Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses 20.27: The Lens of Why 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-27-the-lens-of-why

 

Key Points: The lens of why? Authorial intent. Why did you write this book? Theme and meaning? Meaning is what the reader brings to the book. Approach them as questions. Theme is what the author puts into a book, meaning is what the reader gets out of a book. What am I trying to say with this book? Theme and meaning and authorial intent are just a coffee coaster. Help? A story or story structure is a pitcher, that you can put anything in that you want. The reader brings their vessel, a cup, which you fill from that pitcher. A story asks a question, while a polemic answers it. Theme as a series of questions? Moments of discovery of what my theme is? Rewriting can be a joy. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 27]

 

[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 27]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Howard] The Lens of Why. 

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mark] And I'm Mark.

 

[Howard] We are joined by our special guest Mark Ashiro here on Navigator of the Seas...

[Mary Robinette] You will have already been listening to Mark on some of our earlier episodes at the beginning of the year. Because we time-travel. We haven't recorded those yet, so we don't know what we've talked about.

[Howard] We're quite sure they're awesome.

[Mary Robinette] Brilliant. They are brilliant.

[Mark] I'm going to tank those ones on purpose now.

[Laughter]

 

[Howard] Mark, will you take a moment and tell us about yourself?

[Mark] Of course. I am primarily a young adult and middle grade author. I have seven published books, many more to come. I'm also very lucky in that I am a multi-genre author and I get to genre hop. So I like taking deep dives into genre structure, all things nerdy.

 

[Howard] Outstanding. Well, let's talk for a moment about the lens of why. This is a category we're using to describe tone and frame, authorial intent. Theme and meaning. All kind of wrapped up under the question of why did you write this book? Why did you write this book? And I want to begin by focusing a little bit on just theme and meaning, because I always struggle with these. So I'm going to ask the question to my fellow hosts. How do you differentiate between theme and meaning?

[Mary Robinette] I… This is my own personal take. And I think about both of those as things that are not necessarily for me. So, theme, for me, is something that people who are writing essays or reviews are about, that it's big, sweeping arcs of stuff. Meaning, for me, is what the reader brings to it. There's stuff about the book that means stuff to me, but it's often a personal thing that never surfaces for the reader. So I tend to, when I'm going into this, approach them as questions. What is the question that I'm asking? And I think that that is essentially what people are talking about with theme. That… Like, I will… The novel that I'm working on right now, the question that I'm asking is how many times can you lie to someone you love? That's not… It's not my intention to answer that question. My intention is to explore it. And I think that's what people are talking about when they talk about theme. But, for me, theme… Like you, Howard, is an amorphous thing that someone… Because I also see people like, ah, yes, thematically, they've used the color blue throughout this. I'm like, or they liked it.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] It was on sale.

[Howard] Okay. I'm going to… I need to one trick pony this. My one trick is metaphors. Theme is how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie pop. And meaning is the owl doesn't care about the question, the owl is just going to bite the Tootsie pop. Meaning doesn't answer the question, necessarily. Meaning provides an answer in a different way, and theme asks the question without necessarily providing an answer.

[Mary Robinette] I think in another way you've demonstrated my thinking here, which is, with your metaphor, you've used a metaphor that kids these days won't get. And so you've got a meaning that is important and meaningful to you, but they're going to bring a completely different meaning to it when they read it. What are you thinking, Mark?

[Mark] So, my way into thinking about this is very similar to yours, is when I'm starting a project, it almost immediately always has a meaning to me. This is the reason why I want to write this, this is what I think is interesting. I don't often know the theme until much, much later. Because the theme will then diverge very much from the meaning that I intended or the meaning that I had for it. I think it's also interesting, as someone who is writing kid lit and is constantly interacting with readers, how often the readers, these kids will go on long five-minute tangents to me about what this book is about or what this story's about. And I'm just sitting there, nodding my head, like, that's totally what I intended. And seeing the way that someone can read something and find 20,000 different things you never intended, you never thought of. And so, for me, that's meaning. That's where meaning is. It is also fun, though, when you have these experiences where someone does see the theme that you have written in there, that is intentional. But, yeah, they don't always match up. I think it is fun, though, I will say, when the two, your meaning and the theme, matchup, and someone catches it. Those are the [garbled], that beautiful trifecta moments you have.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] At breakfast today, Kate McKean said… I asked the question…

[Mark] Yeah.

[Howard] She's going to be on some episodes with us this year.

[Mary Robinette] She will have already been on episodes.

[Howard] She will have already been on episodes…

[Laughter]

[Howard] With us this year.

[Mark] Time travel!

[Howard] Sorry, I keep forgetting to use the future has been tense.

[Chuckles]

 

[Howard] She said, oh, yeah, theme is what the author puts into the book, meaning is what the reader gets out of the book. Which is also a convenient definition. Dan, you were going to say something?

[Dan] I just thought… I'm really fascinated by this conversation, because I think I'm the opposite of you, Mark, entirely. I think about theme a lot. Theme, to me, is what is this about. What am I putting into it? I can't think of meaning… I can't think of a book I've written where I know what it means. Like, that is a completely foreign concept to me. What does this book mean? I don't know. Whereas the theme, what is this about, what am I trying to say with it, that's something that I do think about very consciously.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think about… I think this is why I liked the umbrella term of the why. It's like…

[Mark] Right.

[Mary Robinette] The why of the book. Why is this important to me? Why is this a book I want to tell? Why is this a journey that my characters want to go on? Because theme does have so many different meanings for so many different people.

 

[Howard] There's… We have in a couple of weeks an episode about specifically authorial intent, and, for me, the Venn diagram of theme and meaning and authorial intent… Boy, depending on what angle I'm looking at it, it's just a coffee coaster. It's just one circle, they all fit in the same thing. And so I struggle a lot with these definitions. Help? Help me.

[Dan] We all thought you were going somewhere with that.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I am going somewhere. I am asking you a question.

[Mark] We thought you were providing us with guidance, and then you're like, I need the guidance.

[Mary Robinette] So this is something that… A metaphor that I use when I'm talking about a structure… Structure, but also the relationship with the audience. And I probably talked about this in an episode at some point, but… Hello, we're going to revisit. That when you're thinking about a story, a story structure, that it's a pitcher, that's a container. It contains whatever it is that you want to tell. Pitchers come in a bunch of different shapes and you can put anything in them you want. You can put gazpacho for reasons. You can put a Pinot Noir, you can put apple cider. You can put anything into that pitcher you want. Depending on the genre you're in, the pitchers may have different shapes. You may decide to become a glassblowers and make your own. That's the story as you intend it. When the reader comes to you, each reader brings their own vessel. And when you're looking at the vessel, a Pinot Noir glass is designed to shape the way you're experiencing Pinot Noir so it hits your palate in a specific way, brings out all of these bouquets and things. So if I have a Pinot Noir in my pitcher, and I pour it into your Pinot Noir glass, you are experiencing the story as I intended it. You're getting my theme and meaning. But if you come to me with a red solo cup, you're still going to enjoy that. If I've got hot apple cider, and you come to me with a ceramic mug, perfect! We got a good match there. If you come to me with that Riedel glass, which was so good for the Pinot Noir… It's likely to shatter from the hot apple cider. Which is not my intention. And so, for me, when I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about who in my writing for? But I'm also not… Like, I can't also think about, oh, I have to think about every possible vessel that may come to me. So, when I'm thinking about that meaning, like, for me, the meaning is the way the reader experiences the story. That's… And sometimes, as Mark was talking about, they do line up perfectly. So this is why I have found that if I think about the what question am I asking, why am I telling this, who am I telling it for, that those give me measurable things for myself that I can use to make decisions. I can measure against the is this going to make so-and-so laugh? Then that's… Yes. And that was… That's my intention. That's my… The meaning for this moment. Great. Then I can measure against that. If I want this… If I want a laugh here and it's not going to make them laugh… Other people may also laugh at that point, but also, sometimes, you put in, like, an in-joke that is for one very specific cup.

[Mark] I want to jump in here, because now you just triggered sort of a memory that might help with differentiating between theme and meaning. So my first book, Anger Is a Gift, I wrote… a secondary character is a trans-racial adoptee, like myself. If you're listening and unfamiliar with that term, it is someone who is adopted out of their ethnic and racial culture and into another one. It usually describes kids of color who are adopted by white people. So I have a white adopted mom and a Japanese Hawaiian adopted father. And so I wanted a dynamic I have almost never seen in fiction. Because usually adoption narratives are just… There's an adoption, it's usually not transracial, you might see foster care, orphans,  or whatnot. But that specific experience is so specific, you don't see it. So I wrote this character who's dealing with being Latino who is adopted into a white family and the privilege that comes with that. That's my theme. The themes of privilege and how this person who is a person of color is in a very white society… Not only that, but in the neighborhood she lives in, and then how she interacts with her friends who are from a poorer neighborhood. That's my theme. What I'm talking about, what's the authorial intent. The second day this book was out, I was at a book event with Jason Reynolds in DC, and a man came up to me and said, "I read this whole book last night and I loved it. But I need you to know, like…" It was an older white gentleman and he's like, me and my husband adopted this young black girl, and I think I need to, like, talk to her, because I don't think I've raised her right. And I'm like holding this book open and I'm like, who do I make it out to? Like…

[Laughter]

[Mark] That man got the theme, but it had a different meaning. Because… And I love that you're talking about [garbled]

[Howard] And it had a very powerful meaning.

[Mark] Very powerful meaning, but, also, I was like, that's not it. I do… This is not for you. I was not writing for you, but that is a thing where the liquid I'm pouring out went into… I won't say the wrong cup, because I don't…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Mark] Want to make that judgment call…

[Mary Robinette] No, no.

[Mark] But a cup that shattered. And it was fascinating to me, because I'm like, I love that you did get the theme of this child's parents did not treat them well… Whoa, that is not the meaning I intended at all. Sorry if you happen to be listening and had an existential crisis for the last six years, but…

[Chuckles]

[Mark] But that's interesting because it's someone who understands the theme, but the meaning was still different for them.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] But if that individual came away from your book and what they came away with first and foremost was I need to have a conversation with my adoptive daughter…

[Mark] Yeah.

[Howard] About transracial adoption and parenting. I don't see parents having conversations with their children as a bad thing.

[Mark] Oh, yeah. No.

[Howard] That's… I would not say that cup shattered. I think that someone got meaning from it that you didn't expect, and had a very powerful experience that you didn't intend, but that was probably a net good.

[Mark] Yeah, I agree. I agree with that.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I also don't think that sometimes a cup shattering is always a bad thing, because sometimes you need a different cup.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Chuckles]

 

[Mary Robinette] The thing that I was thinking about was a conversation that I had with Elizabeth Bear years ago. It was, like, one of those conversations where you're sitting around at a convention, and someone drops a… Just a one sentence thing that blows your mind for the rest of time. And she said that a story was something that ask a question, and a polemic was something that answered it. And so, when you were talking about the questions that you are asking, how does she relate to the people that she knows, how does this impact… Those are all questions.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And what you're showing is one way in which it might be experienced. But I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say you're also showing multiple ways, multiple answers to that. And that is, I think, where you… For me, the thing… Thinking about theme in that way, as a series of questions as opposed to a series of answers, is that it allows space for the reader. And I think any time you can allow space for the reader to come into the story, any time you can invite them in, that you do have the potential for a more powerful meaning.

[Howard] And on the subject of space for the reader, our advertisers don't actually read this, but we're going to give them some space.

