wetranscripts | Entries tagged with process

Writing Excuses 20.18: The Art of Teaching

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-18-the-art-of-teaching

Key points: Teaching as a writer forces you to think through your process and what you know. Also, how do you communicate that to someone else? It helps you be more creative and challenges you. How do you get it across? Start with humility. Examples! Difference between workshops, retreats, school visits, and regular classes? Punchy, big points, not minutia. Opted in, or apathetic? 8000 jokes! Be flexible. Safe creative space. Lovely ugly alien babies. Treat them as equals. Take them seriously. Advice if you are thinking about getting into teaching? Think about a teacher who created a safe space and challenged you that you remember, and put yourself in their place. Is this something you want to do? Be enthusiastic about the subject.

[Transcriptionist apology: I suspect I may have confused Marshall and Mark at some points.]

[Season 20, Episode 18]

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is your opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

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

[Season 20, Episode 18]

[Marshall] This is Writing Excuses.

[Erin] The Art of Teaching.

[Marshall] I'm Marshall.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Mark] And I'm Mark.

[Erin] And we are here on the Navigator of the Seas. This is another one of our recorded on the cruise episodes in front of a live audience. Live audience makes a noise.

[Whoo Applause]

[Erin] Amazing. They're real. Or good sound effects. We are going to be talking today about teaching, which is perfect for this cruise, because we've all been teaching the whole week, and wanted to talk about all the different ways you can come to teaching, and what teaching means and how it can help your writing, and all that jazz. But to start, we should probably actually say what kind of things we teach and how we came to it. So, Mark, remind us who you are and what you teach?

[Mark] Hello, Writing Excuses. I'm Mark Oshiro, the author of many young adult and middle grade novels. And I feel very lucky that I have taught more times than I can count over the years. Primarily to young adults and middle grade students, though I have taught at a few adult workshops. My preference, no offense, Writing Excuses, is teaching to kids because I think about how much I wish that… Some of the people in this audience are very horrified when I say that, by the way. But I prefer, because I am so lucky that I had adults in my life when I was in high school who fostered my love of writing, and I want to show them the possibility that not only can you write and do it for a living, but that you can be a big ass weirdo and not have to edit yourself and be yourself and still be a creative person.

[Erin] What about you, Marshall?

[Marshall] I second the big ass weirdo thing. I'm… I call myself out all the time when I'm teaching kids, because it's just… I'm just being weird.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Marshall] And it's fun. But I got into teaching 17 years ago. I teach high school for the last 15 years. I've taught middle school. I was a sub for middle school for a long time, and I kind of decided, I don't know, a little later in life, like I always kind of wanted to teach, or know I could teach, and then I just went and got my credential and have been doing it for a long time now.

[Erin] Nice.

[Marshall] Like, a long time, it feels like.

[Erin] So, I am probably then the newest person to teaching. So, I… My father is a teacher, and so I feel like I come by it honestly. But I mostly teach college students. So I love that we actually have, like, a wide range of folks, and teach adults as well, as we do here on the cruise. But I teach at University of Texas at Austin, and I teach creative writing there, and have a blast. And I love students in college, I think because it feels like there right on the brink of kind of figuring out who they are, and creativity is a great way to do that. And writing can be an amazing outlet, whether the person wants to go on and become a best-selling author or whether they are an engineering major who just does this because it's something that they love and they want to put time into it.

[Erin] So, I'm curious, all that being said about how amazing we all are, what you think you get out of teaching as a writer?

[Mark] I actually think the primary thing I get out of it is actually forcing me to think about my process and what I do actually know. And I remember the first time I got asked to teach, I was like, "What? I've only had…" At that point, I think I'd only had two books out and I was like, "That's not enough." That's not enough knowledge, that's not enough experience. Which was wrong, because I did actually know a lot of things about writing. But, first of all, it forced me to stop and think, well, what do I know? What is knowledge that I… Or wisdom, I can impart on another person? And even throughout the years, even what I've taught was new, I've never taught that specific lecture ever in my life. And it forced me to sit and think about I taught voice and how I use it to guide my story. So I love that it makes me have this very introspective deep dive first and think about my process, what it is that inspires me and motivates me. And then the second half of it was, well, how do I communicate that to someone else who doesn't know me, is often meeting me for the first time, and they have no way in and has never read anything that I've written. So how do I communicate that to someone else, and communicate it in a way that is both entertaining and engaging, but, hopefully, that they take something away from it? I love teaching that just causes a reframe and allows you to just, oh, this thing I'm doing, I now have this chance to think about it a little bit differently.

[Marshall] I never told… I never said what I teach. I teach English, I've taught Digital Media for a bit, and now I have a creative writing class for the first time. I feel like just the actual what I'm going to do, like, in front of these kids, each day, is… Helps me be more creative and it challenges me. And I really do… I really like seeing what kids can create and how they can challenge themselves, even though they really hate English class, most of them, and they don't want to read, they don't want to write, they don't want to be there. And I say, okay, that's fair, but… I don't know, let's talk about movies for a little bit and write something. And share stories. That's my favorite part of teaching is getting to tell stories and hearing their stories. Yeah. So, I get out of it… And then, when I come back to the page, hopefully, theoretically, I am more creative. But usually, I'm very tired.

[Erin] Yeah. Teaching can take it out of you. It's very… Like, there is a perform… There is an aspect of performance. Like, some of teaching is at about actually making sure the thing lands. Like, you can be the best expert in the world on something, and actually quite horrible at teaching it, because you don't know how to, like, get somebody who's not at your level of expertise up to where you are. Like, I think, like many people have that experience of having a teacher where you're like, I wish I understood what was happening and I'm not quite there. And we all try not to be that teacher. Whether or not we succeed… Ask the students.

[Erin] But I'm curious, like, some of what y'all are talking about, just like unpacking all the parts of that process. So, like, how do you think about, like, how you convey something well, like, how do you teach people who are, like, not really there, how do you figure out how to get something across in a way that actually, like, works for the person that you're talking to?

[Mark] I mean, primarily it was messing up. Like, doing my early lectures, my early talks, and having those moments… The personality changing moments of silence where you're like, oh, this didn't connect, this didn't land. This joke is unnecessary. So, I have learned from having those moments and accepting, like, okay, that was embarrassing. That sucked. But it's like, oh, now I know that I can do something different. So I do something, actually, at the beginning of all of my lectures, in whatever form. If I'm teaching multiple times over a week or if I've done some short residencies before, which is… I know personally that if I'm just being taught rules, these are the rules, don't break them. I'm out. I don't do well with that kind of where… It feels very top-down. I know these things, these are the way to do it, you need to do these things. So I actually start… Or attempt to start from this place of humility. And I did hear, we, which was saying, hey, this is not about the rules of voice, with the rules of guiding your story, or whatnot. I have some information and what I think is knowledge. I hope to give it to you. So, starting from that place, and then even though I care deeply about what I'm teaching, I don't want it to feel so self serious that it's boring. I'm not giving a place for people to come into it. And I also found, as many of you saw here at Writing Excuses, like, examples. You can explain, hey, maybe think about voice in this particular way. And for me, I'm also a visual learner, someone, if you demonstrate the thing, I am attempting to learn, it helps me a thousand times more than just saying do this. So I've learned over the years that examples are so, so helpful. I have a lecture I've taught multiple times on how to write compelling dialogue, and we have a whole section in which to demonstrate how to use… How to actually utilize some of the rules, what it is is, I construct dialogue about the class I'm in in real time. And then show them, and then we create an argument and we show how it goes back and forth and just watching people open up because… It's a little bit of improv, so, of course, especially the little chaos goblins in the room are like, I'm going to say all sorts of wild things…

[Chuckles]

[Mark] And you use that to sort of guide people through this is how you create a scene. Oh, we just noticed it got confusing. Who's speaking this time? How do you write people speaking over each other, because that happens in real time in real life? So, yeah, that's how I found my way into teaching.

[Marshall] Yeah, I've found that with the age group that I teach asking them early on to write about themselves, I get them… One, I get to see how the writing is, because I love writing, but I like sharing stories, so if I can connect with them on anything, like, just the posters in my room… I have a bunch of geeky Star Wars and Marvel posters on my wall, and the kids are like, oh, what do you think of this? That's… I find that that is the best way to help those kids who really would rather not be there, there. It's not necessarily about the grade or about what I teaching, although I think what I'm teaching is awesome. I think just getting them to buy-in is a huge part of it, especially when you're teaching 15, 16-year-olds who are just like, "Bro, this guy?" You know what I mean? And I love what you said about dialogue, too, like, listening to kids talk to each other and making them talk? It's a really kind of fun way to… When I go back to the page, if I'm writing a teenager or something, like, that, like, this is what they would focus on, this is what they would… How they would communicate their day to there buddy. You know what I mean? They wouldn't share with me. But I'm just listening.

[Erin] Yeah. Like, the more of humanity you get to know, the better you can portray it on the page in some ways. And, like, how often do many of us, like, speak to kids of all ages? Like, you might have your own kids and speak to them, but a lot of times, you don't have necessarily an opportunity and, like, to really see folks in an environment where, while you do have some power over them, they sort of are able to fly free, and you can just observe the flock of wild teen birds as they go around [garbled]

[chuckles]

[Erin] That sounds bad. As they go around, and do their thing.

[I like garbled though. Yeah, that's good. Garbled]

[Erin] There you go. We are going to now take a break for our thing of the week.

