Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-23-the-lens-of-the-senses

 

Key points: Sensory details. What do you use automatically? Sound, sight... What do you remind yourself to include? Cues to memory or emotion. Use analogy to describe. Tie it to an emotional moment. The unexpected squirt in the dark. Leave space for the reader. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 23]

 

[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 23]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] The Lens of the Senses

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm stinky.

[DongWon] And we all have a regret.

[Laughter]

 

[DongWon] So we've been talking about the various lenses you can use to approach how you're doing worldbuilding, how you're building your fiction, how you're just constructing your story in general. Right? We've been talking about context and time. But I wanted to bring us back down into the body a little bit today. And what is the most rooting thing you can do in a scene often is to remind your readers of the sensory details of the scene. What do they see, what do they hear, what do they taste, what do they smell? What do they feel? Those are the five senses. I believe I hit all of them. And so... 

[Mary Robinette] What do they taste?

[DongWon] What do they taste? Did I miss that one? Anyways. As we're going through these, or as we're talking about how to make your world feel really lived-in, what are the sensory details that you guys reach for in a scene automatically, or what are the ones that you find otherwise you have to remind yourself to include?

[Howard] I reach for acoustics. Very, very quickly. Because, as an audio engineer, one of the first things that I would do walking into a space is stop, close my eyes, and listen to the room. Not just listening for things that are making noise in the room, but then I also snapped my fingers or clicked my tongue and listen for the T 60, the time in which an echo will drop by 60 decibels. How long does it take for the echo to die away completely? And I realized fairly early on that with my eyes closed, I could tell, without making any noise, if I was in a little room or a big room or a giant room or outdoors. And it's such a fun exercise to do.

[Mary Robinette] I… It's interesting that you say this, because my husband is also an audio engineer. Film and television, he did location sounds. In college, I was an art major. I am very visually oriented, and tactile orientation. So we walk into the same space, and he will be absolutely driven bonkers by a buzzing sound that I don't even know exists until he points it out. And I will talk about the pattern in a carpet that's just, like, why would anyone do this, it gives people vertigo, and he is like, there's carpet in the room?

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And this is… I think one of the reasons that it is such a powerful tool, because it's telling you not only about the world, but also about the character. So I tend to default to visual. And I think a lot of writers do. As a result of that, I will sometimes make a conscious decision that one of my character's other… It's primary sense is something other than sight. So… To differentiate them. I try to link it to… Usually something about the career that they've wound up in. Not because the career shapes it so much, but because I think that you get drawn to a career based on what is important to you. But I can reverse engineer that to create some character distinction.

[Erin] What's interesting hearing that is that I… I have aphantasia, so I cannot make mental images at all, and I have a horrible sense of smell. And those are my two favorite senses to use when I'm writing.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Actually…

[Mary Robinette] Interesting.

[Erin] I don't know if it's because I am try… Like with visual, I actually am trying to make it happen. So, something that I will do is I will actually pull up images of the place or something like the place I'm writing about so that I can actually look for what are the visual things that, like, would be happening. And I just love smell because I feel like it's so visceral, even though I don't experience it as much as other people maybe. I just love what it says about the way you experience something. I feel like it's the thing that's the hardest to get away from. Like, if something smells bad…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It also will have, like, a taste effect on you. And so I think it's an interesting one because it kind of has, like, an interesting secondary effect. But I think part of the reason is because they aren't things that I'm experiencing as much, I'm able to think about the way that the character experiences them in a completely different way, and it doesn't… I'm not distracted by my own senses in coming up with the character's sensory experiences.

 

[DongWon] Interesting. It lets you put yourself in the fictional space more because they're things that aren't [garbled] connected to you… A you experienced world. But it's also really interesting about this is each of the senses are tied to memory and experience in different ways. What we see versus what we smell versus what we hear, I think, are all different cues for different people into memory. I… There's a lot of research that scent is the most strongly connected to memory for a lot of people. Maybe less so for you, Erin. But that the scent memory of something… I know, for myself, that sometimes I'll smell a particular smell and I'll suddenly just be back in when I was 13 years old in this particular space, in this particular summer, or whatever it was. And so I think… Are there things that you guys not only are connecting in terms of what's interesting for the character, but if you're trying to evoke certain emotions, do you lean towards different sensory details or do you find that it's more just what tool fits what character?

