Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-22-the-lens-of-time

 

Key Points: Time! Setting? Day versus night? The when of the character? Anticipation and flashbacks, expectations and disappointments. Magnified moments. What is the character noticing? Order or sequence of time. Time as an extension of setting. Associations with time of day. Personal physical cycles! Conveying passage of time. Children, other changes. Sensory details, obligations. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 22]

 

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

 

[Season 20, Episode 22]

 

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses.

[Mary Robinette] The Lens of Time.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] And this is Dr. Who.

 

[Mary Robinette] So, we've been talking about these different lenses that you can look at a story through. We're looking at the idea of where and when, and time is one of the big lenses. You don't have to be working on a historical piece of fiction to be thinking about time. All stories move through time, even if it's only for a moment. So we're going to be talking about time as your setting. The differences between a story that's set during the day versus at night, or even a scene or a moment. We're going to be talking about how you can use time to your advantage. Not so much in a structural way, but more in that sense of controlling the reader's experience of the story and the character and the setting.

[Erin] We are going to be doing that.

[Dan] Love it.

[Erin] And we're starting now.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] When you are sitting down to think about a story, I know, Erin, that you often start with a voice and that you are very much thinking about the character. How much is the character... At that stage, are you thinking about the when of the character?

[Erin] I think a lot... So. I saw a very interesting tweet a long time ago that said that one of the ways you can upgrade your craft is to move time in the story. To actually use anticipation and flashbacks… Not necessarily, like, an entire flashback, but just what is your character coming from? What are they looking back to? What are they looking forward to? And, like, playing with that in the story. That in truth, and in our own lives, we rarely just move forward in time. We're often thinking about, like, our expectations, which is our vision of the future, and our disappointments, which is our reckoning with the past. And so, a lot of times, I really think about how my characters are reckoning with the time they are in in their own times. And, like, also the time that the world around them is in. Are they in sync? Like, are they moving forward in a world that's moving forward with them? Do they want to hold back in a world that they're like they love tradition, but the world wants progress? And then, looking at that as a source of tension in the story, between the way that they're dealing with time and the way the story and the world is.

[Mary Robinette] I love this idea of looking at where they are in time and using that anticipation as a source of tension. That… You're making me think of something that I just did a brief reread of which is in Dune, which is the fight between Paul Atriedes and Jamis, when he has to, like, "Hello! No, here I am! The Chosen One." And what's interesting in that scene is the way Frank Herbert plays with time. It's happening at a particular point in Paul's life and… Where he's a young man, he's approaching a point where he is going to kill for the first time. That is a threshold, that is a time threshold. That's going to be a marker. Before he killed, and after he killed. That's how his world is going to divide. But the other thing that he does in that is that he does these very small flashbacks to before he is in this thing, where he's thinking about my training taught me this. And all of that is setting up this anticipation of the ways the scene can go wrong, the ways that it can potentially go right, but mostly the ways it can go wrong. It's looking at the… That he's been trained in this one particular way, to go very slow against the shield, and that he keeps making the same mistake over and over again because of his training. And so you've got this contrast of this… His knowledge… His history compared with the future that he's aiming for and this anticipation of all the possible paths for which it can go wrong, which is, I think, one of the great things that you can play with with time, is the… Is letting the reader know, oh, there's more than one path for this. There's more than one path, there's more than one way that this can go wrong. You don't know which of those possible futures you're going to land in.

 

[Dan] Yeah. One of the other things going on in that scene is… That also plays with time is what my seventh grade English teacher always used to call a magnified moment. Where it's really an exchange of blows that takes probably ultimately maybe 30 seconds. I think in the movie, it was drawn out to 40 or 45 seconds. But it's still very short. Whereas the actual excerpt is two or three pages worth of material. Because every single second, every single step, every single move of the blade is given this momentous weight. And so it is expanding things out and magnifying every little moment that takes place into this huge, kind of glorious, thing.

[Erin] I love that… I was thinking about, like, fight scenes and love scenes are two of the ones in which the time in which it's taking on the page and the time it was probably taking in the life of the characters are so different. I'm curious, like, how like… Like, how do you make that moment… Like, how do you make it slow down and not fade as it feels momentous? But not slow down so much that people are, like, wow, I've been on three chapters of the same, like, sword cut, and, like, I wish they would do it already…

[Laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] is it just, like, let… Like, how do you, like, actually make time slow and speed within something?

