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Positional vs Personal

Excerpt from Writing Excuses 13.26 Character Relationships [7:05 - 9:03]

Howard: I have a much simpler tool that I employ very differently, which is the two scales of power: “Positional Power” and “Personal Power.”

In an employer-employee relationship, the employer has position power over the employee. But a very very charismatic, intelligent, effusive employee has gobs of personal power... and without even trying, can undermine an employer who doesn’t have any personal power.

And in fact you see this a lot in workplaces, in all kinds of relationships—where someone assumes that their personal power grants them position. Or assumes their position power grants them... for instance, friendship with everyone under them.

I pay close attention to this in Schlock Mercenary because the military organisations that encompass so many of the relationships in the books are inherently about position power. And there’s a wide array of differing personal powers in there.

I need to make sure—like when we talk about manners—something that you would say to a fellow grunt is not something that you would say to an officer. I have to keep track of that dichotomy, because if I get it wrong it knocks people out of the story.

Dan: I worked in an office, and was there for the moment when the guy with all the position power realised that he didn’t have any personal power, and the office became unlivable. It was fascinating to watch that. And you have just given me the vocabulary to describe what happened!

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Kowal Relationship Axes

Excerpt from: Writing Excuses 13.26 Character Relationships [2:26 - 7:05]

Mary: I have a tool that I use when I know that I’m going to need these two characters to fight, but I don’t want it to be a stupid fight.

Because I see this all the time, where the characters are fighting. I’m like, “Why are you fighting?” Or conversely, the characters who really do not get along at all... and then suddenly wind up in bed together. I’m like, “What? You’ve got nothing in common!”

Allow me to introduce something I call the “Kowal Relationship Axes.” It’s actually named after my mother-in-law who used it as dating advice to my husband—or to her son. And I realised that it actually works incredibly well for describing the way we interact with not just a romantic partner, but for everybody.

So the idea is there are 6 axes along which relationships exist. And the more closely you are aligned on any one of these, the more compatible you are. And the farther apart, the less compatible. And the sliders don’t have to be very far off.

Those are “Mind,” “Money,” “Morals,” “Manners,” “Monogamy,” and “The Marx Brothers.” I will grant that my husband added the Marx Brothers after we were married, when he realised I had never seen the Marx Brothers.

So we’ll start from the end and work our way back.

The Marx Brothers basically represents that you have the same sense of humour. Brandon: You laugh at the same things. Mary: Yeah. It’s a very simple one.

Monogamy is not that you are both monogamous, but that you have the same idea of what the relationship is. You've experienced the thing where someone thinks that you are B.F.F.s, and you’re like, “I kind of vaguely know you from work.” And it’s really super-uncomfortable.

She labelled that one as “Hot Burning Kisses,” which is better for romantic stuff. [Dan laughs] Brandon: So they weren’t all alliterative. You being a writer... Mary: Well the first four were alliterative. And then “Hot Burning Kisses.” Dan: Which, to be fair, can stand alone. Mary: That’s true.

Manners means you have the same idea of what is polite, and what is not. Morals is different from Manners.

Morals is your sense of what is right and wrong in the world. So you can have morals that are in close alignment, and manners that are wildly off. Or the other way around. That’s often why you know someone who is a terrible person on the internet, and you meet them in real life and they’re so nice! And it’s because your manners are really closely aligned while your manners are wildly off.

Money is that you have the same sense of what money is for, and the same goals towards money. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the same amount of money. Brandon: You’re swimming through in your giant money vault. Obviously that’s what you do with it. Mary: Obviously.

Mind is that you have comparable degrees of intelligence.

What’s interesting about this is that they really do not have to be very far off. So you can have people that are compatible, on the upper ends of all of these sliders in terms of their compatibility. But even just a little bit off... those are the points where the friction is going to happen. And if you know the places that they’re a little bit off, that tells you what the fight is going to be about.

Howard: The “Why would you even say that?!” Mary: Yeah. Howard: That surprise. “We are so like each other, and yet you just...” That thing.

Dan: Some of them being close together can also be a good reason why the characters fit together, even though the others are far apart. The Lethal Weapon franchise is almost entirely founded on the idea that their morals are completely aligned and their manners are wildly 100% off.

Mary: Yeah, and they are also lined up on mind. What is interesting is that at the beginning they are in agreement on what their relationship is, which is "We don’t like each other.” Brandon: “I work alone.” Mary: Yes. For both of them. And their understanding of what their relationship is evolves together.

More Information:  Mary’s Patreon Post

Editor’s Note: You may have noticed I don’t do full transcripts very often. It does take a lot of time to make each one—a good few hours to transcribe, and then add onto that the formatting and adding media and so on.

But now and then, there’s a nugget of awesome that piques my interest. This week’s episode had two such points: The “Kowal Relationship Axes,” and... another one.  (I’ll be posting that one soon; stay tuned!) Transcribing these as excerpts means I can do these when I personally find it interesting to do so. And it means less time on transcribing, which leaves more time for prettying things up and so forth. I made that illustration to show the 6 sliders, for example.

I hope this is still enjoyable to read for you guys. I’m hoping that this new “format” will be more sustainable in the future. So I’ll hopefully make more of them—though “regular” isn’t necessarily the word I’d use. ^^

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Quick Characterisation

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, Patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Season 13, Episode 9.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! Quick Characterisation. 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: And we are talking all this month about side characters. It’s a topic we’ve touched on before in Writing Excuses, so I wanted to get to something specific about side characters this week. I wanted 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 of sentences to characterize someone. Dan, how do you go about doing it?

Unexpected Aspects

Dan: 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. You 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 is that thing, except not just the reader’s expectations but the point-of-view character’s expectations. Because using that allows me to 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.

Memory Hacks

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. If the character says their name, I will slide a detail in that is alliterative, without... Dan: Without drawing attention to it?

Brandon: Wow! That’s interesting! Oh... Howard: I feel manipulated now...

Dan: An example? Mary: Monty with a mustache. Dan: Monty with a mustache. Okay. That’s awesome! Howard: Howard with the hairless. [others laugh] Mary: Hairless Howard.

Mary: And there are other “Memory Palace” kinds of things that you can do with that too. Brandon: Right. Make the guy named Jim a Butcher. [Dan laughs] Mary: Yeah, actually that would totally work.

So I’m terrible with remembering names, and that’s when I’m meeting someone in real life. So I was taking a class on how to remember names--and it doesn’t help me actually, that much. It’s a little better.

But I suddenly realised that these were all very useful tools for cementing a name with the reader. So if I have a character who is a jeweler, then one of the details that I’ll call attention to is the earrings that are hanging from her pendulous earlobes. And if I have named her Patricia, with the pendulous earlobes... Howard: Or Pendularia. [Brandon laughs] Mary: Or Penny.

So that is very sneaky. I do not deploy that all the time. But that is a trick that works distressingly well. [laughs]

Howard: I think I got better with side characters once I realised that I wasn’t good with names and I wanted to be, and I started practising any time I was in public.

I learned all the names of people at the place where I got salads. And 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.

They’re 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, and I started retaining that information. It’s fascinating that the two seem to be related.

And 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 not been done right.

Dan: The one counter example being something like Crab and Goyle from Harry Potter, who are supposed to be pretty 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 backstory and discovery write who they are... Mary: Luxury! [laughs] Brandon: Right? And suddenly they come to life. And if I don’t have the viewpoint, then I have a lot of trouble with that.

Mary: I will go ahead sometimes--even when I’m doing short fiction--I will do a bit of an exploratory scenelet 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--you’re just not getting traction on them. And so I’ll do exactly that.

I’ll write that scene from their point of view, which helps me figure out what their motivations are, and some of the physical body language that they’re going to be using. And then I’ll flip back to my main character, do the scene again incorporating the information that I’ve learned.

I don’t do that every time, but it’s a very useful exercise to engage in sometimes.

Brandon: (To Dan) I’ve seen you do something similar.

Dan: Yeah. This is such a dumb little thing. The thing that I do all the time, is 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 kind of things they would lie about. And It’s fascinating!

I think at this point, I’ve done it with 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... and 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... 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 them this quirky thing.” The Flanderization...

Brandon: Yeah, we’ll going to talk about Flanderization in a minute. But we can just dig into it right now. Why don’t you just tell us what Flanderization is?

Mary: Flanderization is referring to the slow evolution of a character into just being a quirk. It relates to what happens to the character Flanders on The Simpsons--that he started out as being this very rounded character, and 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.” And then he stopped being a person and started being a quirk.

Mary: Right. So I think one of the things that you can do to keep that from happening is to figure out why your character does that thing, and 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. And it also makes the character more rounded. Because whatever reason they have to do “that thing,” the same reason is going to motivate a lot of different choices.

Brandon: Next month we’re going to dig into this 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: everyone does. [all laugh] Brandon: Yeah, we’ll dig into this a lot.

Let’s go ahead and stop for the book of the week. And you’re actually going to tell us about Brimstone?

Book of the Week

Mary: Yes! Brimstone, by Cherie Priest is fantastic. It is a story set right after the First World War. And there are two main characters.

One of them is a young woman who is a medium, and she has travelled to this new small town to learn how to use her powers. And it’s a real town that really had a spiritualist movement in it, and still does.

And then the other character is a man who survived the war, and has come back with a ghost. But he doesn’t realise he has a ghost. Things just keep catching on fire. It’s their interaction, and figuring out what it is that is haunting them and has come back with him from the war.

The characterisation in this is so rich. It’s a huge cast, because she’s in this small town filled with spiritualists that she’s meeting... It’s this very huge community. Each character feels distinct and individual--even the ones that are on the stage just for a few moments. Even the ones that actually never come on stage because they’re dead already. It’s wonderful storytelling.

Brandon: Brimstone. Mary: Brimstone, by Cherie Priest. Dan: And if you’ve never read Cherie Priest, she’s one of the few writers that can hook me from the very first sentence of a book. The writing itself, the language, is incredible. Mary: And it’s written in an epistolary form so that each character... what you’re reading is their journals.

Peekaboo Moments

Brandon: So one of the things I’ve learned over the years for characterising side characters in specific, for doing things quickly, is what I call “Peekaboo Moments.”

It’s a measure of great gratification as a writer, when occasionally someone will come up and say “Oh! This little side character just came to life for me!” And almost always it’s somebody where I’ve done one of these Peekaboo Moments.

Where you are writing a story, and in general you’ll describe the scene and then focus in on the main characters and have the conversation or the conflict or things like this, and everything else fades to background--even some of the side characters who are coming in and interacting with them.

And what I like to do is occasionally say, “No, we’re going to add a splash of colour 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 and 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.’” While they’re waiting, they’re standing there juggling or something like this.

What I try to do in these Peekaboo Moments is show a moment of humanity and backstory 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.” And 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 in... They’re 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 their twin daughters.” I don’t know... something like that that gives humanity to the background characters.

Dan: One of my favourite movies is Brick, by Rian Johnson--which is basically a Film Noir but set in a modern high school. And 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. And 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 Schlock Mercenary book... one of the scenes, the company’s about to take a job and our protagonist is talking to her sister, and her sister is saying she needs medical help.

And her sister’s saying “I need medical help.”

And she’s saying “Well I’m not a doctor. Why are you calling me?”

“Well, you work for a mercenary company. You’ve 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.”

And then we have the battlefield medic show up behind her and say, “Saved your life.”

And Schlock says, “She also hears really well.” [others laugh]

And now we have, in two panels, insight into five characters. And okay, it helps that I’m able to illustrate them so some of the context is here... Brandon: Luxury! Mary: Yeah! [Dan laughs] Howard: But I did it specifically... and 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 panels. Howard: Yeah. And 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: I was going to give the warning that you can’t do this too much, in most books. If in every scene, you’re spending a paragraph on five different side characters, then suddenly the point of quickly characterising... Mary: Paragraph? Luxury!

Brandon: But there are some books where this is kind of the way the book is. We’ve recommended the Golem and the Jinni on the podcast before. And I read that because you guys recommended it. And it is a story mostly about the side characters. And on this page you will spend three pages on this side character. On this one you’ll... And they just are there populating the story, and constantly interacting with the main characters. But the main characters are almost there as an excuse to explore an entire community.

Mary: And I think one of the reasons it works in that book is because everything is new to the main characters. Because the P.O.V. focusses on “Who is this interesting person I have encountered, that is unlike anything that I have ever seen, living a glass bottle for a thousand years?”

There are many other books that do that where it does not work. It is not compelling and engaging. Brandon: I would agree.

Side Character’s Lives Matter

Mary: One of the things that I will do sometimes is think about what the character was, or what they were doing before the protagonist walked out 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.

You don’t even need to give the character a name, or anything like that. But if the 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.

Brandon: That’s a really good tip.

I think we’re out of time. Howard, though, you’ve got a really good thing that cartoonists use.

Silhouette Test

Howard: Oh yeah. The Silhouette Test. Cartoonists, comic book writers, anybody who’s working in sequential art where there are characters... Mary: And puppeteers! Howard: And 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 the filled outline--just the silhouette. And if you can’t tell them apart, something has to change.

I ask myself this all the time--what is the prose equivalent for the Silhouette Test? And what I’ve kind of boiled it down to is the adverbs and adjectives that I 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? And just make a quick list of those adjectives and adverbs. And 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 is, come up with those. You don’t necessarily always want to always describe somebody that comes on screen as “greasy.” But if on one scene they’re the only person who’s eating a big hamburger and dropping bits of it to their jeans, then that image you could use repeatedly.

Howard: Your 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!

Mary: Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Taylor. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

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S12E41 - Raising the Stakes

Mary: This episode of writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Season 12, Episode 41.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses—raising the stakes. Mary: 15 minutes long, Mary Anne: because you’re in a hurry, Wesley: And we’re not that smart.

Brandon: I’m Brandon. Mary: I’m Mary. Mary Anne: I’m Mary Anne. Wesley: And I’m Wesley.

Brandon: And we’re going to talk about raising the stakes and making it more personal. In the “Novel” month, we want to specifically talk about how you can continue to raise stakes for a story across a long period of time. So I’m going to ask you that.

How do you keep readers’ interest through the longform?

How do you get them to keep reading something so long?

Wesley: Really, for a novel-length piece we’re talking about an overall plot that will span the 100,000 words that encompasses the novel. Brandon: 100,000. Mm. Mary: [laughs] Wesley: Or half a novel, or act one of a Brandon book.

But then also within that 100,000 words of the main plot are a bunch of smaller plots—smaller scenes that are continually raising the stakes in different ways. Brandon: Okay. What are some of those ways?

Wesley: So for example, in The Rise of IO there’s the main plot for the character who is a person inhabited by an alien and she’s trying to not only survive the whole encounter but she’s also trying to figure out who she is. But on top of that she’s also a conwoman who is on the run from gangsters, and she is dealing with the fact that she lives in the slum.

Brandon: So you’re talking about adding some subplots and things like this to raise the stakes? Wesley: Subplots that help build environment, to develop the character... and you’re ratcheting things up slowly.

Mary: Yeah. When we’re talking about raising the stakes, what we’re looking for are things that make things worse for the character. And I’m going to talk about 2 basic paths that you can take.

One is that you can still have the same thing that can go wrong but you can...

Make the failure point of that worse.

So if, for instance, the popular kid is afraid that people are going to discover that they are homeless. That’s a bad failure point. But the failure point can become worse if as a consequence to that, that could lead to them being put into foster care and being taken away from their family.

The same thing is at stake: “I don’t want people to find out that I’m homeless.” But the failure point can become worse and worse and worse and worse.

Brandon: Right. I had this in college when I was a professor. Actually I still am. But it happened a lot more when I was teaching freshman-comp. If somebody failed, that was bad.

But if a student from another country failed, that could be even worse. It could mean they didn’t meet their credit requirements and they could get shipped home. Your parents angry at you is one thing. Getting shipped back if you’re doing study abroad and losing your ability to continue at school is even worse. 

So yeah. You can make the failure more drastic. Wesley: The consequences of everything that happens.

Mary Anne: It’s funny—I was also thinking about parent-child conflicts and school. But I want to take a step back, because when I’m trying to figure out what the stakes of my story are, and the stakes for the characters... I tend to go back to “What do I care about? What is frightening to me? What is at stake for me? What am I emotionally invested in?” Because I feel I write that more convincingly.

For example, when I was in college we had this South-Asian students group meeting where we all sat around in a circle and it was this encounter session kind of thing. And we were talking about “What are we afraid of?” and “What it’s like being here in college?”

And 95% of us wanted to talk about dating and how we were terrified that our parents would find out. And we were really really scared of that. Because it was a huge deal! And there was one girl whose parents found out that she was dating a white boy and they cut her off, and she had to drop out of college for 2 years until she could re-apply independently for financial aid... and it is potentially your whole family on the line.

And then there were a couple of people who were like, “Oh, wow. My parents are totally cool. This is just not an issue for me.”

So that’s always made me think on that when I’m setting the story...

“What are the issues for my character?”

And there’s not necessarily going to be universal issues.

Wesley: That’s a really good point. So for example, “The world is ending.” Well, that sucks. But then for the character what does that mean, that the world is ending? “Suddenly my child will never grow up and experience a full life.” Mary: “I’ll never finish this novel!” Wesley: [laughs] I’m at 90% of the novel and I’ll never finish...

Brandon: Two general themes, here. One is what Mary was saying earlier, which is “Make it more specific.” Make the consequence a little rougher by making more specificity in their life. And the other one’s a take on the same thing, but you’re saying “Make it more personal.” Let us know the personal consequences of this failure.

Mary: And a lot of times that’s the thing that makes the failure point worse. “Oh, if we don’t do this the drinking water could become contaminated.” And everyone agrees that’s a bad idea.

But as soon as the main character meets one of the kids who’s drinking that water, that is actually—all by itself—making the failure point worse. Because it has become personal for the main character, even without adding any complications to it. So that’s one way that you can actually raise the stakes without adding plot points.

Mary Anne: And I think you can keep interrogating yourself, as a writer. My awareness of consequence changes every year.

Last year I was diagnosed with breast cancer—and I’m fine now—but one thing I realised the day I was diagnosed is that I suddenly had this terror that I was not going to be around long enough to tell my kids everything they would need to know. And I wanted to go and record video messages to them for hours. “Here’s all the wisdom I have!” just in case. It would not have occurred to me a week beforehand that that would be the biggest issue in my life.

Mary: And I think when we talk about “Write what you know,” that’s the kind of thing people are talking about. It’s not “Oh, you must write your life experience.” 

It’s that you can take things that you know—the deep emotions—and extrapolate from them into things that your characters are experiencing.

And a thing that happens a lot with try-fail cycles, is that you can...

Introduce a new problem that has been caused by a previous solution

For example, in the southern United States they were having problems with soil erosion so they introduced this plant called Kudzu. And if you’ve ever been to the South... Brandon: It looks so cool! Mary: It’s this great ecological faux pas.

Brandon: It’s a disaster, but it looks so cool! Wesley: Why does it look cool? Now you’ve got me curious. Brandon: It looks like the Zerg arrived and they’re taking over the ecology with this alien creature... Mary Anne: What?! Brandon: You drive along the road and you just see vines covering everything and turning it into an alien landscape. Mary: And they’ll just go over houses, and... it is a disaster.

Mary: And it’s this thing where a new problem has arisen. They solved the erosion problem. That problem has been solved! Brandon: That goes back to one of the plotting methods you taught us a few years ago which is the “Yes But, No And,” where it’s always make it worse. I’ll have a question for you guys after the Book of the Week. But let’s stop of the Book of the Week because you’re going to tell us about “The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl”?

Book of the Week

Mary: Yes! “The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl”! This is a book that I picked up when I was in Australia. And I was “I want to read an Australian author that I am not familiar with.” I picked this up on the recommendation of a bookstore owner, which is why we support local bookstores. And it’s amazing!

It’s a Young Adult novel, and it begins with signs of the end of the world. There are legitimate signs that the apocalypse is coming, and specifically the focal point of the apocalypse is going to be this small town in Australia. So it is totally this “End of the World” novel, but the author pulls out some incredibly surprising things. It’s hard to talk about without spoiling one of the fun things. But you spend a lot of the novel going, “Wait— Is the world actually going to end, or is it not?”

And she manages to raise the stakes for the characters, which you wouldn’t think was possible when the book begins with “The world is about to end.” But she does it by getting more specific and more personal.

The characterisation is great. It’s also a very body-positive novel. And it’s just fantastic. I loved the heck out of it. Wesley: The author is Melissa Keil. Brandon: Excellent! That sound really cool. Mary: It is a fantastic book.

Brandon: So, back on the topic. Let me as you guys... we have this raise the stakes “Yes But, No And.” All of this stuff that keeps us tense and on the edge of our seats...

Doesn’t this just get old across the course of a long story?

Doesn’t it just get frustrating for the reader? How do you not have that illusion break down?

Wesley: I feel like you can’t write an entire novel pedal-to-the-metal. There’s got to be times you pull back a little, let the reader catch their breath... Brandon: So occasionally do you need to have a, “We fixed this one. We’re okay”?

Brandon: For those who don’t know “Yes But, No And,” you plot by saying:

“What is our conflict?” “They try something and solve it.”

“Does it work?” “Yes. But it causes a bigger problem.”

No, Kudzu is taking over. And, we have the original problem. That sort of thing.

Can we have a “Yes, period”?

Mary Anne: As a reader I really appreciate rest points. I like a chance to breathe, a chance to just delight in, “Oh, these characters are having a small, intimate/funny/romantic/whatever moment that’s just enjoyable.” And you can lean on the structure of the book. If there are 200, 300 pages left... as a reader you know something else bad is coming. We’re not at the happily ever after. So we’ll just enjoy  the little rest. [sigh] And then we turn the page and we’re going to be plunged into it again.

Wesley: There’s different formats. There are a lot of thriller movies where you are on the run the entire time. Any time you solve something it gets even worse. 

Brandon: Lots of them do that. But I will say part of the reason I’m asking this question is because occasionally in thrillers, about halfway through I’m emotionally done. I’m not invested anymore. You’ve lost me. The first half was super-gripping... Wesley: You’re exhausted. Brandon: Oh, of course it’s going to go wrong in some ridiculously over-the-top way. Of course there’s going to be, “Yeah, we fixed this but now there’s scorpions in my shoes.” That sort of thing breaks down for me eventually.

Mary: Yeah, I would agree with that. One of the mental metaphors that I think about is constructing a story is much like constructing a stairway, where things are going up for the character, but at a certain point you have to have plateaus—you have to have a level spot so you can catch your breath and continue forward. But those still are always forward. There’s a sense of progression.

You see this done badly where things are going wrong, things are going wrong... and then we have the seemingly unrelated happy scene in the cafeteria where everyone seems fine. And then you know, “Oh, everyone is happy right now. Something bad is about to happen.”

So the challenge is to provide that sense of rest while giving that sense of, “This rest moment is serving a function.” Otherwise people are like, “All this rest moment is doing is setting me up for the next thing.” Brandon: Yeah, I can’t enjoy it because I’m too tense for what’s coming next.

Mary Anne: I enjoy reading cosy mysteries. I enjoy reading funny romances. These do not have thriller pacing to them.

And there is a tension, but it’s...

A quiet tension

There’s a lot of people sitting around and having conversations and knitting, etc... But nonetheless it’s gripping because there is a question that was raised at the beginning, and it’s a question that matters. The stakes are high for the reader. I mean, what’s more important than love? It’s a big deal. So that can be enough to carry you through.

In genre Nicola Griffith’s “Hild” is a really interesting book. It’s told very quietly. It’s a brilliant Norse-type story with a young girl as the protagonist. And Griffith is a beautiful writer. There is a tension that grows incrementally over the course of the book, and she turns it up a tiny bit in every chapter.

Mostly it’s very domestic. It’s this little girl learning how to navigate her world, and she’s doing handiwork and cooking and whatever else. But you can feel the looming disaster.

Mary: This is a really good point that a lot of times early-career writers will raise the stakes too fast and too high. And that’s the thing that’s hard to sustain.

When I was writing “Shades of Milk and Honey,” my instinct was to put in evil overlords, to have... Brandon: Wow! Mary: It was so hard not to do that, because that’s what I read. And it would’ve been a disservice to the novel. Mary Anne: Because it’s based on a Austenian kind of model, right? It is a complete disaster if someone turns away from you instead of speaking to you when you walk into the room, right? That’s enough.

Brandon: This is a really good point. Spacing out how you raise the stakes—even backing up on the stakes for your beginning. Despite our discussion of “You need to start strong.” Well, starting strong can be, “I’ve just broken up with someone, I’m looking for someone else. Hey, I’ve got a nice fling. Hey, I’m getting attached. Hey, I’ve found this person I’ve been looking for forever, and now they’re moving to Australia!” Mary Anne: Aww~! Brandon: That is a raising of stakes that’s very personal to someone but also has an escalation.

(SPOILER ALERT for JESSICA JONES: Skip the indented block below if you don’t want to see any spoilers.)

Wesley: One example that clearly illustrates what Mary’s talking about is Jessica Jones. It’s 10 episodes of Jessica fighting Kilgrave. In the middle, they raise the stakes right away: they caught him by episode 5. But they’re like, “We’ve got 5 more episodes; what do we do with him?” So then they let him go. Brandon: [laughs] Wesley: And they catch him again. Wesley: And for 3 or 4 episodes that’s all they do, because they’ve already gotten to the very end and they have time to spare.

Mary: This is a fine example of you’ve got this really epic finishing shot, you don’t want to throw away your shot really early.

The other thing that I think that you can do is...

Delayed consequences.

These are sometimes a way to keep the stakes raised.

Going back to the question that you’d asked earlier Brandon about whether or not you can ever just close an arc... I think that if you ever just have a “Yes,” that does close that question. But you can have a “Yes dot-dot-dot, but.” And have the “but” come later.