 

[Howard] I have an experience I want to share about when I thought… When… I look at it now and think back at it. And I think that learning my theme, learning my meaning, caused me to change what I was writing. Early Schlock Mercenary, I did not realize… This is going to sound a little silly, I know… I did not realize that I was writing social satire. Once I realized I was writing social satire, a lot of lights came on, and now I had, as a writer, I had a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning. I knew what certain themes were going to be. My question for you, my fellow hosts, have you ever had a similar moment of discovery, where you realized, oh, wait. This is what this means. This is what my theme is. And you changed your course?

[Mary Robinette] Mark, I just watched you nod all the way through that, so [garbled]

[Mark] [garbled] And I love this too, especially because, it was for a book that was contemporary, and the theme could only manifest as speculative fiction.

[Mary Robinette] Ah

[Mark] So, my most recent YA book, into the Light, is a secret speculative fiction book, where the speculative fiction twist does not happen until like 325 pages in, when you realize you've been reading speculative fiction the whole time. Which, by the way, actually has made people very angry when they read it…

[Chuckles]

[Mark] Because it's so [garbled unlike]

[Howard] Dan has no experience with this.

[Laughter]

[Mark] Yes. And I'm sure you can speak to (one) it is a very creative… Creatively satisfying thing to do, but I even knew when I realized what the theme of this book was actually going to be, that it was going to be an unnerving and upsetting experience for the reader, because you thought I was leading you into one story, and your very much not being led into that story. And people… I do get why people go into a book and expect one genre and you don't get that. But I had written multiple drafts, I'd figured out structure. But I was having this problem with the two main characters where I was very frustrated because they sounded a little too similar. And what was it about the two of them that made them different enough to warrant this being a book? I had my meaning before I started the book. I had my meaning before I even started outlining it or brainstorming. I knew what the theme was before I started drafting. So I felt very secure in what I was about to do. But when I was actually writing these two narrators, something wasn't right. They felt disjointed, they felt angular. I was like, they're not clashing in ways that are interesting, their clashing in a way that's just upsetting. Why can't I get them to be what I want them to be? It was in a conversation that I was having that I… On the phone with my editor, where I said something very similar, like, they cannot be what I want them to be, and I was like, oh! That's actually the theme. The theme is of this whole…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Mark] Kind of why I was struggling with this is it is a book about religious repression and rejection, it's about two kids who are tricked into conversion therapy. And they go through very different experiences with it. And the theme that I was struggling to vocalize is, for some people in this world, you'll never be good enough.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Mark] And I just was sitting there and I'm like, I'm doing it now, I'm saying they're not good enough and they aren't fitting the mold that I want them to. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's it! And I mean, unfortunately, you have that moment where I was on the phone with my editor, Miriam Weinberg at Tor, where she's like, you're going to have to rewrite the whole thing, aren't you? And I'm like, yeah…

[Chuckles]

[Mark] This is the third rewrite, and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to have to, but I know what it is, in the way I figured out how to… Without spoiling it, was it required something extremely bombastic and very, very speculative fiction. But… And I'm curious to hear, too, for people who have had this, that moment of, like, oh, this is right, this is it. I'm exactly where I need to be.

 

[Howard] I shared with a student yesterday morning… We were talking about the necessity for rewrites, and I said, yeah, I got bad news for you. If you love having written, finding that you need to rewrite the whole thing is terrible. But, if you actually love to write, the opportunity to make this discovery and go back and rewrite it can be a joy.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] Because now you get to do it again.

[Mark] With… At least for me, this sort of, like, infectious certainty.

[Howard] You get to do it better.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Mark] Where you've [sussed?] out as you are making decisions, and then you get to make even more because you feel good about the decision you made.

[Dan] I've talked about this a little bit before, but I've had this experience with three of the John Cleaver books. Four, five, and then, in between them, a novella called Next of Kin. Which I think of as my basically Alzheimer's trauma books…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Because they were about memory. The kind of basic premise of the John Cleaver series is that there are monsters who lack something and they steal it from us. And I wanted to have one who didn't have his own memories and so he had to take ours. And does that by… Does that in order to survive. And realized very quickly once I started writing that, that I was trauma dumping my grandfather's Alzheimer's experience all over the readers, and I… Then had that moment of, well, I need to go back and make this a little more palatable and a little more acceptable, but also, wow, I didn't realize that that's what this book was about, and it absolutely, that's what this book is about. That's what all three of those books are about, is me trying to work through my own history with loss of memory and the impermanence that this creates in your life and the other people around you. And having that experience halfway through really changed how I saw what those books were and what their theme was.

[Howard] All right. Well, if we have answered for you the question about what theme and meaning are, and how they are different from each other, please let me know, because I still am not confident in that. But I'm okay with not being confident in it. I feel like this is a place where the definitions we each come up with are going to function as the lens of why.

 

[Howard] And I have a homework for you which should be fun. Take a popular book to film or book to TV adaptation and ask yourself if the film changed the meaning or changed the theme of the book. And then, ask yourself in what ways it did it.

 

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

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-48-beginning-with-a-thrill 

 

Key Points: Beginning with a thrill. A bang! A big, flashy question. Cold open, somebody is murdered, so who did it, why did they do it, how did they do it? Howcatchem. Start with small question, answer, to build reader trust and curiosity. Thrill or long slow burn? Little things going wrong. Let the character notice that something is wrong. Language and choice of details. Not always a burst of action or violence. Something unexpected or shocking. Mysterious stranger in the shire. Disrupt the normal. Meet cute or meat cube? Don't introduce tension through worldbuilding. Foreground action, not back story. What would startle your characters, and how would they deal with that? Give your characters stakes early on. 

 

[Season 19, Episode 48]

 

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

 

[Season 19, Episode 48]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Beginning With A Thrill.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

 

[Dan] Today, we are going to talk about beginning with a thrill. But first, we want to tell you a little bit about what we're going to be doing all month. And this is Erin.

[Erin] Yes. This is Erin.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] 15 minutes… No, I'm…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] [garbled] inspired by an earlier episode that we recorded with Marshall where we were talking about how different genres can help you understand writing in different ways, we're going to be focusing on a genre that does something really cool that you can take into your own work for the rest of the month.

[Howard] I am excited to be a part of these discussions…

[Laughter]

[Howard] Because I literally have no idea what's coming.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Well, that is also what all the people who die at the beginning of a thriller say.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Do you like that segue? So, the reason we're starting with thrillers is because thrillers in mysteries, as a genre, tend to start with a bang. You need to ask a big enough, flashy enough, question that will pull the reader through the rest of the story, and you need to do it right off the bat. Kind of establish, this is the kind of story you're in. Where we see this most bluntly is in, like, a detective show on TV, where the cold open is some random person we've never seen being murdered, and then the rest of the show is trying to figure out who did it, or why they did it, or how they did it, or whatever it is.

[Howard] Sandra and I will play a game when we're watching those shows. The game is the moment we see someone on TV, we decide whether they discover a body or become a body.

[Laughter]

[Howard] One of those two things.

[Mary Robinette] Is about to happen. Well, this is one of the things that I love, is that that discovery of the body or becoming the body doesn't actually have to be the very first thing that happens in the novel. But usually when you're watching those cold open scenes, there's something small that goes wrong first. So, what I like looking for is something that goes wrong that kind of sets the tone that is going to lead directly to the big problem, but is not necessarily the big problem. I've… Have a… I've learned that dropping the body in the first chapter is not always the best thing to do. As tempting as it is.

 

[Dan] Yeah. There's… One of my favorite mystery genres is called the howcatchem, which is related to whodunit, where the main question is who killed this person. A howcatchem story is we know who did it, but we are watching the detective to see if they're going to be able to figure out who did it and stop them. The way this often starts is we will see the killer first. They're not going to discover or become a body, they're going to produce a body.

[Squeak]

[Dan] And often the way this goes is we get to watch all the things that are wrong in their life, the person who bugs them, or the aspect of their life that needles at them and we can tell that sooner or later this person's going to explode. That is the kind of tension you can draw out for a while, because it's just ominous enough and it's tense enough that it does ask that big flashy question, what is this person going to do to get out of this situation they hate?

[DongWon] This is usually, at least in terms of bookstore genre, one of the distinctions between thriller and mystery. When you know who the killer is upfront, and then the tension is more about will the hero figure that out, and then as you have that sort of cat and mouse kind of perspective, that's how you ratchet up the tension, rather than the mystery being what pulls you forward into who actually did this thing. Right? So it's kind of two distinct hooks that define these two genres.

 

[Howard] There's a secondary principal at work here, which is that when you present that big question, you want the reader to already trust you that you are eventually going to provide an answer. The way to build that trust is that somewhere in the first page, somewhere in the first 10 pages, or the first chapter, you want to be asking smaller questions and providing answers. Small questions, provide answers. Small question, delay the gratification for the answer, get another question, and then, oh, here's the answer. You set this pattern up for the reader, where they realize, oh, yes, I am curious, and then, I am sated. Then, I am curious, and I am sated. Then I am desperately curious… And that's the page turn for the next chapter.

 

[Erin] So, I have a question. So, I'm thinking about a book where I'm reading about someone going through their life, and things are bad, and I'm wondering, I know that I bought a thriller. Like, I bought it from the thriller section of the bookstore, so I'm probably anticipating that, like, this bad thing will end in a body one way or the other. But how much of that… Let's assume that I didn't know that it was a thriller, I bought it with, like, no knowledge of the book at all. What is it that you're doing in order to make this feel like it's tense, like something's about to go wrong in this person's life in a murder-type way and not just like a day in the life of a guy whose life sucks?

[Laughter]

[Dan] Yeah. That is a very good question to ask. That's where I was going to try to go next. Because this is called starting with a thrill, not starting with a long slow burn. Although those often can be the same if you're very good at it. We talked earlier in the year about the establishing shot, and when you are writing a book or a short story, the very first thing that you show us is kind of telling us what kind of story this will be. If you start your mystery novel off with a fight scene, then you're telling us this is going to be an action movie or maybe a thriller. If that's not actually what it is, the death has to be more abrupt or less of a back-and-forth. There needs to be less interaction in the way this person dies. But, if you were doing, for example, an episode of TV or a movie, you could get away with a lot of that tension you're talking about with musical cues and stuff. Weird shots, weird POV shots that make us feel like this person is being watched or followed, spooky music, to let us say, oh, no, this person's going to die. The way you can create that… I should say, one of the ways you can re-create that in a novel, where you don't have music and things like that, is to just draw things out. Focus on details that don't seem as if they should be important. Because that makes readers nervous. Why is it taking two paragraphs to find her keys before she can get into her house? Things like that. Which is… The purpose here is not to bore the reader. This has to be tense and interesting. You're giving us little micro tensions of, oh, no, something is wrong. Oh, okay, they got out of it. Oh, no, this other thing is going wrong. Oh, they got out of it. Why is he describing so much about this type of whatever? It's to put readers on edge. Take them out of comfortable territory.

[Mary Robinette] Another tool that you can use along those lines is having the character notice that something is wrong. So, the character who is approaching their house and is like, "That's weird. I don't remember leaving a light on." And having the character… Using POV to signal to the reader, hum, things are about to be not okay.