[Erin] I have the thing of the week, so, just I'm going to keep, like, just throwing the mic to myself. And the book that I want to call out, which… Whose name I am going to forget… No. Is All This and More by Peng Shepherd. And one of the reasons I'm especially excited to talk about this book is that Peng was actually an instructor here on the cruise a couple of years ago, working, I believe, on this novel. And so it's just very meta-. Like, and I am living in the meta-cruise moment of it all. But this is a very cool book for me specifically… I mean, it wasn't written for me, but it was written for me because it is a choose-your-own-adventure novel. And the actual conceit of the book is that someone goes on a show where they're able to change parts of their life based on, like, what the show decides. So they get to, like, decide if they want to blow up their marriage or choose a different job. And at the end of the chapter, it actually gives you the opportunity to flip to whatever chapter you want. So if you want them to blow up their marriage, flip to chapter 8. If you want them to do a new job, flip to chapter 10. And it's a really interesting way of going through a book that takes a novel and a game and puts them all in one. So, definitely check it out. All This and More by Peng.

[Erin] And we're back. We are still on the cruise, still moving, still talking about teaching at all levels. And something else that I love that you were saying, Mark, about figuring out how to, like, convey things is using really good examples and using tactile materials. Do you find, because, I know you do school visits, like, you're not there for very long, like, you're having to, like, get in, get out, engage and go. And, like, is there a difference between that and, like, what I think Marshall and I do, where we're teaching the same folks for, like, years and years and years?

[Mark] Oh, yeah. Absolutely. My teaching technique and speaking technique is different for a workshop or a retreat than it is for a school visit. Generally, in kid lit, the school is actually how you're going to meet your readers. You might get lucky to be at a book festival that is geared towards young adults or middle grade readers, but the majority of the time I am meeting my readers, it is through school visits. So you're doing a presentation that is as long as a class period. Sometimes you're lucky, you get, like, the auditorium style where you therefore, like, an hour or two. So in those, I tend to be much punchier. I am trying to make grand big points. I'm not delving into, like, the minutia. And a lot of times, you're meeting kids who may have an interest in writing, or may have an interest in reading, but you're probably going to meet a few kids who are also deeply apathetic about it. Whereas when you're at a retreat, when you beat… Teaching a workshop, these are people who have already opted in. So they're here for that. So I tell 8000 more jokes. I think one of the best compliments I ever got was doing a school visit, and afterwards, the teacher came up to me and was like, "I've just never seen my students that energized. You're like their weird gay uncle." And I was like, "Yes!"

[Chuckles]

[Mark] That's the energy I want. And so I'm coming into these spaces, one, to as I said earlier to demonstrate that I have not had to edit who I am or edit my personality to be a professional creative person. And I'm not… In those instances, I'm not thinking I want to inspire this person to be a writer. I just want to inspire them to do the thing that they want. So I'm often surprised how often I get questions that have nothing to do with writing at all. Is to maybe someone who wants to do something creative, but the thinking of a completely different field. So then the questions tend to be more about, like, motivation, how do you keep doing this? Did you have parents who supported your creative endeavors? How did you get to the point that you are? What did you study in college? Those sort of questions. So I think the biggest advice I give as well to other people who are joining the kid lit field is you have to be flexible. You cannot go into any of these settings, especially the ones where you're there for one hour max and assume that this is how it's going to go, everything is going to go how I want. Also, children will say something to rip your soul out of your body and then move on, because it's Tuesday.

[Yup]

[Mark] So you also have to be… I mean, don't be afraid… You should be very afraid! But don't be afraid of them, like, they're going to ask the questions, especially if they feel safe. And these questions sometimes might be wild, you might have to say, "Mind your own business." But I want to foster that sense as well of, like, yes, maybe I'm only here for an hour, but I want this hour to be as impactful as possible.

[Erin] I love what you said about safety there. It makes me think about, so, before I started teaching college, I actually did, like, public writing workshops that you can do in libraries or in, actually, like, places where folks are living after coming out of, like, prison and are, like, trying to get back on their feet and they have writing classes as a creative outlet. And there's a book called Writing Alone And with Others, which was developed for prison writing workshops that we used their methodology. In the big thing there is, like, in a prison, you, like, depending on what it is, because our system is no bueno and we're all about punitive, people, like, can't actually keep pen, paper, stuff with them. So you have to do the writing exercise at the time, like, you basically walk in and you're like, here. I'm going to give you, like, a few images, and, like, an idea, and one prompt, and, like, you're just going to go. And then everyone shares their writing that they just wrote. And it's really hard. Because it is terrifying to share writing when you have a long time to write it. And if you just found out about it five seconds ago, it's really hard. And one of the big principles that we talk about in that group is that we're going to make this… This is going to be a space about safe creative expression. Not about perfection. It is… We often use the analogy of, like, having a baby. If somebody has just had a baby, you say what a sweet baby. Many babies look like aliens, but…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Just after birth is not a time to tell the parent, "Your alien looking child is freaking me out." You have to say, "What a sweet baby. I love its wide eyes." or whatever thing you can come up with that seems affirming. What I love about that experience is that, like, it has helped me to really see the good in everyone's writing and to create, like, a safe creative space for all of our lovely ugly alien babies.

[Mark] The safety thing, I think, is so important when it comes to teaching. Like, they're not going to open up, they're not going to create or create what they… If they don't feel like, if you read it, you'll betray them in some way. You know what I mean? So I really try to foster, like, the most… The safest space I can for students so that they can actually just express themselves and write something and have fun while they're at school.

[Marshall] I love that you said that as well. I'm very lucky also that I'm one of the few authors whose been able to do visits and teaching at juvenile delinquent facilities, and the biggest thing I run up into in those environments is adults who don't take the kids seriously at all. So in those spaces, it's… Someone starts talking about their writing and you treat them like a peer, on your level. So they start telling you about, like, oh, I have this story or whatever, and they're used to people dismissing it or assuming they're not going to have a future to tell that. So what I do always is, like, well, why do you want to write that? Why is it that thing? And ask them, like, essentially… They don't see them as craft questions, but I'm asking them craft questions to show them I am interested in the thing you're doing and I take it seriously. So, that's something I think in any situation, but particularly in those situations where the kids actually aren't safe.

[Erin] Yeah. I'm, like, looking for things… The thing is there is beauty to be found in all writing. And I think it's really exciting to see if somebody is really pouring their heart out. I think something else that can be hard, depending on the environment, is when people put a lot of themselves on the page, like, a lot, and you realize… You can tell sometimes, when this is someone's first opportunity to work through something, and, like, it is often just as messy as a therapy session on the page, and you are trying to react to it both as a human being, but also like… Your purpose at that point is to be affirming, but also to actually treat it as writing and not to treat it, I find, as therapy. To be like, okay, a lot happened in that piece. Like what I really thought was interesting was, like, how you kept referencing, like, the color blue. Like, that was really, like… Why did you… Why did that happen question because then it takes the person into talking about craft, and it allows them, I think, a chance to process at their own pace as opposed to being, like, oh, my gosh, did that really happen to you? One thing we do in this, in these settings, is we'll say you actually are not allowed to act as if it is about the person's life. You should always pretend that they wrote it about somebody else, because otherwise it derails the conversation into the person, and not into the prose that they put on the page.

[Mark] Yeah, I know, and I… One of the first creative writing assignments I give my student, because I'm co-teaching sort of the class with another colleague and we had them, like, recall a memory from when they were younger. And that kind of platform… Really, they hit the page with it. And so sometimes… Whenever I was talking to them and giving them feedback, I always made a point of saying, oh, the character did this, the character did this, or what do you think of that about this… And one of the students said, well, it didn't happen that way. And I said, yeah, but we're also writing fiction. So I know this is based on a memory you have, but it can be… It's fiction. I don't know the story. So…

[Erin] And I think the things that happen… I think one of the nice things about teaching, at all levels, is that some of the things that we don't talk about in writing, like, as we get older, some of the things that we like take for granted, like how much of ourselves is in our writing, become much more clear… Become clearer when people are newer to it, and so they can't hide it as well in some ways. And so some of the things that you see when you teach are things that you're like, wow, I should remember that from my own writing. Like, I should remember to think about how much of myself and my bringing to this writing experience. Or, wow, am I using… In my thinking broadly enough about dialogue? Or am I thinking about how to make things exciting in a way that aren't just the ways I've been taught, but the things that work for the story? And we're starting to run out of time.

[Erin] But before we get to the homework, which feels very apropos…

[Right]

[Erin] For the topic that we're having, I'm wondering if you each have, like, one sort of piece of advice you would give if somebody is really interested in thinking about getting into teaching?

[Marshall] Think about a tea… No, in…

[Erin] I love the facial expressions that are happening.

[Marshall] That question's amazing. I think… I would go… I would suggest, think about a teacher that you had that created a safe space, that challenged you, that you remember, and put yourself in their place. Like, is that something that you want to do for other young folks? Maybe they reached you at a time where you really needed that teacher and that class and that time. You know what I mean?

[Mark] My thinking was very similar, along those lines. It was a moment where not only you were inspired by the teacher, but they did something that had you then writing and it didn't feel like homework. Because, to me, there were the moments that now I look back and I was like, you gave me more to write, and I wasn't even… I was doing it, but it didn't feel like work. And those, to me, are like the transformative experiences… Is why, at that age, when I could've been doing 20 other different things, did I choose to write more or write a different assignment or read this book? Why was it that thing and what was it that that teacher or librarian or educator did to get me to forget that I'm in school. Like, that's… And so, if you can imagine that. So, yeah, if you have that empathy or understanding, like, what was it that helped you get past that point?