[Mary Robinette] I think that there's two pieces that you're playing with. One is the character's awareness of time, and the other is the actual amount of time that it takes the reader to experience it. So, one of the things that happens in the example that we were just using is 2 to 3 pages takes several minutes to read. And… Unless they are listening to some [garbled] to speed.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But it is that reader experience of it will slow it down. Sometimes when something is slow down in ways you don't want it to be… Fight scenes that are slow in ways that are not helping the story… It is because you're taking too long to get us through it. Likewise, you can speed things up by compressing it so that the reader's actual experience of reading it is shorter. Like, physically shorter. But then there's also what the character is noticing. Sometimes you can create a sense of, oh, this took forever, by lingering on the character's experience, feeling all of the things that they feel. The kinds of things that I've been thinking about lately are what they're noticing, where they feel it in their body. It's not that you have to hit all of these beats, but that each time, you hit one of those, you are having the character live that moment again. So if I have my character picking up a sword, and the first thing that happens is that we describe what the sword looks like, and then the next thing is the character experiences the physicality of picking it up. The weight of it, the heft, the balance. We've now experienced that sword twice. If we think about, this was the sword my father gave me, that's a third time that we're experiencing it. If we think… If we cut through the air, if we try some simple bl… Strikes with it, that's a fourth time that we're experiencing it. But all of those are things that probably happen almost immediately for the character. So, those are ways to slow it down, but also to be conscious that sometimes you don't want to slow it down, and you want to just pick one of those, the one that is most distinct to the character, the one that is most demonstrative of this specific moment in time.

 

[Erin] I think that's interesting, because that's making me think about ordering a lot. Which, like, ordering is a function of time… Or whatever. Sure, I'm going to say it is. Ordering is a function of time because I said so.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] I think it is.

[Erin] Yeah. But I'm thinking, like, let's say that the character ends by slicing somebody in half. I don't know if this is what happens, but… This is what happens. Then I'm wondering, that, if it's like, if you pick up the sword, sliced the person in half, then notice the weight of it, then think about that it's the fact that it's the sword that your father gave you, it's a completely different emotional experience…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Than if you do all of that before you hit. So, thinking about, like, what order things happen in is really interesting. I also just really love that there are certain things you can do in prose that are difficult to do in other forms. Which is that… Like, I always think people in the world of my character probably find them very annoying because every time they say a line of dialogue, they then think for, like, a long period.

[Laughter]

[Erin] Half a paragraph of deep thought. Return line. Which is, like, an interesting… And we can talk at some other time about dialogue and how not to lose the reader when you, like, have long periods of, like, epic thought in between dialogue. But in real life, that would be quite irritating, unless you think very quickly. But in a story, the reader does want to know what's going on in the character's mind. And so they're willing to, like, pause with you for a moment. Because what they're gaining in that moment of time as a reader is worth the pause in the reality timeline of the story itself.

[Mary Robinette] I think, on that, why don't we pause for a moment?

 

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I am really enjoying about this conversation is that we're talking about using time in so many different ways. We're talking about the sequencing of a story and how that can change… Just when a character has a reaction. We're talking about using time as a way of… As an extension of setting. And I'd love to actually dig into that part of it just a little more, the idea of time as an extension of setting. I think I've talked about this more on a previous episode, but one of my favorite scenes that taught me so much was from Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey where we get a character going into a room and describing it… First, her experience of it, her interactions with it, when she arrives in the middle of the night and it is fulfilling all of her Gothic fantasy dreams. And then, the next morning, when she gets up, and discovers that the terrifying scratching sound is actually a rosebush that's beautiful outside the window. And that the secret locked cabinet that had a role of enciphered paper in it is actually not actually locked. It was open, she had accidentally locked it, and the enciphered paper is actually a literal laundry list. She just couldn't read it because it was dark. But the… How the literal time can cause the character to experience a place and the reader to experience a place in a different way, which gives you essentially two settings for the price of one.