[Mary Robinette] I often, when I'm trying to evoke a specific emotion, the one that I lean towards is touch. Because I lean into what the body is feeling, where the character is feeling their tension. If they're too hot, if they're too cold. Those are the things for me, when I'm trying to create emotion, that I tend to lean towards. Which is linked to, but somewhat different than trying to create a sense of place.

[DongWon] Right.

[Howard] I do feel like scent, the sense of smell… It's almost like when we remember things, smell ends up as the index tabs. Whereas other things, sounds and colors, don't. And… But I don't do that to try and… I don't include smell to try and make the reader smell something or… I'm not trying to flip through their index tabs. What I'm trying to do is let them look into the character's brain by giving a scent and have the character immediately smell…Ah. It smells like grandma's place. What? Oh, mothballs. I'm smelling mothballs. And if anybody's had that experience, and I think most of us have, where you smell the thing and immediately been in a place or had a thought, that is normalizing, that is… That draws us into the character and gives us, the reader, a sense that we experienced the same thing the character's experiencing.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I will hear people talk about sometimes is that they… Yes, they agree with that, but that they don't use smell as much as they would use sight because there's not as much language for it. However, after my husband went through the audio engineering, he went and became a winemaker. Which, sometimes I have to help him with his research, and that's very difficult.

[Erin] Oh, no.

[DongWon] What a struggle.

[Mary Robinette] [garbled] sadness. But it means that I wind up going to these winemaking events, and they have so many ways to talk about scent. One of the things that I was struck by was that actually it's the same toolbox that we have for talking about sight, we're just not used to using it. When you talk about a color being creamy, that's an… That's analogy. Right?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And that's the same thing that happens when you're talking about scent. It smells chocolatey. It doesn't smell like chocolate, but there's that richness of flavor. And this… You can build a sense of something that is not a flavor or scent that occurs in the real world by linking it to things. Like, I just wrote a story where there was something called a basil willie, because people are actually really crap at naming things. We just name it by what we… But then I was sitting there, trying to describe basil. I just had a recent experience where I have a friend who has the unfortunate gene where cilantro tastes like soap, and she's like, what does it taste like to you? And attempting to link it to things that I know that she has smelled and tasted. It's like, oh, yeah, this is all analogy. One of the things that my husband says when people are learning to approach wine is if it smells like that to you, you're correct. If the way you need to describe it is it reminds me of grandma, then someone else can be turned and say, oh, knowing me, oh, your grandmother's southern and you're picking up these bacon notes and these vegetable tones. Grandma's baked green beans are amazing. Now I'm hungry.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Now I want bacon wine.

[Mary Robinette] I can introduce you.

[DongWon] I really want to talk more about the language that we used to describe sensory details. But before that, let's take a quick break.

 

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[Mary Robinette] The thing of the week is an experience that I think is actually going to be hard for you to find. It's called Darkfield. It is a train show and you go… They have containers that they have turned into a theater, and you go into a container and are in a completely dark space. This is actually something that is not commonly experienced, because most of the time, there's a little bit of an LED, there's the exit light. Completely dark space, and they tell you a story through sound and motion. It is wild. There's… They have a couple of different experiences. Flight, séance, and comma. As a storyteller, thinking about how you can tell a story with only a few senses and removing others highlights exactly where we get our information. It's very compelling. It's a little disturbing, and it is a touring show so it may be hard for you to find. But if you can, I recommend seeing Darkfield.