[Yeah]

[Erin] And I would say for me, like, it is be enthusiastic about the subject matter, about the people your teaching. If you teach enough, you will have a day in which you are tired and you are not at your best. But, even so, I think, the enthusiasm really comes through. If you want the person to… When you want someone to learn, that really, I think, comes through. Even if you're tired, even if you're hangry. Like, that wanting someone to learn is what's important because it means you're able to be flexible, and you're thinking about the things that you brought with you from people who wanted you to learn and who were successful in getting you there.

[Mark] And they know… They know if you're excited about it. They know that you're passionate about it. And even if they might not be, they'll get there with you. Because they know you're stoked about it. So, is it homework time? [Garbled you looked like you were?] about to say one more thing.

[Mark] So, the homework is very similar to what we kind of just talked about, but I want you to think, if you're even kind of considering teaching, your homework is to think of something that you're very passionate about. It doesn't have to be writing, it could be knitting, it could be whatever. And create a lesson in your head or write it down that would work for you, your younger self.

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

mbarker

Writing Excuses 19.46: An Interview on Structure with N. K. Jemisin

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-46-an-interview-on-structure-with-n-k-jemisin

Key points: What was your process? I wrote an outline that laid out the three plot line structure, the opening with an overview of the world, and that there would be a cliffhanger ending. Then I write test chapters. It started to flow. But about halfway, I decided it was trash. Devi talked me down. Structure and process are intertwined. Deep and close reading. I wrote the majority of Essun first, then started working on the other two. I fixed a lot in revision. I seeded in a lot from the beginning, then took out a lot in revisions. Starting with too much is an easier edit. Epic fantasy wants certain things. What if we have a complex magic that is indistinguishable from technology? The restoration tradition in epic fantasy is a manifestation of privilege. I wanted to explore oppression. I do write certain scenes while cackling deep in my chest.

[Season 19, Episode 46]

[Howard] I have three be a better writer tips. The first, write. The second, read. The third, get together with other writers. That third one can be tricky, but we've got you covered. At the Writing Excuses retreats, we offer classes, one-on-one sessions, and assorted activities to inspire, motivate, and recharge writers just like you. As you make meaningful progress on your stories, you'll build connections with your fellow writers that will last for years to come. Check out our upcoming events at writingexcuses.com/retreats

[Season 19, Episode 46]

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] An Interview on Structure with N. K. Jemisin

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[DongWon] We are incredibly excited to have a guest with us today. As the title implies, we have interview… We are interviewing N. K. Jemisin as we are finishing our section talking about The Fifth Season. Nora is truly one of my favorite authors working in the genre today…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] I think an absolute powerhouse when it comes to sort of redefining what fantasy is right now. Not to overstate it right at the head into us. But, we are incredibly excited to have you here and to start diving into some of the topics we've been talking about when it comes to The Fifth Season. So, welcome.

[Nora] Thank you very much. I'm N. K. Jemisin. Welcome. Thank you for welcoming me to this podcast.

[Chuckles]

[Nora] You are also the sweetest person in the world [garbled for having?] said that. Thank you.

[DongWon] Very, very happy to, and I promise it's only true things. But… Let's dive right into it. So, as we've been talking about Fifth Season, we really focused on the structure of this book, with sort of the three point of views that you eventually realize is all one character, just split across time. I was always entranced by how this book is put together. It feels like an intricate puzzle box. Yet, as we were chatting before we headed into this recording, this episode, you mentioned that you don't do a lot of planning ahead of time. So, what does the process look like for you to put together this thing that, as a reader, feels quite complex? But to you, was an organic process?

[Nora] Um. There is some structure involved. I wrote an outline that sort of basically laid out the three plot line structure, the sort of opening, which would be sort of an overview of the world, just to kind of introduce people to the planet as a character. And that there would be a cliffhanger ending. That… All of that, I knew up front. My initial thought was that the story was going to be third person, very traditional telling, present tense… I mean, sorry, past tense, third person. Nothing sort of experimental or unusual there. But I always write test chapters. The test chapters, I will just simply start writing. Like, I'm spitballing and, I'm trying to see what voice feels best, what makes it flow, what makes it have the right energy. So I will try it over and over again, in some cases, from the different POVs, different tones, different voices. For some reason, I found myself drawn to this bizarre part third person, part second person, present tense-y… Almost… It increasingly felt like I was trying to write poetry. And I suck at poetry. So, I attempted multiple times to write poetry, only to realize I'm entirely too literal a person to do that. But here I am, I'm pulling the hollow man, even though I'm only E. E. Cummings, I'm like… All of a sudden, all of the poetry I've ever read in my life is starting to speak to me and wants me to acknowledge that flow, that energy. It was a truly instinctive… Like, this just feels right. So I started writing. It started to flow well. I was like, this is ins… This is bizarre. I've never really written anything this… Just experimental, I guess. For lack of a better description. I've never written anything this off the beaten trail. I don't know if it's right. But it feels right, so I'm going to keep going. Then, of course, I hit a point about like halfway through the book, where I suddenly decided that this is the worst thing I've ever written, I can't believe I've written this much, I need to stop right now. Devi Pillai, my then editor, editor at Orbit books, had already given me… Had already offered me a three book contract, and I had happily signed it and happily gotten the advance. At that point, I was like, this… I've never written anything like this, I can't keep doing this. This is going to make people think that I'm the worst writer in the world. So I called up Devi, I was like, I want to stop doing this book, I'm going to change this back to a single book contract. I think I was crying. Devi was like the editorial equivalent of hey, Nora. Have a Snickers. You always want to quit your novels when you haven't eaten. So… Basically, she told me to sit down and relax. So, around the same time, a bunch of friends of mine dragged me out for a intervention.

[Laughter]

[Nora] A very drunk intervention. Over mimosas, they were like, Nora, this may hurt. So…

[DongWon] Stop reading Modern Miss poets and get back to reading your poets. But…

[Laughter]

[Nora] Anyway. So we're segueing over from talking about structure. I'm sorry. But that was basically how I wrote it.

[Howard] Yeah, but see, that's… Structure and process are so intimately intertwined. I mean, when we talk about structure with each other, when we talk to writers about structure, it is in part of a… It is as part of a discussion on process. You have a structure that you are originally working with, and then you realize… You get to the middle of the book, as I think almost all of us do, and decide that we're wrong, we've always been wrong, we hate writing, and we're done.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] That is a structural moment. That is a moment where you go back and you look at what you're doing and you eat the Snickers and you have drinks with friends at the intervention, and then you go back, and, I assume, at some point realize…

[DongWon] [garbled]

[Howard] Oh, my goodness, the second person is actually teeing up a wonderful reveal. And… [Garbled] I don't know when that moment was…

[Nora] Yeah.

[Howard] But your reveal was brilliant.

[Nora] Well, the reveal… So I knew at the beginning that all three perspectives were the same person. That was a given. I knew that my primary perspective needed to be Essun. That Essun was the person whose story I was ultimately telling. They're all Essun, but that was…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] The focus that I wanted to keep. So I found myself seeding in hints into Essun's POV… I put hints into all three of them on purpose. Because I am an evil writer, and…

[Chuckles]

[Nora] I cackle while I throw in little hints. I'm like Did you notice this one?

[DongWon] Yep.

[Nora] But, uh...

[DongWon] Going back in a reread, it is such a delight to pick out all those little moments of, like, oh, diabolical.

[Nora] Isn't it?

[DongWon] That she was giving us this… I remember noticing stuff in the introduction of Essun that, like, leads to that understanding later. I was just like God damn.

[Nora] Yeah. Yeah. Those are my favorite kinds of books to read. The books where, when you are really… Where you enjoy the first read through enough that you're willing to go back and reread it and catch all the little stuff. So that is… I don't expect anybody necessarily to pick up on it the first time around. But, deep and close reading are… Deep and close reading is something that I want readers to do with me. It is what I love to do myself with good writing. So I want to reward that with here's a blanket which she mentions in one chapter that you're not going to see again tell like six chapters later. But, little things like that. So, um… But, yeah. I knew from the very beginning that it was going to be all three people in the same perspective. I did write Essun's part first. Because I felt like I needed to know where she was going and where she was going to end up in order to write the other two. But then the other two, I kind of flipped back and forth between Damaya and… Oh, God. Wow.

[DongWon] Syonite.

[Nora] Syonite. Wow. Wow. Okay. Coffee… I don't have enough in me. Sorry.

[DongWon] Always. Yeah, I was really curious about the order in which this was written. Because part of me was like, did she write just sequentially, chapter 1, Chapter 2, chapter 3, altering the perspectives? But hearing that you wrote one of the POVs first, and that then enabled you to write the other two… Which makes sense. Because Essun is like the spine of the novel in some… So many ways. Her story's like carries us through as we start to understand the other perspectives and the history that she's had up until this point.

[Nora] Yeah, I wrote the majority of Essun first. Because I needed to have her lodged in my head. Then I started kind of working on the other two, and inserted some earlier chapters. But I reached a point where I was basically alternating between the POVs as I wrote. It just felt better that way. In fact, in some cases, I was deliberately… Like, when I was writing about Damaya, I would have just written a segment in which Essun went through some terrible hell, and I wanted to seed in a parallel to that that Damaya has to go through. Or that Syonite has to go through. I had to actually kind of stop that, because it was a little too obvious. In the revisions, I fixed it, I think. But…

[DongWon] Interesting.

[Nora] Yeah. But that is how it got written.