[Erin] Absolutely. Because we associate certain times of day, I think, with certain things. Like, night and danger often go together. Which is interesting, too, because if you with… If there's a character who's like, not feeling steady in their bones, until the sun goes down, then that's an interesting… That's something different, and what does that mean about the character? What does that say about them? But I often think about, like, I experience my own body differently walking around based a little bit on time of day.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] You know what I mean? It's like I am more… Because it feels like you don't have the 360 view in the same way at night. And so I am more conscious of who's around me in the distance. And those are all thoughts that I'm having, and that a character can be having as a way… So then what do they notice? Because we all… The dangers that we view are reflections of our own mentality. And so, the dangers that you view in the night are going to be different than the dangers I view in the night. And so thinking about that, then, that's a great opportunity to maybe get to what are your character's fears? Or what is your character's fearlessness? Where do they feel comfortable? When do they not? When do they feel ill-at-ease? And I think all of those are, like, great moments, I think especially… I think that's especially great when you're trying to get something done clockwise. Like, I need to have the character go to the grocery store…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Because it's like, really important later on that they've been there. But it's not interesting at all, so, like… But, if it's all of a sudden, they're going and, it's, like, they've got to go in the middle of the night… Or they need to go out in the day, but they hate their appearance. Then, how does that time actually make something mundane more interesting so that you can hide the plot work that you're doing that will then become more interesting later.

 

[Dan] Yeah. And I think a lot of kind of personal physical cycles can go into this as well. Healthwise is what I'm thinking of, since developing depression and on the particular meds that I'm on right now, I am so much better in the mornings and in the afternoons than I am in the evening. And by the time we get to dinner time, there's just not much of me left. And so I will experience the world and people will experience me in very different ways based on what time of day it is as well.

 

[Mary Robinette] It is interesting how much we are shaped by time. And yet it is also one of those things that I think is hard to convey to readers. Like, the passage of time. The way in which someone is different in the morning then in the evening. One of the questions that I'll hear people ask is, like, how do I let people know that time has passed? If…

[Dan] Yeah. I asked Fonda Lee this question a while ago, because I think she does such a brilliant job of it in the Greenbones saga. With the first book takes about a year, the second about five years, and the third book covers 20, 25 years of time. And how do you convey that so well? One of the little tricks she pointed out was that she made sure to always talk about the children as soon as possible after a time jump, because if the kid that was toddling around and barely verbal last time is suddenly doing his school homework, well, then you know that a certain amount of time has passed. And it became a really interesting shorthand for me to go back and look through the books and go, oh, yeah. She does do that every time there's a time jump.

[Laughter]

[Dan] She starts talking about the kids early on. Because they will change more than the adults will, and so it makes it more obvious that time has gone by.

[Mary Robinette] I think that actually interestingly ties back into what we were talking about for where… How much can you change a place and still have it be recognizable. And, like, how much can you change a time… When you're changing time, what are the pieces? If you don't have the option to have children, if it is just moving day to night, what are the pieces that change, and those are the things that you flag. Like, kids change a lot, but buildings don't change that much. If you're going day to night, the light through the window changes a lot even if nothing else in the room does.

[Dan] Yeah. The temperature could change, the sounds that your hearing outside, whether there's suddenly crickets or something else, that you could… There's a lot of sensory details that you can mention that will immediately clue you in to the passage of time.

[Erin] I also think obligations change over time. Like, from day to night, if you're in a sort of traditional, like, work during the day is the, like… One of the reasons a lot of times writers write late at night and early in the morning is because those are times that people feel that the obligations of life had yet to like come tug on them. And so it's, like, is it quiet in some ways, not just the quiet of the actual room, but the quiet of, like, no one demanding things from you and nobody is needing things from you in this moment.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, but… Interestingly, that has been one of the things that has been disruptive for me at this… And I've recognized the symptoms before I say it… That's one of the things that's been disruptive for me about teaching my cat to talk…

[Laughter]

[Erin] There are many, but that's…

[Mary Robinette] Is that her diurnal cycle is not the same as a human's. So she sleeps during the middle of the day, and then, at night, when I am starting to wind down, when, normally, before this, I would have been able to have quiet, because the rest of the world has quieted, that's when she's like, let's play! Let's have zoomies together! Let's use this button board thing and let me mash on it and talk to you. So I have… Like, I'm finding that now I'm starting to write during the middle of the day, which has never been a writing time for me. Because then those obligations, which is this, are quiet.

[Dan] I need to write when my cat shuts up.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, my God. I love her so much, but choices were made.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] What I love about that is, like, you're not going to get your cat to not be dire… Like, you can have some stern talks, but I don't think it's going to work. And so, also thinking about, like, what are the things… Like, children's growth, like a school day, like, what are the things that keep… That are unchangeable by your character, no matter what they do in the world?

