Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-08-identity-3-stakes-and-fears

 

Key points: Stakes and fears. Relationships? What will make the character feel less about themselves? A friend might die? Your parent will be disappointed? Stakes often are what will I lose, rather than what will I gain.  Sometimes stakes are small. Low stakes sometimes become important. What is the worst thing that could happen? Sometimes big stakes aren't as important as small ones. What fears do you give a character? There's a hole, an absence in the character. Do we fear the unknown, or do we fear knowing it? Be obvious. Courage is picking up a flashlight and looking in the dark corner. Trauma points, along axes of safety, connection, and empowerment. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 08]

 

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

 

[DongWon] We're excited to announce that our 2025 retreats are open for registration. Join us in Minnesota June 15th through 21st for a regenerate retreat where you will learn new skills, generate new ideas, or focus on your writing. With lots of opportunities for restoration and networking, you'll leave refreshed and reinvigorated. Tickets start at $1500 per person. You can also sail the high seas September 18th through 26th. We'll sail out of Los Angeles on the Royal Caribbean Navigator of the Seas and explore the Mexican Riviera while refining your writing. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or tweaking your prose, you'll leave more confident in your current story. Tickets start at 2650 for writers and 2350 for family members. To learn more, visit writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Season 20, Episode 08]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Character stakes and fears.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[DongWon] This week, we're continuijng our conversation about sort of the lenses of who, talking about character. The thing that I wanted to focus on this week is talking about how the fears that a character has and the stakes that a character faces help move them through the story, and help create the story that exists around them. Right? So, last time, we talked a lot about motivation and goals. The way I think about motivation and goals is very internal. Right? That is how the character's relating to themselves. When it comes to stakes, now we are getting to the parts where we're starting to feel tension, where the audience is relating to the character, we understand what their goals are, but now are feeling the pressure that they're facing and how that's moving them through the world. So when I think about stakes, I don't necessarily think necessarily about failure or danger, because we are all… Your readers are all people. As people, we tend to care about other people. So, what we care about are relationships more than we care about physical danger. Right? So, starting in an action scene can sometimes feel a little flat. But if you put a relationship under pressure in that, that's where a little bit more of that juice can come from. So, how do you guys think about creating stakes, especially initially when you're jumping into a story?

[Mary Robinette] I usually think about something that makes… Will make the character feel like less of themselves. So I find that early on, and then I say this with early career writers, that I would say, well, this… The goal is to have the eight gems of Rovisla…

[Laughter]

[Erin] We got a C in it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Sorry. I do pronounce…

[Howard] That letter's supposed to be an apostrophe.

[Mary Robinette] I do pronounce the apostrophes. It's a regional variation. So… If they fail, then they don't have the eight gems. An inverse of the goal is not… Like, that's not compelling. Or they're like… And then they might die, which is actually, like, the least compelling…

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Thing. I think, then, a friend might die. But that's…

[DongWon] Or your parent will think you're a failure because you didn't bring the eight gems back.

[Mary Robinette] Yep. That's significantly worse for most people.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] You do not want someone to be disappointed in you.

 

[Dan] Yeah. I think a lot of stakes often come down to what do I stand to lose rather than what do I stand to gain. It's not so much about gaining those gems. This is how the D&D movie starts, is look at this great life that I had before everything went wrong. We see him throughout the movie trying to get back to zero. Just trying to struggle back to regain the things that he lost in the first place.

[Mary Robinette] Sometimes the stake can be really kind of small. Like, when you look at… Back at, This Is How You Lose the Timewar, that initial stake was if I don't check this, I'm going to be curious for the rest of my immortal life. Just that, oh, what am I going to miss? It's a small thing, but it is the thing that also is the catalyst.

[DongWon] Then, the stakes of that so quickly become what does this other person think of me? They might think I'm not a worthy competitor. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Not think I'm a worthy companion by the end of it. The evolution of that stake is the thing that gives so much of the tension to that little novel.

 

[Erin] One thing I really like is when something feels low stakes, and then it turns out that it was worse than you thought. When the thing…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, oh, I'm just, like, trying to, like, get my cup of coffee so that I can make it through the day. But actually it turns out that there's something about… I cannot think what that would be… About getting that cup of coffee that is, like, suddenly the most important thing. Because when you're doing something low stakes, like, if you're doing a low stakes mission in life, you're not super prepared, you're just, like, I need to do this one thing. I'm only bringing what I need to get this small thing done. If that small thing becomes huge, then, all of a sudden, you are unprepared, you're afraid that you will fail, you feel like you have not brought your best self maybe to the table. Then it taps into those deeper fears about who am I, what will people think of me. It's sort of the same thing that gets people to often… When I go to karaoke, people will talk about how bad their voice is today. You don't want people to think that you're doing your best and you failed. You're either…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It's like, I could have done better if things had been set up differently for me.

[Mary Robinette] I see this in critique groups. I actually have my critique or's do a ritual apology before we begin where everybody apologizes all at the same time. Because all of them are afraid that people will think that they're not a good writer, and that they are lesser. I… When I'm sometimes talking to a student who's having a little bit of a meltdown, I'm like, okay, but what is actually the worst thing that could go wrong if someone doesn't like your story? They're like, it doesn't get published. I'm like, and what's the worst thing that can go wrong if it doesn't get published? I write a new story? I'm like, great.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Is that a bad outcome? No?

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Dan] Yeah.

[[DongWon] For an example, I'm going back to your sort of coffee thing becoming bigger stakes. One of my favorite escalation of stakes scenes in a movie is in The Devil Wears Prada. Where, early on, and he goes to get coffee for her boss and brings it back, and, kind of like is in a meeting about… I can't remember exactly what it's about… And she kind of snickers at something. There's this incredible speech that Miranda goes through about the color of the sweater that Andy is wearing in this scene, the periwinkle blue speech, and it's like this thing that goes from the stakes of my job are absurd, I'm getting coffee for someone who runs a fashion magazine, to understanding the perspective of the people who run this magazine and why clothes and fashion and aesthetics matter in the world and the context of that, and her realizing that, oh, no, I want the positive regard of this woman who is now yelling at me because I didn't take this seriously enough. So that slow escalation as we understand the terms of the movie and the stakes of everything that's going to come in the rest of the movie is just a masterfully done scene.

 

[Dan] At the same time, one of my favorite tropes is the complete opposite of this. Where we realize that what we thought were the big big stakes really aren't as important as the small stakes.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] The Perdiem Chronicles does this really well.

[DongWon] Oh, yeah.

[Dan] Throughout, where… For the several books, they don't need him to be a hero. They need him to be an assistant pig keeper.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Because the pig's the hero, and they need him to do that. In book 4, this kind of comes to ahead with one of my favorite lines where he's trying to work with the witches, and they say, "Any hero can soar with the eagles. But let's see him scratch for his own worms." Like, learning how to be a person, learning how to fend for yourself, how to survive in the world is so much more important than one or two acts of heroism.

[Howard] I got to thinking about the stakes and the fears in the very first Iron Man movie. Because the movie begins and Tony Stark wants for nothing. He can afford to blow the deal, he can afford to… He can afford to screw up because he's so rich. It just doesn't matter. Then the very first set of stakes he's presented with are now you might die. Now you need to invent or die. Those aren't the big stakes. He invents, he saves his life, and then he puts the whole company at risk. Now it is… Now he might not have money. Then we find out what was really happening here is someone's trying to take the company from you, and they're going to find another way to kill you. The final battle in the movie is because Tony doesn't want them to hurt Pepper. It comes back to a personal thing. It is not I need to where the Iron Man suit to save the world or to save the company or to save my life. It is because my friend might die.

[DongWon] So, while we all contemplate what we're all afraid of enough to make us a hero, let's take a break.

 

[DongWon] Welcome back. So we've been talking sort of about character stakes and how that relates to relationships. Right? One of the things that comes into that idea of stakes is the concept of fear. Right? We often have seen fear in stories as a negative to be overcome. But when you're thinking of how you're constructing character arc, how you're constructing a character, how are you thinking of what do I want to make this character afraid of? What fears are you putting into your characters that will help move them forward through the story?

[Mary Robinette] So this is why we wanted to tie these episodes together, because I will often look at their goals and motivations. What I find is that there's something that the character… There's a hole, there is an absence in the character, there's something. They are either rushing towards things, which are their goals, to try to fill it, or they are running away from the goal. So the… Having to confront, oh, this is a lack in myself is something that a lot of people are afraid of. Like, no one wants to confront their failings, their… No one wants to confront the fact that they're vain. Or no one wants to confront the fact that they're insecure. No one wants to confront, like, people want to be self-sufficient. So if I can create a fear and a reason to trigger that fear in them, that causes them to have to confront that or, to, like, flee from it. It's like I don't want to believe that I'm selfish, so I'm going to help these people. But they're constantly, like, but maybe I don't help them…

 

[Howard] We talk a lot about how people tend to fear the unknown. I don't think were actually afraid of the unknown. I think were afraid of knowing it. I… There's a thing out there that I don't know anything about and I would prefer not to. It may be a truth about me. It may be the fact that layoffs are coming. But there is a dark corner out there that I don't want to peer into, because it has information in it that is going to force me onto a new path, and I would rather continue to live with ignorance as bliss. Ignorance isn't actually bliss. But it's not the fear of the unknown, it's the fear of learning a thing that will now force me to change.

[DongWon] I would say it's even more than that. It's the fear of how other people see you changing.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

 

[DongWon] Right? That in encountering the unknown, you will be forced to change in some way through that encounter and what your partner thinks or what your children think of you, what your friends think of you, what your boss thinks of you, all these will change when that layoff comes. The thing you're afraid of is how do I survive that? Is that a survivable encounter? So I think that tapping into that fear is going to be the thing that will drive your characters forward. The thing I want to emphasize about when we talk about character fears like this, there's an instruction in the game dialect that's a player instruction that I love a lot. The instruction is very simple, it just says be obvious. As a player, when you're making choices, make really obvious choices. That will lead to complexity through the interaction of everyone at the table making obvious choices. Not overthinking it. So leaning into what your character's afraid of in a Broadway will lead to specificity because of all the other stuff we've talked about in this section when were talking about the lens of who as they bounce off the other characters in your plot. But don't be afraid of them being afraid of a really broad thing, of, oh, my partner's not going to like me, my parents won't love me anymore. My sister will hate me now. Right? Like, those are really juicy, really powerful motivators that I think drive most people as they move through the world.

[Dan] Well, it's not just those choices that can be really obvious. But the resolutions, the ways of dealing with them, can be really blunt and obvious as well. Going back to a previous episode, we talked about Toy Story… Or I talked about Toy Story…

[Laughter]

[Dan] His… What he really fears there is that he has no value. Unless he… And he… Once again, he misinterprets that by saying, I will have value if I am the favorite toy. That all comes to a head when he gives the huge speech to Buzz. You're a cool toy. That is not only the moment where he convinces Buzz that it's okay to be a toy instead of an actual spaceman, that is very clearly and obviously the moment where Woody is convincing himself, being a cool toy is awesome even if I'm not the favorite toy. I don't need to find external validation. I can just love me for who I am. Whether I'm the favorite toy or not.

[Mary Robinette] It's occurring to me that what we're talking about here is basically give your character imposter syndrome.

[Laughter]

[Howard] One of the thoughts that I had just a moment ago, after talking about the fear of the unknown, the fear of knowing the unknown. Courage, to me, has always been defined as moving forward despite fear. Not an absence of fear, it's moving forward despite fear. I love the idea that if were not afraid of the unknown, we're afraid of knowing what's there, then courage is picking up the flashlight and looking at what's in the corner. That, just as a metaphor for me feels like an easy sort of litmus test, lens if you will, for looking at what my character's doing and deciding, well, in act one, they're staying away from the corner. They're not peering into the shadows, and things are coming out of the shadows and they are reacting. In act two, Act III, they're picking up the flashlight and they are staring at what they were afraid to stare at before.

 

[Mary Robinette] I sometimes look at really primal fears as a thing to give a character. But I was having… I was talking to my therapist and she started talking about trauma points. I'm like, I'm sorry, sorry, can you repeat those? I'm just going to start taking notes right now…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I'm like, stop doing a therapy session and started being a… This is really useful.

[Howard] I no longer need therapy, I have a professional interest in the information you're providing.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So she said that most people have these trauma points where something bad happened in childhood. Most of the time, you are not actually aware of what that is, because it happened when you were fairly young. But it was a long one of three axes, safety, connection, and empowerment. When we are looking at our Tony Stark example, the thing for him, his trauma point was connection, because of his damaged relationship with his mom… With his dad. You can see that. It's, like, how does he handle that? He makes Jeeves, who's in artificial intelligence… Boo, hiss… Artificial intelligence connection. He buys friends, essentially. Then when he realizes he has genuine friends, that then becomes the most vulnerable thing for him, because it's something he absolutely cannot lose.

[Erin] I think that doesn't necessarily mean that every… I mean, we can traumatize every character, and we should…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] But we don't have to actually, because sometimes I think some of that is based on traumatic experiences, but also some of it's just a staying alive lizard brain, like, human response. Like… Safety, like, every creature has a desire to stay alive. Like, as a species, like, they do things that will help to keep them alive.

[Howard] Whether you're a mother or whether you're a brother…

[Erin] Exactly.

[Howard] Staying alive…

[Oo, oo, oo…]

[Laughter]

[Erin] Like, I think of, like, my cat… Like every… Cats want to get high. Like when I…

[Laughter]

[Erin] There's a tornado warning… Yes, they do, in every sense. No, but whenever… When there's a tornado warning…

[DongWon] I've lost many a spider plant to cats, so, yes.

[Erin] Yeah, like you're like… I'll be like, no, we have to, like, get it in a lower part of the house.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] Because there's a tornado. But the cats, just, like, something is weird in the air and the best way to get away from weird things is to get as high as possible where I cannot possibly care anymore. No, to get to like a higher elevation where I can keep an eye on everything. It's just kind of baked in. We have our own thing with that. We are also safer in numbers. Humans as a species have, like, not very good, like, actual personal defenses. Like we don't have, like, really tough hides or really sharp teeth. We've got these opposable thumbs and the ability to come together in a group and build tools that help to keep us safe. So all of these things are things that are very baked in, I think, is very primal fears.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Empowerment, being able to take action to change the environment around you, because we don't necessarily physically adapt to our environments the way that, like, a reptile might.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So I think it's really nice to think about, like, those primal fears. I also just wanted to say that… I love to write, like, horrible people as characters. So I'm, like, they don't do that, like, when they… They let their fears get the best of them. So, a lot of times, I love thinking about what happens if the character does not overcome their fears. What if they do the thing… They're like I'm afraid that no one will love me so I won't let anyone, or, I will put up a wall. That's just going to be my character arc is becoming a worse version of myself. So it can be something that drives your characters positively or negatively.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. That's something that, like, as you were talking, was making me think about Sour Milk Girls, and how, like, the fear absolutely takes over that character. For listeners who are just joining us, you can hear a deep dive about that in season 18.

[DongWon] Yeah. It's what makes a truly relatable villain pop off the page…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Is understanding where they're coming from, understanding where what their fears are rooted in. It's also what allows you to give a hero a truly believable low point. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] The low point of them giving into a fear that you've seen them grapple with and understand intimately over the course of the series, that let you buy into the moment where the hero does fail. Because so often we see those moments and they fall flat, because it's not connected to anything. There was nothing actually at stake for the hero when things went off the rails. So, giving them things to care about, giving them goals and motivation, but then giving them fears that go alongside those, that is the thing that I think really can juice your story and get it to that next level.

