Writing Excuses 15.50: Juggling Ensembles

Dec. 16th, 2020 02:03 pm
mbarker: (Burp)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 15.50: Juggling Ensembles
 
 
Key Points: How do you manage a large cast? In outlining, include the characters who are NOT going to be in the foreground, who are going to be left out. Start with a few, and then expand out. Don't try to treat all point of view and ensemble characters equally. How do you connect multiple different POV's in different places into a cohesive narrative. Common bits, e.g., dialogue. Groupings and teams! Don't exceed the reader's threshold for people and lines. Make sure every member of your ensemble serves a purpose in the story. I use multiple POV's for different places. Make sure your story is big enough to justify multiple POV's in different places. Switch to the POV who is in the most pain. Be careful of cliffhangers. Make sure the reader can follow your narrative, don't shift too many perspectives and timelines at the same time. How can one primary viewpoint character interact and build relationships with a large ensemble? How do you develop relationships without sending all the other characters out of the room? Don't treat all characters equally. Treat your ensemble cast like a group of real people. Use shorthand and cues to remind the readers who certain characters are. Sometimes caricatures work. Give the readers space for their imagination. One or two weird idiosyncrasies of character go a long way.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 50.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Juggling Ensembles.
[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] We have questions from you guys about how to manage a large cast. This is tricky. I was not good at this early in my career. In fact, I have a story, I think I told you guys before, but when I first sat down to write the first Stormlight book, this was in 2002 before I sold any books, I failed because of the large cast. I wanted to do a big epic, like George RR Martin, like Robert Jordan, that had a large cast. I, even though this was my 13th novel, still crashed and burned trying to write this one. It didn't work until I had been handed the Wheel of Time and had to get up to speed on juggling a large cast very, very quickly. 2600 named characters in the Wheel of Time. That was like going to the gym and being like, "All right, personal trainer…"
[Howard] How many point of view characters were in the Wheel of Time?
[Brandon] 50, I think. Somewhere around there. How many main viewpoint characters? A dozen or so is what I would say. Maybe two dozen, depending on how you count main. So there were a lot.
[Howard] Using your gym metaphor,
[chuckles]
[Howard] There are people who go to the gym and overhead pressing 45 pounds, boy, that is a lot. Then there are the bodybuilders overhead pressing 450 pounds is also a lot. What you're talking about here really is the ultimate bit of heavy lifting. I don't… I haven't counted how many point of view characters there are in Schlock Mercenary, because the point of view is the camera instead of the character. But I think I realized around 2008, 2009, that my nascent outlining process needed to include which characters whose names I know, whose backstories I love, am I going to leave out of this book except for we get to see them in the background so that we know that they're not dead. Because unless I did that, my brain would latch on to the fact that oh, we haven't talked to so-and-so for a while, I should put them in a scene. That was a disaster. So, for me, large cast was about taking the huge cast, and then for an entire book, setting a different set of limits.
[Victoria] I mean, this is interesting. So, in the Shades of Magic series, I think I have four point of view characters in the first book, eight in the second, and 12 in the third. I like an expansion project. I like the idea that we can root in a few first, and then expand outward from there. I think it allows for focus. I also, though, and I think this will come up a few times, I'm a really big fan of not treating all point of view characters equally. They do not all get the same amount of pages. I have a primary cast, a secondary cast, and a tertiary cast. The primary cast always gets point of view time. But I'll throw in some secondary and some tertiary just to break it up. I don't think you have to treat all members of the ensemble equally from a perspective.
[Brandon] Do you get fan anger from that? Because I get a lot of it. From not treating my tertiary characters… People will read it and they'll write me notes and say, "I feel like I've been promised much more from this character, because my brief glimpses of them were so evocative. Why are you ignoring this character? Why do you hate this character?"
[Chuckles]
[Victoria] You know, that's one you can't win. Like, I love writing characters who are on page for maybe a page or two, and feel holistic enough, complete enough, that you can imagine that they're the protagonist of a different novel. I want all of the characters in a book to feel like they have legs in that way. But no… I mean, I get people who are like, "I want more of this person." I've been lucky in that I don't get the anger of it. Maybe when I… It's because in each subsequent book, I shift that a little bit and I give more space to the ones that I've established. I like having this almost ripple effect, where if a person is a secondary character in one book, they will have a primary status in the next book. So I'm almost seating them, letting you get accommodated to their presence in the room, so that then when I focus on them more, you already are like, "Oh, yeah, I know that dude. I'm really excited to learn more about them."
[Howard] That was the second season of Community, we're introduced… In one of the humanities classroom scenes, we're introduced to Fat Neil. Where John Oliver says, "Oh, Fat Neil." Neil says, "Neil is just fine." Then it's two or three episodes later, when we get Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, where Neil's character arc is super important, and the fact that people are calling him Fat Neil is super important. But for that episode, he's… I thought… When I first saw that episode, I thought, "Who's cameo'ing? Why is that person important? He just now showed up, we called attention to him, I don't think I've ever seen him before."
 
[Brandon] So, one of the questions here is how do you connect multiple vastly different POV's into a cohesive narrative, especially when some characters might be in totally different places in the world.
[Howard] Common tone modulation. It's a cheat that I use all the time, where I will take words from somebody's dialogue at the end of a scene and I will work them into someone else's dialogue. They are literally an entire galaxy away doing something different, but I have picked this tiny thread that shows that there is a similarity between the two of them and away I go.
[Victoria] I like the groupings. I like physically grouping different teams. I like to think of them as my A Team, my B team, and my C team. Because we… Like as readers, we are trained that if you start showing different teams, we're waiting for the coalescing. We are expecting that at some point in the narrative, the teams are going to begin to physically cross, or they're going to begin to come together. I think that it is… There's a threshold for reader balance, where they can hold a certain number of people and lines in their mind at a time. You have to be very careful not to exceed the threshold for reader balance. That's why there are whole sections of George RR Martin books which focus on a narrowing slice of the cast. Because to ask them to hold all of the cast in their mind for a long time… One, you're diluting the impact of any one of your cast members. So I always encourage when people want to have a large cast to make sure that every member of your ensembles are serving a purpose in the story. But I love a good physical grouping.
 
[Dan] See, for me, the question about how can you handle multiple POV's when they're in very different places… That's when I use multiple POV's.
[Victoria] Exactly.
[Dan] Right? Because if they're all in the same place, then I'm just going to stick with my main character, and we're going to follow her. But in the Partials series, this is how I eventually started using multiple POV's. The first book is all Kira. The second book had to have a second one because we needed to know what was going on and she was in a different part of the world. Then, by the time we got to the third, I think I have five or six POV's because that is how I can show the different parts of the world. So, for me, this is less a question of POV than it is of is your story big enough to justify having people in all these different places at once.
[Howard] One of the most important things I learned recording Writing Excuses with Brandon and Dan during season one back in 2008, was the discussion of… I can't remember whose writing book it was, but the idea that the point of view character that you want to switch to is the one who is currently in the most pain. Because I'm writing comedy, and pain is funny. That is, it is a conflict from which I can always exact a punchline.
[Brandon] Another thing that's useful here is determining just how you use cliffhangers and not, particularly if there's going to be large spaces and large gaps. Different authors do it different ways. I'm not going to say there is a right and a wrong way, but I've found as a reader that having to keep track… Like if you… If the author doesn't tie it up somewhat neatly, before leaving this character for a long time, it's going to be much harder, because you're going to feel like this is dangling over you. Now sometimes you can be neat and still have a cliffhanger. Right? You can sometimes be like, "All right. This character, this thing's happened, you only have to remember they have fallen off a cliff." But if you have to remember they have fallen off a cliff while there in a political negotiation that has not finished and their loved one is over here with… And keep track of all that, and you're going to leave them for 100,000 words and come back, then you're setting yourself up for some failure.
[Victoria] This is really interesting. I learned this lesson through timeline. I tell a lot of alinear narratives, and I also have multiple perspectives in them. So I have multiple perspectives, multiple timelines. I learned that basically my reader could tolerate shifts between perspectives or shifts between timeline. Could not tolerate a shift from perspective and timeline. So if I wanted to follow a character's present and then into the past, I needed to come back to the present for I switched to somebody else's present. It's a matter of sandwiching. It's a matter of understanding that threshold for pain that a reader has in terms of like being able to keep track of the narrative. It's the worst reason to lose your reader is that they can't actually follow your narrative. They're like, "There are too many threads here. Those quote
[Howard] That is a great exploration of the difference between prose and other mediums. Because in comics and TV, visual medium, we can make this sort of jump and take the reader with us because we have text and we have video and we have audio and all of those things can be used to cue the change.
[Victoria] And you have palletes and you have everything.
[Howard] Color palette… All of those things can be used to telegraph it. But, yeah, in books, I really like the idea that you've limited yourself. You need to switch between all of these things, you're just not going to throw all of the switches at once.
[Victoria] You have to be very careful which switches you throw in which order, or else you genuinely will end up with a very confused reader.
 
[Brandon] Let's talk about a book this week by one of our favorite people ever.
[Victoria] This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar, is one of the strangest, most beautiful examinations of perspective. I think it fits perfectly into this theme. It is an epistolary love story between two characters, Red and Blue, two women on opposite sides of an alinear, intergalactic, inter-spatial, interdim… Inter-everything time war. They begin leaving letters for each other. It is almost impossible to describe, and that is all right, because it is only… It is novella length. I read it on a single plane ride. I would recommend to everybody just carve out an hour or two in their evening or in their morning or in their lunch, at some point, and just sit with it and just devour it. There is something so powerful about it.
[Howard] Structurally, it's fascinating because you have two third person limited points of view and you have two epistolary points of view. So there are four POV, and they alternate very… Mechanically is the wrong word. Formulaicly. There is a formula for the delivery of these POV's. On my second iteration through that formula, in that book, I realized, "Oh. That is letting me perfectly keep track of where I am. That is brilliant." They used the pacing structure of chapter breaks to tell me who was talking and when and why and how.
[Victoria] It's a master class on a lot of the things that we discuss.
[Howard] It is so awesome.
[Brandon] So…
[Howard] This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Max Gladstone and…
[Victoria] Amal El-Mohtar.
[Howard] Amal El-Mohtar.
 