[DongWon] I mean, we spent a whole episode talking about parallelism in this book. Right? Your use of parallelism in the different character arcs, but also over time. Right? Starting with the child death and ending with a child death. Starting… You'll have one beat that then is replicated across all three stories at different points in time. Which, like, set up so many sort of like thematic resonances. It was almost like… Like the magic system, you were setting up these different resonances that were coming at us from different angles, which, like, built to something, but felt quite powerful. When you're setting up those parallels… I mean, you were saying that once you started alternating, you saw them coming in, and then you sort of shifted them around or cut back on them in edits. When you're seeding like, these clues, in as well that you kind of mentioned, was that planned at the beginning or did you find yourself layering that kind of stuff in later? Because I think… I love that we're talking about process so much, because I think these are the questions people have when they see something beautifully structured, they're like, how in hell do you do that? Because you can't think of all these things when you're outlining or when you're doing your first drafts sometimes.

[Nora] Right. Right. The majority of the parallels and the hints and things like that, I seeded in from the beginning. I took out a lot. I am not a subtle person. I am a… I am a person that throws bricks at the heads of my readers. I have to stop sometimes, because I need to be more subtle than I naturally am. So revisions are my favorite. Revisions are when I'm like, oh. Oh, that's way too… Let's turn that brushstroke into a dab. Let's turn that brick to the head into a pebble to the head. Or whatever. So I removed a lot of really obvious stuff. Honestly, it still felt too obvious to me. But then I ran it through some beta readers and that helped a lot. Because things that scream obviousness to me are far more subtle in other people's eyes, I think. So…

[Howard] Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit like… I don't know if you've ever performed stage magic, but it's a little bit like being the magician and knowing which hand you palmed the coin into. Being able to see from your angle, yes, I have a fake fingertip on this finger. It's often very difficult to step out of that point of view… Like, man, everybody's going to see this. I can see it. It's obvious.

[Nora] Yeah.

[Howard] No. Nobody's going to see it. You're moving your hands fast, and you've written this well. I feel like there's an instinctive element here, that sometimes we have to go back and remember. When I wrote this the first time, my instinct was to do this. I've cleaned it up in revisions, and I haven't broken it. That's the thing I think we're always afraid of, is that we'll break something in revising.

[Nora] No, I have always loved revisions. Revisions are my favorite part of writing. Writing raw is actually my least favorite part. I am good at that part. Like, the flow… Once I really kind of get into the zone, I… If I'm listening to my characters the right way, then they are speaking and the story is writing itself. At least at a certain point. But there are two huge problems. One, I have a terrible memory. So I will write the same scenes, or the same kinds of scenes, beats, over and over and over again. Because I don't… especially when I'm on deadline, I don't have time to go back and reread the entire book, and I forget that I put in some particular beat, and then I do it again, and I do it again. So that sucks. Because each writing session is about anywhere from like 1500 to 3000 words a day, and by the time I get to the point where I am doing page 100, I will have forgotten what's on page 25. So that's one problem. But the other problem is that the urge to be subtle feels coy to me. I've always preferred just being straightforward. I've always preferred just saying what I mean. The problem is that it's a good idea to be subtle sometimes. It's a good idea to kind of let the story speak for itself, the action or the setting or whatever speak for itself. I've got to get myself out of the way of that. I have sort of a… I'm told that this is a typical neuro-diverse person behavior. I don't know if that's true. I'm still adjusting to realizing that I have been ADHD my whole life, and had no idea until relatively recently. Yet, when I look back, I'm like, "How did I not know?" So… Anyway.

[Chuckles]

[Nora] But, um… So I'm…

[DongWon] We've all been there.

[Nora] Yeah. So I'm told that is sort of common for folks with ADHD to just repeat themselves over and over again trying to be more clear each time in the hopes that they can get across what they're trying to say if they're just clear enough. If they just say it slowly or carefully enough. As a writer, I'm especially prone to that. Because I'm like if I just write it exactly the right way, they'll all get it, and it'll be obvious, and then I won't need to do it again. And, no, that's not how anybody works. So…

[Chuckles]

[Nora] That's not how I work. I don't even know why I expect that of other people. So I have to kind of get myself out of the way. I have to stop my urge to explain and explain and explain. That is what revisions let me fix.

[DongWon] That said, if you're going to err on the side, I think erring on being straightforward over being coy is so powerful. Right? There's so many times I read a book that is just with holding so much back that I'm like there's nothing keeping me here. You've kept so much back that I am just straight up bored. Right? So I think the instinct of just telling the reader stuff up front, I think, does so much to keep us engaged. And then, I love this idea that in edits, you're like, oh, I gotta pull back a little bit. I gotta hold a few things back, I'm telling them too much. Right? I think starting with too much and pulling back is always an easier edit than starting with… Like, underwriting is harder to edit for then overwriting. Right?

[Nora] [garbled]

[DongWon] Not to say that you're overwriting.

[Chuckles]

[Nora] Yeah. I'm not sure. I've never underwritten. I've always overwritten.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] But the overwriting is a problem in and of itself, though.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] Because past a certain point, I find underwriting coy. Overwriting is condescending. It is patronizing to your audience. It is assuming that your audience lacks the intelligence to figure out simple stuff.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] [garbled] subtle stuff. So… That's not what's in my head, but that's how it feels when it comes across. So I have to keep that in mind too.

[DongWon] It's all trust.

[Nora] So there is a sweet spot. Yeah. There is a sweet spot.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] And there is a trust factor, and you have to remember that your trust factor changes as you proceed through the book.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] You start out at the very beginning, your audience does not necessarily trust you at all, especially when you're hitting them with second person and a bunch of other weirdness. Then, past a certain point, though, you can start to be very, very delicate with your brushstrokes. I tend to still slap on the paint. But I… Revisions are where I thin it all. To beat a metaphor to death.

[DongWon] Well.

[Laughter]

[Nora] I'm sorry.

[DongWon] No, you're doing it, that's great. Speaking of overwriting, we are running a little bit long here. So, let's go ahead and take a quick break.

[Nora] Sure.

[Howard] Writing doesn't have to be a solitary activity. That's why we host in person retreats and workshops. At the Writing Excuses retreats, you'll get access to classes, one-on-one office hours, critique sessions, and activities to keep you inspired and motivated. Become a more engaging storyteller and learn how to navigate the publishing landscape. As you make meaningful progress on your stories, you'll also build connections with your fellow writers that will last for years to come. Check out our upcoming events at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

[Nora] So, yeah. My thing of the week right now is the videogame Alan Wake II. I have gotten very into the Remedy connected universe, I think is what they're calling it. Alan Wake is the sequel to the game Alan Wake. It is companion to a game called Control which one lots of awards last year. Alan Wake II one lots of awards. These are writers games, I think. Because they are games that are heavy into sort of exploring the artistic mindset, among other things. But, also, the paranoia that revisions are to writers. Are you making the story better or are you dragging the story to hell? And is the story driving you to hell? So are you actually putting in… Breadcrumbing your ideas early or is an eldritch abomination slowly dragging your story into a terrible place? So, Alan Wake II is a game about a writer who is literally trapped in his own novel. There are other characters involved. There are other plot elements to it. But, as a writer, writing this… Playing this incredibly meta-fictional game, it has been absolutely fascinating for me to realize (A) how writing looks to other people. How writers look to other people. That's been a little actually intimidating. Because you realize Alan's coming across to pretty much everyone that meets him as just being absolutely bat shit. And there's something wrong with the guy and everybody can see it. I'm like, oh, is that how… Is that how we seem?

[Chuckles]

[Nora] Oh, good to know. But then you also see things like the author's characters getting revenge on him. [Garbled lot in common] But it's been a delight to play. And I'm actually super excited because next week sometime, the latest DLC, The Red Caps, drops. So I cannot wait for a chance to play that. So…

[DongWon] We've been talking about doing a bonus episode talking about Alan Wake and…

[Nora] Oh, really.

[DongWon] I think now we have to do that, and we have to have you back to do a deep dive with us.

[Nora] Sure. I would be… Absolutely.

[DongWon] On why this game is so brilliant. So. But thank you so much.

[Nora] Yeah. Absolutely.

[DongWon] Welcome back. So, so far we've done a wonderful dive into your process and how you think about the structure of these books, what that looks like as you develop it. I want to take a zoom out a little bit and take a little bit of a step back, because one thing I was thinking about is… This might be my publisher perspective coming in. Right? Of this book is very much marketed and sold as epic fantasy. Right? It's very much fitting in that category. One of the things that I think is so interesting about it is it feels very fresh and contemporary. It's not surprising to me that you were like thinking about modernists as you were writing. There's so much about it like the rupture of technology is sort of modernity coming into this book in a certain way. It feels very contemporary, it feels of non-genre fiction in terms of the structure. But when you look at all the elements, it's literally wizards going to a magical school with magic crystals and things like that. Right? Like, especially the first book has so many of the trappings of classic fantasy brought into it. So, epic fantasy can have a really rigid structural drive. Right? It wants third person omniscient. It wants prophecy. It wants multi POV, like all of this stuff. Were you actually thinking about the category as you were conceiving and drafting this novel, or were you just like I'm going to do my own thing? And did you feel a tension with that tradition at all?

[Nora] I definitely felt tension with the… I always feel tension with the epic fantasy tradition. I take very much to heart your statement that epic fantasy wants certain things. I find myself hearing those calls for certain things and saying, "No. Fuck you, epic fantasy. I'm not giving you what you want."