[Mary Robinette] I will say also that going back to the idea of the traumas, the trauma does not have to be a big trauma.

[DongWon] Oh, yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Like, my… I don't know what some of… Like, what my trauma triggers are. But knowing the axes that it's on can really help clarify how a character reacts to things. Which again can help you shape the plot when you apply that lens to your story.

[DongWon] Exactly. On that note, I think we should go to some homework.

[Mary Robinette] I think that sounds like a great idea.

[Dan] Absolutely.

[DongWon] To traumatize our listeners a little bit more.

[Laughter]

 

[DongWon] So the first thing I want you to do is to make a note of all the major things that your main character is afraid of. List out those things, the fears that they have. Then, take your MC and draw a little map of all the characters that there connected to, and describe their connections to these other characters in one sentence or less. Now compare the list of relationships you've made to the list of fears that you've made for that character, and see if those two lists are in conversation with each other. Are they supporting each other, or are they completely disconnected? If they are disconnected, start thinking about how do I bring these two closer together to sort of get that feedback loop between relationship and fear?

 

[Mary Robinette] 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/19-32-an-interview-on-character-with-cl-clark 

 

Key points: What do you do when you think "It's time for me to write a short story and it should have a character?" Triage your characters, who would be there. Then pick a few you are interested in, and ask what they want, and drill down into the stakes. Big stakes or internal stakes? Both! Relationships. Do you approach character differently when you write novel length versus short length? Yes. If they are loadbearing, you need to flesh them out. How do you pick what to include in a short story? Not so much picking out what to put in, but what to take out. Pay attention to what you want to play with. 

 

[Season 19, Episode 32]

 

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

 

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

 

[Season 19, Episode 32]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Erin] An Interview on Character with CL Clark.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

 

[Mary Robinette] And we have a special guest with us today, CL Clark. You've been reading their work for a couple of weeks, now we are extremely happy to have them with us.

[CL] Hi, everyone. I'm CL Clark. I am the author of The Unbroken and The Faithless and several short stories. I'm really excited to be here. Yay.

 

[Mary Robinette] So, the reason that we picked your stories was we wanted to have this conversation about character. There were a couple of things that short stories offered the opportunity to do, which was to look at how you built three different characters, three different POV characters, in a very compressed space. We looked at The Cook, Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an account of several misadventures and how I found my way home, and You Perfect, Broken Thing. All three of these characters are really distinct. They have different backgrounds, they have different personalities, different wants. What… Like, what are you doing when you're sitting down and thinking, "Well, it's time for me to write a short story and I guess it should have a character?"

[CL] Okay. So, I should also say that I have been a really big fan of Writing Excuses from a very, very long time ago.

[Chuckles]

[CL] So, one of the things that I do, not with every story, but for many stories, I actually stole from you, Mary Robinette.

[Mary Robinette] Oh. How convenient.

[Chuckles]

[CL] Very convenient. But I used to be a patreon on your Patreon, and you shared at some point this sort of plot process thing that you did. There's… At the beginning of that plot processing, you do this sort of… Or you did, I don't know if you still do it, but I found it really helpful. That you would do this kind of triaging of the characters, and, like, starting with who would be there at this whatever place or situation you'd be in. Pick a few that you'd be interested in in focusing on or that you're just mostly interested in. Then asking what they want, and drilling down into the stakes. I found that the more you figured out a character's world and situation, the better… The more distinct they became. The more distinct they became, the more interesting their story was and the more they… I was able to kind of hone in on what made this story different from other stories that I was writing.

[Mary Robinette] I think that that's… So, first of all, I'm super glad that that worksheet is useful. It is on the podcast website, so folks can grab it. But I also find that, like, knowing what is important to a character is one of the things that really drives this. Part of the reason this is coming to, like, oh, yeah, it's a really good reminder, is that I just wrote a short story with a character who is a secondary character in the Lady Astronaut novels, and wrote her as a main character, and realized I did not know her at all. It is that, like, what is she afraid of? What does she want? What does happiness look like for her?

[CL] Definitely.

 

[Erin] I was going to say, I wonder, because I was thinking about, like, what characters want. I think one of the really interesting things in all of these stories is that all of the characters have, like, big wants on the surface, like, big things that they're dealing with, like, I need to get through this competition, I need to… I'm in the middle of this war. I need to figure out what's going on with this lighthouse. But I feel like when I think about the characters and what they want, I keep thinking back to their relationships with the other characters. So I'm wondering, like, when you're coming up with this, are you thinking about those big stakes, are you thinking about, like, their internal, like, what they're dealing with on the inside, both?

[CL] Both.

[Chuckles]

[CL] Because I like… I really like writing stories about relationships and not always romantic, but often romantic. Just because I think stories are the most interesting for me personally when the thing that is getting in the way is another person. That other person can also be yourself. It's very often, like, I want this and I also want that, and somehow they're mutually exclusive. But how somebody navigates around another person, not necessarily just in like a physical, like… Now I'm going to beat this person and kill them and now I have whatever, but, like, negotiating or developing a relationship to get what you want is very interesting to me. So they're not necessarily distinct when I think of whatever the stakes are. But since that other person is usually one of the three characters that I kind of brainstormed at the beginning, they just sort of come looped together already. If that makes sense. Like, they're a web that I can start pulling on and tying together.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, that does make sense. Because there's that saying, everybody's the hero of their own story. So if you start thinking about what the stakes are, what the other person's wants are. One of the things that I particularly love in The Cook is how much that story is really just about the relationship. Like, there's this massive war that happens offstage that we spent a lot of time talking about how delicious it is to watch both characters change in each scene that they're in. The relationship to each other inflected by this experience that we don't participate in. We only participate in their relationship. That's, I think, one of the things that is really, like, really lovely and beautiful about having given them both something that they want, something that's driving them.

[Erin] Yeah. I also think it's interesting because, like, even though, like, the war is such a small part in some ways of the story, it casts such a big shadow. Like, it's not like you could take that story and be like, it's not a war anymore, it's a parade…

[Laughter]

[Erin] And it would be the same story. You know what I mean. It would be a very, very different story. I love that you're able to…

[Mary Robinette] [garbled thematic story]

[Erin] [garbled] planning or something instruments…

[Garlic yeah]

[Erin] But the amazing thing about the parade version of the Cook is such a different story, because we feel the impact of things that you didn't even show us. I love that you're saying that they come to you intertwined, because they feel intertwined. It feels like if you took out a thread from one, it would unravel the thread of the other, even if it isn't a thread that we see that, like, hugely on the page, like explicitly. So I just love that.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Also, please write The Cook at the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

[Mary Robinette] Please. Yeah.

[Laughter]

[CL] Hey, a fanfiction. I do do a fanfiction of my own works.

[Erin] Do you really? Wait, wait, wait. Say more?

[Mary Robinette] We're going to do…

[CL] I'm sorry. Some of it is not as wholesome, so…

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Erin] I know what I'm doing after this. Okay!

 

[Mary Robinette] Yep. Have the same thoughts. [Garbled] novels, that's interesting to me. Do you find that you have to approach character differently when you write at novel length than you do when you're writing at short length?

[CL] Absolutely. 100 percent. But, like, just on the very barest level. Kind of what you said, Mary Robinette, about your side character that you didn't know at all when you actually started trying to write her story. Some stuff that I can get away with in a short story just doesn't fly in a novel. Because, for me, I can just feel it when I have to be with a character longer, even if there a side character. If they have any loadbearing at all, and they're not fleshed out enough, I can just feel it, and every scene with them feels a little flat. Or they… I don't know, they just don't feel… I've actually been dealing with this recently with characters in a couple of different books. There's just something about even scenes that they're not in or other character storylines, like main character storylines, that feel off if someone is supposed to be important but they're not fleshed out enough to them. So, like… Well, I'll just say so. In the novel series, in the Unbroken and The Faithless, there is a friend of the princes's named Sabeen who I love to pieces, but I had to work a lot on her, because she has not ever gotten a point of view chapter or anything like that, but she supposed to be really important to Luca. Enough that Luca make some questionable decisions about her. Or around her. If she's not, if Sabeen is not a strong enough character to deserve those decisions…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[CL] Then the whole book kind of falls apart. So… Yes. It's very different that way.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I wonder if… As we're thinking about it, because I do tend to think of them as being in the same general toolbox, I wonder how much of it is audience expectation that in a short story, we know that the author can't include everything, and so we're used to filling in the gaps for them, but in the novel, we hunger for that, for those details that are not necessarily there, and we're with them longer too.

[Erin] I think it's also that idea of loadbearing. Like, I love that is a concept. Like, you're not holding up as much stuff. Like, as short story is, like, you're just holding up an umbrella.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And not a house. So the amount that you need to know in order to bear that load, seems like it would be a lot less.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I mean…

[Erin] I don't know if that is true for you, or even how you figure out what it is that you need to know to make the story work, either in short or in novel length.

[CL] I think, like… Definitely one of the things that seems easier in a short story is… Not easier, just for the characters that… Part of the reason, I think, that you can sort of sketch out just is partly reader expectation, but partly it's easier to work with negative space when, like, so much of a short story and the world building and the plot, all of it, is negative space.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[CL] Whereas with a novel, all of it is… Not all of it, but a much higher percentage of it is fully filled out. Like, main characters in short stories are not the fullest, most fleshed out things always compared to a novel protagonist.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I like the way you're thinking about it with negative space. That probably appeals to me because I was an art major. For people who haven't heard this term before, it refers to a concept when you're looking at a picture. There's the object that… The subject of the picture. There's a vase, or a person. Then the negative space is all of the stuff that is around them. That negative space is as much a part of the composition is the figure itself I think it's a very useful concept in short fiction. The one where you see it the most clearly is The Cook, where so much of the war happens in the negative space. But I think it's also… It's also there very much in You Perfect, Broken Thing as well. Just lines like one of my favorite lines in the… I mean, I have a lot of favorite lines. But at the end of the very first thing, you say, "This is not my first race." That is such a good example of like telling you so much. You're not describing all of the other races, you're not doing any of that. But you're giving us this negative space, and we can pour the rest of ourselves into it. I think it does a really good job of creating space for the reader in this story.

[Erin] I was just thinking about this negative space idea, and, like, what readers expect. Because I was thinking, like, if you leave… It's basically what you already said, but if you leave negative space in a story, it feels intentional. If you leave negative space in a novel, it often feels like you just forgot. Like you just forgot that part of a page. Like, I just stopped coloring and left. I'm wondering, though, in a short story, how do you know what you do need to fill in? Like, you've ordered a cast that's shadowlike… How do you know that you need to like make a reference even to a first race, which you didn't have to do at all. I could have been, like, no, I'm just telling you about the current thing. Like, how do you pick those pieces that give you enough of, like, an outline that the negative space comes through in a really clear, cool way?

[CL] That is something that I struggled very hard with when I first started writing short stories. But I do want to just drop in re negative space in novels, I do think that it can work. I just think it's harder to navigate with a slight… The current sort of expectation in the fantasy genre of a quicker pace kind of reads where things are a little bit more spelled out, but sometimes… I think I have a fair amount of negative space in my novels as well. Just, I don't necessarily rely on it in the same way as I do in short fiction. For, like, understanding and plot. But, back to how I was working on what to pick to put in a short story. I struggled for a really long time actually before I ever got short stories published with writing really, really epic short stories. Because I really liked epic fantasy. It's really hard to write an epic novel, or an epic sized world in 5000 words. So the first story I ever got published was called Burning Season. It got published at Podcastle. But I remember one of the critiques that I had when I was trying to get it ready was, "This isn't a short story. This is a novel." I was like, "Well, I don't want to write this novel right now. So I'm going to figure out how to make it a short story." It was basically not figuring out what to put in, but figuring out what to take out. So I just took out as much as I could without losing the meaning. So there was a lot of, all right, well, if I take out this, does this paragraph still makes sense? If I take out this entire scene, and I still get the spirit of what this scene was trying to get across? Basically, I just kept whittling it down and cut until I could condense it into its smallest form while still having the sense of the world and the magic that was required. And the history. So…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Fantastic. I think, let's make a little bit of negative space for our thing of the week.

 

[CL] Okay. So the thing of the week that I would like to talk about is a book. It's called Reasons Not to Worry: How to Be Stoic in Chaotic Times by Brigid Delaney. I did not know that I was going to be sharing a sort of pop philosophy book today, but it has been really helpful in reframing not just, like, the world at large, but my writing career or being in the writing industry. Because the idea of stoicism is primarily about letting go of the things you cannot control. By golly, the writing industry is a thing that not a single one of us can control.

[Mary Robinette] What?

[Chuckles]

[CL] So if you are looking into this as a career, whether you're in it or aspiring to it, you're going to have to let go of a lot. This could help you do that.

 

[Mary Robinette] Fantastic. So, as we returned from our negative space, I wanted to kind of switch gears just a little bit and talk about Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an account of several misadventures and how I found my way home. Even the title of it has a different character.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Like, The Cook. But one of the things that's also very interesting about this one from a character point of view is literally the point of view. You're balancing two character POVs, one of which you give us in first person, and the other you give us in third. Do you remember why you made that choice?

[CL] I think I wanted to make it distinct from… I wanted to make the lighthouse keeper distinct from the sailor, not the pirate. But I think it was because the lighthouse keeper felt more distant, a little more cranky. To me, it was the better way to get across some of that anger. But also, because I often find that two first-person point of use are harder to distinguish. So that was the easier way, for me, as well as I knew I didn't want to spend a lot of time in the lighthouse keepers point of view. So having these little tiny barks was actually more… It seemed more fitting as a… Like, a section break as opposed to a point of view, so it helped distinguish it structurally as well.

[Mary Robinette] When you said you didn't want to spend a lot of time in the lighthouse keepers point of view, was that… I mean, I could try to structure this in a different way, but… Why?

[Laughter]

[CL] Because I still think that the story that I wanted to tell was primarily the sailor's. Yes, it is about their relationship, and yes, the lighthouse keeper also has some changing and growing to do. But, ultimately, it was about the change that the sailor had to make in terms of selfishness and… I don't know, like… What she was going to give up to be with someone or not give up. That was just more her story. I didn't… Also, like, there are secrets in the story, and so having too much of the lighthouse keepers point of view would have been harder to obfuscate that without resorting to tricks I don't know how to do. So…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] that when you're looking at something where you are needing to withhold information from the reader, that it is much easier to play fair with them if you stay in third person, because of that distance that you were talking about.

[Erin] I'm thinking about what you just said about relationships and, like, whose perspective we're in in the relationship, and I'm wondering, like, does that… Do you just tend to find yourself drawn to, like… All of these stories have relationships at their core. Like, one character over the other, and like, that's always the person you are going in with? Does it ever shift in any way as you learn more about the characters in the story? And, like, whose perspective you want to use?

[CL] I don't think so. I think I… I think… I have a sense fairly early on of whose story I want to be telling and who has… Again, back to that idea of stakes, who has the most stakes in the relationship or has the most to learn or change from in their convergence. Yeah, so I think I go in pretty well. But it is a little different from my novels when I have more space to have multiple points of view. So, like in The Unbroken and The Faithless, Luca and Terran are both… Like, they have romantic tension but we get both of their perspectives in the novel. That is… It's very different when I have to show both sides, but it does just offer more nuance. Like, I get to play with the idea, like, with the sailor and the lighthouse keeper. The sailor has all sorts of thoughts about the lighthouse keeper. But we don't even get to see if all of them are correct. Like, she thinks that she's snotty or stock up. We don't get to see her rea… Like, the lighthouse keeper's reasoning for her snotty and stuck up behavior. Which may or may not actually be her being snotty or stock up. Whereas when you have both points of view, you can almost immediately cut that tension by giving their reasoning. But it creates a different kind of tension. Which is, well, now that we know they both have different opinions of this action, how will they resolve that? So, I think it really just depends on what kind of tension you're more interested in playing with. Honestly.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think that that's a really important thing to remind readers, what are you more interested in playing with. Remind our listeners. The… So often we get hung up on oh, this is… What's going to be the best thing for the market, what's going to be the best thing for this or that. But, really, it's about what do you want? As the writer, where do you want to spend your time and energy?