[Brandon] So, another question we have on POV takes this a slightly different way with these ensemble casts. One of our listeners has a character who is going to be the main viewpoint character. This character needs to interact with a lot of different people and build relationships with all of them. How do you give time to a large ensemble when you're using one primary viewpoint character and you need to characterize all these different people? One of the things this listener says is, "How can I isolate certain relationships for development without always having to send the other characters out of the room?" Which actually is a thing I think about a lot. Because I find that personally, I don't know if it's the same with you guys, if I have too many characters in the scene, I will naturally start to forget about some of them, and they just won't participate. If I get beyond about four or five people, characters start slipping, and I've realized I have to create scenes where if I have more than that, I have to use other tricks to tell the story.
[Victoria] Two things for me. Hierarchy. I don't treat all those characters in that ensemble equally, and I don't think in a relationship or any group of five or six or 10, that we all would have equal relationships and equal time. Two, one of my own personal favorites. I write characters who hate each other. The nice thing about writing characters who hate each other is that they're not terribly enthusiastic, even if they're on a spaceship or on a boat, they're not really great at being in the same room as each other at all the same times. So, remembering that in any group of 10, most of those people probably don't like each other equally and are going to gravitate into their own almost small subgroups. You have to remember to treat your ensemble cast like a group of actual people.
[Howard] I would ask our listeners to think about a time when you've been super happy that a friend of yours has fallen into a wonderful relationship. You are now the POV character for their love story. How do you write that? Because that's… If you have a single POV in your novel, and other people are falling in love, that is exactly what you're describing.
[Brandon] One of the other things here is the larger your cast gets… This isn't always the case. But the more often you're going to have to use shorthand to give readers reminders on who certain characters are. Some of these characters who don't get equal time with all the others, you're going to have to be okay the fact to just aren't going to have a lot of time to develop them. A great writer can take a short amount of time and characterize someone in a really interesting way. But then one note of that is going to stick in the reader's mind, and you have to remind them who that character is when they come back, and not violate what that note is.
[Dan] So, the novella that I wrote for Magic, the Gathering, has a fairly large cast of… By the end of it, six or seven main characters. They're… I did this trip with them. I gave them… Here's one or two identifying traits that will just be shorthand, because they're not main characters, they're there because they need to be there and they're flavor. It was really fascinating to me to read the editor's notes, because one of those, who's just a very thinly drawn character with one or two traits, that was the editor's favorite character. He's like, "I love every scene that this guy's in. His characterization is so strong." I'm like, "That's because he's a caricature." But that works. Don't feel like it doesn't work.
[Victoria] I'm going to say as well, I think that we don't always give readers enough credit or space for their imagination in these things. We feel the need to dictate all the details of characters, when the truth is, like, sometimes you really just do need a few cues and shorthand, and allow the reader to fill in, and kind of fill-in like smoke, spread out into that space. I am somebody who I'm not great with spaces, personally, and so I love the visual cues shorthand. I will use an article of clothing, I will use a color, I will use a piece of jewelry, and that will be the thing that tethers an entire primary cast in my readers minds to each of those characters. Yet, when I look at the fan art that comes in for the series, they're all identical. There's just enough there that they get the main pieces of it.
[Howard] Back in September when we talked about writing under deadlines, I mentioned the importance of falling back on craft. Dan, what you've described, that is absolutely a craft trick. You know you've done it right when your editor can't see the trick.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] You know this is a very well painted cardboard cutout. But a trick of the eye, from the reader's perspective, ah, it's fully fleshed out.
[Victoria] Also, to that, beyond the physical details, giving one or two like kind of weird like idiosyncrasies of character can go such a long way with characters that don't spend a huge amount of time on the page.
[Brandon] It really can. It can be really, really handy. Sometimes I feel bad about doing it, because I'm like, "This character deserves their own book." But these are the things you have to do, if you want to have a large cast.
[Howard] This character deserves their own book, but I deserve to be able to write The End and turn this in for money.
[Victoria] Yep.
 
[Brandon] So, we're out of time, and this is our last podcast with Victoria.
[What? Oh!]
[Victoria] I've had so much fun, though.
[Brandon] But we're going to give you a last homework.
[Victoria] Yeah. So. This is a good old favorite of mine. I want you to take something that you've written, preferably something with an ensemble cast. Let's say a cast of at least three. We're not… It doesn't have to be a whole gathering, a whole gaggle. Take a cast of at least three, if you have a viewpoint character, or even in your mind a main character in this group, I want you to pick one of the other two or four or six or however many you're choosing from. I want you to think of how you would tell the exact same story, and, by shifting the leadership role, shifting the primary and secondary and tertiary roles around, so that this new character, hopefully a minor character you've chosen, is now at the center of the narrative.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. Victoria, thank you so much.
[Victoria] Thank you.
[Brandon] You're all out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.46: Crafting Chinese-American Characters

Nov. 18th, 2020 10:32 am
mbarker: (ISeeYou2)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 15.46: Crafting Chinese-American Characters
 
 
Key points: Are there representations of Chinese-American characters in media? Literature, TV, and movies do have representative characters, but it's not as deep as it could be. Mostly focusing on how do you merge the two heritages, and recent immigrants or second-generation learning about early trials. Good characters are aware of stereotypes, and control them. They are aware of language. And then there's food! Tastes, emotions, a metaphor for making connections with heritage? Comfort! Make the influences from the past little nods, spice for the character. How can you write about a culture that you didn't grow up in? Admit that this is just your viewpoint. Focus on one character, one place, don't claim that it represents everyone, just that one character's life.
 
[Transcriptionist note: (1) I may have confused Piper and Tempest. Apologies for mislabeling. (2) I may have confused emigrant and immigrant.]
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 46.
[Piper] This is Writing Excuses, Crafting Chinese-American Characters.
[Dan] 15 minutes long.
[Yang] Because your time is valuable.
[Laughter]
[No. No. Laughter]
[Dan] And we're not that smart.
[That just finishes… Garbled]
[No]
[Yang] See, I was a Chinese-American… [Garbled]
[Piper] Getting back to… I'm Piper.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Yang] I'm Yang Yang.
[Tempest] I'm Tempest.
 
[Piper] This is already off the rails. So… I get to be Howard this time. This is the best. All right, so. Welcome to the next episode… Our continuing episode about Writing the Other. We are here with Yang Yang Wang.
[Yang] Hello.
[Piper] You're so awesome. You do so many things. But, yes, when I said I want to do these episodes and we're going to do them in Seattle, Nisi Shawl, who is the godmother, the mystical goddess of Writing the Other, was, like, "You should talk to Yang Yang." So I think…
[Yang] Oh, thank you. Whoever she is.
[Laughter]
[Piper] Thank you. Thank you so much, Nisi. Yes. So tell us a little bit about yourself, as an author, is a Chinese-American, as whatever.
[Yang] So, currently, I am an author and actor. I mostly specialize in commercials. I've done everything… Every brand in the Seattle area, from like Amazon to Microsoft to Washington State Lottery. I think it's cool that I found some success in that. I feel like it's a combination of good timing and my own personal brand. I don't know if… For those who have met me, I have a very good, what they call a developer look. Believe it or not, that is very hot in Seattle.
[Chuckles, laughter]
[Yang] [garbled]… A lot of tech companies.
[Piper] In my day job, I actually work with a software development company, and I agree, you have a great developer look.
[Laughter]
[Yang] Oh, thank you. Yeah, so besides that, I've been dipping my feet into more on the production side. I wrote and directed a short film last year which took a best short film award at the Oregon independent film festival.
[Dan] Cool.
[Yang] I recently just opened a short film at the Wing Luke Museum, who's doing an exhibition on Asian Americans in science fiction. You should definitely check that out. Like, it is an amazing exhibit.
 
[Piper] Awesome. How cool. Yay. It's not often we get someone with acting and writing experience. So, I guess the first thing I want to ask is about when you're thinking about the kind of Chinese-American characters that you do see in media, whether that's like film media or even books, first of all, do you see many? And, the ones that you see, are they the kind of characters that you would say, "Yes, I enjoy that depiction. That seems amazing. I would want every person to want to look at that, forever and ever, amen."
[Yang] So, first of all, I would like to start off by saying that my opinions do not represent everyone else's opinions.
[Dan] Certainly.
[Piper] Absolutely.
[Yang] Just my own. I think, growing up, I did see Chinese-American characters in literature and on television or in movies. I would say that I did recognize them. I wouldn't say that I felt, like, misrepresented. But at the same time, I felt like it just… It waded in the shallow end of the pool, if you will. I felt like there was more that could be depicted. A lot of the narratives that I was seeing was centered around like people struggling with merging their Chinese heritage and their American heritage. It would be a story about recent immigrants or like second-generation learning about their parents' trials coming to this country. Being… So, my own story is that I came over here when I was nine years old. I felt, like, while I recognized some of the trials that those characters faced, like, I was not picked on in school anymore than anybody else. My name was not made fun of. You know, when your name's Yang Yang Wang, there's a lot of wordplay.
[Chuckles]
[garbled… Yeah, yeah… Places…]
[Yang] I picked out one of the ones I wanted to highlight is somebody called me… You know, Yankee Doodle Dandy, but they called me Yankee Doodle Wanger.
[Dan] Nice.
[Yang] But, yeah. Kids… But I'd like to, again, stress that kids being who they are, I was picked on no more or less than like any other kid at my school. So, while I recognize facets of this, I didn't think that that was the complete story. So, like for me, some of the things that I think good Chinese-American characters are highly aware of are (a) their relationship to stereotypes, like, you grow up hearing these stereotypes and you decide and you have control over how you relate to them or not relate to them, how you let them affect you or not affect you, whether you want to embrace and make it your own. Because there's that… Let's take the example of, like, martial artists. While there's that stereotype, all Chinese kids know martial arts. But some Chinese kids love martial arts. By performing martial arts, it's not that they're perpetuating the stereotype, but they are definitely aware that that stereotype exists, but they are taking control over it, and not letting it affect their love of this thing.
[Right]
[Yang] Another thing being awareness of their relationship to language. I think whether or not you speak the language that your family, your ancestors, etc., like, did, you are aware of your level of relationship to that language. Like, what do you know, like, just a couple of words? Like whether you know a phrase. Whether you can just order a couple of food dishes at a restaurant. Maybe that's enough. But for other people, like, it's not, and it's a source of like common guilt from their family, etc. But I find that language… It is definitely something that a lot of Chinese-Americans, including myself, like, are hyperaware of.
[Uhum]
 
