wetranscripts | Entries tagged with try-fail

Writing Excuses 16.39: Deep Dive into Event

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/09/26/16-39-deep-dive-into-event/

Key points: Event stories are driven by disruptions of the status quo, the normal. They tend towards externally driven conflicts. Begin with a disruption of the status quo, end either with a restoration of the old or a new status quo. Events happen! But mostly, sequences of breaking, over and over and over. Cascades following one decision. But not just big events, small disruptions too. Obstacles are when each action further disturbs the status quo. Complications are when one problem opens up a different problem. Focus on where the characters are expending effort, what are they trying to solve. External events can be overwhelming, how do you avoid that? First, every try-fail cycle does not need to be the same size, or have the same difficulty. So, control pacing by picking smaller events and consequences, and stacking them. Make a list of possible problems, and slowly escalate them. Consequences are what matters to the character. When you start a story, you have a million choices. When you get to the climax of a story, you only have one. Gradually take away choices, close doors, until there is only one left. Make it a hard choice!

[Season 16, Episode 39]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Deep Dive into Event.

[C.L.] 15 minutes long.

[Charlotte] Because you're in a hurry.

[Mary Robinette] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[C.L.] I'm C.L.

[Charlotte] I'm Charlotte.

[Mary Robinette] And I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] We are back with the fifth episode of our M.I.C.E. Quotient master class. So excited to have you all here for it. Today we're going to talk about the fourth and final element, event.

[Mary Robinette] Right. So event stories are driven by disruptions of normal. These are… Tend to be very externally driven conflicts. They began when a status quo is disrupted, and end when it is restored or there's a new status quo. So many things that we think of as plot are actually event. There's a tendency I've noticed among particularly science fiction and fantasy readers to think that the big actions that are happening are all of the plot, and they forget that all of the other pieces are also plot.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But event is all of the things that happen. But it's mostly about things breaking over and over and over again. It's that thing that happens in the real world where you're like, "I'm just…" And I should say, we are having our bathroom remodeled as we are recording this.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] The cascading effect of making one decision to change a status quo, which is, let's have a new bathroom, winds up impacting everything else. Because once you decide that you're going to peel up the floor, then you discover that since your grandfather built the house, that the floor beams are actually two by sixes instead of two by tens which is standard for a floor. So that then in turn breaks their ability to put in water lines and air conditioning because they have to fit them into smaller spaces. Also, then you have to have things reassembled. Then, when you're trying to record a podcast, there are contractors who are constantly coming in and interrupting. None of you have heard any of this because we have solved it by managing to record around things. But it is this cascading chain led from one decision to make one change in the status quo that is then breaking all the rest of my normal. Good times.

[Charlotte] Good times. I'm so glad that you said that, because I think certainly for me when I was starting out with event, I always thought of it is something massively big, explosions, a meteor coming, Independence Day type thing, but it can actually be something much, much smaller, like a bathroom or a tap on your sink breaking, something like this. Anything that disrupts the status quo, or your normal. Right?

[Mary Robinette] That is absolutely correct. So, again, as you say, this is… But a lot of times when we think about ramping up the tension in event stories, we think about needing to make things bigger and bigger and bigger. It's really just about this cascade of normal breaking, that you attempt to fix something and not only does it not work, but something else breaks next to it. So, again, in the obstacle versus complication thing, obstacles in this form are when each action causes the status quo to become more disturbed. So, again, in small frame world, if someone has a problem with their boss, that's an external problem. That's not the problems they have with themselves, that's an external problem. So they want to change that status quo. They go to HR to try to resolve it. That action then directly causes them to get fired. So that's an obstacle. It's where they tried to change something and a problem in the same thread line causes it to just go wrong. Complications are when a question opens up to a different problem. So someone has a problem with their boss. They go to HR. That, in turn, leads to them being held prisoner by terrorists. Who are the terrorists? Where did they come from? This is heading things in a completely different way. So these are… This is the kind of thing that you're looking for. I mean, you could make the argument in some cases that this is a continuation of a disruption of status quo. I am thinking of it is kicking off an inquiry thread about who are these people and the milieu of escaping a hostage situation.

[Dan] Yeah. I was going to say, event is the one that is the hardest for me to get my head around. Is that your experience as well? Is there something trickier about event, or am I just thinking about it wrong?

[Mary Robinette] I think that it is that… Because event is action driven, everything feels like it's an event. Stories are inherently about change. That's a thing that happens in stories. So when you're looking at… Let's say that you're doing a milieu story and your characters… Let's say your characters crash land on a planet. If they arrive on the planet, that is definitely a milieu story and the thing that they're trying to solve is getting off the planet. If they are explorers and they land under a controlled set up in the story begins after they have already arrived on the planet and they are attempting to… Their ship breaks. Okay, the ship breaking is, at this point, an event. Because it has disrupted their status quo. Because they're supposed to be there and they're supposed to be exploring. Whereas if they are crashing on the planet, if they are there unexpectedly, and trying to leave, their primary goal is to leave the planet and fixing the event of the problem with the ship is incidental to the primary thrust, which is getting off and surviving the planet. That's why it is… With this one, and with all of them, the question that you're looking at and the thing that is often the deciding factor isn't necessarily… I mean, a lot of it is where you start and stop. But a lot of it is what are they trying to solve. Where are they expending their effort? In a murder… If someone is murdered and you put the focus, the primary effort goes into trying to answer questions, that's an inquiry. If the primary focus goes into learning to live after this person has been murdered, and someone else's dealing with the question of who did it, there are detectives who are going off and solving things. But the focus of the story is on how does the widow survive, how does the widower learn to fold his own laundry… It's a little bit of gender stereotyping, and…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] We're just going to roll with it right now. My husband is actually the one who does laundry in our household. So… But this is… That's the… One of them, the focus is on trying to establish a new normal, and the other is on trying to answer a question. That tells you the kind of conflicts that go in the middle and where you're putting your emphasis.