Brandon: Right. “We’ve delayed this.” I think you’re right; that happens a lot in epic fantasy. We say, “This is a big problem. We have put a band-aid on it. This will be a dangerous thing later on.” You see it all the time in films that are planning a sequel as well, though. “Now we have to deal with this other evil...” I think this is a good way.

Mary Anne: I have a story, Seven Cups of Water (erotica), where it has escalation and every night it escalates a little bit more. And one of the things that worked really well in that story is the next-to-last night, it de-escalates suddenly. And you’re like, “Wait— We’re not on that track anymore. We’re going somewhere else. We’re no longer engaged in that.” And then it comes back. And you’re like “Oh no! We did not actually solve this. We’re right back in the midst of it. And now it’s really bad.”

Brandon: This has been a great discussion. I’m going to have to call it here.

Homework

But I do have some homework for you guys. I want you to try a few of the things that we’ve talked about in this episode. Number 1, specifically raising the stakes by taking a side character from a story you’re working on and raise the stakes for what’s going on for them. Try making it more personal first. But I’m not going to let you use the crutch that a lot of us use, that they have lost someone in their past, or that it’s personal because this is the person that killed their mentor or something like that. It can’t be related to the loss of a loved one. Mary: No fridging! Brandon: Yeah, let’s make that one not on the table, and just see what you can do with that, then.

And then make it more specific. Try to make it a little less epic but more specific to the person. Try that instead. And see if this raises the stakes in interesting ways for your story.

This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses; now go write.

Mary: Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Taylor. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

[wxat]

S11E25 - Elemental Mystery is Everywhere

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would like to support this podcast and start a 30-day trial membership, visit AudiblePodcast.com/excuse.

Season 11, Episode 25.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! Mystery as Subgenre.

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: And let’s keep talking about mysteries! Mary: Yay! Brandon: So the question I want to ask you is why do people turn the page in a mystery story?

Howard: To see if they’re right? [Dan and Mary laugh]

Mary: Well yeah, I think that that’s actually true. I think that there is a question and people want the answer to it and they want to solve it. So I think that in a lot of cases—as opposed to Idea stories, which we’ll talk about later—in a mystery story it’s not just that the character has a question.

The reader has a question and they’re trying to solve it.

Brandon: Right. Now, I will say that there are a lot of readers I know that don’t want to try and figure out the mysteries. That for them the fun is just seeing how it unfolds. I’ve met a number of these who just want to go along for the ride.

Howard: Those are the people who are not following or participating in the Schlock Mercenary Facebook group. [others laugh] Brandon: That is true. Howard: As I watch that group I think, “Oh! Okay. Yes. You guys have identified all of the red herrings that I identified, and there is no way for me to make all of you be wrong... so I’m not going to try.” But I can tell what they are loving.

Brandon: This is an interesting thing just to bring up. We get a skewed perspective sometimes as popular writers interacting with fans. The fans who interact with us are a self-selecting crowd. The fans that go on internet forums and talk about these things are a self-selecting crowd.

And when I’ve gone to signings and ask questions along these lines, a lot of people don’t want to know, don’t want to guess—a large number of people. But the hardcore fans are all trying to figure it out, because they are the people who talk to their friends and say, “What do you think about this?”

Dan: Even people who are not playing along at home, they’re still reading the mystery because they want to know the answer to it—even if they’re not the one actively trying to solve it on their own.

Brandon: I just want to point out that there is this sense of, “I want to see how this plays out.” In the same way that Adventure (the Adventure Subgenre) was, “I want to see what cool things they do,” this is, “I want to read along because I know something is coming, and it’s going to blow my mind when it happens. And I am so excited to have my expectations rocked in that way.”

Howard: We’ve covered this over and over and over and over and over again in your critique groups. It’s incredibly useful to have readers who are readers. We talk about the “true fans” who we get feedback from. And yes, excuse our perspective, having our reader in your writing group who loves to read mysteries but who doesn’t hang out on the fan sites... that person is the one who’s going to tell you if you’re getting it right.

Brandon: The Alpha and Beta readers are even more valuable for that sense, because the writing group people will be tainted by everyone else’s guessing. Mary: Yeah, I use my dad for Beta testing, because if there is a plot-hole he will find it. He’s an engineer. [Dan chuckles]

Mary: So I think one of the things that I was answering when I was saying “why do we keep turning the pages?” is this is why I keep turning the pages in a mystery. 

Because when I am reading and I’m not reading science-fiction and fantasy, the two genres that I go to are romance or mystery. And usually mystery. I am turning the pages because I’m intrigued. I want to know what...

Brandon: Curiosity. Mary: Curiosity. Brandon:

Curiosity is the king right here.

Brandon: Even if you’re not trying to figure it out yourself, you’re still curious. And this actually is important for this discussion of Mystery as a subgenre. Because a lot of times you will be as a writer embedding mysteries that don’t look like mysteries to the reader.

They’re not presented as “Here is a body!” or “Here is a big problem!” It is the characters working on something, gaining information in some way. And that’s a mystery even if the outline the reader would put for it doesn’t make a mystery for this book.

Dan: Especially as we’re talking about using them as sub-genres inside of a larger work. That can be so effective in a thriller or in a horror story, when suddenly something weird happens and you can’t figure it out. And it will build tension for your larger story. But it also gives you a little chapter-long or scene-long “Let’s figure out why all the lights suddenly went out.” That kind of thing.

Mary: Romance also has a mystery that’s very common embedded in it, and that is the hero’s dark past. Brandon: Yes! Action movies, too! Mary: Yeah! Brandon: What is the hero’s dark past?

Brandon: I just came up with something that really sounded right to me. I’d just never thought of it.

The mystery is really the journey.

Brandon: The reveal at the end of the mystery is going to define the subgenre being blended with it.

For instance, if you are feeling like “When this gets revealed I am going to find out the dark Eldritch horrors that will break my brain,” you’re a Horror and a Mystery. But if the reveal is that “We are going to discover what’s hidden underneath the city, and it turns out to be a city of gold,” then you’re in Wonder.

We have discovered the thing. And so the emotion that immediately falls to curiosity, is your blended emotion. Mary: Oh, that’s interesting. Howard: That’s a really good way of looking at it.

Howard: One of the things that I have puzzled over for quite some time now in thinking about these elements as sub-genres, “What’s the element that gets used most often as a subgenre?” And I’m leaning towards Mystery, because it just gets used so often. Second place is probably Relationship, because that is so important.

I don’t know, but what you just said kind of sums it up. Sometimes the reveal is so powerfully Sense of Wonder, or Horror, that I forget that Mystery was there and I’m not counting it.

Brandon: Here’s what it is: curiosity sustains the reader until you hit the reveal. And as you’re going you want to foreshadow that reveal. You will foreshadow that this discovery is going to be terrible and frightening in a different way than you foreshadow this discovery is going to change the way that the magic works and makes you really think in awe about wizards in a new way or whatever. You’re going to foreshadow those differences, but curiosity is what’s sustaining you during that.

Mary: And that’s a really good way to point at how these genres, these elemental things blend together. Because you have to be doing both at the same time. You have to be bringing in the elements of whatever your other genre is while you’re bringing that curiosity all the way through.

Brandon: And I think that might be the difference between mystery as a genre and as a subgenre. In mystery as a genre, the reveal is information. Information that you’ve been thirsting after all along so that the puzzle locks closed. “Ah! I am done now with this puzzle. I have had the reveal.” Whereas in another genre the reveal adds to your major genre, whatever it is.

Howard: With Mystery as the principal element, the reveal is “Aha!” But in science-fiction it’s “Wow!” And in Horror it’s “Oh noooo!” Brandon: [laughs] I wish I could have a book so that when I open the last page you give one of those reactions in your voice. [others laugh] Dan: Like a little greeting card: “Oooh nooo!” [laughs] Brandon: Let’s have our book of the week.

Dan, you were going to have our Book of the Week this week.

Book of the Week

Dan: Our Book of the Week is “Thud,” by Terry Pratchett. Terry Pratchett writes fantasy comedies. He’s combining Wonder and Humour. And people who pass him off as “Just a funny guy” are really discounting the incredible work he does as a fantasy author.

He has, for example in Thud, his dwarves are the first truly original take on dwarves I have read since Tolkien. They’re incredibly new and fascinating. And what’s great about Thud is that it is a murder mystery. Someone has killed the leader of the dwarves in the city. And good old Vimes, this world-weary city watch commander, has to figure it out before the uprising comes and people go nuts.

Absolutely wonderful book. Hilarious and brilliant and very intelligently constructed as a mystery.

Brandon: I would say that almost all the Vimes stories are mysteries. Pratchett uses a couple of different things across his various subseries in Discworld, but mystery is his most common one. They really are fantasy-mystery-humour all completely hybridised. Dan: It’s hard to say which is the sub-genre of the other one, because he blends them so thoroughly.

Brandon: Well, you can start a trial at Audible by going to AudiblePodcast.com/excuse. Pick up a copy of Thud by Terry Pratchett, read by Stephen Briggs to start off your trial.

Mystery Subplot

Brandon: So let’s go into how you approach creating a subplot that is a mystery plot for one of your stories. Anything specific you do? If you know you’re writing this big horror story or this fantasy, this historical fantasy... how do you insert your mysteries?

Dan: One of the places that I start is when I look at the information that the reader needs to know. And I decide, “Would this be best explained through some kind of expository scene, or for the characters figure it out on-screen?” And if the latter, then I’m putting some form of mystery into the book.

Howard: If you go to WritingExcuses.com and look at the tag cloud on the website, the largest word in that cloud is “Characters.” And that is because we drill down on that so often.

For mystery as a sub-genre, if you ask yourself what the characters are asking themselves, what is it that they are curious about? Why are they curious about it? What is driving them to find the answer? Then that’s what’s going to engage the reader because that’s whose shoes we’re standing in.

I find that when I do that with Schlock Mercenary, what I will often do is—I change points of view a lot in the strip—I look for the character who is the most puzzled and the best able to articulate the puzzle, and that’s where I switch to because for me that’s what engages it the best.

Brandon: When I was building the Stormlight Archive, I did something very similar to what you’re saying here. I said, “I want each of my five main characters to have a mystery hook to them. When you read that character, after a few chapters you’re just like, 'I want to know what happened to this person,’” to bring them to this point where the book starts.

And that was one of my main hooks to get people through the first five books—is each one would take a character and delve into their past. So I needed something really intriguing. I needed a question that by the end of the book if readers came to me and said, “What happened to such-and-such that caused this?” I knew I was doing it right. If they could put their fingers on it and say, “Oh, I want to know what happened there.”

And that’s part of how I design these. What question is the reader going to ask me? If they’re halfway through the book, or if they’re done with the book, what are they going to come and say? “Oh, Brandon! There’s one thing I want to know, and it is...” this—which would be a huge spoiler for the next book [Dan chuckles] Brandon: —then I’ve done my job right.

Mary: One of the things that I’ll do sometimes—and I don’t do this every time, but it’s a useful hack—is I figure out what it is my character needs or wants, and what it is they need to do to achieve that. And then I look at what piece of information do they lack that would allow them to accomplish the thing that they need to do. And that search for that piece of information then becomes a mystery within the larger plot.

Brandon: I’ve said many times before that when I build a plot I do this thing where I say, “What are all my subplots? What are all my emotions?” And then I build each one backward. I don’t build a huge outline., I build a bunch of little outlines. And a lot of them are mysteries. And it will be... sometimes they’re whodunnits. “Hey, somebody got killed. The characters don’t know how. Let’s lead them on a journey discovering this.” Sometimes it’ll be a piece of information, a true mystery of, “We don’t know why the magic is doing what it is doing,” like a classic Isaac Asimov mystery like we mentioned. Let’s lead them and the reader slowly as clues are gathered.

And sometimes it’s not even the characters wanting to gather the clues. It’s just during their normal plot cycle they’re running across things that are pieces so that you can earn you ending this way.

Dan: You know, in the first draft of “I Am Not a Serial Killer” the mystery was, “Who is the bad guy? Who is the monster who is killing everyone in the town?” And I realised in our writing group that that was the wrong mystery, because the character was not interacting with that mystery as effectively a he could have been. The right mystery was, “I know who the bad guy is, and it’s a monster. How do I kill it?”

And that’s what all the rest of the series has turned into, and that’s the first question that I come up with as I sit down to write a new book is, “How does this monster work? How can John kill it?” and then build the mystery backwards from there.

Mary: Which is again, looking at what it is the character needs to do and what is the information that they lack to be able to pull it off. Dan: And John Cleaver specifically, his entire character journey is, “Should I kill this thing?” And the books would not be as interesting if he weren’t constantly grappling with that question.

Mary: One of the other things when you’re using it as a subgenre is that it’s very easy to raise the question when you’ve got a dead body on the floor and that’s your main genre. But with it as a subgenre, a lot of times you have to raise the question for the reader by planting stuff, and...

Calling attention to it.

Like in “Of Noble Family” there’s a mystery subplot that’s pretty significant. And one of the things that I had my main character do is notice, “So-and-so reacted very strangely when I just said that. I wonder why.” And then I moved on.

Brandon: Right. The “Hanging a Lantern On It” is really important. “Hey! This was a clue!” Even though you don’t notice it’s a clue right now, there’s enough of a stop a moment in the prose so that you’ll remember this moment.

Howard: It’s worth taking just a moment to put a pin in something here. When we’re talking about elemental mystery as a subgenre, it’s not the same as mystery a subplot. You are kind of doing that if you have mystery as a subplot. But mystery as a subplot is easy to pick out.

“Oh, well I’m in this romance story and they are detectives, and they are solving a murder,” versus, John Cleaver needing to figure out how to kill the monster.

Dan: My new series, Bluescreen, is primarily a thriller. But what I tried to do with that is create a mystery in it that you don’t realise is there until you’ve already gotten several clues. Because you’re in this thriller plot, and “Here’s a weird thing. Here’s a weird thing.” Eventually they’ve built up to the point where there are so many weird things, the characters go, “Wait a minute. Let’s figure this out before we move on.”

Brandon: Alright! let’s go ahead and give you guys some homework.

Homework

Mary: So what we’re going to have you do is insert a mystery into whatever it is that you’re currently working on—short story, novel, whatever it is. All I’m going to ask you to do is to look at what it is that your character needs. You’ve probably already got the solution already in there. Take the solution out. And then build it in so that the character has to figure out the solution. So essentially you have just created a mystery within your story.

Brandon: Excellent. This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses, now go solve some mysteries.

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel Production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

[wxat]

S11E24 - Stakes!

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would like to support this podcast and start a 30-day trial membership, visit AudiblePodcast.com/excuse.

Season 11, Episode 24.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! Stakes!

Mary: 15 minutes long! Dan: Because you’re in a hurry, Howard: and we’re vampires. Brandon: I’m Brandon. Mary: I’m Mary. Howard: I’m Howard. Dan: I’m Dan. [Mary evil-laughs]

Brandon: And I remember when the first time we were visiting your family at, was it Chattanooga? Mary: I am fascinated by this segue. [Dan laughs] Brandon: And I said, “I really want to go get some stakes.” And I asked you where we could get them before I remembered you were a vegetarian. Mary: [laughing] Right. Brandon: You still took us to a place to get stakes, however. And they were tasty.

Mary: I… Dan: And they gave you bacon. Mary: Yeah, there was that. The bacon. Brandon: Okay, not that kind of stakes. Dan: Neither kind of stakes that we have mentioned thus far. Brandon: Neither stakes we have mentioned. [all laugh] Alright. We are going to talk about the stakes of your story.

Dan: Obviously we mean tent stakes. Mary: [laughing] Right! Brandon: Alright. We’re going to talk about the stakes of your story. Mary and Dan, you guys pitched this episode… Howard: That’s three mistakes in a row! [others laugh lamely] Dan: [sarcastically] It’s so funny!

Brandon: Oh, this is getting worse and worse…

You pitched this episode. Why did you pitch this episode?

Mary: I’ve been working with some students on doing a novel workshop. And one of the things that people seem to have a lot of trouble with is understanding what stakes are.

You get the advice all the time: “You have to raise the stakes!” And there’s a temptation to think that this means that you have to make it more world-shattering. And I think that that is a fundamental understanding of the role that stakes play in fiction.

So the thing that I’ve been trying to come up with is a better way to describe it. And for me what it comes down to is basically the thing that is at stake is the thing that keeps your character from being able to walk away from the conflict.

If you’re having an argument with someone… And this is a minor stake, but if I had my character, and he’s working on making an instrument, and his mum comes in she wants him to go to a dance. If he has nothing at stake, he can put the instrument down and say, “Okay, let’s talk about this.” If she has nothing at stake, she’s like, “Oh, you’re busy right now. I’ll come back.”

So what is it that keeps them both in the room when they both have conflicting goals? What is at stake for each of them? And that is the thing when we talk about raising the stakes—making sure that the character always has something that is important enough to keep them in the game.

Howard: And part and parcel with that, we have to believe that that will work. You have to have already sold me on that. For me, a good example of stakes, when it matters and when it doesn’t matter… there are arguments that I can just walk away from.

I’m here at a convention, and I’m having a conversation with somebody. And I realise, “Oh. This is just not a conversation I want to continue, and I don’t have to,” and I will walk away. If I’m having a disagreement with one of my children, that is not one of the options that is on the table. Because taking that option will damage the relationship in a way that creates a really, really interesting story that I’m just not interested in being a part of!

Dan: Mary and I were on a panel earlier today, here at Phoenix Comic Con, talking about evil and villains. And I can’t remember if it was you who said it or Victoria Schwab. But I just thought this was one of the most brilliant things I’d heard. Mary: Oh, then it was me. [laughs] Dan: So I assume it was you…

Talking about how often the difference between the hero and the villain are the magnitude of the stakes that they’re fighting over. And in my head I immediately thought of the dystopian story.

So for example, from the villain’s point of view, the stakes are the survival of our nation or of our species. “We have to do things this way because of these big, huge reasons.” Whereas the hero is often fighting against much smaller stakes. “Well, this society is going to destroy my life or my sister’s life,” or something like that. So they’re both kind of fighting for good things, but the stakes are totally different, and on different scales.

Mary: That is brilliant, and that was not me. Dan: That was Victoria, then. And I just thought it was amazing, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Brandon: You know, this is a conversation that I wish we could have, and you guys could have, with many a Hollywood Exec. [Dan chuckles] Because the idea of raising the stakes seems to be a big thing in Hollywood. “Well, we need to raise the stakes for the second film.” And what they do to raise the stakes is they make it less personal to the main character, but add more villains or more explosions.

Dan: That was one of the many things that I really loved about “Captain America: Civil War.” Brandon: Okay, no spoilers! I haven’t seen it yet. Mary: No, neither have I. Dan: Okay. I won’t give any spoilers, but I will say that after movie after movie where the finale is a big, giant fight over a city, this one does not do that. And it was really refreshing and very cool.

Brandon: That is excellent. And you can see the Marvel movies are doing a pretty good job of this. They have their foibles. I think they’ve maybe learned from the old Spider-Man films that were like, “Well, in the second movie, we’ll have two villains. Well the third movie will have seven villains…” I mean, all of this sort of thing.

And the danger of that, the problem is it makes it less personal to divide the time, not more personal. So it lowers the stakes instead of raising the stakes.

Howard: When I told the story in “Shlock Mercenary: Resident Mad Scientist,” the sixth book… It’s a time travel story in which we are using the energy generated by the destruction of our galaxy to go back in time and prevent the destruction of our galaxy.

It’s ultimate huge stakes! And it does not become personal for anybody, you don’t care… until you realise that the person going back is also going to save the life of his friend who died before the whole galactic brouhaha happened.

And that story was so satisfying for me. I mean, it resonated with a lot of readers, but I don’t care. It worked well for me. It told me who these people were. And after that story, which I told in 2006? I’ve been telling stories for 10 years since then, and I haven’t tried to blow up the galaxy even one time! [Dan chuckles] I haven’t needed to, because now I’ve figured that out. All I need to do is make it personal, and the threat can be quite small.

Mary: And the thing that you said about “the audience doesn’t care,” that is the thing that makes the stakes personal. Because you can have a personal stake, but if the audience doesn’t buy into it… I mean, Joffrey has a personal stake in Game of Thrones. We don’t care.

[07:30]

Brandon: So let me ask, how do you do that, then? Let’s talk about this.

How can you make it personal and we care?

[trumpet blast] [Mary laughs] Dan: Well Robin Hood has a suggestion for us. Brandon: I don’t know if you guys are able to pick that up, but we are at Phoenix Comic Con, and someone is blowing a horn out in the main lobby… Dan: Nope. That’s not a horn. That was my text thing. Howard: That was Dan’s phone. Brandon: Oh. Dan: I have it muted, but sometimes alerts still come through when it’s muted. Brandon: So I’m blaming the poor con-goers and you are the one that’s interrupting me. Dan: Keep it quiet down there, con-goers! [Howard chuckles] Mary: Yes! Dan has something at stake here. [Dan chuckles]

Mary: So how do we make the audience care? I know that I talk about Jane Austen a lot. Brandon: Mmhm. Mary: But “Persuasion” is, I think, a really good example of making us understand.

Because there is really literally nothing at stake in that book except, “Will she be happy?” That’s the thing that’s at stake. That’s it. But we care about it deeply because she gets into the character’s head. And I think this is one of the tools we have as authors that is very effective—is that we can get into the character’s head, and we can understand why it matters to them. And that why…

Brandon: Okay. So motivation is what you’re getting at. You need to understand the motivation. Go back to the Joffrey problem. Do we also need to empathise and want it to happen?

Mary: I think so, but the weird thing—and we were talking about this, again, on the villains panel—is that you can empathise with someone who is really actually a villain. Brandon: That’s right. Magneto is the great example. You empathise. You don’t want him to enslave all of humanity. Mary: Yes, Magneto. But actually, again, “Lies of Locke Lamora,” they’re the bad guys.

Any heist film, you’ve got your thieves… those are villains. But they’re acting as the protagonists, but we care about it. Howard: “Law breakers.” Mary: “Law breakers.” [Dan chuckles] Brandon: Some of them are villains. Sometimes they take great pains to say, “No, they’re robbing somebody worse.”

Howard: I think it’s worthwhile to do a callback and go ahead and link this in the liner notes—when we were messing with the character sliders. The idea of “How likable is a character? How competent is a character?” What was the third one? I don’t even remember? Brandon: Proactive. Howard: “How proactive is the character?”

When we are trying to raise stakes, when we are trying to build engagement with the audience for whatever is at stake, those sliders… how do we feel about this person? When I told the story in Resident Mad Scientist, Captain Tagon dies saving the lives of the other people who are with him. And it’s kind of a heroic and wonderful moment… and yes, he’s a violent, mercenary sort of person. But he’s good. And we like him. And now he’s gone.

[10:52]

Book of the Week

Brandon: Let’s go ahead and stop for our book of the week. Our book of the week is Mrs. Grisby and the Rats of NIMH. Mary: Mrs. Frisbee. Brandon: Frisbee. Dan: Frisbee. Brandon: Frisbee, yes. I should’ve known that.

Mary: That’s okay.

So I have been listening to “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH” at Audible.com, and loving it. This is a book that I read as a child multiple times. It’s one of my go-tos. And this is a beautiful narration. This is a really good book to read when you want to read about stakes, and also looking at ways to raise them without being unbelievable—even though we’re talking about talking rats and mice.

It’s beautifully portrayed, the narrator is fantastic. Highly recommend this.

Brandon: So, if you want to pick up a copy of Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Nimh by Robert O’Brien. You can head over to AudiblePodcast.com/excuse, start your trial membership. It is read by Barbara Crusoe, and high praises from Mary on the audiobook version of this story.

[12:05]

Alright. You look like you have something you really wanted to say about raising stakes, and I put you off for a book of the week.

Mary: No, it was something I realised—and again, from the villain panel. Dan: It was such a good panel, you guys! [laughs] Mary: It was such a good panel. One of the things—and this ties into what Howard was saying before the break—one of the things about the stakes, and one of the things that differs Joffrey from other people is the difference between selfless and selfish.

That frequently when we care about someone and what they have at stake, is that the thing that they have at stake is actually for someone else. Again, in Persuasion… And it also has to do with the main character sometimes being willing to give up their own happiness because they care more about someone. Willing to give up their own life because they care about someone. And it’s that selflessness, I think, that can help the reader empathise with the thing that is at stake.

[13:11]

Selflessness

Brandon: So… go ahead, Dan.

Dan: This is a slightly different topic. But I’m thinking about one of my favourite authors, Bernard Cornwell. And one thing he does in almost every book, is he will establish two different sets of stakes and put them in conflict with each other.

Here is a character, Uhtred of Battenberg in the Saxon Chronicles, he wants to get his castle back, he wants to get this woman back that he’s married to. He wants to get these things for himself, but also he needs to help Alfred the Great establish England. And sooner or later he won’t be able to do both and he’ll have to choose.

Editor’s Note: The “Saxon Stories” series is now called “The Last Kingdom.”

And that creates this wonderful tension and ultimately a lot of tragedy when he inevitably chooses the country over himself. And he does that in every book, and I eat it up every time. [Brandon laughs]

Brandon: What is it about those stakes specifically that works for you? Let’s talk about that story. Why did those stakes… why do you care?

Mary: It’s the moment of selflessness.

Dan: Yeah, going back to what you were saying. And I think that’s part of it, is because there’s the one he wants for himself, he wants to get his family castle back. But…

Brandon: Does it establish why he wants the family castle back?

Dan: Yes. And actually, that’s where the entire 9 book series starts—is with him losing that castle, and every book he wants to get it back. He wants to go back and reclaim it again, and establish his family glory, and do all these wonderful things. And other books will do different things. He wants to train his son to be a great warrior like himself, and all these other things.