[Yang] The last one, I mentioned it before, was food. Like…
[Laughter]
[It always comes back to food]
[Yang] Yeah, absolutely.
[So many things about my life are food.]
[I'm there for you]
[Yang] Yeah. I find that, for me, like, food is something… I consider it like a safe space, like, where people can sort of like experiment with traditional…
[Yeah]
[Yang] And like mixing different influences, like, safely. But something about, like, food that really resonates with me is growing up, even without, like, knowing what it's called, I will have experience, something… I'll have eaten something and remember the taste and certain, like, emotions around it. I might have even, like, forgotten about this, but like years later, either going to a restaurant somewhere in America or somewhere back in China, I will essentially, like, rediscover this food and maybe this whole… Maybe the whole time in the back of my mind, like, this flavor will be, like, lingering and I'll seek it, like some sort of extended metaphor for, like… I guess you could take it as an extended metaphor for, like, seeking a connection with, like, my heritage. But you don't have to. It could be for some people, it could definitely be that. But for me, it's just like seeking, like, a comfort and an emotional connection.
[Piper] oh, I think that's really relatable. Because, for example, I'm Thai-American. I was actually born here, but I spent many, many summers of my childhood in Thailand. We just went to Thailand over the past New Year, and I took my partner, Matthew, with me. It was his first time in Thailand. So, it was one of those things where as soon as we got there, I hit the streets for the vendors, looking for my favorite things that I just can't get here or I can't find here. Or if I do find it here, it's not the same flavor. I was looking for that flavor. So I think that that idea of comfort foods or that feeling... Another friend of mine, Phillipa Ballantine, who's an author in steam punk and also epic fantasy, she was just recently back in New Zealand, and she pinged me just as I was getting back from Thailand. She was in New Zealand eating foods that she hadn't had for quite some time. She had grown up in New Zealand. She's like, "There's something about eating this food that brings you home." It's really, really all about sensory, not just what you remember, but what you're smelling and you're tasting and you're feeling, the emotions associated with it. So, yeah, I absolutely agree with that.
[I feel like there's… Garbled]
[Tempest] there's not enough, I feel like, about that in depictions where it's like… Not like own voices writing, it's writing the other. About just, like, all the foods that make us feel like who we are. Because, like, food is so important to just literally everyone.
[Laughter]
[Piper] Oh, yes. I try to incorporate that a lot in my series. In fact, it got to the point where some people thought that I was… That they would be able to re-create a Chinese dish based on my Chinese-American heroine's looking that she was doing through the course of a scene that I was describing, because she stress cooks.
[Laughter]
[Piper] The only way they can get any information out of her, she's like, "Look, you want me to answer your questions? Stand there. Let me cook, and I will answer your questions clearly. If you make me try to sit down, it's not happening." But, yeah, I mean, all of my series… I have a Korean American character who does the same thing. She has comfort foods, because she ended up in the hospital. Got shot at. Or actually exploded. But anyway…
[Laughter]
[Piper] Either way… It's romantic suspense, man. But either way, it comes back to what you're saying about the food and wanted to see that and see how food brings you back… And not necessarily back, but deepens insight into who you are.
[Yeah]
[Yang] Yeah, I guess it all comes back to the fact that, like, it's like these little nods. To your… To the influences from your past. Like, it doesn't need to dominate a character. It just needs to be… It's like the spice, to go with the whole food metaphor, right?
[Yeah]
[Yang] It's like the spice to a character. But it doesn't need to be like something… The only thing that a character obsessed is about or thinks over.
 
[Piper] All right. I'm going to stop us here, because I've been politely reminded that I totally forgot…
[Oh. Garbled]
[Piper] To watch the time, and it is time for the book of the week.
[Laughter]
[Piper] That is you. Would you please tell us what the book of the week is?
[Yang] I was just reading All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I think it is probably one of the… It's got one of the best characters, Murderbot, that I've ever encountered.
[Chuckles]
[Yang] I'm super jealous, I wish I'd thought of this character first.
[Chuckles]
[Yang] I wish I could, like, steel list character and like put it in like all the settings, all the time periods that can possibly exist. Yeah, I know I'm a little late in reading this reticular one…
[It is never too late.]
[Yang] Yeah. I can't… I say that it does not diminish my enjoyment of it anyway.
[Piper] Awesome.
[Dan] That is All Systems Red by Martha Wells.
[Piper] Awesome. Thank you.
 
[Tempest] So, one of the things that I know that some people who are either from a diaspora culture or they're from… They're like [garbled] emigrants, they were brought to whatever cultures their family emigrated to when they were very young, so, like, most of their experience is in, like, the new culture, is they worry about whether or not their writing about the home culture would be considered writing the other, because it's, like, it's sort of my culture, but it's not exactly my culture, because my culture is this, the culture that I mostly grew up in, and whatever. I know that there are, like, two aspects of it, there is the aspect of, like, from the inside, the person whose, like, having that thought about themselves, but then there's also, like, the voices from the outside are like, "That's not authentic."
[Chuckles]
[Tempest] Oh, Lord, we could have a conversation about authenticity all day long, and we won't.
[Chuckles]
[Tempest] But I'm actually, like, more concerned with, like, how… What would you say to authors who, like, they're from a… They're Chinese-American or they're Indian-American or whatever. They want to write about China. They want to write about India. What are the kinds of things that they can do to feel less... or to just be aware of the complicated issues around that?
[Yang] Right. I guess, one of the first things that they can do is just acknowledge the fact that they are representing it from their own viewpoint. Like, they are not trying to assume any sort of authority over the subject matter. I mean, to be fair, even citizens from like a country, such as China, can't necessarily write about China with all the nuance and all the complexity to do it justice for various reasons. Right? But I think after going past that, it's a matter of… So, whenever I read about a character, I always think about the author. Like, I look at the back of the book and I read the little, like, blurb about who they are and where they come from, and, like, I try to think about their relationship to the subject matter. I think that as long as they have, like, the proper research and they have access they don't try to tell me that this is how the country is. As long as I can see that there's, like, room that they think the country is this way.
[Their perception is theirs]
[Yang] Their perception… Yeah. As long as there's enough of that fallibility, like… I think I'm okay with that. Because that's the best that we can do, really. Like, we are all trying to have, like, some good intent and we want to explore and we want… It's really like celebrate. Like, part of the reason why, I think, that people want to write in these other settings is that there's something about setting that enraptures them. They want other people to love it, and they think it's exciting, and they want other people to feel the same excitement. So, as long as they… Yeah, as long as… Sorry, I lost my train of thought.
[Laughter]
[That's okay]
[Dan] No, I wanted to add onto that, because I think that's great. That's one of the reasons, one of the things we talk about a lot in this series is that the more specific you get, when you're talking about one character, then you have room for that fallibility. Because I'm not trying to say all Chinese Americans are exactly like this. But this one is. Then that gives us room. It doesn't feel like were trying to represent an entire massive nation or culture, we're just trying to show you one person's life.
[Tempest] Yeah.
[Piper] Yep. That's the most important thing. Cool. Well. Thank you so much.
 
[Piper] In wrapping up, I have today's homework. This is super exciting. I love giving homework.
[Woohoo!]
[Piper] Excuse me. So, for your homework, I want you to take a culture. It can either be a real-world culture or a culture that you have made up for your books. Then, I want you to create a character that is a descendent of emigrants from that culture. Then that character comes back to the home culture. How are they experiencing the home culture? What are they seeing? Are they saying, "Oh, that's so familiar?" What are they seeing? Are they like, "I didn't know they did it like that. Grandpa didn't do it like that?" Write that scene. Just explore what it can be like to be the person who is, like, of a culture, but not of a culture inside.
[Dan] Awesome. Thank you, very much, Yang Yang, being on the episode. This was great.
[Yang] Well, thank y'all for having me.
[Piper] Thank you. All right. Listeners! You're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 14.05: Viewpoint As Worldbuilding

Feb. 6th, 2019 10:32 am
mbarker: (Me typing?)
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Writing Excuses 14.05: Viewpoint As Worldbuilding
 
 
Key Points: Worldbuilding using character viewpoint? How do you integrate setting into your characters?  Start with the way the character interacts with the world, both physically and emotionally. Use actions and dialogue to show us assumptions and attitudes, how things work, without lengthy info dumps. Use two or more characters with different backgrounds or opinions, different viewpoints, to give the reader information about the thing, about the characters, and about the unreliable viewpoint. One way to use viewpoint to intersect with worldbuilding is in the way characters describe other characters. The same character seen through the eyes of two different characters can be very different. Think about how the character's voice directs the narrative versus keeping the narrative safe and trustworthy. First person, the character runs everything. Third person, you need to balance. Some voice, some straight narration. To make your worldbuilding richer, think about what people swear by, who makes what jokes, and how your character interacts with the environment. A room with marble floors comes to life when heels clack across it.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode Five.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Viewpoint As Worldbuilding.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
 
[Brandon] One of my personal favorite topics… Perhaps even hobby horses, is to talk about how to worldbuild by using character viewpoint. I love it when books do this. In fact, it is one of the things that when I pick up a book, if the first chapter does, the first page does, I know I'm going to have a good time, at least with that character. I really like it. I want to talk about how we do it. So, how do you make setting an integrated part of your characters?
[Mary Robinette] I think a lot of it is the way the character interacts with it, not just physically, but also emotionally. That... the weight that things carry. So, using Jane Austen as an example, someone can… Like, two characters can look at each other, and that's no big deal. But when Austen handles it, she gives you that emotional weight. It's like she… And I'm thinking specifically in Persuasion, there's this scene when Capt. Wentworth pulls a small child off of Anne Elliott's back, and there's a moment where he's touching her. The emotional weight of that tells you, as a modern reader, that oh, there is no touching. This is… There is a lot going on between these two. It is… It gives you all of these layers of detail, while just being a physical interaction in the world. So that's the kind of thing that I find very interesting.
[Dan] One, very similar to that, is in Age of Innocence, when he takes her glove off. It is so steamy, and it's just a glove. But it tells you so much about the world and what it's like and the rules they have to follow.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah, you do that. It's actually one of the things I enjoy in the Stormlight, is the safe hand.
[Brandon] Right. Right. The safe hand came from… So, for those who aren't familiar. Society has eroticized the bare left hand of women. This has all kinds of social implications, and all kinds of… People always want to ask me, they want to say, "Why?" They often come to me, "Why, why is this?" I can answer. From, like, I… In the worldbuilding, the past, well, there were these events and these influential writings that happened, and then there was some institutionalized sexism that insp… But really, the answer is, "Why? Because that's how their culture is."
[Laughter]
[Brandon] That's how they see things. It's not why because they are like, "Well, when my great…" No. They're just like, "This is how my culture is." Then that culture becoming a big part of how people see the world is the sort of thing that I just love.
[Dan] You just look at all the different cultures on Earth today and the cultural assumptions that we carry and assume are common to the entire human race. Then you go to another country, and it's… They've never even heard of it before. You realize that we do this all the time.
 