[Dan] Okay. So, as with some of the other ones we've looked at, the value then of figuring out what kind of story, which of the four M.I.C.E. elements you're dealing with is that it helps you to focus your story and it helps you take it in the right direction, so that you're not spinning off like you said into story bloat and adding unnecessarily unnecessary elements because you know more exactly what your story is about.

[Mary Robinette] That is correct.

[Mary Robinette] Actually, I'm going to talk… Pause here to talk about our book of the week, because I think that's a good example of this, and the trickiness there. So I am the audiobook narrator for Seanan McGuire. Also, currently, as we are recording this, I am in the process of recording When Sorrows Come which is her new book. When you hear this, it will be out. It's book 15 in the October Daye series, so FYI. But the thing about these books is that they are a combination inquiry-event with character going on as well. But the thing about the inquiry… Toby is a detective, and there are things that she needs to answer. But really, when you're signing up for the books, what you're interested in is watching her kick some ass. So the primary driver in a lot… Is arguably that these are event books. Chaos just surrounds her, things are constantly going wrong. She's constantly getting stabbed, she's constantly needing to solve problems. There is much less emphasis put on the actual detecting. The detecting exists is a set up to give us all of the events that go wrong. Are we there and interested in it? Yes. Does it need to carry weight? Absolutely, because it's a novel, and it has multiple threads. But the driver for most of this is about this… These events, these things going wrong. There's also character stuff that's happening that is wonderful. There's… It's kind of a constant coming-of-age. But it is a coming-of-age that is always being kicked off by things going terribly, terribly wrong. And that affecting everything else in Toby's life. I like these books a lot. I enjoy narrating them. I… In every book, Seanan makes me cry while narrating.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So, I highly recommend them. I get better as a narrator, FYI, over the course of 15 books. So don't judge me too harshly on the first books. But…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] But that was… The new one is When Sorrows Come. Correct?

[Mary Robinette] When Sorrows Come by Seanan McGuire. Yes. It…

[Dan] Awesome.

[Mary Robinette] Is absolutely a… It is status quo disruptions, just constant status quo disruptions. Like, we're going to check this thing out. Then the process of checking this thing out causes someone to get killed. The process of checking out how they get killed causes someone else to get killed. This is not a spoiler if you ever read an October Daye novel.

[Chuckles]

[Charlotte] So, with an event story, if it's about action, external things happening, status quo's being disrupted, how do you keep that from becoming overwhelming? Like, something happens and then something else happens and then another thing happens and it's all related, it's all consequence and staying in the same M.I.C.E. element. I guess it's a question about pacing, really. Like, how to control that?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, pacing… The… One of the things that I misunderstood what I was first learning to apply the M.I.C.E. elements to things is thinking that every try-fail cycle had to be the same size, and that they all had to be the same levels of difficulty. So, similarly, that I that all of the consequences had to ramp up at the same proportional level.

[Yeah]

[Mary Robinette] So one of the things that you can do when you're trying to control pacing through the events that happen in the consequences of those events is to think about smaller consequences and stacking them. Sometimes what I will do is I will make a list of possible consequences, things that can go terribly wrong. Then I'll… This is in a… I should say, this is in a phase when I'm stuck and brainstorming. It is not the way I just… Normally I just write. But when I'm stuck and brainstorming, I'll list the consequences and then I'll rank them in kind of best case scenario to worst-case scenario.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Then remove the best case scenario and sort of dole out the worst-case scenarios in a slowly escalating piece of rolling disasters.

[Charlotte] Right. This is all…

[Mary Robinette] But, like pacing is… Go ahead.

[Charlotte] No, I was going to say, this is always in relation obviously to your character, because what is devastatingly awful to me might not be the same for my sister or my friend. So it's always with the character in mind, right, the list of consequences?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Charlotte] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Right, right. Exactly. Because you're thinking about the character's status quo being disrupted. Although… So it is their sense of normal and their place in the world. The world being disrupted, for instance, there are big disruptions like the horrible disruptions happening in Greece right now as we're recording this. Terrible, terrible fires. Those are not affecting me. So it is a disruption of the status quo, but it is not a disruption to my status quo. C?

[C.L.] There was something I wanted to add around pacing. One thing that really got my head around the concept of pacing was the idea that when you begin a story, you have a million choices. When you get to the climax of the story, you have one. Pacing is all about taking choices away, gradually. Closing more doors until there is only one thing left to do.

[Dan] Oh, that's brilliant.

[Garbled]

[Mary Robinette] I'm sitting here going, "Yeah. Yeah, because it really is…" It is about getting to… Trying to get them to a point where it's an impossible choice, it's a choice that is hard.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Speaking of things that are hard, should I give them homework?

[Yes]

[Dan] I think that's great.

[Mary Robinette] All right. Grab your fairytale. You are going to attempt to strip out everything except the event stuff. So with Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the three bears come home, there is a home intruder in the bear's home. Furniture has been broken. They have to drive this little blonde girl out of their home. Their dinner has been eaten, they have to re-make dinner. Papa Bear has to repair furniture. Then, and only then, after they have restored their status quo, are they truly safe.

[Dan] Awesome.

[Mary Robinette] Or there's a home intruder and Papa Bear just kills her. Now they have to live with the consequences.

[Laughter]

[garbled… Porridge. What are you doing, Papa Bear? I'm retiring.]

[Laughter]

[Dan] Okay. So I want to ask, and I know this is homework, but I want to dig into this for a second. Is there a way to cast Goldilocks and the Three Bears as an event story from Goldilocks' point of view without making it just a milieu story?