[Dan] Yeah. Speaking of character, you can absolutely in prose do the freaky POV shot that you would get in a TV show. If the whole first scene is a couple just came home from a date, and they're flirting with each other as they walk through their house, and they talk about their bank accounts while taking their clothes off, but we're seeing the entire thing from some third perspective. Someone is listening to them. Even if that listener is never identified, and you drop hints about how they can't see what they're wearing yet or whatever it is, but it's obvious that this very private intimate conversation is being eavesdropped on, even without any direct mention of danger or threat, that's invasive and puts us on edge.

[Mary Robinette] That really is invasive and does put me on edge.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Let's come back to what it feels like to be on edge after this break.

 

[DongWon] One thing I've really loved recently is Yorgos Lanthimos's The Favourite, which was released in 2018. It's a brilliant historical satire about a rivalry between two of Queen Anne's ladies, played by Emma Stone and Kate Winslet [Rachel Weisz?]. The Queen herself is played by Olivia Colman, in a brilliant, hilarious, and tragic performance. It's sort of like All about Eve, but with an even more biting edge and a lot to say about class, privilege, and power, all wrapped up in a strange, almost surrealist aesthetic. It's a really wonderful movie, and I highly recommend it.

 

[Mary Robinette] One of my other favorite tools to use to make things tense is language. So, the word choice that I pick… If I'm describing a rose, and I want it to be a romance, then I'm going to talk about all of the beautiful, perfect things about the rose. But if I'm setting up for a thriller or a mystery or horror, then I'm going to be talking about, like, the diseased leaf on the rose. And even the words that I'm going to use are going to be much more visceral, I'm going to reach for the ones that are darker. Those are some fun things that you can do to set tone in the same way that a film would be able to set tone.

[Howard] When you put things in a scene and shine lights on them, you can make us comfortable, you can make us uncomfortable. The easiest example I can think of is someone striking a match or lighting up a lighter, and we see a cigarette, and we see the end of a fuse. Those are two very, very different things. Knowing what your stand-in will be for the fuse or for the cigarette or for the stove that requires a lighter… I don't know. Knowing what your stand in is, that's your job, not mine.

[Chuckles]

 

[Erin] Okay. I have another question.

[Dan] Okay.

[Erin] This one is, let's say I woke up and I decided not to choose violence.

[Laughter]

[Erin] I was like no murders here, but I still want to use these techniques in my story to draw the reader in. What should I be doing?

[Dan] You're getting to all my points right before I get to them. That's… We're on the same wavelength here. Because I would wager that a vast majority of our listeners right now are not writing thrillers. They're probably writing fantasy or science fiction, which can include thriller or mystery elements. But we focus so much on tension, whereas what we really are talking about is starting with a thrill, starting with a bang. That doesn't have to mean a burst of action or violence. What it really means for me is something that is unexpected and/or shocking that hooks us into the book. Maybe that is the person we thought the main character dies, and, okay, now I'm in for the rest of the book. I want to see who did this. Maybe that is something like you present to us an idyllic shire full of wonderful hobbits, and then a mysterious stranger shows up that nobody trusts. Then, even if you haven't introduced our main conflict, you've introduced a conflict. We know that there's the potential for danger, that things could go wrong. What about the rest of you? What answers do you have?

[DongWon] One thing I like to think about when thinking about writing in these different genres is that a genre's really made up of a whole bunch of tropes. Right? It's a whole bunch of individual patterns that we recognize of, like, oh, this has spaceships. Oh, this farmboy found a sword. Oh, this, that, or the other. That tell us we're in science fiction, that tell us we're in fantasy. But there's a thing that I think of as like micro-tropes or micro-patterns, where you can pick and choose from other genres and pull them into the main genre that you're working on. So, this is exactly what Dan was talking about, in terms of having a beat early on that's in maybe a thriller beat and have that moment or somebody's trying to find their keys or key card or whatever it is. That can increase that… Just to have that little hint of the thriller tension in there. Then you don't have to have bodies hitting the floor at that point. You can go into a different scene. You can go into a board room. You can go into the bridge of a starship. Whatever it happens to be. But you can use those little micro-tropes, those little micro-beats to really goose it in the way that you want. Right? So don't be afraid to steal from other genres and to do a little bit of mix and match, while still hitting the big beats that you want to say this is science fiction, this is fantasy.

 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I find that one of those small beats is just a disruption of the normal.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Like, what is… What breaks their normal. And you don't have to have normal established very long before it breaks, and I think that one of the things for me with the thriller pacing is that that break in normal comes very early. It's not three chapters in, it's something that happens usually on the first or second page.

[Howard] If you throw a meet cute into the first couple of pages, you can absolutely start with a thrill and just take us at a run into a romance.

[Mary Robinette] So, just in case people have never heard this phrase before, that is meet as in meet each other, not meat as in meat cube, which is what I first heard you say.

[Howard?] Did you all think meat cube…

[Laughter]

[Howard] Because every last one of you looked at me…

[Garbled bodies. Really thought that's where we were going.]

[Dan] You guys don't put meat cubes into the first chapters of your books? That's super weird.

[DongWon] I love to start a romance with a meat cube…

[Howard] Yeah. When the two meat cubes meet, it's… I'm so sorry.

[Mary Robinette] I did read a book once that said that… That had come here, you big hunk of love [garbled]

[cool]

[Dan] Oh, man. That is not what I would name my meat cube.

[Laughter]

 

[Dan] I say. As if I don't already have one. So, one way that I see this done wrong very frequently by aspiring writers is that they are trying to present their world, establish who the characters are, and where the story takes place, and the way that they try to introduce tension in those early chapters is through worldbuilding. By saying, yes, we're in an idyllic shire, but we never leave here because there's monsters in the woods. Or because there is evil travelers on this road sometimes, or because there's a dark Lord that every seven years will come and eat one of us. I mean, yes, you're adding some darkness to the world, but you're not adding darkness to the story. This needs to be some kind of action. Those mysterious strangers on the road need to show up. Or something has to, as was said, disrupt normal in some way. There has to be an immediate danger, not just the back story of danger.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Because for people who… Dark Lord shows up every seven years, terrible people on the road… That is their normal, and so they continue to go about their day-to-day life. What is it that breaks their day-to-day life that is the foretelling of… The foreshadowing of the bigger thing that's coming?

[Erin] Yeah. I also think that there's a… There's something that can happen where you… Like, one of the things that… Sorry. One of the things that I love about thrillers and mysteries is that the thing that goes wrong is something that we instinctively know is bad. Like people dying, we're not a fan. Like, in general. So, when you're trying to create that for another genre, it's what is the thing that is, like, wrong in your world? What is the thing that, like, would throw things off? If the dragon shows up on year six instead of year seven, that's going to feel very, very wrong in a way that is very unique to the world that you've created. So, a lot of times, just think about what are the things that would startle the people that are in your world, and then what would… How would they deal with that?

[DongWon] Well, this is why giving your character stakes early on are so important. Right? This is why you have to start page 1 really with something your character cares about. Ideally another person, but it could be some goal that they have. Right? That's their normal. Their normal is trying to get to school to give the girl the note that you've been thinking about giving her all week. And then something happens on the way to school. Right? You need to have the thing to be disrupted, not just to be a normal everyday day, but something that somebody cares about their day. Right? Somebody is… Has to give a big presentation, then when they can't get their key card, and they can't get into the room, now you have a cascade series of events where things are going wrong. But… To make those scary things that are coming into the world feel threatening, you have to give the characters something they care about, so that I care about the character and what they care about.

[Dan] Yeah. One of the… One of my favorite examples of this, believe it or not, is the first Toy Story movie. Which we don't think of as a thriller. But that movie starts with a kid playing with his toys, and then we get the little premise of, oop, the toys are awake when he goes out of the room. Then we don't get the actual, like, inciting incident main plot conflict for a while. But what we do get right off the bat is the birthday party, and the toys lose their minds over that. Because this, to them, disrupts their normal. They know that it has the potential to change everything. So we haven't gotten to Buzz, we haven't gotten to the whole Woody's not the favorite anymore, none of that has arrived yet, but we do have a conflict that, through their eyes, we can understand is very meaningful to them, and there's a lot of action, there's emotion, there's a lot of thrilled to it. Then, four or five scenes later, we get the full, actual, oh, this… The real plot has arrived now. We have basically run out of time now. We want to give you plenty of time to write. So we are going to end with homework.

 

[Mary Robinette] That homework is what breaks normal for your character right now? The next thing you write, how does normal break for them?

 

[Mary Robinette] 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.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-07-nanowrimo-revision-with-ali-fisher-intention 

 

Key points: Editing for intention, focusing to make the book more of the book that you want it to be. What effect do you want to have on the reader with the book? Figure out who you are, and then do it on purpose. You read your favorite author because of what they do well. So lean into what you do well, and what you enjoy. Don't kill your darlings. Why is this here? Do consider where and how you are planning to publish. Don't write to the market, but you can edit to the market. Having someone tell you what they think the book is about can help. Focus on the question the novel is asking. What is the tone of the book? The vibe? What is your lodestone, your guiding light?

 

[Season 19, Episode 07]

 

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

 

[Season 19, Episode 07]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A mini-series on revision with Ali Fisher, editing for intention.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Ali] And I'm Ali.

 

[Mary Robinette] We are delighted to have Ali Fisher back with us for this episode, where we are going to be talking about intention. This is, like, how you're approaching the editing when you're not thinking about the length, but thinking about really focusing to make the book more of the book that you want it to be. There's a thing that Edgar Allan Poe said that I referenced in our last episode about writing and editing for unity of effect. That is, in his view, what is the emotion that you want to leave the reader with. That's a… Something that I share as well, and I think I've certainly heard both of you talk about that quite a bit. Like, thinking about what effect you want to have on the reader with the book. So, what are some of the questions that you ask your authors when you're trying to get them to focus their book?

[DongWon] Absolutely. When I'm approaching a manuscript, so much of what I'm doing in the initial pass is trying to make sure I understand very clearly what the author was intending to accomplish. Right? What was the unity of effect that they were going for? Since everyone else has a quote on this topic, I also have one…

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Which is a Dolly Parton quote…

[Yes]

[DongWon] which is, "Figure out who you are, and then do it on purpose." So much, I think, of writing a book is a process of figuring out what is this book, who is this book, why did you write it? I think sometimes you'll have an idea going into it, and sometimes that idea isn't clear until you've finished it. Or, what you originally thought it was about turns out not to be what the book is about. Right? So, I think the process of writing it is often, no matter how much planning you do, discovery of what your intentions were, and are, and what you want them to be going forward. Right? So, that's so much of the thing that's going to be informing your editing process and your revision process as you dive back into it.

 

[Mary Robinette] I love that so much. That Dolly Parton quote makes me so happy. It also ties into something that... I just took a class with Tobias [Buckell?]. He was talking about finding your spark, but one of the things that he said just set off all sorts of fireworks and sparks in my head, was that you read your favorite author because of what they do well, not because of what they don't do well.

[Ali] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] So, like when you're reading Asimov, it's not because of his characterization.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Like, that's not why you read Asimov.

[Ali, DongWon chorus] Nope.

[DongWon] Truly not.

[Ali] She likes jewelry. End of character.

[Mary Robinette] Yep. That's all you need. Really. It goes with the diamonds. But, for me, it was like thinking about… Like, really leaning into what you do well, and the things that you enjoy as a representative audience member yourself, as a writer.

[Yeah]

[Mary Robinette] That's, for me, I think just an exciting way to think about it. It's, like, what do I love about this and how can I make it more of what I love.