[Howard] Last season, we had an episode on confronting the default, in which we talked about exactly that. When I wrote, I think it was Scrap Ante for Privateer Press, they wanted me to develop a character for them… Develop an existing character. They wanted me to give a POV to a character who was a mechanic… And this, they've got game fic… They've got game stuff surrounding this guy already. Who is a mechanic, and he needed to sound like a mechanic, and they wanted to talk a little bit about how these things work. Then it needed to not be boring. So I created a mystery in which someone is sabotaging a Warjack, and in as lean writing as I could, I have this mechanic digging in and finding out that somebody has swapped a part that looks like another part, and he has names for all of these, and he's rattling them off the way a mechanic would. In the course of writing this, I started lifting names and altering them a little bit from actual steam engines and diesel engines and whatever else. When I sent it into the Privateer Press guys, Doug, who's the chief worldbuilder, read it and said, "you have done something that I have been terrified to do forever." Which is explain how these things work.
[Laughter]
[Howard] They loved it. It read like a fun story, and it was all POV. It was not, "Oh, this is how the magic flows through the whatever." It's just a guy fixing a thing and looking for a problem, and then determining that somebody had sabotaged this to kill him.
[Brandon] Awesome.
[Dan] So. An example from one of my books. In the Partials series, one of the things that I wanted to play with for the worldbuilding was the generational divide. People who remember life before the apocalypse and the kids who have grown up in a post-apocalyptic world. So I had the chance then to start with two or three chapters entirely from this teenage point of view, just describing a normal world. She didn't think it was scary, she wasn't constantly concerned with the things that they had lost. Then, we finally get to a meeting with adults, and they spend their whole time bemoaning how rustic everything is. Just the difference between their attitudes immediately tells you a lot about the world and the society.
 
[Brandon] Yeah. That's one of the things I like the most is when you can take two different characters and describe the same thing, the same event, or the same cultural mores, and then, with those two contrasting opinions, the reader is given a bunch of information. They are, number one, told about the thing. Right? You're getting the worldbuilding. But you're, number two, told about the characters. You're told what they find important and valuable, or what they notice. But, number three, you're also told viewpoint is untrustworthy.
[Dan] Yes.
[Brandon] Which is a really important thing with these sorts of stories.
[Dan] That can make it very difficult. If you want to do that, that's something that you might need to refine and polish quite a bit, because your readers of the first or second draft might say, "Oh, you've got an inconsistency here." No, I don't. You need to look at who is saying it, and maybe I need to finesse this a little bit so that that is more clear.
[Howard] The number of times I have taken an inconvenient fact about the Schlock Mercenary universe and backtracked it to determine who said it…
[Laughter]
[Howard] And then ascertained, "Oh. That person is actually allowed to be wrong about this." Did the narrator ever… Nope! Narrator didn't… Did a footnote ever… Nope! Oh, this is awesome.
[Laughter]
[Howard] This is awesome. I am off the hook.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I have… There's a timeline problem in the Lady Astronaut universe. Because when I wrote the novelette, I was just like, "Eh, it's a one-off." I wrote it. I didn't do a lot of worldbuilding. Basically, when I got into doing the actual hard-core how long does it take to get people into space when you're kickstarting a space program… I'm like, "Oh. Elma's just wrong."
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] About some of her memories. She's just conflating them.
[Dan] Just misremembering.
[Mary Robinette] Just misremembering.
[Brandon] I run into this a lot. But it is nice to establish viewpoints that are untrustworthy for this sort of reason.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So a book that I'm reading right now that's doing a really interesting job of this shifting viewpoint is Semiosis by Sue Burke. It's a multigenerational novel. So you will move forward like an entire generation, and it's a colony world. So the first generation are the first people on the planet. Then the next generation are kids who've grown up there. The way they view their parents versus… The worldbuilding is fascinating, because… They're… You see how they're shifting and how the culture is shifting to adapt to the place that they're living. It's really, really interesting. It's all POV that's doing it.
[Brandon] Now, that is not our book of the week, but it would be a good book for people to read.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
 
[Brandon] Dan actually has our book of the week.
[Dan] Yeah. The book of the week actually hits this topic perfectly. It is Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. Which is a YA fantasy. Big secondary world fantasy set in a world inspired by Africa. What's fascinating about it… Many things are fascinating about it. But pertinent to this discussion, there are three viewpoint characters. It's a world where magic has been stolen. No one can do it anymore. The people who used to be able to do it are an oppressed class. So one of our viewpoints is one of these kind of former mage people. Then we have a princess who has been sheltered her entire life and runs away from home. Then we have her brother who is struggling with the King's policies. So they all have completely different ideas about what the world should look like and what it does look like and how they want to change it. It's really fascinating to see the interplay of those viewpoints as you go through.
[Brandon] Excellent. That is Children of Blood and Bone. I was on a panel with her, and she was really interesting. Had some really cool things to say about magic. So I anticipate it being a great book. Emily really liked it.
[Dan] Yes. She describes the book as Black Panther but with magic.
[Brandon] She does.
 
[Brandon] Now, one of my favorite ways to use viewpoint in worldbuilding, to intersect them, is by the way the characters describe other characters.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] Uhuh.
[Brandon] I first picked up on this as a young person reading The Wheel of Time, where… And I'm not going to be able to quote these exactly. I'm sorry, Wheel of Time fans, but you have one character who would describe someone and say, "Wow. They look like they spend most of their day at the forge." Then another character describes the same person and says something along the lines of "Wow. If you beat that person at cards, leave early. Because otherwise, they'll jump you in the back alley." Those two descriptions are both "This is a tough, intimidating person." But seen through the eyes of two very different characters. I love this sort of thing. Description. Now, my question for you guys is, do you ever worry about the blend of… When you're in narrative, how much you're going to let the character's voice direct the narrative and how much you're not?
[Mary Robinette] It does depend on whether… Which voice you're using. Are you using first person, or are you using tight third? Because first person, all over the place. It's no problem. But with tight third… With third person, it is a tricky line. Because what I find is that the… Unless it is very obviously voice-y, that the reader will interpret that as being safe and trustworthy. So I tend to try to be fairly honest when I'm doing narration that is less flavored than when I'm doing something that… If I'm doing free indirect speech, I try to… That's… I try to reserve the perceptions for those.
[Brandon] Yeah. I always kind of go back and forth on this, because, of course, Robert Jordan did very much a lot of tight thirds. There would be these moments where it felt like it was right in their head, and other times when the narrator was speaking. He balanced it really well. I'm always a little scared about that. Because you do want the narrator, the non-present narrative, to be trustworthy. But you want the viewpoint of the character to maybe not be.
[Mary Robinette] Sometimes it's a thing that you can do… I was just reading The Killing of Kings by Howard Andrew Jones. It's not… At the time of recording, it is not yet out. But one of the things that he does is there is this character who's constantly… Male character who's constantly looking at women with a very male gaze. Like, constantly looking at boobs and ass. Just all the time. Then will say things like, "I don't understand why this woman doesn't like me."
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Right. Right.
[Howard] Wow.
[Mary Robinette] "It's like she's always so cold and distant. There's always a piece of furniture between us." I'm like, "Yep. Yes, there is. Absolutely, yes, there is." But it is… It's deftly handled, because he is staying absolutely true to the character's point of view. But by giving us very obvious physicality and recognizable body language from the other character, he's telling us how this behavior is actually perceived in the world.
[Brandon] Later in the year, we're going to do an entire week on writing imperfect worlds. Or imperfect characters. With… Using topics like this, not validating but acknowledging that some people are like this. We will cover that. It's going to be in a few months, but we are going to get to that. That is one of the… That's like Using Viewpoint and Character Level 501.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Being able to pull off some of this stuff.
 
[Brandon] Before we go out, any tips for writers on making their sentences, particularly their worldbuilding sentences, do more than one thing at once?
[Howard] What do these people swear by? I love that. My favorite examples of this currently are from the various different NPCs in the ESO world, where they swear by different gods. They are consistent in the way this works. It adds a measure of depth. Because some of them will swear by those gods, and somebody who is from the same culture will never utter those words. You can now tell that those two people are actually different. That's not the sort of thing that you expect to see… Well, if you grew up with video games. It's not the sort of thing that you expect to see in a videogame. But videogame writing has progressed to the point that we are expecting that level of worldbuilding, especially in dialogue that has to be read by an actor in a way that sounds conversational and believable.
[Dan] Very similar to that, and I'm starting to notice this more as I read… In the current science fiction that I'm reading, is what our people allowed to make jokes about. Which jokes can come from which species in the space station? And things like that.
[Mary Robinette] I would say, for me, the tip that I would hand to our listeners is to make sure that your character is interacting with their environment. Which is where I started us, but I'm going to give a really concrete example. Like, I can describe a room and say, "The room had marble floors, tall vaulted ceilings, and green velvet curtains." That tells you what the room looks like. But if I say, "My character's heels clacked across the marble floor as she strode to the window. The velvet was soft against her skin as she pushed the curtains back." You know so much more about the character and the world. So you're getting both things at the same time. I think that's going to make it feel richer to the reader, as well.
 