[Chuckles]

[Nora] I have spent probably the bulk of my career fighting with epic fantasy. Because I see such potential in that subgenre. It is… Like, why are we fixated on middle European epics, on that as epic? Why aren't we looking at Gilgamesh? Why aren't we writing about [San Diego?] Why aren't we writing about all these different cultural traditions instead of just a few? Why aren't we exploring science fictional landscapes? There's no reason why you can't have magic in space? And things like that. So I do not like the rigidity of any genre. I react badly when I'm told that the way to a particular kind of genre is only X, Y, Z. I'm like, well, what about X, Y, A? So that is how my head works. So, yes, I very much was like I'm going to put a lot of science fiction in this. Then, somewhere in… I think the two… This is a little spoiler. But, somewhere in the two, I gave a name to the force that is being used, and it is not orogeny, it is magic. And I'm just… I just did that to [garbled fool with the audience]

[chuckles]

[Nora] [garbled] because I am an evil writer as I said.

[DongWon] Because at that point, the book was becoming more science fictional, was becoming more science fiction in terms of its logics and technologies, and then that you're throwing out us, like, no. This is magic. It's such a lovely little tension there, yeah.

[Nora] Well, I mean, there's a particular thing that I was doing which is that… I believe it's Clarke's Law, is any sufficiently complex magic is indistinguishable from science fiction… No. The other way around. Any…

[Howard] Any sufficiently complex technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[Nora] Thank you.

[DongWon] There we go.

[Nora] The inverse of that, I think, is the Girl Genius law, which is the same thing. Any sufficiently complex magic is indistinguishable from technology. And I really wanted to play with that. What if we have magic so complex, so structured, still incomprehensible, still at its core something that you cannot fully grasp or at least not easily, and not necessarily reproducible, not necessarily all of the things that are science. But what if it's magic, it looks and sounds and tastes like science. At what point do you start to treat it as a science? At what point is it just science, it's just got a weird name. I really just wanted to play with that. I did not want it to become a clear answer, I wanted it to be ambiguous to the end. Because… Again, this is a bit of a spoiler for later in the series, but the initial stage of the story, where you realize how structured orogeny is, much, much later in the story you find that another civilization went even further with the structure. They got into literally the ability to do some miraculous things with it. They scienced it to death and then drag the world with them. So I really just wanted to explore that aspect of it. It's magic, but can you science it too much? Is there a point where you have dragged it so far that it has a different core?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] It's different in its nature, ultimately.

[DongWon] [garbled]

[Nora] Yeah. That was the idea.

[DongWon] Well, like, one thing I think about a lot is… I think about Tolkein a lot. I love those books, I love the story. It's very meaningful to me. But the thing that always strikes me when I go back to Tolkien is how mournful it is. It's very sad. Everyone's always just singing songs about how the world used to be better. Right? I think so much of epic fantasy derives from that origin point of this… What is ultimately a restoration fantasy. Right? It's we need to bring the old ways back…

[Nora] Right.

[DongWon] And the world was better before and we live in this fallen time. So, so much of what we think of as classic epic fantasy… Obviously there are departures, this is not the whole genre. But much of the core of the genre, much of its most successful elements tend to be this urge to bring something back that once was. Right?

[Nora] Yeah.

[DongWon] If I'm… Had a couple cocktails and you catch me at the right moment in an expansive mode, what I will say is that I think the dominant mood of epic fantasy is nostalgia. Right? I think nostalgia is the thing that drives a lot of it. That is not The Fifth Season. Fifth Season explicitly starts with this statement of Fuck restoration.

[Nora] Yeah.

[DongWon] Restoration doesn't work.

[Nora] Yeah.

[DongWon] We can't do that. It starts with the breaking of the world. I mean, I just wandered off into a whole thesis statement about where fantasy is, but I'm curious, like, was that something that resonates with how you think about this book or were… Was that not even in your mind as you're trying to distinguish yourself from that tension between the what epic fantasy wants versus what you wanted to do?

[Nora] That is always a tension in my mind. I, like I said, one of the things that I… I have been fighting against that tradition within epic fantasy and other traditions within epic fantasy in my whole career. Epic fantasy has so much farther that it can go. And it is… The adherence of so many writers to that nostalgic theme limits it. I think that that's not necessarily a thing that they can help. I think that that is a manifestation of privilege. You want to get back to the world as it was if the world as it was is good for you. If the world as it was was a shithole, you have no need to go back to what used to be. You would not want to go back to what… In fact, you're going to fight the quote unquote heroes of the story, you're going to be an antihero and try and move on to something different, instead of returning to what was. So a lot of my fiction tends to explore these themes. Because some of it… It's pretty obvious, I think, in The Fifth Season that I'm channeling slavery. And I wanted to explore a lot of different kinds of oppression within it. I was exploring closetedness among queer people, I was exploring disabled people who had been treated as useless at varying points, I was exploring a lot of different stuff. I wanted to kind of teach one sort of unified theory of all these folks for whom the old world was bad, are going to see the potential in change. They may or may not pursue that potential. But they see it. And there's no reason for me to pretend that tension isn't there. So, yeah, in the case of… For example, in the case of Essun, I deliberately contrasted her against Alibaster. Alibaster is the reformist. Essun, for the bulk of the book, is the centrist. Who is the status quo defender, survivor, etc. one of these people… Both of them see the potential for change. One of them is just simply not willing to put in the effort that is necessary to make that happen and the stuff for it that would be necessary to make that happen. And the other is further along on his particular path towards reform, basically. I deliberately contrasted them, because I wanted to show… I don't believe that there is… I mentioned earlier that I think that that nostalgic exploration tends to be associated with privilege. For people who are coming from marginalized identities, there's different ways of reacting to that same thing. I don't believe that there's any one way of doing it in a privileged way, and I don't believe there's one way of doing… Of reacting to oppression as a marginalized person. But I wanted to show different perspectives on… Excuse me. If you are seeing the world as it is and you see that it could be better, what do you do? So, yeah, I guess it's the centrist versus the progressive, if you want to look at it that way.

[DongWon] Yeah. It's really interesting. I was just having a conversation with a cis white male author about epic fantasy. I kind of said something similar to what I said here about, like, me, even as a kid, reading epic fantasy, feeling a sense of golden nostalgia, of a thing I would never have access to. His response was initially [garbled] he didn't quite have that experience when he read it. He felt more of the potential of adventure. I was like, oh, is this just the experience of reading this while marginalized? Right? Like, as a person of color, as a queer person, of, like, oh. These adventures aren't for me. I will never get to be Taron. I will never get to be whoever a major epic fantasy hero is. It's really interesting… And I think part of why Fifth Season did speak to me so much was I was like, oh. This is from the perspective of deeply marginalized people who are being subjected to active, awful oppression. Right? It's why the scene of the Guardian breaking Damaya's hand will just, like, live in my brain forever in the worst and best ways. So… But I would love to shift away from sort of looking back a little bit at the traditions and talk about how you move forward. You've written a whole nother series since then, and… What lessons did you take away from the experience of writing these books. Obviously, they came out to great acclaim. You've won Hugos for every single entry in the series. What did you… How did this shift how you approach writing fantasy going forward and what… How you think about structure going forward? To return to the original topic, like, what were the lessons that you took away from this experience?

[Nora] Um.

[DongWon] That's a very easy to answer question.

[Ha ha ha ha]

[Nora] I think I have relaxed a little. I'm not as angry at the genre, because I said my piece. I… I… Like I said, I spent a long period of time kind of railing against the traditions of epic fantasy, frustrated by the potential that I saw that just seemed to be being squandered. I would read… I'm not going to name any particular books, but I would read an epic fantasy series and see how much more interesting it could have been if they'd decided not to restore the king to power. If they decided why don't we try democracy. I know that, like Game of Thrones, kind of went and nudged about ha, ha, ha, democracy? We're not going for that silly idea. Why would we try that? I know that there have been others engagements with that idea, and, epic fantasy as a general thing has mostly kind of laughed at the concept of applying all these modernists… All these modern ways of thinking to the story. But you aren't bound by the ways that medieval people actually thought. You are writing to a modern audience, you are a modern person yourself. You cannot think like a true medieval person. So why pretend? Why let your biases about the medieval era impact how you actually write about the medieval Europe versus how people in the medieval era might have themselves actually thought. There's a lot of potential within the genre, and I spent a long time just kind of pushing at it and trying to say, look, we can do more. We can go here, we can go there. Let's try it. Why isn't anybody else trying this? There were people… There are people who are. I don't want to pretend that I am the only writer that is doing something weird.

[DongWon] No. But I do think you kicked the door in. You know what I mean? Like, I think people were doing that, but I think you opened a door in a way… Forcefully in a way that made it easier for people to follow.

[Nora] Good.

[Howard] Using the door metaphor, when Tolkien published Lord of the Rings, he threw open a door into something that at the time was being called romantic fantasy or fantasy romance or something. They didn't even have a word for it.

[DongWon] Right.

[Howard] He had a goal which was to create a sort of fictional mythos for Great Britain, and we all walked through that door.

[Nora] Yeah.

[Howard] We all walked through that door and ended up with that POV, ended up with that point of view, ended up with that perspective. And now when I think about worldbuilding, I have to kick myself a little bit and say, no. You're worldbuilding. You're building a secondary world thing. You do not have to adhere to the rules of feudalism or medievalism or Roman or bronzed technol… Just do what speculative fiction does best and speculate!