[Ali] It's such a good reframe. Author Jo Walton had a series of posts. I don't know if they were critiques or love letters, but they got all published in a book by tour that was called What Makes This Book so Great. That was what the series was called. I just thought that was such a wonderful way to approach, like, the reading experience. But also a very helpful way to approach the revision period which is when you're expected and most likely will be extremely hard on yourself. We're not talking about the fallout trial process in this episode, but stay tuned until next week or 2 weeks from now…

[DongWon] Yes.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Next week.

[Ali] Stay tuned. But I will say one of the things that, when talking about revision and intention, I always do my best to try to remember to flag the things that, like, what's so awesome here, like, this made me cry, don't touch it. I want it, I want to get hurt. Let's talk about how to hurt me more. Or, like, what… This is so great. So, what else is like that? Or, like, what else can we do to sort of… Putting those flags down I think is just really helpful. Because it can be… It's a really hard time, it's a really hard time to be with the story and just remembering what all these good things is really helpful.

[DongWon] Yeah. I think 2nd only to show, don't tell, which is something I complained about last episode, one of the most common repeated refrains of writing advice that just drives me bonkers is kill your darlings.

[Mary Robinette] Ugh. Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? There's this idea that… There are times when you do have to cut something you love. Right? We talked about this a little bit less time, about cutting a character or cutting a scene or an element that isn't tying… That is slowing your pacing down or isn't supporting the main action of the story or the main intention of the story. But that's different from this idea, that's like, oh, if you love this thing, then it shouldn't be in the book. You wrote this book, the reason we are here is because we like the things that you're doing well. I mean, this is exactly… Going back to Tobias's quote, I don't remember the exact wording, but it's this idea of, like, we're reading this for a reason, and that reason is probably the thing that you're most excited about. Because your energy and enthusiasm and interests are going to come through. Right? Now, don't overindulge in that. Right? Don't, like, luxuriate in that at the expense of all the other elements that a book has to have. But, don't kill your darlings. Love them. Find ways to support them and give them an environment that they can be best observed, appreciated, and so they can flourish for the reader.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. For me, it's that you have to be willing to kill them if they are pulling the book out of alignment. That's… Sometimes, if you've got a book that's got this really clean, spare, austere sense of language, and then you've got one sentence that has a lot of flourishes in it that you love, that sentence stands out, not because it's a bad sentence, not because you love it, but because it is in contrast to everything else that's happening in the book. It is not part of that unity of effect. There are times when you want to contrast, but you want to make sure that it's a contrast that is applied deliberately and for an effect itself.

[Ali] Right. Do you want that attention, because you're grabbing it. Is this the subject or the topic or the moment that needs that spotlight because it's got it.

 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, for me, when I'm thinking about this editing for intention, the thing that I'm coming back to is always like why is this scene here, why is this moment here? If I'm trying to fix something, sometimes I'm looking at it like I can't get this sentence to work. Then realize it's because it does… It just… It doesn't fit. There's some part of me that knows that it doesn't belong there. If I query, like, what is my intention with this and what function is it serving in this scene, then I can usually either swap it out for something different that serves better or recognize that it doesn't have one and cut it. But it is always coming to the why is my starting point.

 

[Ali] Yeah. We've talked about sort of philosophical and essentially political, but, like the effect that the book is having and that intention. Do we also want to talk a little bit about the intention of like how to publish it and, like, whether or not you're planning on going to a major publisher or publishing yourself or making it into a zine, like printing your own booklet? I think knowing the expectation, or like excitement of the reader in different spaces, or, like, what is more exciting to people right now, like, they're [garbled]. We were talking about the [Oops La] battle novel in…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Right.

[Ali] In our last episode. I feel like there are certain areas that that could potentially hit stronger. I think maybe knowing where you're going with the story or where you're hoping to take the story out is a good thing to keep in mind, because there will be expectations based on whatever that publishing process looks like.

[Mary Robinette] That's a really great point. There is the reason that you write is not the same reason that you publish.

 

[DongWon] I always really strongly encourage writers not to think about the market when their drafting or coming up with a book. Right? Like, don't write to the market. But what you can do is edit to the market. A little bit. Right? You don't want to overdo it. But there's ways in which once you have a drafted thing, and now you're sitting there figuring out, like, okay, here's the book I wrote. I love it. How do I get this in front of as many readers as I can? That's the point at which you can now start to consider, okay, what categories does this fit in? Is this for adults? Is this for teens? Is this for a middle grade audience? Is it genre? Is it literary? These are so where you can start to edit and start tweaking things to push it in one direction or another. Sometimes, it can be hard to completely do a 180 in terms of your direction once you have the draft, but you can move it 10° this way, 10° that way, and I think start to hit a really specific audience and a specific reader that you're aiming for.

[Ali] I mean, even within like traditional publishing and within my work, I've had a situation where cover art comes in before the book is finished and, like, we realize, like, oh, there's… Like, there's an expectation here, like, an even cozier… Even, like, whatever expectation… Let's put in more food, more delicious like moments, like more textures. Then, the sequel, like, oh, what if it's snowing, and there's a little cozy fire. Like, there are things that can be really surprising that can have an effect. This is obviously very down the line. But you might be surprised at some of the things that affect the revision by the end of the process.

[DongWon] Yeah. I've had situations where we wrote up the copy to pitch it to publishers, and in writing the copy, we both went, like, wait a minute. There's something that's not working. There's a huge piece of this that needs changed, because it just wasn't hitting, it wasn't… That intention wasn't coming through, both in terms of what the author was trying to get across, but also how we were trying to publish it and who we were trying to publish it for. So we really, like, took it back, broke it down, and like added a whole other… We added like 20,000 words, added a whole new character arc, and a new POV, based on trying to write the pitch for the book. Like, we were ready to go out with it, and then suddenly, like, 6 months later, we're like, okay, now we're ready to go out with it. Sometimes it really is that much of a process of figuring out how do we target it for who we're trying to get it to.

[Ali] I've absolutely been in the same situation, where I've been like…

[Chuckles]

[Ali] But, wait, I'm like working on addressing some copy and been like, I actually don't know what the stakes are, but I don't care. So what does that mean? You know, like… During the read, it didn't bother me, but now, like, is there space for that? Is it needed? That kind of thing.

[DongWon] Yep

[Mary Robinette] So, when we come back from our break, we're going to talk a little bit more about intentions and how to figure out what your intention is when you've finished a book, but actually don't know what it's about.

 

[Ali] So, DongWon assures me that they've already pitched you Scavengers Reign, an animated show, I assume you're all now watching. It is gorgeous, vivid, kind of psychedelic dark science fiction. A while back, I got to work with the cocreator of that show, Joe Bennett, on illustrating 2 books with us. One that he also cowrote with Dera White called I Will Not Die Alone about learning the end is nigh and basically just playing D&D with your friends. He also illustrated a book by comedian Joe Pera called A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing, But Using the Bathroom to Escape. Both are now available from Tor books, and you should check them out.

 

[Mary Robinette] So, we've been talking about different types of intention, but one of the things that I will hear early career writers say, and indeed have experienced myself, is I don't know what this book is about.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Nancy Kress, who is a phenomenal writer, said this thing to me that just… Like, I shivered in my very bones. That she writes a draft, and that that is what tells her what the book is about. Then she throws that draft away completely, and start writing again from scratch now that she knows what the book is about. I'm like, I cannot. Uh-uh. But I've also heard other people and myself say this, and then someone will say, like, one chance thing, and I'm like, "Oh! That's what my book is about." So, how do you help your writers understand what their book is about? Like, what are some of the questions that you ask? I'm hoping for pearls of wisdom that will help me.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Oh, great. How do we… No, I mean [garbled]

[Ali] One of the things that I do is I tell them what I think it's about. Then get to watch their face and find out if they're like, "Oh, no," or like, "Oh, yay," or "I hadn't seen that," or whatever. It's… I love to go in there with a very like, I'm often wrong, here's what I think attitude and just sort of see what that surfaces for somebody. But in terms of actually identifying it?

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, this is… I think people ask a lot… I have an undergraduate degree in English literature, and I think people ask a lot, if, like that's useful in what I do, and in most ways, it isn't. Right? It's not like I learned grammar from that or how to compose prose from that. But one thing it did give me was critical reading skills. Right? And how to think critically about the stuff that I am reading. Thematically, what there is in it. It's not even so much the formal instruction that helped me do that, it's just reading a ton of books. Right? I think this is one of the reasons why I so strongly encourage, if you want to be a writer, if you want to work in publishing, you have to like books, first and foremost, and you have to read books, first and foremost, and try and stay current with what's happening out there. Because when you're consuming enough media, when you're consuming those things, you start to understand why you like something, what it is about it that… Even if you don't know how to articulate it. When we say that we want you to understand what your book is about, I don't need you to be able to sum it up in a sentence. I don't need you to be able to tell me. In part, you wrote the book because you don't have a simpler way of explaining whatever it is that you were trying to get to with writing the book. Right? That's okay. That's great, actually. That's my job to figure out how to frame it up in a pithy few sentences so they can go on the back of a book or go to an editor or whatever it is. So, I think, for me, it really is putting those critical skills into place as I'm reading to figure out, okay, what is this project? What are they trying to accomplish here? What are the thematics of it? What are the things that are really jumping out at me that seem to resonate with the person behind this book? Now, that's me as a third party coming in, and again, what Ali was saying, I think is so true of sometimes it's about presenting that idea and watching it bounce off the person you talk to, and hopefully you're close…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And sometimes it's like, oh, wow, I'm way off here. Then we can approach the edit with that sort of refocus on the intention.

 

[Mary Robinette] When you don't have access to an editor or an agent to do this for you, because I have absolutely had that happen… On the Spare Man, Claire looked at the book and said, "This is a story about a woman of privilege who wants to get her hands dirty." I was like, "Oh. Yeah." The… For me, the thing about that is that that is a declarative's statement. But when I go into the book, the thing that I have found most useful is to figure out what question I'm asking. This is a… I'm reframing something that Elizabeth Bear said, like, you know how you're having a casual dinner conversation and someone just says something brilliant? You're like, "Well, that is going to save everything I write from now on." She said that the difference between a story and a polemic is that a story asks questions and a polemic answers them. The thing for me about a novel, in particular, is that a novel can show so many different answers, so many different possible ways, and leave room for the reader to decide what their own answer to that question is. So, for me, one of the things that helps when I'm trying to focus a story is to think about what is the big question I'm asking. In… It's… It varies. Sometimes it's something like how do you handle it when your spouse is depressed. Sometimes it's a very straightforward one like that. Sometimes it's a big societal one, like how do you create community? Like, what does community mean to you? Like, what are the different ways that community expresses? Then, when I'm writing, I can evaluate against that question. It's like does this scene explore that question? If it doesn't, is there a way that I can add that? If there's not, what is this scene doing? Why is this scene in here? It's not that every scene has to be providing an exact answer to this. But it's… Even if it's just one moment in the scene where that is explored, it still helps me. It helped me with focusing and making decisions about what to include in that.

[DongWon] But if your book isn't feeling like it has a clear purpose, that it has a clear direction, then I think that's a great way to go about it, is asking these questions of is this particular scene supporting the central question that I'm asking? If the answer is no, then does this scene need to be here and does this scene need to shift in its purpose to better support whatever that central thing is. Right? So, I think being able to have some clarity about what that question is, and also what your personal connection to that question is… I see a lot of times someone will come into a book and they'll be asking a big question about society or about how a certain relationship would work, but I can't feel why that question is important to the person in particular. Sometimes digging until you get that personal connection, where you can feel the author in the story, is the thing that really makes a book pop for me. That's when I get very excited, when I can suddenly be like, oh, I see you. You're here. This matters to you because X, Y, or Z. Sometimes it's something as simple as a shared identity, and sometimes it's very nuanced and complex in a way that could not be explained without 30 hours of conversation about the author's like life. But whatever that is, you should feel a connection to the questions that are being asked by your book and find a way to really focus on that and make sure you're really highlighting that in all the major pieces of your story.