[Brandon] Awesome. Howard, you've got some homework for us.
[Howard] I do. This is the from-within, from-without episode, the Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, the Twoflower, Rincewind. Take a character who is alien to the culture or the setting that you are writing within. But obviously has a reason to be there. Describe things from their point of view. Now describe those same things from the point of view of a native. Somebody who's grown up there, who's been there, who is familiar with it.
[Brandon] Excellent. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 13.45: Next Level Narration

Nov. 14th, 2018 10:52 am
mbarker: (ISeeYou2)
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Writing Excuses 13.45: Next Level Narration
 
 
Key points: Leveling UP your narrative. Get the standard narrator, a character much like yourself, with similar experiences, solid first. Then try things like unreliable narrators. Study writers who have done something similar before you experiment with narration and form. Try breaking the fourth wall, making your reader aware that they are reading something, suspicious of the person who is talking. With unreliable narrators, at some point, the story reveals that they are unreliable. Figure out how the character sees the world, what their defaults are, and how that affects what they tell the reader. Try multiple witnesses, narrators who have their own angle on what is happening. Older, younger, different life experience. Brains wired differently. Try to understand and represent their reactions. Make them rounded, with one aspect that is different. Use forums, YouTube, listening to people to help you. Be cautious of carrying defaults from one work to the next. 
 
( There are more words? )
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Next Level Narration.
[Mary] 15 minutes long.
[Amal] Because you're in a hurry.
[Maurice] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary] I'm Mary.
[Amal] I'm Amal.
[Maurice] I'm Maurice.
 
[Brandon] We are getting near the end of this year on character, and we wanted to spend… Oh, you're giving me the pouty lip…
[Amal] Sad face. I'm so sad.
[Chuckles]
[Amal] I am. It's been so fun.
[Brandon] But we want to talk about kind of leveling up your narrative. When we were talking about this earlier, Mary said, "One of the things we want to focus on is you want to get really good at telling maybe a more standard narrative first." Standard's probably the wrong phrase for that.
[Mary] So, when you're writing as a narrator, one of the things we've talked about multiple seasons is that there is a lot of different techniques and skills. A lot of times, what you want to do is, you want to start and solidify a technique on kind of the easy setting. Which is, by writing a narrator who is very much like yourself, who's lived very similar experiences. Then there is the stuff that's harder. Some of those things are things like unreliable narrators. This is much harder to write than a narrator who is reliable.
[Brandon] Yeah. Let's talk about that. I want to point out before we do that, when we say on easy setting, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to make a worse book. We talk about this a lot. Taking the thing that is in some ways… particularly with a writing technique, natural for you and comfortable for you. Starting with a first person or a third person limited, the kind of standard viewpoints, is a good place to begin before you try something with a really strange omniscient viewpoint. It's not that your book's going to be worse, it's just mastering a skill before you level it up. One of these things that you can try is, as Mary said, an unreliable narrator. Have any of you guys written an unreliable narrator before?
[Mary] Yes.
[Amal] Yes.
[Brandon] Let's talk about it. What did you do, how did you do it, what pitfalls were there, and what advantages were there?
[Maurice] Well. This next level writing is hard.
[Laughter]
[Mary] Really?
[Maurice] So, what happened? How did this come about? So, I love writing short stories. One of the main reasons I love writing short stories is I get to experiment with different forms. So I get… It's like failing in the privacy of your own home. So recently I've tried this unreliable narrator. I've only tried this… like within the last couple months has been me trying this. So the story's about this woman who's experienced some trauma, and it's kind of fractured her psyche. So she is trying to progress through her current day… I mean, trying to push through her day, while both simultaneously reliving the trauma and healing from it at the same time. So the story plays with time and how she's perceiving it and just events. So, like the events are happening out of order, but the order is happening in which she's experiencing her healing. So she's experiencing the story in the terms she needs to in order to be healed. It's… It was a tricky thing… And it's one of those things… I'd gone over… I'd been studying Kelly Link. I read like a lot of Kelly Link stories. Just to sort of… All right, it's time to level up, who do I need to read? So she was one of the people I was studying at the time to experiment with narration, experiment with form. That's why I just dove into it that way.
[Brandon] And it worked out?
[Maurice] So far, so good. I… My writers' group were a little mixed on it. Because they were just… One lady said, "This story is on the verge of making sense."
[Laughter]
[Maurice] Which has been my favorite criticism ever. But I know I'm one draft away from having something I think might be really special.
 
[Amal] I love that. So, the ways in which I've tended to write unreliable narrators is absolutely informed by the fact that I've been in academia for way too long. So I try to approach them from this idea of… Almost like breaking the fourth wall in theater, where you make your reader aware of the fact that they're reading something as opposed to… So that it rises to their minds like, "Where is this information coming from?" You want to make… Like I want them to eventually become suspicious of the person who's talking to them. In a couple of cases, I've… In which I've done it… in one of them, I wrote a story called The Lonely Sea in the Sky, which is about a planetary geologist who's been working on Triton, specifically looking at the diamond ocean, which, for real, exists on Neptune. There's like an ocean of diamond on Neptune. It's like diamond in a liquid state.
[Mary] I am totally googling this when we're out of the studio.
[Amal] It is so cool. It is so cool. Articles about this started coming out in 2000… Anyway, so I won't go there. Point is, so she has succumbed to this illness that is being… That is still being figured out. It's just being called Meisner Syndrome for want of… They don't know whether it's… Like, what the nature of this is. It's a set of symptoms that some people… A very, very, very small percentage of the population succumbs to, and it seems to have to do with interacting with the diamond ocean on Neptune material. She is being encouraged to write a journal about her experiences. But she is… She's arguing that she's not succumbing to this, when she clearly is succumbing to this. So you're having her… You're experiencing her stuff. My… The line that I was trying to walk here was that I want you to be sympathetic with this character… I want you to sympathize rather with this character. I want you to believe everything that she says, but I also want you to see how that is changing over time, and to walk that line of not distrusting her necessarily, but understanding that she is impaired where her own reality is concerned.
 
[Brandon] Right. I think that this is kind of vital to the idea behind an unreliable narrator, is that at some point, it's going to be a part of the story that they are unreliable. Though, in another way of talking about it, it feels like every character is going to be slightly unreliable. This is one of the reasons why we put things in a character voice is they're going to describe things in a specific way. You need to be able to get across to the reader that this is the way the character sees the world. That's going to make them attached to the character. That's what they're going to like about the character. In some cases, like when I've done it, I've been very kind of almost ham-fisted with the this character is funny because they just describe things the opposite of what you would expect this description to be. They will sometimes break the fourth wall and just be like, "Yeah, I'm not going to tell you about that story yet." And these sorts of things. Sometimes you do it very subtly, which is the character who over time, as you're writing the scenes, the reader starts to realize, "Oh, they see the world in a certain way, and there are just certain things they don't see as I would."
[Mary] That's one of the things when we were talking previously in an earlier episode about defaults, that your characters are going to have their own default settings. If you can figure out what these are... the thing about an unreliable narrator that can be frustrating for a reader is when the narrator is inconsistent in ways that break kind of that character's world. So when you can figure out what their defaults are, that's going to tell you the places that they're going to lie, the reasons that they're going to lie, the ways those lies are going to take shape. They're not even necessarily lies. They are ways that the character is reporting things that may be honest and true to them, but that are not representing the way another person would experience that.
[Maurice] So, a story I had a huge amount of fun writing. It was called At the Village Vanguard. It was for Mothership Zeta. It was the first of my Afro-future stories. So it was about this place nicknamed Blacktopia. Cause I'm subtle like that.
[Laughter]
[Mary] So they… Do they dare say, "By my blackness?"
[Laughter]
[Maurice] I missed out on that opportunity.
[Laughter]
[Mary] I just want you to add that to something in the future, please?
[Maurice] It's done. But the way I chose to tell the story, because it's kind of an origin story, but the way I chose the story… The way I chose to tell it was as an oral history. So I actually have… I believe I have seven narrators of this story. It's kind of…
[Wow]
[Maurice] Like… One of those… The reliability of eyewitness testimony, we have seven eyewitnesses who roughly tell… Can tell the same story. But they're all telling their version of the story. Determined by what they saw, or actually buy their own personal biases about what this story now means to them. So that was another way for me to just experiment with form and the whole unreliability of each individual storyteller. You have several witnesses, all who have different angles on it trying to tell one story.
 
[Brandon] Let's go ahead and stop for our book of the week. Because didn't you just have a book come out?
[Maurice] I did. I did. It's The Usual Suspects. It's my first foray into middle grade detective novels. It's all about these middle school students who, whenever anything goes wrong in the middle school, they round up this group of middle school students and like, "We know one of y'all did it." That was actually the first… My first time… Speaking of interesting narrators, was using narrators who are much younger than I am. So, it is all told first person through the eyes and mentality of who is essentially on unreliable middle grader. That's almost redundant, but…
[Chuckles]
 
[Brandon] Let's ask about that. How do you write from someone who's much younger or much older, has much more life experience than you have?
[Maurice] Well, in this case, at the time, I had two middle grade students. So, this is going to sound a little weird, but actually I record a lot. So, like, there's times when I will just randomly record like my kids' conversations, and… With the caveat that anything I hear, you can't be punished for. So there's always that that I throw out there. But I literally… I'm studying how they speak to one another, how they speak to their friends. So, like, I can like just really get into their headspace. Being a middle school teacher helps, because I just hear students speak all the time to one another and how they interact and everything like that. So I'm… That has helped me a lot in terms of staying in their heads and sticking with their mentalities and the way they see the world. But on the flipside though, like I said, this is a narrator who as I… I didn't even realize this when I was plotting out the character, but part of him being so intelligent, he has like a streak of paranoia to him. So now… So he's still making observations about the world, but you realize, "You know, this student's a little paranoid." Little things like that.
 