[Mary Robinette] The inevitabilities.

[Erin] These are the inevitabilities of time. At the beginning of the day, they'll have to do this. At the end of the day, they'll have to do that. I was reading Babel…

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Erin] By R. F. Kuang and it's all about school. Like, it's a schoolbook, for at least the portion then I'm in. And so there's a lot about the school year, and, like, the passage of time in a school year, which the characters are going through so much internally, but there's still, like, they have to hit the external, go to this class, be in this place, do this thing by this time. And, I think, we sometimes forget or ignore or get used to the strictures of time in our lives. But maybe we should not do that for our character's lives, and think about how we can use that as an opportunity for tension or fun.

[Mary Robinette] That is a fantastic example of great time passage and using time as setting and time to manipulate character. Speaking of time, it is time for us to give you some homework.

 

[Mary Robinette] And it's a really simple one this time. It's similar to the one that we gave you at the beginning of this, looking at the lens of when and where. And this is just I want you to change the time at which a scene takes place. If you've got a scene that's set during the day, what happens when you move it to the night? What changes? If it's set in the spring, what happens if you move it to the fall? You don't have to make all of the changes, but, what happens if you change the time in which that scene takes place?

 

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-27-close-reading-on-character-an-overview-and-why-we-chose-c-l-clarks 

 

Key Points: Short stories are like tapas, a bite-size treat. Relationships. Backstory. Choices. Ability, what the character can and cannot do, role, tasks and responsibilities, relationship or loyalties, and status, where they are in a power structure. Sequence and anticipation. Momentum or velocity. You are who you choose to be. Dragon's tears, and nebulous expectations.

 

[Season 19, 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.

 

[Howard] You're invited to the Writing Excuses Cruise, an annual event for writers who want dedicated time to focus on honing their  craft, connecting with their peers, and getting away from the grind of daily life. Join the full cast of Writing Excuses as we sail from Los Angeles about the Navigator of the Seas from September 14th through the 27th of 2024. With stops in Ensenada, Cabo San Lucas, and Mazatlán. The cruise offers seminars, exercises, and group sessions. An ideal blend of relaxation, learning, and writing, all while sailing the Mexican Riviera. For tickets and more information, visit writingexcuses.com/retreats. 

 

[Season 19, Episode 27]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Close Reading on Character: An Overview and Why We Chose C. L. Clark's Short Stories. 

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

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Erin] I am very excited that we're doing a trio of stories for this section of our close reading. Because I love to write short stories, but also, I think that there's a lot that you can learn from looking at one author doing a few different short stories. So, as a reminder, we're going to be doing C. L. Clark's stories, You Perfect, Broken Thing, The Cook, and Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home. Which were all actually published in Uncanny Magazine. I think, Mary Robinette, you were the one who brought these stories first to our attention. What made you think of them?

[Mary Robinette] So, I have known C. L. Clark for a couple of years, and one of the things that I love about their writing is that they can be extremely emotional, get deep into a character, within a very compressed space. One of the first things that I read of theirs was You Perfect, Broken Thing. Like, even today, I had to reread just to prep for this, it still makes me cry when I get to the end. That's a really beautiful gift, from a short story, is to have this kind of in-depth emotional response. The other thing that I love about it is that there's a very clear character arc that happens, and the character is encountering several different emotional spaces. Not only is the character inhabiting those different emotional spaces, the style of writing that C. L. Clark deploys to convey that is so specific to each moment, that it's… I thought that it was a really good example of "Look at this! Look at how much freedom you have when you are attempting to convey character."

[DongWon] We hear the word character-driven a lot when talking about different kinds of fiction, different kinds of stories. C. L. Clark's work really drives that home. It definitely feels like the character has taken the wheel of the car of this story and has just taken us wherever they're going to go. Right? There's so many unexpected choices for surprising or nuanced things that the characters say or do that in each… All three of these stories will catch me off guard in a way that was so delightful and so fun. In a couple of them, really, making choices that were almost borderline [garbled] choices in ways that I think are so relatable and understandable and… I can't even be mad at them when they've done something that I so heartily disagree with.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Exactly. The other thing that I really like with this is the second story that we mentioned, The Cook, is supershort. It's like 800 and… It's less than 900 words. There is major action that happens offstage and all we're looking at in this story is the difference in the way to people are relating to each other, based on this major action that happens offstage, but the major action is not the interesting part. So it just gets quickly referred to in just a couple of lines, and then we go on. I find that very compelling, that… There are a lot of these character portraits that I find in their work.