[Mary Robinette] So, it is about a disruption to the status quo. If we start…

[Dan] If we start the story when she's in the house and the bears show up?

[C.L.] I think in this case…

[Dan] I don't know.

[C.L.] Goldilocks and the Three Bears, as an event story, Goldilocks is the antagonist.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. The only… Like… I think if you… Huh. So, it is about a change in the status quo. If Goldilocks wants to make a change in the status quo, then she would need… What does she want to change? Goldilocks. Goldilocks' mom won't cook her lunch. You have to start it at a different point.

[Dan] Okay.

[Mary Robinette] Goldilocks' mom won't cook her lunch and is trying to force her to take a nap. She doesn't want anything to do with that. So she is going to make a forcible break from her family and she's going to run away from home. It gets back into character again.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Wow. I'm not sure. I think there's got to be a way to make Goldilocks an event story.

[Dan] Well, rather than puzzle over it now, that'll be a bonus homework. If anyone comes up with a really good one, let us know.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] But, for now, you are out of excuses. Go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 16.38: Deep Dive into Character

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/09/19/16-38-deep-dive-into-character/

Key points: Character stories are driven by character's self-doubt, angst, internal conflicts. A problem with themselves. They begin with "Who am I?" and end with, "This is who I am." Often paired with an external catalyst to cause the moment of self-doubt. An exploration of self-discovery. Wanting to change, to be somebody different. Character stories do not require a deeply flawed character. Struggles with priorities, struggles with expectations. Obstacles are when each self-revelation opens up new problems with self-identity. Complications are when the self-revelation opens up different problems not related to identity. Coming-of-age stories are often character stories, trying on different identities, coupled with event stories, changes in the external status quo. In try-fail cycles in character stories, the character is either clinging to an old self-definition or trying on a new one, asking, "Is this who I am?" Many stories have an outer character frame, because it provides a satisfying emotional payoff at the end of the story. How do you avoid navel gazing? Multiple threads, stakes, or... make sure you externalize the internal changes!

[Season 16, Episode 38]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses. Deep Dive into Character.

[C.L.] 15 minutes long.

[Charlotte] Because you're in a hurry.

[Mary Robinette] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[C.L.] I'm C. L.

[Charlotte] I'm Charlotte.

[Mary Robinette] And I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] We are continuing our really wonderful M. I. C. E. Quotient class taught by Mary Robinette Kowal. Thank you so much. And thank you to C. L. and Charlotte for being here. Today we get a talk about character in nice juicy details. So, take it away.

[Mary Robinette] All right. So. To recap, in the M. I. C. E. Quotient, character stories are basically stories that are driven by the characters' self-doubt. Angst. They are very much about internal conflicts. They are about a problem that the character has with themselves. They began when your character basically asks, "Who am I?" and they end when they say, "This is who I am." Most of the time, when you see a character story told in the wild, it is paired with something else, and there is a catalyst, an external catalyst, that causes that moment of self-doubt. That moment does… Can… Doesn't have to be a major driver of the story. So if your character is plagued with self-doubt because… It's like I thought that I was a charming philanthropist, and someone is like, "No, actually, I find you very much an asshole." They don't need to necessarily try to fix that person's opinion of them. But that can be the moment that causes them to have the self-doubt, and they're like, "Am I? Am I? I thought I was charming?" Then kicks off this exploration of self-discovery. It also can be something that they are trying to fix. So in a romance, that relationship that misin… That probably completely accurate impression is something that they would be trying to fix, because they wanted to have a relationship with the person. But they don't have to. So, in a classic one, it is just about the character being sad about who they are and wanting to be somebody different. I'm also going to say…

[Charlotte] So in my…

[Mary Robinette] Oh. Yes. Go, Charlotte.

[Charlotte] Sorry, Mary Robinette. I just completely spoke over you. But I think while it's true that an event can help kick off a character story, also, the reverse is true? So the novel that I'm currently grappling with, it's the character and their flaw who makes a mistake, and then that kicks off an event that upsets the status quo. So you can play around with which order these things happen in.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. Absolutely. One of the challenges sometimes with this is that the urge when you're doing a character story is to make the character deeply flawed so that they can come to some magical realization and become a better person. The fact is you don't have to make someone deeply flawed to have a character story happen. It can be just two pieces of themselves warring about which… What they're going to prioritize. Do they prioritize work or family? This is a thing that we often have to struggle with. That is enough to be a character story.

[Dan] Yeah. A great example that came to mind is It's a Wonderful Life. Which is a character story about a really, really good person. Who, kind of his problem is he's got big ambitions and big dreams that he keeps giving up because he's too nice. He gives all his money and all his time to other people. That does eventually lead him to a suicide attempt, so there's definitely flaws at work. But in general, it's a character story about a very good person rather than about a very flawed one.

[Charlotte] I'm also thinking about the kind of character story where someone is trying really, really hard to be who they think they are supposed to be, and that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with character flaws at all. That the process of their character story is to question all of these things that they are supposed to be, and discover who they actually are. So, in a way, it's actually a story about rebellion.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. Which actually leads me to talk a little bit about the obstacles versus complications in this form. So, obstacles in… When you're looking at a character story, is that each self revelation, each time they discover something new, it opens up additional problems with their self identity. So if they're like, "Well, this is who I'm supposed to be, this is how everybody sees me." When they're going through that, and then they realize, "Oh, but this doesn't actually fit me." That shows them… This one piece of how everybody sees me doesn't fit me, and if I try to shift that, it shows this problem with this other piece of me. So you can have this cascading sense of problems with self identity. But complications are when self revelation opens up a different problem that is not related specifically to their identity. So this would be things like where… That… Imposter syndrome makes them decide that they aren't going to turn in… That they aren't going to turn in the manuscript, say. And they aren't going to communicate to their editor about this. I'm not speaking to anyone in our audience at all.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] That's all being motivated by this sense of self, but what it kicks off is this whole cascade of event problems, where everything has to move around because the manuscript hasn't been turned in. It could eventually lead to a status quo change, where they are… They have to return the advance. To be clear, just for anyone who's afraid of this, it is totally okay to be late with your manuscript as long as you communicate clearly with your editor.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I say… And I am late with my manuscript.