[Brandon] Well, that brings us into another topic I want to talk about. Writing people whose brains are wired differently than your own.
[Mary] Yeah. So, I just wound up doing that in the Lady Astronaut books. Elma is… Has anxiety. She specifically has social anxiety disorder. So she gets really… Like being the center of attention in a large group makes her really uncomfortable. I am clearly not wired that way. I love being in front of a large group. Hi, podcast listeners.
[Chuckles]
[Mary] But I do know what it is like to be anxious about something. I have had anxiety and panic attacks. The ones that I was having were because I had been sexually harassed by my boss for three years. So it's a totally different circumstance. But the physical symptoms are very similar. So what you… What I wound up doing was extrapolating from what I knew. I did a lot of reading about what the disorder was like, and then the symptoms that people were listing, I thought about the times that I had had those physical symptoms. Also, then, I had to think about ways in which… I had to make sure that I was being cognizant of the fact that her default setting about the way she would react to a crowd was different than mine. I would have to go and adjust that. But I also… I know what it is like to mask when you're afraid or upset about something. So again, that's one of the things that often goes with that disorder, is that often people will seem very calm. Really, super calm and chill, because they are masking so hard. So making sure that I was also representing that. That a lot of people around her didn't know that she suffered from this.
[Amal] I wrote a story called The Singing Fish for the… It's called The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. It was a story that I was solicited for at very, very short notice. It was one of those. It was a huge break for me. Jeff and Ann VanderMeer invited me to this, and I think I had something like two weeks in which to turn around a story. This was an ekphrastic collection, like they had a piece of art that they wanted me to write a story for that was appearing in this book. It was literally of like a fish standing on its tail and singing while a very puzzled man looks at it and stuff. So I ended up writing a story that was about critics and art. But… I can't remember now how this even came about. The… One of the characters in this story… It's basically a story that's a bit of a biography of a woman I made up who is an artist who drew this painting… Drew this painting? Drew this pencil and ink sketch.
[Mary] You do underdrawing before you paint.
[Amal] There you go. Yes. So I wanted to make a story about the artist who did this. I genuinely cannot remember… It was just… I fell down a wiki hole. Must've been what it was. I gave her Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Which is a thing where… I think people are not quite sure why it happens. I think there's… I think it might be a physiological thing that comes from having pressure on the brain, but your perceptions get fundamentally altered so that the shapes and sizes of things relative to each other shift drastically. So things that are… Things might seem very, very, very small or very, very, very big. All I had to go on was the Wikipedia description, because I was in a huge time crunch and I wanted to just turn this story in. I felt really uncomfortable about the fact that I was doing this. But for whatever reason that I cannot now remember, it still seemed like a good idea. Partly because I was fascinated by the fact that this existed. I'd never heard of it before. So I just… I tried very hard to imagine what it would be like, and ended up writing it into the story. But wrote it also from… What I tried to do to make up for the fact that I didn't actually know what this was like was to have it ironically be in first person… Be like have her write diary sections where it was her voice. So that I could at least have a whole rounded character who had a voice and this was just something that happened to her sometimes, that she experienced. To try and compensate for that lack of knowledge. As it turns out, one of my closest friends has Alice in Wonderland syndrome.
[Mary] Oh.
[Amal] Which I only learned years after having written this story. I like knuckle bitingly asked, "So what is it like, and what about this story?" Because he totally read the story. He was like, "No, no, you totally got it right. That's what it's like." Like, I can't recommend this…
[Mary] Whew.
[Laughter]
[Amal] As a method. But I think that it was partly just treating that difference as just one facet of the character that I imagined everything else about. Because I'd gotten the rest of that tissue there, it made it that much easier to imagine well, what would it be like if this were happening to me, given this description.
 
[Brandon] One of the tools I love is just going to forums. The Internet is wonderful for this, and see forums where people collectively together and gripe about their life. Those forums are like gold for a writer, because if people are sharing their gripes, you learn so much. Just being a fly on the wall and listening. How… What do you get frustrated when you are… You have this certain way of seeing the world and everybody else sees it differently from you, and they compl… You complain about what they don't see. Those things… When you guys are doing that on forums, know that you are helping us out as writers.
[Maurice] Well, there's another thing. Because when I was writing Buffalo Soldier, one of the early edit notes that I got back was, "Well, you have this child, he's neuro- atypical, but we'd like to hear more from that character." I was a little nervous because I was just like, "Well, how am I going to do that?" I'm obsessive about dialogue. So I was like, "Well, how am I going to get this dialogue right?" YouTube is an un… I mean, YouTube is like the writer's best friend. It gets underutilized as far as I'm concerned. Because I googled… Just randomly "conversation with autistic children." There are tons of videos of mothers who just upload conversations with their autistic children so they can show other mothers. Because everyone thinks that they're isolated and alone. This is a good way for people to just go, "Hey, you know what, we're all in the same boat. Here's what we're going through. What are you going through?" It was a good way to just observe conversations and study those conversations, so I could very much just get the conversations right.
 
[Mary] I'm going to throw in one cautionary thing, which is that once you figured out how a character is going to behave, it's very easy to take those characteristics and carry them forward to your next work as a default. So don't… Like if you got a character who has anxiety, say… I did. She was a mathematician. One of the ways she calm herself down was counting things. Specifically, she would do primes and she would do the numbers of pi. I was working on another story and my character was on the autism spectrum and also had problems with crowds, but very different reasons. Right? One of them is all about sensory input, the other is about attention. It's two different things. I looked at the story after I'd finished, and I'm like, "I have her counting things! This character would not do that." I have made that my default for how a character with anxiety behaves. So you do have to be aware of the defaults that you can… When you're going to this next level narration. It's like, "Oh, a character who lies behaves like this." Be aware of the defaults that you are carrying forward from your own stuff, in addition to the things that you've absorbed around you.
 
[Brandon] Now, you had also some homework for us?
[Mary] I do. So we're going to harken back to some homework that you have already done, which is in April, when in character voice, we had you do three different points of view. 80 years old, 12, and from a different country. At the time, we were having you think about character. So this time, you're going to do next level narration. Which is that each of these characters are experiencing the same scene differently. So this is the Rashomon effect, that some of them are telling you information that the others are not telling you because they're lying. So at this point, you're dealing with two different aspects of narration. One is that these characters are different from each other, so we need to be able to tell that. The other is with their default settings and what is important to them, some of them are lying. Figure out which pieces they're lying about and why.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 13.9: Quick Characterization

Mar. 7th, 2018 11:09 am
mbarker: (Smile)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 13.9: Quick Characterization
 
 
Key points: Quick tips for characterizing side characters? Give them something weird and memorable, something in conflict with the reader's expectations. Also something that conflicts with the POV character's expectations. Or use the tricks people use to remember names, e.g. alliteration. To make a character come to life, write a brief scene or piece from their viewpoint. Play two truths and a lie with your characters! Beware of turning characters into a single quirk, a.k.a. Flanderization. Figure out what makes the character do that thing, then pay attention to how that motivates other things. Use peekaboo moments, add a splash of color to a scene highlighting something unusual about this side character. A juggling guard? Just a momentary glimpse of the motivations and passions of the side characters. To quickly introduce characters, have the characters, justifiably, talk about each other. Beware of overdoing quick characterization of side characters! Finally, make sure that the side characters are doing something when the protagonist walks on stage.
 
( Rounding out the flat side characters... )
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Quick Characterization.
[Mary] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary] I'm Mary.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
 
[Brandon] We are talking all this month about side characters. It's a topic we've touched on before on Writing Excuses, so I want to dig into something specific about side characters this week. I want to talk about how we characterize people quickly. Because sometimes, you just don't have a lot of space to dedicate to these side characters. So let's say you only have a couple sentences to characterize someone. Dan, how do you go about doing it?
[Dan] Kind of the cheap and dirty hack that I use is just to give them something that is, in my opinion, unexpected. Based on what their role is or what their situation is in the story, I will throw something else weird on top of that so that you'll remember, "Oh, yeah, this is that kid, but also he really likes this one strange thing."
[Brandon] Right. They put them in conflict with the reader's expectations. It's a really good way to make someone memorable.
[Mary] One of the things that I try to do, actually, is that thing, except not just the reader's expectations, but the point of view character's expectations. I… Because using that allows me to kind of slide past some of the I am telling you what this character looks like. It also allows me to then convey information about my main character, which, when I'm writing short fiction, I have to be able to get every sentence to do double duty. One of the sneaky tricks that I will use sometimes is I will use some of the tools that people use to remember names in real life. Which is… If the character says their name, I will slide a detail in that is alliterative without…
[Brandon] Wow!
[Dan] Without calling attention to it?
[Brandon] That's interesting.
[Mary] Yeah. Monty with the mustache.
[Unsure] [inaudible now]
[Brandon] Oh.
[Dan] So, like an example?
[Mary] Monty with the mustache.
[Dan] Monty with a mustache. Okay. Awesome.
[Mary] I mean…
[Howard] Howard with the hairless…
[Laughter]
[Mary] Hairless Howard. I get… And there are other memory palace kinds of things that you can do with that, too. So…
[Brandon] Right. Make the guy named Jim a butcher.
[Mary] Yeah.
[Laughter]
[Mary] Actually, that would totally work. So, I was… I'm terrible with remembering names. That's when I meeting someone in real life. So I was taking a class on how to remember names… It doesn't help me actually that much. It's a little better. But I suddenly realized that these were all very useful tools for cementing a name with a reader. So… If I have a character who is a jeweler, then I will… One of the details that all call attention to is the earrings that are hanging from her pendulous earlobes…
[Brandon] Nice.
[Mary] If I have named her Patricia, pendulous…
[Howard] Pendularia…
[Laughter]
[Mary] Yeah. Penny. That is a very sneaky… I do not deploy that all the time, but that is a trick that works distressingly well.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] I think I got better with side characters once… And this is kind of coming back to the name thing. Once I realized that I wasn't good with names, and I wanted to be, so I started practicing any time I was in public. I learned the names of all the people working the line at the place where I got salads. In the course of doing that, they always gave me the best strawberries. Because I was the guy who came in and knew everybody's names. But in the course of learning their names… They were all wearing identical clothing. They're all working this salad line. But in the course of learning their names, I forced myself to remember some of these details. I taught my brain that this is important. So I started retaining that information. It's fascinating that the two seem to be related. If… I will often see in movies, when I can't tell two side characters apart, I know they've done it wrong. Because I'm pretty good at tracking those things, and if I can't tell, then it's just… It's not been done right.
[Brandon] So…
[Dan] Well…
[Brandon] Go ahead, Dan.
[Dan] The… One counterexample being something like Crabbe and Goyle from Harry Potter, who are supposed to be interchangeably faceless.
 