 

[DongWon] I started this episode by talking about how sensory details can be the most grounding. But, Mary Robinette, before the break, you were talking about ways in which actually that sensory experience is so subjective. What I experience is very different from what you experience, very different from what Erin experiences, and Howard experiences. Right? What tastes one way to us, even if we all like the same thing. My experience in eating cilantro is different from yours, because I'm a different person. I mean, my physics, biology, all these things. So when you're trying to use language to make an experience feel universal, make someone feel in the body of this character, you don't know what kind of body your reader has. What are the tricks that we can use to make sensory experience feel universal or feel connected or feel specific in different ways?

[Erin] So, it's funny, because hearing y'all talk earlier about, like, scent being the core of memory, I think, because of a lack of both sent and visuals, like, I actually have a quite poor memory. And I… The only way that I remember things is by feeling like there's a story about it, almost as if somebody was singing a song and suddenly you remember the chorus. And so, like, that's how my whole… My whole life is stories. But one of the things that I do, then, because I'm trying like to convey scents to… Or something to a reader that I don't have is I often make up what a scent is by trying to create an emotional moment and then telling you there's a scent to it. So I would say this smells like a combination of… And a lot of times I'll use a very sensory thing and a fake thing. Sort of. So I'll be like, this smells like rotten meat and sidewalk chalk the day after a rain.

[Howard] Yeah. And as a humorist, I am always, always playing with the words around smell. Because it's so much fun. This smells like something died and then went to gym class without taking a shower. That's a ridiculous metaphor. But… And what we know is that the character has passed judgment on… Maybe it's body odor, maybe it's putrescence, maybe it's both. But we are having, hopefully, a humorous emotional response to what the character is experiencing.

[Mary Robinette] The thing that Erin was saying, just taking that and tying back in, you make me think about the way perfumiers describe perfume, that they're trying to create an experience that takes you through something. So, even though you're saying an imaginary thing, it's like, yeah, it's imaginary, but there's a whole layer of scents that are associated with each of those things that builds this whole in a way that a list would not. It smells like petrichor, sidewalk chalk, and exhaust from streets… But, like, that's a very different thing than the smell of sidewalk chalk after a rain.

[Erin] And the thing is if you say, like… I can think of a lot of reasons why I think, like, that scent makes sense, like, things like rain do have their own scent, a sidewalk after the rain has a certain scent, and chalk has a scent. But I also think that it's very possible that if we had, like, smell-o-vision or, like, I could suddenly smell what you might think of when you thought of that, that we would all have different smells.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] But I've rooted it to the same emotions.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So that if I reference it again, or if I'm using it to describe a character, it's sort of doesn't matter that the scents are different because the emotional thing…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That I'm trying to get you to realize through using that sensory detail is the same.

[DongWon] I think that's the thing that we were all talking about, is that really, when we get to these sensory details, so often it's about emotion. How is the character feeling? We're describing sensory details to give us a sense of what their experience is, not just in a physical way, but how that connects to the emotional truth of it. Right? So, in describing… The way you're combining positive and negative imagery when it comes to the scent of something, that gives us a more well-rounded experience of, like, oh, this smells bad, but also a little nostalgic. And what does that mean that this character associates writing me with something a little nostalgic?

[Howard] The mediums that we're using… We have to pay attention to these. Because if you are writing and someone is going to read it, then you are using principally the sense of vision to create a data stream that is giving us… But if the audiobook is read… If someone reads the book to you, you're listening to an audiobook, the information stream is now going through your ears. And there are audiobooks that are not just read, they're dramatized. And so some of the sounds you might put in the text end up performed as sounds. I remember being in a planetarium for a concert, and they said if you see something you like, that's us. If you hear something you like, that's us. If you feel something you like, don't look at us. And then, during the show, they were in the back with a squirt gun.

[Laughter]

[Howard] And it was hilarious, because we were getting information through a stream that we were told we wouldn't be getting.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Howard] Anyway, I'm just fascinated by this.

