looking at… Let's say that you're doing a milieu story and your characters… Let's say your characters crash land on a planet. If they arrive on the planet, that is definitely a milieu story and the thing that they're trying to solve is getting off the planet. If they are explorers and they land under a controlled set up in the story begins after they have already arrived on the planet and they are attempting to… Their ship breaks. Okay, the ship breaking is, at this point, an event. Because it has disrupted their status quo. Because they're supposed to be there and they're supposed to be exploring. Whereas if they are crashing on the planet, if they are there unexpectedly, and trying to leave, their primary goal is to leave the planet and fixing the event of the problem with the ship is incidental to the primary thrust, which is getting off and surviving the planet. That's why it is… With this one, and with all of them, the question that you're looking at and the thing that is often the deciding factor isn't necessarily… I mean, a lot of it is where you start and stop. But a lot of it is what are they trying to solve. Where are they expending their effort? In a murder… If someone is murdered and you put the focus, the primary effort goes into trying to answer questions, that's an inquiry. If the primary focus goes into learning to live after this person has been murdered, and someone else's dealing with the question of who did it, there are detectives who are going off and solving things. But the focus of the story is on how does the widow survive, how does the widower learn to fold his own laundry… It's a little bit of gender stereotyping, and…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] We're just going to roll with it right now. My husband is actually the one who does laundry in our household. So… But this is… That's the… One of them, the focus is on trying to establish a new normal, and the other is on trying to answer a question. That tells you the kind of conflicts that go in the middle and where you're putting your emphasis.

[Dan] Okay. So, as with some of the other ones we've looked at, the value then of figuring out what kind of story, which of the four M.I.C.E. elements you're dealing with is that it helps you to focus your story and it helps you take it in the right direction, so that you're not spinning off like you said into story bloat and adding unnecessarily unnecessary elements because you know more exactly what your story is about.

[Mary Robinette] That is correct.

 

[Mary Robinette] Actually, I'm going to talk… Pause here to talk about our book of the week, because I think that's a good example of this, and the trickiness there. So I am the audiobook narrator for Seanan McGuire. Also, currently, as we are recording this, I am in the process of recording When Sorrows Come which is her new book. When you hear this, it will be out. It's book 15 in the October Daye series, so FYI. But the thing about these books is that they are a combination inquiry-event with character going on as well. But the thing about the inquiry… Toby is a detective, and there are things that she needs to answer. But really, when you're signing up for the books, what you're interested in is watching her kick some ass. So the primary driver in a lot… Is arguably that these are event books. Chaos just surrounds her, things are constantly going wrong. She's constantly getting stabbed, she's constantly needing to solve problems. There is much less emphasis put on the actual detecting. The detecting exists is a set up to give us all of the events that go wrong. Are we there and interested in it? Yes. Does it need to carry weight? Absolutely, because it's a novel, and it has multiple threads. But the driver for most of this is about this… These events, these things going wrong. There's also character stuff that's happening that is wonderful. There's… It's kind of a constant coming-of-age. But it is a coming-of-age that is always being kicked off by things going terribly, terribly wrong. And that affecting everything else in Toby's life. I like these books a lot. I enjoy narrating them. I… In every book, Seanan makes me cry while narrating.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So, I highly recommend them. I get better as a narrator, FYI, over the course of 15 books. So don't judge me too harshly on the first books. But…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] But that was… The new one is When Sorrows Come. Correct?

[Mary Robinette] When Sorrows Come by Seanan McGuire. Yes. It…

[Dan] Awesome.

[Mary Robinette] Is absolutely a… It is status quo disruptions, just constant status quo disruptions. Like, we're going to check this thing out. Then the process of checking this thing out causes someone to get killed. The process of checking out how they get killed causes someone else to get killed. This is not a spoiler if you ever read an October Daye novel.