[Laughter]

[Dan] I have a question, but before we get to it, I'd love to hear about the book of the week. So, Charlotte, you're the one who has our book of the week this time.

[Charlotte] That's right. It's me on book of the week. So, my book of the week is Popisho. P. O. P. I. S. H. O. In the US, or This One Sky Day in the UK, by Leone Ross. It is full of amazing, magical characters. It's a super sensual novel. It conjures a world where magic is everywhere, food is fate, politics are broken, and love awaits. It just brims and blisters with life and love and grief and magic. The overarching, I guess, thread is character, because it's also a love story.

[Mary Robinette] I think I need to read this, a lot.

[Charlotte] You do. Everybody should read it. Popisho…

[Mary Robinette] Popisho or This One Sky Day.

[Charlotte] This one… That's it!

[Mary Robinette] Dan, what was your thing?

[Dan] Okay. So I am wondering about coming-of-age novels. Coming-of-age stories. Something like Little Women or Huckleberry Finn. Are those character stories?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] I'm asking mostly because I can't think of where else they fit.

[Mary Robinette] They are. I mean, so, coming-of-age often is coupled with event, because they are experiencing a change in external status quo. Not always. But frequently. But really, what it is is that the character is trying on different identities, a lot of times, as part of the coming-of-age. This is something that we all go through when we are teens, and sometimes it continues on. The thing to understand about character stories is the try-fail cycles. So in try-fail cycles, your character is basically clinging to their old self-definition or they are trying on a new one. It's basically, it's this… The idea is that we… Our self-definition is super precious to us, and shifting it is terrifying. Because it completely redefines who we are. So every time you have a try-fail cycles, what your character is doing is like, "Is this who I am?" is the question that they're asking. If they're trying to break out of a role, it's like it's someone that they don't want to be. If they're trying to take on a new role, this is… They're experimenting. So, "Is this who I am?" is the question that they're asking. When they fail, the answer is no, this is not who I am. That leads them to their next level, because they have to try something else at that point. So, that's… That is basically what's going on with the try-fail cycle. In the coming-of-age stories, it's… They're… They are doing two things, frequently, when it's a kid growing up. They are trying to cling to the safe things of childhood, and they're also trying to reach to the adulthood. So frequently what you've got is they're doing both. They are trying to cling to their old self-definition and they are trying to try on the new ones at the same time.

[Dan] Yeah. It occurs to me as well that character might be the most common. As we talk about nesting these things, character might be that the most common outer frame. You look at something like Shawshank Redemption, which is clearly a milieu story overall, but it doesn't really end until the character Red learns to hope again. Which is how we started the movie. There's this thin shell of character development around it. There's countless examples that we don't necessarily have to go through. But whatever story you're telling, there's this character frame around it, because that's kind of that really satisfying emotional button on the end of the story.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah, as you were saying that, I'm like, "Oh, yeah. This is… Reluctant hero is the same…" That's the… Like, "Am I a hero? No." Then you get to the end of the story. "I am a hero."

[Dan] Yeah. I mean, not to do another Morgan Freeman one, but Seven does the same thing. It is obviously an inquiry story, through and through. But it begins with Morgan Freeman saying, "This is a horrible place and my life is awful and I gotta get out of here." It ends with him saying, "You know what? I can do a lot of good if I stick around here." Again, he has learned to hope, he has grown as a person. That is the shell around the inquiry story, is this character frame.

[C.L.] That is the most optimistic reading of the ending of Seven that I have…

[Laughter]

[C.L.] Ever heard in my life.

[Dan] Well, but it's true, though, because the inquiry story ends horribly, but the story itself ends with him kind of getting a little bit of hope. Yeah, it's… You gotta really dig through some mud to find any kind of optimism there, but it's there.

[Charlotte] It's there. Mary Robinette, and my other people in this podcast, question. Character story. How do you get it… How do you stop it from being navel gazey? How do you make it a driver, how do you keep it going? How do you make it exciting?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah, this is… That's such a good question, because frequently people are just… They think, "Oh, if my character is dealing with this internal self-doubt, it's all my character just going, 'Oh, woe is me. Woe!'"

[Charlotte] Absolutely. A lot of describing of the thoughts and the feelings and the… There's no action.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So…

[C.L.] As… It's… I was going to say, like, the thing about all of these elements so far that I'm seeing, especially with character, is that it needs some juice.

[Charlotte] Yes.

[C.L.] Like, we're doing an escape from this place because… We are answering these questions because… We are examining ourselves and changing because…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. This is, again, why you almost never see them solo, because they can be super dull. You need the juice that another thread gives you. Or the stakes, what… Why does it matter to the character. The… For me, the thing that I think about is that while you have an internal conflict, you have to externalize it to make it visible. So, again, I come out of theater, and so what you're looking… One of the things that we say is, "Acting is reacting." That the character… It's not just the character sitting there and having feelings inside themselves, it is them reacting to their environment and moving through it and taking action. But the actions that you take and the reactions that you have change from person to person. What happens in a character story is that a character is becoming a different person as they go through the story. So the actions, the externalization of that change means that they are making different concrete choices in the physical world, based on the internal changes that are happening to them. So making… Figuring out why… What are the… What does the way their mind is built, what does that do to affect the way they move through the world? Then you make… You frequently windup presenting them with increments of the same choice and that they respond to that choice in slightly different ways each time they come upon it. It doesn't mean that it has to be exactly the same beats, but it's the same kind of thematic choice. Like, do I kick the puppy this time or do I not kick the puppy?