But invariably, there’s the much bigger thing. The Queen is in danger, or the King’s son has been captured, or something like that. And he’ll have to choose something nobler than his own cause. And I think that that’s what it must be, is why I love it so much—it’s that sense of personal sacrifice for the greater good, that he’s giving up this thing he wants so much, and it’s because he wants it so much that it makes it that much more powerful when he gives it up.

Mary: That is actually what makes Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” work. Dan: Yes.

[15:23]

Revenge

Brandon: So let me throw a curveball at you, because I agree with all of this. But a piece of my brain is saying, “Well, there are stories that violate this.” Obviously.

So what about the stories where it is a selfish desire, say revenge narratives. A revenge narrative is where it is, “I am going to go do this thing.” Yet some of those work pretty well for stakes. What makes it there, where it’s selfish…

Howard: Usually with those, the revenge narrative is the A-plot for lack of a better term. And you give me something that is running parallel to that that is the B-plot. And that might actually be what I am engaged with. Assuming that the success at the revenge plot is going to be our “triumph.” But usually that’s not the thing that I will engage with unless you have given me a reason to care beyond just saying, “No, this bad guy really is that bad. Look! Here he murders a kitten.”

Brandon: See, I totally agree with you. Though I think, going back to character sliders… We’ve talked a lot about nobility, right? “It’s beyond myself.” Those are likable things. Those move the scale up on the character’s likability, and that said, “Okay. We like them. We want them to achieve…”

But I do think we can do it with the proactivity. If there’s someone who’s just hyper-competent and something is in their way consistently, that will aggravate us and raise the stakes on getting past this thing, because they have so often run into this problem.

Dan: And here’s a funny example of it. One of my favourite revenge movies is “Payback,” with Mel Gibson. And the reason this works for me is because the stakes are so low, and he chases them so hard. It’s a comedy-action movie, and the mob has stolen something ridiculously stupid from him, like $30,000. He’s not chasing millions, he’s not trying to get his wife back. He just wants his 30 grand back. And none of the mobsters can even believe that he is fighting so hard and causing so much trouble to get this stupid 30 grand, and it’s wonderful.

Brandon: I want my 2 dollars. [Dan and Mary laugh]

Alright. Let’s go ahead and do a writing prompt. Mary, you have a writing prompt for us.

[17:40]

Writing Prompt

Mary: Yeah. So I’ve been doing this thing where I write a story in 15 minutes for charity, and I start it based on 3 things: an object, a character, and a genre. So, listener, look to your left—that is your object. Look at your bookshelf, the first book you see—that is your genre. And your character is your best friend. Now write a story for 15 minutes.

Brandon: This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses, now go write.

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

[wxat]

S11E23 - The Element of Mystery

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would like to support this podcast and start a 30-day trial membership, visit AudiblePodcast.com/excuse.

Season 11, Episode 23.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! The element of mystery!

Mary: 15 minutes long! Dan: Because you’re in a hurry, Howard: and we’re confused. No, wait—we’re puzzled. We’re… I don’t know what the element of mystery is. Brandon: [laughs] Well, I’m Brandon. Mary: I’m Mary. Dan: I think I’m Dan. Brandon: We’re not sure… Howard: I’m Howard. I’m very sure of that. Dan: I may or may not be the provocateur.

Brandon: Okay. Mystery! Mystery is one of my absolute favourites. Because I don’t think I’ve written a book that hasn’t had some mystery in it, and it’s really rare that I read a book that doesn’t have some element of mystery in it. This episode of the podcast, we’re going to talk about mystery as the main driving force for a story. It’s the super-plot.

So what does that mean? What is a mystery as a novel form?

Dan: It’s a puzzle. And I think that’s what draws me to mystery more than anything else, is that thrill of solving a puzzle.

Mary: I think that mysteries tend to start when the main character has a question. And often it is, “Why is this dead body on the floor?” But it doesn’t have to be. Dan: It could also be hanging from the ceiling. Mary: It could be. That’s right. It could also be in a closet. I mean, there’s a lot of different places to put a body… [Dan chuckles]

Brandon: And we go to the “body” one, that’s the most common one that you will see. When someone says “mystery,” it’s a whodunnit. But one of my favourite science-fiction writers is Isaac Asimov. And almost every Asimov story was a mystery.

He would outline, “Here are the Three Laws of Robotics. Oh, our robots are doing something screwy.” Dan: Yeah, “Why is our robot running in a perfect concentric circle endlessly?” Brandon: Yes. And it’s a mystery of putting together the clues with the information you have. It really appeals to the mathematical side of your brain, but also to the exploration/adventure side of your brain. You’re going to discover something new. It’s like the perfect genre.

Howard: From the writer side of things, I think it was when Mary and Dan, you guys interviewed David Brin. And he said, “New writers, write a mystery. Sit down and write a mystery because you’re going to need that element in just about everything you do,” like you just said.

And if you can pull that off, if you can build a story around giving us that sense of, “Oh, I solved it! Oh, I’m clever! Oh, the author is actually a little more clever than I am, but I’m still very satisfied.” If you can do that… it’s so useful. Terribly useful.

[02:43]

Revealed Mysteries

Brandon: Now, what about the mysteries where you know the answer before the characters do? Have you ever read any of those? How did they work for you?

Dan: Those can work well. There’s a lot of movies and TV series that are like this. There was a great TV show called The Fall, with Gillian Anderson, where you know from the opening scene who did it. You know the bad guy she is chasing. And the mystery elements are, “How is she going to solve the clues?”

Brandon: So does that change from a mystery into an adventure? Or is it still just a different type of mystery?

Mary: Well I’ve always thought that one of the differences, for me it would be Mystery vs. Thriller, that one of the things that you’re trying to provoke in the reader with the mystery is trying to figure out what’s going to happen. And with a Thriller you know what’s coming, and it’s the anticipation of it. So with a Mystery the author needs to be one step ahead of the reader. And with a thriller, the reader needs to be one step ahead of the character.

Brandon: That’s pretty cool, yeah. And with a Horror you’re on the same exact page feeling the sense of dread as it manifests. That’s very interesting.

Mary: In an ideal world I think what you want… When I am reading a mystery, the 2 things that I want are, I want to try to puzzle it out with the character, and feel like I have all of the tools that I need to try to puzzle it out. So I am in very similar character space, having a very similar character experience.

But when they solve it just a moment before I do, and it’s that moment of, “Ooooooh! Of course!”

Brandon: Yeah, that is the ultimate experience. Although I won’t discount the “You figure it out a page before the character does” experience also, which can be really really fun.

Dan: And I think that that element of answering the question—of solving the puzzle—can still be there if you know who the killer is, or you know the answer. Because what you’re really doing is, you’re going along with the character of saying, “Well I know this guy did it. But how can I prove it?” There’s been a lot of TV shows that have had that as their puzzle-solving element rather than finding the bad guy, but convicting the bad guy.

Howard: Watching “Bones,” all umpty-whatever seasons of Bones. A lot of forensic shows are like this. I like Bones because the science for me, even though the pace of getting results back is completely unrealistic, it feels like science-fiction to me because the science is a character.

And yet at the heart of it the whole time you’re watching the show, you’re asking yourself, “Who did it? What are the clues going to lead to?” But there’s also the meta, once you’ve watched a bunch of episodes. Which is, “Okay. The person who did it is never someone who’s introduced in Act 4. Who are the characters that are introduced in Act 1 who possibly could have done this?” And I will start spinning on that.

Mary: I’m going to make just one argument though, that when we’re talking about a mystery where we know the answer before the character, that that’s a case where we’re talking about bookstory genre. But when we’re talking about the Elemental Genre of Mystery, I think one of the parts of it is that it is a mystery to you, too. To you, the reader.

Dan: Yes. My argument is that it’s a different kind of mystery. Mary: Okay. Fair point. Howard: That might actually be mystery as a subgenre, where the puzzle you’re solving is, “How are they going to arrive at this piece of information that they can’t possibly know?” Dan: Yeah, that’s probably what I’m trying to say. Howard: “I know it, but they can’t possibly figure this out.”

[06:43]

The Body

Brandon: Let’s turn this back to more standard mystery, rather than the tangent. So what other elements define it? Often there’s a body. Why is there usually a body in a mystery?

Mary: It creates an immediate question and immediate stakes. Because if there’s a body then someone probably killed them, which means that you have a villain.

Howard: In the bookstore genre of Mystery, I think it’s because the shelf promised you that there would be a body. Does that make sense? For the same reason there’s a horse in a Western. It feels like it is so often there. It’s probably because of the stakes, but it’s very much expected in the bookstore genre.

Mary: Right. But not at all necessary.

But what it points us to is that in order for the mystery to be compelling, there has to be something at stake involved in solving it. It can’t just be, “Well, this is an interesting question. I wonder why cats purr.” [Dan chuckles] That’s a question. That’s not a mystery.

Brandon: That’s a great point. Dan: It has to be a compelling question that keeps you turning the pages.

Mary: Also I will say that, interestingly, it does not have to be a personal stake necessarily for the main character, Sherlock Holmes being a prime example of this. What he does, is he solves mysteries.

Brandon: Right. But they raise the stakes in those in other ways. If you’re not going to have it be a really compelling consequence, then making the main character really involved in it can make it equally powerful. Having a body raises the stakes enough for us that an outside investigator can be like, “Oh, my job is to solve this. Plus people will die. I’m invested.”

Dan: And that’s why one of the most common tropes that you’ll see in cosy mysteries and stuff is that we’re all trapped here together. We’re in a house all together, we’re on a train all together. We know it’s one of us. Which gives you a compelling reason, and it also gives you a sense of danger. If I don’t solve this soon enough, I might be next.

Brandon: Let’s go ahead and stop for our book of the week. And Mary’s going to tell us about it.

[08:52]

Book of the Week

Mary: Yes. The Book of the Week is “Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante.” This is actually book 5 in the series, but you can read them out of sequence. The reason I picked this one is that it’s historical, it’s set in 1941 right after the attack on Pearl Harbour. And the main character is Maggie Hope. She’s a Special Agent to Winston Churchill, she poses as a typist, and then she solves mysteries.

They are incredibly charming, well-written, beautifully paced, and really very classic mysteries. This one, Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante is by Susan Elia MacNeal, and it’s narrated by Susan Deridan. And you can pick up a copy at Audible if you start a 30-day trial membership by going to AudiblePodcast.com/excuse. And you can grab a copy of Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidant as your first book.

Brandon: Excellent. So let’s dig in to how you go about planning or starting, if you’re a discovery writer.

[10:02]

How do you jump into a mystery?

This genre, for a long time I believe that people listed “And Then There Were None,” by Agatha Christie as the best selling novel of all time. It I think was eventually superseded by the Lord of the Rings books once the films came out, and the sales of those…

But for a long time, mystery was the single most popular novel genre that had ever been. So there’s something about this that people really really love. How do you go about building one?

Mary: Well I think one of the things is, you’ve got the question. But when you pose a question, it has to be a question that has multiple possible answers so that there is an uncertainty. It is not just, “I answer this question and then I answer that question, and then there we are!” It’s not a single chain. For me, the thing about the mystery is the uncertainty.

Brandon: Well in each step along the way, whatever type of plot you’re using—and Mystery is the first one that we really have a definable, “Here are the steps along the way.” Because the steps along the way for a Mystery are the clues.

Now, every story that you write of every Elemental Genre, you can substitute “clue” for something. It’s just not as easily defined. But there are going to be these steps.

Well Mystery, I like what Howard mentioned, telling new writers to write a Mystery. Because those quanta, if you will, of the story are so easy to think of. “Okay. These are the clues that we’ll have along the way.”

The trick is, tying into what Mary said, each of those clues have to be fascinating in its own right. They need to change your conception of what’s going on, point you in multiple different directions, intrigue you. The clues need to be as interesting as the eventual resolution is.

Howard: I’m intimidated by Mystery. And I think it’s because when I was 12 I picked up a paperback mystery that my grandfather had read. And on the first page, in his handwriting, was the names of all of the characters and page numbers. And as I flipped through the book, I realised, “Oh my… He’s taking notes!” [others laugh] And I thought that that was how a Mystery had to be. And I thought that it was just impossible to plan that far ahead.

And yet his logic system, my grandfather would always find out who the killer was a page before it was revealed because that was the clue that finally narrowed it down from 3 to 1, or from 2 to 1, or whatever.

Building that… I mean, if you want to build it mathematically, I’m sure you can. In the same way that you’d create a crossword puzzle or Sudoku. But that doesn’t feel like storytelling.

Mary: Agatha Christie said, and I’m paraphrasing wildly. She was apparently a seat-of-the-pantser. And so when she started, she said that at the beginning of the book anyone could’ve done it, and that she doesn’t know until the end which of them…

Brandon: And so she starts narrowing it down as she writes. She says, “Okay, I’m going to make a clue that makes it so it couldn’t be this person.” That’s really interesting.

For me, in developing a Mystery, one of the things I look for are the Red Herrings. I say, what’s the reader going to assume because I assume it, taking away my knowledge. And I try to make sure that those Red Herrings are legitimate, at least for part of the story.

Because if I’m assuming it, and the reader’s going to assume it, it’s good for the characters to assume it and start investigating in that way, until they hit that brick wall. And hopefully the brick wall isn’t just a brick wall, but it is an opening toward, “Okay. If this isn’t the case, what we always assumed, something else is going on. What piece did we miss?” And it can be a really interesting subplot, to do that.

Howard: I played “How to Host a Murder” once, where I was the murderer and I didn’t know it because that page was stuck together. And I just flicked past it, and I’d never played the game before. [Mary and Dan laugh] And so the people kept accusing me of having done it, and I got way into character and was very passionately telling stories about how, “No, there’s no way! I’m not Tarzan! I couldn’t’ve gone between those balconies in the rain! What are you thinking? Yes, I climb mountains. I would never try that.”

They didn’t pick me. We got the wrong person, and was like, “Okay, who is the murderer.” “I don’t know.” [Dan laughs] And they look at my book and, “Howard! You were the murderer the whole time and you didn’t know?” “No, I actually didn’t.”

But as we went back and put the clues together we realised, “Oh!” Because I didn’t know, I lied so effectively. It’s not that the clues didn’t drop. So when you talk about Red Herrings, for me that’s the most fun, is presenting something so convincingly that it throws you.

Dan: Now see, when I plot a Mystery—and writing Mysteries is what taught me to start at the end. So I will figure out what the solution is, and I love to just make a list of, “What are the clues that are going to make this obvious?” And work backwards from there, and say, “Well, if I take out this one clue, the 5 that are left, who do they point to? And if I take out one of those, the 4 that are left, who do they point to?” And then throw in some extra Red Herrings and things. And make sure that there are some other clues in there that you totally don’t even notice until way late in the book.

And that gives you a good way of keeping that believability that Mary was talking about. That even when you know 2 clues, you’re pretty sure that those 2 clues point to “Character X,” and it’s plausible.

Mary: We should actually probably, just for people who are not familiar, define “Red Herring.” Brandon: Go for it. Mary: “Red Herring” is basically a false clue. It is something that looks like it is a plausible clue. It is actually a clue, but you draw the wrong conclusions from it. And there are a lot of different ways to plant it.

One of the very mechanical, useful tricks for planting a clue and having readers just gloss over it… We tend to notice the first thing in a list and the last thing in a list, and the things in the middle take on less importance. So if you want to plant a clue and you don’t want to draw attention to it, then you put it in the middle of the list.

Brandon: Another good way of doing that is to give the clue but have the characters think that it points to the wrong thing.

Dan: Or to give a clue but make sure that clue is important for completely unrelated reasons. So the reader can think, “Oh, he’s telling us this because of some other thing that has nothing to do with our mystery.”

Howard: “There’s a dog hair found at the scene. Oh, that must’ve come off of the murderer who owns a dog. No, the dog was actually in the room.”

Dan: The Harry Potter books are all mysteries. They’re all constructed like Mysteries. And she is brilliant at that. At showing you, “Here’s an awesome new magic thing that’s fun, and it’s cool, and has to do with this subplot. Oh, and also at the end we find out that it has to do with the main plot as well.”

Brandon: Alright! i have to call the discussion here, although it’s going very well. We will talk more about Mystery in a couple of weeks, but for now Howard has some homework for us.

Howard: I do! For you seat-of-the-pantsers, this may be very difficult. For you outliners this may be equally difficult. I want you to create a crime. Not in real life, please. Just stay at the keyboard. And create a crime scene, create a crime, where you know who’s done it, you know what’s been done.

And start leaving the clues. Work your way backwards through the criminal’s path, through the victim’s path, whatever. And lay the clues, and start removing the clues that people wouldn’t notice, so that you’re essentially building the framework for a Mystery which you could later then wrap prose around. Brandon: Right. So outline backward. Howard: Outline it backwards.

Brandon: Alright! This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses, now go write.

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

[wxat]

S11E22 - Examining Unconscious Bias, with Shannon Hale

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would like to support this podcast and start a 30-day trial membership, visit AudiblePodcast.com/excuse.

Season 11, Episode 22.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! Examining Unconscious Biases with Shannon Hale.

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: And I’m living the unexamined life. [Brandon laughs]

Brandon: And we have our wonderful friend Shannon Hale here, joining us again. Shannon: Thank you so much for having me! I listen to your podcast, and I pretend you’re all my best friends. [Dan and audience laugh]

Brandon: Wait— you are my best friend. Shannon: That’s true. But the rest of the guys… [Dan and audience laugh] Brandon: Yeah.

So we wanted to do a podcast on our biases. Everybody has them, and they will get into your writing. And in many cases it’s really good to start looking at these things, seeing what you’re doing, and examining them to become a better writer.

We are going to use specifically writing female characters, because we have 2 women on the ‘cast this time. And that means that Dan, Howard, and I are kind of going to step back on this one and say a lot less, and we’re going to let me throw questions at Mary and Shannon talking about both how man write women and how women write women, and what our unconscious biases might be.

Mary: Sounds good!

[01:27]

Brandon: Okay. So let’s start into it. What do we mean by this…

What unconscious biases do people in our society have about women that often go into their fiction?

Shannon: Well first of all, I would say from a very young age we teach boys to only read stories about boys. Whereas girls are encouraged to read stories about everyone. So from the beginning we’re training boys to only be interested in stories about boys, and have empathy for male characters.

This is true in fiction, and it certainly is true in television and movies, where 80% of the main characters in movies continue to be male. And when there is a movie where the main character is a female, that is a chick flick that men don’t go to.

Editor’s Note: It seems Shannon is saying it is also true in movies, but from the recording it sounds like she said “isn’t.” I’ve corrected it for clarity, but just a heads-up.

And so the first question is, are men exposing themselves… Please not literally, gentlemen. [crowd laughs] LTUE has a harassment policy. Howard: Hey, they’re back on. They’re back on. We’re good. Shannon: [laughing] Oh, okay. Thanks.

You can’t tell… it’s amazing, when you sit at these tables, you can’t really tell if anyone’s wearing pants. So…

Mary: I am not. [audience laughs]

Brandon: Let me ask you this question. Shannon: “Is this appropriate for this topic?” Brandon: Does this have to do with—whatever reasons we have—but our definitions of masculinity? Shannon: Yes! Brandon: I noticed my little sons… one of them, when they’re really young might pick pink as his favourite colour. My 3 year old, Mini Mouse is his favourite character. And the older ones all kind of go like “this.” (Wrinkling his nose?) Because it’s not okay for a boy to like something feminine because they will get mocked.

Mary: Yeah. This is something that’s reinforced kind of constantly, and very subtly.

I was walking down the street and I heard a construction guy talking to his friend on the “Bring Your Son to Work Day.” And had this conversation—it’s like, “Oh. You have 3 sisters. Must be tough being surrounded by all those girls.” So we’re telling kids, even if you are trying to raise your child to be gender neutral, we’re being raised in a society that is offering these messages all the time.

And it’s not just boys. Women will also internalise this stuff, too. Like, I have caught myself saying to a guy, “Oh, you probably wouldn’t like this, it’s kind of a girly book.” And then I’m appalled that I have just said that. Shannon: Right.

[03:58]

Wizard of Earthsea

Dan: And you were telling an amazing story yesterday about Ursula K. Le Guin and the “Wizard of Earthsea.”

Mary: Yeah, so I am going to name-drop because… I was having tea with Ursula K. Le Guin. Shannon: Whaaaat? [audience laughs] Mary: So Ursula… [others laugh] my friend…

She was talking about how she regarded herself as a feminist. And that when she wrote Wizard of Earthsea, she wanted to do this ground-breaking book and break all these rules, and that wizards were always wisened old men.

So she wanted to do a book about a young man who is learning to be a wizard. Which didn’t exist. No one was writing a book like that. The main character was always a white man, and so she wrote a young P.O.C. (person of colour) character. But she still wrote a man.

When you look at the book, she says that there are these mistakes in it that the aunt who teaches Ged how to use magic originally has no name. The girl that he has the first crush on is just “The Girl.”

And she said that it wasn’t until much later that she realised that what she was doing was that she was writing a book for men, because the only book that she had read had been written by men for men. And she had internalised all these things. And she had to spend a lot of time de-programming and examining her unconscious biases in order to write a book as a woman for women.

[05:32]

Reading the Other Gender

Shannon: And that’s the reality for a man or a women writing in our society, because there are no lack of stories written by men about men. But there are very few… for example, when you’re in high school English class, you can go through high school and college without ever being exposed to a female writer.

I can, off the top of my head, name 20 male authors who I have read multiple books by, and who I adore. And I would ask the men to ask themselves, can you name 20 female writers that you have read books by and that you adore?

We “protect” boys and men from having to even think about and be interested in female stories. I talk about this a lot, because I’ve had many experiences of basically discrimination as a female writer.

For example, going to a school to do an assembly, and having the administration take the girls out of class to come to my assembly, but leave the boys behind. Because as a woman I only have anything of interest to say to girls.

Brandon: See, I went to that same school, and they only brought me the boys. Shannon: Did that happen to you? Brandon: That exact school. Shannon: Because I’ve asked—multiple schools have done this to me—I always ask them, “Have you had a male writer?” And in that case they always had the full school. Brandon: Because I went and found out—because I heard this story—but even still, they did this thing where they’re like, “The girls won’t be interested in your book, Brandon.”

Shannon: Right. And it’s just as damaging the other way around.

And when you’re talking about writing stories and being a writer and being a reader, you’re not talking about gender topics like “Your Menstrual Cycle and You!” So there’s really no reason to do that. [audience laughs]

But because I talk about this a lot, I’ve heard so many stories, and some of them being, “In our high school English class we read Moby Dick. And the next book we were going to read was Pride and Prejudice, but the boys refused, so the teacher found an alternate title by a male author so the boys wouldn’t have to read a female author.”

I’ve heard this hundreds of times, where we’re protecting the boys from girl stories. As though they’re going to be sullied by the femininity. Mary: Well, we do have cooties. [Brandon and audience laugh] Shannon: Well, that’s true.

But where it’s damaging besides just basic human empathy, is as writers if you’re not exposed to the full spectrum of the human experience you’re not going to write as well.

I have many male author friends, not at this table… [others laugh] who are extraordinary human beings, and have wonderful, interesting women in their lives. And then in their books their female characters are really awful, bad stereotypes. And it’s because they’re basing their female characters on characters they’ve read rather than opening themselves up to reality.

Mary: Exactly. And that’s one of the things, is these unconscious biases. And these are things that you’ve internalised and you think are common sense, and those can reinforce stereotypes.

And although we are using women as an example, this kind of thing happens across the spectrum of humanity. And when you start talking about people of colour, the intersection of being a woman of colour, being a woman and being a person of colour… the amount of unconscious bias that you have to deal with on an everyday basis is something that is worth examining.

And that’s why we’re using women as an example.

Brandon: They told me, when I was coming up with this topic, you guys said, “Don’t use feminism in the title, because it’s such a charged topic.” But when you get into feminism, what feminism really is is just examining this, right? The actual literary theory.

Shannon: Yeah. It’s actually just equality, social, political, economic equality between the sexes, is the dictionary of feminism. Unfortunately it’s become a charged term.

Brandon: I was actually using the literary term. In college, feminism means examining gender roles, and just analysing them. And if you start analysing this… we’re not coming at this with a political agenda, whatever side you’re on. Mary: No. Brandon: What we’re saying is if you don’t analyse this, you will start doing this.

[09:20]

Societal Bias

An example of this is, I wrote Mistborn, right? I’m like, “I’m going to do a dynamic female protagonist in an epic fantasy story.” And to most fans I talked to they say I succeeded. I still defaulted to male for the rest of the team.

Now, when I say this to people, I get, “It’s okay, Brandon. You’ve got dynamic females in all the other books, and things like this. And it’s great. And plus it kind of wouldn’t make sense in the society.” But the same thing is, I wasn’t sitting there and thinking, “Oh, it makes sense in the society.” That’s not why I did it. I defaulted to male because of unconscious bias. I didn’t sit down and say, “We’re going to make this…” the reasoning.

Mary: And one of the things about this that I want to point out is, “It makes sense in the society.” The society is a society you built. Brandon: Yes. Mary: And you built it based on…

Brandon: And I’ve heard women get up on panels and say, “Why can’t we have a society where I get to do wish fulfillment, where the society isn’t like every other one, where the women don’t get to take part, and these sorts of things.”

Mary: So one of the things that I was talking about on a panel earlier with Dan was Romance. And Romance is actually the highest-selling genre period, by a lot. But it is written by women, for women. And while there are some certain tropes of Romance that I am not keen on, like the Alpha Male, I’m… sorry, that’s a stalker, and abusive. I’m not happy about that.

But the point being that that’s a stereotype. People think that they know what Romance is, but it is one of the few places where women are centred. And it’s very hard in science fiction and fantasy to find books where women are centred and they are not by themselves.

[11:06]

Book of the Week

Brandon: Can we stop for our book of the week, here? The book of the week is actually called “Women Destroy Science Fiction!” [Shannon laughs] Mary, can you tell us about this book?