 

[Howard] I want to tie a couple of things together here and clarify something. Erin, you said you love to write short stories, and, Mary Robinette, you mentioned The Cook. I love to read short stories. I was trying to figure out why, and I realized I think I like to read them for the same reason I like to eat tapas. I love being able to get in one bite a million flavors all at once. You think of a novel as… It could be a three-course dinner, it could be a pepperoni pizza with everything, it could be… If you think of it as a pepperoni pizza, or a pizza with everything, thinking of short stories as deconstructions of the pizza, as tapas, little bits of those things that would be in the full meal, and which, in and of themselves, are complete. That, coming back to the idea of just being a cook, that is the mastery that I found in reading these. That… They're small, but there is so much in there.

[Erin] One of the things I like is that… To just build on this pizza analogy, which I love, and is making me hungry, is that these are three different lengths of stories. There short stories, but one is this very tiny pizza bite type of like…

[DongWon] It's a bagel bite.

[Laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] trying to think of a name for them. It's a little… Thank you. Bagel bites. You have one that's basically, like, maybe a cross section…

[DongWon] A hot pocket.

[Erin] The hot pocket. You're…

[DongWon] I'm on it.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Okay, I just want to be clear that the story is way better a story than a hot pocket is a food.

[DongWon] Hey, some people like hot pockets [garbled] hot pockets.

[Erin] The third is maybe a slice. So, each one of them… Because it's the same author writing them, there's a certain… There's certain things that are done in all of the stories that makes us… Like, there's cheese in all three of those things. Theoretically. But the way that that cheese would be expressed is different.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Erin] Similarly, like, things like a description of another person, all of these have relationships also at their core. But the way that people are described is slightly different when you have three words to do it versus a sentence versus maybe a paragraph.

[DongWon] One of the reasons we chose Time War is because there's like 3 to 4 different voices in that book. So it's really useful to break it down and compare. Short fiction, similarly, because they're bite sizes, the metaphor we've landed on, it's very easy to figure out how to talk about different aspects and highlight different aspects. Being able to cover a collection of short stories, a handful of them here, let's us really compare and contrast how the author is highlighting different aspects of character, drawing out different elements of character, across all three stories. So I think it'll make for a really dynamic and fun conversation.

[Howard] When we do close readings, the power of these, for me, is being able to reference the text, being able to read to you, fair listener, the words that did the thing. With the short stories, it's so much easier to find the words. Because, you know what, in this one, there's only six sentences to choose from that did this bit of lifting on that character.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I find, having gone from short stories to novels, is that the skills that I learned in short fiction, I deploy in novel form so that I have more space for… Like, I establish a character very, very quickly because I've learned these skills in short form. Which gives me more space to have character development, to have other things that are happening and interesting. Whereas I see a lot of people who are early career spending chapters and chapters trying to establish this character and all of this painful back story of the character. Frequently, when you look at short fiction, you're able to establish painful back story in just one or two sentences, maybe a paragraph. Especially when we get into You Perfect, Broken Thing, there is so much worldbuilding in that that's just conveyed superfast in super economical terms.

[DongWon] Well, that's kind of the thing that I want to talk about is there something Clark does so masterfully here, which is have this laser focus on character and be so late with worldbuilding. So much of the worldbuilding is defined in negative space. Right? The Cook is a great example of this, but all three stories do this in different ways, where there is very little that they are telling us about explicitly here's why this contest is happening, here's why the world is like this, is why these people have been persecuted out of existence. All that is left in the margins of the story, and not addressed. Because they don't matter, unless they matter to the character interaction. So we understand the world enough to understand why characters are making the choices that they make and that's it. It's a stop at that point. I think that is so cool, and is such a great demonstration of how much you can do if you really hone one of the tools in your kit. Then, when you carry that into novel writing, I think when you have that more expansive space to do the stuff that is offscreen in these stories, you still have that strong foundation in knowing how to write character, how to write that element.

[Erin] Yeah. I love when you said the worldbuilding sort of just comes in when it's needed. I remember in Your Eyes, My Beacon, that there's this the high court, which is…

[DongWon] Yeah. But barely mentioned.