[Nora] That's… You raise a really good point. What Tolkien did, in creating that mythos, I think bunches of readers read the Lord of the Rings, saw what he did, and were to… And their take away was we can do medieval Europe better. Their take away was not we can do a mythos in whatever thing that we want to do. We can make up our own mythos in any direction that we want to spent. I think that there's a number of reasons why that sort of lockstep thinking kicked in. I mean, obviously, you wanted to make imitations for commercial reasons. Because when you look at Lord of the Rings, and you think, what makes it worthy of all this money and all these movies and all this other stuff, you're going to go for the most obvious imitations. I grew up in the eighties, where there were Tolkien imitators every fricking where…

[Chuckles]

[Nora] And literally called the genre or the subgenre of Tolkien clones.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] And…

[DongWon] I grew up on those. They were candy to me. I loved them [garbled]

[Nora] They were candy to me. I was like 10 years old. Then I hit 15 and I was like I am so sick of medieval…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] Europe once again. And I would have reached a point… I did reach a point where it was just sort of like, oh, my God. How many times can they do the same shift over and over and over again? And I think that that is probably what informs my writing…

[Chuckles]

[Nora] As an artist, is my 15-year-old, no, I am tired of this. So, yeah, I think that that's really what it kind of boils down to. But what Tolkien did was take something that he cared about…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] And take it in and create a riff on it. I wanted to take something I cared about and riff on it. And I don't care about the same things that a British professor who's born in South Africa and went through World War I… One? Two?

[DongWon] Two.

[Howard] One.

[DongWon] One.

[Nora] One. I don't think about the same things, I don't have the same interests, I'm not going there. Among other things, what interested me was American history, Black history. I inserted a theme from an actual thing that happened, the Margaret Garner incident at the end of the book. You people have read the book, the first book, so Syonite killing her child at the end rather than letting her child return to slavery is based on a true event for those that did not know. Based on the actual real life of a woman named Margaret Garner who escaped slavery with her children. Something went wrong, slave catchers were closing in, she began to kill her children rather than let them go to… Go back into slavery. It was one of the incidents that galvanized the abolitionist movement, because people were beginning to… People were basically like slavery is so bad that a mother would kill her own children rather than let them suffer it. Because at the time, the marketing for slavery on the part of the slaveholders was, oh, it's fine. We treat them beautifully. Because they're an investment. We would never mistreat them. It doesn't make any sense for us to mistreat them… Didididi… All of that. So that was one of the prime… Not primary, but that was one of the thematic ways that people pushed back. I wanted to insert all of that. I wanted to riff on American history. We are a country with so many sins to our name. We are a country that cannot really function without putting someone in a position of suffering. I wanted to think more about that, basically.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] So I did the same thing that an old British guy did, but I did it from the perspective of a younger black woman. Black American.

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, to me, it felt like his reference point was postwar Britain, and you moved the reference point to being 21st century America. Right?

[Nora] Yeah. Yeah.

[DongWon] One of the things I love about Fifth Season was, to me, it felt… When reading it, I felt so clearly to be to be… If not entirely about it, at least in conversation with the experience of being black in America. Right? But, nothing was mapping allegorically one-to-one. It wasn't like, oh. These are the black people, these are the white people, these are blah blah blah blah blah. It wasn't, like, mapping to specific things, but it all felt so densely and richly of the experience. Right? But a part I didn't know about the individual event that you mentioned that you were referring at the end, which is very powerful and very upsetting. But, yeah…

[Nora] What I wanted to explore was oppression. Not specifically…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] Racism, not specifically sexism, not specifically… I was not exploring a specific oppression. I was not exploring a specific manifestation of oppression. I read about suffragism in the UK and Australia. I read about the aboriginal resistance to Australian colonization. I read about Mallory resistance. I mean, I was reading as much as I could about how people in the world pushed back against colonizers and what happens to societies that are colonized, and how it warps those societies, how it warps the people in them. And I wanted to explore the themes and not dry history. So that's why it doesn't map. I didn't want it to map.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] I didn't want it to be… This was not me trying to work through the specifics of my own life or the specifics of American history. This was me working through what is it to be oppressed. Period.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] Um… And I tried to do it in a way that paid respect to all of the marginalized people whose histories and stories I read. I don't know that I succeeded.

[DongWon] I… From my experience, you did succeed very well. I found a lot to personally identify with from where I come from. For someone who is afraid of being too obvious or… Worried about a kind of didactivism, I think you succeeded in creating something very specific and very subtle and very universal all at the same time.

[Howard] I am fond of saying that there are books that are factual and there are books that are true. And you wrote a true book.

[Nora] Well, thank you. Wow.

[Howard] I come from… It's middle-aged white dude. I do not come from any of the marginalized spaces, and I read a true story about what it meant to be marginalized, what it meant to be oppressed, what it meant to try to reshape the world when a marginalized person finds themselves with the power to do some reshaping. It was a true story for me and I loved every minute of it. Except for the parts where I was mad at you, and crying.

[Chuckles]

[Nora] Yes. Okay. Um… Yeah, okay, I mean I… Writers are evil.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Nora] I am an especially evil writer. I admit it. I accept it. This is a thing that I have learned to own about myself.

[Chuckles]

[Nora] I do write certain scenes while cackling deep in my chest. Like, I'm killing a character and I'm like people are going to hate this. Hehehehe.

[DongWon] Make them suffer.

[Nora] Yes… Your tears. I am sometimes like that. I try not to be like that, but… In real life, I am very much… I try very hard to be a nice person. I… Everybody's got their own inner bitchiness, of course, but… And sometimes outer. But I try to be a nice person. I am very much a people pleaser and so forth. But in my deepest soul, I am a sadist. [Garbled] writers are.

[DongWon] And we are deeply grateful for it.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] So… Nora, thank you so much for joining us. This conversation was truly wonderful. It was a real delight to be able to dig into some of the thematic elements and structural elements of this book with you. Thank you for writing it.

[Nora] [garbled] I thought so too.

[DongWon] Thank you for joining us here.

[Howard] Do we have some homework?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Nora] Yes. In keeping with me being interested in video games lately, I've also been replaying Mass Effect, the Mass Effect series.

[DongWon] For your sins.

[Nora] Sorry?

[DongWon] For your sins.

[Nora] Always. So, what I would like to ask people to do is to imagine that they are in a game like Mass Effect where they are presented with three different attitude-oriented choices. Let's call them paragon, and the renegade, and neutral. So, take your current work in progress, take your protagonist to date, assuming that you have one, and flog them through those attitudinal flavored choices. What happens if you continue the story with your character having done the diplomatic and polite and nice thing? What happens if you have your character snap and just be super done with everything and say the stuff that they probably shouldn't say, but it's effective? What happens if your character tries to punt on either of these choices, when they really needed to be giving a more strong response? Just run it in your head and see how that affects your plot structure. I don't know if that…

[DongWon] That's fantastic. Thank you so much. That sounds like a really delightful exercise.

[Nora] Okay.

[DongWon] Nora, thank you so much again for joining us. We… It was such a delight to have you here.

[Nora] Thank you very much. It was a delight to be here.

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

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

mbarker

Writing Excuses 17.51: Feel The Burn

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/12/18/17-51-feel-the-burn/

Key Points: Burn out! When do you shelve a book series and change genres? The dreaded second novel? Online stresses? Shifting as a writer? Give yourself time to process it emotionally. Burn out has a long recovery time. You need to recognize your own burn out symptoms. Look at your priorities, the boundaries of your life, and what you have committed to. Be aware that coping mechanisms may mask a lot! Say no to things. Recovery? Recognize that we are people. Learn your tells! Also, look for the things that help you recover in life. Sometimes you need a break, but sometimes you can write yourself over the hump. Make sure your task list includes doable things, too. Golf, hobbies, these can also help. Go easy on yourself. Let your process and strategies evolve.

[Transcriptionist note: I may have mislabeled some of the speakers. Apologies for any mistakes.]

[Season 17, Episode 51]

[Dongwon] This is Writing Excuses, Feel The Burn.

[Piper] 15 minutes long.

[Peng] Because you're in a hurry.

[Marshall] And we're not that smart.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

[Piper] I'm Piper J. Drake.

[Peng] I'm Peng.

[Marshall] I'm Marshall.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dongwon] Okay, so this week, we're talking about a big topic. That topic is burnout. It's been a long few years, guys.

[Yeah!]

[Dongwon] There's been a lot going on.

[Yes.]

[Dongwon] Burn out is an issue for writers and people in publishing generally kind of at any time. But I feel like that's been a little bit elevated over the last few years. I know it's something that I've struggled with personally, both before this whole stuff kicked off, before the pandemic started, and also a little bit in the past couple of years. How about you guys? Have you been going through it?

[Piper] Absolutely. It has made major life impacts for me. I will say I burnt out so hard after working really hard on my day job in 2020 that I had a heart attack in 2021. I also ended up having a very difficult discussion with my editor about the fact that my contracted work that was contracted for romantic suspense was one that I could not continue to write. So we decided, as a team, my agent, my editor, and myself, and my publicist that we would shelve that romantic suspense because I couldn't continue to write it and completely brainstormed an entirely new concept that would be a contemporary fantasy series instead, which is launching in April 2023 instead. I feel super lucky that we work that out.

[Peng] Yeah, I have a… I actually have a question. I want to go back when we get to this point in the podcast to ask you about the book that you shelved. That's related to burnout and…

[Piper] Yeah. Absolutely.

[Peng] I would say, so, for me, the… It was really a perfect storm of burnout inducing stuff that happened, because I was working on the dreaded second novel at the same time that the pandemic happened, so it was really… Both of those things are already very hard by themselves, and then together it was just… It was great.