Mary: Sure. So Lightspeed Magazine has responded to someone who said this ridiculous thing, that “Women are destroying science fiction!” And shook his cane. [audience laughs] Howard: A man said that? Mary: Yes! Sorry, I just realised that was ableist and ageist. Sorry about that. [Shannon groans] I just— I am not going to use that one any more.

But the point being the thing about this response was that they said, “Alright. Women have actually always been in science-fiction. You might’ve heard of Mary Shelly? Strange. Ursula LeGuin, my friend.” [others laugh] Howard: What? Mary: Urgh?

So they put together an anthology of stories by women. I also included a roundtable interview with Ursula Le Guin, Nancy Kress, Ellen Datlow, and Pat Cadigan, about the early days of science-fiction and how things are changed. And the answer is… not a lot.

Brandon: Well, it is edited by Christie (Yant) “Yahnt” or “Yaunt.” And it has a multitude of narrators. You can find it at AudiblePodcast.com/excuse. Start a trial membership and download “Women Destroy Science-Fiction” to kick off your membership.

[12:42]

Token Awesome Female

Alright. There’s a question I want to ask you guys. And I’m curious to hear your answers. Have you noticed, and do you think about, the books that have the one token awesome female. Who is not a stereotype in the classic sense, but also has no flaws and no personality other than “I am so cool that I could do anything!”

Shannon: Yeah. I have strong feelings about that character. And that character is really really common in action and science-fiction and fantasy books and movies. So much the default is, “Well, there’s only one female character, but she’s strong.”

And what’s important is variety and diversity. You can make female characters villains. That’s okay. A villain has power, that’s an interesting power dynamic. The more female characters you have, the more variety and diversity you’re going to have, the more interesting the story’s going to be.

This is something male characters have had the luxury of for centuries. And it’s time to allow more female characters than just the Cold B****, you know? And the Mother character, and then the woman without a personality but with a great face and body who is the prize for the hero.

[13:54]

Single Other

Mary: And one of the things that I want to talk about is the damage that it causes when you have someone who is a single representation. Because particularly, if you think about it, we learn from books. This is what we’ve been talking about. So when you have someone who’s a single representation, what that does is it causes people to then think all women should be like that character. And reinforces those internal biases. And it also means that everyone is then judged against that character. So it’s very damaging.

Whereas as Shannon was saying, if you’ve got a wide variety, a spectrum, it’s much easier to understand that… Sorry. One of the things that I am aware of and frustrates me is that it is completely possible, if you have a book in which there is only one female character, it is actually possible for a reader to come to that and have never read a book with a named female character. And this could be their first representation, and how they learn about women.

Howard: Coming to this from the Y-chromosome, and for a long time heavily biased point of view, I love the term… Mary: It’s okay. It’s genetic. [others laugh] Howard: Yeah. Unfortunately, it’s also heritable. [others laugh]

I love the term “unconscious bias” because it allows me to take responsibility to learn something, to make things conscious. And my take away for several years now has been every time I put a character in a book, every time I put dialogue in a book, or anything… I asked myself why, and I’m willing to ask myself “Is there a bias at play?” That does not mean I catch all of them, but it means I am far more aware than I used to be.

I joked about living the unexamined life, it’s still mostly unexamined, but I’m starting to look a little bit more closely at bits of it.

[15:56]

Start with “Person”

Shannon: And it’s taking more control of your writing. If instead you’re always defaulting to a character that’s kind of like yourself, or it’s a white man, it’s making conscious choices about every character trait. You don’t start with a white male and then decide, “Should I make him a woman?”

You start with “person,” and then you start to decide race, gender, ability, age, body type, all these things. And then you make really cool, interesting characters, and your story becomes more interesting and doesn’t become like everything else.

Dan: One of the great crusaders for this is Gina Davis. She talks primarily about film, because that’s where she works. And she has 2 rules that she’s campaigning for screenwriters to use. And they are so simple. And what I love about them is how easy it is—just as a first step. It’s not a great place to end, but as a first step… Number 1, every time you describe a scene say, “A crowd full of men and women.” And number 2, you go through your screenplay and make sure that every other spoken part, every other speaking part is a woman.

And just those 2 simple things… Even if it’s just cop number 1 and cop number 2, and making sure that there’s one of each… Just those 2 tiny things are a really easy first step that any author can do to start adding more women and more equality into their fiction. And once you start doing those, you see so many more opportunities to go, “Oh, well I can flesh this out, wouldn’t this character be so much more interesting if I did this?” And it’s a great way… it’s so much easier than people think it is.

Shannon: And one reason why she did that is because in crowd scenes in movies are on average 17% female. And that is true whether it’s live action or animated. Someone is making a choice to draw those crowd scenes 17% female, and what is that? 83% wrong? Whatever.

And there’s been a lot of studies done where if you take groups of people of an equal number of men and women in business and school settings, and let them talk for an hour, and afterwards interview them… who spoke more? Men or women? If women spoke 17% of the time it’s perceived as being equal. If they spoke 30% of the time, it’s perceived as women having dominated.

We’ve become comfortable with having women less visible and think it’s normal. And we need to question that consciously in order to make a change.

[18:19]

First Steps

Brandon: And I would just like to add, if you’ve done this as a writer—because both men and women do it—it’s okay. Well, it’s not okay. But it’s okay to acknowledge that you have done it. And if you’ve had the one paragon woman who is just super-awesome, then that means you’re trying, right? You’re trying to not make all the women a weak stereotype. There are steps to take and you can learn and grow and get better. But it’s okay to acknowledge it.

Mary: Yeah. And I just have one thing to say before we break for homework. When you make a mistake, that’s okay. That’s no big deal. People make mistakes all the time. It’s part of the learning process.

The difference between a mistake and a failure, is with a mistake you learn from it, and you do better then next time. A failure is you make a mistake and you double-down and repeat that mistake. So it’s okay to make mistakes as you’re learning to write women. Just please don’t fail.

[19:16]

Brandon: Alright. Shanon, you have some homework for us.

Homework

Shannon: Yes. Take something you’ve written and gender swap it. Every character that’s a male, make him female. Every character that’s female, make her male. And see how that changes the story.

Often what will happen, if you have a story with a lot of male characters and not many female characters, suddenly your now newly male characters, you’re going to say, “Why aren’t they doing anything? Why are they just sitting around, and only the female characters are doing everything?” And it’s going to open your eyes to how you treat the different genders.

And then the challenge after that is see if you can actually make your named, speaking characters half female and half male, just like they are in the real world.

Brandon: Alright! This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses, now go write.

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

[wxat]

S11E21 - Q&A on Horror with Steve Diamond and Creepy! Mary

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would llike to support this podcast and start a 30-day trial membership, visit AudiblePodcast.com/excuse.

Season 11, Episode 21.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! Q & A on Horror.

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. Mary: [creepy voice] And I’m behind you~

[all laugh]

Steve: Wait… Why am I here? Howard: That voice gets me every time! Mary: I know! I love that… Howard: Hey, Steve’s back. Brandon: Yes. But he has never left. He’s been living in my basement for the last 3 weeks. I think after this we will finally be rid of him. Steve: Oh, man!

Brandon: Q & A on Horror! You have asked your questions of us, and we are going to answer them. But this is the last podcast we’re doing in a long stream. [others laugh] So I’m not sure if any of the answers will be what you want to hear.

Mary: There’s chocolate pie waiting for us. Howard: Oh, it’s going to end badly. Start with the questions, though.

Brandon: Alright! Darcy asks:

If I want to make something ordinary—like peanut butter—terrifying without coming off as silly, how do I do that?

Mary: A lot of it has to do with the character’s reaction to it. Most of it has to do with the character’s reaction to it. And within that, what you’re going to be looking at is the specific words that you’re using. So you don’t describe the peanut butter as “beautiful, tan, and shiny.” You describe it as, “muddy brown and slimy… a sheen of oil on it.” Steve: It’s starting to separate. Mary: Yeah.

Howard: The character walks into the kitchen. The character knows that her sister’s baby is deathly allergic to peanuts. And somebody has been making peanut butter sandwiches on the counter, and she can smell the peanut, and she can see the smears everywhere, and it’s all death!

Brandon: Even worse. We’ve had this one, because you see little handprints and know that the brother and sister have had peanut butter and they are now running toward their… Howard: And they’re somewhere in the house!

Dan: This is basically the first principle that I talk about when I teach classes on how to scare people, is that familiar things start acting in an unfamiliar way. Go and watch the scene in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” where the aliens show up at the house, and it’s all just vacuum cleaners going by themselves, and record players starting without anyone pushing the buttons. Absolutely normal household objects. It is one of the most terrifying scenes ever put on film. Steve: It’s pretty much every haunting.

Howard: Darcy should’ve picked something less scary than peanut butter. That was easy.

Mary: But I just have to say that this is, again, very much about the character’s reaction to it. Because in mary Poppins things start going by themselves and it’s wonderful and magical because that’s the way the characters are reacting to it.

Brandon: Soundtrack, also. Make sure your book has good— No. [Dan laughs]

Alright. Jasmin has an excellent question. I love the phrasing of this.

What is your personal line between good Horror and “gorenographic”?

Steve: Gorenographic. Nice! Howard: Gorenography? Dan: I like that gorenographic is a word, and is a thing. [Brandon laughs]

Mary: “Does it change the character?” Dan: It comes down to “what is the purpose?” Steve: Yeah, “what’s the use of it?” Dan: And “what is the audience reaction? Did I put this bloody splash of whatever into the book because that makes it scarier, or just because that makes it more tense, or more exciting, or whatever? How am I using those elements?”

Brandon: Now, I will say… I want to kind of push you guys on this one, because I think some people really like this. I’ve never seen the movie “Evil Dead,” but people I know who love it, what they love about it is the over-the-top gore. Is that a separate thing from the Horror, or is that an enhancement of the Horror? What is it that they’re enjoying about the over-the-top gore in a film like that?

Dan: What they’re enjoying, at least what I’m enjoying in a movie like Evil Dead, is the combination of it. Because we could run down a list of allegedly Horror movies that are really just gore. “Here’s a splash of blood, here’s a bunch of dead bodies…” Rob Zombie makes these kinds of movies all the time. They’re not really frightening. They’re not horrific. They’re just gross. And there’s absolutely an audience for that.

And on the other hand you’ve got movies like “The Others.” That have no gore in them at all, but are terrifying. And something like Evil Dead is using elements of both. And that’s what makes it effective.

Howard: I like the question, “What is your personal line?” I watched “Jango Unchained” 2 weeks after, or maybe not 2 weeks… shortly after Sandy Hook (Editor’s Note: A high school shooting that happened in 2010). And I remember looking at that final scene in which the walls are splashed with blood from a gunfight, and in my mind I recontextualised that and felt nothing but dread and sickness and horror at a movie that was not necessarily shooting for that.

And so the context that you put the reader in when you create this, you have some control of that, but what the reader brings to the party is incredibly important, and you don’t have control over that piece.

Steve: I think it depends on the medium. Are we talking about movies? Are we talking about books? Brandon: We’re talking about books specifically. Steve: Okay. Because my threshold for that line is far, far, far lower in a film than it is in books. In books, my brain can auto-filter some of the stuff out, or it can change it, like Howard says.

For me, like Dan says, that gore has to serve a purpose. Whether as a promise of what’s to come, or as making good on the promise you made earlier.

Howard: Yeah. Now, if Tarantino had wanted me to feel what I felt, then everything done in that film was done exactly right. And that’s why I bring it up as an example. Because you contextualise it correctly, and…

Brandon: So the next several questions, people are really interested in this topic. So we’re going to stay on this gore one. Because the next question is:

How do you avoid going too far?

“The second episode of Breaking Bad made me”—this person, Brady—”stop watching the entire series.”

Steve: Oh… That’s so unfortunate!

Dan: That’s too bad. Because it’s the greatest TV show ever.

First, before we get too far into the topic of gore, the thing we have to say—because it seems like our listeners are conflating this—gore and horror are not the same thing. You do not need any gore. You don’t need blood. You don’t even need death to tell an effective Horror story.

And that is part of the problem that Horror has as a genre. When I tell people I’m a Horror author, the first things that come to mind are either 80s slasher movies or 70s-era Stephen King possessed demon child movies. Steve: I get the same reactions. Dan: And that’s not what horror is anymore, and it’s not what Horror has to be. So don’t force Horror into that box.

Brandon: And we’re talking about the genre distilled down. We’re not talking about the bookstore genre, even. We’re talking about the genre distilled down.

Lovecraft is often brought up as a great Horror writer. There are no body counts in Lovecraft books. It is one person’s descent into madness, almost always. That’s terrifying for someone who’s literate, like me, who the loss of faculties in my own mind is the most terrifying thing I can imagine.

Mary: I’m going to say that there’s actually a fairly simple answer to this question, which is that… remember that every reader is different, and also that readers come in big groups, as well. So you need to think about who you’re writing for. And the first person that you’re writing for is yourself. So if it is too much for you, then it’s wrong. If it’s not too much for you, then it’s okay. It’s just that you have to know that that’s the audience that you’re writing for.

Most of the people watching Breaking Bad who continued watching it didn’t have problems with that scene.

Brandon: And in some ways it’s a good thing they put that scene in, not having seen the show myself. Mary: Nor have I. Steve: It’s good. Brandon: But it’s a good thing they put that scene in to indicate, “This is not a show that you will like.” Howard: It’s a filter. Brandon: That is a good thing.

So I’m actually going to put a pin in all of the other gore questions. There’s like, 15 more. We’re not going to touch on this topic anymore. And actually I’m going to stop us for the book of the week, because Dan, you are going to pitch “I Am Legend” to us.

Book of the Week

Dan: Yes! I Am Legend by Richard Matheson is… and I can say this with official backup. It is one of, if not the greatest Horror stories of our age. In fact, a few years ago at the World Horror Convention it won the Stoker Award for Best Vampire Novel of the Century. Mary: Wow! Dan: It’s a fantastic story.

I mean, it’s been made into a million movies, and you’ve probably seen half of them. Brandon: But none of them actually get the story. Dan: And none of them actually get the story right. But the basic premise is that the world has been taken over by vampires and there’s one human left and he is hunting them.

And it flips vampirism and the vampire story on its head. It is in equal parts tense and thrilling and horrific. It is absolutely fantastic. And it’s also very short. It will not be a big investment of your time to read one of the greatest Horror stories ever.

Brandon: Right. You can buy it on Audible for, like… it’s 5 hours long. And so you can go pick it up there, listen for 5 hours and get this amazing experience with a Horror story, if you’re wanting to figure out how it goes.

Howard: And you can launch your trial at Audible, AudiblePodcast.com/excuse. Who narrates I Am Legend? Dan: His name is Robertson Dean. Howard: Outstanding.

[10:19]

Brandon: Alright! Next question!

In movies, Horror is often communicated through subtle, incidental things like lighting, sound, and music. How do those things transfer into the written word?

Someone who’s been reading my mind about having a good soundtrack. [Dan chuckles] How do you get these things across in your books?

Steve: For me, it’s all little details. It’s mannerisms in the character. It’s getting in their head early and often, and understanding what it is that makes them fearful.

Earlier, both Howard and Dan talked about going into a flashback and seeing how they react in a situation. And then seeing that situation played out later, and knowing that they are going to make a terrible, awful decision, and they can’t help it.

Those little details and those things that push it forward.

Howard: In terms of things that you can do in a book that you can’t do in a movie… I start with the details, like you’re talking about, and then on my editorial pass I look at word choice and rhythm to try and create a song, a dirge, a something that resonates with me in a scarier way that the words I originally picked.

And I can’t give you any examples of that, but I do it every time as I turn the screws on individual syllables for maximum effect.

Steve: For me it’s all about how many words I use, too.

Dan: What you need to do is look at what purpose, what function do those sound cues in a movie have? And really, what they’re designed to do is put you on edge. Because you’re in a normal setting, but why is that cello suddenly playing? [Mary laughs] Why is the lightning flashing? What’s that weird shadow in the corner of the screen?

And you can add those into a book by… I talked earlier about making familiar things become unfamiliar. First you have to establish what familiar is. Make us comfortable in a setting, and then change some small aspect of it, and it will have a very similar effect to that weird, “Oh, all of a sudden the creepy cello’s playing. I know something bad is about to happen.”

Howard: Read the poem, “The Bells.” Poe’s “The Bells,” and look at the way he uses sound to make you hear things and feel things about the bells, and then figure out how to do that with everything else.

[12:54]

Brandon: So, the next question I think is also very interesting. Nicole asks:

For someone who has written similar genres to Horror—thrillers and suspense—what would be the best way for me to start edging into writing a Horror story instead?

Mary: So I don’t write Horror very often. And usually I only write it when someone asks me to. What I find is that the difference for me between writing something that is scary and writing something that is specifically Horror, a lot of it is thinking about who my audience is going to be so that I’m writing it for people who want that.

But a lot of it comes down to, for lack of a better word, the atmospheric details that I’m putting in. That from the very first sentence I have to make sure that the kind of language that I am using is darker and more… I keep using the word “visceral.” But instead of describing the perfect rosebush, that I’ll choose to focus on the petals that are starting to wilt on the rosebush—so that I’m shaping the reader’s expectations about where it’s going to go.

And the other thing that I do is that I look at, “What am I afraid of?” And as I’m writing I kind of pay attention to whether or not I’m starting to make my own… Like, if I am pushing back in my seat… Brandon: Then you know something’s going right. Mary: Yes.

Howard: Procedurally, the trick that was most useful for me, and it was when I did the first “Space Eldritch” piece, was having beta readers who like Horror and understand Horror who could read this and who could tell me, “Okay, this is good. But you flinched here. You relieved tension too soon. You stopped backing away from it. I kept asking, ‘Is he gonna? Is he gonna?’ And then you didn’t. And you need to.”

Find beta readers who love Horror, and try to write Horror for them. And they can let you know what you’re doing wrong.

Mary: Yeah, that’s a really good point. The first thing that I wrote that was really Horror is a story called “Cerbo en Vitra ujo,” which I will not let my mother read. 

Editor’s Note: Mary has Cerbo en Vitra ujo available for free download on her site. Scroll to the bottom of the post to find the links.

And there was a scene that I got to and I faded to black. Because you could tell that the bad thing was going to happen, so I didn’t need to show it, which is the way I would normally approach that. And I had to write the scene, because you actually have to live that moment with the character.

Brandon: Dan, you had something?

Dan: Yeah. I want to… specifically as someone who’s been writing thrillers or mysteries, like the question-asker. What I want you to do in that case is to come up with your great new thriller plot, and then find a way to force the character into a horrible decision, into a moral compromise, or an outright awful thing. And then build your plot around some way to get them there, to where that’s the only choice they can make. And that, even without whatever trappings of Horror, that by itself will add a  bunch of Horror to the story.

Steve: Plus you have to deal with the consequences to that. Dan: Exactly.

Howard: I’m really excited for the journey this writer is about to embark on. [others laugh] Because seriously, learning to not flinch from the bits that you’ve been flinching from is hugely educational as a writer. I loved it.

[16:41]

Brandon: So I’m going to end us with this last question. And I’m actually going to point it at Steve and Dan specifically. And I want Steve to take the first crack at it if he can. Steve: Alright. Brandon: There are several questions in here that I’m going to conflate into one about showing the monster. The question I’m going to turn it into is:

How do you decide when to show the monster? And how does it change your story once you have?

Steve: Well for me, showing the monster… There’s this big so-called rule that you can't ever show the monster. And I don’t agree with that. I think you can show it if you want to. It just has to be in service to your plot.

So in my book, I show a monster right from the very beginning. And that isn’t because I want you to be scared by how scary it looks or whatever. It’s because I want to promise you that I am going to make good on this monster and that this monster is going to just cause havoc. And the damage it can do, and the horrible things it can cause.

And it isn’t just the monster. It’s everything surrounding the monster. You know, all of the horrible things it can enact upon people, the way it smells, the way it sounds…

Dan: Yeah, so I would say there are 2 rules. When do you show the monster? First of all, you show the monster after you’ve prepared the reader to be scared by it. And 2, when it will cause the maximum amount of harm to the story. And the way that you prepare the reader for that monster is you have to pick one of two directions.

The reason that there’s this kind of unspoken rule Steve was talking about, that you don’t show the monster, is because once you’ve shown the monster you take away that sense of unknown, and you’ve made it concrete. And now it’s not a mystery anymore. It’s just a, “Well how do we kill this thing?”

And so the way that you get around that so that it’s not a problem is, a) you make the monster something different that we were expecting, or b) you make it far worse than we were expecting.

“Jaws” is a great example of this, because it’s a shark, and eventually we’re going to have to see the shark. So early in the movie they show us a shark. They drag out a dead shark on the dock, and they get their picture taken with it, and it’s bloody, and it’s gross and it’s huge. And when we see the real monster later in the movie, it’s 5 times bigger, and so much worse than that first shark prepared us for.

And it’s effective because in our head we say, “Oh, well I know what a shark looks like. I’ve seen one already.” But the one we actually see later is so much worse.

Brandon: Alright. That’s all the time we have. But Dan is actually going to give us some homework.

[19:28]

Homework

Dan: Alright. We gave this homework to one of our listeners. We’re going to give it to all of you. We want you to plot out a story, and built an outline that will force your character to make a horrible choice. Force them to do something they shouldn’t do, to compromise themselves horribly, to do whatever awful thing… and then build it so that that’s the only choice they can make when the situation arrives.

Brandon: Alright. Well, thank you again to Steve Diamond. Steve: Thank you. Brandon: Let’s also mention “Residue,” his book, which you can get at fine bookstores everywhere. But mostly Audible and online is your best bet, right? Steve: That is the best bet. Brandon: And you guys are out of excuses. Now go write!

[Mary chuckles creepily]

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

[wxat]

S11E20 - Horror as Subgenre

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would like to support this podcast and start a 30-day trial membership, visit AusiblePodcast.com/excuse.

Season 11, Episode 20.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! Horror as Subgenre.

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: And once again, we have our good friend Steve Diamond. Steve: How’s it going? Brandon: Pretty good. Thank you for coming back and talking some more about Horror with us.

Howard: Yeah, it’s been 2 weeks, Steve. It’s good to see you again. Steve: It’s been forever. So glad to be back with you guys again. [others laugh]

Mary: [creep cute voice] We’ve been in the basement the whole time… [others laugh] [Mary squeaks]

Brandon: Alright. We’re going to talk a little bit about using Horror as a subgenre, but first I want to dig into a question of… this question I ask every time. What makes people turn the pages? When you have a Horror element in your story, why is that pulling people through the story?

Dan: The great thing about Horror is that it is so universal. I think it is profoundly universal. And every story can and often does have an element of it.

In a romance, the idea that the person you love might not love you back and you’ll be alone forever, that’s Horror. That’s straight-up Horror right there. And so we can all recognise it when it happens, and we all feel connected to the characters that are going through it. And I think we have an incredible moment of catharsis at the end of it, that no matter how bad it was and no matter how profoundly the characters lost, we survived it. And we have this great moment of victory, I geuss.

Howard: There’s a lot of different reasons to turn the pages. One of my favourites is the hope that the horrible thing that I have imagined is in fact worse that what the author thought of. That I’m going to turn the page and things might somehow get better.

And I love being tricked into believing that. I mean, I don’t really love it, but those are the most effective horror stories for me. Is when I keep turning the page because I want to know how it turns out, and I want the ending to be at least a little bit better than what I thought of… and then being wrong.

Brandon: So could we say, in a way, that this is a reversal of Adventure that we talked about? In that Adventure, we want to see what cool thing the protagonists come up with to overcome these obstacles. And in horror, it’s the “We’re waiting to see what kind of gruesome trainwreck is going to happen at the end of this plot-cycle, because we know something terrible is coming.

Howard: What you’re describing is kind of rubbernecking for Horror. And I certainly do that. That’s the only way I can get through a horror movie, is to tell jokes at the screen. I can’t just sit there and be viscerally afraid, because I don’t like that. Psychologically, I just don’t like that.

But there are people who do, and the experience they’re having is not the rubbernecking of “I want to see what horrible thing happens,” it’s “I want to feel the horrible thing happen and be afraid. I want that adrenaline rush. I want that anxiety burst.” I don’t understand how those people think, but I will sell them stories. [Dan laughs]

Steve: At the same time, to piggyback onto that… but then they know they’re still safe, and that’s why they’ll keep reading. Specifically to this being Horror as a subgenre, the way you can get people to keep reading in this is, how is the horrific element that you’re introducing to the story fundamentally changing what you’re introducing it into?

So if it’s a Western, how is it changing it? If it’s Fantasy, how is it changing it? Brandon: How is it changing the characters, the plot, the setting… Steve: Yeah. It can be the economics of a world, if you’re Tim Lebbon or China Miéville. How does that affect it? And that’s what keeps people reading.

Mary: And I think within that, the thing that Brandon just said about the character, is that when you go through a horrific experience it does exert profound change on you. You come out of the other side totally different. It’s impossible to go through it unscathed.

And so a lot of times, Horror as a sub-element can really illuminate the character, and can also be something that motivates them. It’s why a lot of books start with the “Fridging of the Girlfriend,” Which is something that I do not encourage. But it’s because the author thinks they need something to motivate the character forward. A lot of times that’s true, it’s just not something you necessarily need at the beginning of the book.

Brandon: Right. Now let’s say that you’re writing a story that’s an adventure story, but they’re going to go now into the cave, and it’s going to enter a horror segment. We’re transitioning, you’re kind of taking the power away from the characters for a little while so that you can ramp up tension and things like this.

[05:19]

What are the touchstone elements of what will make that sequence a true horror story?

Like, what are the moments and points along the path?

Howard: For me, one of the best times that I’ve seen this done was in a older Michael Z. Williamson book, which was very much an action-guns sort of book. And yet there is this flashback in which we learn why this character is kind of broken.