[Brandon] How do you characterize people without viewpoints? Let me explain this. I find it, as a writer, really easy if I give myself a brief viewpoint through someone's eyes to dig into their back story, to kind of discovery write…
[Mary] Luxury!
[Brandon] Who they are, right? And just suddenly they come to life. If I don't have a viewpoint, then I have a lot of trouble with that. It's like…
[Mary] I will go ahead, sometimes, even when I'm doing short fiction, I will go ahead and do a little bit of an exploratory scenelette thing from the other character's point of view. Usually the same scene that I'm writing. Especially if I've got a character that is being very flat, which still happens sometimes. It's just you're not getting traction on them. So I'll do exactly that. I'll write that scene from their point of view, which helped me figure out what their motivations are, and some of the physical… The body language that they're going to be using. Then I'll flip back to my main character, do the scene again, incorporating the information that I've learned. Which will often… I don't do that every time, but it's a very useful exercise to engage in sometimes.
[Brandon] I've seen you do something similar.
[Dan] Yeah. So the thing that I do, all the time… And this is… This is such a dumb little thing. I will play two truths and a lie with my characters. Because then I get to know things about them, and I get to know what kinds of things they would lie about. It's fascinating. I've done it with… I think at this point, all of my young adult series. The one I'm writing right now, I actually put a scene into the book because I find it so interesting. But just to watch them tell truths and tell lies. Inevitably, I'll have one character that tries to cheat. It just tells me a lot about who they are, very quickly.
[Mary] I want to point something out that you said about what are the things that they would lie about and why would they lie about them? I think that when we have characters who wind up dropping into being just a single quirk, then I think one of the reasons that that happens is because we've thought, "Oh, I'm going to do that quirk. I'm going to give him this quirky thing." That the flanderization…
 
[Brandon] Right. We'll talk about flanderization in a minute. We can just dig into it right now. Why don't you tell us what flanderization is?
[Mary] So, flanderization is referring to the slow evolution of a character into just being a quirk. It relates to what happened to the character Flanders on The Simpsons. That he started out as being this very rounded character, and then eventually became a single joke.
[Brandon] Because when people saw him come on the screen, they all wanted him to do his thing. So he did his thing, and the writers all just had him do his thing. Then he stopped being a person, and started being a quirk.
[Mary] So, I think one of the things that you can do to keep that from happening is figure out why your character does that thing. Then, only deploy it when the triggers happen. If you want them to do it, then you have to give them the trigger, and the trigger then has to be coherent to the rest of the story. It also makes the character more rounded, because you… Whatever reason they have to do that thing, that same reason is going to motivate a lot of other different choices.
[Brandon] Month, we're going to dig into this kind of idea really deeply. We'll do an entire podcast on the idea of characters who are self-contradictory, or characters who wear different hats in different social situations and act differently in those social situations.
[Mary] Spoiler alert!
[Brandon] We will dig…
[Mary] Everyone does.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] Into this a lot.
 
[Brandon] Let's go ahead and stop for our book of the week. You are actually going to tell us about Brimstone.
[Mary] Yes. Brimstone by Cherie Priest is fantastic. It is a story set right after the 1st World War. There are two main characters. The… One of them is a young woman who is a medium. She has traveled to this new small town to learn how to use her powers. It's a real town that really had a spiritualist movement in it, and still does. The other character is a man who survived the war and has come back with a ghost. But he doesn't realize he has a ghost. Things just keep catching on fire. It's their interaction and figuring out what it is that is haunting him and has come back with him from the war. The characterization in this is so rich. It's a huge cast, because she's in this small town, filled with spiritualists that she's meeting. There's… It's this very huge community. Each character feels distinct and individual. Even ones that are on stage just for a few moments. It's… Even the ones who actually never come on stage, because they're dead already.
[Chuckles]
[Mary] It's wonderful storytelling. It's…
[Brandon] Brimstone.
[Mary] Brimstone.
[Brandon] By Cherie Priest.
[Mary] By Cherie Priest.
[Dan] And if you've never read Cherie Priest, she's one of the few writers who can hook me from the very first sentence of a book. The just… The writing itself, the language is incredible.
[Mary] It's written in an epistolary form so that each character is… That what you're reading are there journals.
[Yeah!]
 
[Brandon] So one of the things I've learned over the years for characterizing side characters in specific, doing things quickly, is what I call peekaboo moments. It's a measure of great gratification to me as a writer when occasionally someone will come up and say, "Oh, this little side character just came to life for me." Almost always it somebody I've done one of these peekaboo moments, where you are writing a story. In general, you'll describe the scene and then focus in on the main characters and have the conversation or the conflict and things like this. Everything else fades to background, even some of the side characters who are coming in and interacting with them. What I like to do is occasionally say, "No, we're going to add a splash of color to this specific scene, to this specific person. We're going to fade them from the black-and-white background into the characters paying attention to them, saying, 'Oh. This person wasn't what I thought they were.'" This guard, who's standing guard at the door, isn't the person I thought they were. They are, between… While they're waiting, they're standing there juggling or something like this. What I tried to do in these peekaboo moments is show a moment of humanity and back story and passion from somebody who's not related to the main story at all, just so that you get a glimpse that hey, all these people populating this world have their own motivations and their own passions. I find that the occasional use of one of these can really add a lot of vividness to your story. Or using them with a character who's often in the scene, but is never the main character. The reader will take that character and take that image of them and bring it to the next scenes where they're going to be like, "Oh, yeah. This is the person who has twin daughters and is always on the lookout for two copies of things, because they like to give it to their twin daughters." I don't know. Something like that, that human… Gives humanity to the background characters.
[Dan] There's a… One of my favorite movies is Brick by Ryan Johnson. Which is a… Basically a film noir, but set in a modern high school. As much as I love it, I could not tell you who any of the side characters are, except for one drug dealer, who pauses somewhere around the second act break and gives a little monologue about how much he likes the Lord of the Rings books. He's such a beautiful character, because of that moment. It's amazing how much richness that adds.
 
[Howard] One of the tricks that I use is having the characters, justifiably, talk about each other. The 18th… 18th, good Lord!… Schlock Mercenary book, one of the opening scenes, the company's about to take a job, and our protagonist is talking to her sister. Her sister's saying, "You know, I need medical help." She's like, "I'm not a doctor. Why are you calling me?" "You work for a mercenary company. You got battlefield medics, don't you?" "Well, yeah, our doctor. I guess she's okay. But our battlefield medic is like a walking cutlery station." Then we have the battlefield medic show up behind her and say, "Saved your life." Schlock says, "She also hears really well."
[Laughter]
[Howard] Now we have, in two panels, insight into five characters. Okay, it helps that I'm able to illustrate them, so some of this context is…
[Luxury! Chuckles]
[Howard] But the… I did it specifically. I've got a spreadsheet for this. I did it because I knew these characters are all going to be critical to this story, and I need to introduce the reader to them early in a way that is memorable.
[Brandon] But doesn't take a lot of panel space.
[Howard] But doesn't take a lot of panels. Yeah. It took two panels. And while this is happening, we are moving the story forward by establishing why this job is going to make sense for the company to take.
 
[Brandon] There are some books out there, and I was going to give the kind of warning, that you can't do this too much in most books. If every scene, you're spending a paragraph on five different side characters, then suddenly the point of quickly characterizing…
[Mary] A paragraph!
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] But there are some books that this is kind of the way the book is. We've recommended the Gollum and the Jinn.. the Genie... The Gollum and the…
[Mary] Jinni.
[Brandon] The Gollum and the Djinni on the podcast before. I read that because you guys recommended it.
[Mary] [inaudible]
[Brandon] It is a story mostly about the side characters. On this page, you will spend three pages on this side character. On this one, you'll… They just kind of are there, populating the story and constantly interacting with the main characters. But the main characters are almost there as an excuse to explore entire community… [cough] Excuse me.
[Mary] I think one of the reasons it works in that book is because everything is new to the main characters. So that's one of the reasons that it works, is because of the POV focus on who is this interesting person that I've encountered that is unlike anything that I've ever seen, living in a glass bottle for a thousand years. So this is… There are many other books that do that where I think it does not work, it's not compelling and engaging.
[Brandon] I would agree.
 
[Mary] Can I offer one other trick? Think about… One of the things that I will do sometimes is think about where the character was or what they were doing before the protagonist walked on stage. Because I think one of the things that will make a character seem flat is when they have just been waiting for the main character to appear. So, it's… You don't even have to give the character a name or anything like that, but if my main character walks in and the clerk behind the counter wiped mustard off her mouth and then smiled brightly. "Can I help you?" That character already feels more real and compelling than just…
[Brandon] That's a really good tip.
 