[Chuckles]

[Marshall] Yeah. So, I'm a teacher. During Covid, lock down, that's what I burnout. It was really tough to sit at that computer all day and speak to students and try to teach them and everybody's stressed. My kids are stressed, they're trying to get their stuff done. So I'm in a little bit of a different position. I'm working on things, but during that time, I really struggled. Really struggled to write at all. What kick started the back end of that was starting in a Masters program which is forcing me to write. So… But the burnout is real. I'm still… Feel like I'm feeling it.

[Dongwon] I feel like you're trying to solve your burnout with more work, which is a real choice.

[Marshall] Yeah, honestly, that's what's happening. That's okay. I'll get there.

[Dongwon] Sometimes it works.

[Erin] I'll say I think a lot of my burnout was more things that happened during Covid than Covid it's self. So I used to work at a social justice philanthropy nonprofit in communications. So when things happen in the world like Black Lives Matter protests, like just shenanigans, bad things in the world, it was my job to come up with like a really measured kind response. Which meant that I didn't have a lot of time to actually process. I had to like get something out in 24 hours that's like the perfect wording that will make everyone feel better about the world when nobody can. So the effect on me was that I started shifting as a person. Because I was taking a lot of the emotions in and that made me shift as a writer. I spent a lot of time fighting the new writer I was becoming, by trying to like go back and make projects work that I was in the middle of, instead of acknowledging that as I'm changing, my writing is changing, and therefore the project is changing.

[Piper] I think that's a really interesting insight. Because there is a book that keeps getting recommended over and over and over again, and I think you might have been thinking of the same one, Dongwon, but I can't remember the author. So we'll have to put it in the show notes. But it was about burnout and dealing with it and the fact that in these cycles of things that are happening to us, stressful situations that are happening to us, often times people move forward and don't actually process emotionally. What that would do was actually just delay or prolong burnout and make it worse and worse. I think a lot of times people think that if they just change environment or change something, they feel that relief, and burnout's over. But it's not. There's a lot of long term recovery time required for burnout.

[Peng] Well, I think for me, one of the hardest things about burnout for me is that it takes me a really long time to realize I'm burned out, that that's what's wrong. So, sometimes that's… You can be burned out for like years without actually realizing that you're burned out. Then that's a whole nother… Once you acknowledge that you're burned out, that's a whole nother phase that you've got to go through. But it's… How do you all know that you're burned out? Are we getting better at recognizing it in ourselves now?

[Dongwon] I think I'm learning to spot it a little bit better. For me, I struggled a little bit as I mentioned with burnout before. I used to work with a start up. That was like insane hours working under incredible pressure. So when I left that job, I took some time off and really had this moment of like, "I have been doing too much for too long." That was also coinciding with the move across the country and all kinds of stuff. So I kind of had a little bit of experience with it before. Then, as I was building my agenting business over the last five years before the pandemic started, it… I had taken on so much and taken on so many clients and had so many projects and there was so much coordination that I think it took me a little while to realize once we got to this point where I was just inside all the time and not able to go out into the world… I was traveling constantly. I was like gone a week out of every month for the year before. So when it came to slow down and stop, I just completely stopped. I had a really hard time figuring… Even getting through my normal day to day to do lists for those first few months. I think it was a big moment of having to really sit down and look at my priorities, look at the boundaries I had on my life, and look at like what I had taken on and what I had committed to over the past few years.

[Piper] I think I should learn to do better, because what was happening was I was so functional in my dysfunctionality. I do suffer some elements of ADHD and executive dysfunction, things like that, but my coping mechanisms help mask it so much. I was so effective with time management and task management, project management, program management, because of the skills that I had developed over the course of my career with my day job, that I masked everything until I literally suffered a heart attack. Then I was ordered on bed rest. I just stared and was not able to function, not being allowed to do anything. So we actually had to figure out that my physical… Like, we would notice my physicality first, like, the elevated heart rate, the fact that I have a tendency to stress bake or stress cook when I'm starting to feel stress, or that I have a tendency to project plan as a form of procrastination. So people are like, "Wow, you're so great at planning. Wow, you're so great at creating task lists. Wow, the whole wall is covered with Post-it notes of your task lists. Color-coordinated, shape oriented, categorized. You're burning out." That looks so effective and functional, but was actually signs of me burning out.

[Marshall] Yeah. I'm starting to get a little bit better about noticing it as well. A lot of times it has to do with when I start sleeping worse or trying to cram too many things in late at night, that kind of stuff. I started saying no to things, which has helped, especially at work.

[It's so good and so hard]

[Marshall] It's so hard. Then there's… I coached the golf team for 12 years at my high school, and I just had to say… I couldn't… I didn't… I wanted to do it for the kids, but I just had to say, "No, I couldn't." Because of all the other things. Now, I don't know if the balance is any better, but I did say no to a couple things. So that's been helpful.

[That's awesome]

[Marshall] I want to circle back one more… To something Erin said as well. I did write something. You mentioned Black Lives Matter, when all that stuff came up, I got… I did a lot of angry writing, and I turned a really angry rant into an essay that got published on NBC Thinks. So that was kind of… That felt like something.

[Yeah]

[Marshall] Processing, at least.

[Dongwon] Let's pause for a moment to talk about our book of the week. A little difficult to insert in that pretty heavy conversation, but, Piper, why don't you take it away?

[Piper] So I think we can say that this book was written during the pandemic. To Marshall's point, I was so proud of myself that I actually managed to write it, because this was the book that we switched over to after we realized I was burned out and couldn't write romantic suspense anymore. So it is a contemporary fantasy titled Wings Once Cursed & Bound. It features a Thai American heroine who is also a throwback kinnaree, which is a Thai bird princess, particularly from Thai mythology, one of my favorite, favorite mystical beings from Thai mythology. I just would really love to see more and more Southeast Asian mythologies out there in books and in media, that I decided to write them. This story is very much kind of hijinks and shenanigans in search of objects of myth and magic and bringing them in before they can do harm. There's other groups that are opposed to that and really want to take objects of myth and magic and just toss them into the most dense human population possible, just so humans can implode. Right? So that's basically the premise of the series. Wings Once Cursed & Bound is really centered around this Thai American heroine, the romances that she has, a vampire who really just wanted the shoes that she got cursed with but she didn't die so he didn't really know what to do with her. Shenanigans ensue. Yeah, I'm super excited to be able to share Wings Once Cursed & Bound coming out April 2023. So depending on when this podcast airs, it is already out for preorder, but it may be available for purchase directly. And the cover…Ah!

[Dongwon] So, once again, our book of the week is Wings Once Cursed & Bound by Piper J. Drake.

[Dongwon] So, for the back half of this, I want to give it a little bit to talking about recovery. I mean, I don't know that any of us are necessarily all the way out of it, right, like, it's a process. It's a process, and a slow process, but do any of you have things that you've been trying or has been working for you or you had worked in the past? If there's been anything that has been particularly effective at helping you?

[Erin] So I will ignore you and first say one quick thing to the first half, which is that I'm… I think it actually does relate to recovery, which is that the people we are as writers are also the people we are as people. I think that's something we often forget is that we're not in a different box as a writer. So, something that I've been trying my whole life is to understand myself, like a poker tell. So if I start doing something odd that I've never done before, I'm always like, "Why?" I figured out the first time I would always buy lottery tickets… I would suddenly feel compelled to buy lottery tickets when I hated my job. It was always the first time that I hated my job, was I'd be like, "Wow, that scratch off is looking really compelling today." So that was the tell. On the other side, I often look for what are the things that help me recover from things that are not burned out, but any time that I've sort of dealt with a crisis in my life. I find sometimes just like taking walks is a very kind of thing that people say, but I made myself… At one point I said, "For 30 days, I'm going to like go out and take the air," like a Jane Austen heroine.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Every day, at 7 PM, I'm just going to take a stroll and walk around just to get myself out of the rut. Because I was finding that I was spending the whole day and night just working and working and sitting at my desk, working from home. So I was like anything that I can do to break the cycle. That's helped me before when I needed to get out of things, and so it will help with the writing type of burnout as well.

[Peng] This is a recovery or... Just taking steps to try to recover from burnout is complicated for me because I have realized about myself, and I don't actually have a conclusion to this, but it's something that I've noticed so maybe I can slowly figure out a healthy way forward. But, for me, a bad writing day is still more fulfilling than not writing at all. But also, when you're really burned out, you do need some kind of a break, but then it's this weird cycle of… I still, even when I'm incredibly burned out, I still feel better if I write terribly and if I didn't write at all. So it's interesting that the… The medicine is also making things worse in a way. I don't really know where I'm going with this. But I just wanted to put it out there, because I think a lot of us do, as writers, feel guilt over taking time off, and sometimes you really should take time off, but on the other hand, sometimes keeping writing is what actually gets me over the hump. Eventually.

[Dongwon] There's a comic SC going around that sometimes it's like, "Too burnt out to work, but when you try to rest, all you do is think about work."

[Yes. Exactly that.]

[Dongwon] So you just split the difference and just feel bad the whole time. Anyways, I'm poorly summarizing it, but, yeah.