[Mary Robinette] The thing that I love about this is that we're in the module where we're talking about where and when, but we're talking about character, and this is, I think, an important thing is most of the time when your reader is experiencing the place, they are experiencing it through the lens of a character. When we're using these sensory details. How is the character experiencing it? And even if the character isn't there, the reader is interpreting it through their own lens of self and their own awareness of how their body would experience those things. Like, if I see someone who is describing stepping out into the humidity of a southern day, and they are describing the way I described it, which is, it's like stepping into a sauna and being hit in the face with a hot wet towel. I know that, and I have… I bring my own memory to it. This is part of a thing that we talk about a lot, that your reader is building the story with you. And so, invoking those sensory details, even if you're doing it in omniscient, even if you're doing it where there's not a character on the page, you are evoking them for the reader.

[DongWon] I mean, that's what I like so much about this topic is, whether we like it or not, we all have bodies. Right? Whether we like it or not, we all have… We're all in our Gundams made of ham. Right? We're experiencing the world filtered through the sensory organs that we have. And so are your characters. Right? So when you get this opportunity to remind your reader that your character has a body… They don't. They're fictional. You made them up. They literally don't have a body. But the reader does. Right? And so if you can connect those two dots, you will increase the verisimilitude of the reading experience exponentially.

[Erin] And what I like about that in setting is that you can use things that are very visceral and sensory to connect things that are very speculative, very out there…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] To something that we can feel. I was at an immersive theater show at the Edinborough Fringe Festival where we were in the dark. Full black dark, in front of, like, an arcade machine, and you could, like, choose things, and it was all audio. We're just standing there. But at one point, there is… Like, somebody is killed by some really weird out there gun of some sort, and the arcade machine squirted a tiny bit of water. It was the most disturbing thing ever…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Because, like, I don't know what that machine does, I don't know what happened to the person exactly, but death plus liquid in your face…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Is making you feel like so many things. And I connected really strongly. I don't remember much about that experience other than that moment, because it was so visceral and because it was so sensory and I didn't need to know the specifics of how the thing works because I understand how the thing feels.

[DongWon] I mean… I think this is why… I talked about genres of the body. Right? Because horror is such a classic one, because you can take the most outlandish thing in the world and you bring it down to blood and bone and the smell of somebody dying and now it's so real for your reader no matter how bonkers made up the monster was or the situation was with a haunting was. You made it felt in the body, and then your reader's with you in that moment.

[Howard] I… I love the senses, and I love the idea that when you feel a thing… Feel, smell, hear, see… That seems out of place, it can be absolutely horrifying. A little bit of wetness when there's been a splotchy death noise. A little bit of open fresh air when you've opened a door you expect to lead to another room, and you realize that this door opened into… Don't take a step or you're going to fall to your death. There's all kinds of ways to play with this, where the unexpected sense is part of a reveal that can be humorous or horrific or intellectually stimulating or whatever it is you want to evoke in the reader. You do it with more than one sense, and it's harder.

[DongWon] And it's a place where sometimes doing less can be more. Right? I think if you're really trying to overwhelm your audience with the sensory aspect, it can be hard to parse what's happening. One of the… Going back to horror, I'm thinking about the famous rain room scene in Alien, part of why that is one of the most iconic effective scenes in all of horror history is because it's very quiet. He's there, you can hear the drips of water, you can feel how cool it is on his face, you're so grounded in his body, in that moment of, like, this moment of relief of, like, oh, there's water on my face, the chains are clinking, there's a little bit of a breeze, and there's all these tiny little sensory details that are making that scene pop, right before awful things happen. Right? And it's the quietness in that moment that lets you absorb the sensory reality of it, which then heightens your dread, because you know what's coming.

 

[Mary Robinette] I think along those lines, sometimes, the thing that you can do is to leave space for the reader.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] There's this thing that has stuck with me for a long time from Steven King where he says, you can describe the pain in great detail, going into all of the… The nerve endings lighting up and all of this stuff, or you can say, they ripped his fingernail off. And, like… For our listeners, DongWon, sitting beside me, just winced and turned away.

[DongWon] Yup.