[Chuckles]

[Dan] The question we all must ask ourselves.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] I may have just revealed too much about myself there.

[Dan] Awesome. So what homework do we have for character?

[Mary Robinette] Shockingly, we're taking our fairytale and we are converting it straight to being just a character story. So, in our story of Goldilocks, there are four different characters and I can decide to center that story on any one of them. So if I center it on Goldilocks, Goldilocks is tired of being treated like a child. So she is going to prove that she's not a child by going out and having adventures. Then realizes the adventures are too frightening for her, and that maybe she's better off being a little girl after all. Or, it can be Mama Bear desperately wants to be a great porridge artist. But no one appreciates her porridge. Her family doesn't. She's disconsolate. Her family takes her out to try to cheer her up. She attempts to pack a picnic to fit into the mold that they want her to fit into. She's just so unhappy making sandwiches. Sandwiches are for a different kind of bear. She returns home nearly broken and discovers that someone has eaten her porridge and loved it. She has found her audience. A little blonde girl. So you can do this in any way you want. Now, obviously, there is in my very dramatic Mama Bear telling, there is an event that happens in there that's the catalyst, which is someone comes and eats her porridge. But what we're looking at there is her attempting to fit herself into the mold that people are expecting her to be in, and her sadness that she is not appreciated for who she truly is. A great porridge artist. So…

[Dan] Well, now I want to read that version of the story.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] All right. So your job is to take whatever you're working on and try to strip it down to being just character. Good luck.

[Dan] Excellent. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 15.42: Writing The End

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/10/18/15-42-writing-the-end/

Key Points: How do you pick the right kind of climax? Your beginning, the first act, telegraphs the ending. How do you pick the right one for the story? Identify what kind of story fulfills the character's journey. Write backwards, plan the ending and let that determine the rest of the story. The ending defines the story. Start with who are the characters when we leave them, then rewind to figure out what leads them there. You need to know what you're making to figure out the ingredients. How can the characters fail and still satisfy the audience? Give them hope. It should be satisfying, but still a train wreck. Build up to it. Fulfill the promises, and still surprise them. Don't change your ending just because someone guessed it. Satisfying does not necessarily mean happy.

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 42.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Writing The End.

[Victoria] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Victoria] I'm Victoria.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Brandon] And we're done.

[Chuckles, laughter]

[Brandon] I don't usually get to do that joke.

[Brandon] We're going to talk about writing endings. We have questions from listeners, and a couple of them are really curious about how we pick what kind of ending we do. So, the first question is, how do you decide what kind of climax fits your story? They list battle, escape, conversation, inner turmoil, etc. All of those together sounds like a great idea.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Well, the… There's a school of thought that says your… Whatever your first line, your first paragraph, your first chapter, that will tell you in some sense what your ending will be. That will telegraph the whole story. That works much better for short things than for long things. But, by the end of the first act, you should know what kind of an ending… Whether this is going to end in a gunfight or a conversation.

[Brandon] Yeah, I agree. Now, if you're a heavy duty discovery writer, you may not discover that till the end, and then you need to rewrite it in. That's totally fine. But let's just say in the finished product, the reader should be able to anticipate what kind of ending it is… You are looking for after the first act of your story is done. Most of the time. That said, sometimes you do get twists, like, Into the Woods by Sondheim is a classic example of sometimes reversing expectations. It's very hard to do. But it's very rewarding if you do it right.

[Dan] I'm not sure that we're answering this specific person's question. Because they said, here's my list of things, a battle, a chase, a conversation. If I know that my book has to end with the hero defeating the villain, that could take the form of a battle, that could take the form of a chase, that could take the form of various different kinds of violence or action. How do you pick which one of those is going to be best for this particular story?

[Brandon] I like your reframing it that way. Because we're taking the easy answer to this…

[Yeah]

[Brandon] I think the harder answer, because… Looking at something like MCU films. One of my favorites is Doctor Strange. I know a lot of people think it's one of the weakest, but I love it, because magic and wizards. The ending of that one is basically a conversation.

[Dan] Yeah. And it's a very clever one. It is a puzzle, and especially coming on the heels of so many where, so many Marvel movies all ended with we're all over a city and the city is blowing up and we're flying around and shooting each other, that one ended with a conversation and a puzzle.

[Brandon] And you totally could have ended that one with a fight instead, and it would have felt appropriate for the themes that were happening through the story.

[Howard] Let's look at that ending a little bit. There is a whole bunch of very satisfying fight leading up to that ending. That ending is the capstone to the fight, the capstone to all of this action there at the end. To me, that's what made it satisfying. If he had arrived and immediately gone and had his chat with Dormammu, I wouldn't have felt satisfied.

[Brandon] That's true.

[Howard] I wouldn't have seen all the fun magic stuff I wanted to see.

[Brandon] Although, I will say, part of the reason I like that ending is it was a theme for the character, learning patience…

[Right]

[Brandon] We had seen that his trouble was he wanted it now, he wanted to be the best, and he wanted his answers. If you haven't seen the movie, he travels to get healed from a terrible injury so he can go back to being a doctor. He finds people who will help him, and they turn him aside. They send him out. He's like, "No, no, no. You've got to help me." But he has to learn to be patient with his flaws and with himself to find inner peace. Then he uses that to defeat the enemy.