[Mary Robinette] Absolutely. One of the other things that I've found along these lines is, again, that personal connection is thinking about the tone that I want the book to have. Because I'm measuring against a bunch of different things. In an ideal world, I'm just writing it and I'm feeling it and it's there. But when I'm revising it, and I'm having to make decisions, like, my first series, Jane Austen with magic, it's like how does this feel like Jane Austen with magic right now? Spare Man, Thin Man in Space. Does this feel… Does it have that feel? No. Okay. Fine. There needs to be more cocktails, obviously. Like, who's… Where is the small dog right now? So, I think that that's another question that you can ask yourself, is, like, what is the tone that I want? What's my vibe? Is this supporting it or is it a deliberate juxtaposition?

[Ali] Yeah. That's so helpful because I do feel like purpose can start to feel sort of like academic. It can feel a little like intellectualized in a way that I think rightfully a lot of people would bristle against. But it can be really basic. It can be like I want to give people a laugh. Or, like, I want… I want to show how cool explosions are. Like [garbled] probably.

[DongWon] [garbled] by the fire. Right?

[Ali] Yes. There probably is more there, if you wrote a whole novel, like, there's more there. But, also, like that is a very legitimate and exciting and cool sort of jumpoff point that needs to be honored in a very similar way, I think. Especially…

[DongWon] Again, it's not something you need to necessarily be even able to articulate. You just need to have like a feeling of what the vibe is. If you lock into that vibe, that's all you need. You just need a tone, or like an image, a thought, a question, any of these things can be your guiding light. I just encourage you to try and figure out what that sort of lodestone is for you that is going to pull you through it, and keep you consistent when you're asking questions about should this stay, should this change, whatever it happens to be.

[Ali] Find your vibe.

[Mary Robinette] I think that's a great… Yeah. I think that's a great segue to take us to our homework for the week. Ali, I think you have that.

 

[Ali] I do. Thank you for asking. Or telling or saying. Okay. Yes, I do. Your homework this week. Write down what you like best about your book. Find a spot in your book where you can incorporate that element where it isn't now. Godspeed.

 

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

 

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-15-building-a-mystery-now-with-more-tools/ 

 

Key points: Using a toolbox of ways to build tension in mysteries? Anticipation! Unanswered questions. A foundation of character tension, relationships and stakes. Handles or business ends of the tools? It's not just information, there's also emotion, revelation, and consequences.

 

[Season 18, Episode 15]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Building a Mystery, Now With More Tools.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] We're going to talk about mysteries again, but now you have this whole toolbox of different ways to build tension, and you see why we were so excited about it. So. Let's start  talking about mysteries. So we've been talking about mysteries and anticipation. Okay. So how do you apply anticipation to mysteries? What are some of the classic ways we've seen it done or ways that you're like, "This! This is a really meaty juicy way to do it?" I can talk about... I was like, "I'm just going to riff until one of you has an answer…"

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] I was anticipating something and then it fell through for me. Seriously, though, one of the things that I did a lot in the Spare Man was that I was using anticipation. I was using the anticipation of waiting for that body drop is one of the things in the first scene… Or second scene. In the second scene, I set up a fight. So that is building for the reader the anticipation that something is going to happen with one of these three characters. That then allows me to have… To keep you moving along. Then we get into the second scene… Or I guess it's the third scene, actually. The next scene where we have a scream. That builds an anticipation of oh, something has gone wrong. Which I then ramp up further by giving you an unanswered question of who is the screamer? So what I find a lot of times you can do with these is that you can take one of the tools that we've used and then use it as a… One of the tools we've mentioned and then use it as a handoff or a funnel point…

[Howard] A page turner.

[Mary Robinette] Page turner. Use it as a way to keep you going, and then give you another. Another piece of tension.

 

[DongWon] I'll say that those are the mechanics of a plot structure that you have there. Those are the beats that you used to move us along. What works really well, and the reason all all that engine goes, is you've established underneath that the character tension. Right? You've established the relationship and the stakes for these individuals of like her trying to figure out how do I relate to this other person, what is marriage going to be like for me, and also like dealing with her own trauma, her own history. Like those are all questions you've introduced fairly quickly. I cannot remember exactly when each piece of that comes in, but by the end of the first few chapters, I have a lot of questions about the future of this character, the future of her relationship, the future of her sense of self, that are pulling me through all of this as your giving me the plot details and the unanswered questions that layer on top of that.

 

[Howard] Coming back to the toolbox metaphor for a moment, as we talked about these as tools, we're kind of talking about the business end of the tool. The way the blade of the screwdriver fits into the head of the screw. The way the hammer slams the head of the nail. We haven't talked a lot about the handles of the tools. For my own part, I don't start with anticipation or juxtaposition or conflict. I start with what is the answer to the original unanswered question of who committed the murder. Then I start making notes about where I want readers to feel the different things. This is where I want them to be excited. This is where I want some sense of wonder. This is where I don't know what's going on or what's going to happen, but I've got to get them to turn the page, so here's a question mark. Then as I sit down with the manuscript, that's when I open up the toolbox and start looking at, "Oh. Oh. This is where I'll throw in micro tension, because the characters are talking about things that don't really matter, but I need to explore them. I need to explore the characters so I need them to be passionate about what they're talking about and to be perhaps a little bit in conflict during the discussion." So my approach to the use of the tools is… Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, I will say that with Spare Man, I actually started with not who committed the murder, but how the murder was committed. Because for me, the thing that is interesting in a mystery is the puzzle. That puzzle is around the murder. So I figured out what is a really interesting way to murder someone. Then who do I have that can commit that murder. That was actually the way that I built that particular thing. Which… What I'm hoping that you're noticing, dear listeners, a thing that we keep talking about is that there is no one right way to do things. Each of these is a correct way, it's just whatever is feeding you as a writer.

[DongWon] Yeah. I don't want people to come away from this feeling like with all of these different tools, you have to have some kind of master plan. Right? That you need to know, "oh, I'm going to deploy a red herring here, I'm going to deploy tension here, I'm going to deploy this that and the other there." Because I think a lot about the apocryphal thing about Agatha Christie, about her not knowing who the murderer was until Poirot said it on the page or something along those lines. Right? You can approach it from… I mean, yes, you do need to know which end of the tool's the business end, and which is the handle, but you can deploy these tools as you go and sort of see where that leads you and sort of build up to something that feels really consistent. A lot of making a mystery feel right is a thing that happens in editing process as you go back through it and say, "Hum. I was giving a little too much information here. I need to withhold that there." Or, "This is really confusing because I knew what was going on, but I didn't set that up properly two scenes ago." Right? So, mysteries. Think of them more as magic tricks rather than like perfectly executed plans. Right? You get to go back through it and adjust and tweak and make sure everything's set up right for your audience to get there when they get there.

[Dan] So, as we've been going through these last few episodes, which really stood out to me talking about all these different forms of tension and how to use them are overlaps between them and ways to solve multiple problems with a single tool. So, for example, we've talked a lot about how we need to care about the characters in order to be invested in them. That is a perfect match with the concept of micro tension, because if you give your character enough texture that they have a hobby or a job or something that they love outside of the plot, then suddenly you've given them something that they can be working on in the background of a scene or these other kinds of little micro tension problems they can be dealing with while trying to solve or trying to ignore the much larger mystery and problem that they are faced with. That solves a lot of things all at once.

[Mary Robinette] That's a great example… Sorry, I'm going to use… A great point, and I'm going to use the character of Fantine in Spare Man as an example of that. So, there's two things, two micro… Two points of micro tension for her. One, she's doing crochet for much of the thing. At one point, she is so distracted she makes a mistake, and in yelling, she's mad, not just about all of the other things that are happening, but about the fact that she had to rip out 20 rows. It's like having to rip out 20 rows has no bearing on the overall mystery at all. But it is… It's a piece of character detail and it adds just a little bit of micro tension. Then the other piece for her is her weird pattern of cursing. Because she had made a deal with her priest that she wouldn't use swearwords. So she curses by a combination of Shakespeare and Catholic martyrs. Again, she hits a point where she's so upset that she accidentally does swear. Again, it's just this tiny bit… Little bit more tension that I'm applying to that seen, and texture to the character, which is a lot of fun.

[Dan] Fantine ends up as a lot of people's favorite character, or one of their favorite characters. Because of all these things that you've done.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yes. Hashtag team fantine or team gimlet, apparently.

[Chuckles]

 

[Mary Robinette] Why don't we take a moment and pause? We'll come back and talk about some of our other tools and how to apply them to mysteries.

[DongWon] Our thing of the week this week is Mark Oshiro's new young adult novel Into the Light. It is a very twisty thriller that's told in a nonlinear way. It focuses on a young teen named Manny who was first pulled into a cult called Reconciliation and then subsequently kicked out of said cult. We sort of meet up with him while he's on the road after all of that. His sister stayed behind, and so he's trying to reconnect with her. Then sees on the news that a dead body has been found in the hills near where Reconciliation is based. There's multiple timelines, there's different POVs, as we try to get to the heart of what exactly happened at Reconciliation. What is his trauma around his experience with this cult, and what is it like to navigate the world as a queer adoptee who's been sort of neglected by the system. It's a really fantastic pointed sharp funny weird novel. I think people are going to be very excited to find the spoiler at the core of what makes this novel tick. It's a real thrill.

 

[Mary Robinette] So, when we're talking about mysteries and tension, there are a number of other tools that we have not even gotten to yet. One of them which… One of my favorites and one of the core things is the unanswered question. So we talked about that a little bit in the first one. We've got a whole episode on unanswered questions. But when we're applying them specifically to mysteries, one of the things I want to look at is not just the ways to do it, like misunderstanding the question, but also some of the dangers in that. Like, what are some of the pros and cons of delaying an answer in a mystery?

[Dan] Okay, so I've got a pretty good example of this one. One of the things of the week that we promoted earlier was my new book, Dark One Forgotten. Which is a mystery and it is a prequel to a Brandon Sanderson fantasy novel. What that means is that even though it is structured as if you are listening to a true crime podcast, you go into it knowing that there will be a supernatural angle. You know that eventually… It's got Dan Wells and Brandon Sanderson on the cover, there's going to be magic or some kind of speculative element to it. Especially if you've read the novel it's based on, you know exactly how the mystery gets solved. So the problem that I ran into in writing it, and that I had to send multiple drafts over and over through my writing group to figure out is, it is obvious to the reader what's going on. We know that the reason no one can remember the killer or the victims is because there is some kind of magic effect. So, how long can I drag out that anticipation for the reader for the characters to finally catch on without making them seem stupid or without frustrating the audience? It's difficult. It was very hard to write a story that kind of fundamentally ignores one of its core premises for the first half or so of the story. So there is that unanswered question like who's the mystery, but the fact that it's… Or who's the killer. The fact that it's a prequel means that I needed to start… And here's the solution. Here's why I'm saying all this. What I eventually had to do was to just give you as much information as possible. It was essentially a story about tying off every possible loose end before they finally conceded that maybe magic was real. Because it takes place in our world. They aren't predisposed to believe it, even though the audience is predisposed to expect it. So, three episodes of them exhausting every possible other explanation made it interesting enough to get through that. So the anticipation and the unanswered question was very difficult to deal with.