[Peng] No, but it's exactly that. I find that a major part of my personality is that I like to achieve things. If you tell me, "Today is going to be a rest day and you're not going to do anything." Or the doctor says, "You're going to rest for a month in bed and not do anything but go to the bathroom." That's horrific to me. It's incredibly stressful to me. It doesn't make me feel like I can recover from burnout at all, because all my brain does is turn on all these things that I need to do. So, we had to figure out things for me to do on bed rest that left me feeling like I had achieved something. Even if it was just brushing my dog. I have achieved getting my dog to actually do a little leg twitch three times today. Which means I was good at the pets. Right, like that kind of thing, like, I needed to achieve things that brought me joy. So my task list started to include things like eat pie, take a nap. My task list started to include things that were very, very doable in addition to big task items. So at the end of a work. That I would allow myself, I could be like, "Hey, I accomplished things." That makes me feel super good and makes me feel super energetic. I started paying more attention to including things in my day that made me happy and that… And making those more of a priority than things that were important to get done to reach somebody else's goals.

[Marshall] Yeah. My recovery, most of the time, consists of going to play golf really early in the morning and listening to podcasts because I do it in between shots. It helps. It doesn't take anything off my plate necessarily, but I found I'm able to handle those things so much better if I get up and play. At least nine holes, it doesn't have to be 18 holes. But… So when the golf course opened up again after the lockdown, I made an arrangement to go before they even opened. I'm teeing off at 7:30 in the morning. It's a beautiful walk next to the ocean, that's lovely. So that's what I do.

[Dongwon] Yeah. I think I'm kind of in a similar [garbled] to Marshall, where I found that my hobbies were the things that kind of saved me. I like to do woodworking, I build furniture. So, like spending time in the shop, which was so hard to be like I'm going to take today and go to the shop and do this difficult thing that's going to be exhausting, and like all this stuff. But as soon as I started doing it, it just unlocked all these other parts of my brain. I think sometimes when we're working, we take things out of the tank, and we forget to put stuff back in the tank. Right? Peng, I think even what you were saying that sometimes the work can be re-filling in its own way, even when it's not going great. But there's also times where you just need to go do something else. Go outside, go for a walk. I got into hiking and birding during the pandemic, both those things helped me a lot. So. I think there's all these different strategies. The thing that I would say is if you're feeling this way, go easy on yourself. A lot of people are. I think the vast majority of my authors… Sorry, guys, I'm calling you out, but… Are behind on projects, but that's fine. Everybody is. Everybody's delayed right now. It's been a really difficult time. Don't put that pressure on yourself to immediately be the person that maybe you were when you were starting out. You are evolving, your process is evolving, and you'll find the strategies that work for you. That sort of get you back to the place that you want to be as a writer. So. We are pretty much out of time at this point. But thank you all for talking about this really difficult topic. I think that is really helpful for people to hear people at y'all's level talk about our experiences with this. So, this has been Writing Excuses.

[Wait, wait…]

[Dongwon] Oh?

[Homework!]

[Dongwon] We didn't decide on homework.

[I know. Do we have homework?]

[Erin] I've got homework.

[Yay]

[Dongwon] Great.

[Erin] I've got homework I just made up. So, one of the things that I think I find helpful, to go with what Dongwon said, is treating yourself the way that you would treat someone else. Because a lot of times we are kinder to other people and gentler and so much more gracious than we are to ourselves. So homework is to write yourself a letter as if it was someone else, and just say whatever it is… Like, whatever… Like, how you're doing, like if you came to yourself and said, "I'm burned out, I'm working all these projects." What would your reply be? Write that down. That's your homework.

[I love that homework]

[Dongwon] I love that so much.

[I love it]

[Dongwon] Thank you, Erin. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write. Or take a break. Whatever you need.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 12.30: Tools for Writers

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/07/23/12-30-tools-for-writers/

Key Points: Consider your tools and how they support your process and creativity. Scrivener supports component-based authoring. Other people prefer a key to screen word processor that is bare bones. Index cards, a pen, and Post-it notes. Write or Die for word sprints. Word 2010 and the document map. Wikidpad and other wikis, for encyclopedia or book bibles. Aeon Timeline for dates and times, or an Excel spreadsheet? Excel for outlining -- columns for character, subplot, mystery, then shuffle rows to organize. Spreadsheets for story beats. The browser for research! Asana for time management.

( Handbrains and index cards... )

[Howard] Who's got our homework?
[Brandon] I do. It's very easy. You're just going to try one of these programs, these different methods. It doesn't even have to be a program, you could try the index card thing if you've never done that. I want this year, this season of Writing Excuses to get you to try to shake up your structure, your planning, your organization, a little bit to see if there are tools that will help you be more creative. This is a perfect example of something that might help you be more creative. Give it a try. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

Current Mood: quirk

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 5.12: Time Travel!

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/12/12/writing-excuses-5-12-time-travel/

Key Points: Treat your writing professionally. Learn your own process. Don't just wish, start! Shut up and start. Be wary of collaboration. Be true to yourself, write the books you care about. Try out different ways of writing (outlining, discovery writing, etc.) early. Try new things! Pay attention to what you love, and don't worry. You can make a living writing books.
( Across the great time barrier... )
[Brandon] All right. Your writing prompt is to go forward in time and get next week's writing prompt and write a story based on it.
[Dan] Nice.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

Current Mood: flickering

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses Season Four Episode 34: Q&A at Dragons and Fairy Tales

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/08/29/writing-excuses-4-34-qa-at-dragons-fairy-tales/

Key Points:
Time management: what are you willing to give up? Set a goal and times. What is important to you?
Process to get published: Write. Submit. Research. Network.
Team dynamics: position the heads in different locations. Make characters distinctive: visual cues, dialogue cues, unique motivations, roles, jobs.
Super characters: what's important to them? What problems can't be solved by superpowers?
Transition from fan to original fiction: create your own problems and personalities for characters. Build on what you already know.
Reader interaction: it's all about community.
Large cast: kill some.
Stumbling blocks to creativity: poor physical condition. Lack of reading.
( And here's the nitty-gritty! )
[Austin] OK. You walk out of a bookstore to a torrential rain and Howard attacks you with the power of thunder.
[Howard] And lightning?
[Brandon] Little did... we have to expand on that. Thunder is his pet cat.
[Howard] I get a kitty?
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses and we went way too long. You're out of excuses, go write. Thank you for another wonderful season.
[Applause]

Current Mood: stumbling

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Writing Excuses Season Four Episode 28: Brainstorming the End and Working Backwards

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/07/18/writing-excuses-4-28-brainstorming-the-end-and-working-backwards/

Key points: Many writers start by figuring out the ending, then working towards it. Be careful about telegraphing the endings too much. You can always turn an too-obvious ending into an early reveal distraction.
( Leaving out the middle... )
[Howard] Okay. Is there a character arc for our biker dude?
[Brandon] Yes. But I don't think we have enough time. Dan... um... oh, writing prompt... What is the character arc for our biker dude?
[Dan] Writing prompt. That is a great writing prompt.
[Brandon] We planned that all along, and was our twist ending.
[Dan] And we went back and foreshadowed it in the beginning of the podcast.
[Howard] 15 minutes long because you need to write about a motorcycle, and it's actually 18 minutes in.
[Brandon] All right. Well. There you go. This has been Writing Excuses. Next time, we promise not to throw any puppies at bulldozers.

Current Mood: reversal

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Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 32: Collaboration

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/01/03/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-32-collaboration/

Key points: First, last, and in between: Don't. Collaboration means (a) famous author outlines, skilled sidekick fleshes out (b) alternating chapters (c) brainstorm and split writing/editing (d) come up with a shared world then write your own books. Don't collaborate to try to shore up a weak point -- learn how to do it! Collaboration is hard work. Consistency is a problem. How are you going to handle disagreements? Three rules for collaboration: #1, learn to do it yourself first; #2, Lay groundrules beforehand; #3, Decide on the process.
( hiding the collies )
[Howard] I've got the writing prompt. I'm actually going to provide two writing prompts. Writing prompt number one is for all of those people out there who want to be collaborative writers and think it will solve their problems. On your own, write a story about two people collaborating in which things go horribly, horribly wrong. Writing prompt number two. This is for all of those writers who want to write comics and are saying, boy, I sure wish I could find somebody to draw this for me, because they are looking for collaboration. I'm going to tell you what I had to do, and you go do it. Write your comic, and then go draw it your own dang self.
[Brandon] Amen.
[Dan] Take that, listeners.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, and if you make any, Howard will beat you up.
[Howard] Now go write. And draw.
[Dan] Now.

Current Mood: one is the lonliest

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Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 22: Idea to Story

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/10/25/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-22-idea-to-story/

Key Points: To turn an idea into a story: Look for the points of conflict. Look for the boundaries -- what kind of story is this? Consider plot, setting, characters. What is the ending? How will you resolve the story? Look for characters who are in pain. Check old ideas that didn't get used yet. Brainstorm interesting ideas -- set pieces, events, twists, interesting stuff.
( the nuts and bolts )
[Brandon] We're out of time. But let's go ahead and give you the writing prompt which is the same idea that we used at the beginning.
[Howard] Insects have in some way evolved defenses against all of the poisons that we use to kill them and many of the chemicals that would work to just kill anything because they have somehow developed magic.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

Current Mood: nodding

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Writing Excuses Transcripts

Entries tagged with process

Writing Excuses 20.18: The Art of Teaching

Writing Excuses 19.46: An Interview on Structure with N. K. Jemisin

Writing Excuses 17.51: Feel The Burn

Writing Excuses 12.30: Tools for Writers

Writing Excuses 5.12: Time Travel!

Writing Excuses Season Four Episode 34: Q&A at Dragons and Fairy Tales

Writing Excuses Season Four Episode 28: Brainstorming the End and Working Backwards

Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 32: Collaboration

Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 22: Idea to Story

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