[Dan] Now, to Howard's point, a lot of what's going on in the early action stuff is try-fail cycles. I think we can win by this. No we can't. I think we can win by this. No we can't. Then he puts the pieces together and completes his own inner arc, and that's when he figures out how to do it.

[Howard] I think that comes back to the original question. Am I going to end with a battle? Am I going to end with a chase? Am I going to end with a conversation? Well, Brandon's first answer was, these all sound nice.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] You can have all of those. You can have, in the final six minutes of act three, you can have a battle that… Or, excuse me, a chase… Well, a battle that fails and someone gets away and you have to chase them and you catch them and you have a conversation, and then we're done.

[Brandon] I think the key here is for you to identify what kind of story will fulfill, not necessarily what you need to do, but will fulfill the character's journey. Then you could pick any one of these things. Whatever feels right at the time. As long as you are completing that character's journey. That's the harder decision.

[Victoria] So, I feel like I'm the monster at the end of this conversation.

[Chuckles]

[Victoria] Right? Like, the thing is, I have been waiting to talk until the end of this because I write my books backwards. So I actually don't do anything until I've planned the ending. The ending, for me, and that climax basically through the last page, determines the entire story I'm telling. So, for me, the total cohesion of it is second to figuring out the ending of the story. So I feel like I have perhaps a different perspective on this, because rather than write toward the end, and think what kind of resolution do I need in order to fulfill the promises that I've made early on, I write backwards, from the end to make those promises from the ending that I know I want to achieve.

[Dan] So, you are still then at a point in the process deciding how your ending is going to work. I actually write the same way. I think about the ending first. So, how do you pick?

[Victoria] It's the story I want to tell. I feel like the ending is not a culmination, it's the definition. For me, the ending is the punctuation at the end, it's the thing that we're working toward. An entire sentence has to end at that moment. I… It is part of the fundamental questions I am asking myself when I begin to have an idea and when I begin to ask what kind of story I'm telling. I really treat the ending is the opportunity for the absolute collision of all of the ideas that I have, of all of the places that I want to end. The thing that I actually ask myself, before I figure out if it's a battle or a chase or anything, is who are my characters at the moment we leave them? So, really, it comes down to who's alive, who's dead, where are they act physically and psychologically, and then, from there, I begin to rewind their last moments in order to figure out what is the thing that leads them there, and I rewind from there all the way until I get to the beginning and figure out who the characters are when we first meet them.

[Howard] Your Doctor Strange metaphor is feeling even more fitting now.

[Victoria] Yes.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The bit about working backwards from the ending, it does not feel backwards to me. When I'm outlining, these days all of my discovery writing tricks are now rolled into my outlining process. The… I've talked about the process where my first outline is a 10-year-old boy tells you about his favorite movie at high speed. The 10-year-old boy will say, "Ohohoh, I forgot to tell you this one thing." That actually goes into my first pass at the outline, because it's silly and it's fun. But I begin that process thinking, "What is the big awesome moment at the end that got the 10-year-old boy to come home and tell me, 'Oh, I have to tell you about this movie, it's so great!'"

[Victoria] Yeah.

[Howard] "Because there was this thing. But before I tell you about the end…" And then off we go.

[Victoria] Also, I have used, I feel like over the course of the episodes that I've been here, a lot of food metaphors. But to use yet another food metaphor, it's like the ingredients, like, you're gathering apples along the way, and you end up with an apple pie or something. I don't want to end up with, like, an orange cake. Like, if I grew… Like, I don't want to, like… If you write towards a discovery and you don't actually have a plan in mind, you risk gathering ingredients which result in a different end, which result in something that doesn't feel cohesive. Whereas I want to know what it is I'm making, so that I can figure out the ingredients that I need to find along the way to make that dish. It is all about that dish.

[Howard] If you're gathering apples, it is entirely possible to end up with cyanide.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Because there's cyanide in apple seeds.

[Victoria] Okay. Different fruit, then.

[Howard] But that's… No no no, but your metaphor works perfectly, because you can gather apples, you can be gathering these things, and still have some options for what happens at the end. That's, for me, where surprising but inevitable will come in.

[Brandon] Let's stop and talk about your book.

[Howard] Oh, yes.

[Victoria] Yeah. I have a new book out. Or I will, by the time this airs. It is called The Invisible Life of Addie Larue. It is essentially about a young woman in 18th-century France who is deathly afraid of dying in the same place she was born. She decides to summon the old gods to help her out of her life, out of her predicament.

[Brandon] As one does.

[Victoria] As one does. As one does. But the problem is, none of them answer. She prays that Dawn, and no one answers. She prays at midday, and no one answers. She prays at dusk, and no one answers. The one rule she has been taught all her life, never pray to the gods that answer after dark. She makes a mistake, and she does this, and she accidentally summons the devil. When he asks her what she would be willing to trade for her soul, she wants time. She doesn't know how much, she wants to live forever, and the devil says, "No." Because if you live forever, he doesn't get your soul, he gets the soul at the conclusion of the deal. So, in a moment of desperation, she says to the devil, "You can have my soul when I don't want it anymore." Sensing an opportunity, the devil agrees. The deal is done, and she discovers afterward that he has granted her the ability to live forever and cursed her to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

[Brandon] There you go.

[Victoria] I did not start writing it until… I had the idea eight years ago, and I didn't start writing it until two years ago when I figured out the ending.

[Brandon] What an awesome premise.

[Howard] And is this under the name…

[Victoria] V. E. Schwab.

[Howard] V. E. Schwab. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue.

[Brandon] All right. So. Another question we had… Kind of take this from a different direction, is, how can you end a climax without neatly resolving the conflicts, or, also, how can you have your characters fail without leaving the audience disappointed? How can you build up all this tension, and build up all these indications that there's going to be a heroic victory, and then… Not. Give. It. To. Them?