[CL] And, I mean, unless someone has developed this without my knowledge, last time I checked, we cannot read other people's minds. So sometimes it is more interesting to explore that without… With having a character who only has the same capacities that we do. So…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] We should develop that. No. We shouldn't.

[Mary Robinette] No.

[Laughter]

[No, no, no, no, no. Nooo.]

[Erin] Mary Robinette mentioned, like, markets, and it reminded me of something I was thinking about before we started recording, which is that, like, all these stories are in Uncanny. We don't mean to do it on purpose, but it happened. I'm curious, and also, you worked… You were an editor at Podcastle for many seasons. So I'm wondering now, like, what you think the intersection is between, like, what you're writing and where it ends up? Like, does knowing… Do you ever write for a specific market? Do you just think it turns out to be a good fit accidentally? I'm curious where that plays into your writing process?

[CL] It's actually shifted a little bit. Especially now that I do write a fair bit of my short fiction now on commission or invitation. Just because of timing. But I think the reason, for example, that I do have so many short stories in Uncanny has a lot to do with the kind of stories I like to write. I think if I were, like, by percentage, I think most of my short stories are either at Uncanny or Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It's no… Like, it's no surprise because those are the ones that I read very often. And, obviously, Podcastle, but I can't count that because I kind of helped build that taste. So… As an editor. So I know it. But, like with the other two, I think that I'm… I have so many stories in there because that is where I naturally gravitate. It's… They… Both venues make space for the second world stuff that I like to do. With Uncanny, though, there's a bit more flexibility for little more of the realistic. I don't tend to do hard or spacey sci-fi very often. So it's very often near future, and that tends to go best at Uncanny compared to other science-fiction venues. High character focus, at both venues as well. Oh, we're on the character podcast, so, yeah. That makes sense.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] It's weird. It's like you write character focused fiction. Interesting. Strange. The first thing that I read of yours was You Perfect, Broken Thing. It's a story that I keep going back to when people are saying, "Oh, short fiction, you can't really do much with it." I'm like, "Excuse me." Because it's really, actually… It's only… It's less than 4000 words.

[Really?]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. 3930, according to Uncanny, which has the thing up at the top. But it feels bigger in scope. I think that some of that is how specific you get in this story, in particular with the sensory details that the character notices. Like, we are… It is such a grounded story. We don't actually go that many places. We go to the gym, we go home, and then we go to the race. How do you think about sensory detail when you're thinking about character?

[CL] With that story in particular, it's especially sharp for me because she's a very embodied character. Most of my characters are, they're very physical, whether they're fighters or dancers or athletes. Because that's just something that I'm very interested in. But it was… That story, I wrote it while I was in some creative writing classes. So I was really, really paying attention to a lot of different things. But one thing that I had rattling around in my head was something from a teacher who said, "Pick something from your job." At the time, I was a personal trainer. So, pick something from your job, and then just write every single detail about your job. So, that was everything from what do I see at my gym, what do I here at my gym, what are people doing, what are we… Like, what are we drinking, like, what are we eating, like… So that was everything from the sweat to the pre-workout, like, the locker rooms, locker room smells, like there was so much of that. Then, the other thing that I did and I really enjoyed was I did a couple exercises from Ursula K Le Guin's Steering the Craft. One of my favorite things, so everybody gets like a two-for-one of recommended books for me.

[Mary Robinette] It's so good.

[CL] There is like one is the write a really long sentence one and one is the write a really choppy kind of crush type paragraph. So if you read the story…

[Oh!]

[CL] You can pick out which ones are… Came from two of her exercises. But they also have high emphasis on sensory detail as well. So…

[Mary Robinette] Those are great, great examples. I know exactly where… What you're talking about in each. Because we… As our listeners know, we talk about that during the podcasts. I think that that's actually probably a really good place for us to segue to our formal homework, since were giving you some accidental ones. Like, go read Steering the Craft and do that exercise.

[CL] Do every exercise.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. I think you have some homework for us.

 

[CL] I do. So I… As you guys can probably tell, I pay a lot of attention to the other instructors and writers who have, like, stuff to share. So this exercise, this next exercise, comes from another writing teacher that I love whose name is Matt Bell. One of his exercises is about… It's called four scenes about power. The exercise is as follows. You will write for scenes. Whether they're in a short story, a novel draft, or just like just sort of like triptych quartet thing. One is a scene in which your protagonist does something to someone else, so they act upon them. A scene in which your protagonist does something for someone else. So acting on their behalf. A scene in which your protagonist has something done to them. So they're acted upon and react to that. Then, finally, a scene in which your protagonist does something with someone or something else. They are acting in collaboration with another character or a group of other characters.

[Mary Robinette] That is a great exercise. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.

[CL] Of course.

 

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-29-a-close-reading-on-character-barriers-vs-stakes 

 

Key points: Barriers and stakes. Speedbumps and clinking jars. Use stakes that are tied to the character. Which stakes impact their sense of self. Setting up a barrier? What is the character's goal, and what stops them from achieving it? Barriers and stakes in ability, role, relationship, and status can interplay. Connect the reader with the character to make the barriers and stakes resonate. Use sensory details. Metaphorical heavy lifting.

 

[Season 19, Episode 29]

 

[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.

 

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

 

[Season 19, Episode 29]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Close Reading on Character: Barriers vs. Stakes.

[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.

 

[Howard] I drove over here with some glass bottles in the back of the van that were full of what is essentially marmalade for making hot tea. For making, like, citron or honey [honey tea]. Every so often, I would hit a bump, and I would hear the jars clink together. There were no speedbumps. A speedbump is kind of a barrier. Slow way down for it. The glass jars in the back of the van? Those are stakes. If you don't slow down for the speedbump, you will get marmalade all over everything in the back of the van. So there is my one-trick pony explanation for barriers versus stakes. Now, let's get out some other tricks. More ponies, please.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So we're looking at You Perfect, Broken Thing by C. L. Clark for this episode. One of the things that I very much like about it is… Well, there's a bunch of things that I like about this story. But, it's a really good example of barriers and stakes. The barrier in this story is very clear and escalates. It's that our main character has to run a race. Not only… So, that's barrier one. Barrier two is that they have to run a race while they are sick. Then, we've got this additional thing that there are family members that are dependent on them, and the more that they practice, the sicker they get. The family members depending on them are the stakes. This is the reason that they're running the race. The need for the cure which is what they earn when they run the race is the… Is one of the stakes of this. So, it's a really short story, but there are multiple barriers and there are multiple stakes, all interacting simultaneously.

[Howard] One of the things that works so well for me with this story, and I wish it worked less well, because it's a me thing not a story thing, that is the description of physical pain. The description of… Well, it's this line at the very beginning. 

 

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. 

 

Oh, I feel so seen. What do the kids say these days? It's me. So much, it's me right there. If I sit down, I will never get back up.

[Erin] I also think that that… There's a great technique that's being used to demonstrate this a little later in the story, the, 

 

I use the railing like a cane. All my strength bent to keeping my feet for one, two, three, four. Five, six, seven, eight, nine. Ten, eleven, twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen stairs.

 

You just feel in the punctuation… There's nothing else going on in this sentence. At that moment, everything stops for the I need to get from step one to step fourteen, and I cannot think about anything else because it's taking all of my will to get past this pain. Without even saying exactly what's happening, it's coming through so clearly in that moment.

 

[DongWon] One of the things I really love to see is when I can feel the writer in the story itself. I can feel their perspective in it. I can… I get such a sense of C. L. Clark's own experience with exertion, with working out, with pain, with exercise, and it's coming through so clearly. I think, when you think about character, when you think about projecting and empathizing with someone who's not us, but also don't forget the ways in which you can utilize what is you to really enhance the reading experience.

[Howard] One of the places where the barrier and the stakes… The line between the two begins to blur, is the… If you've experienced the pain of that with a really tough workout, and have experienced the pain of, I think I've injured myself. We get both of these. "It takes a long time," I'm quoting now. "It takes a long time for the lightning pain in my ankles, knees, hips to dissipate to a dull throb." For my own part, when I work out, which is not a thing I do much anymore, but when I've worked out in the past, if I start getting lightning pain, it's time to stop. I am past the barrier of I am exhausted and I am into the stakes of how much do I really want to pay for the rest of this work out. Do I want to pay with not being able to walk tomorrow?

 

[Mary Robinette] I think that this is a great example because it's so personal to you. When you're trying to choose a stake for your character, you're looking for a stake that is tied to the character. You can have big global stakes, but when we're talking about character stakes, it's something that is going to affect the character's sense of self. So… We have this, right in that first sentence, or in the first paragraph. "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." So, that is directly tied to the character's ability. That… This very small stake. If I sit, I do the thing that I want to do, which is to sit down. That's my goal, I want to sit. But I can't. I can't. What is at stake is my ability to stand back up. I can't… I don't have that ability anymore. So when you're looking for those, you can interrogate the character's identity which we talked about in the previous episode to find the stake that is going to most directly impact their sense of self.

[Erin] Yeah. I think that the barrier… I think one of the things that really works for me here in terms of that identity barrier is if it's hard to sit, to stand, to climb, and the stakes are so high for something that is much more physical exertion than, Lord knows, I'm doing on a daily basis, then how hard is it going to be? I really feel when the race starts, I'm not anticipating that the main character's actually going to make it through.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] To be honest. Like, I'm like… Like, you are not even making it from, like, barely to the starting line. How are you going to make it…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] All the way through? There is a surprise… I think I get the same surprise in ability that the character does, which is great. It brings me on the journey with the character, because as Coach is learning, like, Oh, I actually did climb this wall, and did murder that person. I'm also learning that that's what they're capable of. Then that, actually, makes me identify with them more, and makes the emotions of the story hit that much more… Like, much more… With much more of a punch.

 

[DongWon] In what is a very brutal story, one of the most brutal lines, in my opinion, at the end of the first section when it just says, "This is not my first race."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] We understand that she has done this before, and she may do it again in the future. That's how she's thinking about it. Even though we see how much her body is breaking down, we see how much she's at the limits of her ability, but the idea that she's been doing this for a while is just heartbreaking, and it sets the stakes of how important this is, that she is going to keep pushing herself to accomplish this.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] I'm going to read a bit of the breakdown for you, after the break.

 

[Erin] This week, I have got to plug one of my favorite books of all time, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson. This is a voice story, like, from start to finish, in my opinion, which is why I love it so much. It starts with this opening paragraph. "My name is Mary Catherine Blackwood. I'm 18 years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead." If that doesn't get you to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I don't know what will. So check it out.

 

[Mary Robinette] When you write a novel, there are often things you have to leave out. Scenes that predate the main book, situations that just didn't fit in, character moments that hit the cutting room floor. I've taken nine stories like that from the Lady Astronaut series and put them together into a short story collection called Silent Spaces: Tales from the Lady Astronauts. It's on Kickstarter right now. It includes stories about the arrival of the meteor in 1952, the race to the moon and Mars, and my Hugo award winning novelette, The Lady Astronaut of Mars. And there's one story, Silent Spaces, that is 100 percent new for this book. The Kickstarter funded in eight hours, so this is not so much a please help me make this, as a please help me make this even cooler. Because the stretch goals bring the Lady Astronaut series off the page and into the real world with tons of memorabilia, like patches, drinkware, teletype reproductions, recipe cards, spacesuits, and more. I hope you'll be a part of its journey and help out Silent Spaces on Kickstarter.

 

[Howard] Welcome back. I promised you some reading. There we go. Our protagonist is climbing a climbing wall. 

 

The colorful rubber is rough under my fingers. I think of Little and try to imitate her gibbon's grace. Each contraction of my lats pulls me higher and my biceps thrill at their strength. My legs forget their fatigue and I'm –

I'm a goddamn orchestra.

Until I'm not, and numbness webs across my back, a note out of tune. Maybe it started in my fingers and I didn't notice and now it's too late.

 

I have been in… I have been in that… Not exact position, not on a climbing wall, but I've been in that position more times than I care to count. It really struck home to me. The feeling of oh, I can do this, I've got this, oh, I'm fine. And then all of a sudden, there is pain and I realize not only am I not fine, I'm not fine and I'm in a place where I should not have put myself. This is another one of those barriers that blurs into stakes because we failed to clear the barrier properly.

[Mary Robinette] So I'm going to talk about how to set up a barrier. Again, you're looking for something that your character can't get through. So if you think about what their goal is, like, her goal is to run the race. So, if she can run the race well and quickly, then story's over. Immediately. So you have to put barriers. The barriers are the things that stop your character from achieving their goal. So the first thing we do at the beginning is we establish what our goal is. Then we have a series of barriers. You can tell the reader what those barriers are, and disguise it as part of the character thinking. So when there's a part where right before the section that Howard read to you where she's thinking about, she puts the climbing harness on and her teammates say, "Don't do that. Shut that shit down. You just ran a mile's worth of sprints." "I didn't need them to tell me that. I calculated our needs the night before, our weak spots. I accounted for his lack of stamina, for Shell's lack of speed. My pain. Our weakness will come with us to the race. The wall is there, too, and I need to be able to take it." So, very clearly, we've laid out exactly what the problems are, we've foreshadowed what's going to happen in the race. Doing that allows the reader, knowing what the barriers are ahead of time allows the reader to anticipate those and to anticipate the failure points and also to be surprised when they play out in different ways. But all of these things are, again, still tied to that goal of I need to run the race and we've also been told what's at stake if we don't run the race. So it's the here's the goal, here are the things that are going to stop me from hitting that goal, and then when we actually get into the race, there are even more things that go wrong.

[DongWon] I still love that line, our weakness will come with us to the race.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It's just… You just feel it in your chest when you read that.

[Erin] That's life, though.

[Laughter]

 

[Erin] Also, Mary Robinette, when you were talking, it made me think about the fact that there… The barriers also can exist in those ability, role, relationship, status, and that when a barrier hits in one, then maybe one of the others can be the thing that gets you past it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So I'm thinking about the other moment in the race, where, like, the strength gives out, and then somebody's like, "You got this, champ." Which, as a former [crossroader?] Like, there is something very powerful weirdly about some random person being like, "You can do it." It is the role. You are a champion. A reminder of the role that helps you get forward a little more. Then, when that runs out, it's something of the relationship.

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Erin] To the people that you need to bring this medicine forward to. So it makes me think about my own work, how can I create a barrier in one of these areas and then solve it with another, and then hit a barrier there and solve it with another, and sort of pass back and forth between the different aspects of character is a way to create story moments.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I want to be clear that there are other ways to create barriers for character. You can use milieu. So… We'll see this in the race itself, where the place itself is the problem. You can create things with the questions. That… If a character has a question, they can't get the answer. I'm specifically in this section, because we're talking about character, thinking about barriers to the character and to their sense of identity. But I want to be clear that barriers can, in a lot of different ways.