[Mary Robinette] And that's an example of leaving space for the reader. That sometimes you describe the thing that is happening to someone and you don't deliver the sensory details, you let the reader experience them. It's something that you use sparingly. But it's also the thing that relies on the reader having a common experience.

[Erin] I'm just thinking… It makes me think that part of the way that we experience sense is also distance. Like, how far away is the sound, how close is the smell? You know what I mean? And I think that there's like… That is something to think about. And that actually I like to play with more, which is, like, what happens when a sense… Something that you sensed as far away is suddenly closer. Or something that you sense as close… If you're smelling your grandmother's baking bread and then that becomes further away through time or further away through distance. Like, that actually can convey emotion in the exact same scent, but a different context for it.

[DongWon] Absolutely. I really love that. And that's combining the differences that we have in terms of context, in terms of time and distance, and all these things, and how you experience that in your body. So, while we think about how to make space for the audience, Mary Robinette, I believe you have some homework for us?

 

[Mary Robinette] I do. This is an exercise that I learned from C. L. Polk. We're going to link in the liner notes to the original essay. And it is an exercise that they use to create an immediate sense of place, that they got from an anxiety stopping exercise. Five, four, three, two, one. You list five things your character can see, for things your character can hear, three things your character can touch, two things your character can smell, and one thing your character can taste. So that your exercise, is to do the five, four, three, two, one. I'm going to put in a slight twist for you, which is, if your character's primary sense is something other than sight, make that the one that's the five.,

 

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2019/08/06/14-31-cultural-setting-as-conflict/

 

Key Points: To some extent, every story has some aspect of characters in conflict with their setting. Consider conflict as either a desire to move or resistance to being moved. Also, I don't like the way this is built, and I want to change it. A.k.a, ideals in conflict with reality. Immigrants are automatically in cultural conflict. Children of immigrants, growing up, face a challenge between what their parents want and what the culture around them teaches. Nobody represents 100% of their culture, we are all slightly in conflict. But don't use this as the main conflict, use it to make the characters more well-rounded. Start with a character in friction with their society, then let the main plot smash into them. Cultural conflict may not drive a story, but it often grounds us in the character. One story archetype is the person who doesn't fit saves society. Consider sensory writing -- what senses show the conflict of character and culture? What are the standard conversational moves that the character doesn't know? Casual or respect? Use conflict with your culture to add layers to the plot and enrich your story.

 

[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 31.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Cultural Setting As Conflict.

[Dan] 15 minutes long.

[Howard] Because you're in a hurry.

[Mahtab] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Mahtab] I'm Mahtab.

 

[Brandon] Cultural setting as conflict. A little preface here. This is using my definitions for worldbuilding. I define physical worldbuilding as all this stuff that exists if human beings or sapient races weren't around, and cultural setting is all the stuff that they create. I think I announced that last month, too. But just so you know, when I say cultural setting for this particular podcast, we're talking about all of this. Religion, linguistics, economics, all of this stuff. We want to talk about how to put your characters in conflict with their setting, and with their culture. Obviously, this is one of the great ways to tell a story. In fact, I think every story that I write has some aspect of a character in conflict with their setting.

[Howard] I think the easiest place to start with this is to look at the conflict as either a desire to move or a resistance against being moved. For instance, if you are a member of the wealthy class, you do not want wealth to be redistributed, because that is moving you into a different place. If you are impoverished, perhaps you want to move into a different class. Those two work within whatever framework of the culture may exist. I mean, whether it's economic or gender or racial or multi-species or whatever. I want to move or someone is trying to move me, is one of the easiest ways to define the conflict. The other big one is I don't like the way this is built. I want to change it so that everybody can move. Or nobody has to move. Or something.

[Brandon] Right. Putting your ideals in conflict with the actual reality of the system.