[Brandon] I think we're out of time. Howard, though, you've got a cool thing that cartoonists use.
[Howard] Oh, yeah. The silhouette test. It's not… Cartoonists, comic book writers, anybody who's working in sequential art where there are characters.
[Mary] And puppeteers.
[Howard] Yes. Puppeteers. If you're going to keep these characters straight, they have to be able to pass the silhouette test. Which is where all of the details of the characters are removed, all you can see is the outline, or all you can see is the filled outline, just the silhouette. If you can't tell them apart, something has to change. I… I have… I ask myself this all the time. What is the prose equivalent for the silhouette test? What I've kind of boiled it down to is the adverbs and adjectives that I will so rarely let myself use when I'm describing characters. Which are the ones that I would only use on character A and would never use on character B? Just make a quick list of those adjectives and adverbs. Once I have those, when I am writing the characters, those adjectives and adverbs need to disappear. Because you expand them out into other things.
[Brandon] So your homework…
[Howard] Come up with those.
[Brandon] Is to come up with those. Yeah, you don't necessarily want to always describe somebody who comes on scene as greasy. But if on one scene, they're the person who's always eating a big hamburger and dropping bits of it to they… To their jeans, then that image you can use repeatedly.
[Howard] So, the homework. Take your cast of characters, and make their adjective/adverb list, so that, in terms of those words, they are passing the silhouette test for you.
[Brandon] That's great. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 12.9: Q&A on Viewpoint

Mar. 1st, 2017 10:24 am
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 12.9: Q&A on Viewpoint

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/02/26/12-9-qa-on-viewpoint/

Q&A Summary:
Q: Third person omniscient is generally the norm in most fantasy/sci-fi. Do you have any ideas, tips, tricks to make this voice more interesting or unusual?
A: Give the narrator a personality, characterization.
Q: How can you make [third person] limited more interesting?
A: Make the character sing. It's not the viewpoint, it's the character.
Q: It usually takes me a few drafts/revisions to really nail down a character's voice. Is this normal for most writers? Any tips on how to discover it in other ways?
A: If it's working for you, don't break it! Try writing a quick scene that is pivotal and important to your character. Sample scenes, monologues, conversation, job interviews. Don't be afraid to throwaway writing. Let the character talk so you can figure out who they are.
Q: What is the most effective way to portray an unreliable third limited viewpoint in which the reader can still know what is actually happening?
A: Why do you have an unreliable narrator? To fool the audience? Dramatic irony, where we know something the character does not? Establish that this is the character's personality, they think one thing, even though something else is really happening.
Q: How does one thoroughly immerse themselves in a setting/person? I know it's very subjective, but what are the most effective methods you have found in feeling, for example, when a pregnant woman, a pious man, or a lost child might feel? It's so far eludes me.
A: Meditation, guided imagery. Primary sources! Find forums where people are sharing trials and experiences, and get the things people gripe about right. Method acting for writers – feel it yourself, then write.
Q: How do you choose between first and third person? What's your process? When you're preparing a story, how do you make that final decision?
A: Is the story about plot or character? If it's about character, do it first person. Check your genre – adult romance usually is third, YA first person. How can you best express the characters? Try a writing sample, a quick scene or paragraph, to see which works best.
Q: How do you pick the right character for a viewpoint in a scene? How do you choose whose eyes you're going to see through?
A: Who is in the most pain? Who's most interesting? Who has the highest stakes, the most emotional response? Who's going to be doing the most, whose protagging the most? What do you like to write?
Q: I'm writing my first novel. How do I choose to do first person, third person, it's overwhelming. I could do omniscient, I could do non-omniscient, how do I make this decision?
A: Which POV makes the words flow for you? First novel, just write it. Spot check along the way, "Is this still working for me?" If so, keep going. If not, try a test scene in another perspective and see if that works better. What do you want to accomplish? Grand in scope, lots of different characters, third might work better. But first and foremost, finish the book.
Q: I have a problem with transitioning between voices. A.k.a. How do you know when to cut, how do you smoothly transition from one viewpoint character to another, how do you do a chapter break, do you sometimes not do a chapter break, how do you decide this?
A: End on a phrase that resonates with the reader, that's impactful, and makes them want to keep reading. Look at the first line of the next scene, make sure the reader knows whose head they're in as quickly as possible. Beware the garden path sentence, where the reader doesn't know whose head they are in until they turn the corner. End on a zinger, something awesome to say goodbye to that character for a while. Answer a question, raise a new question, resolve a package. Give emotional closure.
Q: My characters start to sound less distinct the further in my story I get. How do you keep this from happening?
A: Give each character a high concept that's evolving out of the consequences of previous acts, along with a dialogue tic that's a result of the consequences. Check prepositional phrases and three syllable words to see if your characters are all using the same ones. Visual and verbal tics work because they remind you, the writer, who the character is. Remember the character's passion.

( Wow, back and forth... )

[Brandon] I'm going to call it here. We have so many questions. I'm sorry we didn't get to them all. But, Piper has some homework for us.
[Piper] Oh, I do. My brain just died. I'm so sorry. So, my homework for you is to take dialogue, not narrative, dialogue, and take the characters who were involved in the dialogue… Probably works better with two or three, just a limited number of people in the dialogue, and swap them. So character A might say one thing, character B might say another. Now swap them, and how would character B say that first line, and how would character A respond?
[Brandon] Excellent. I really like that writing exercise. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.
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Writing Excuses 12.7: Description Through the Third Person Lens

Feb. 15th, 2017 11:14 am
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 12.7: Description Through the Third Person Lens

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/02/12/12-7-description-through-the-third-person-lens/

Key Points: Learn to let the character's voice, thoughts, and feelings come through when describing, especially in third person. Combine characterization and description! Get specific with what the character notices and does. Pay attention to what they notice, and what they miss. Describe the small things, let the reader imagine the large things. Focus indicates thought -- what the character sees, what they hear. Exercise: try and include every sense in a scene. But don't spend too long! And beware going overboard on all the senses all the time -- no one licks a vase. Add your infodumps in third person to emotion, action, dialogue -- dribble them across a scene. Pick out the important information and avoid the irrelevant infodump. Losing viewpoint? Check the emotional investment in the scene. Make sure you have the right scene. What happens when the main character knows something, but doesn't let the reader know? Frustration! Use focus, something else compelling to keep the main character going, and sometimes, it's just background for the character, no matter how surprising it is for the reader. Or... give the reader the information! Often knowing the secret makes the action more compelling. Or make that other plan a contingency. Think surprising, yet inevitable.

( The third person thinker? )

[Brandon] We are out of time. Mary Anne, you were going to give us some homework?
[Mary Anne] Well, I was just going to say that I love Ursula Le Guin's book, Steering the Craft. It's a very short little how-to-write book. She's got like three chapters with exercises on various variations of third person that I find really helpful. I still… I assign it every semester and I do them again with my students every semester. I get something out of it every time.
[Brandon] Well, excellent. That is your homework. Go read some Ursula Le Guin. You will always find it time well spent, I have found. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
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Writing Excuses 11.44: Project in Depth, GHOST TALKERS, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Nov. 4th, 2016 10:43 am
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 11.44: Project in Depth, GHOST TALKERS, by Mary Robinette Kowal

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/10/30/11-44-project-in-depth-ghost-talkers-by-mary-robinette-kowal/

Key Points: Catalog pitch and sales pitch are often different. Catalog pitch is to get readers, sales pitch is the emotional core of the story, with spoilers. Even though you know an event is coming, when it happens can still be a surprise. Changing viewpoints, letting a character explain why he's a slimeball, can make them more real. Watch for the tension between who a character wants to be and who they are. Sometimes you can split a conflict into parts and play them at different points in time to misdirect the reader. Just because a story deals with horrific things does not mean it has to be a horror story. It depends on how the main character views things. Pay attention to what matters to the character. Emotionally powerful moments often combine two conflicting emotions at the same time. Also, telegraph that this moment, this goal is coming well ahead of time. Writing combines craft and internalized practice, and working on specific things at specific points. Use your revision to find and fix overused stuff, or places you left vague. If you know you overdo something, replace it with a different piece. You can keep a style book to help you with the colors of emotions, or other fine points! Don't be afraid to use friends and 7 point plot structures and other tools to help with outlining, and to help fix places with problems. Remember, your reader only sees the final version, they don't see the drafts and drafts. Don't judge your first draft by anyone's final version, even your own.

( A whole lot of words... )
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Writing Excuses 7.12: Writing the Omniscient Viewpoint

Mar. 21st, 2012 11:57 am
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 7.12: Writing the Omniscient Viewpoint

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/03/18/writing-excuses-7-12-writing-the-omniscient-viewpoint/

Key Points: Omniscient viewpoint, with a narrator who can see all the action and knows all the thoughts of the characters, is hard to get right, compared to limited and first-person. Readers don't expect it. Cinematic omniscient, or third person cinematic, uses a camera as a narrator. Another type is the storyteller, with someone telling you this story. This lets the narrator talk to the reader, while not necessarily letting the characters know. It's a good way to condense information. Another type is the occasional zoom-out, such as establishing shots. There is a distinction between narrators with a strong voice and neutral omniscient narrators. When writing omniscient, be careful of the temptation to indulge in world builders' infodumping. The main advantage of occasional zoom-outs is that you don't always have to have a character see everything. The final type of omniscient is pure omniscient, which may lead to head hopping if done wrong. It must be very clear who is thinking what, but this can be very strong. This kind of omniscient lets you dig deeply into several characters and cover a lot of information in a single scene.
( Ignore the man behind the curtains! )
[Brandon] Yeah. Give them writing prompts.
[Howard] Okay. I'm actually going to give two. Writing prompt number one. Stick a scene in between two third person limited scenes, where an omniscient narrator delivers information that isn't available to any of your POV characters. The second writing prompt is pull off this Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility thing. Have two characters carrying on a dialogue in which what is being communicated with the words is out of sync with what each of the characters is thinking.
[Brandon] Okay. Excellent. You are out of excuses. Thanks for listening. Now go write.
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Writing Excuses 5.16: Critiquing Dan's First Novel

Mar. 1st, 2011 12:54 pm
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 5.16: Critiquing Dan's First Novel

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/12/19/writing-excuses-5-16-critiquing-dans-first-novel/

Key Points: Avoid discontiguities. Stomp out the cliche that all fantasy starts with a long, dry, boring description. Character before things! Punch it up and show us a character's viewpoint. Consider your genre, but put the promise of the story as early as possible. Start the story where it starts, and don't tell us all the stuff you wanted to tell us, just start it and go. You don't have to fill in everything. One telling detail beats pages of prose. Evoke plot, character, and setting. Make each sentence do multiple things. When you rewrite, make decisions. Consider your pace, and rearrange information as needed.
( Between the bindings... )
[Brandon] All right, Dan. I'm going to let you give us our writing prompt.
[Dan] Our writing prompt?
[Howard] And remember that time travelers may be reading this writing prompt for last week.
[Dan] May be reading this right now? Okay. This is... take an idiomatic expression and literalize it. So, for example, the crack of dawn... a world in which dawn actually cracks, visibly or audibly. Then describe that going on. Not as a pun, but as world building information.
( Final jokes )
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