[Erin] Like, all of a sudden, they were mentioned and I'm like, "Oh. Actually, I think this is the first time I hearing about high court. But it's very cool that both of the characters are very familiar with it." But didn't… It didn't need to be mentioned to me until this moment. I really thought this was like sort of an audacious but amazing choice. Because the time that you spend explaining the high court takes you out of the moment between these two characters is there trying to figure out what to do within this lighthouse.

[DongWon] It barely comes up again, but is this constant threat throughout the story. I never forget about the high court for the rest of the story, but it's mentioned maybe twice, off the top of my head.

[Erin] Yeah.

[Howard] On the subject of taking you into and out of the moment, we're going to take a quick break, and be back in a moment.

 

[Dan] This week, our thing of the week is called… A role-playing game called Monster of the Week, which, as that name implies, is based around this kind of TV show Supernatural or Buffy or X-Files. The kind of show where each week there is another monster and you have to figure out what it is and deal with it. The reason I am recommending it is because it gets so creative with the powers that you have in the way that these powers help you to tell a particular kind of story. So, for example, one of the character classes has the power of getting captured by the monster. That is literally their superpower. The reason that that is useful is because getting captured helps reveal all kinds of things, where does the monster hang out, what kinds of powers does the monster have, and it fits into that genre of storytelling that you see on shows like Supernatural, where someone will get captured and then gets to talk to the monster or see how they work. So the sh… Game, once again, is called Monster of the Week and it's awesome. Check it out.

 

[Mary Robinette] Right. As we come back from the break, I want to give you a couple of very specific tools to be thinking about with character. Then, what we're going to do is, we're going to read to you the opening of… Just the first paragraph of each of the three stories, so you can hear how these tools are being manipulated even in this… In these tiny, tiny spaces. So these tools are about a character's identity. Ability, role, relationship, and status. We're going to dig more into these in the next episode, but right now what I want you to think about is ability, the things a character can and cannot do. This is all about how a character self defines. So the things they can and cannot do. Role are the tasks, responsibilities, that move them through the world. Relationship is about their loyalties. Then, status is about where they are in a power structure. So, as you are listening to us read these, think about ability, role, relationship, and status, and how they are manifesting even in these compressed spaces. Just these first paragraphs.

[Erin] I'll start with the opening of You Perfect, Broken Thing.

 

When I leave the kill floor, my legs are wasted. I shuffle to the women’s locker room. I can’t stand anymore, but I know if I sit, I’ll never get back up. At least, not for another hour.

 

[Mary Robinette] The Cook.

 

The first time I see her, it’s just a glimpse. I’m standing in the inn’s common room and the other warriors straddle chairs and call for ale. While some reach for a serving wench or boy, cheeks to pinch, a life to grasp—my stomach growls a monster’s growl. I should be slain; the growl is that fierce. I smell the roasting lamb, the unmistakable sneeze of freshly ground peppercorns, and garlic, but it’s all hidden behind the kitchen door.

 

[DongWon] Your Eyes, My Beacon.

 

She is light. Until she is not, and the lighthouse goes dark as the waves crash against the cliffside, the rocks at its foot jutting and jagged, a peril to even the most skilled navigators’ ships.

 

[Mary Robinette] So you can see how they are manipulating those things, even in these tiny spaces. That first one, we're seeing ability, the ability of the character completely manipulated. In the second one, we're looking at the tasks, I'm hungry and need to eat, and in the moment, that's everything that's defining this character. Then, in this last one, she is light, again, we're back to tasks, but also this role…

[DongWon] The status really comes in here.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] As she's failing to complete this task, as her ability fails her, suddenly her power and her status becomes very much in question.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] I think to do that with something that was really interesting I noticed between The Cook and Your Eyes, My Beacon, is, I think The Cook is very much relationship. The first time I see her, it's just a glimpse. It's about a specific other person, is being centered, really early on. Whereas in Your Eyes, My Beacon, when it talks about the lighthouse goes dark, a peril even to the most skilled navigators' ships, you can tell it's a role or status, I guess, because it's affecting all the ships. It's no longer about a single… It's not that ship. It's all the ships out there. That's where you can tell, like, it's a specific person's status or place in the world versus their place with regards to another individual.