And he’s broken because he was the soldier who had to give the order to murder everybody in the village. And we watched that event unfold, and we watch him approach that decision with dread and the realisation that, “Oh my… He’s going to give that order. He’s going to become that person that I really don’t want him to become. And I’m going to have to spend the whole rest of this book following this person who is in point of fact a monster, as evidenced by what happens right here.” And as that unfolded, yeah. I was horrified. And then the book proceeded with darker action.

Brandon: So are you saying anticipation is part of that? Anticipation? Mary: I think dread? Brandon: Dread? Howard: Dread. Steve: Dread. Dan: Mmhm. Steve: It’s the fearful anticipation of something.

Mary: Well for me dread is the anticipation of fear. Or it is both being in fear and also afraid of what is coming. It’s not just being afraid of the moment, but it’s also being afraid of what is coming next.

Dan: I think one of the—and Howard already hit on this—that the ability to insert a scene of horror to reveal something important about your characters. We need to learn that this character, when the going gets really bad, she’s going to step up to the plate. Well okay then. When she goes down into that cave, in your example, it’s going to be an outright horror story in there, and she’s going to get through it.

This other character, we need to find out that he has some specific breaking point. Well, we’re going to throw him into just one little horror scene where everything goes wrong, and we’re going to watch him become selfish or whatever and see, “Oh! That’s his big character flaw.”

And horror is so good at exposing those.

Steve: And it’s the whole idea that… Earlier, Mary, you talked about more primal fears that we have. And in your example specifically, Brandon, you’re talking about, “Oh, there’s a cave, and what happens? How can you turn that into a Horror segment within the story?” And to kind of wrap all this together, there’s the moments of, “Okay, how are the characters going to react to this? How far are they going to go? Or are they going to retreat?”

This uncertainty that comes along with it all. The uncertainty of “Will they get through this?” To go back to Mary’s statement, “Will they get through this horrific scene unscathed?” Or as a reader, I’m hoping they don’t… [Brandon laughs] Because I want to see how they change. Brandon: You want to see development. Steve: I want to see how they change and develop, and they how that’s going to influence further segments of Horror to the positive or the negative.

Mary: And I think for me it’s the, “How do they handle the loss of control?” Steve: Absolutely. Mary: And then within that also, one of the things that I think is often very specific to Horror is the really visceral sensory details. It’s not just that bad things are happening, it’s that the reader is completely immersed. It’s not just, “There was a pool of liquid on the floor.” It’s, “The slime…”

You talked about this at one point years ago, Dan. I’m pointing at him for the (non) video feed people. [Dan laughs] If you touch the liquid, it’s not just, “Oh, the liquid is slimy.” It’s that the liquid clings, and it’s being trapped by the details as much as anything else. Howard: And it’s just a little bit warmer than my hand… Mary: Or a little colder.

In “The Puppet Kitchen,” which is actually a place where we make puppets, it’s in this old church. And you know, we’ve got all these fun things upstairs, but then… Steve: That sounds horrible! [laughs] Mary: It is! And it is so cliché. Because you open the door to the basement, and basements are usually cold, and you open the door to the basement and this warm, moist air comes up from the basement. Steve: Breathing at you? Mary: Breathing at you, yeah.

And there’s a single bulb, and you go down and there is a tricycle. And you’re like… [all laugh] Steve: What is wrong with you? Mary: You are all going to die!

Brandon: Okay. I’ve got to stop us. Howard: We need to do a book of the week? Brandon: We need to do our book of the week. And our book of the week actually is one that Steve is going to pitch to us.

[10:35]

Book of the Week

Steve: Okay. I’m going to pitch to you guys “Swan Song,” by Robert McCammon.  Robert McCammon is one of the finest horror authors to ever grace this earth. He is a terrific human being as well. Swan Song was basically his answer to “The Stand,” by Stephen King.

It is just a glorious romp through an apocalypse that, even though this is written in the 80s, still feels relevant today. It still feels like this could happen today.

And the characters in it are fabulous. The evil characters in it are fabulous. And Robert McCammon does something in Horror that very few other people do and can get away with it. And that’s, he leaves you with a glimmer of hope at the end. All the terrible stuff happens, but there’s still this slight bit of hope. Just enough to make you wonder, “Is it all going to be okay, or not?”

Brandon: And you can experience this for yourself. By going to AudiblePodcast.com/excuse. Start a 30-day free trial with Audible. Download Swan Song by Robert McCammon. It’s read by, and I’m going to try this last name. I’m sorry. Tom Sholt… (Stechschulte)? Shay-she-shu-shu-she? Steve: Shetstechts? Brandon: [laughs] Even Mary’s having trouble. That makes me feel better.

Mary: Oh yeah. Brandon: Oh yeah, it’s German. You’d know it. Dan: Stekshulteh would be the… Howard: Stekshulteh. Brandon: Stekshulteh? Mary: Yeah. Well, there was also a moment of trying to read your handwriting. [all laugh] Brandon: No, that’s easy handwriting…

Howard: AudiblePodcast.com… yeah, that’s runes that we’re only supposed to be looking at with one eye. [Mary laughs]

[12:16]

Hybridising Horror

Brandon: Let’s move on to talking really about hybridising Horror. And I’m going to raise two examples of hybrid horrors that I think will be illustrative of this. The first one is “Seven.”

Seven is a hybrid mystery-horror. I think that a lot of horror has mystery elements. And the other one is the one Dan raised last time, which is “Aliens.” Which I would argue that “Alien” is a true Horror, and “Aliens” is an adventure with a strong Horror sub-theme, and that they specifically changed the genre for that one in order to give a new experience.

Howard: Yeah. Dan: Absolutely.

Brandon: What makes these work?

Howard: Well, in both cases there’s the loss of control. In Seven we’re following these detectives, and the closer they get to solving the mystery the more danger they are placing themselves in. Steve: Or the worse it’s getting. Howard: Yeah, the worse things are getting. Brandon: You could say that Seven starts as a mystery, and at the end is a true horror. Howard: Yeah.

I think that in exploring Horror as a subgenre element those are great examples, but it’s also useful to look at every time George R. R. Martin has killed off a character. Because taking an epic fantasy and giving you a moment of horror, when a thing that often happens in epics happens, is a great way to explore the use of that tool.

I think of it the way I think of humour. Humour, I think of “Beat, beat, punchline.” And horror I think of… in that environment, I think of it as “Beat, beat, stab.” [Mary laughs] Where I set something up, and then I position it and contextualise it, and then there’s this twist, this turn that is surprising, and then it stabs you. And that’s…

Brandon: See, I am going to argue that George R. R. Martin’s… that just killing characters is not a horror element. He does have horror elements in those books, but the… Howard: It’s not the overall body count, but things like the “Red Wedding” felt horrific to me.

Steve: That’s a very “Horror” scene. I would say, if we’re talking specifically about Martin and the Grimdark genre as a whole, the prologue to the very first novel is absolutely Horror. And then when Ned Stark bites it. Because that’s the very first taste of it you get, that “This is awful.”

It stops becoming Horror as the series goes on, because you expect it. It happens. Brandon: Like “Song of Roland” has a high body count of main characters. It is not a Horror in the least bit.

[15:00]

Using Horror in Things that are Not Dark and Grim and Gritty

Mary: One of the things that I want to talk about is using Horror in things that are not dark and grim and gritty. For instance, Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey.” It’s a straight-up romance, but the main character reads Gothic Horror novels. That’s what she reads. And so she interprets everything as if she is in a horror novel.

So there is this… She’s like, “I hear the scratching at the window. It must be someone trying to get in!” And it’s a tree branch. Dan: Yeah, Northanger Abbey is so good. Brandon: It’s a great book. If you haven’t read it, it’s her only actual satire, which a lot of people don’t understand as they go into that one.

Dan: Masterpiece Theater did, to date, my favourite Jane Austen adaptation of any of her books, is their Northanger Abbey.

Mary: But one of the things about that, and about Austen, and about using Horror in non-Grimdark settings is using that moment where the protagonist recognises the single element that’s out of place, which is the clue that something is about to go terribly wrong, and their emotional reaction to it… You can have these moments of Horror without having an entire bloodbath scene.

[16:19]

Contrast

Steve: The great thing about that, and the reason that works so well, is because of the normalcy that it is contrasted against. So you have these very normal moments, these very average moments. And then, like you said, that one thing that shifts just a little bit. And you go, “Oh! We’re not in Kansas any more, are we?”

Brandon: Or that momentary loss of control is a big part of it. Steve: Absolutely. Brandon: Think of how many epic fantasies you will have this scene where somebody gets kidnapped from their perspective. It happened in the Wheel of Time to the protagonist. And suddenly the person you’ve been following who’s the hero, who’s in charge, is no longer in charge, is without power, and is in a horrific situation… this elicits those same emotions.

Dan: One of the ways that you can use Horror like this, and that loss of control, is kind of what Howard was talking about earlier, that anticipation. And Seven does this. And a lot of tragedies, in fact, do this.

Othello is a great example, where you spend the whole story getting to know a character and then all of a sudden you present them with a choice and you know exactly how their mind works, and you know they’re going to choose the wrong thing.

That is a powerful moment of Horror that can be used in any setting. You don’t need supernatural stuff, you don’t need blood, you don’t need gore. You just need that inescapable certainty that the character you love is going to do the wrong thing.

Mary: And sometimes also the character knows what the consequences are going to be, but there’s no other option.

Dan: Yeah, and that’s a great way of showing… the character’s in control. They’re the ones making the decision. But really they’re not. Fate has forced their hand, or their own personality, their tragic flaw. And so you get this great contrast of control and lack of control at the same time. And it’s just delicious.

Steve: It’s like the metaphor of getting into a minecart. You start down the railway, and then the handbrake just busts. Howard: Yeah, your first mistake was getting in the mine. [Steve laughs] Mary: First mistake was being in of Steve’s stories. [laughs]

Howard: The whole elemental genre concept, as we talk about how these things make us feel—for me, anyway—putting Horror in anything is because I want you to feel all of the things. If I’ve made you anxious and afraid, if I’ve given you dread, then when I have a “Stand Up and Cheer” moment later, you’re going to cheer and you’re going to cry a little bit because you get to cheer. When I make you laugh, you’re not just going to laugh, you’re going to laugh and feel relief.

And it’s one of those things that a good—and we said this a couple of weeks ago—a good chef will craft the meal so that the flavours complement each other. And you put Horror in a thing because it makes the humour funnier, it makes the action actions, it makes the love lovier.

[Brandon giggles] Dan: That’s the title of our romance anthology. Steve: “Love Lovier”? [all laugh] Mary: “Love is Lovier.” Howard: “Making Love Lovier.” Dan: “A Night of Loving Lovier.” [laughs]

Steve: The other way to do it though, is to take those things but reverse them. So you use the humour to set up the Horror, and make it that much worse.

Howard: And this is the difference between you and me. [Steve and Dan laugh] You’re a bad person. [others laugh] Steve: I try so hard…

[19:46]

Horror as Spice

Dan: So I want to point out really quick before we end… One of the things we talk about with Horror is that you don’t have hope, that it’s going to end poorly no matter what. When you are using Horror as a spice to another genre, you can escape that. You can use it to your advantage.

Because here’s a scene of Horror, and you know that that scene will end poorly. But like Howard said, all that does is set you up so that the good stuff that comes later is that much better when you get to it.

Steve: This works really well in Westerns, when you mix a horror element into the Western genre. Because the unknown, being on the border, all of these things that you’re unfamiliar with, that things can come at you in the night… it works really well when you put a little bit of a Horror element into a Western. And then you still have the good stuff at the end.

Brandon: Alright! It’s been great! I have to actually cut us now. Steve: Oh~ Dan: You have to cut us now? [all laugh] [Howard squeals] Brandon: Mary, you have some homework for us.

[20:48]

Homework

Mary: Yes. So we’ve been talking about using this as a spice, and the contrast that you can get. So I’m going to ask you to write two things. And it’s basically the same scene…

But the first time I want you to write it so that there’s a funny element and then tragedy, or Horror happens. And then I want you to take that and reverse it so that the second time you write it, the Horror comes first and then the comedy. Brandon: The exact same things. Mary: The exact same things, but just reverse it so that those elements are in a different relationship to each other, so you can see what happens when you start flipping these pieces around.

Brandon: Excellent. Once again, thank you Steve. Steve: Thank you. This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses, now go write.

Outro

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how you can support this podcast, you can visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.l

[wxat]

S11E19 - Fashion for Writers

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would like to support this podcast and start a 30-day trial membership, visit AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse.

Season 11, Episode 19.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! Fashion for Writers with Rebecca McKinney.

Mary: 15 minutes long. Dan: Because you’re in a hurry, Howard: and we’re getting dressed! [audience laugh] Brandon: I’m Brandon. Mary: I’m Mary. Dan: I’m Dan. Howard: I… have pants on~ [audience laugh] Rebecca: And I don’t. [all laugh, audience whoop]

Brandon: We would like to thank Rebecca for being our guest host on this episode. Rebecca: You’re welcome. Brandon: And we’d like to thank our live studio audience. [audience cheer] At Life, the Universe and Everything, a science-fiction symposium. So go ahead! Take it away, Dan!

Dan: Alright. So this is an episode I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Rebecca has been a friend of mine for a few years now, even to the point that we’ve worked on… I used her—[chuckles] I leveraged my friendship with her to get her to give me a whole bunch of really good fashion advice on the book that I just wrote, called “Bluescreen.” And we’ll talk about that a little later.

And that convinced me that it was such a fascinating series of conversations, I thought, “We have to get her here on the show.” So thank you very much for being here.

So I want to start—we want to talk about how fashion works, how clothing can be described well in books, things like that. Let’s start with the question. First the bad stuff: What are some big mistakes that you see writers make when they talk about clothing?

Rebecca: Well, Brandon Sanderson… [all laugh] No. I told Dan beforehand I was only comfortable picking on these guys. And since I’ve read pretty much their work, there’s a few things that pulls me up really quickly. And the first thing I’d like to say is just a really simple fix.

I don’t remember what the name of the book—it was the genetics one. Dan: “Partials.” Rebecca: No, the other one you haven’t published. Dan: Oh, “Extreme Makeover.” Rebecca: Okay. So you’re making a joke, and it depends very specifically on the wordplay, and you got the wordplay wrong.

This is something that you get every now and then, which is if you’re going to make a joke, make it right or it’s not funny. So he was making an example of jeans, which most people are wearing jeans here. It’s a twill weave. He commented, “I’m not wearing jeans, I’m wearing twill.” The word he was looking for was tweed. The joke is only funny if it’s right. [Dan chuckles, audience laughs]

Dan: Yeah. I know what you’re talking about. Sounds like a good one to start on.

Rebecca: And everyone wears clothing, so there’s this assumption that you know what is going on. And you don’t. I’m sorry. [audience laughs]

Anne of Green Gables is another example, where she talks about puffed sleeves being extravagant. And what you don’t understand, if you don’t have something that’s Lycra-based, if you don’t have anything that’s stretchy, and you have zero puff in your sleeve, you can’t go like this. Your arms don’t go above your head.

Sorry. I wear deodorant. I promise. [Dan laughs]

And so it’s very important to understand that you have to have certain things. The human body is shaped a certain way, and it functions mostly the same way. And you have to accommodate that. There’s no getting around it. Your arm has to have a certain rotation or you’re not able to move that arm. And so if you don’t have a puffed sleeve, you can’t go like… you can’t rotate it.

I’m sorry. I’m trying to remember that I can’t…

Howard: For those of you not benefiting from the video feed, she is doing the backstroke. [all laugh]

Rebecca: So this is very frustrating when I’m reading a book and someone’s playing with the weave of their sweater. Sweaters aren’t woven, they’re nit. So there’s the little basic inaccuracies, and there’s also… Sorry, I have a list. [all laugh]

[04:00]

Another thing that I think people do that’s a little odd—and this is a bigger jump—is…

People Describe Clothing the Exact Same Way No Matter Who is Telling the Story

Mary: Yep. Sorry. Again, for the video feed, you cannot see me nodding vigorously every time Rebecca speaks. [laughs]

Rebecca: I love John Cleaver. Dan did a great job with that because every single thing John does is from his point of view. And he does that with clothing as well. He doesn’t notice clothing unless he shouldn’t be noticing clothing. Which is interesting, the way that he’s set up the rules and everything.

And he’s very upset that Brooke has changed her shirt, because she shouldn’t have. And that’s really the only time I can really remember John overtly noticing and getting passionate about what someone was wearing, was when Brooke wasn’t wearing what she should’ve been.

If you have a book that switches character (view)points… Okay, if my husband and I, a book is from our perspectives, he would not notice what I notice.

I have memorised what every single kid in my primary wears every week. I’m in the primary (?) it’s just how it works. I know every single one of their clothes, and I know when they get new ones. Not because I’m a crazy— Well… [others laugh] Not because I’m going to murder them, but because that just how my brain works. I can’t go somewhere and see a bow that’s mistied and not fix it.

My husband could care less, and the conversations he has to have with me before a fashion show… He’s a sweet man, but he does not care at all. [others laugh]

And I think that your character should reflect that. Don’t have it just instantly jump back into being very bland. Like, “Oh, this is the writer speaking now.” When you notice Ron Weasley, you only notice his clothing when it’s ill-fitting because he’s poor. So it underlines something very important.

That’s a different thing. Sorry—I skipped.

[05:57]

Mary: No, we’re just going to segue without the questions. I’m glad that you mentioned that, because one of the things that clothing demonstrates, and one of the things that drives me crazy, is that…

People Don’t think About the Economy of Clothing in their Books

That they will have characters wearing garments that they can’t afford, or they will do things like having things made out of cloth that does not come from that region.

Pat Rothfuss in Name of the Wind talks about the fine linen and the everyday cotton. What that immediately tells you is that he is from a region where cotton is grown. Because the expensive things are the things that are high-labour, or that are imported. “Fine linen” means that it is not an everyday material. Whereas in the regency, cotton was the fancy thing because it was being imported from India. Linen was your everyday thing because you could make it at home.

And it’s that kind of thing, where you’re not thinking about how the clothing links into the economy, into the environment, and also into the available technology.

People used to have to make buttons by hand. The Victorian buttoned shoes with the ridiculous number of buttons… The reason those happened is because suddenly button-making could be automated, and buttons were cheap. But the mentality was still that they were still a sign of wealth. So the Victorians just said, “We’re going to put buttons on everything!” [others laugh]

Rebecca: I think that’s very true. I mean, you get an opportunity to costume your world. If this was a stage play, how would you do that? And you have a very short amount of time.

I’m obsessed with clothing, and I will still get bored. I can only handle so much “She was wearing a red shirt and jeans and…” I don’t care. If you’re not moving the story forward, why are you saying it?

[07:59]

Show Character Through Clothing

And I think that it’s really important to keep in mind that you can describe their sex, their religion, their socio-economic background, what kind of world they come from, instantly. And you can describe so much about a person that you’re not really thinking about. And I think it’s so sad that we don’t take more adva— “We.” I am not a writer. [sigh]

Howard: You don’t need to apologize for not being a writer. [others laugh]

Mary: I completely agree. Because one of the ways you judge people is the way that— That’s why your Mum is always getting you to dress nicer. It’s an instant snap judgement. We can tell stuff about someone’s economic situation, their class, their taste. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they’re dressed. You can’t tell everything. People will absolutely make…

Rebecca: And this is done subconsciously. You’re not meaning to do it, but you do. And that just needs to be a tool. Think of it as a tool. I mean, you have such an opportunity to in such a short— My favourite is, I listen to the podcast and you say, instead of using a whole sentence to talk about the fancy couch, you can just say “the Davenport.”

It’s the same way in clothing. You’re not going to have a wallflower wear a bright fuschia dress. It’s just probably not going to happen. And so you can let someone know that they’re not a wallflower by coming in the fuschia dress. You can let so much about a person known by just those details.

[09:29]

Dan: Alright. We’re going to break here for the…

Book of the Week

…which is mine! Ha haa!

We’re going to talk about “Bluescreen,” which is my new cyberpunk science-fiction novel. It is set in the 2050s, so near-future. In 2050 almost everyone has a computer in their brain, implanted. And they use it for everything. That was kind of my next step after the smartphone.

In the book, the main character’s name is Marisa Carneseca. She and her friends live in Los Angeles, and they are professional video gamers. And early on, one of their friends introduces them to a digital drug that you can plug in to the computer in your brain, and it will crash it and give you a buzz. Hence the title “Bluescreen.”

It’s a great book, and it’s really fun. And one of the things that I wanted to make sure to do right… a blog that I love to follow, or maybe it’s a tumblr or whatever, one that talks about all the clothing on Star Trek and the things that they do right, and then making fun of all the amazing things that they do wrong.

And that got me really thinking about the clothing of the future and “What will people wear?” And I so sat down with Rebecca, and we talked about it, and… All of the errors in the clothing are mine. Anything brilliant about the clothing in that book comes from Rebecca.

So anyway, you can get that from Audible. AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse. And it is read by Roxanne Hernandez. And you can go start a trial membership and get a copy of that book.

Brandon: Alright. What other questions do you have, Dan?

Dan: Okay. Alright. I want to ask you… because we talked a lot in the first half about things that people get wrong, and a lot of it sounds like just not having a good knowledge-base.

[11:20]

Where can people learn about this kind of stuff?

If someone wants to go out and learn about clothing, what do you recommend they do?

Rebecca: 16 years of obsessing about it? Dan: Okay. [laughs] Rebecca: No. I’m very old-school so I brought some stuff, because I’ve got a bag of tricks. Okay, this…

Mary: You have to say if out loud for the podcast. [laughs]

Rebecca: [laughs] Okay. This is the Reader’s Digest New Complete Guide to Sewing. If you have a fabric and you want to figure out what it means, it’s probably also on the internet but this is the definitive— You’ll get a lot of people arguing, and sometimes it’s nice to just have a real thing.

Dan: We’ll put these book titles in the liner notes as well on the website so that you can look them up.

Rebecca: Okay. This is a book from college, and it’s very useful. I am not a costumer, but at one point I was going to be. And it’s historic costuming for the stage. The nice part about it is it’s extremely detailed. It goes through what is significant, and…

Dan: Well it seems like that would be what you really want to know. It’s not just what they wore but why they wore it. Why is it important that they wore it this way?

Rebecca: Yes. Well, for example, has anyone heard the term “Greek Toga Party”? Dan and Mary: Yeah. Rebecca: Okay. That’s not true. [Dan chuckles] Like, 3% of Roman citizens could wear togas. But there’s reasons behind it, and it had to be folded a certain way, and you had to be a Roman citizen, and you had to be male. And it tells a lot about it, and it’s very specific in why they did that. And it talks about it in this handy-dandy little book.

Mary: If you don’t have the resources to grab the book, or you’re in a hurry or a deadline or something… and we’ll get the right URL for the liner notes, but The Costumers’ Guild has a website. And they go through and talk about period silhouettes, and how they would change over the course of years, and also frequently how that is related to a particular manufacturing technique.

The other thing that is very useful is Pinterest.

Dan: Mmhm. Mary: [laughs] Dan: I have start building Pinterest boards for my characters. Rebecca: I taught him that, thank you. Dan: Yeah. [audience laughs]

Mary: And one of the things that’s great about it is you can build visual reference. But also, when you don’t know what something is called, you can take that picture to a friend who does know fashion and costume and say, “Please tell me what this is.” And sometimes they describe it on the sites.

The other thing is honestly, pick up fashion magazines.

Howard: Years ago, I was having dinner with Phil Foglio and talking to him about costumes, specifically for putting them in the comic. And he tried over and over to explain stuff to me, and he finally said, “Dude, just go buy Bena Abbling’s Fashion Design Sketchbook.” “Oh. Er… What’s that?” He said, “Ah, it’s going to set you back 75 bucks, but it’s full of hand-drawn artwork about how to draw for fashion design.”

And in 30 seconds of opening that book, I learned the pen strokes that I just didn’t know how to do in order to quickly communicate the things that I hadn’t been communicating.

So 75 bucks to learn something in 30 seconds? That paid for itself. [Dan and Rebecca laugh] Of course, I still have the book.

[14:45]

Dan: Alright. I want to make sure I get some really good writing information, so let’s move on. What can you tell a writer who is doing a fantasy novel or something like that? As they’re worldbuilding…

What Should they Think About as they Worldbuild their Clothing?

Rebecca: Well, can we just talk about what we did for “Bluescreen”? Dan: Yeah! Rebecca: Okay. So what we talked about was, “What is going to happen in the future of clothing?” At some point you’re going to be able to print material. That’s something I see… I don’t know how soon it’s coming, but we have 3D printers. Most material today is polyurethane-based. It’s going to happen.

Mary: You actually already can print material. Dan: Yeah. Rebecca: [fake pouting] Shut up. [all laugh] Mary: My dad’s a programmer, and he worked for a textile research and development company.

Rebecca: So we went in the right direction. Thank you, Mary. [Rebecca and audience laugh]

But what we talked about is how that’s going to progress and mature. At some point you’re going to get it, and it’s going to still be expensive and you’re going to have to do it elsewhere. But eventually it’s going to come into your home, or the shop around the corner.

And we have an Xbox 360, and it takes 3D imaging of your body or however it does that… You’re going to be able to buy something on Amazon or whatever, and scan your body, and print it in your size and shape.

And this is a real thing that’s going to happen. And I think there are stages of it. First it’s going to be a lot more sleek, and then it’s going to be a lot fussier, because people learn how to use this tool.

And we talked about when she was going to a club or something—what is going to differentiate between the old people and the young people? The old people are going to have that fist newer technology, and then the new ones… it’s going to shift as a culture.

Dan: One of the great things that you mentioned to me in that conversation is something that Mary already called out, which was the affluence of having the really fancy clothing. You know, what is fancy?