[Mahtab] You know what, the very fact… Just from personal experience, the very fact that I'm an immigrant in Canada is straightaway a cultural conflict. Because there are certain things that I'm used to doing in India, there are certain traditions that we follow, certain norms. But take that out and put me in a North American setting or a Canadian setting, and all of a sudden, I want to follow certain things, but I cannot. So, I mean, just… For example, I love cooking Indian food. When I first came to Canada and the winters were cold, I would cook with the doors closed. I would be smelling like a day-old samosa. Maybe a week-old samosa. Then you'd go out into the world and you would have people just kind of… I was nose blind, but people would wonder, "Does she not know what she smells like?"

[Howard] What is that smell?

[Mahtab] It took me a while. I mean, I had to get onto an elevator with someone who was a lot more fragrant than I was till it hit me. So, the fact is, I can still cook Indian food, but even in the midst of an Ontario winter, I have to have all the doors and all the windows open… Not the doors. All the windows open, proper ventilation, and then… So it's just like… The fact is that you can have conflict if you just take someone who's used to following a certain cultural norm, put them in a different setting, and that's it. Also, with kids growing up. When, especially, the kids are young, the parents are not very well educated or not very well integrated into a certain culture. They are still holding to the old norms, whereas the kids who are growing up are now influenced by the culture they are growing up in. They are treading a very fine line between what should I follow, because this is what my parents want, and this is what my friends and teachers and everyone are doing. It can be huge. I mean, I've seen a lot of teens go through a lot of anguish because of that.

[Dan] There was a really cool movie a couple years ago, and I can never remember the title of anything. Sorry. That was about a group of Korean American teenagers, all of them first-generation Americans, who went to like a cultural summer camp. Their Korean families are like, "You need to know about our culture from back in the old country, so you're all going to go to this thing." It was just fascinating to watch that whole dynamic play out as they were trying to embrace their roots while also staying true to who they had become. There is a lot of cool compelling stuff that can be pulled out of this.

[Brandon] Is it called Seoul Searching?

[Dan] Yes.

[Brandon] I just googled it for you.

[Dan] Seoul Searching, Seoul being the pun. Ha ha ha.

 

[Brandon] I… It's interesting to think about this, because nobody 100% represents all aspects of their culture. None of us do. Which is this weird thing to think about, in that there is this nebulous sort of culture, right? Whichever set of culture… Religious culture or whatever. Society. There's nobody that is that thing. We are all not aligned exactly to everything in that culture. So we're all going to be slightly in conflict with our culture. There's not a person who isn't. We're just going to be in conflict with it in different ways. I think as writers, sometimes, we want to make this the main conflict of the story. Sometimes it's appropriate to do so. Sometimes this is what our story is about. But I think in every story, these sorts of things are what's… Are the sorts of things that are going to make your characters become well-rounded and feel real. People often ask me, "How do I make well-rounded characters?" Our kind of cliché but true response is don't write them to a role in a story, write them as they are and make the story kind of come along and make things messy for them. I think this is one of the ways you indicate this is these characters are going to be having friction with their society and culture, even before whatever the main plot of your story is comes along and smashes into them.

[Howard] It's not uncommon… I say it's not uncommon. I can't actually think of any examples off the top of my head. But you have a protagonist whose motivation is I want to fit in with my family. Or I want to get a promotion. It's very cultural, but then they are thrown into an adventure that has nothing to do with fitting in with their family or getting a promotion. At the end of the adventure, they have changed or their family have changed or the corporation has changed, and they have the thing that they need. So the cultural conflict there is not necessarily what's driving the story, but it's what's grounding us in the character.

[Dan] One of the books that I talked about last month, A Memory Called Empire. Like I said, it's a political story and it's a murder mystery, but the main character is an ambassador from one tiny nation who has gone to this massive Empire. What's fascinating about her attempt to fit in is that she loves their culture. So it's specifically kind of has this subplot in there of you're the big evil empire that's trying to consume my little nation, but I love your art, I love your stories that you tell, and I watch your TV shows all the time. It added a really interesting dimension of that cultural conflict.

 

[Brandon] Let's go ahead and do our book of the week.