 

[Mary Robinette] So this is just kind of a little bit of a preview of some of the things that we're going to be talking about over the next couple of weeks. And why we're so excited to be exploring the work of C. L. Clark.

[Howard] I want to look at The Cook again, because this, the shortest of the three, that first paragraph gives us so much information, and some of it is inherently mimetic, in that we are being given information by being asked to recall things that are not in the story. The sentence I'm talking about, I'm standing in the inn's common room and other warriors straddle chairs and call for ale. Inn, common, warriors, ale. Pathfinder or D&D. You are there. Those are words that get used all the time. If you tell yourself, oh, I'm in a D&D setting, or I'm in a Pathfinder setting, or I'm in some sort of Western fantasy-esque role-playing game setting, except I'm telling a story, you know what, that's good enough. The story will play with that backdrop you've painted. We were told to paint it by being given those four words in quick succession.

[Mary Robinette] Exactly. It leaves so much more space to then explore character. So you don't have to do a ton of worldbuilding. That allows you to then… The negative space that DongWon was talking about before, that allows you then to just focus on the character. Again, in that… In The Cook, the first time I see her, it's just a glimpse. One of the other tools you're going to hear me talking about is recency or primacy effect. By starting with this is the most important thing in this story. The first time I see her.

[DongWon] It's funny, we almost get the inverse of that with Your Eyes, My Beacon, because we are starting with her, we are starting with the she is light, and by the time we get to the reveal of what's going on with the lighthouse keeper, I… Me at least, completely forgot about this opening. Right? Completely forgot about the connection between the character and being light. Then, when that comes back, it's such a thrilling moment.

 

[Erin] I also wanted to note that the first time I see her, it's just a glimpse… The first time. Because you know there will be a next time. I love words like that, that help to create anticipation naturally in us by telling us there is a sequence of events, and if you wait, we'll get to the next one in the sequence.

[DongWon] All three of these imply future action. Right? We have her leaving the kill floor, this sort of athlete pushed to her limits. We're going to get more about this. Right? You get the first time I see her, you get the lighthouse going out, and the consequence of that. All three are such a great way of rooting yourself in character, but with momentum. Right? I think sometimes when people talk about characters, it can feel very static, because it's a portrait of here's a person who existed at a point in time. But the thing is people aren't static, they are in motion. C. L. Clark is a master at giving us that velocity. Each one of these, I feel like I'm coming off the starting block, and just sprinting away into the distance.

 

[Howard] There's a line from… I think it's… I think Hogarth speaks it in Iron Giant where he tells the Iron Giant, "You are who you choose to be." I love that line. You are who you choose to be. Just show us a choice. Show us the character making a choice. Now we know who they are in that moment. We don't know what their next choice… What they'll choose next time, but we now know enough. It's motion.

[DongWon] Yeah. But I love how that also feels in tension with this idea of character as destiny. Right? They are going to make choices and they have choice… They have agency, which, we're going to talk a lot more about in a future episode, but also, there almost trapped by who they are and what they need to be, and watching them struggle against that is so much the dynamism of these stories. Of how do you make a choice when you have to go fight a war? How do you make a choice when you can't leave the kitchen? How do you make a choice when you need to save your family? That is so fun.

[Howard] I want to come back to the kitchen. One last comment about tapas and…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] About the length of short stories. I was served something called a dragon's tear at a sushi restaurant. Which was basically a slice of habanero, teardrop shaped, wrapped around a little nugget of wasabi.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, no!

[Howard] Okay. That is one bite of heat and tears and sneezing and regret…

[Heehee]

[Howard] And joy.

[DongWon] What did you do to piss those folks off?

[Laughter]

[Howard] It's… But, see, here's the thing. I don't want a plate of dragon's tears.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] I just want one. I want to go on that ride one time. Okay. I'll go back to that restaurant and get another one. Because it was fun. That, for me, is what short fiction can do. I don't know what this is going to taste like when I start reading it. It doesn't have a book cover. It's not shelved somewhere in the fantasy or science fiction section. My expectations are nebulous.

 

[Erin] I think that is a perfect time to go to the homework, which I have for this week. Which is to write a series of sentences. Each one… Pick a character that you have and write that character's name is someone who… And then something about them. Then write it again, and again, and again and again and again. Until you run out of things and you have to continue to keep writing, because that will help you find levels to your character that maybe not even you anticipated.

 

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

 

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