 

[Howard] It's important to note that the… This several extreme connection that I developed to this story grows out of the very close parallel between the physical experience in the story and some of my own physical experiences. It's challenging to set up a barrier or to set up stakes when that connection isn't apparent. For instance, the wizard who just needs to cast that spell right. But it's not tied to exhaustion or hunger or migraine headache or any… It's tied to some magical sense. Finding a way to communicate that so it is personal to us, the reader, can be a challenge. That's where, for me, stories that fail to deliver barriers and stakes in ways that resonate? That's usually why they fail. It's because, for some reason, worldbuilding didn't connect me to those things.

[DongWon] Because it's really about character choice. Right? To bring all these barriers and all these stakes back to creating a character that we are interested in, engaged with, whether we hate them, whether we love them, whether we empathize with them or not, it has to be about choice. So when this comes down to that moment of Coach in the mud pit, right? And making a choice about what she will do to win this race, what is worth it to her? I think that's one of the things that communicates so much about the character, about the stakes that are going to occur, and our understanding and compassion for her, even as she does something that in some ways is unforgivable.

 

[Erin] I also really like how we're taught a little bit how to read that moment. So, one of the things that I love is the series of, like, the very long kind of sentence paragraph of just things that are happening, that I will not read, because it's very long. But there's a series of things that is going on as she's in the mud and trying to get out of the mud. When I was looking back and doing a close reading, I noticed that we… It's not the first time we get this long sentence paragraph. We also get it with the meal the night before, which is also, like, a moment of, like, just really being in the moment. So, sometimes you can be in the moment with the food and enjoying it and the companionship. Then, the next day, you're in the moment of survival. I don't necessarily relate to life or death survival in that way, but I do relate to eating a good meal. I feel like the story sort of taught me a little bit how to take in that kind of sentence, and how to be in that moment with the character, and then used it for something that I was less comfortable or less familiar with.

[Howard] We actually talked about that principle in the very first season of Writing Excuses, a bazillion…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Bazillions ago. The idea of get one thing, one small thing, exactly right and we will follow you along for the big thing. If you can connect me with the character enjoying a meal, then I will stay connected when they are trying to cast color magic using their sense of [oxareen].

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[DongWon] I love picking Clark for character because they do embodied character so well. Right? They do sensory detail. I always feel I am in the room with them. I feel like I can smell the things that the character smells, tastes the things, feel the pain and the burn in my body.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It's so wonderful to be so deeply entrenched in a perspective like this.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The other thing that I love about it is how they managed to do that with such often sparse description.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Like the section...

 

I don't want to tempt the ache in my body, but I don't want to die tomorrow without remembering the good things my body does. So we’re two bodies, in flexion, extension, the slow eccentric stretch and the isometric clenching hold, over and over, until we can release.

 

Like, she does not tell you what is exactly happening in that scene, but you can understand it and feel it in your own body. The other thing that I want to call out about that particular section that I read is that this is also one of the two moments where she makes… The character makes it clear that she is not expecting to survive the race. That her motivation has changed. Which, for me, also helps with that moment in the mud. Knowing that this is something she's doing for other people. That the relationship aspect of it…

[DongWon] Drowning another runner is okay because she doesn't expect to survive herself?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? There is… If she weren't willing to sacrifice that much, it would make that moment less sympathetic. Then, of course, we get the moment at the end which… I don't know why, it caught me off guard. I was surprised by it, when she turns down the shot for herself…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And gives it to the kid. In retrospect, it's, of course, and that's what so lovely about that moment is when you're doing character and you're setting up the stakes and all these things, getting to that moment of, oh, of course, this is what they would do even when you didn't see it coming, is so much what let's character drive a story. Because it means you're leaning into choices, it means you set up the stakes well. Right?

[Howard] It's ironic almost to the point of a pun to say, Mary Robinette, that example you read is a fine example of muscular prose.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Because it's giving us so much information. All of the words are doing the metaphorical heavy lifting for us, explaining to us what's going on.

 

[Howard] I've got the homework for you. We're going to return to the speedbump metaphor. But you're not allowed to use my speedbump and my jars.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Write a short scene in which your character has to deal with a mundane obstacle. Then, rewrite it as if that obstacle now has life or death stakes. How do you shift it to make those stakes clearer?

 

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

 

[Erin] Are you struggling to find time and energy for creative work or writing? Sandra Tayler has a new book that might help. Structuring Life to Support Creativity is a resource book for creative people who want to make more space in the life that they have for the creative work they want to do. This book is drawn from 30 years experience in juggling creative work along with everything else life throws at us. Inside the book, you can find such topics as managing your mental load, arranging your physical space, how to come back to your creative work after life goes sideways, the problem of motivation, and more. The whole book is written with a focus on adapting for how your brain works instead of trying to change you to fit expectations. The book is not prescriptive. Instead, it provides concepts and tools so you can find the ones that work for you. This makes the book autism, ADHD, and neurodivergent friendly. Preorder your copy today at sandratayler.com. Just make sure that Tayler has an e r in the Tayler.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-19-a-close-reading-on-worldbuilding-an-overview-and-why-a-memory-called-empire 

 

Key points: Worldbuilding. Not just the things you invent. Spaces, relationships, and interconnections. Not just speculative fiction, worldbuilding is a part of any fiction you are writing. Where do your characters live, what kind of people live there, what kind of industries, schools, family... Worldbuilding gives you texture, realism, and plausibility. What you don't show as well as what you show! Worldbuilding establishes stakes for your characters. What's important. Legal system, physical infrastructure, what people value. Rules and systems as much as physical material spaces. Think about your establishing shot, that first scene. Not always a wide shot, sometimes a single detail can tell you a lot about the world. How much do you need to establish and explain? Beware of the "in a world" prologue. Balance show and tell. Two kinds of worldbuilding, decorative and structural. Structural things drive the story. Decorative is just fun. And sometimes things are both! Audience surrogate, fish out of water...

 

[Season 19, Episode 19]

 

[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.

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, listeners. We want your input on season 20. Which, I have to be honest, does not sound like a real number. What elements of the craft do you want us to talk about? What episode or core concept do you use or reference or recommend the most? Or, what are you just having trouble with? After 20 seasons, we've talked about a lot of things. What element of writing do you wish we'd revisit for a deeper dive on the podcast? Email your ideas to podcast@writingexcuses.com

 

[Season 19, Episode 19]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Close Reading on Worldbuilding: An Overview and why A Memory Called Empire. 

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Marshall] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[DongWon] So, to kick off this second series that we're doing of close readings, we are going to be talking for the next few episodes about worldbuilding. Why it's important, how it functions, and to dig into that, we wanted to do a close reading of Arkady Martin's A Memory Called Empire. This is a really wonderful novel. It won the Hugo award. I am very biased, because as a literary agent, I represent Arkady and I worked on this book, so I know it pretty well. But to kick us off here, before we dig into A Memory Called Empire specifically, I wanted to talk a little bit about the concept of worldbuilding. What is it exactly, what are the basic mechanics? Just so we all have a shared vocabulary heading into doing the actual close reading.

[Mary Robinette] So when we talk about worldbuilding, it's really easy to get hung up and think that it's only about the things that you invent. But, for me, it's also about not just the spaces, but the relationships between people, and how all of the things interconnect. That it's… It is worldbuilding because you are thinking about those connections, and the connections are often the things that are significantly more interesting than any individual thing that you may invent.

[Dan] Well, it's worth pointing out, I think, that we tend to think of worldbuilding as being a part of spec fic exclusively, but regardless of what you're writing, worldbuilding is an important part of it. When I was writing the John Cleaver books, a big part of those books was figuring out how big is the town he lives in? What kind of people live there? What kind of industries do they work in? Where does he go to school, what is school like? What is his family like? Who are the other people that he's known? That helps give the town a lot of texture and a lot of realism and a lot of plausibility. That is absolutely a part of worldbuilding.

[DongWon] Yeah. What you don't show is as important as what you put on screen. Because any novel or any short story, whatever it is, there's going to be way more details and facets of this world than you can fit into your book itself. So, you don't have to invent every aspect, or if you do in an attempt to be realist, you don't have to show every aspect. The way I think about worldbuilding, and this kind of ties into what Mary Robinette was saying, is it's about establishing stakes for your character. Because what parts of the world you show are the things that are important to the people in your world. So, what the legal system is, what the physical infrastructure is, what rich people value, what poor people value, all those things are going to be part of your worldbuilding. So, as you're establishing what's important to your characters, think as much about rules and systems as you do about physical material spaces.

 

[Howard] You used the word establishing, which always takes me to establishing shot. As you're doing your worldbuilding, as you're writing languages, creating religions, doing geography, whatever else, at some point, the rubber will meet the road and you have to write that first scene. That first scene is your establishing shot, where you start giving people the details they need to understand what's happening here. If you look at a helicopter shot of New York City, at the beginning of something, you know that this is taking place in New York City, or a city. If you have a helicopter shot zooming over rolling fields of grain, you know that it is a completely different type of story. Just understanding that principle can help you set up that first scene so that your worldbuilding works.

[Mary Robinette] Also, along those lines, that establishing shot does not need to be a wide shot. That often, zooming in on a single telling detail is going to tell you a lot about the world more so than the rolling fields of grain. So one of the mistakes that I will sometimes see people make with worldbuilding when they are doing it in spec fic is the feeling that they need to do that wide shot. While there are times that you need to do it, and it's something that we'll see with Arkady's work, there are also places where just starting very, very tight in is going to serve you better. That decision is based less on worldbuilding and what you want to convey about it and more about the tone of the book. Like, are you doing something that's very intimate, are you doing something that's really slow? When we start looking at Arkady's, it's a huge empire that we're being introduced to, so it is both a wide shot and, I think, a more detailed shot. Which is a lot of fun.

 

[DongWon] Part of why this is so fun to talk about in speculative fiction is that when you're doing contemporary realism, you get… You've got a lot of shorthand, right? As Howard was mentioning, if you have a wide shot, a helicopter shot of New York City, you've established a lot of world that you don't need to explain to your audience. When you are inventing a new culture, so, as we get into Memory Called Empire, when you're like approaching this massive planet-city, there's so much you need to establish and explain. So, sometimes, in that case, when you do the big wide shot, as Mary Robinette was talking about, it can be very overwhelming and not give you very much information. So zeroing in on a very specific thing often is a way to get to more information faster. Because if you try to tell them everything at once, their brain's going to shut down. That's when we start talking about quote unquote info dumps.

[Dan] Yeah. This is making me think of the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, where there is a ton of world, the incredibly expansive world… He's famous for his worldbuilding, and yet, the first several chapters, and our introduction, our establishing shot, is all just the Shire. It's a peaceful little village with just a bunch of idyllic sheep and people eating happy meals together. Not actual happy meals…

[Laughter]

[Dan] But they're eating meals and they're happy about it. That doesn't tell us what the world is like, but it is vital worldbuilding because it tells us what the characters are leaving behind.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Dan] And it establishes, like you said, the stakes. This is what we're protecting when…

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Dan] We leave here and go out into the rest of the very complex world.

 

[Howard] A common mistake that I've made myself in regard to delivering your worldbuilding to the reader is delivering it the way the late 90s and 2000's movie trailers did, "In a world." In a world, guy… He's the guy who pitches the worldbuilding in 15 seconds so that you know the pitch for the novel. Okay? He is not the guy who opened your story. Having a story that opens with some text telling you where we are, and then the first scene contextually gives me 80% of that information… You know what, we didn't need that text.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] We didn't need that. We didn't… I say we didn't. Maybe we didn't need the prologue of your novel. But consider if your prologue is "in a world," go ahead and just start with chapter 1.

[DongWon] Well, this is where I love the balance of show and don't… Show and tell. Right? Because we hear the advice all the time, show, don't tell. But when you're communicating worldbuilding, there's so much information to get across that sometimes you do just want to come out and say the thing. You do just want to explain it. I think a lot of our favorite examples are ones that don't do that, because it's more memorable to find an effective way of showing it without explaining. But also, sometimes, slowing down and just explaining, "Hey, this is how this world works. This is how this legal system works." You will have to do that, especially in speculative fiction, because there's too much to explain to let your audience infer it. When I find myself getting super confused by worldbuilding when I'm looking at submissions, it is almost always because they have tried to adhere to closely to just showing me. Then I'm like, "Wait, wai, wai, wait. I don't understand because this could mean 8 different things."

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[DongWon] So, finding that balance point is the trick, especially early in your book.

 

[Mary Robinette] I find that I break my worldbuilding kind of into 2 categories, decorative and structural. So the structural things are the things that are driving the story. Like when we get into A Memory Called Empire, one of the things that's in there is something called a cloud hook. Arkady just like drops us into it, we just… Like does not really explain it, except in pieces, like, gives it to us as a character interacts with it. The reason that it's worth taking the time to have the character interact with it and spend that time with it, is that later, the cloud hook becomes this really important thing. But there's other pieces that happen in the story, like there are these little hummingbird-like things. We don't need to know where those come from or anything like that. Those are purely decorative. That, for me, that I will see people put in a decorative thing that there super excited about, and then people don't understand it, and they try to explain it, and it's not important.

[Laughter]

[Dan] One of the things that I always try to do in my books is put in enough of these decorative elements that the reader is never sure until it matters which elements are loadbearing and which elements are decorative. This is one of the things I love about the movie My Cousin Vinny. Because it has such wonderful worldbuilding, is you take these outsiders into this small southern town and they encounter the mud, and they encounter grits, which they've never seen before, and all of these little aspects of small-town life that just blow their minds. Then, about half of them become vital to winning the case at the end. Grits doesn't sound like it would be a loadbearing element, and it absolutely is. It's just…

[Howard] You make them thick enough…

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I was gonna say…

[Dan] So, yeah. It's the… That ability to… I mean, it's not quite red herring, but it's just as you are explaining the world and where your story takes place, the reader has that thrill of not knowing which elements are vital to the plot and which elements are fun and which are both.

[DongWon] This goes back to talking about how contemporary fiction can be a stretch in the imagination, because for 3 out of the 4 people here on this recording today, grew up in grits-eating country…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] So the idea that someone wouldn't know what they are…

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[DongWon] Completely baffling to me when I watched this as a child. But, on that note, let's take a break for a few minutes, and when we come back, we'll start digging into A Memory Called Empire.

 

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[Erin] I think a lot of people have heard the song Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. But if you haven't heard that song and aren't singing it to yourself right now, then really, go ahead and listen to it. Because it's amazing. I will admit a little bit of theft here. My father had taught high school English for many years, and always used Fast Car is a way to teach his students point of view. I think it's because it's a great story in the song that's all about this woman trying to get a man with a fast car to run away with her, but you get these little glimpses from her life as it is, as it will be, as it was. It's a great way to look at how past, future, and present can all come together through one particular person's POV. So, listen to Fast Car, and if you want to be like my dad's students, think about what it would be like if that song was sung from the point of view of the man with the fast car and not the woman looking for him.

 

[DongWon] Okay. So, I would love to start talking about the text itself and why we chose this particular book. In some ways, it's a little obvious, because it's right in the name, it is about Empire, and when we think about big science fiction worldbuilding, we tend to think about space empires. We tend to think in fantasy about books like Lord of the Rings that have really rich, complex settings. I find the way that Arkady, the author Arkady Martine, approaches worldbuilding in this particular book to be really fascinating and nuanced and complex, but what about you guys? I mean, what did you feel about when this book was proposed, why we decided to settle on this one for the close reading?

[Dan] I was so excited that we chose this book. I read it… I have right here with me my original ARC that I read before it came out. It blew my mind. This is one of the best science fiction books I think I've ever read. Most of that stems from the incredible work that she's done with the culture. So much of science fiction is worldbuilding a new technology or worldbuilding a new alien or a new environment. Most of the work here is a culture. The story is, in large part, about getting to know what this culture is like and how their names work, and how poetry is vital to the things that they do. It's just such a rich book because of that.