One thing I didn’t know that Rebecca told me is that a really expensive dress, the kind you see on an Oscar red carpet or something… those are advertised in part by the labour hours it took to make them. Because of all the extra fabric and the folds and the ruffles and everything. And once we get to the point that that stuff is easy, then everyone will do it and then the rich people will stop doing it because the poor people can.

Mary: The non-fashion example of this is what happened to movie soundtracks when the Casio keyboard came out. Everybody used the Casio keyboard, and we have that really weird… you know the music I’m talk about. [Dan chuckles]

And then they figured out when it was actually useful and only used it then. But when a new technology comes out, yeah, what Rebecca’s saying is absolutely correct. People will use it for everything.

Brandon: So wierd, those fantasy movies from that era where the… Dan: Tangerine Dream. Brandon: Where the symphonic is gone, and instead it’s Tangerine Dream because this is the new-fangled cool thing.

We are out of time. Rebecca: Sorry~ Mary: No, it’s great! Brandon: No, this has been fantastic! This has been a really useful episode. We really appreciate you coming on Rebecca.

Rebecca: Oh stop. I’m blushing. [audience laughs]

[18:05]

Brandon: And Rebecca, you’re going to give us some…

Homework

Rebecca: Yes! I think that you should describe the same outfit from two different points of view, and how does that person see them, and why?

Brandon: Excellent. And thank you to our studio audience! [audience claps and hollers]

This has been Writing Excuses! You’re out of excuses, now go write.

Outro

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

[wxat]

S11E18 - Elemental Horror

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would like ot support this podcast and start a 30-day trial membership, visit AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse.

Season 11, Episode 18.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses. Elemental Horror.

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: And I think there’s [scared] somebody else in the room with us~

Brandon: [laughs] Yes! His name is Steve Diamond, and he’s a vengeful spirit come to haunt us. 

Howard: Well now that we can see the monster, he’s not scary any more. [Steve laughs] Brandon: Say hi, Steve! Steve: How’s it going, guys?

Brandon: Steve is our good friend, long-time friend. He is a writer and a blogger and a book reviewer. Howard: And a government subcontractor. [laughs] Dan: He appears in all of my books and I think most of Brandon’s. Brandon: Yes.  [Steve laughs]

He has the distinction of having organised my biggest signing until the Wheel of Time happened to me. Steve: Until that whole Wheel of Time thing happened? Brandon: Yeah, until that whole Wheel of Time thing. He was a bookstore employee who… I had the weird experience of walking in, and he knew who I was, and had read my book! That was unique, [Steve laughs] in my experiences during that time.

And Steve is now an author, and he’s consented to join us to talk about horror. He’s known us long enough that he knows about horror! [others laugh] Steve: Yes… Mostly Dan.

Brandon: So Steve, what’s your blog? What’s your website?

Steve: So it’s ElitistBookReviews. Some of you have heard of it. Dan: Most people have heard of the nomination. Steve: Yeah, nominated for the Hugo a few times.

I’ve reviewed all of you, I think. Mary: Yes. Steve: In fact, I remember reviewing Mary right at the very beginning with your short story collection. Mary: Yeah, you were one of the very first people who said nice things. [Dan laughs] Steve: Yes. So yeah, we’ve been around since I think 2009. It’s been a long road. It’s good. I’ve met a ton of great people.

Brandon: And you have a book! But we’re going to pitch that a little bit later during our Book of the Week.

Let’s dive into horror. This is a genre that is close to our hearts, much like the knives that Dan spears us with on occasion. [Dan laughs]

What is Horror?

Mary: So one of the things for me… I don’t write horror very often. And when I was learning to… I could write something that put my characters in danger, I could write something where you were a little afraid. But the difference for me, the thing that Jason Sizemore at Apex said, was that horror is visceral fear.

Brandon: Visceral fear. How’s that different from just a thriller, the fear that I’m being chased by guys that are going to shoot me?

Dan: My favourite definition actually comes from Ann Radcliffe, who was writing old Gothic Horror around the same time as Jane Austen. And she said that… And I’m going to totally butcher this. So this is not a quote, this is me paraphrasing my memory of what she said… That something that is scary is something that hasn’t happened yet. You’re afraid that a bad guy will attack you. You’re afraid that something will fall apart. You’re afraid that something bad is going to happen.

Horror is your reaction to something bad that’s already happened. And it’s the sense of dread that your world has changed for the worse irrevocably and now you have to deal with it.

Mary: The other aspect of horror that is very key, is that the protagonist has actually done something to kick it off. There is a catalyst moment. Brandon: Even if it’s something as simple as “I’ve moved into the wrong house.” Mary: Yeah. That there was actually a way to avoid it.

Steve: Yeah, the thing with horror is that it isn’t enough that the book is quote-unquote “scary.” What has to happen is the reader, while reading this, legitimately worries that that character is done for. And the sense that even should the character miraculously make it through whatever this horrible situation is, it’s still bad. The consequences are horrible for them.

And so it’s this attitude of terror and fear, like you guys have been saying. It’s why I love it so much, this actually raising the stakes and making the characters within the book worried about everything. Worried about that unknown.

Howard: I think it was Michael Collings, in one of our live episodes from LTUE several years back who said that horror and erotica and humour are the genres that seek to elicit a strong metabolic reaction.

It was actually an episode recorded at UVU: Season 7, Episode 20 - Cathartic Horror.

You’re reading a horror story, and your heart begins to race, you are feeling the fight-or-flight. That the reason I hate it. [Dan laughs] Because I don’t love feeling that way, okay? But I love writing it, because I get this chill and this thrill that I am doing that to someone else. [Dan laughs]

And I know that sounds awful. Now, if I was a character in a horror story, the reader would be horrified at what I am becoming. Not the bad things that are happening to me, but the fact that I’ve embraced this dark magic and have begun writing stories that are almost as terrifying as Dan’s or Steve’s.

Steve: And that’s what I love about horror, also. Horror is often associated with monsters or with creatures of various incarnations. And the interesting thing about that is it isn’t just about the monster, it isn’t just about the scare. It’s about the person, the character’s reaction to it—and what it is turning them into, like you just said, Howard.

They’re very much a mirror to what we don’t want to be. Or, depending on the viewpoint that you’re writing from, what the person wants to be. And which is scarier?

Mary: I think that there’s also an aspect of awareness in horror, that the character is aware of what is happening to them. Brandon: That something terrible is going on. Mary: That they are living in dread.

Steve: The runaway train that, “Oh no. This is happening! What can I do?” Maybe nothing.

[06:40]

Mary: And there’s a…

Loss of control

Brandon: Yeah, I was going to ask about that. See, I haven’t ever written true horror. The closest I got was in a short story once. So I’m going to ask a lot of questions.

That powerlessness, that loss of control, why is that an aspect of horror? And is that necessary, as part of this? Or is that just an aspect of it?

Dan: I think it is an important part. I don’t know if it is necessary, but it’s a big huge deal.

And to compare this to, for example, Adventure, that we talked about last month… One of the things with adventure is, “Oh no! Something’s going to happen!” But the fun part is seeing how we get out of it. We have this sense that no matter how bad it gets, Indiana Jones is still going to manage to find some loophole and escape.

Whereas with horror, that sense of control is gone. He’s not in control of the situation, and in very bad ways. That something is going to go wrong, and we’re just kind of waiting for the car to hit the pole, you know?

[07:44]

Brandon: Okay. Tell me this. This may be a random aside, but I’ve noticed a lot of horror stories have a moment of, “Okay, we got through it.” And then… 

NOPE!

[Dan chuckles] And the story ends with the, “Oh by the way, no you didn’t.” This stinger on the end that kind of betrays the normal convention of, “Trouble, problem, we work on it, we succeed or fail,” and it’s “Trouble, problem, we work on it, we… succeed? Oh. No, you failed.”

Howard: It’s a recasting of “Surprising Yet Inevitable.” And if you do it correctly, the point at which they are victorious is surprising, because I’m reading a horror story. “Wow! That turned out pretty well for them!” And yet from what we’ve seen, yes, that seems inevitable. And then that twist at the end where you cast everything in a new light and you realise, “Oh. Not only were they not okay, everything that they did in order to make things okay made things unimaginably worse.”

Selling that is brilliant. I’ve never pulled it off, but when I read it… well, it’s horrifying and it’s wonderful.

Mary: I think one of the reasons that that element exists is because again, when we talk about what this element is doing to hack our brain, we sign up to read horror because we want that visceral metabolic reaction.

And if you bring it to a resolution where there’s a happy ending, you have taken that metabolic reaction away from the reader. Whereas if you give that tiny little bit of a twist, that’s something that they can carry with them outside of the book.

Steve: It’s almost a bait-and-switch if you do that, right? If it becomes a super-happy, fluffy ending, suddenly it’s not the same book.

I know Dan and I have talked about this before, that one of the main differences—and this is a huge generalisation, so I apologise—between say, Urban Fantasy and Horror, is in Urban Fantasy, no matter how bad they screw up, you know they’re pretty much going to succeed in the end.

Whereas in Horror it’s typically the reverse, right? No matter how good they do, no matter how much they succeed, they’re still going to fail.

Brandon: Right. Urban Fantasy is about, “We’re going to kill the monsters. Yeah, there are monsters. Yeah, they’re scary. And we’re going to kill them.”

Whereas Horror is, “Yeah, there are monsters.” Steve: “We might kill them. Hopefully.” Brandon: “We might kill them, but if we do we will be horribly ruined.” Like John Cleaver, right? This is perfect example. John Cleaver does not escape those books. It’s almost worse that if he had been killed.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, I love to describe my job as thinking of new ways to make his life worse. Because that’s what the books are about—horrible things that happen to him.

[10:31]

Book of the Week

Brandon: We need to stop for our Book of the Week, which is a very important Book of the Week. Because our Book of the Week is “Residue.” [Steve laughs] And Steve, will you tell us just a little bit about the book?

Steve: Okay, “Residue” is about a kid named Jack Bishop who can see the psychic residue left behind by monsters and murder victims. And he uses that to track down a monster that’s been let loose in this town. It’s a genetically modified monster.

And the pro who tells him that all of this stuff is real, is a girl named Alex Courtney. And she can read minds, and she’s a complete tough person. It was important for me to have her be the pro, and him be the new guy.

Brandon: So how did you get from when I first met you writing fantasy, to writing this type of true-horror, urban-horror story?

Howard: It’s an anti-hero arc. [Steve, Dan, and Howard laugh]

Steve: I think it just came from me starting to read more horror novels and stories, and then finding so much in there that I loved. The ideas, the themes, the fact that—and I think we’ll talk about this later—that you can merge horror with anything you want, and make its own story.

I mean, my story’s a horror story, but it’s also a thriller, there’s also science-fiction in it, there’s also some comedy and romance in it. And horror just… I don’t know. It just gelled with my dark, dark soul, I guess. [Dan laughs]

Brandon: Well, Steve’s book is on Audible. It’s read by David Stifel. Steve: I think that’s how it’s pronounced. Brandon: And you can start a 30-day trial at Audible, download Residue by Steve Diamond for free. Just go to AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse, and you can support us and support Steve, our good friend and an excellent writer.

Steve: [laughs] Thank you.

[12:27]

Brandon: Let’s talk about now…

How We Write a Horror Story

When you’re going to sit down and say, “I want to write a story that is primarily horror. That’s my genre.” How do you go about it? What things are you thinking of? How do you construct it?

Howard: The best piece of advice I got on this I got from Mary. So I should probably let Mary give it to you. [Dan and Brandon laugh] Mary: I’m like, “What did I tell you?” [laughs] Howard: Okay, what you told me was, “Don’t make the protagonist incompetent. Make the protagonist supremely competent, but the things that she can do will not help her in this story.”

And I got chills when you said that because the story unfolded in front of me, and I suddenly saw, “Oh! I get to have the action movie moments where the character is awesome, and at the end of the awesome we just have more disaster.”

Because no matter how good you are at this, it’s the nightmare where you can’t run fast enough to get away from the alligator. You guys have all had nightmares about alligators, right? Steve: All of time. Howard: I grew up in Florida, [Dan chuckles] but I assume this is universal. [Mary laughs] Steve: Here in Utah, we have so many. [Howard laughs]

You can’t run fast enough. You’re just not good enough to solve this problem. But recast in the way Mary instructed me is, “You’re definitely awesome enough to run fast, but the alligator is flying, or it’s nanoparticles in the air. It doesn’t matter how fast you can run.”

Dan: And in many ways, that heightens the horror element. Because then it’s not just a nobody who can’t do anything who’s being menaced, because of course that person’s going to get eaten by the alligator. But it’s somebody who’s really competent, and really amazing, and still can’t get away from the alligator.

That’s why the Aliens movies—it’s one of the reasons the Aliens movies are so effective, because the first one… These are not random horny teenagers on that spaceship. They are middle-aged, competent professionals who know what they are doing, and they’ve been doing it for decades. And they still get eaten. In the second one they’re marines, armed to the teeth. And they still get eaten.

[14:41]

Brandon: So let me ask you this. This may be another tangent, just something I’m really interested about. The cool thing about horror, as you guys are describing to me is—when I write a book, an epic fantasy or something, I have to suspend the readers’ disbelief in an interesting way. Number 1, I have to make it real to them, which we all have to do. And I have to make it seem like the characters are really in danger. Because most stories in my genre, people are successful.

You flip that on its head. How do you suspend the disbelief?

How do you make them believe for a little while that it might be okay?

[Dan laughs] Does that make sense? You have to make them…

Howard: You let good things happen.

Steve: So one of my favourite authors is Joe Ansdale. He writes all over the place. He’s gone for Horror and Westerns primarily.

But one of the things that he’s told me frequently is that for any horror to be successful there has to be moments of light in it. And those moments of light, what they do is they… You can’t understand how bad something is without understanding how good it can be conversely, and the reverse is also true.

And so you have to have those moments, like Howard said, where things go okay for them. Things are right. And all it is is, whether it’s elder gods or monsters or an evil corporation, or whatever… it’s just the calm before the real storm hits them. And it makes it more real.

Mary: I think the other aspect of that is that when you’re looking at these moments of light… In fantasy, the suspension you’re… is that the character is going to get killed off. And we all know that the character is, in most… Brandon: In most cases—once in a while they will—but when you’ve got a… Mary: Unless you’re George R. R. Martin… [others laugh]

Brandon: You’ve got a 14-book series about this character. It’s already out. You’re reading. You know that character is on the cover of book 13. So~

Mary: So they’re going to live.

But the thing with horror is, don’t think that the worst possible outcome is death. Steve: It rarely ever is. Mary: And so it’s not that, “Are they going to be successful?” But it’s, “What kind of terrible ending are we coming to?” And that’s the thing that you surprise people with.

You make them think, “Oh, the character is going to… His girlfriend is going to be eaten by a monster.” But it turns out that that’s not the case. That his manhood is removed or something. [others laugh]

Dan: Okay. That came out of nowhere. [Brandon laughs] I don’t know if I have a follow-up to that specifically. [Mary barrel laughs] Mary: Sorry. Dan: So one of my favourite horror stories is “The Midnight Meat Train” by Clive Barker.

Mary: Really? Midnight Meat Train. Dan: Midnight Meat Train. Mary: I see your transition there. Dan: Okay! [others laugh] Mary: Sorry…

Dan: And what he’s doing, and the principle that I want to talk about here is, “How do you make the audience think that everything is going to be okay?” is that they don’t necessarily know what the true nature of the horror is. Stephen King does this a lot. “The Mist” is a great example.

Midnight Meat Train is about a journalist who is investigating a serial killer who is lurking in a subway system. And the movie, right up until the end, is a series of successes. He investigates. He tracks down who this guy is. He finds him. He figures out how to stop him. And then he does it.

And then the dying words of the serial killer are, “I’ve been feeding the monsters who live under the city. Now that I’m dead you have to or they’re going wake up and kill way more people than I ever did.”

And it’s this absolutely gut-wrenching reversal when you realise, “Oh. I thought he was the bad guy. There’s a way worse bad guy, but now the story’s over and everything’s gone to hell.”

Brandon: That is really cool.

[18:41]

We don’t have much time left, but I really want to get into…

Dan, How You Conceive a New Horror Story?

What goes into you building that story?

Dan: Okay. This is a big question. Brandon: Yeah, I know. Dan: Okay. I’m going to transition into that question by talking about another thing.

The other way that you convince the audience that everything is going to be okay, is that you make them want everything to be okay. And the way you do that—again, Stephen King’s a perfect example of this—80% of his books are, “Here’s a guy, and all of his life, and his troubles at work, and his troubles with his wife, and his cool new kids that he has.” And you get to know him, and you get to love him, and you really really really want his life to work out.

Brandon: So do you start with a character a lot of times, with these?

Dan: I think for me, Horror has to start with either the character or the monster. Steve: That’s how it is for me.

Mary: I start with the fear. Brandon: What they’re going to be afraid of. Mary: Yeah, and usually it’s specifically, “What are the things I am afraid of?” And I usually start with primal things. Steve: That’s the way to go. Mary: Like fear of the dark, fear of… Steve: Confinement, of unknown… Mary: …confinement, yeah.

Howard: I start with the reveal of whatever this horrific disaster thing is. And then I start putting layers of obscuring anxiety over it. What’s a thing that I am afraid of that would hide that? And I sort of backtrack the character’s journey so that they’re having [laughing] an anxiety attack on the way to insanity. [Dan laughs]

Brandon: Well, we are out of time but we will come back to this in a couple of weeks and dig into it a little further. Let’s stop and give everyone some homework. And Dan is going to give us our homework!

Dan: Yes! We’re going to follow on this principle that Steve was talking about that in Horror, even a victory will feel like a defeat. We want you to take one of your favourite stories—a movie, a book, or whatever—that is not horror, and then rewrite the ending. Write a new alternate ending in which it is horror, and everything goes horribly wrong and they snatch failure from the jaws of victory.

Brandon: Alright! [laughs] This has been Writing Excuses. Thank you again to Steve Diamond. Steve: Oh, thank you. Brandon: You are all out of excuses. Now go write.

Outro

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Taylor. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

[wxat]

S11E17 - Elemental Adventure Q&A

[source]

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would like to support this podcast and start a 30-day free trial membership, visit AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse.

Season 11, Episode 17.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses. Q & A on Adventure. Mary: 15 minutes long, Dan: because you’re in a hurry, Howard: and you’ve got questions! Brandon: I’m Brandon. Mary: I’m Mary. Dan: I’m Dan. Howard: And I've got answers! [others laugh]

Brandon: Right. Well we’ll see how good they are. Howard: Yeah. Yeah, we will. Brandon: We went to Twitter and Facebook, and these are your questions about the element of adventure.

In an adventure story, what is more liked by readers: if protagonists go through many different incidents and locations, or a fewer number of incidents and locations but that are similar to each other and have a theme?

Mary: Howard? [laughs] Howard: Both of those sound awesome! I would write one book about each because readers are different!

Dan: It depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re doing a big globe-trotting James Bond, Indiana Jones kind of thing, then the more cool, exotic locations the better. Whereas if you’re trying to tell something that maybe is a little more personal or a little more smaller-scale, then... yeah.

Mary: I would say that even if they’re thematically linked, part of what people are looking for with Adventure is the sense of going to someplace new. So that you would actually want to have multiple locations.

Brandon: And I think this also might be a distinction between an Adventure story and a story using the element of Adventure to advance. An Adventure story, I think Mary’s got it. You need to be going to different locations and things. Or at least having different phases of exciting, exotic adventure.

Dan: If you’ve got 2 pieces that are set in the same or in very similar locations, you have to do something super new with it the second time.

Brandon: This isn’t to say you have to go to different countries all the time. But you’re like—part 1 is climbing the mountain, part 2 is find the cool caves in the mountain, part 3 is find the hidden city underneath the mountain. Those are 3 distinct set-pieces taking place in the same location, but they’re so different.

[02:18]

Next question: J. C. Holder asks,

What lessons can we take from your favourite adventure games for writing adventure fiction?

Howard: I mentioned Peter Molyneux, either last week or 3 weeks ago. If you can find especially video games in which it is not a flat fight—in which there are multiple levels of terrain, there is an environment you can interact with—I’ve found those are much much more interesting to play.

I’ve been playing XCOM 2, and I love the environments where there are things that I can blow up. It’s, “I don’t just have to shoot my enemies. Sometimes I can shoot the car they’re hiding behind.” That little bit of… Yeah.

Dan: There was a bit of Game Master advice in the old West End Star Wars roleplaying game that said: Every character in your party has a different strength, so make sure that each adventure session has a chase scene, a fight scene, and a talking scene. And I always think about that when I'm plotting out a book, to make sure that I am including different kinds of adventure.

Brandon: That’s a great suggestion. I like that one. I think might be something we may have missed in the other podcasts.

Mary: Yeah. the thing I would say is D&D would be my favourite adventure game of choice. Naturally in D&D there’s something at risk. Your character may die. But it is personal because you’re playing. And that is something that I think a lot of times when people are building an adventure that sometimes they’ll be like, “Oh! I’ll have this explosion!” But it doesn’t put anything personal at risk for the character. And I think that that for me would be the thing.

Brandon: With all the superhero franchises around, what are some tips on writing adventure stories outside of fight scenes and world-ending consequences?

Well I think we’ve covered some of this by saying exotic locations don’t have to include a fight scene. The superhero movies tend to play off of this “external villain,” but you can have great adventures with no villains.

Howard: It’s an accelerated Time Bomb format—escaping the burning building, getting out of the path of the avalanche, getting to the hospital before the baby is born, or before you bleed out, or whatever. These are all cases in which you are racing through a complex and shifting environment and something very important is at stake, but you’re not actually fighting anybody.

Mary: Indiana Jones again, going into the temple, and back out of the temple, and the giant boulder. The giant boulder is... Brandon: Not a world ending consequence. Mary: Not a world ending consequence. Brandon: Not a fight scene. Mary: Not a fight scene. You could argue that the giant boulder is his antagonist in that moment, but it’s not a person.

Brandon: And another lesson from Indiana Jones, or movies like this and stories like this, is you can have an antagonist who is not a super villain, who is just somebody else trying to getting the thing that the main character is trying to get. And presenting these two opposing teams, it’s like the TV show Survivor, or something like this.

It doesn’t have to be, “I am the super villain bent on the destroying the world.” You just need to show somebody else nasty who wants the same thing the protagonist wants and then set them against each other in an exotic location, and you have an adventure story.

Howard: I was watching an episode of Leverage… We mentioned this last week. I mentioned it last week. Sorry. Bringing it up again! [Dan laughs] ...Where Christian Kane’s character, Eliot, is posing as a cook. And seeing him in a kitchen catering a wedding, when not everybody else knows what they’re doing…

It was a whole new adventure side for him. Because he’s cleaving vegetables and being super-competent, and moving with all the grace that he fights with, and yet he’s not fighting anybody. He’s making food.

Dan: Leverage and Ocean’s Eleven and some others are good examples of primarily ensemble stories that have a lot of Adventure in them. Ocean’s Eleven has so many adventure scenes where it’s not a fight, it’s a conversation. Or it is, “I’m locked in a room...” Brandon: Or it’s two characters who have to accomplish something that are on the team, they’re like, “You guys go do this thing.” Dan: And you get this little mini-adventure puzzle solving. “How are they going to get out of this? Wow, that was so awesome!” But they were just talking to each other. And watching someone lie really successfully is a fantastic adventure scene.

[07:08]

Brandon: So Christina asks,

Are there tropes that are overdone and need to be avoided with regards to adventure fiction?

And this is a good question. I’m glad she asked this. The point of what we’re doing is to distill down what about an adventure works. We’re not actually talking about the surface-level adventure fiction.

I’m sure you could say, “Alright. For a while dark jungles and idols were overdone.” Because Indiana Jones did them too much, or Solomon’s Mines or something like that. But that’s not we’re looking at with our discussion of adventure fiction. We’re looking at the deeper level of “What do you get from that?” and transposing it.

But do you think there are things that are overdone in this?

Mary: Well, one thing I want to say is that people a lot of times get confused by the word “trope” and think that it is a bad thing. A trope is an ingredient. And you could argue that an entire dinner made of nothing but chocolate would be overusing the trope of chocolate. [Dan chuckles] I think that that would be a hard-sell, but no one is going to really complain. It’s like, “What? Chocolate, again?”

So when you’re looking at the trope it’s not so much the trope itself but what you’re doing with it and the ingredients that you combine it with.

Howard: It’s easy in elemental adventure of any sort of modern kind, we have car chases. A lot. And you can argue that the car chase—we mentioned this last week—the car chase in a heist is a trope of the heist. It’s a piece that is regularly there. If you do it the way everybody else does a car chase, you might have a problem.

But if you do it the way everybody else has a car chase and there’s a conversation happening during that car chase that is fresh and interesting and exciting, then we’re probably fine with it. And so you’ve got to understand why you’re using these pieces.

Dan: We talked so much about ways to make a scene do multiple things. You can make this dialogue more interesting by having a car chase during it. I think that the adventure thing that falls down the most is when adventure is the only thing that that scene is doing.

I find when watching movies and TV shows, increasingly I will just not pay attention to the fight scenes. Because I know that nothing important is going to happen except they’ll punch each other for a while and then it’ll be done.

Brandon: That has ruined several movies recently for me. Because it’s like, “Oh. 45 minutes of people punching each other.” It doesn’t have the cleverness of Jackie Chan using the environment. It’s just explosion after explosion with no character. I am bored out of my skull.

Dan: So if that adventure scene, whether it’s a fight or a chase or an explosion or whatever, if you’re not also advancing the plot or revealing stuff about characters, that’s when you’re using the tropes wrong.

Mary: One thing that a friend of mine, Margaret Dunlop who’s a screenwriter, said is that she defines the difference between an obstacle and a complication is: an obstacle just gets in the way, and a complication changes the story.

And I think that when we’re looking at a fight scene that’s just a fight scene, it’s just an obstacle, it’s not doing anything.