[Mahtab] Right. So, the book of the week that I'd like to recommend is one that has been written by yours truly. It's called Mission Mumbai. This is a story of a friendship between two boys. One of them is an Indian, Rohit Lal, one of them is an American, Dylan Moore. They have a friendship that is based on their love of reading fantasy novels. But it's a very fragile friendship. When they take a trip to India, that is when they realize that there is a certain amount of jealousy involved. Their friendship is not as strong as they expected it to be. But one of the reasons that I love having written this story is that I take someone from a North American culture and put him into the Indian culture. Which is just as alien as having gone to a totally different place. I give both the boys certain problems. It's only when… Their friendship is stretched really, really thin, and it's only when both the boys decide to put aside their own issues and help one another is when their friendship becomes a lot stronger. So it's a coming-of-age, it's a friendship, it's a loyalty story. But it's also a fun way of exploring India from your own room.

[Howard] Less expensive than plane tickets.

[Mahtab] Absolutely.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] Awesome.

[Howard] That's Mission Mumbai.

 

[Brandon] For this podcast's second half, let's kind of try to drill into the why… Or the hows. The nitty-gritty details of how to use conflict with culture as plots in your stories. I'll give an example. Oftentimes, I notice that in films and in books, one of the things you do at the beginning is show the character not fitting in as a method of showing what their kind of arc is going to be. They're the person that doesn't fit into their society. Taking classic Disney movies, if we look at Mulan. Mulan doesn't start with her out sword fighting. It starts with her not fitting into the society of gender roles and the marriage rituals and things that she's expected to participate in as a way to reinforce that she's kind of outside her culture. So that when she leaves to go do something very different from what someone in her situation would do, you believe that she would do this. Because she obviously doesn't quite fit in. Then, the whole story is about this idea of the person who doesn't fit in being the one who saves the society. You see this used a ton. It's a really great story archetype. It's used in Dragonlance, it's used in a lot of different stories. It's one of those ways you use someone in conflict with their setting in a small way to inform your entire story.

 

[Howard] We talk about sensory writing quite a bit. Mahtab, you described the way you smell when you've been cooking. The smells of things, the colors of things. When you're uncomfortable with a culture, if you've been dropped someplace where you are not comfortable, which of your senses are uncomfortable? Which… Where are you feeling the conflict? Is it because it's too loud? Is it because it's too quiet? Is it because it doesn't smell like you want it to smell? Is it because the flavor of the food that makes you comfortable just isn't available anywhere? Is it because you're one of those people who is genetically unable to appreciate cilantro? Because there's a group of people for whom cilantro is just terrible. These sorts of… And Indian food, which I love, and I love cilantro too, has lots of cilantro in it. So you got this whole class of people who are genetically unable to appreciate the thing that you cook, Mahtab. Those senses are a great way to ground us in a character's fitting in or not fitting in. How much you love the smell? How much you love the color? How it feels like being embraced to all your senses?

[Mahtab] One of the things that I also felt or experienced when I came here is that there is a whole unspoken language which is just by looks and gestures, and some things that are… I mean, just to give an example. Whenever you start a conversation, now, I'm not saying that it's not done in India, but over here you discuss the weather a lot. In India, all you have is rain and heat.

[Chuckles]

[Mahtab] So you really do not open a conversation with, "Oh, we're having a really nice day today." So when I was doing sales and I was on calls, I would be like, "Hello. I'm calling from so-and-so and just wanted to talk to you about XYZ." I was told, "Nonono. You're supposed to talk about the weather," and this and a TV series going on or something. Or a little bit of the news. So, the thing is that in terms of making the story or the character a little bit more layered, it's not just the sensory, which is very, very important. But it's also the unspoken stuff that the… The norms that the culture that you're in follows, which is not quite what you do. So there are lots of clues that you have to pick up which are not… Sometimes, may be told to you, but sometimes you just have to observe. It took me at least a few years of observing, or being corrected or being told that this is what you're supposed to be doing. Again, I had no idea about time zones. I remember calling someone at 6 o'clock in the morning from the East Coast to the West Coast…

[Chuckles]

[Mahtab] I'm like, "Hi." He says, "Do you know it's 6 o'clock?" I'm like, "Why did you pick up the phone, then?"