[DongWon] Yeah. Talk about surprising loadbearing elements, it's rare that you get a science fiction novel that has loadbearing poetry recitals…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] That radically alter the direction of the plot.

[Howard] Also, unusual to get something with such an epic scope that has a single POV. We… I mean, yes, there are other POVs for interludes and for chapter bumps, but the story is being told through the perspective of one character. I think that's part of why the worldbuilding is so accessible and so effective. We have a stranger comes to town, really, is the… Well, not… Somebody goes on a trip is the story structure here.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] We are seeing a new place through the eyes of someone to whom this place is new, but she has loved it from afar and has studied it and is now immersed in it. Every paragraph… Every paragraph gives us tidbits about this struc… About this place.

[Mary Robinette] So, for me, the thing that is interesting and exciting is that it is not a single world. That every paragraph illuminates 2 worlds at the same time. Because our main character, Mahit, comes from Lsel, which is a space station. It is an un-planeted world. Has come to this planet that is part of this Empire, this massive Empire. So all of everything that she sees is seen through the lens of someone who grew up not on a planet, and also has had this deep, deep love for this culture, but has never been a direct participant of it. Interacting with people who are, who have grown up in it. So there's all of this really wonderful, like, very muscular writing that is happening, where we're using all of the tools that are possibly at our disposal. She's using interactions with the environment, she's using point of view, she's using conversation, she's using every tool. Epistolary things. Every tool to convey all of this rich information. But had to create, like, there's 2 worlds that we are getting information of, and then there's bits of other places and other cultures. Even within the world that we're in, there's multiple cultures, for both. So that's why I was excited by it.

[Howard] For me, one of the scenes that best calls that out is the café bomb. Because someone sets off a bomb…

[DongWon] We're going to dig into this very deeply in a couple of episodes, actually.

[Howard] Yeah. Yeah. But, the idea that on a planet, someone can…

[DongWon] Yep.

[Howard] Protest by blowing things up. But on a space station, that would kill everybody. It would never occur to anyone to protest by setting off an explosion, because that would destroy the world.

[DongWon] Well, she has a whole speech, actually, where someone did do that in the consequences were that were so extreme. Right? They immediately physically spaced everyone involved and cut them off from their [imago line], so they essentially just erased them from society in a radical way. The difference in scale of response versus what you can do on a space station versus what can happen on a planet is one of those fascinating little things.

[Howard] Actually, yeah. So it calls up her perspective of I come from this place…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] I'm now in this new place. If this thing happened in the old place, it'd be completely different.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It's such a novel of contrasts, and the way Arkady uses that parallax of perspective to give you perspective on the whole universe. Right? Because 99.9% of the book takes place in one location, in one city. Really, between 2 offices, primarily.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It mostly just… The range of spaces in the book is very limited. But when you think about the book, your memory of it is so expensive, of a sense…

[Mary Robinette] Your memory of Empire.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Your memory of Empire is a sense of multiple worlds, of massive systems, of huge space wars. But the action in the book is very constrained and very limited.

 

[Dan] Yeah. I was going to say that on one hand, this idea of the outsider coming in is just My Cousin Vinny again.

[Laughter]

[Dan] Right? It's… That's such a helpful trick and a wonderful little tool to explain one culture is explain it through the eyes of an outsider. But it is rare to see the opposite done. Like, if My Cousin Vinny told us as much about Brooklyn as it does about little southern town, then that would be closer to what we're talking about here. The differences between them is kind of the whole story.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Dan] I love, in particular, how torn she is about this. Mahit… You get this sense that she doesn't want to love Teixcalaani culture as much as she does. That they are imperialists, that they are colonialists, that they are kind of absorbing and warping all of the other cultures.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Dan] And that everyone who encounters them loses a little bit of themselves, but at the same time, she just really loves it. It's this kind of otaku visiting Japan since almost…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] That she's like, "I'm so excited. I'm finally here. I've watched all of these movies about this."

[DongWon] Yeah. With the difference that Japan is not actively colonizing the United States. Right?

[Dan] Yes. Yes. Right.

[Howard] If it was a Chinese otaku visiting Japan…

[Dan] Yeah.

[Howard] In 1940.

 

[DongWon] Well, this is why this book is so significant to me personally. The term we usually use for what you're talking about is audience surrogate. Right? You have somebody who is… Stands in for the audience, arriving at the place, and we see it through their eyes, so there's an excuse to explain all of the things about how this works. Right? So this is Kitty Pride arriving at Xavier's mansion, and we get to see oh, these are what all the X-Men are. Right? But in this case, Arkady pulled an incredible trick, in my view, where the subjectivity of the audience surrogate becomes very, very important. Because they are not just a visitor, they are someone who is resisting assimilation, resisting Empire, by the place that they are visiting. What does it mean to love the Empire that is destroying your culture? I'm Korean-American. My family is from Korea. Which was… This is a complicated statement I'm going to make, but has been occupied territory by the United States since the Korean War. Right? The influence and dominance of American culture on Korean society cannot be overstated. So the idea of coming from a colonized people, colonized by many people… Another example is the way Japan has colonized Korea. I love Japanese media. I watch animes. Some Japanese filmmakers are some of my favorite filmmakers of all time. Right? Whether that's Kurosawa or a variety of other people. Those things are very near and dear to my heart. So what it is to feel like you love the cultures that have actively or passively tried to destroy the culture of the people that you come from is a very complicated emotion. To see that represented on the page by this person who is not only trying to figure out how to survive in the most literal way, but also to preserve her identity and her people's safety. It was such an inversion of the trick of the audience surrogate, that I was completely blown away. Again, that contrast between the 2 perspectives gives you all of this depth and all of this complexity of the world she encounters.

[Mary Robinette] Well, the other thing that she also did, in addition to that, the other layer of it, is that… Often the audience surrogate, the fish out of water, has no experience and everything is new. Mahit is a subject matter expert.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Fluent in the language, studied it, top marks. Knows the history. Still… Still, there are these enormous lacuna in her understanding. I think that the… That those gaps, those places where herself, her home, rubs up against… And her book understanding of a thing rubs up against the actual experience of it, those are the things that make the world building in this so meaty that I'm just so excited to be digging into over the next several episodes.

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, I think many of us here have had the experience of living overseas are visiting overseas for a period of time. It's amazing how much you can do all this research, you can speak the language, and still the texture of actually being there is wildly different. Right? Again, this is a thing for me growing up as a child of immigrants, going back to Korea, is this culture I know so well in so many ways, but Korea is different from being Korean-American. Right? So, while it's not exactly Mahit's situation here, it was such a familiar experience of thinking you know how things are going to go, and then somebody says the word and you're like, "Oh, my God. What does that mean in this moment? I thought this meant this other thing, but now they're saying this…"

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] How do I navigate this social interaction that made sense to me through the filtered version I experienced or from watching movies? But then somebody's saying to me right now, what do I do?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] That is such a fascinating experience.

[Dan] Yeah. I… With that is this idea of loving a culture so much and living in that culture and still realizing that you're an outsider.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Dan] I had this experience living in Mexico. I lived in Mexico long enough to start to consider myself Mexican. I'm not. I would never actually say that I. But there is that bit of… I don't really fit in here. But I do, but I don't. This book explores that so well.

[Howard] I think the power of this novel lies in the fact that as readers, we come away from it understanding what it means to be Lsel…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] To be Teixcalaani. And we understand that there's a depth way beyond that that we could never have, because we weren't born there. We weren't raised there. That level of immersion is one of the things that I love about good worldbuilding and well presented worldbuilding. A Memory Called Empire pulls it off perfectly.

[DongWon] Well, I think that's a great note to leave it on. I'm so excited to dig in in-depth over the next few episodes about specific things about this book that communicate all the concepts we talked about here. So, thank you guys for joining us on this little journey here.

 

[DongWon] I have some homework for you in the meantime. That is, I would like each of you to pick one of your favorite fictional worlds, whether that's Middle Earth or the galaxy in Star Wars or what Memory Called Empire… Whatever world has spoken to you in your past. Then, I want you to write down 3 different attributes of that world. So, think about ones that establish culture, think about ones that establish legal systems and power, and think about ones that establish physical spaces. All of these things are going to communicate different things about what's important to your characters. So if you make a list of those, I think that's a great starting point to understand how you can approach writing a world that feels robust and consistent.

 

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

 

[Mary Robinette] Do you like stars? I do. Maybe you would like to put up a constellation of stars by rating us on Apple Podcasts. Hello. Yes, we're talking about ratings, not astronomy. But, a 5 star review can help us by creating a navigational beacon for new writers like you to find their way to Writing Excuses. So. Rate us on Apple Podcasts or your podcast platform of choice.

 

[Mary Robinette] Let's talk about Rude Tales of Magic. In this improvised narrative role-playing podcast, join artists, writers, and comedians from Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Marvel Comics, and more as they fight and fumble their way across the madcap and exceedingly rude fantasy wasteland of Cordelia. Branson Reese and his jesters retinue, Christopher Hastings, Carlin Menardo, Tim Platt, Joe Laporte, and Ali Fisher, star is a group of unlikely survivors. Specifically, a talking crow, a Lich in a wig, a bubbly faun, a Sasquatch punk, and a [teefling?] hunk. This group must solve the mystery of Polaris University vanishment and return balance and higher education to their world. It's going to be very hard and very, very rude. Subscribe to Rude Tales of Magic on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Pocket Casts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-44-nanowrimo-week-1-getting-started 

 

Key Points: NaNoWriMo, writing 50,000 words. How do you get started? Writing your opening? Meet the characters and set promises for the readers. Confidence and authority, voice! And information! Promises to me, to motivate me! Voice, character, or setting. Voice driven or action driven? Hook the reader! Write a little, then ask what excites me about that. Do some freewriting, meet the character or setting or voice, before starting. [If you don't start, you can't finish.] Give readers reasons to care, to connect. Think about who, what, when, where, why, and how. Breadcrumbs, not infodumps! Character stakes, what is at risk. Where are we, who are we with, and what genre is this? Within 13 lines, what is the character's goal? Remember, Nano is a time to play, to try out things. Dive in!

 

[Season 18, Episode 44]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] NaNoWriMo Week 1 - Getting Started.

[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 be talking about National Novel Writing Month. All month, in fact. For those of you who haven't participated in this, National Novel Writing Month is a month-long challenge in the month of November, where you attempt to write a novel or 50,000 words, depending on how you want to define that. So what we're going to be talking about is what you need to do in order to try to have something that's vaguely coherent at the end of the month. These are tools that you can use the rest of the time when you're working on novels or short stories, but we're going to talk this week about getting started.

[Pause]

[Erin] So, how do we do that?

[Laughter]

[Erin] I mean, it's like…

[Mary Robinette] Surely, someone else will start talking now?

[Erin] That's often the problem…

 

[Dan] Getting started is hard.

[Mary Robinette] Getting started is hard. So, in getting started, what we're talking about on day one is that you're going to be writing your opening. This is where you meet your characters and you set promises for your readers. So we're going to be talking about both stuff that you need to establish, but the order in which you establish things is very much up to you. So, what do you all find are some, like, consistent things that make an opening, like, that first page?

[DongWon] I personally really love openings. They are my favorite part of the book. As a literary agent, I'm mostly looking at openings as I'm going through queries and new projects and things like that. So, for me, the thing I'm looking for in that first page, in those opening sections, is a sense that the author knows what they're doing, and they're going to take me on a journey that I'm excited to go on with them. Right? So, projecting a certain amount of confidence and a certain amount of authority in those opening pages are really important. Some of the best tools to do this is with your actual voice. The words that you're using and the sentence structure that you have is a great way to bring readers in and project that kind of confidence that you are going to be telling us a story that we're going to be excited to read. That can be everything from word choice to sentence structure to a kind of musicality and rhythm that you have in those opening sentences. But that really needs to be balanced with all of the information that you need to give to your readers. Right? It can't all just be voice-y beautiful prose, you also need to be communicating a ton of information in those opening pages.

[Howard] I'm a sucker for a good first line. It can take a long time to write a first line that you're happy with. Often, the first week of NaNoWriMo is not a great time to grind on that.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Howard] Caveat. If the first line is good enough to excite me, the first line might be good enough to continue to excite you. So, I always try and fill my first page with things that are not just promises to the readers, but are promises to me, to get me motivated, to remind me how much fun this story's going to be.

[DongWon] Right. This is Nano. You're not here to make perfect prose, you're not here to make sure everything's super refined and edited to perfection, you're here to get words on the page. Right? So, I'm telling you this as ways to think about what your goals are for the opening, but don't stress about anything that I'm saying right now.

[Dan] Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned voice. Voice is one of the 3 things that I try to do in an opening. You don't need to do all of these 3. Really, your goal is to hook the reader and get them interested. The way I think about it, you can do that with a really great interesting voice, or with a compelling character, or with a fascinating world or setting. One of those 3 is going to grab that reader in the want to learn more about it and come on in. If you can do all 3, that's even better, but…

[DongWon] Yeah, you can only do…

[Dan] Do one of the 3.

[DongWon] Some combo of those. Right? It's not going to be pure voice. If it was pure voice, then they're like, "What is this story about? I'm out." If it… But you want to have character in their. It's sort of like you're readjusting the levels to sort of fit the story you're trying to tell.

[Mary Robinette] So, I find that what you're talking about, I see as kind of 2 different paths into a story. That you can have something that's kind of voice driven, where the voices doing all of the lifting and carrying, or you can have something that's action driven, where the character is in the middle of doing something. That… There's overlap between those 2 things. Like, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, nobody is doing anything. It's all voice driven. Whereas, if you look at the beginning of Ghost Talkers, using my own novel, that begins with a character saying, "The Germans were flanking us at Delville Wood when I died." Ginger Stuyvesant was sitting with the spirit circle… I don't remember the rest of my actual lines…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But she's in the middle of doing something. But it is that hook, that both of these have different ways of hooking the reader and pulling them in.

 

[Erin] I would say that you may not know which of these you're doing because it is Nano and you're just trying to figure it out. So one thing that I find really fun during Nano is to write a little bit of a beginning and then go like, "What could this be? What excites me about it? Like, what about the voice that I've just written is really interesting? What about the action that's happening is really intriguing?" It's a great way later in the month if you get stuck to go back and look at what are 2 or 3 things that I was really excited about, like Howard said, right at the start, that can continue to motivate me when I'm not sure, like, where I went or how the story has taken a twist or a turn.

[Dan] Well. One thing that I do, and I've talked about this on the show before, but I still do it, and I still think it's valuable, is I will do free writing before I start a book. I will write some dialogue, let a character talk for a couple of pages. Or I will describe the world. I will describe my favorite aspects of the world, the part of the setting that gets me excited. I will try to write something and nail down a tone of voice, or find a weird turn of phrase. Never intending to actually use any of this in the novel, but just to kind of get me into the right headspace so I can hit the ground running when the actual writing starts.

[Mary Robinette] I do something similar, that I will often do a couple of exploratory attempts. Sometimes I am planning for it to be the first chapter, but it's just me saying, "What is this? What is going on here?" Much like Erin does, also. It's just like is there something here that excites me? For those of you who are doing NaNoWriMo seriously, all of these exploratory attempts count towards your total word count.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Save them. No writing is wasted.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things about Nano is that it really teaches you that no writing is wasted. When we come back from our break, what were going to be talking about are some of the pieces of information that you're going to need to pass to your reader. But, right now, let's take a brief break.