Howard: It’s an obstacle to my enjoyment of the movie. [Mary laughs heartily]

Dan: And now it’s, “Let’s pause the plot for 10 minutes while cars chase each other around. And then we’ll get back to the story again.”

Bradon: A brief one of those can add some spice and be fine. Mary: Sure. Brandon: It’s when the story starts relying only on that… But I love what’s been said here. We do have to move on to the book of the week. I want to talk about that one more, but I think there’s some questions that’ll get us that direction as well.

Mary, you’re going to tell us our book of the week.

Book of the Week

Mary: That’s right. So the book of the week is Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson. It’s narrated by Sanjiv Jhaveri. I loved this book. I picked it up blind in a book store, and it is Adventure, but it is a wonderful example of blending a lot of these different things.

Because it’s a cyber-crime novel in which the main character winds up getting hooked up with genies and going into a fantasy world where he has to deal with cyber… So it’s cyberpunk, and secondary world fantasy, and there’s also this adventure because there’s all kinds of car chases. Sometimes not cars, sometimes flying carpet chases.

But it is wonderful with all of the different elemental genres she is combining in there. It’s great, beautiful character, fantastic world-building and setting. I loved this book. And I kept turning the pages and going, “You did not just... Oh, you did! You did!” It’s great.

Brandon: That is excellent. And they can start a 30-day free trial at Audible, by going to AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse and they can download Alif the Unseen for free.

[12:20]

This actually transitions really well into the next question, which I’m going to point at you (Mary), but anyone can answer this. Because someone asks,

Do you have any suggestions for non-Western, non-traditional styles of adventure that could provide variety or a fresh take on things for readers?

And you spent a whole year reading non-Western stories.

Mary: Yes. So last year I decided that I was going to read things that were not written by Americans. Brandon: So I guess it wasn’t non-Western but it was non-American. Mary: Right. It was non-American.

And yes, there’s a whole bunch of fantastic adventure things. I read... I mean, it’s Western, but something set in Finland. So yes, absolutely you can go other places.

And one of the things that I would recommend if you want to do that, is actually to grab books and read them. Because if you just look at it and go, “Oh, this would nice set-dressing,” you’re not going to really going to take advantage of the place.

An adventure is very much about the place and the connection of the character to the environment, and the way all that plays around.

Brandon: Did you notice anything in them that were different styles of adventure? We’ve talked about the dialogue as Adventure, and that sort of thing. Was there anything in any of these books that was an adventure as we wouldn’t normally wouldn’t conceive it but still evoked the same emotion? I’m kind of putting you on the spot.

Mary: Yeah, I have to…

Brandon: Why don’t you think about that, and I’ll point another question... Oh, Dan’s got an answer. Dan: I actually have an answer to this one! Brandon: Okay. go for it.

Dan: I have a new baby [laughs], which means that I have to watch TV with the sound turned off. So in other words, over the last couple of months I think I’ve watched every kung-fu movie on Netflix.

And one of the things that has stood out to me, that strikes me as a distinctly non-Western form of storytelling, is very often in Chinese movies the final fight will come down to the bad guy and whole group of heroes. And in American stuff, we always have this, “No! I have to face it alone!” And the Chinese mindset seems to be, “Well, if you can defeat him all by yourself, he’s not much of a bad guy. You’re going to need your sidekick and this other guy to help you.”

And I don’t know what I can tell you to go do with that information, but it stood out to me as something that is very non-Western.

Mary: And that was one of the reasons that I was sitting staring at the ceiling when Brandon asked me that, is that there were a lot of non-Western… but to talk about what they are... The book that I would tell people to read… actually grab anything by Nnedi Okorafor. Because her books have a lot of adventure elements in them, but the structure is very much not the traditional Anglo-american story structure, where it is, “Here is my problem. And I will go do these things. And I will be awesome. And here is my solution. And solved!”

The problems are often more layered and they’re very... a lot of the books that I was reading, the problems that people were facing were very much societal. It was just…

Brandon: So go read a bunch. Mary: Basically, go read a bunch of stuff. 

Howard: One of the challenges that we have is that not only are we steeped in Western fiction, we’re also steeped in Western terminology. I don’t even know how to describe the things that are happening in Princess Mononoke that make it different from the the things that I watch, but I can tell that it’s different, that the structure is weird.

Mary: Well let me use an example. Because actually this is an adventure story: Karen Lord’s Best of All Possible Worlds. Her main character goes off into the Hinterlands, and has to solve a whole bunch of different things. For me, I kept looking for the bad guy. And this was a story where there was no bad guy. It was about her needing to apply her skills to overcome a lot of different problems. The problems were not directly linked. They were linked to an underlying societal issue, but it was not, “This is something that we have to fix.” It was, “This is the way things are, and I ave to deal with the fact that this was the way things are.”

The first time I read the book I bounced off it a little bit because I kept waiting for the conflict to emerge, because that’s what I’ve been trained to read. And the second time I attempted it I had been reading a lot of other books, and I realised that that was not how the structure worked. So it’s still, “Go read a lot of things,” but Karen Lord’s Best of All Possible Worlds is...

Brandon: Excellent. I’m going to end us on a question that was repeated three or four times in different forms by people. They’re talking about the journey. The journey that’s often a part of adventure fiction. How do you make the journey exciting? Do you have to include all the details to it? And really interestingly, if you skip a bunch of it, how do you get across to the reader the character moments during the parts that you skip the journey?

Dan: Okay. So. [others laugh] The first answer is to think hard about what you’re trying to accomplish. And thinking of the fantasy adventures that I’ve read, in Lord of the Rings, the journey is the whole point. Not so in the movies, but in the books you get 95% of that book which is where we went and what we ate and what songs we sang when we were there.

And in contrast to that, the Bernard Cornwell Saxon Chronicles jump to mind. Which are adventure stories which are essentially fantasy, even though they’re historical. But the plot is entirely focussed on, “We did this. And then we left And a paragraph later we got somewhere else and we did another thing.” And it just depends on what kind of story you’re trying to tell. Which answers [laughing] one of those three questions.

Brandon: I would say skipping the boring parts is a good idea. Try to skip the boring parts. And by definition, those parts won’t have big character moments. we accept the fact, when we’re reading a story, it’s one of these suspension things we do. characters will change more dramatically because of specific moments that we show to evoke their character arc to you as the reader. And really he allusion is that they’re changing all along and we’re seeing these important points. So you don’t have to show every moment of that. You can show those points and the reader will fill in the rest and create a character arc for them.

Mary: One of the things about this is that I think this is actually something that is, in some ways, easier to do in short fiction than it is in novels. In short fiction we will accept a lot more readily the, “We’re going to show you this moment and we’re going to jump and just show you this tiny little character moment and then jump.” Whereas in a novel if you jump and you show a character moment that’s only five minutes long, that’s half a page, it;’s going to feel out of balance. Brandon: Jarring. Mary: And jarring. So I think one of the things you can do with that is looking at how you can combine those moments so that they happen more together so that they aren’t happening... Brandon: They overlap. Good idea. Yeah, that’s a really good suggestion.

Dan: Now, because I mentioned the Saxon Chronicles it occurs to me that my single absolute favourite scene of the entire 9-book so far series is a moment of travel, it’s a journey. And it’s when the main character is on a boat in the North Sea, and sees a whale for the first time. And it is this absolutely kind of primordial monster coming up out of the unknowable ocean in the year 1200 whatever... and it was incredibly powerful. And it didn’t necessarily add any character, and it didn’t advance the plot. But it’s my favourite scene of the entire series. And so, like Brandon said, skip the boring parts. But if you can find a way to make the journey not boring, put it in. Absolutely.

Brandon: That’s even better. Make the journey not boring.

I’m going to have to shut it down here. I’m sorry for all of you that put questions. There were 54 responses, and we answered 7 of them, if that many. But we thank you very much for listening, and we are going to point you at some homework for next time, for our next elemental genre.

[21:09]

Homework

So I want you, for your homework, to make a list of set pieces, really cool places for people to visit. And I then want you to go a step further and I want you to say, “How does my main character entering this place, interacting with this place, change who they are?” We don’t want you to just go to cool places. We want those cool places to change your story and change your characters in interesting ways. And that is what I think will make adventure fiction go up a level for you.

Now, as I said, we will be moving onto Horror next week. We want you to brace yourselves for that. Dan’s going to make you afraid. But until then, this has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go write.

Outro

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.Patreon.com/WritingExcuses.

Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

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S11E14 - The Element of Adventure

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.com. If you would like to support this podcast and start a 30-day trial membership, visit AudiblePodcast.com/excuse.

Season 11, episode 14.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! The Element of Adventure.

Mary: 15 minutes long. Dan: Because we’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: And we are continuing with our theme of Elemental Genres. Now, we’re talking about Adventure this time. We’re not just talking about adventure fiction. We want to dig deeper. We want to ask why people like this style of fiction, how you can use it, and how you can write an adventure story yourself.

To do that, we need to spend a little time defining exactly what we mean by adventure. For instance, some of our other Elemental Genres kind of stray this direction a bit. Mary, what is the difference between an adventure story and thriller?

Mary: So adventure story… Both of them have an danger to them. The big difference is where that danger comes from. There’s a lot of jumping and running with both adventure and thriller. But with adventure it’s very much about, “Can I do this thing?” It’s about pushing your limits, and it’s really trouble you get yourself into.

Thriller, there’s an outside threat that is coming after you. So there might be a thriller moment in an adventure, but adventure is really, “Can I do this thing?” It’s basically the fiction version of, “Hey, dude! Watch this!” [Dan laughs]

Howard: For me, I contrast it with “Sense of Wonder,” with elemental wonder. Wonder for me is the thrill of seeing a thing, and the element of Adventure is the thrill of doing a thing. And it’s easy to conflate them.

Because for instance, in Ringworld we have this big wondrous object and we have an adventure in which they are doing things. But the things that they’re doing are not nearly so exciting as the big thing.

Brandon: Exactly. And the fun about this is, if you start to drill down into how each of these work, you can see how a lot of films will present themselves as adventure fiction. But really they will be skewing a different direction.

I think of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Which some of them have been Adventure and some of them have been Horror, and some of them have been Thriller. They all pretend to be the same adventure genre. But you get bored with seeing the same thing, and so they present different films and even different parts of the films in different directions… to tweak something different inside of people.

Mary: Whereas Indiana Jones is pretty much straight-up adventure. Brandon: Yup. Straight-up adventure. Mary: He’s like, “Hey, there’s this cool thing. Can I go get?” Well… and then Nazis. But… [laughs]

Dan: Well the example that I was thinking of was the Tintin comics, which Indiana Jones is based on in large part. Which really, the writer of that would just come up with some great idea like “Antarctica,” and then think about how many cool set pieces… What are the fun and exciting things that can happen in Antarctica? And then string them together into a story.

Mary: And I think that’s a really good point, that a lot of times adventure fiction is based in the milieu, the place that it’s… There is an element of exploration to it.

Brandon: Right. Now, we’ll get into Idea story where we’ll talk… We’ve kind of put a lot of exploration under that, but that’s more about the discovery of something. The fun from that comes from discovery.

In this, it’s really the challenge. The fun comes from the challenge. And Tintin’s a perfect example, Indiana Jones is a perfect example, of these stories where… Indiana Jones has danger. He’s fighting Nazis. But he has put himself there, and it’s the challenge, “Can I beat the Nazis?” Not, “Oh no! Nazis are going to kill me!” Very very different stories doing something different.

Mary: And I think the other thing it is that the challenge is, again, almost always a physical challenge. Whereas with an idea story it’s usually a mental challenge, it’s exploring an idea as opposed to exploring a “Can I do it?”

Dan: Idea stories are often exploring an idea or a place to learn how it works. Whereas in Adventure we’re just trying to get out alive, or we’re trying to jump from one thing to another.

Howard: Another really good example of adventure stories is the Jackie Chan movies. Because it’s set-piece after set-piece in which we are seeing Jackie Chan do cool things. And the evidence for me that this is just straight-up adventure is that the linking story is usually quite weak between these elements. And often the best part of the film is the pseudo-documentary at the end, which is outtakes of Jackie Chan trying to do these things he did for the movie. It was all about doing amazing things.

Mary: And the other thing about this “Doing of the Amazing Things” is for the reader. I think one of the emotions that you’re trying to convey to them, or invoke in them, or why they read it, is that the protagonist is doing cool things that the reader would like to be able to do.

Brandon: Yeah. There’s great elements of wish fulfillment in almost every one of these, as we’ve talked about. But in this one it’s the, “I want to go there and accomplish this thing.” It’s one of the reasons you watch a documentary… which I love documentaries, and films about Everest. Stories about Everest. Just because that’s one of the greatest challenges that someone can face in our world, is “Can I climb this mountain? It’s there. Can I get to the top? It kills a lot of people. Can I go do this?”

Now, some of those stray into having subgenres of other elements, but at their core every “Climb a Mountain” story is an adventure, in the same way going against Nazis is an adventure, in the same way that going and finding King Kong could be an adventure. All of these are… there’s this element of, “Go and do this thing.”

The question I have for you guys is… You mention Milieu. These are often Milieu stories. Can you have an adventure that is not in an exotic location?

Mary: I think definitely you can. Although it’s… I think that one of the core elements of an adventure story is that the person having the adventure is an outsider. So I think that it’s possible to have an adventure story that’s in a city, but I think that the main character would not be from the city.

Howard: Coming back to Jackie Chan, “Rumble in the Broncs.” The Broncs—it’s a place any of us can go, but our protagonist was not from there. He was an outsider. So it wasn’t an exotic location, but there’s plenty of adventure in it.

Dan: Well, it’s worth pointing out that in Jackie Chan movies and movies like it, even if the setting is familiar, each set-piece makes sure to add something unique to the environment. Brandon: That’s true. The set-pieces are quite dynamic. Dan: This isn’t just a fight on stable ground. This is a fight on a moving platform, or a hovercar, or in a factory full of flames and televisions and things.

Howard: The scene in “Live Free or Die Hard” where Shia LaBeouf (Editor’s Note: he means Justin Long) says, “You shot down a helicopter with your car.” 

Yeah! We’re in a fairly ordinary place, but somebody launched a car at a helicopter. And…

Brandon: Now, that’s an excellent example. Because the Die Hard films started as thrillers, and transitioned into adventure stories. And actually their rating went down as they transitioned into adventure, and the things accomplished got more extravagant.

Howard: Well in part that’s because they… and now I’m maybe blowing the Writing Excuses horn a little too hard. [Dan laughs] They didn’t understand that the core element that attracted people to these films was Thriller.

Brandon: You could make that argument, certainly. You could also make the argument they understood that but said, for a wider audience… “We’ve done this so many times. We need to take the genre in a different direction and build into it this other idea.”

Dan: I think there’s a lot to be said for tone as well. If you take a thriller and lighten the tone, you’re going to get an adventure story. And so just depending on which audience you want to grab, as soon as they make a… I think they already made one of the Die Hards as PG-13. Brandon: Oh yeah. Like, 2 of them have been, or something. Dan: Instantly that, almost by definition, changed it toward adventure.

Mary: I’m thinking that one of the differences then is, part of what you’re looking at when you’re looking at the hero’s solutions to the problem… The same threat could arise. But with the thriller, one of the things that you’re setting up is, “Is he going to survive?” And with an adventure you’re looking at, “I want to see what cool thing he does to get out of this.”

Brandon: Yeah. “Can he or she accomplish this thing? Can they do it?”

Dan: That balance of power…

[08:58] Book of the Week

Brandon: Let’s go ahead and stop for the book of the week. I actually have the book of the week this week. It is Leviathan Wakes, by James S. A. Corey. This is actually half written by a friend of mine, Daniel Abraham, under a pseudonym along with Ty Franck.

This was a really good book. I enjoyed it. It has that sense of adventure. It’s a grand Space Opera with some Hard Science-Fiction trappings. Just hard enough to make you believe. It’s exactly what I love in a science-fiction story. It follows primarily two protagonists as they navigate what’s going on in the politics and adventure and weirdness of space.

It’s a small system though, kind of like Firefly, in that they’re not travelling to other star systems. It all takes place in our solar system, except all of the asteroids have been mined. And there’s people living in them. And each of the moons have a colony on it. And I liked this because you can kind of grasp the size, even though you can’t really… But you can say, “Okay. There are like, 50 places that people can go in this solar system. And I can keep these all straight.” Mars is a superpower, and Earth is a superpower, and the asteroid belt is a bunch of Belters living in these little hollowed out asteroids.

It’s very fun. It does transition genres about at the halfway point. I won’t give that surprise away to you. But it’s very interesting how they transition genres in the middle of this.

I will give a content warning on this. They curse a lot. So if that’s something that bothers you, this may be something to avoid. It is an excellently written book and there’s a companion television show now, which I believe Howard is watching?

Howard: Yep. The Expanse. And the Expanse takes us to that halfway point in the first book.

Brandon: Great book. Written by James S. A. Corey, read by Jefferson May. And you can pick it up at Audible. Start a 30 day trial. Go to AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse. Support the podcast, get a free book, and enjoy Leviathan Wakes.

[11:00] Part 2

Brandon: Alright. Second half of the podcast. Let’s dig into this. Let’s say, okay… We know what an adventure story is. How do we conceive and come up with one of our own? What are the elements we need to put in, and how do we do it?

Mary: So the things we’ve been talking about that adventures have is that there are cool set-pieces. And this means that you’re looking for cool action scenes. You’re also looking for a protagonist who is competent but pushed to the edge of their competency.

Brandon: That’s a great… Indiana Jones is the perfect example of this. Because I often reference the intro to the first Indiana Jones. But it does it perfectly. You see how competent he is, and he still fails. He’s right at the edge. You know that he could pull something great off, but he’s going to have to push himself.

Howard: I had a fun experience with the very first story I did (Editor’s Note: called “Heartfire”) for Privateer Press… and I’ve related aspects of this before. Scott Taylor, the editor, told me, “This is adventure fiction. We need something to happen.” [Dan laughs] “We need something to go on here in this first act.” And he said, “It can be a runaway cart.”

And so what I built was the cart, was being pulled by a mule… the mule gets spooked because a Steamjack explodes. And our very competent protagonist is paying attention to the Steamjack. He’s like, “It shouldn’t be making that noise. Guys. Guys! Pay a—” And then there’s an explosion, and then he doesn’t have control of his cart, and then we’re caroming through the city.

And Scott read it and was like, “Oh yeah! See? More of this. And make the explosion bigger.” [others laugh] Which was a fun learning experience for me, because I didn’t realise at the time that that was what I wanted to be cranking.

Dan: Now see, that is a great example to bring up, because it is a way to add adventure but without diluting the story you were trying to tell. You still made sure that the character’s competency was involved, that that specific character was a scholar, and so he was noticing something wrong with the machinery.

And so you were using it to expose character and to make the story fun, but without losing all the rest of the stuff you wanted to tell.

Mary: I think in some ways one of the things to actually look at when you are looking at your conflicts, is actually what Howard just said—is, “Can you do this conflict in such a way that the explosion is bigger?”

Which sounds a little facile, but when something goes wrong… It’s like, “Okay, this is the level of wrong I had planned for it to go. But this is an adventure. Can I take that ‘This has gone wrong’ to another level?”

So you you’ve got the one Nazi who comes in. Why not a squad of Nazis? [Dan chuckles]

Brandon: I want to raise the concept here though, that when I’m plotting… Because I’m a planner. When I’m plotting I’m often looking at, “What are the payoffs? What are people looking for? And what’s going to pull them from page to page?” And we’ll spend some time next time when we come back to adventure about this idea of pulling people page to page. But I think you want to look at an escalation with adventure fiction.

Often there’s a really big thing at the beginning. It’s not your biggest set-piece but it’s a good one to give your promise to your reader. And then you want to deescalate for a while, and do setup for a while. Have small escalations building up to grand set-pieces later on. And you do need to make the explosions bigger through the course of your story, as well as having some at the beginning that will draw people in.

Mary: Something that I do dealing with adventure in my stories is that I write down a list of the set-pieces. And then I will order them and figure out where they need to happen structurally in the book.

Brandon: And you can escalate other things than the explosions. We’re using that as a metaphor. You can raise the stakes. You can… It can be very personal, with the main character saving a room full of people. And at the end you make it a building. This sort of thing is okay. Or you can just show the character being pushed to their limits trying to achieve this, so that even if the end one is not necessarily as big as the beginning, we’re there with that character and what they accomplish should be bigger.

Mary: And actually, you know, I think in some ways… Now that you’ve said that, I think I was wrong when I said that it’s about making the explosions bigger. It’s actually about making the way the character solves it cooler. Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Dan: Yes.

Howard: That’s part of it. The other part of it, and we’ve talked about this in our podcasts, about romance in particular. How is the character responding to this? If it’s a very small explosion but it’s right next to my head, and I’m disoriented, and I now have to be extra-super-competent in order to accomplish what comes next… That’s a completely different experience than if I’m just running and jumping and whatever.

Brandon: Howard, would you say that Schlock Mercenary is primarily adventure fiction?

Howard: No, I’d say it’s primarily humour because of the punchline. But I think that topic would fit better when we’re talking about adventure as a subgenre… Brandon: Yeah, that’s a good idea. Howard: …because I’m definitely exploiting that.

One of my favourite adventure moments in anything is the scene in the oft-maligned Pirates of the Caribbean 4 movie, where Jack Sparrow shows us his plan to escape from the dining room. And he does all the zany stuff that you see him do in the first three movies, except you see him looking at things and positioning the room as he’s doing his crazy-talk.

And then all of a sudden a dude goes out the window, and there’s swinging on the chandelier, and he grabs the pastry… And these are all things that are fun and exciting, but knowing that he isn’t just making it up… Brandon: Right. He’s set it all up so that he could be cool. Howard: This was a set-piece, and that made it so much cooler for me than any of his other action scenes.

Dan: Now, I like the way that we keep coming back again and again to the environment, and the way that the environment is informing the Adventure. Because I think more than anything, that’s how I use this—is to think, “This story takes place in a big city. That means I’ve got a train, and a skyscraper, and a big shipping dock. What cool things can I do there? And how can I make sure that the character scenes and the investigation scenes and whatever else I’m doing happen in a cool place where cool things can be done?”

Brandon: This is because the conflict in an adventure story is primarily external. It’s the environment, or it is other people, that the main character is trying to overcome in some way.

And that externality of it doesn’t mean you can’t have an internal arc for your character. You should. But that as the prime story means that the obstacles put in front of this character need to be great to challenge them. And if those weren’t there you wouldn’t have your story.

Mary: I think one of the other aspects of the location and all of that, is actually that there needs to be an element of improvisation. That part of the area of competency of your character is someone that can look at a room, or look at wherever it is, and figure out… You know, like Jackie Chan, “What do I have to fight with? I will fight with this ladder!”

Howard: Peter Molyneux, game designer, very famously once said that he was tired of these fantasy games in which you are upgrading your weapons, and really the only thing you do is swing your sword at things. Yes, you develop all these cool moves, but these fights shouldn’t be taking place on a flat battlefield. You are in an environment. Why are we not jumping off of walls? Why are we not throwing bottles? Why are we not setting fire to things? And what he was describing was, “How can we make games look more like action movies?”

Mary: And the Princess Bride—the sword fight. Brandon: Yeah. Perfect example. Mary: Because that is not level terrain. And the entire time you’re watching it you’re like, “I wish I could be doing that.” And it’s articulating character, it is advancing the plot… it’s really cool to watch.

[19:38] Homework

Brandon: Alright! This has been a great discussion. We will dig into this again in a couple of weeks. First I want to give you some homework. Dan! You have our homework this week.

Dan: Alright. Your homework this week… You are going to do what Howard’s editor made him do. Take an expository scene, whether that is an introduction to a character or dialogue between two characters… Something where you’re feeding us important information. But then set it during something really exciting. Something thrilling.

The room is falling apart, you’re being attacked, you’re running away from something… Whatever that is, make us have an adventure during our exposition.

Brandon: This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go write.

Mary: Writing Excuses is a Dragonsteel production, jointly hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson.

[wxat]

S11E08 - Wonder as Subgenre (-media)

[source] (Editor’s Note: This is the text-only version, without any embedded media. To view the full version, please go to part 1).

Mary: This episode of Writing Excuses is brought to you by Audible. Visit AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse to start your free trial membership.

Season 11, Episode 8.

Brandon: This is Writing Excuses! Wonder as Subgenre. Mary: 15 minutes long. Howard: Because you’re in a hurry, Dan: and we’re not that smart.

Brandon: I’m Brandon. Mary: I’m Mary. Howard: I’m Howard. Dan: And I’m Dan.

Brandon: And we are going to talk about how to use wonder, specifically in your books, as your genre to draw people going page to page.

Now remember, the idea behind these elemental genres is to give this sort of sense of progression and motion. To have something in your book that is going to draw people through a substory and make them interested and fascinated in it.

And how do we use wonder in this regard? And that’s our question for the podcasters.

Howard: Okay. Well last week I raised Ringworld as an example of sense of wonder. And if you look at the novel Ringworld, it really is just all sense of wonder. You move from “Wow, it’s big! Wow it’s big! Wow it’s big!” to “Wow it’s big!” to “Wow! There’s a great big hole, we can get out of the thing that’s big.”

Brandon: It’s a great book for this.

Howard: Yes. It’s wonderful for that. And the— (Sorry. That was the wrong word, but it was the right word.) The point of this episode is, “How do you write a story where those things are not what’s driving the story forward?” Those are things that are happening to one of the characters, or to the villain, or…

Dan: So what we’re describing is pretty much the structure of the first Harry Potter novel. The plot revolves around him eventually learning magic and defeating a villain. But the first half of the book is just, “Here’s one amazing thing. Here’s another amazing thing.” It’s one after another, jaw-on-the-floor kind of stuff.