[Chuckles]

[Victoria] Well, in YA, you would say you would need to have hope. So you can end with a bad ending or a failure in YA, but the thing that you don't want to end up with is the lack of hope. I'm also a really big believer in saving the day, but not the world. I love it when your characters survive to fight again, maybe solve one of the problems, but in so doing, much like the try-fail cycle, end up creating another problem that they're going to have to face at some point down the line.

[Dan] Yeah. Unsatisfying endings are like my favorite thing.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Unsatisfying is the wrong word, because if you do it right, it will still feel satisfying and it will still feel resolved, even though you didn't get what you want. So, in all of my John Cleaver novels, except, arguably, the very last one, he does what he's trying to do. He fills the goal he sets out to fill, and then looks around at the wreckage surrounding him and goes, "Oh, my gosh. What was the cost of actually destroying this demon? I've lost my family, I lost everything that I had." And I just over and over for five books because I'm an awful person.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] The ending of Extreme Makeover does this same thing. It has an incredibly dark, desolate ending that a lot of people come back to me and they're like, "How… Why did you do that?" Because that's where it needed to end. That is actually the resolution of the arc that I set up, is that these characters are going to fail in the world is going to end.

[Brandon] It's why everyone on Seinfeld should end up in jail…

[Dan] Yeah.

[Brandon] At the end of the series. That is the satisfying resolution, under some understandings of how the plots were going.

[Dan] Okay. So. Taking Extreme Makeover as an example, all of my early readers, all of the offer readers, the writing group that I ran it through, they all came back and said, "What? How dare you end it there? We thought they were going to pull it out." I realized, okay, this is satisfying to me, but I need to make it satisfying to the audience. So, I played a lot of tricks on you. First of all, I started every chapter, and this came very late in the revision process, started every chapter with a countdown to the end of the world. So that you know, even if you think that I'm going to cheat at the end and pull it out, you at least have been told, every couple of pages, nope, the end of the world is coming.

[Brandon] That worked really well. What it did was it made the end of the world become a thing you're anticipating, and kind of looking forward to.

[Dan] Yes. Then, the other thing was, I kind of amped up the darkness inside of all the characters, so that when it happens, you're like, "Oh, good. That one just got his comeuppance." Then, "Oh, good, that one just got it." We get to the end and you realize, like, the worst thing that any character does in that book, in my opinion, happens in one of the last couple of pages. If you actually look at the dates and the times of this countdown, it's not counting down to the end of the book, it's counting down to that one betrayal. So, by the time you get there, you're like, "Well, yeah, he deserves to die. I've been following this whole time, I've been waiting for him to pull it out, he just did this awful thing to her, I want him to die."

[Victoria] This comes back, again and again, to promises. Right? To promise versus expectation, to finding a way to surprise people even when they know what they want. Because that's essentially the bargain that you're trying to strike here, is, a reader reads and, if you have a cohesive narrative, they have an idea of how they expect it to end and how they want it to end. You, somehow, have to find ways to surprise them, and not be predictable, while still fulfilling the general promise. You made a tonal promise over the course of your book. So, then, they can't be betrayed by the tone. They can't be betrayed by the ending. So there's like… It's a lot of promises to keep up with. You're going to end up with somebody upset. Like, no matter how well you end a book, somebody is going to wish you ended it differently. That's one of the hard parts of this.

[Howard] The one counsel I'd give is that if you have a public audience for a series, and you have not yet published the ending of the series, don't let the fact that someone correctly guessed the ending of a thing make you change the ending. I was on a panel with a guy who wrote for comic books. He would go through the letters and if somebody guessed his ending, he would just change it. I thought, "That is no way to live."

[Laughter]

[Howard] I assume that somebody is going to put all these things together, even if they're just rolling dice, and figure out what I had planned. That person gets to do a little dance…

[Victoria] [garbled… They get a cookie]

[Howard] And know that they are smarter than me, and that's fine.

[Brandon] Going back to some of the things that Dan and Victoria were saying, I think satisfying doesn't have to mean happy. If you can learn to split apart those two things… George Martin made a career on being satisfying but not happy in his epic fantasy. That is what people came to expect. That… Being satisfying… Even satisfying deaths is like a thing in the Game of Thrones series, that if you don't fulfill on, reader expectations are like, "Wait a minute. This is not what I was promised. I was looking forward to satisfying deaths."

[Dan] You can see that in the final season of the TV show.

[Victoria] We can't… I can't even talk about it, I'm so angry.

[Dan] So many people…

[Victoria] I'm still angry.

[Dan] Started to complain about halfway through the season, "Wait. All of the main characters are going to live through this!" That is not what they had been promised, years and years ago when that first book started. Then the show kind of flinched and stopped killing off main characters. It didn't satisfy.

[Victoria] That is a tonal promise break. You promised not only death, but satisfying death that adequately reflected the crimes which were perpetuated in life. It is one of the only things we all had to look forward to…

[Chuckles]

[Victoria] I am still upset about it.

[Brandon] Moving on. Let's go ahead and do some homework. Dan, you have our homework.

[Dan] Yeah. So what we want you to do is just practice this. Take something you've already written, whether it is a short story, a novel, or whatever length. Then, rewrite your ending so that the opposite thing happens. This is not just let a meteor land and kill all of your heroes before they succeed. Find away that they can fail, but that it's satisfying. Whether you do this the opposite kind of tone or the opposite kind of… The opposite person wins. However you want to define opposite. Write it, but do your best to make it feel satisfying.

[Brandon] I'm really curious to try this on some of my own stories. I think it would be… This is going to be a fun exercise to practice kind of pantsing an ending, where you're taking all the things you've set up, and then coming up with a new ending. Very hard for someone like you or me who always knows our endings.