 

[Mary Robinette] NaNoWriMo is just around the corner, and it's time to start planning. If you're aiming for 1600 words a day, it's easy to de-prioritize eating. But you need to keep the brain fueled. During Nano, I turn to meal kits. Hello Fresh makes whipping up a home-cooked meal a nice break from writing with quick and easy options, including their 15 minute meals. With everything pre-proportioned and delivered right to your door every week, it takes way less time than it takes to get a delivery. I find that stepping away from the keyboard to cook gives my brain time to rest. I love that with Hello Fresh, I can plan my meals for the month before NaNoWriMo begins, and then, I can save all of my decision-making for the story. With so many in season ingredients, you'll taste all the freshness of fall in every bite of Hello Fresh chef crafted recipes. Produce travels from the farm to your door for peak freshness you can taste. Go to hellofresh.com/50WX and use the code 50WX for 50% off plus free shipping! Yeah, that's right. 50WX, 50 for 50% off and WX for Writing eXcuses. We are terrible with puns. Just visit hellofresh.com/50WX and try America's number one meal kit.

 

[Howard] It's the first week of NaNoWriMo. It is time to get started. I'm going to throw a couple of aphorisms at you. You must be present to win. You miss 100% of the pitches you don't swing at. [Sigh] If you don't start, you'll never get to finish. I speak as someone who has never actually won at NaNoWriMo. I've started it several times. I think one time, I actually got 30,000 words in on a project. But I've never actually completed something that I would consider to be a first draft of a novel during NaNoWriMo. Do I feel bad about it? No. Do I feel in the least bit conflicted about encouraging you to start NaNoWriMo? Absolutely not. I am giving you permission to start and maybe fail. Because that happens to the best of us. I don't want to suggest that I'm the best of us. There are way better than me who have failed at NaNoWriMo. But you miss 100% of the pitches you don't swing at. Sit down at the keyboard and write something. Let the words flow, or let the words don't flow. Because until you try it, you won't know whether or not you can do it. [Sigh] I've heard it said that the limitations that affect most people are what they believe their limitations to be, rather than what their limitations actually are. So, whether or not you think you can finish NaNoWriMo, I think you should start.

 

[Mary Robinette] Right. So. Now that we're back, what I'd like us to talk about is some of the information that you want to try to get to the reader early, early in your novel or short story. One of the reasons you want to do that is that part of the promises in all of those things is that you're giving the reader reasons to care and to connect. Readers are desperately trying to ground themselves at the beginning, and they will grab hold of any piece of information that you give them and begin to build a world. So you want to make sure that you are giving them information in order to build that world in their head.

[DongWon] One of the biggest mistakes I see in openings is not giving enough information. Right? A lack of information density can make for an opening that feels incredibly slow. It's just not pulling me into the world. It's not giving me information about the character and not giving me a sense of what the shape of the story is going to be. So, the way I always talk about opening pages is I want them to be like a layer cake. Right? Where there's so much stuff put into those opening pages that are giving me a sense of world and character and all these things. So one way to do that is to kind of play with your voice a little bit and play with time and interiority and perspective to be able to give us lots of different pieces of information from lots of different angles as quickly as possible.

[Erin] Sometimes I actually like to think about this is literally the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Like, these are the things that your reader's going to want to know in the beginning. You don't have to give them all in one sentence. Though, if you can, that's exciting. But, really, I like to think about when am I answering like, who. Who is this happening to? What. Like, what is actually going on at this moment? When and where is our setting. Like, when and where are we? Then, for why and how, how is a lot of tone. Like, how is this story going to be told? Is this humor, is this a light touch, is this like dark and foreboding? Like, how is the story being told? Why is a little bit of sort of the if there's any theme that I want to put in there, that I want to seed early on. Sometimes, I'll actually go through the pages of a story and be like when our each of these elements clear? If one is clear very, very far down, then, am I doing that for a reason? If I'm not, can I bring it up, and at least suggest what's going on so that it doesn't feel missing?

[Howard] On that point, or to that point, I love the idea of descriptions as being either additive or corrective. I see corrective as inherently problematic. If I've given you some description, you're going to start building independently of me continuing to write things. If I lead you in one direction and you keep running in that direction, but that's not what is actually happening, the next piece of description I give you is corrective instead of additive. Every time you do that, you are breaking a trust with the reader. Now, in a humor novel, you can absolutely get away with it. In fact, it's a fantastic technique. But, I started thinking about it in this way, where, yes, I want to order things, the who, what, when, where, why, but I also want to make sure that if I start people down a path, I don't let them run far enough that I have to correct my description later.

[Dan] I think it's important to point out… We don't want to freak you out with this thought that you have to explain everything in your first couple of pages. That's not what we're talking about. Think of it as providing evidence of what's going on, rather than providing us answers for what's going on. You don't need to explain your entire magic system, for example. But you do need to give us the information that pertains to the scene itself. If your first scene is a fight between wizards, then, yeah, we need to understand some of the magic system. If it's not, you can just drop hints here and there, give us some breadcrumbs, and explain the rest of it later.

[DongWon] One thing I always say is that I need character stakes in the opening scene, I need some sense of, like, what's at risk here. The other thing I always say is these can be lies.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] This goes a little counter to what Howard was saying, but this doesn't have to be your main character's biggest problem. This can be a minor set of stakes that they need to get through for this scene, that will then lead them into bigger inciting incidents. Right? So, I need a sense of the shape of the story. Don't feel pressured to communicate your whole novel to me in this moment. I just need a story, a subplot, a little something for me to chew on that's going to pull me into the rest of the book.

[Howard] Coming back to additive versus corrective real quick. If you tell me someone is desperately trying to get a hold of someone else, but can't, and you don't tell me why, I… Well, if you tell me because my cell phone has no charge, then you grounded me in the 21st-century. If you tell me that I can't get to a pay phone, whatever, then you grounded me maybe a couple decades earlier. Or smoke signals or whatever. I need to know if we're in Civil War era or 21st century fairly early on with the descriptions end up being very, very corrective when you deliver them.

[DongWon] This brings me to one another point is to be a little careful of metaphor in these opening pages. Because everything… I don't know anything about your world, so sometimes somebody… I'll run [inaudible into fantasy?] where somebody puts a metaphor in and I'll think, "Oh, literally, people are fish in this world." Not they were like a fish in this moment.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] You know what I mean? You can take stuff that is completely wild because I am… It's all open skies for me. I don't know what it is I'm engaging with yet. So, those metaphors can be taken incredibly literally in those opening pages. So, something to be a little careful about.

[Mary Robinette] I… I… I'm going to give like some metrics for a really mechanical way to do this. For people who like rules and are feeling freaked out. I want to be really clear that this is exercise stuff, this is not books must be written this way. But if you're like, "I don't know, this is too much." Using Erin's idea of who, what, where, why, I do something very similar. That is, I try to make sure that my character's… My readers know where we are, who we're with, and something about the genre or mood. I count when as part of the where. I try to do that within the first 3 sentences. So that I'm just like giving… And it's not that… When I say who, it's not that you have to know my character's entire back story. It's just giving a little bit of an idea of whose eyes we're going to be looking through, who we're going to be connecting to. Then, within the first 13 lines, I try to make sure that we know something about my character's goal. The reason I say the first 13 lines is an entirely mechanical and mercenary thing, which is that it's about the first half page of a manuscript, and that's about how long you have to hook an agent or an editor when they are in the slush pile. So if you can give them something that your reader… Your character wants. To DongWon's point, it doesn't have to be the big thing, but something that's, like, somehow thematically linked. Like, if we're going to be on a big quest later, they're just looking for the remote control right now. But something that they want.

[Erin] Let's say 2 things about that. One is that I think those small things, like looking for the remote control, build the trust that Howard was talking about earlier. You show that, like, I'm going to show you something and I'm going to deliver on it. Then you don't have to deliver on it as quickly the next time, because you've built that trust. But also, to be like a chaos gremlin…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Like, in opposition of what you're saying, I also feel like one of the things that's nice about Nano, it's, like, a time to play around and find out what…

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Surely.

[Erin] And find out what happens if you break all these rules. Do you want to write 50,000 words where no one knows where they are the entire time, including the reader? Hey, go for it. You may find out that you've discovered a new way of writing fiction, or you may find out that it's confusing and you need to go back and add that in. But this is a great time too, like, play around with what you're doing and how you're doing it.

[Mary Robinette] I actually completely agree with that. So we're in great shape. And, I think, that we've set you up to begin your first nano day. Hopefully. So, dive in. All of the words you count write.… All of the words you write count! Now, we're going to give you a little bit of homework.

 

[Mary Robinette] So, your homework assignment is that I want you to write 2 different openings. The first one is going to be more action driven, where your character is doing a thing. The 2nd one is going to be voice driven, where you are ruminating on something and kind of just exploring voice. You may wind up using neither of these, both of them count. You can do them in any order you want. But explore 2 different ways of opening that novel.

 

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

 

[Mary Robinette] Do you have a book or a short story that you need help with? We're now offering an introductory tier on Patreon called Office Hours. Once a month, you can join a group of your peers and the hosts of Writing Excuses to ask questions.

 

 

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/2021/10/24/16-43-the-narrative-holy-trinity-of-world-character-and-plot-with-fonda-lee/

 

Key points: The story is like a three-legged stool with world, character, and plot working together. Worldbuilding is a part of all kinds of fiction. Most stories start with a kernel, either a world kernel, a character kernel, or a plot kernel. Then you build out from there. For example, starting with a world kernel, look at what attracts you to this world and what kinds of conflicts does it have. That will suggest potential plots, and lead you to types of characters. Starting with a character kernel, think about the character's journey, and what kind of world would make that journey more compelling and difficult. From a plot kernel, backfill, and think about what kind of world would make the stakes of that plot compelling and gripping. The world, in turn, is made up of environments, culture, and technology. Think about the ways things are interconnected. Wherever your story starts, take that kernel and build the world around it, tie the world, characters, and plot together.

 

[Season 16, Episode 43]

 

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Worldbuilding Master Class with Fonda Lee.

[Fonda] 15 minutes long.

[Mary Robinette] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Fonda] I'm Fonda.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Dan] We are incredibly excited to be starting a brand new eight episode series. We're going to be talking about worldbuilding. We have one of, in my opinion, the very best worldbuilders working today. Fonda Lee, can you tell us about yourself?

[Fonda] Yeah. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm Fonda. I write science fiction and fantasy novels. I'm best known for the Green Bone saga, which begins with Jade City, continues with Jade War, and concludes with Jade Legacy, which is coming out November 30. I'm also the author of a few science fiction novels, Zeroboxer, Exo, and Cross Fire, and a smattering of short fiction. I live in Portland, Oregon, and I love food and action movies.

[Dan] Cool. Well, thank you for being on the show. We're really excited to have you here.

 

[Dan] You have prepared a class for us about worldbuilding. This first episode, we're going to talk about what you call the narrative holy trinity, world, character, and plot. What… Start us off with that.

[Fonda] Yeah. So, I love worldbuilding. It's one of the topics I always enjoy talking about. People often ask me about my worldbuilding process, how do I actually go about it, how long do I take, what steps. I often have a difficult time describing the actual process for them, because in my mind it's really impossible to distinguish the act of worldbuilding from that of developing the plot and character. The reason I called this episode the holy trinity is because in my mind, the story is like a three legged stool, or perhaps a three cylinder engine, that only functions because the pieces of world, character, and plot are working together. When you ask yourself as an author, "Well, why do you go through all the effort of worldbuilding in creating this entire fictional campus?" On one hand, you could say, "Well, it's really fun." Which is true, a lot of us authors worldbuilding because it's really enjoyable. But for me there also has to be a reason why that invented world exists and contributes to making the story uniquely what it is from a narrative perspective. I feel like we often talk about the relationship between plot and character, and what I'd really love to do in this master class is dive into the relationship between the world and the other elements of story.

[Howard] As I was thinking about this, I looked at the outline last night, I was reminded of an anecdote that I love to share about college Howard. Which has each of these elements in it. I was waking up in the morning and thinking, "Oh, I'm so happy that today is Friday, because I don't have my 7 AM class. I'm so glad that today is… Or, no, I'm so glad that it's Thursday because I don't have my 7 AM class, and I'm so glad it's Friday because the weekend is beginning." Howard is lying in bed, mulling over these things and suddenly realizes, "Wait, those can't both be true." I asked my roommate, "Hey, David, what day is it?" He's like, "It's Friday." "Oh, good, I'm glad it's Friday. Wait, what time is it?" "It's 6:45." At which point, I leapt out of bed. The worldbuilding detail that I've left out is that the day before, David and I had installed bunkbeds, and I was on top.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] So I pancake on the floor and David looks at me and says, "If this is going to happen every morning, we can trade."

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The point here though is that there is this character who's kind of doofy, and there's this plot about what he likes and what he doesn't like. Then there is this worldbuilding detail which arrives a little late, but which sells the whole story. If you don't have all three of those, it's just another story about me waking up late.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] The other… And there are so many of those, honestly.

[Fonda] Now I want an entire series of just Howard's college exploits.

 

[Mary Robinette] Right! But actually, this is a thing that I do want to point out for our listeners, because I know that while we tend to focus on science fiction and fantasy, and people think about worldbuilding as being a science fiction and fantasy hallmark, and it certainly one of the things that drives us, worldbuilding is something that you have to do with any kind of fiction. Even something that is set contemporary in your real home because you are still making narrative decisions about every piece of the world that goes on the page. So all of the things we're going to be talking about are things that you will still be able to find and apply, even if you're writing something that is contemporary.

[Fonda] Yeah. I've often said that even if you have your story set in a small town, or a nuclear submarine, the odds that your reader has actually been to that small town or has been on a nuclear submarine are vanishingly small. So you have just as much work to convince your reader of that world as you do a fictional world. The only advantage, or really difference, that you have when you're writing that is opposed to a speculative fiction story is that you have more… You can count on your reader having more real-life cues to help them along in building that world in their mind than you necessarily would if you're creating a completely secondary world from scratch.

[Dan] Yeah. I made this mistake yesterday, actually. In the book that I'm writing, I have a scene set in a law office. I wrote it. It just didn't feel wrong, it felt hollow and weird, and I realized I had included zero worldbuilding details in it. There… If someone doesn't already know exactly what a law office looks like or how it works, they would be completely lost trying to read that scene and understand it. So, yeah. You need to include this whether it's real or… Real stuff or stuff you make up.

[Fonda] If you don't get those details right in a real-world setting, there are people who will tell you that you got your worldbuilding details wrong.

[Dan] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Even if you do get them right, I'll just say, FYI, even if you do get them right, people will still tell you that you're wrong.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Yes, but at least you can feel good about yourself.

[Mary Robinette] I know. So, what are some of the tools that we can use, Fonda?

 

[Fonda] Well, often times people have asked how do you come up with the ideas for your story? Like, every single one of us has had that question put to us, at a reading or a book signing. The reality is that there's no idea factory. Most of the time, we have some little kernel, and we glom additional material onto that kernel in order to make it turn into something that could potentially be a story. I find, at least in my case, that the story tends to show up as an initial kernel of either a world kernel, a character kernel, or a plot kernel. This is happened to me with each of my different projects. They've come to me as different kernels. The Green Bone saga, for example, that came as a world kernel first. So the world, the premise of the world, was what first arrived, and then I had to do the work of developing plot and characters. So if your world comes to you first, I think the thing to ask yourself is what attracts you to this world and what inherent conflicts are there that are present in that world? That will lead you then to what kind of potential plot might unfold as a result of the conflicts. It might lead you to what types of characters will enable the reader to experience that world and to experience those conflicts. But if you have, let's say, a character kernel come to you first, then you can ask yourself, well, what is the character's journey and what is it that you can do with your worldbuilding that makes that journey more compelling and difficult. Then, finally, if you have a plot kernel come to you first, it may be a twist or a cool climax idea, then you can backfill it with, okay, now you're going to go do your worldbuilding. What kind of external worldly pressures are going to make the stakes of that plot extremely compelling and gripping?