[Chuckles]

 

[Charlotte] So, with an event story, if it's about action, external things happening, status quo's being disrupted, how do you keep that from becoming overwhelming? Like, something happens and then something else happens and then another thing happens and it's all related, it's all consequence and staying in the same M.I.C.E. element. I guess it's a question about pacing, really. Like, how to control that?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, pacing… The… One of the things that I misunderstood what I was first learning to apply the M.I.C.E. elements to things is thinking that every try-fail cycle had to be the same size, and that they all had to be the same levels of difficulty. So, similarly, that I that all of the consequences had to ramp up at the same proportional level.

[Yeah]

[Mary Robinette] So one of the things that you can do when you're trying to control pacing through the events that happen in the consequences of those events is to think about smaller consequences and stacking them. Sometimes what I will do is I will make a list of possible consequences, things that can go terribly wrong. Then I'll… This is in a… I should say, this is in a phase when I'm stuck and brainstorming. It is not the way I just… Normally I just write. But when I'm stuck and brainstorming, I'll list the consequences and then I'll rank them in kind of best case scenario to worst-case scenario.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Then remove the best case scenario and sort of dole out the worst-case scenarios in a slowly escalating piece of rolling disasters.

 

[Charlotte] Right. This is all…

[Mary Robinette] But, like pacing is… Go ahead.

[Charlotte] No, I was going to say, this is always in relation obviously to your character, because what is devastatingly awful to me might not be the same for my sister or my friend. So it's always with the character in mind, right, the list of consequences?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Charlotte] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Right, right. Exactly. Because you're thinking about the character's status quo being disrupted. Although… So it is their sense of normal and their place in the world. The world being disrupted, for instance, there are big disruptions like the horrible disruptions happening in Greece right now as we're recording this. Terrible, terrible fires. Those are not affecting me. So it is a disruption of the status quo, but it is not a disruption to my status quo. C?

[C.L.] There was something I wanted to add around pacing. One thing that really got my head around the concept of pacing was the idea that when you begin a story, you have a million choices. When you get to the climax of the story, you have one. Pacing is all about taking choices away, gradually. Closing more doors until there is only one thing left to do.

[Dan] Oh, that's brilliant.

[Garbled]

[Mary Robinette] I'm sitting here going, "Yeah. Yeah, because it really is…" It is about getting to… Trying to get them to a point where it's an impossible choice, it's a choice that is hard.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Yeah.

 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Speaking of things that are hard, should I give them homework?

[Yes]

[Dan] I think that's great.

[Mary Robinette] All right. Grab your fairytale. You are going to attempt to strip out everything except the event stuff. So with Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the three bears come home, there is a home intruder in the bear's home. Furniture has been broken. They have to drive this little blonde girl out of their home. Their dinner has been eaten, they have to re-make dinner. Papa Bear has to repair furniture. Then, and only then, after they have restored their status quo, are they truly safe.

[Dan] Awesome.

[Mary Robinette] Or there's a home intruder and Papa Bear just kills her. Now they have to live with the consequences.

[Laughter]

[garbled… Porridge. What are you doing, Papa Bear? I'm retiring.]

[Laughter]

 

[Dan] Okay. So I want to ask, and I know this is homework, but I want to dig into this for a second. Is there a way to cast Goldilocks and the Three Bears as an event story from Goldilocks' point of view without making it just a milieu story?

[Mary Robinette] So, it is about a disruption to the status quo. If we start…

[Dan] If we start the story when she's in the house and the bears show up?

[C.L.] I think in this case…

[Dan] I don't know.

[C.L.] Goldilocks and the Three Bears, as an event story, Goldilocks is the antagonist.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. The only… Like… I think if you… Huh. So, it is about a change in the status quo. If Goldilocks wants to make a change in the status quo, then she would need… What does she want to change? Goldilocks. Goldilocks' mom won't cook her lunch. You have to start it at a different point.

[Dan] Okay.

[Mary Robinette] Goldilocks' mom won't cook her lunch and is trying to force her to take a nap. She doesn't want anything to do with that. So she is going to make a forcible break from her family and she's going to run away from home. It gets back into character again.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Wow. I'm not sure. I think there's got to be a way to make Goldilocks an event story.

[Dan] Well, rather than puzzle over it now, that'll be a bonus homework. If anyone comes up with a really good one, let us know.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] But, for now, you are out of excuses. Go write.