[Erin] I think this gets to something that we've talked about before. Which is that sometimes you can give the answer to the reader or to the listener. I think it's what's really cool about that example is the question, it seems like to me, becomes less is there magic involved with this, because everyone knows the answer is yes, but more how will people deal with the revelation that magic exists in the world? So that's a different unanswered question. So sometimes shifting from the informational question… I think one of the dangers sometimes in mystery is you think everything has to be about information and plot. But, sometimes some of the most interesting unanswered questions are the ones about emotion, revelation, and consequence, as opposed to the ones about who did what to whom at what point.

[Howard] Touching on something that Dan said toward the beginning of this episode, and something that Erin just said, we've talked about how it's like setting up a magic trick. In the second edition of Xtreme Dungeon Mastery, Tracy and Curtis Hickman point out that magicians entertain purely by deception. When they explain how the trick is done, it just kind of makes us feel dumb for not having seen it. Which is why they typically don't do it. Storytellers entertain by setting up deception, and then with revelation. Erin, you use that word twice. So when I think of unanswered questions as a tool, I'm always thinking of the revelation that is going to come at the end. The reveal of this is the answer to the question, this is how it was done. The magician typically won't show us that they were using a trick knife with a collapsible blade, but in Knives Out, famously, we are told about a trick knife in the first act, and we are shown the trick knife at the very end of the show.

[Mary Robinette] Interesting that you say that, because I have some friends who are magicians and we talk about the overlap between magic and story all the time. Because one of the things that a magician must do is that they must tell the rea… Tell the viewer what they're about to do is impossible. Because you go into a magic trick knowing that they're going to do something. I think that that is also one of the things that you have to do, in different ways, but it's still a narrative thing, that you using a lot of these tension tools in a mystery to signal to the reader that this is actually hard to solve. A lot of the conflict things that you're using are ways to say this is… There are reasons that this is hard to solve. Much like what Dan was talking about with, well, why don't they just think it's magic. There have to be… It has… You have to present the impossibility to them in order to get the payoff of, "Ah, here's the solution and the answer." So a lot of the tools that we've been talking about are tools that you can use for that.

[DongWon] I think one thing that's important to remember in all of this is that there's a way in which mysteries and the structure of a mystery is a fantasy. You are selling people on the idea that there are easy answers to complex problems. That there is a trick behind the whole thing. I think when we think about unanswered questions, sometimes it is almost more interesting to not answer every single unanswered question you put out there. Right? Like, sometimes you have a Darrell who's still wandering around the island and nobody knows why he's there. That adds this extra layer to what you're doing and you can sell the fantasy of, "Wait. We do know who the killer is. We do know what happened. We do know what exactly was done to pull this magic trick off." But things are hidden from the audience in that. Right? There are answers that we won't see, and that's okay. I think that can add a really interesting layer to how your presenting your mystery, how your presenting your answers, and what questions are you really asking in the story that you're telling.

[Mary Robinette] I think these are all great points. I'm hoping that our listeners have some new tools for when they're going back into their mystery and can apply all these different forms of tension to the mystery.

 

[Mary Robinette] We also need to set you up for success for the next episode. We are going to be doing a deep dive on The Dark One. Dan, do you want to tell us a little bit about what people should do?

[Dan] Okay. So, as we explained several episodes ago, our next little series that were going to do, we'll start with a deep dive on Dark One Forgotten, an audiobook by Brandon Sanderson and me. Then we'll have some other episodes spinning off of that. So, in preparation for that, you've had several weeks, you have one more week left to listen to Dark One Forgotten. This is audio only because it is a fake podcast. You can get it pretty much anywhere that has audiobooks. Audible and LibroFM and Google Playbooks and Barnes & Noble and all these other places. So it's about six hours long, a little more. Listen to that. Then get ready for next week, when we are going to dive deep into everything about its structure and its… The process of creating it and why I love it so much.

 

[Mary Robinette] One of the reasons that we're doing these deep dives, and then building episodes off of them, is so that you can see the tools that we use and hopefully start to build a toolbox of your own. Which brings us to our homework assignment.

[Howard] Okay. So. Yeah, part of your homework is if you haven't listened to Dark Ones yet, go listen to Dark Ones. But the other part of your homework is make a list of the tools which you regularly return to when you're writing. That might be MICE Quotient, three act structure, Hero's Journey, whatever. Just make a list of the tools that you already use regularly. Then make a separate list of the tools you know about, perhaps tools like tension via micro tension, conflict, anticipation, juxtaposition, unanswered questions. Make a list of the tools you know about but don't think you're using yet. Then, try to move one tools from the second list to the first one.

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-09-unpacking-the-tension/

 

Key Points: What drives a story? Tension! So what kinds of tension are there? Anticipation, juxtaposition, unanswered questions, conflict, and micro-tension. Tension is emotional, it requires engagement. Narrative tension is what the characters feel, contextual tension is what the readers feel, and they don't have to be the same. Anticipation, expectations about how we think things are going to go. Juxtaposition, contrasting expectations and actually how things go. Unanswered questions, mystery, but also other levels. Cold start horrible situation, then back off to earlier, making us wonder what happened. Mystery box storytelling, what's in the box, what's the solution to the puzzle. Do a question and answer quickly to build trust with the audience. Anticipation is expecting an outcome, while unanswered questions, where you, the reader, don't know the answer. Micro-tension is smaller tensions, often lower stakes. 

 

[Season 18, Episode 9]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Unpacking the Tension.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] We are going to be spending the next several weeks talking about tension. I'm going to go ahead and frame this a little bit, because as we were trying to set the season, we each brought something that we have been struggling with a little bit or a new toolbox that we've been noodling with. Erin and I happen to have simultaneously just taught a class on tension. So she's going to be chiming in here in a moment. But I want to start explaining what's going through my head with this. So, we are often taught that a story must have conflict. I think that actually what drives a story is tension, but that conflict is the easiest form of tension to teach. I started thinking about this while I was reading Japanese literature, which often does not have any visible conflict, but there's a ton of tension. It really solidified for me while I was watching Ted Lasso. Slight spoilers here, but when you look at… Watch the Christmas episode of Ted Lasso, there's no villain. Everyone is being kind. There's no conflict. All of the conflict comes from this anticipation of something that you think is going to go wrong. For instance, at the beginning of the Christmas episode, he's watching It's a Wonderful Life and he's drinking, so, obviously, the next thing that's going to happen is he's going to go on a bender, and he's going to have a dream sequence. None of that is what happens. But they so clearly signpost it that it builds this tension, and then you get this release… So, what I want to talk about is looking at some different types of tension. So we're going to kind of give you an overview, and then for the rest of the episodes, we'll be digging into each type of tension. So. I'm going to break them down, and then let other people talk. The types of tension that I am identifying as I am attempting to build this toolbox are anticipation, juxtaposition, unanswered questions, conflict, and then micro-tension. Erin, on the other hand, is building… Is constructing a tension toolbox in a different way.

[Erin] Yeah. I will say that one of the things I love about tension, just to start, is that tension is emotional. Just the word tension feels more emotional than conflict. I think it's an amazing reminder that you need some sort of engagement with the thing in order to be tense. If you don't care, you won't be tense. I think sometimes because we think a lot about conflict, people will open a story or a novel or a movie with a conflict that we haven't bought into. So we're not feeling the tension. We just see the conflict. Like when you have a little… Your two dinosaurs, as a kid, and you have them fight. The two dinosaurs are fighting with each other, but why? Does anyone care? So, to me, tension is a lot about building in and thinking about the emotion. The other thing that I really love about just tension versus conflict is that conflict is something that is felt on the page. Your characters are in conflict with each other. Perhaps. Or with nature, or what have you. But your reader is not in conflict. They are observing the conflict. The tension is the thing that both the readers and the characters can share.

[Mary Robinette] [garbled]

[Dan] I love this description of tension as requiring an emotional investment. For me, the way I have always thought about it, tension is a combination of anticipation and hope. You anticipate something bad is going to happen, you hope it doesn't. But without that hope, without that one outcome I like and one outcome I don't like, there isn't really any tension. It's just a bunch of stuff that happens.

[Mary Robinette] I think the outcome of tension and hope is where a lot of romance comes from. It's like, oh, you know that they're going to get together. So that's the thing that you're hoping for the entire time, but you keep seeing all of the reasons that they aren't going to get together, which is what builds that tension. That's a… I really like that framing, Dan.

[Howard] Yeah. I've… Without going into detail, one of the things that for me makes a good action scene is if I care about what's happening. If the action scene… Fight scenes are often inherently conflict, because they're fighting, but if I'm not feeling tension, if I'm not emotionally invested, all the great fight choreography is just eye candy. I don't care. So tension is key. It's critical.

[DongWon] Yeah. I think that brings up a really interesting point, because for me, tension is almost always about relationships, because stakes aren't necessarily about survival, stakes are about consequence and how you see yourself or how you see other people in connection to other characters. Because that's how we think about it, and that's how we feel it, so just for a quick example going to what you're saying, Howard, like the lobby scene out of the Matrix is them fighting a bunch of goons. The tension in that scene doesn't come from are they going to shoot these security guards. It comes from is Neo starting to realize who he is? Is he in tension with himself? What matters to him? So we're excited by that scene because we see, as Morpheus says, "He's starting to believe." We see that relationship starting to change. So the tension comes from an internal journey that the character is on, not the conflict of there are 10 random goons that need to get out of their way at this point.

 

[Erin] I think you can also, like, you're thinking, "Oh, I'm just starting my story. Nobody yet cares about my characters. How am I going to create this tension?"

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] One way to do that, also, is to tap into kind of primal tensions I think that we feel. So if you're on a spaceship and the spaceship is breaking, that's bad. But it's also this person's first day on the job, like, there's a certain primal, "oh, crap, I just got this job, and now everything is breaking." Or I have to give a speech. The things that people freak out about in their dreams. Like, that kind of thing, if you put it on the page, it's a way to tap into tensions that people might be feeling in their own lives. Then use that to kind of move the action forward while you build up the character engagement.

[DongWon] Yeah. The thing that you said about conflict being something the character sees, but tension is something the audience sees. Conflict for the character is am I going to survive this. I, as a reader, at the beginning of a book, I don't really care yet. I don't know you. Sure, if you fall out into space and die, that's not particularly interesting to me. But what is interesting to me is are you going to feel bad about it being your fault that you fall out into space and die. Right? I think that's the difference between tension and that conflict in that way of stakes matter… Survival matters to the character, but you have to give me a reason to care. That's where tension comes in.

[Howard] Circling back to Mary Robinette's five things here, can I talk about juxtaposition for just a moment?

[Mary Robinette] I think you can, after the break. That is going to create tension for our readers, our listeners…

[Gasp]

[Mary Robinette] As they wait to find out what Howard is going to say about juxtaposition.