Why do we go to Diagon Alley? Because it’s wonderful, and we want to get that sense of exploring this amazing new world and be wowed by it.

Howard: Right. In the first Harry Potter film, the thing I remember from that film was, “They’re making me watch Hagrid drag a Christmas tree that he has cut down into this… Cool. Why are we doing this?”

Because he’s so much larger than the tree is, and I am being allowed to just experience that. Was the movie too long? Yes. [others laugh] But they gave us those pieces because that sense of wonder from the Harry Potter books was a large part of what drew people through them, even though the books are Harry’s story about being a wizard.

Dan: Yeah. And this kind of plot doesn’t have to be childish. Because all the Elric books are plotted the same way. The first half is, “Here’s a crazy new thing! Check out how weird it is!”

Brandon: And the second half is “Oh no, I’m probably going to have to kill someone I love in order to make this happen”... [others laugh] And so it’s like wonder to horror.

But yeah. I mean, I wrote down, “This is all about waiting to see the next cool thing.” That is what is driving this sense. Now, it’s often mashed up with something else, as a lot of these are. But yeah.

So the first thing that I would say, if you want to use this in your books, you want to have this be a strength—you need to put awesome things in your books.

Dan: You do.

Howard: Oh, wow. Okay. Way to throw down the gauntlet.

Dan: And a great example of this is, again, Indiana Jones. Which just jumps from set-piece to set-piece. And you can tell that Spielberg and Lucas writing this were just thinking, “What would be so awesome? Let’s have the best truck chase scene ever filmed. Let’s have a giant boulder rolling out of nowhere. Let’s have every snake our production artist can buy.” And that’s what’s driving that story.

Mary: Yeah. And this is actually a different way of looking at plotting, is to sit down and make a list of, “What are all the really cool things? What are all the things that I myself would find really cool?” And just make a list of them. And then kind of order them in magnitude, so that things get progressively cooler.

Because one of the things that can happen sometimes in a sense of wonder story when it misfires, is that you start with the coolest thing and then everything else feels like a little bit of a let down.

Howard: Broken Arrow in which in the middle of the movie, we have a nuclear explosion in southern Utah. And I remember watching and thinking, “Okay. That was really, really visually cool. How are you gonna top that?” Kung fu on a moving train didn’t do it.

Brandon: However, kung fu on a moving train at the beginning might’ve been enough.

I love that you mentioned this set-piece thing, Dan. Set-pieces, I actually have started to think about, specifically when I’m writing certain books. It depends. Some books, this is not an aspect of the book. Some books I’m like, “Alright. What is my awesome set-piece that readers can get to and say, ‘That is cool!’”

Dan: Yeah, that’s a habit that I’ve picked up actually from Game Master manuals, back when I would run roleplaying games. Because they would say, “Your session oughta maybe have a chase scene. And that chase scene ought to be somewhere cool with lots of neat stuff for them to dodge around. Maybe your session needs to have a fight scene, a jet fighter scene, a hacking scene, whatever it is… something that can stand as a set-piece and a centre-piece to that evening’s play.”

Mary: Yeah. The other thing is that if the thing that you’re building towards is something that is smaller, that also lets you know that you need to make the early things… If the thing you’re excited about is relatively… petit? Then you know that you need to make sure that your earlier stuff, when you’re designing these other things, these other elements, you need to keep them proportional to the thing you’re building towards.

And this is why just making a list of “What is cool” can be so helpful.

Brandon: I think it can also help you live up to your foreshadowing. Because foreshadowing sense of wonder is going to be important in your book. You’re going to show them cool new things periodically. You can start to foreshadow some of these things that are coming.

The Death Star is foreshadowed in Star Wars. It’s one of the examples we bring up. And so when we start to see it, and when we start to experience it, and when we then go get to blow it up… each of those are a progression of wonder toward interacting with this thing.

Mary: And the other aspect of this as well, within that sense that wonder, is that sense of strangeness, the newness of it. And making sure that your reader understands that this is strange and new, either in the way the narrative presents it or in the way the P.O.V. character reacts to it.

This can give you… You may not want an entire novel that’s “sense of wonder.” You may just have a single chapter, or a single item. But sitting down and also deciding how your character is going to react to this, and why it is new for them, and why it is strange, can help you fine-tune that sense of wonder.

Brandon: You know, this is another major point that I wrote down as something that we really needed to talk about. Which was making sure, if you want to use this, that there are characters who can be awed by things.

James Bond is not awed by anything, right? Depending on the incarnation of James Bond and the story.

Mary: Right. Generally speaking.

Brandon: But this archetype of this character, he is too cool to think anything is awesome other than himself. And so if that type of character is the story you’re telling, you’re not going to have a sense of wonder in the same way.

Dan: And that is why the Bond movies will always have the Bond Girls. Because here’s this hot young 22 year-old following him around, and she’s the one who gets to be in awe of the giant submersible city or whatever.

Mary: Yeah. And Sherlock Holmes has Watson. So sometimes having the viewpoint character be less experienced, than whoever is driving the action in this sense of wonder story is a good way to help boost that wonder of the moment.

Harry Potter is another good example. He’s the least experienced person in that story.

Howard: It also gives you a tool which is one of my personal favourites because it’s inherently humorous: Imagine a Sherlock Holmes story in which Watson is being increasingly wowed by things that are happening, and Holmes is very nonchalant about it. And then we open a door and Holmes says, “Wow!”

Well okay, now we know—even without looking in the door—that something impressive has happened and we are prepared to recontextualize whatever it is he’s looking at.

Brandon: You know, there’s a T.V. trope—sorry to send you guys in this direction, I know it’s dangerous... which is, “Worf gets beat up,” where you introduce how strong Worf is, and then you have him get beat up. And it’s the same sort of thing. You introduce how callous somebody is, and then you have them experience a moment of a sense of wonder. That would be a great way.

Mary: Yeah.

Dan: But you know, the reason Sherlock Holmes works and Worf doesn’t is that Wharf gets beat up every single episode. So...

Brandon: Yes. Every episode we’re like, “This guy must be tough! He beat up Worf!” (Editor’s Note: I couldn’t find a compilation of him getting specifically beat up... but the video is more or less along the same lines, and it’s funny anyway! ^^)

Dan: Nobody cares~!

Now going back to what Mary was talking about with the small-scale sense of wonder... that, in my opinion, is the number one reason that the Harry Potter series is as successful as it is. Because she didn’t just rest on the giant set-pieces. She took it all the way down.

The candy wrappers. How many amazing, wonderful things are just on the candy cart in a two page scene on the train on the way to Hogwarts? And she took the care to fill even the corners with wonder. And that’s why that series has kind of entered our culture and consciousness so much.

Brandon: I think that’s a brilliant point.

Book of the Week

Let’s go ahead and stop for our book of the week. A book that should inspire great awe and wonder in you, because I wrote it. [all laugh] This is the Bands of Mourning (Mistborn 6), which is the third of the Wax and Wayne stories.

And I actually chose this one specifically here, because I transitioned. In the previous book, Shadows of Self, I don’t want to give any spoilers, but the elemental subgenre is horror and thriller mixed together. It is a very tense book. Lots of terrible things are happening. And it’s about stopping terrible, terrible things.

And because that book was so tense, being finished with it I wanted the readers to move into something that shifted subgenres dramatically toward something a little more hopeful. And I mixed in a lot of sense of wonder, and a lot of exploration and idea. So this is more of an Indiana Jones-Mistborn mash-up, where the previous 2 have been police-procedural and terrorist/murderer mashups with Mistborn. Here we finally get to do something a little more light-hearted. So I actually do do Allomancy kung fu on top of a train.

[others laugh]

Howard: Oh, right on.

Dan: Very cool.

Brandon: And I do all sorts of fun things. It’s read by Michael Cramer. I hope you guys will enjoy it.

Howard: AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse, a 30-day free trial membership. And yeah, Michael Cramer is one of our favourite narrators, been doing this for a long time. And having him read you a Brandon Sanderson book? That should seal the deal all by itself.

Brandon: So, going back to a sense of wonder one thing I wanted to mention, and Dan brought it up with Harry Potter, is that you can have these little brief moments of wonder in your story that are not necessarily related to the main plot. And in fact, you can just kind of dip into wonder for a second.

And I’ve seen this happen really effectively in books, in simple things. I’ve seen a relationship plot where one character steps back and says, “You know what? This person I’m in love with is really amazing.” And has a moment of basking in it to kind of let the reader understand that this character’s been immersed in this world, but they’re taking a step out and looking at it.

And that happens to me sometimes with my cellphone, where I’m like, “I’m holding a tricorder right here!” There’s a moment of awe there, and you can use that even with the characters firmly entrenched to pop out and remind the reader, “You’re reading something that is wonderful.”

Howard: Yeah. Without telling a quote-unquote “genre-fiction story,” you could write a romantic comedy in which one of our romantic leads lives in Manhattan, and another one is a visitor to Manhattan. And the visitor’s sense of wonder about the skyscrapers and the big and open-all-night and all of the things that make Manhattan become part of that character’s driving force, while the other character… “Meh. don’t walk around looking up. Everybody can tell you’re a tourist.”

Brandon: I’ve got an even better example of something like this that worked so well. There’s a… I believe it’s German, it’s a foreign film. “Mostly Martha”? It was made into an American version called, No Reservations, with Catherine Zeta-Jones. I liked the original better.

And it’s a cooking… It’s about 2 chefs that have a relationship. And that movie basks in the wonder of great food. And they will occasionally make something for the other that, as chefs, they will take and bite and say, “Wow! You are really good at this!” And there is a sense of wonder to discovering how good a food they can each make for each other. And the main plot is a romance plot. The sub-plot is a sense of wonder about food.

Mary: The thing that I want to point out in all of these is that there is a progression. First, the reader experiences—or the character experiences something new. And then they experience something unexpected about that new thing. And then they are amazed by it.

And that unexpected thing is something strange, like with the candy that we were talking about. Harry Potter has never had this flavour of candy. It’s a new candy.

Howard: “Booger.”

Mary: [laughs] Yeah. It’s a new candy. But “Booger” is strange. And it’s amazing that someone could do that.

I’m a foodie a little bit, and when I’m eating something and someone has combined things in ways that I was not expecting… And that element of strange is when you take two things and you combine them in ways that the reader is not expecting. So when you’re trying to create that sense of wonder… “That’s no moon. It’s a spaceship.” But it’s not shaped like a spaceship. It’s shaped like a moon. It’s not just that it’s big. It’s that it’s shaped like a moon, and it’s the size of a moon.

So having them encounter something new, and then whatever aspect of it is there—with the cardboard box example that we used earlier... The thing that makes it new is the strangeness of the postage stamps being out of date, and out of sequence, date-wise.

So look at your sense of wonder element, and see how you can tweak it to highlight its strangeness. The juxtaposition between 2 elements. And then have your character react to it in a way that lets us know that this is amazing, and give us time to experience that.

Brandon: You know, another thing that I would suggest doing with this—if you want to make it a major theme, or a major subgenre to your story—is, you might want to look at a time-bomb.

Time-bombs are going to work for a lot of our different plotting progressions. I’m thinking specifically of Mistborn. In Mistborn I introduce to you that there 16 metals. You don’t know what they all are at the beginning, but you know that they’re all going to do something awesome.

I introduce you to a character who has not experienced very many of them, and we start to say, “Here’s a cool metal. Play with this.” You start to realise, “I’m gonna get 12 more of these through the course of the book. Here’s a new one. Here’s a new one.” And I actually construct scenes where Vin, the main character, goes and trains with experts in each of these different metals to give you moments to enjoy her enjoying discovering her newfound powers.

And this works wonderfully for the “Apprentice” plot, the plot where you’ve got somebody interfacing with something brand new. But even a travelogue is basically a time-bomb for a sense of wonder. You give them a map, a bunch of points on the map, and those each are a promise: “You’re going to go to these places and they’re going to be increasingly wonderful.”

Dan: A lot of video games use this principle really well, by showing you an empty awards case in the login screen. And so some of the achievements you get are just little surprises that show up. But others you’ve been waiting for days and weeks…

Howard: I’m meant to be filling that with stuff? How are…

[aww]

Dan: We’ve talked about this… [laughs]

Mary: But the point with this is that we’re talking about using these elemental aspects of storytelling to hack your brain. And if you want a story in which the major driving force is that sense of wonder, then you need to use this time-bomb method and have these packed all the way through to lead the character through. Because that’s the major emotion you want them to be experiencing. That sense of, “This is so cool!” But if you’re wanting to use it as a subgenre then you don’t actually want to use the time-bomb method.

Brandon: You don’t.

Mary: You just want to use these little pockets, these little layers, these flourishes of that sense of “Ooooohhh!”

Brandon: You don’t want to distract from whatever your main plot is.

Mary: Exactly.

Brandon: And that’s gonna be a real trick as you try for these things—learning how, I’m writing primarily a romance. We’ll put in a sense of wonder. But if my sense of wonder overcomes my romance, either I have to reconceptualize my book, or I need to make sure the romance element is stronger as a plot point and the sense of wonder is more of a Easter Egg here and there.

Howard: Yeah. The pitfall of the time-bomb method, where you are essentially roadmapping—there are going to be 14 more “sense of wonders”, or 14 more of these experiences—is that you’re hanging Chekhov’s gun on the wall. You’re making a promise to the reader.

If they do not get that sense of wonder all the way through, or get something that is even better than that sense because the story changed, then you’ve broken promise in a way that lets the reader down. And for me, a sense of wonder story that has a sense of let-down in it is the very Litmus Test of failure.

Dan: Yeah, let-down is not one of our elemental genres.

Brandon: No. Though I’ll say there’s very few actual books that are all about sense of wonder. In fact, I would say the Harry Potter method of the first half is sense of wonder, and you transition into a thriller, or some other sense of progression, happens very often.

Howard: I think Ringworld is probably the closest I can come to an example of that.

Dan: Mistborn is a great example, I think, of how to do this right. Because if you just introduced us to 14 metals the same way every time, then the sense of wonder wouldn’t be there after the third or fourth. And so what you do, is she discovers this new metal while in the middle of a fight. She discovers a new way of using this metal and has this battle flying up in the sky above a castle… These kinds of things that ramp it up every time, so that that sense of wonder stays sharp.

Howard: And then we rediscover Feruchemy and whatever else. And…

Brandon: And then we add a new magic system.

Howard: Oh, grotty.

Brandon: Yeah, that’s how I keep this going is, “Hey! New magic system.”

Howard: [laughs]

Homework

Brandon: We are actually out of time on this. This is has been a fantastic podcast, but we’re actually going to give you some homework.

Dan: Alright. Your homework this week is that we want you to do this. We want you to actually take a story that you’re working on, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a sense of wonder, and apply a sense of wonder to some aspect of it. Somebody walks into a room and sees something amazing, or walks out into the city street and sees something amazing. Write a paragraph or two where your character experiences a sense of wonder.

Brandon: This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go write.

[wxat]

S11E08 - Wonder as Subgenre (part 4, +media)

[source, reads from 13:50] (Part 1 | Text-only version)

Mary: The thing that I want to point out in all of these is that there is a progression. First, the reader experiences—or the character experiences something new. And then they experience something unexpected about that new thing. And then they are amazed by it.

And that unexpected thing is something strange, like with the candy that we were talking about. Harry Potter has never had this flavour of candy. It’s a new candy.

Howard: “Booger.”

Mary: [laughs] Yeah. It’s a new candy. But “Booger” is strange. And it’s amazing that someone could do that.

I’m a foodie a little bit, and when I’m eating something and someone has combined things in ways that I was not expecting… And that element of strange is when you take two things and you combine them in ways that the reader is not expecting. So when you’re trying to create that sense of wonder… “That’s no moon. It’s a spaceship.” But it’s not shaped like a spaceship. It’s shaped like a moon. It’s not just that it’s big. It’s that it’s shaped like a moon, and it’s the size of a moon.

So having them encounter something new, and then whatever aspect of it is there—with the cardboard box example that we used earlier... The thing that makes it new is the strangeness of the postage stamps being out of date, and out of sequence, date-wise.

So look at your sense of wonder element, and see how you can tweak it to highlight its strangeness. The juxtaposition between 2 elements. And then have your character react to it in a way that lets us know that this is amazing, and give us time to experience that.

Brandon: You know, another thing that I would suggest doing with this—if you want to make it a major theme, or a major subgenre to your story—is, you might want to look at a time-bomb.

Time-bombs are going to work for a lot of our different plotting progressions. I’m thinking specifically of Mistborn. In Mistborn I introduce to you that there 16 metals. You don’t know what they all are at the beginning, but you know that they’re all going to do something awesome.

I introduce you to a character who has not experienced very many of them, and we start to say, “Here’s a cool metal. Play with this.” You start to realise, “I’m gonna get 12 more of these through the course of the book. Here’s a new one. Here’s a new one.” And I actually construct scenes where Vin, the main character, goes and trains with experts in each of these different metals to give you moments to enjoy her enjoying discovering her newfound powers.

And this works wonderfully for the “Apprentice” plot, the plot where you’ve got somebody interfacing with something brand new. But even a travelogue is basically a time-bomb for a sense of wonder. You give them a map, a bunch of points on the map, and those each are a promise: “You’re going to go to these places and they’re going to be increasingly wonderful.”

Dan: A lot of video games use this principle really well, by showing you an empty awards case in the login screen. And so some of the achievements you get are just little surprises that show up. But others you’ve been waiting for days and weeks…

Howard: I’m meant to be filling that with stuff? How are…

[aww]

Dan: We’ve talked about this… [laughs]

Mary: But the point with this is that we’re talking about using these elemental aspects of storytelling to hack your brain. And if you want a story in which the major driving force is that sense of wonder, then you need to use this time-bomb method and have these packed all the way through to lead the character through. Because that’s the major emotion you want them to be experiencing. That sense of, “This is so cool!” But if you’re wanting to use it as a subgenre then you don’t actually want to use the time-bomb method.

Brandon: You don’t.

Mary: You just want to use these little pockets, these little layers, these flourishes of that sense of “Ooooohhh!”

Brandon: You don’t want to distract from whatever your main plot is.

Mary: Exactly.

Brandon: And that’s gonna be a real trick as you try for these things—learning how, I’m writing primarily a romance. We’ll put in a sense of wonder. But if my sense of wonder overcomes my romance, either I have to reconceptualize my book, or I need to make sure the romance element is stronger as a plot point and the sense of wonder is more of a Easter Egg here and there.

Howard: Yeah. The pitfall of the time-bomb method, where you are essentially roadmapping—there are going to be 14 more “sense of wonders”, or 14 more of these experiences—is that you’re hanging Chekhov’s gun on the wall. You’re making a promise to the reader.

If they do not get that sense of wonder all the way through, or get something that is even better than that sense because the story changed, then you’ve broken promise in a way that lets the reader down. And for me, a sense of wonder story that has a sense of let-down in it is the very Litmus Test of failure.

Dan: Yeah, let-down is not one of our elemental genres.

Brandon: No. Though I’ll say there’s very few actual books that are all about sense of wonder. In fact, I would say the Harry Potter method of the first half is sense of wonder, and you transition into a thriller, or some other sense of progression, happens very often.

Howard: I think Ringworld is probably the closest I can come to an example of that.

Dan: Mistborn is a great example, I think, of how to do this right. Because if you just introduced us to 14 metals the same way every time, then the sense of wonder wouldn’t be there after the third or fourth. And so what you do, is she discovers this new metal while in the middle of a fight. She discovers a new way of using this metal and has this battle flying up in the sky above a castle… These kinds of things that ramp it up every time, so that that sense of wonder stays sharp.

Howard: And then we rediscover Feruchemy and whatever else. And…

Brandon: And then we add a new magic system.

Howard: Oh, grotty.

Brandon: Yeah, that’s how I keep this going is, “Hey! New magic system.”

Howard: [laughs]

Homework

Brandon: We are actually out of time on this. This is has been a fantastic podcast, but we’re actually going to give you some homework.

Dan: Alright. Your homework this week is that we want you to do this. We want you to actually take a story that you’re working on, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a sense of wonder, and apply a sense of wonder to some aspect of it. Somebody walks into a room and sees something amazing, or walks out into the city street and sees something amazing. Write a paragraph or two where your character experiences a sense of wonder.

Brandon: This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go write.

[wxat]

S11E08 - Wonder as Subgenre (+media, part 3)

[source, reads from 7:23] (Part 1 | Text-only version)

Brandon: You know, this is another major point that I wrote down as something that we really needed to talk about. Which was making sure, if you want to use this, that there are characters who can be awed by things.

James Bond is not awed by anything, right? Depending on the incarnation of James Bond and the story.

Mary: Right. Generally speaking.

Brandon: But this archetype of this character, he is too cool to think anything is awesome other than himself. And so if that type of character is the story you’re telling, you’re not going to have a sense of wonder in the same way.

Dan: And that is why the Bond movies will always have the Bond Girls. Because here’s this hot young 22 year-old following him around, and she’s the one who gets to be in awe of the giant submersible city or whatever.

Mary: Yeah. And Sherlock Holmes has Watson. So sometimes having the viewpoint character be less experienced, than whoever is driving the action in this sense of wonder story is a good way to help boost that wonder of the moment.

Harry Potter is another good example. He’s the least experienced person in that story.

Howard: It also gives you a tool which is one of my personal favourites because it’s inherently humorous: Imagine a Sherlock Holmes story in which Watson is being increasingly wowed by things that are happening, and Holmes is very nonchalant about it. And then we open a door and Holmes says, “Wow!”

Well okay, now we know—even without looking in the door—that something impressive has happened and we are prepared to recontextualize whatever it is he’s looking at.

Brandon: You know, there’s a T.V. trope—sorry to send you guys in this direction, I know it’s dangerous... which is, “Worf gets beat up,” where you introduce how strong Worf is, and then you have him get beat up. And it’s the same sort of thing. You introduce how callous somebody is, and then you have them experience a moment of a sense of wonder. That would be a great way.

Mary: Yeah.

Dan: But you know, the reason Sherlock Holmes works and Worf doesn’t is that Wharf gets beat up every single episode. So...

Brandon: Yes. Every episode we’re like, “This guy must be tough! He beat up Worf!”

(Editor’s Note: I couldn’t find a compilation of him getting specifically beat up... but this is more or less along the same lines, and it’s funny anyway! ^^)

Dan: Nobody cares~!

Now going back to what Mary was talking about with the small-scale sense of wonder... that, in my opinion, is the number one reason that the Harry Potter series is as successful as it is. Because she didn’t just rest on the giant set-pieces. She took it all the way down.

The candy wrappers. How many amazing, wonderful things are just on the candy cart in a two page scene on the train on the way to Hogwarts? And she took the care to fill even the corners with wonder. And that’s why that series has kind of entered our culture and consciousness so much.

Brandon: I think that’s a brilliant point.

Book of the Week

Let’s go ahead and stop for our book of the week. A book that should inspire great awe and wonder in you, because I wrote it. [all laugh] This is the Bands of Mourning (Mistborn 6), which is the third of the Wax and Wayne stories.

And I actually chose this one specifically here, because I transitioned. In the previous book, Shadows of Self, I don’t want to give any spoilers, but the elemental subgenre is horror and thriller mixed together. It is a very tense book. Lots of terrible things are happening. And it’s about stopping terrible, terrible things.

And because that book was so tense, being finished with it I wanted the readers to move into something that shifted subgenres dramatically toward something a little more hopeful. And I mixed in a lot of sense of wonder, and a lot of exploration and idea. So this is more of an Indiana Jones-Mistborn mash-up, where the previous 2 have been police-procedural and terrorist/murderer mashups with Mistborn. Here we finally get to do something a little more light-hearted. So I actually do do Allomancy kung fu on top of a train.

[others laugh]

Howard: Oh, right on.

Dan: Very cool.

Brandon: And I do all sorts of fun things. It’s read by Michael Cramer. I hope you guys will enjoy it.

Howard: AudiblePodcast.com/Excuse, a 30-day free trial membership. And yeah, Michael Cramer is one of our favourite narrators, been doing this for a long time. And having him read you a Brandon Sanderson book? That should seal the deal all by itself.

On with the Show

Brandon: So, going back to a sense of wonder one thing I wanted to mention, and Dan brought it up with Harry Potter, is that you can have these little brief moments of wonder in your story that are not necessarily related to the main plot. And in fact, you can just kind of dip into wonder for a second.

And I’ve seen this happen really effectively in books, in simple things. I’ve seen a relationship plot where one character steps back and says, “You know what? This person I’m in love with is really amazing.” And has a moment of basking in it to kind of let the reader understand that this character’s been immersed in this world, but they’re taking a step out and looking at it.

And that happens to me sometimes with my cellphone, where I’m like, “I’m holding a tricorder right here!” There’s a moment of awe there, and you can use that even with the characters firmly entrenched to pop out and remind the reader, “You’re reading something that is wonderful.”

Howard: Yeah. Without telling a quote-unquote “genre-fiction story,” you could write a romantic comedy in which one of our romantic leads lives in Manhattan, and another one is a visitor to Manhattan. And the visitor’s sense of wonder about the skyscrapers and the big and open-all-night and all of the things that make Manhattan become part of that character’s driving force, while the other character… “Meh. don’t walk around looking up. Everybody can tell you’re a tourist.”

Brandon: I’ve got an even better example of something like this that worked so well. There’s a… I believe it’s German, it’s a foreign film. “Mostly Martha”? It was made into an American version called, No Reservations, with Catherine Zeta-Jones. I liked the original better.

And it’s a cooking… It’s about 2 chefs that have a relationship. And that movie basks in the wonder of great food. And they will occasionally make something for the other that, as chefs, they will take and bite and say, “Wow! You are really good at this!” And there is a sense of wonder to discovering how good a food they can each make for each other. And the main plot is a romance plot. The sub-plot is a sense of wonder about food.

[continued in part 4]