[Victoria] I was going to say… You've gathered all your ingredients for apple pie, and now…

[Dan] Now I'm telling you to make orange juice.

[Victoria] You have to go and bake something completely different with it?

[Howard] I've already told you, there's cyanide in there.

[Victoria] I know, I know. [Garbled] poison.

[Howard] You've got this.

[Brandon] You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.8: Making Characters Distinctive

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2018/02/25/13-8-making-characters-distinctive/

Key points: How do you make your characters flawed? Start with the characteristics you expect, the stereotypical stuff, for your protagonist or character. Flaws, or quirks, come from things that don't match that. Think about the character's situation, how does that affect their dialogue, actions, and thinking. Give your characters something to get in their way, and add texture. Look for try-fail cycles where the protagonist fails because their competency is not what they need to succeed. What flaw can they have that is important to the story? Do you use a tragic flaw, that causes the character's downfall, or just weird flaws that the character is constantly fighting? Tragic flaws are good when you want things to go horribly wrong. Think about flaws that can go either way. Use an ensemble cast to practice and play with flaws. Distinctions are not necessarily flaws. Look at Sanderson's second law of magic, what a character can't do is more interesting than what they can do. When you are creating distinctive characters, the flaws help! Sometimes flaws are what make characters lovable. How do you avoid just stapling a quirk to a character? Look for the things that are important to that character. Look at what's behind that quirk, what's the explanation for it. Find things in the environment or setting that differentiate this person from everyone else.

( Flaws, quirks, how is this distinctive? )

[Brandon] We are out of time. This is been a great discussion. Howard has our homework.
[Howard] Okay. We are talking about distinctive, distinctiveness, failings, quirky, whatever. Make a shortlist of five of the people you know best. They can be family members, they can be friends. Include yourself in that list. Imagine them as characters in a story. Then, next to their name, start writing the attributes that make them distinct from each other. The things that might be failings, the things that might be quirky, the things that might be weird. Include the things about yourself. Don't show this list to anybody else, because they'll find it highly offensive. You now need to keep this a secret for the rest of your life.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 12.41: Raising the Stakes

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/10/08/12-41-raising-the-stakes/

Key Points: Raising the stakes over the long haul? How do you keep it interesting? Lots of smaller plots, smaller scenes that raise the stakes in different ways. Subplots! Make the failure worse, and worse. Mounting consequences! Put yourself into it. Find the personal issues for the character. More specific, and more personal. Use try-fail cycles, yes-but/no-and, and build new problems out of old solutions. Rest points can accent the pedal-to-the-metal moments, if they are real. Build a stairway, always up and progressing, but there are plateaus as well as risers. The question raised at the beginning must matter, it must be gripping, then the stakes will carry you. Don't raise the stakes too fast and too high! Save your great finish for the end, don't give it away too early. Also, delayed consequences, or solutions that postpone the problem without solving it may work for you.
( Raise the stakes? Bet on it! )

[Brandon] This has been a great discussion. I'm going to have to call it here. But I do have some homework for you guys. I want you to try a few of the things that we've talked about in this episode. Specifically, raising the stakes, number one, by making… Try taking a side character from a story you're working on, and raise the stakes for what's going on for them. I want you to try by making it more personal first, but I'm not going to let you use the crutch that a lot of us use, that they have lost someone in their past or that it's personal because this is the person that killed their mentor or something like that. It can't be related to the loss of a loved one.
[Mary] No fridging!
[Brandon] Yes. Just make that one not on the table, and just see what you can do with that then. And then make it more specific. Try to make it a little less epic, but more specific to the person. Try that. Try that instead. See if this raises the stakes for you in interesting ways for your story. Well, this has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses Season Two Episode Eight: The Three Act Structure

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/12/01/writing-excuses-season-2-episode-8-the-three-act-structure-with-bob-defendi/

Key points: The Three Act Structure: Act I, hero encounters problem; Act II, hero discovers problem is bigger than first thought; Act III, he triumphs anyway. Act I needs to establish the characters and the initial conflict. Act I ends when the main character enters a new world, when the battle is transformed into a war. Act II: try-fail cycles are your friend. Don't forget the twist, and a character hits rock bottom. Kick down the door: any time things are slowing down, it's time for another disaster (a.k.a. mini-climaxes). Act III: monkeys are allergic to cheese, or hidden learning lets the hero win.
( the transcript, more or less )
[Dan] This is more of an outlining prompt. So your outlining prompt for this time is to sit down and plot out a very basic Three Act structure either for what you're already working on if it doesn't have one or for an entirely new idea.
[Bob] All right.

Current Mood: try-fail
Current Music: Lookin' for a Good Time, Lady Antebellum

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses Season Two Episode Three: Characters with Brandon Mull

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/10/27/writing-excuses-season-2-episode-3-characters-with-brandon-mull/

Key points: make your characters feel real by understanding them. What are their personality quirks? What do they want? Quirks that are a little bit extreme help make the illusion real. Ask yourself, "Why can't this character fill this role?" Design imperfect characters who are interesting in that slot in your story. Know the three act format and remember that real heroes always fail twice (at least) before they succeed.
( Much ado )

Current Mood: sniffles

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Writing Excuses Transcripts

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Writing Excuses 16.39: Deep Dive into Event

Writing Excuses 16.38: Deep Dive into Character

Writing Excuses 15.42: Writing The End

Writing Excuses 13.8: Making Characters Distinctive

Writing Excuses 12.41: Raising the Stakes

Writing Excuses Season Two Episode Eight: The Three Act Structure

Writing Excuses Season Two Episode Three: Characters with Brandon Mull

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