 

[Dan] All right. So our thing of the week this week is Dark One: Forgotten. The first official collaboration between Dan Wells and Brandon Sanderson. This is the prequel to a story that has been out in graphic novel form for a while, called Dark One. It's a portal fantasy. This is presented… The prequel is presented as a… As if it were a six episode podcast. Someone is making an amateur true crime podcast about a mysterious murder that has remained unsolved for 30 years. Over the course of the series, discovers many more mysteries and a much larger thing going on. This is a lot of fun, because of that nature of a… As a faux podcast, it is only in audio. It's available pretty much everywhere audiobooks are available. Take special note of this thing of the week, because several episodes from now, we're going to do a deep dive on this one. When we finish our whole tension class that we're doing, we are going to do a deep dive into Dark One: Forgotten and talk about the process of writing it and producing it and everything at length. So, it's a little over six hours, and it's a lot of fun. They did an amazing job on the recording, the cast is wonderful. So, Dark One: Forgotten by Dan Wells and Brandon Sanderson.

 

[Mary Robinette] All right, Howard.

[Howard] Okay.

[Mary Robinette] All right, Howard. Tell me. Tell me about juxtaposition. [Garbled]

[Howard] Okay. Return of the King, the Peter Jackson, we have the scene where the Steward of Gondor has sent troops into Osgiliath to try and take it back. While those troops are in Osgiliath, the Steward is eating and making… I can't remember if it's Merry or Pippin… Making them sing…

[Dan] It's Pippin.

[Howard] It's Pippin. We are watching… Is it John Noble? Is that the name of the actor?

[Dan] Yes.

[Howard] I think it's John Noble. We are watching him crush food in his mouth and dribble on his face and tear meat from bone as we watch these soldiers drive into Osgiliath. It is brilliant and beautiful as juxtaposition and also serves as a way to give us X-rated levels of gory horrible violence without actually doing that. Our… Your brain does all the work because of the juxtaposition. It makes you terribly tense because the soldiers on the horses have not yet been turned into grapes in John Noble's mouth yet and you don't know if they will be.

[Mary Robinette] That's a great example. Something that it makes me think of that I've been thinking about a lot is how much of storytelling is a collaboration between the author and the reader. We talk about this in puppetry that the difference between playing with dolls and a puppet show is that one of them has an audience, and that the puppet exists in this liminal space between us. It is also true for writing, that I can write something, but the moment you start consuming it, you're going to bring your own lens to it, your own experience, and you're going to combined things in your own head in ways that I can't anticipate.

 

[Erin] That makes me think a lot of something that I find really fascinating about tension. It is that difference between what readers are doing and what the characters are doing is narrative tension versus what I call contextual tension. So, narrative tension is the tension that characters feel, and contextual tension is the tension that readers feel. They don't actually have to be the same. If the characters are blithely walking into an ambush, but you signal to the reader that there's an ambush coming, there's a difference there. Versus where both folks, both are feeling tense. So there's a lot of really, really fun things that you can do there, in separating those two, and playing with where your character's feeling tension, and where do you want your reader to be.

[DongWon] Yeah. I think of this really as genre expectations. Right? So if you're in romance, you're in horror, you're in mystery, in the ways that we've talked about it in the past, the audience has certain expectations. This is why, when I talk about storytelling, I always talk about pattern recognition. Right? We have read and absorbed thousands upon thousands of stories over the course of our life. So, we have ideas about how these things are supposed to go. You can use those expectations for a lot of these techniques which [we mention?] here, in particular, anticipation and juxtaposition. Anticipation being sort of like we think we know how it's going to go. Then, juxtaposition is the contrast of we thought it was going to go this way, but now it's going that way. I think you can use that tension between the audience expectation and what's happening in the text to kind of create a discordant note that automatically creates a sense of tension that the audience is so hungry for it to be resolved. Waiting for that resolution, waiting for that next cord to progress, so that we know where we're going, is one of the most effective ways to create tension between the book and the audience.

 

[Dan] So one of the elements on Mary Robinette's list that we haven't talked much about yet is unanswered questions. Which, at one level, that's just what a mystery is, right? Somebody is dead, we want to know who killed them and how. So we have that question. But there's a lot of other ways to use this type of tension. The example that comes to mind is the old TV show Alias, which kind of leaned a little too heavily on this particular trope, but many, many… I would go so far as to say, most of those episodes started with the main character in a horrible situation, and then we would cut away and say, "72 hours earlier…" Then, that leaves us with this unanswered question of "Oh, no. I know she's going to be in a horrible peril at some point. How does that happen? How is that situation created? What is going to go massively wrong?" That creates the tension that draws us through the episode to get the answer to that question.

[DongWon] This is also what's commonly referred to as mystery box storytelling. This is this J. J. Abrams idea of asking what's in the box, what's in the puzzle, can be a driving force for your entire narrative. So, Lost is probably the most famous example of this. Sometimes they can be unsatisfying if it's clear they never knew what's in the box in the first place, but you can really connect with an audience who also wants to know what is the core of this mystery, what is the core thing that's happening. A more recent example is Severance. It's a good example of like, "What the hell is he actually doing down there?" It's something that really drives the story forward.

[Erin] Speaking of boxes, literally, since we've done Glass Onion as thing of the week, maybe you've all seen this, but it starts with a box being opened. I think that why this is so important is because in order to have your audience trust that you will answer the unanswered questions, it helps to pose a question and answer it early on. So that you're like, "I am capable of answering questions." How will they open this box? They do. You saw it. So then you're actually willing to give them more space. Each time you answer a question for an audience member or for a reader, I think what happens is you lengthen the amount of time that you can put between question and answer as they trust you that much more.

[Howard] Dan's example, from Alias, 72 hours earlier, is the in media res, and we're familiar with that structure. One of my favorite reversals of that can be found in the first paintball episode of Community. I think it's episode 23 of season one, where Jeff leaves the room. We've been told, "Oh, there's going to be a game of Paintball Assassin," whatever. Jeff leaves the room and says, "I'll see you losers later. I'm going to go take a nap in my car." Then we see, kaching, one hour later. Jeff wakes up in his car, steps out of the car, and the campus is a wasteland, with sort of zombie wasteland music playing. For a couple of minutes there, you're wondering, "Okay. What happened?" I now have a lot of questions about what could have gone this wrong in an hour. Now, obviously, it's a community… It's a community? It's Community, so it's a comedy. So there is exaggeration. But the tool is still there for you. Running the clock forward a little bit and things have changed, and how did it get this bad this quickly?

 

[Mary Robinette] I'm going to briefly cut into say that one of the reasons that we separated unanswered questions from anticipation is that… We went back and forth on whether or not they should be lumped together… Is that with anticipation is something that you know is going to happen. Like, you know that when they walked down the basement steps, that a bad thing is going to happen, and tension comes from that. It's anticipating an outcome. Versus unanswered questions, where you don't know the answer. So in one… You can be… With anticipation, you can be wrong about the answer. Like, often you build tension by having them go down the stairs, and then something jumps out at them. But it's just the cat. So you can build anticipation and tension and let the reader be wrong about what they're anticipating, but that is different than the reader does not know what is going to happen.

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, so, like in Severance, I'm actually expecting not to get answers to many of the questions I have. It's sort of a genre expectation, that I would almost be unsatisfied if they did answer all those questions, but finding out more so I can start piecing together the puzzle is one of the narrative things that's pulling me through this story that I'm loving.

 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The last piece of it that we need to define, and then we'll go to our homework, is micro-tension. I'll try to keep this short. Micro-tension are smaller tensions that happen within a larger scene. So if your character is attempting to deal with a murder, but then they also have to make spaghetti dinner and the water boils over. That's a micro-tension. They're small tensions that pop up often from mundane sources, but not always.

[Howard] They can be related to the plot. I need to get the autopsy report, and in order to get the autopsy report, I have to apologize to the coroner. Now, macro-tension would be I'm going to steal the report.

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

 

[Howard] Hey, should I do the homework?

[Mary Robinette] I think that that's a great idea, Howard.

[Howard] I should do homework. Okay. In this episode, we covered five types of tension. Anticipation, juxtaposition, unanswered questions, conflict, and micro-tension. Look at your current work in progress or something that you're reading… Last week, we invited you to read a mystery… And try to identify examples of each of these. That's it.

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

 

[Mary Robinette] Imagine working with horses as a way to explore and enhance your creative process, all while enjoying the beautiful surroundings of Bear Lake, Utah. Led by me and Dan, this four-day workshop is suitable for writers and riders of all levels and experience. Come make new connections, receive valuable feedback, and set your writing goals in motion. Visit writingexcuses.com for more information about Riding Excuses. You are out of excuses, now go ride.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/11/15/nanowrimo-2018-bonus-episode-with-mercedes-lackey/

 

Key Points: There is no such thing as writer's block. Usually, it's your subconscious saying "Stop! Something is wrong!" Caveat: Sometimes what we think is writer's block is actually depression -- see a professional! Sometimes you should stop and figure out what's wrong. Other times, you should keep going for a while, even though you know it is wrong, to find out what's wrong. If you are stuck because you are bored -- your reader will be bored, too. Find a new path, insert new action, "Two guys bust through the door, guns blazing!" To identify what's wrong, back up, and ask the next question. What if I did something else? What if... Back up, put the old stuff in a scraps folder, and try again, making different choices. Lack of confidence? You've got a million bad words you have to write. Don't let the cursor intimidate you! Try writing on a notepad, and fixing it when you type it into the computer. When you recognize that you could do better, you have level upped. If you are going to screw off, set a timer and do it. Then go back to work. Sit down six times a day and write at least two sentences. If you want to have written, you have to do the work of writing first. Don't just ask yourself, "Why don't I want to write?" Ask "Why do I want to write?" And then do it!

 

[Mary] Season 13.

[Howard] Bonus Episode Three.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Writer's Block with Mercedes Lackey.

[Mary] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we forgot how to write.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Mary] I'm Mary.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] I'm blocked.

[Brandon] And we have Mercedes Lackey.

[Mercedes] Hello.

[Brandon] Awesome writer of many, many excellent books. Thank you so much for being with us.

[Mercedes] Thank you for having me. I enjoy being had.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] We are live at GenCon.

[Whoo! Applause.]

 

[Brandon] So. Misty, you pitched this at us. You said you want to talk about writer's block.

[Mercedes] Absolutely.

[Brandon] Do you remember why or are you blocked on that?

[Chuckles]

[Mercedes] No. I am… I definitely remember why. Because there's no such thing.

[Brandon] Okay. Expand on that.

[Mercedes] Writer's block is when you have got to a point in the story that you have decided, no matter what this is, the direction it's going to go. Your subconscious is saying, "No, it isn't." You're doing something wrong. You've chosen an illogical path for this particular character or this particular story. You're doing… You're making your character do something out of character just because you want the story to go in that direction. Your subconscious knows more about storytelling than you do. Because you've been imbibing storytelling since the time you were born. Your subconscious is saying, "No. Stop. I'm not going to let you do this."

[Mary] I'm going to agree with you. I'm also just going to add a caveat for our listeners. Because I have always held that position as well. But. There are times, listeners, when writer's block is actually a sign that you are dealing with depression.

[Mercedes] Yes. This is true.

[Mary] So I am completely agreeing with her that writer's block is a signal that something is wrong. One of the things that you're going to want to try to identify is whether the problem is with something that's going on in your own head or within the story. So in this podcast, what we're going to be focusing on is when something is going wrong within the story and the writer's block is a signal about that.

[Mercedes] But if it happens to be depression, you'll have other signals and it's time to seek help from a professional.

 

[Howard] What I've found is that if I sit down and I am ready to write, I want to write, and I'm stuck and I can't figure out why I'm stuck, it's my subconscious telling me you are stuck because you made a mistake two or three pages back and you need to step back and figure out how to fix it.

[Brandon] Every time I've had writer's block personally, it's been what Misty just described.