 

[Dan] I am excited to talk about all three of those and dig into some examples. Let's do a book of the week first, which is actually me. I'm going to talk this week about a book called She Who Rides the Storm by Caitlin Sangster. This came out just a couple of weeks ago, and it is an epic fantasy heist novel, with some really just incredible worldbuilding. One of the main characters has this incredible magical sense of smell. So, not only is it written with this really wonderful sense of sensory detail, but the smells that she is including in her fantasy world are all incredibly compelling. It has kind of driven her to create all kinds of interesting foods and medicines… She's an herbalist… Things like this that came together through the sense of smell to give a really fascinating sense of place to the world that she is telling the story in. So that is She Who Rides the Storm by Caitlin Sangster.

 

[Mary Robinette] Cool. Well, there's a thing that Fonda was talking about right before we took the break that made me think of a thing, which is that when we're talking about the world, that I also find that the world is another three-legged stool. That it's made up of environments, culture, and technology. And that each of those pieces influence the others. One of the things that I want you to be thinking about as we're going through this whole thing is that just as the culture's influenced by the environment… If you're in a very warm place, that's going to affect the kind of clothing that someone wears. The technology that you have will affect that as well, because if you're in a warm place with air conditioning, you're going to have a completely different reaction than if you're in a warm place without air conditioning. So there's this kind of cyclical interconnectedness. When we're looking at all of these things, again, through the whole master class, one of the places that people come part with their worldbuilding is that they don't think about the way things are interconnected. So they don't think about how the technology affects the character and that then affects the plot. Or they don't think about the way the plot affects the technology. Like they don't think about the ways… That there's a web. The thing about a three-legged stool is you can't take any of those legs away without the whole stool falling over.

[Howard] There's the classic example that we used in one of the very first episodes of Writing Excuses, which is the continual light spell in the Dungeons & Dragons setting. Which, if it's been around for a generation or more, candlemaking is dead. Because I don't care how much those things cost, now… They're continual. You've upset an entire economy. So contemplating the implications of that cool stuff that attracts you to the world is key to making that world feel believable. Because at some point, we walk through these worlds that people create and something rings wrong and we realize it's because, "Oh, wait. If A, then definitely not B. We're spending all this time on B. We need to skip straight ahead to M."

[Chuckles]

[Fonda] Right. I mean, there's so many choices that you make in worldbuilding. Ideally, you want all of those choices to continue to reinforce your characters, challenges, and their choices, and enable the story that you want to tell and make your plot more compelling. You don't want your worldbuilding to undermine your story. I think we'll talk a lot over the course of this master class about how do you make choices that help your story as opposed to just acting as a backdrop for the story.

 

[Dan] I really love this idea that you gave us about the kernels. World first, character first, and plot first. I'd love to dig into those a little bit and get an example. I kind of want to ask about the Green Bone saga. You mentioned that idea came to you as world first. Can you give us, very quickly, kind of a sense of how you developed that? How starting with the world informed the way that you came up with the plot and the characters?

[Fonda] Yeah, so my initial kernel for the Green Bone saga was Jade City. That was… Those were the two words, it's the title of the first book, and that's what came to me first. The premise of it was almost an aesthetic one. I wanted to create a world that had these… An awesome kung fu magic powers that I saw in my favorite films. People being able to like leap off buildings and punch through walls, and ground that in a story where that made sense and there was a magic resource that explained that. Then mashed it with my favorite crime drama aesthetics. So that was the premise of the world. In order… Where I built off from that was saying, "Okay. Well, what kind of world is going to most fulfill this vision?" That allowed me to decide where to set it in terms of time. Because the default with a lot of fantasy stories is to set it in like a medieval period. But I had a really clear aesthetic in my mind. I'm like, "What is a gangster family drama unless it's got luxury cars and the submachine guns and the dark alleys and the men in suits smoking in rooms?" So that led me to the decision to set a fantasy… An epic fantasy story in a more modern, latter half of the 20th century time period. Because I knew from the start that I wanted to invoke a family saga, like the Godfather, that made me make a decision around characters. They have to be… I had a multiple POV story with a cast of characters, and each of them has a different role in the family. Then, that led me to a lot of plot decisions, around how the characters would interact. So it's sort of a cascading effect in which you come up… You have a kernel, and then you make a number of choices in your worldbuilding that help you tell the story that you want to tell.

[Howard] I find it really useful to prioritize the things that you loved early on, the decisions that you're making. Because I inevitably in my worldbuilding in my storytelling will arrive at a point where I can see very clearly, "Oh. This is the thing that I absolutely need to be exploring, but in order to do this, I have to knock down that very first piece of foundation I built because those don't work." Because I'm working in comics or in prose, that's not terribly expensive. If I were working in cinema and had already built a movie set, then that would be a terrible decision to have to make, but I don't. So that's not the way it rolls.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] We are running… Letting this episode run slightly long because we wanted to introduce the full master class. Let me give a really quick example of a plot first story kernel. With my Zero G middle grade books on Audible. The whole impetus behind that story was Home Alone in space. The idea that there is a kid on a colony ship who has to defend it from pirates, because everyone else is asleep. In order to tell that story properly, starting purely with the plot, that created or forced a lot of worldbuilding decisions such that I didn't want it… If he has to defend the ship by himself, then the cryo-technology that keeps everyone asleep can't be something that he can just undo… He can't wake people up and put them back to sleep again. It forced a lot of the technological details because I needed a story in which a 12-year-old boy had to solve all of the problems by himself. Does anybody very quickly have an example of a character first?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I do. Ghost Talkers started with the character of Ginger Stuyvesant. All I really knew about her, the sense that I had, was that she was this glamorous heiress, and that she was a medium. That was kind of all I knew. I wanted there to be some banter, and that there was a noir feel, kind of a… Then I had to figure out sort of where she lived and figure out what the world was that she inhabited that allowed her to be a medium that solved crime. Which I knew that… That also then gave me the plot. It's like, "Oh, she's solving mysteries. That's what she's doing with this thing." But it definitely started… I had a very clear image of Ginger. Then I had to figure everything else out around her.

[Fonda] What I love about all these examples is that it shows that wherever your story starts, you are taking that kernel and you are building that world around it as opposed to just sort of putting it up against a backdrop. You're trying to find ways to tie the world into all the elements of character and all the elements of plot.

 

[Dan] Awesome. Well, this has been a fantastic episode. We're going to end with some homework. Fonda? What would you like our listeners to do?

[Fonda] I would like you to pick a favorite book with worldbuilding that you admire, and see if you can identify in what way the worldbuilding supports the character journeys that happen in that story, supports the plot, and also supports the themes.

[Dan] Cool. Well, there you go. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/08/01/16-31-first-page-fundamentals-moby-dick/

 

Key Points: Mental illness. Suicidal ideation. Dark humor, and a lot of tone. Authority, a command to the audience. Plus character. Specifics, visceral and relatable. Contradictions and questions. An audience surrogate? What kind of ride, what kind of story is this? Stakes. Ripples and echoes that shape everything to come. The mythic tone of oral history. Alliteration and front rhyme. 

 

[Season 16, Episode 31]

 

[Dongwon] This is Writing Excuses, First Page Fundamentals – MOBY DICK by Herman Melville.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Dongwon] So we're going to do…

[Dan] None of us said, "You can call me…" and then our name. I think that's… I admire our restraint.

[Dongwon] [garbled] restraint.

[Chuckles]

 

[Dongwon] So we're going to do another deep dive into an opening page. In this case, we're going to do Moby Dick. It probably has one of the most famous first lines that Dan just referenced right there. So, I'm going to hand it off to Mary Robinette again to introduce us to this little sample here.

[Mary Robinette] Just a brief content warning. Much like when you make promises to a reader at the beginning of the book, we want to make sure that you have the opportunity to nope out of things that you don't want to read or listen to. Moby Dick deals with a couple of things. It deals with mental illness and suicidal ideation. Those are both present in the paragraph that you're about to hear.

 

Moby Dick. Loomings.

 

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

 

[Dongwon] This is another example of an opening that I absolutely adore. I think it captures so much of the spirit of this book in just a tiny little microcosm. It's darkly humorous. Not to make light of the very serious issues on display here, but the tone of it, I think, really establishes so much of the book. Given the grimness of a lot of things that lay before us, he's approaching it in such a specific lens that I think sets us up to meet Ishmael, sets us up to meet Queequeg, sets us up to spend time on this ship with all these people who all have their own reasons to be at sea, but, fundamentally, are all because they are escaping something. They're escaping the burdens of everyday life. You have that last note that ends on "all men in their degree, cherish very nearly the same feelings for the ocean with me." That choice to go to sea rather than submit to the other things that are plaguing Ishmael in this scene I think is really the core spirit of this whole book.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. We tend to think of Moby Dick as the pursuit of the great white whale. While that is happening, it really is about escaping. It is about the internal conflict. The great white whale, what that represents is that's the avatar of the escape. It's… It is the not-self. But this book… It's been, I will grant, a very, very long time since I read it. But for those of you who cannot see the…

[Suppressed Snickers]

[Mary Robinette] Video feed, Elsie has just joined us by jumping up the back of my chair and across my face. Okay. So, hello. Elsie, would you like to purr for these nice people? No. Okay. Good job. So, what were we talking about? Use of flashbacks?

[Chuckles]

[Dongwon] I think the thing… Even putting aside, because we are focused on how first pages work. So we can put aside sort of the bulk of Moby Dick, and really focus on what draws people in in this case. Again, I like it because it is that microcosm. But in terms of the mechanics, what pulls people in, you have a few things. Going back again to the idea of authority, it literally starts with an authoritative statement, which is, "Call me Ishmael," right? It's a command to the audience. But also, there's so much character built into that, in that sense of unreliability. You get the sense immediately, Ishmael is not this guy's name. He's asking you to call him that for some reason. The slipperiness that's injected into it immediately set so much of the tone for what's pulling us into this paragraph, what's pulling… Introducing that breadcrumb. Breadcrumb one. The authority of the command and the doubt about who this person is. Then we're sliding immediately into this portrayal of someone who is suffering some kind of mental illness, some kind of condition here, whether that's depression, whether that's suicidality, all these things are really coming to play in this scene. That's driving him, in a very real way, to make this choice, which is to go to sea.

 

[Mary Robinette] The other thing that he does, again, in that things are going to be somewhat squishy is "some years ago, never mind how long precisely." Again, it's that command to the reader. But then he gets… He gets very specific about all of the different kinds of symptoms that he spots in himself. So I think one of the things, for me, again, in terms of the ways that this pulls me in is it's like, "Look, don't worry about this thing. Don't worry about that thing. Here are the things I want you to think about." It's it's like this examination of self, the… Bringing up the end of a funeral procession, the moment when you think maybe I should just step into the street. These things are specific, they're visceral, they are inherently things that a listener or a reader can relate to in some ways, and disturbingly so.

[Dongwon] [garbled]

[Mary Robinette] And also funny.

 

[Dongwon] My favorite bit of this is the methodically knocking people's hats off, right? It creates this very specific image of this guy just losing it and the way he's going to lose it is walk in the street and knock everyone's hats off because he so frustrated with something. Right? Voice is a huge component of what makes this paragraph work. But the other aspect is character. All the things about Ishmael that raises all these questions and all these story promises of finding out what's going on with this guy. Why is he like this? How is he going to address this stuff that he's struggling with in this paragraph? Just the specificity of the image, the specificity of the way in which his frustration is manifesting itself in knocking people's hats off, I think opens huge doors into this story, into the character, and is that just absolute trail of breadcrumbs that pulls me into the book to find out what's happening next.

[Dan] Yeah. Well, that word methodically changes everything about the sentence. This is not him losing control. This is not him becoming so frustrated that he has to go out and knock a hat off. That's not what's going on. He's trying to pick a fight. He's trying to get himself in a fist fight so that he can feel something, so that maybe someone will beat him up or kill him, just in order to start something. I love that line. That was absolutely the part that stood out the most to me.

 

[Dongwon] Then it's paired with this… With the philosophical flourish Cato throws himself on his sword, I quietly take to the ship. Right? There's this high-minded intellectualism that suddenly slips in here. Here's this guy. We know he's broke. We know he's sort of at the end of his rope. But he's still going to talk about Cato. He's still going to talk about philosophy and history. But then contrasting that with him quietly heading to his destiny. Here is again this disjunction, this pairing of contradictions, in this character that raises all these questions about who he is.

[Dan] Yeah. Now, I have to admit, they're going to take my English degree away for this, but I've never actually read Moby Dick. So, coming to this completely cold, what stands out to me more than anything is what you've already talked about, that this is entirely character focused. Moby Dick has such a reputation as being this very plot heavy and/or metaphor heavy kind of slog of a book that is incredibly detailed about the process of whaling and about all of these other things. Nothing that I have heard about the book prepares me for this paragraph being so intimately based on one person's mind and mindset. It… This suggests to me that it's much more character driven than I think the clichés about the book have led me to believe.

 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Why don't we take a moment to pause for the book of the week, actually, which is a preparation for next week's episode?

[Dongwon] Yeah. Next week we're going to do our third and final deep dive. We're going to be reading Lee Child's The Killing Floor. These are the Jack Reacher series of books which are very well known, very successful series. Killing Floor is the first Reacher book. It's Lee Child's first novel. I think it's an absolute master class in how to write a thriller. These are some of my favorite thrillers ever. I think it will be an incredibly instructive example. It's also a fun read that will take you about 30 seconds from start to finish. You won't want to put it down. So, yeah, our book of the week is The Killing Floor by Lee Child.

 

[Howard] A couple of fun trivia bits about Moby Dick. Herman Melville wrote this across a span of about 18 months. Which is a year longer than he planned to spend. About halfway through the writing of it, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is supposed by many that this meeting inspired Melville to go back revise and expand and make the project a bit bigger. Because Moby Dick is actually dedicated to Herman Melville… Err, dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. In token of my admiration for his genius. I think that… I don't know what his writing process was like. I doubt that the first line came first for him. I suspect that part of that expanding and revising was the recognition that Ishmael's voice was a poem, if you will, that was going to get stretched through the book in ways that perhaps it hadn't.

[Dongwon] In fiction, sometimes, we talk about audience surrogates, right? So, this is Kitty Pride in the X-Men. That character that the audience can relate to to get them into the story. I think Ishmael's operating for us in some of those ways. Right? He's going to be our lands into understanding Ahab as we understand what's going on with Ishmael. Right? Ishmael being the sort of larval stage of Ahab as he descends into his obsession, into his madness, and all of that. So, I think again this is the author telling us from the very first line what we're in for, what kind of story this is. This is going to be a story about men struggling with their internal selves. Dan's right, so much of the way we talk about this book is this metaphorical, like, man against nature and all these things. But really, at the end of the day, this is a group of people who are characters divided against… Minds divided against themselves. Trying to overcome their own limitations, their own obsessions to literally survive the experience. Although the stakes are there. Survival is on the page. Dealing with mental illness is on the page. Figuring out a solution to what kind of life do I want to lead. All those things are immediately in this first paragraph. I think the echoes from that will ripple throughout the book. Right? This is the first stone thrown in the pond, and then that's going to shape everything that comes after it.