[Laughter]

[Brandon] When I went to Korea for the first time, the thing I kept getting in trouble with is, Americans can be very casual with how they give things to one another. Which is nothing… Something I hadn't ever thought about. But, in Korea, a lot of people expect you… If you're going to give something… Just, like, if you say, "Hey, pass me a roll," that you're going to hand it and present it to them as a gift, with two hands.

[Mahtab] Two hands, yes.

[Dan] Two?

[Brandon] Two hands, and kind of respectfully. Whereas Americans, we'd be like, "Hey. Roll!" I did that to someone. They're like… I'm like, "Hey. Roll!" And threw it. They were like hugely offended. This was a teenager my age, but that is just not something you do in that culture. It was one of those things I had to really get used to. The kind of casualness versus respectfulness.

[Howard] I have to remember not to ask anybody to pass me the bread in Nebraska.

[Garbled] [without having my eyes open. Boom!]

 

[Dan] Just throw it at you. The Asian market where I shop, even the receipt. They will pull it out. They'll rip it off the thing. Fold it, and hand it to you with two hands. Because that is how you're supposed to do it. One of my very favorite cultural stories is a TV show called The Americans. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that. It's Soviet spies, sleeper agents, living in the United States in the 1980s. So every episode has like an espionage story, but the overall story it's telling is how do these people who are like trained, practically brainwashed to hate America, how do they live and fit in and look and act like Americans.

[Howard] I grew up during the 80s. I would not want the job…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Of fitting in in the 80s. Oh, man.

[Dan] It's just a really compelling thing. They're doing a lot of the stuff that we're talking about. Where they will confront situations where they would do something the way it would be normal to them. Obviously, they have been trained in American culture, but it comes off wrong. Or they react the wrong way to something and they have to remember, "Oh, no. I'm American. I have to treat this like an American, not like a Russian." It's just really, really interesting, and really well done.

[Howard] There are a lot of cultural dialect sorts of things, whether it's jargon or just dialect things. In the UK, just now means immediately prior. What was that noise? A bookcase fell over just now. In South Africa, just now means really soon, about to happen. Yes… Not really soon, but kind of soon. I'll be there just now. I'm on my way, I'll be there just now. Are you in a hurry? Okay, fine, I'll be there now now. Okay, I like now now as a construct. When I first heard it, I thought, "Well, that's brilliant. That's a great way to say ASAP." But these sorts of things, if you don't… I don't want to crossover too much into the language discussion we'll be having later. But there have been a lot of times, especially online, where all participate in an online chat about a game and realize, "There is a jargon here." Somebody just threw a string of characters, and they are very clearly making a request, and I do not know how to respond, because there's like six acronyms in there.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] And I don't know what any of them stand for.

[Mahtab] I would just like to say here that conflict with your culture is important, but don't make that the focal point of your story. Just use that to flavor it, to add layers to the plot which would make it richer. But don't make that the focus of the story. Because that would be too kind of clichéd or stereotyped, and you're just going to end up going a very predictable path. But use that to just enrich the narrative.

 

[Brandon] So, we're out of time on this, but we will come back later in the year and do an episode on worldbuilding culture and mores, so you can look forward to that. I have our homework this week. I'm quite tickled with this one. I want you to clone yourself and make an entire planet of clones of you. I want you to decide what the culture would be like if everyone on the planet were you. Then, I want you to create a trading post with this planet where people off world who are not you have to trade with you and what they have to go through in order to make trade deals with an entire planet of you.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] There's going to be a war, and my planet's going to get wiped clean…

[Laughter]

[Howard] Very, very quickly.

[Dan] The galaxy will decide we can't let this planet hang around any longer.

[Howard] Nope.

[Mahtab] I am going to try that prompt.

[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.