[Mary] Absolutely.

[Brandon] It's something is wrong now. The trick for me has been, sometimes the answer to it is not to go back and fix anything. Sometimes it is to continue the story in the wrong direction for a little while. At least for me. So that then, my subconscious can see me having failed. Right?

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Like right now.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] No, seriously…

[Mercedes] No, I know what you mean.

[Brandon] As a writer, as soon as something's wrong, I tend to lock up and start looking for the problem. But that can lead to writer's block for me where I'm searching and searching and searching for a problem, and I can't find the problem. For me, a lot of times if I… Now, I'm not saying go on forever on this. But for me, if I finish that day's writing, and I go in that direction, I say, "Okay, I know something's wrong here, but I'm just going to keep going with what I was doing." If I have that scene in hand, then it's during that night or over the next day, 99% of the time, my subconscious can then fix that and say, "You tried it wrong. Good job. You failed."

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] "Now let's try it this other way to fix it."

[Mary] I find that it's like that thing where you do the eeny meeny miny moe because you can't decide between a couple of options, and then you land on one and you're like, "Oh. But I really wanted this one." Well, you've answered that question. That sometimes continuing to go down the wrong path can do that for you, that it can allow you to identify Ooo...

 

[Howard] Misty, have you ever been stuck because you got to a part of the story and then… And you realized you were bored?

[Mercedes] Yup. And that means that I… If I'm bored, my reader's going to be bored, and it's time to do something… Either go back and find a new path or insert new action. Just like old Dashiell Hammett said, "Two guys bust through the door, guns blazing…"

 

[Brandon] But what do you do when you're facing writer's block? When your subconscious has said, "Something's wrong." How do you identify the problem?

[Mercedes] Well, I've got 140 books out.

[Laughter]

[Brandon?] Okay… You've internalized a lot of these techniques.

[Mercedes] It's a lot easier to do… To identify the problem now than it was back then. What I used to do is an old exercise from Theodore Sturgeon that he had actually made into an emblem which was a Q with an arrow coming out of it, which means ask the next question. So I'd go back into my writing about five pages, and when I came to a branching point in the plot or something of that nature, I would ask the next question. If I didn't go this way, what other way would I go? With that answer, you then ask the next question. Well, where does it go from there? With that answer, you ask the next question. Well, what does it need? You just keep following the chain of questions. Usually, that locked… That brought… Bleh. Usually that kicked me right out of the problem.

[Mary] Nancy Kress says a very similar thing, which is that… When she's… Because she's a complete pantser, she does not plan at all. She says that when she runs into this, she will back up to the last point that she was excited about…

[Mercedes] That's a good place.

[Mary] And then put everything else in kind of a scraps folder and then write forward from there, making different choices.

[Dan] That scraps folder is really important.

[Mercedes] Oh, yeah. Never throw out anything.

[Dan] Even if you never use it again, it's a nice way to kind of trick your brain into saying, "Don't worry. I'm not throwing this away."

[Mercedes] Right.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] "I'm totally coming back to use this again. Look at the flowers, Lizzie."

[Laughter]

[Mercedes] Look at this shiny thing over here.

[Mary] But it… I do find for myself that it's important for me to actually take the words out of the page. Because otherwise what I will try to do is to try to fix the words that are on the page instead of making different choices.

[Mercedes] That's generally fatal.

[Mary] Yeah.

[Brandon] Once in a while, I have a student that I'm talking to, because I teach creative writing. I get the sense that they don't actually have writer's block. People call writer's block many things.

[Mercedes] Oh, yeah.

[Brandon] What they do is, they lack confidence to tell their story. Meaning they have started writing, they have realized they are not as good a writer as they want to be. What is coming out on the page does not match their perfect vision of a… This idealized Platonic version of a story that's going to bring world peace.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] They look at what's on the page and their skill level. They get really discouraged. Their confidence goes away and they stop writing and they go back to something else, world building somewhere.

[Mercedes] Then you tell them what Ray Bradbury told my husband. Every writer has a million bad words in him, and he just has to write until they're all gone.

[Laughter]

 

[Brandon] Do you have any strategies for getting people to do that? Because we talk about that, and that's absolutely the right thing to do. But sometimes it still just really difficult.

[Mercedes] Stop letting that cursor intimidate you with its single finger…

[Laughter]

[Mercedes] Flashing at you.

[Howard] For those of you not benefiting from the video feed, she has imitated a cursor with one of her fingers.

[Laughter]

[Mercedes] Seriously, that's it. You give them something… You tell them that, you show them that, the blan… With the flashing finger and it generally gives them a laugh, which will unlock their fear and turn it into something comedic.

[Mary] One of the…

[Dan] I like this new plan of just flipping off aspiring writers when they're having…

[Laughter. Garbled.]

[Dan] In Writing Excuses. For everything.

[Mary] That's not intimidating at all.

[Chuckles]

[Mary] So one of the things that I do sometimes is that I remind them that what they're doing right now is that they are comparing their work in progress with other people's finished drafts.

[Mercedes] That's also true.

[Mary] One of the things that I will also see happen to writers… Especially writers who have written something and sold it, and then cannot sit down to write the next thing, because they're afraid that they're going to fail at it, is that they are comparing their own finished draft to the thing that they're working on, and they've forgotten how many layers it goes through before it finally sees publication.

 

[Brandon] I've found… Oh, yeah. I found success in taking, particularly discovery writers, the pantsers, among my students who are having this problem and sending them out with a notepad instead of a computer and saying, "Don't worry. It can look ugly on the page. You'll fix it when you type it into the computer." That actually ends… Has worked for a few of them because they allow themselves to just let it look sloppy, and they'll tell themselves it's not really until it's in the computer, so it's okay, if it's bad right here.

[Dan] Which is basically just tricking them into learning how to revise something. Which is the real answer to that problem.

[Laughter]

[Mercedes] One of…

[Howard] It's often useful to remind people that there is a point… There was a point at which you would write and not recognize that what you are writing is not as good as you want it to be. You have level… You have level upped. Now that you are seeing this, congratulations. You've leveled upped. Writing has gotten more difficult. There are more leveling ups to do, and it's going to take some work.

[Mercedes] There's one other thing. You mentioned pantsers. They might not be pantsers.

[Brandon] Yeah.

[Mercedes] I pantsed my first novel and realized I was an outliner.

[Mary] I was just on a panel in Helsinki with a debut author, Erika Vik, who's Finnish. One of the things she said… It was actually another one about writer's block. She said that she reminds yourself to write "just for myself, not for others." I think that can be one of the things that can lock us up the most, is when we start trying to second-guess our own writing. It's like just remember why you're actually writing is actually because you are writing for yourself. I mean, that's…

[Mercedes] If you don't like what you're doing, no one else will either.

[Mary] Exactly.

 

[Brandon] Let's go ahead and stop for our book of the week. Misty, you're going to pitch to us the Secret World Chronicles?

[Mercedes] Secret World Chronicle, by this time, number five, Avalanche, should be out. It's a series of superheroes fighting space Nazis. What's not to love?

[Laughter]

[Brandon] That's a pretty good pitch.

[Mercedes] I know.

[Brandon] Is there anymore or just superheroes fighting space Nazis, that's all we need to know?

[Mercedes] Superheroes fighting space Nazis mostly in Atlanta.

[Brandon] Okay.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Okay, yeah. There we are.

[Dan] Even better.

[Howard] In marketing terms, if that doesn't get people to go look up the book and read the blurb on the back…

[Dan] It's not for them anyway.

[Howard] Those people are just broken anyway.

[Laughter]

 

[Brandon] All right. Let me ask you this question. When is writer's block just goofing off?

[Sigh]

[Brandon] Does that happen to any of you?

[Howard] When there's a new Xcom release.

[Laughter]

[Mercedes] When you're trying to figure out how to get Benny to not kill you in Fallout 3: New Vegas.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] So that does happen to you. Even professional writers, once in a while, writer's block is there's a new game out.

[Mercedes] Oh, shoot. It's not really writer's block at this point. I recognize it's the fact that I want to screw off.

[Chuckles]

[Mercedes] Which is completely valuable. It is.

[Brandon] That's right. That's right. It's very important.

[Mercedes] So allow yourself an hour and put it on a timer.

[Brandon] Oh, okay. So do you actually do this, do you time yourself and say…

[Mercedes] Absolutely. It's on a timer. I go exactly however long I think that I am allowed to have. And then I stop.

[Mary] I just learned a really cool trick from a… Not from Roger Zelazny because he and I obviously can't hang out.

[Chuckles]

[Mary] He's dead. Which is why we can't hang out.

[Mercedes] Unless, of course, you're a medium.

[Mary] Well… Okay…

[Chuckles]

[Mercedes] Madam, I'm not a medium. I'm an extra-large.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] You'd drop the mic, but it's attached to your forehead.

[Mary] Anyway, apparently the bargain that he had with himself was that he had to sit down six times a day and write two sentences, figuring that at least one of those times he was likely to catch fire, and that if he didn't, then at the end of the day, at least he had 12 sentences. But that if he caught fire earlier in the day, like in session 2, he still had to sit down the other times, the other six times and write those two sentences. Which sounds suspiciously like your timer thing.

[Dan] It is embarrassing out easy it is to trick ourselves.

[Mercedes] Oh, yeah. You gotta learn not…

[Dan] And drive ourselves.

[Mercedes] You gotta learn not to lie to yourself when you want to screw off.

[Chuckles]

[Mary] Or to lie to yourself if that will get you back into the chair.

[Mercedes] Yeah.

[Laughter]

 

[Brandon] No, I often say, like, "Becoming a professional writer is really just about learning your personal psychology, of what makes you productive." It's why writing advice is so hard to give. On this very podcast, we've mentioned, yes, there is writer's block where your subconscious is causing you to realize something's wrong. There is writer's block where you're just not confident enough, and you should keep going. There is writer's block when you really just want to play the videogame, and you really need to come up with some strategies to force yourself to do what you want. Like, these are all things that we lump under the umbrella of writer's block.

[Mercedes] There's one other writer's block that I have absolutely zero patience for. It's the people that don't really want to write, they want to have written. They want the benefit without the work.

[Brandon] I'd say that's very commonly kind of part of all of this. Writing is actually hard. Looking at your story and seeing that it's messed up and realizing how much work it's going to take to fix it is really hard. In fact, that's the part I hate the most out of this whole thing.

[Howard] I won't lie. There are times when… There are times when looking back at something I have written or something I have drawn, I am getting far more pleasure at having finished it than having worked on it. But there are also times when I just delight in the work. So, understanding that that's a balance, that's a thing that's going to happen. If I keep going, I will get to enjoy having written, having drawn all of these things. A lot of them I will enjoy while I'm actually making them.

[Mary] One of the things that I think is useful is to flip the question. So if you're sitting down and you're like… And asking yourself, "Why don't I want to write?" Is not fixing it for you, flip the question and ask yourself, "What would make me want to write? Why do I want to write?" See if you can fulfill those questions to sit down and write.

 

[Brandon] Well, we are out of time on this episode. Misty, you were going to give us a writing prompt.

[Mercedes] I would like you to try writing a lover's quarrel. But the difference in this one is they really don't want to have the fight. They really want to reconcile. But it's almost as if they're having the fight for the sake of having the fight.

[Brandon] Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast with us. Thank you to our GenCon live audience.

[Whoo! Applause.]

[Brandon] And, especially true with this episode, you are out of excuses, now go write.