[Howard] One of the… The book… There's sort of a parenthetical aspect between the beginning and the end of the book. In the editions that we have today, there's an epilogue, in which we learn that Ishmael survives the final events of the book. The first UK edition in 1851 didn't have the epilogue. That forces me to imagine the experience of the British reader of 1851 who… First, like, call me Ishmael. Some years ago, never mind how long… And then gets to the end of the book and it doesn't look like he lives. How does that even work?

[Mary Robinette] So I want to… Because we're talking about opening lines and the importance of setting things. There's another book that is related to Moby Dick that… It's called Two Years before the Mast. We were talking about what inspired Herman Melville to write it. He, in multiple places, cites this book, Two Years before the Mast, which is a memoir. It's a real book about a British fellow who went to sea. This is the opening of that. I want you to notice the difference of it and the difference in the promises it makes. Even though the subject matter of the book, which is being at sea, is, on the surface, exactly the same. Or I should say being at sea and a lot of details about being at sea.

 

2 years before the mast

 

The fourteenth of August was the day fixed upon for the sailing of the brig Pilgrim on her voyage from Boston round Cape Horn to the western coast of North America. As she was to get under weigh early in the afternoon, I made my appearance on board at twelve o’clock, in full sea-rig, and with my chest, containing an outfit for a two or three years’ voyage, which I had undertaken from a determination to cure, if possible, by an entire change of life, and by a long absence from books and study, a weakness of the eyes, which had obliged me to give up my pursuits, and which no medical aid seemed likely to cure.

 

So, both of these are men that are going to see to fix something, right? But the promise that is made in that opening paragraph about the ride you're going to be on is entirely different. They're both told authoritatively. They're both internal and about the character's sense, but one of them's much more focused on the surroundings and we're going to get on this ship and this is going to come to an end when I get off of this ship. The other is my mind is a mess.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And I'm going to sea because my mind is a mess.

[Howard] I went sailing because I need glasses.

[Laughter]

 

[Dongwon] Yeah. The other genre thing I want to flag here is this opening firmly places this book in a tradition of oral history, of oral storytelling and folklore. Which is a totally different ride from what Mary Robinette was just talking about in Before the Mast. I think framing it that way gives it this mythic tone immediately. It calls to mind Percy Bysshe Shelley's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It calls, like, the Odyssey. He's referencing this grand history of oral epics and I think framing it that way again gives us such a sense of where this story is going. So when he spends the next three chapters talking about huddling in bed with another man while they smoke pipes because it's cold and then goes into four chapters describing the biology of whales, we had in our heads still that this is going to be this epic storyline. This is going to be this long framework of an adventure even though we're taking all these digressions. I think that tone carries us through these digressions and lets us gather the joy of those moments which are very funny, very strange, very weird moments and then loop back into this bigger narrative, this bigger understanding of we're going on the Odyssey here, right? We're going on this grand journey and people will contend with the elemental forces by the end of this.

[Dan] I want to point out, just really quick, a word choice trick that he's doing here to grant it some more of that epic oral history vibe. Which is alliteration. In a lot of Western, especially Nordic, languages, Beowulf for example, has front rhyme rather than end rhyme. That the letters all… The words all start with the same sounds. That was a form of rhyme in this really strong epic oral tradition. So when you get down here and he says, "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth, whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul," he is echoing that type of oral epic storytelling very deliberately.

[Howard] There's two sets of rhymes in that one line. Growing grim about the mouth. That is a beautiful phrase.

 

[Mary Robinette] Yup. Well, we are going to leave you with a slightly longer episode, which is appropriate for Moby Dick. We're going to give you a little bit of homework. That is to write an introduction that is purely internal to the character's mental state. So, much like this begins with him ruminating on where he is internally, that's where we want you to do with this homework episode… With this homework. Now, if you're in a mood to try something really fun, take the one that you wrote last week and rewrite it so that it is focused on the character rather than the description of the outside that you were doing last week. This week, focus on the character's interiority, that question of who am I at the beginning of this book.

 

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/07/18/16-29-building-trust/

 

Key Points: Think about hospitality. You are inviting the reader into a space you have created, and you need to make sure they feel comfortable and know what to expect. They need to know what kind of ride they are taking. What are the stakes? Help people decide whether they want to keep reading or put the book down. Set the expectations. Raise questions and answer them. Your starting stakes are not necessarily the stakes of the whole novel, but they should be a microcosm, a small bubble that shows us the kind of story this is.  

 

[Season 16, Episode 29]

 

[Dongwon] This is Writing Excuses, Building Trust.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard. And you should trust me.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Wow. We're going to have to work really hard to convince the audience of that.

[Howard] It's going to take more than the first line, I got to tell you.

[Chuckles]

 

[Mary Robinette] So, how can we build trust with the audience?

[Chuckles]

[Dongwon] So, one way I think about this is… One of my friends and clients, Amal El-Mohtar, has this really beautiful metaphor that… whenever she talks about writing a book, she uses this metaphor of hospitality. Right? You are inviting the reader into a space that you've made for them. Your part of your job as the writer, is the creator of this space, is to make sure they feel secure, they feel well cared for, and they feel comfortable. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to invite them into a cozy, friendly space. You might be writing a horror novel, and the thing that you're inviting them into is a goddam haunted house right? So if you are doing that, then you are taking them and you are holding their hand and saying, "Trust me. I built you a scary experience." But one of the things about a haunted house is you know what you're signing up for. You know, at the end of the day, a murderer is not actually going to stab you. If you violate that boundary, then you've made a very bad experience for your reader. So one of the things you're trying to do…

[Mary Robinette] They've been stabbed.

[Dongwon] Exactly.

[Dan] Now all I can think is how can I get that to work.

[Laughter]

 

[Dongwon] But one of the things you want to communicate in the opening page is this is the kind of ride that you are on. This is the kind of story that you're on. But also, I know what I'm doing and you should trust me. I'm going to take care of you. Right? I think those are important things you really want to communicate to get that sense of trust and also authority. Also, I am in charge here. This is my house. Welcome. This is my space. You're going to be okay.

[Dan] Yeah. I really like the this is the ride you're on metaphor, because that makes so much sense to me. I hate roller coasters. If I get on a ride at a park with my kids thinking that it'll be some fun little like Peter Pan thing, and it turns out to be a roller coaster… I'm never going to that park again.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. A lot of this is just about things that we started talking about last week and the week before about establishing the breadcrumbs. There's a number of different ways that you can build trust with the audience. One of those… One of my favorite tools to use is the voice of the character. I… Like, I enjoy… Whether I'm doing third person or first person, when I pick up a book, the voice… The tone tells me so much about what kind of character… The character of the book and it gets into the character of… The character. I'm a writer, I'll go back and edit that later.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But the point is that it… This, it your word choice, your sentence structure, what the character is thinking about, what you've kind of focused on, all sends a signal to the reader. This is… You're going to get more of this. Come with me, and I'll give you more of this.

[Dongwon] In addition to the voice, I think one of the things that really establishes what kind of ride we're on… I think voice is sort of setting the stage, but then communicating the stakes of your story, I think, are one of the best ways to really communicate what are the dangers here, what are the threats here, what kind of genre are we in, what kind of story is this. By genre, I really mean sort of the concept of the elemental genre. Is this a thriller? Is this horror? Is this twisty? Is this a romance? The thing to think about stakes in this kind of goes back to what we were talking about last week in terms of don't start with an action scene because violence and death are actually not great stakes in the beginning of a story because you don't care about the character yet. Stakes are about relationships. We are people. So we are wired to connect to other people. I think that's one of the main ways that stories work is we connect to a character's experience. What makes that relatable is their relationships to other people. Right? Stakes are about a character's connections, their feelings, their conflict between themselves and another person in the world, or sometimes a mind divided against itself. Sometimes an internal conflict within a character establishes the stakes of the story. I think as you can communicate that upfront, that can be the most effective way to sort of establish what kind of story and what's on the table and where we're going.

 

[Howard] I… In the first episode we did, Dongwon, you talked about nobody wants to read a book. Your first line is there to prevent people from throwing your book in the trash. I think that on the topic of building trust, at some point, you have to be willing, in that first page, to tell people if you don't want to be on this ride, it's okay to put this book down. Because there are people for whom this is not a book they want to read, and I would rather they know that soon then be angry at me for having found it out 60 pages later. The example that I use is the opening scene of the 2011 Three Musketeers movie in which a guy wearing steam punk-ish scuba gear emerges from the waters of Venice and fires repeating crossbows at his enemy. I looked at that scene and thought, "Oh. Oh, that's the ride we're on. Okay. I'm here." But, you know what? If your suspenders of disbelief have already snapped, just pull your trousers up and leave the theater and be done. Because this isn't a movie for you. So when I think about building trust, I want to make sure, yes, that I've planted the hooks so that everybody is going to read to the end of the first page. But then on the first page, I'm going to include things that tell people this is what you're here for. If this isn't you, it's okay to leave.

[Mary Robinette] This is why when you… You will often hear me talk about like within your first 13 lines, try to get some hint of your genre element, preferably like within that first three. So that readers know what they're in for. Using the example of the Three Musketeers, if we had started with a historically accurate beautiful court scene and then moved to the repeating crossbow, when you get to that, you will flip the table and storm out. Whereas the other way, you're setting expectations. It's like, "No. You're going to get the pretty clothes, but that's not what this book… This film is about."

[Yep]

[Mary Robinette] So, a lot of it with this is making sure that the reader understands kind of the scope, in addition to all of those other things.

 

[Mary Robinette] Why don't we take a moment here and pause for our book of the week?

[Dongwon] Yeah. So, our book of the week is actually going to connect to next week's episode. So, we are talking about Shirley Jackson's masterpiece, The Haunting of Hill House. This is one of the greatest horror novels of pretty much all time for me. I think it's one of my favorite books ever. It's very different though from what we expect if you're thinking of horror as Steven King novels. It's very moody. It's very atmospheric. The thing that were going to be talking about is that first page. Really, almost just the first paragraph of that book. So, if you're not really up for reading a whole horror novel, just feel free to read that first page. But for those of you who are open to it, I think it's one of the most incredible pieces of literature out there. It is also an excellent TV show that's been made out of it that has very little to do with the book, but it's also very enjoyable.

[Mary Robinette] You… Thank you. So that's The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

 

[Mary Robinette] You looked like you were about to say something right before we paused for the book of the week. What was that, Dongwon?

[Dongwon] Oh. Really, talking about this idea of setting those expectations in that first paragraph, when… One of the most important questions in publishing, I think, for me… Sometimes I talk about it as maybe the only question in publishing and everything else is some version of it, is deciding who this book is for. But when you decide this book is for this person, inherently in that statement you are saying this book is not for this other person. Right? That's okay. It's okay to have your book not be for a certain segment of the audience. Dan doesn't like roller coasters. You shouldn't try to make Dan get on your roller coaster. So, I think communicating that in the first part…

[Dan] Don't say it that way, because now everyone is.

[Laughter]

[Dongwon] I think really being clear about that is really important to let people opt out as much as you're letting them opt in.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Absolutely. The other thing, for me, when we're talking about building trust, goes to something that Howard said last episode, which was raising a question and answering it. This is one of the things that I find… One of the most effective tools that you can do to build trust with the reader is… Because writing a novel, writing a short story, is about withholding information until the point at which you want to deliver it. So what you want to do is you want the reader to know that you will deliver the information when they need it. One of the ways you can do that is to raise a question and immediately answer it, raise a question and immediately answer it, raise a question… Don't answer it. They know, "Okay. I'm not getting the answer right now because it's not important at this moment. I will get it later." But you want to make sure that those… That the ones that are kind of obvious questions, the ones that the reader is going, "well, hang on," are thematically linked to the thrust of your story. Just a question for the sake of why is that happening is going to… Again, with the breadcrumbs, draw them down the wrong path. So, like when I'm talking about a thematically linked question, if you've got a murder mystery, why is that dead body on the floor, that's a thematically linked question. You don't want to immediately tell them why the dead body is on the floor, because they have to figure it out. Whereas if it's a battle, why is that dead body on the floor isn't the question. Right? That's… It's like, "Ah. There's a dead body on the floor from a bullet wound. It looks like… It's… One of the enemy soldiers is on the floor." You want to answer the question almost before they get to it. So that they aren't…

[Howard] To extend…

[Mary Robinette] It popping up.

[Howard] To extend the dead body metaphor…

[Mary Robinette] Which we love.

[Howard] The vast majority of us have never been in a room with a dead body. So, often the question is why am I reading a story about a person… Why is this person in the room with a dead body? Is this a police procedural? Is it a war documentary? What is it? So that's… I like that question.

[Dan] Well, I think it's important to… This is such a wonderful example, because you can illustrate a lot of different ideas with it. There are a lot of authors, and Dongwon mentioned this, I think last episode, that you have already spent hundreds of thousands of hours thinking about your book and your characters. So to you, this might not be a question. You might not realize by putting that dead body on the floor that you are posing a question to the reader. Perhaps what you're trying to do by not explaining the body is to illustrate that the people in this war scene are inured to death and they are desensitized to violence. You're just trying to show how grim and dismal their life is. But it actually is a question, and the readers are going to wonder about it and that's going to lead them off track.

 

[Dongwon] Often times those questions, we also talk about them as story promises, right? You asked the question, you are promising to the reader I will address this in some way. Maybe in an offhand way, maybe in a small way, maybe a big way. I think when Mary Robinette was talking about that series of questions that are asked and answered, I think of those in terms of… As we talk about the story stakes, the way in which the stakes in your opening scene don't have to be the stakes of your whole novel, right? Because if you're giving… If you're writing 150,000 word epic fantasy, the stakes of the whole novel are not going to exist in that first scene, and it would be madness to try and get them in there. But you need to give us some stakes, and those need to be thematically connected to the big stakes. But you're doing a little microcosm, you're giving us a small bubble in which we can understand the kind of story that we're in and where we're going to be going with that. So think about ways that you can have a nearer, smaller version of the stakes of the story as what's in that first scene, what we're engaging with there. So that then we have an idea of where it's all going over the course of the 800 pages that come after this.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. One of the things that we talk about so often when talking about stakes, when talking about how to make a novel more immediate, is the character. The character of the no… The character that you're along the ride on. Something that I have recently had an epiphany about… When Dongwon was talking about a mind divided against itself, that when you're on a character story, that the essential question that the character is asking is who am I. That they've hit something that has caused them to have some doubts or some conflict about who they are. So you can begin to show those cracks in who… Who their understanding of themselves is even in that opening scene when they have to make a small version of a larger choice that they're going to have to make later. That who am I… Am I the person who takes the call from my mom or am I the person who finishes ordering my coffee? That call later is about something much, much bigger. It's… That's a very small stake-y thing, but it is… It's that who am I question can often lead to more specific and personal stakes later.

 

[Mary Robinette] Actually, Dongwon, do you have, speaking of characters, do you have homework for us?

[Dongwon] I do have some homework. The thing that I want you to do is to break down every character that appears in your first chapter. Ideally on an index card. Then, on those cards, write out what each character's wants and needs are. What does the character think they want? What does the character need to get to resolve their arc? Then, ask yourself, what stakes are on the page there that you can work into this scene in an explicit way? If you have a strong idea of where each character is going, then you can start injecting those stakes and making sure there represented on the page in those opening scenes. I have a second piece of homework, which I mentioned briefly earlier. Which is, we're going to be talking about specific examples for the next few episodes. Next week is going to be The Haunting of Hill House. So do yourself a favor and read that first page. Then when we get into the in depth conversation, you'll have a little bit more context of where we're going.

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