Writing Excuses

Nancy Fulda is back this week to talk with us about the truth, and what do to when it's stranger than fiction. Sometimes real people's names are just too cool, and if you were to put them in a book nobody would believe it. Sometimes actual, historical events are so ridiculous there's no way you can get away with putting them in a story that you expect people to take seriously. And sometimes real science is just not going to be believed by your readers.

So how do you get away with using these things, with writing your stories in true places? Sometimes all it takes is the hanging of the right lantern, but in many cases you must go to great lengths to re-educate the reader without breaking the fourth wall or otherwise knocking them out of the story.

Eric James Stone and the Wilhelm Scream join us for a talk about "handwavium," that stuff that you use instead of through-and-through hard science. It's that part where you wave your hand and say "don't pay too much attention to this bit."

When does it fail, though? When is it good enough? Like so many other things, this hinges upon whether or not the reader is knocked out of the story by implausibility. We talk about post-trans-uranics, reversing the polarity, inertial dampeners, and internal consistency. We also talk about how we, as writers, make our decisions regarding handwavium.

Revision, revision, revision. It's easy to tell when you're in the thick of it, but how do you know when you're at the end of it? What does the last pass of revisions look like?

Eric James Stone joins us to talk about this. Brandon talk about his last pass of Words of Radiance, Howard throws down a code-base analogy, and Mary explains why Brandon is comfortable adding scenes during his last pass. Our goal is to help you develop a process that works for you.

Liner Note Linkage: "By the Hands of Juan Perón"

 

Mette Ivie Harrison joins us again for a fun discussion of how we experience time. This episode runs a little differently. Howard shares an experience he had driving on black ice, Mette shares an experience about a bike accident during an Ironman, and Mary shares a story about falling down a flight of stairs.

Each of these stories point up the way that our perception of time can change. There are physiological reasons for this, and knowing just a little bit about that physiology can help us write this actual, real phenomenon in a way that does not seem cliché. We talk about how we can write time compression or dilation phenomenon in ways that seem fresh.

What are those things you already know, but which you might not be using in your writing? How do you identify those things and put them to work for you? Mette Ivie Harrison joins us for a discussion of how you might "hijack" (okay, "repurpose") the knowledge you already have in order to make you a better writer. We hear a lot about the 10,000 hours of practice required to gain expertise in a given domain. It's possible that you've already spent some of those 10,000 hours in activities that you didn't realize were related.

Mette leads with her love of history. Mary directs us a bit with a metaphor from Jim Henson. Brandon talks about what is, by any other name, fanfic, and Howard talks about his degree in music composition. We also talk about how we leverage the knowledge we're acquiring in other activities to flesh out the things we're writing -- in effect, letting that stuff serve as research without it being part of the actual research we do.

 

Nancy Fulda, herself a lettered student of artificial intelligence, joins us to talk about writing artificial intelligence believably. We fire questions at her so that you don't have to!

We talk about what's current, what's coming, and what it is that we're all expecting. We also cover some of the things that writers get wrong (at least insofar as they knock the cognoscenti out of the story.)

Liner Notes: Here's the article Howard mentioned, "Evolving a Conscious Machine," from the June 1998 Discover. He got the details almost 100% wrong, but the gist of it was still there.

Nancy Fulda, who was a guest on the cast clear back in Season 2, joins us to talk about using the narrative to call out or offset character perceptions. Sometimes the POV character "knows" a thing which is not just incorrect, it is something the reader will recognize as incorrect, and if this isn't written correctly the reader may get knocked out of the story by the concern that the author might have his or her information wrong.

For instance, one character might refer to a small-arm magazine as a "clip," while other characters in the story, those more experienced with firearms, know that the word is "magazine."

Mary talks about the historical fantasy novel she's writing, set in Regency-era Antigua, and which steps squarely into issues of race. Nancy talks to us a bit about language drift, and about how our understanding about lots of things will change. Brandon then raises the question of using "author's notes."

Speaking Of Things The Characters Got Wrong: One of those episodes Nancy was in back in 2009? Yeah, we all got it wrong.

 

Eric James Stone joins us for a discussion of hard science fiction. We begin with a discussion of definitions, and then we take care not to spend the whole episode just talking about that. We talk about what we like about hard science fiction (with examples) and of course we address the crux of the matter: can you write hard science fiction without having a degree in the hard sciences?

Happy New Year, and happy new season of Writing Excuses!

Eric James Stone joins us to talk about his latest book deal. These things are different for everyone, and the marketplace is changing so quickly that it's worth noting the differences and the similarities between our deal experiences (three of us were sitting on brand-new deals as of the recording of this podcast.)

Eric in particular walks us through the chronology of his current book deal, from the original writing, through the agent representation and multiple rejections and revisions, all the way to the current contract. Did Eric's Nebula win (for a different story) help this deal along a bit? Oh, it may very well have done exactly that.

Liner Notes: Here's Jim Hine's "First Novel Survey" results page.

Mette Ivie Harrison joins us again, this time for a cast about productivity. She's written an eBook, 21 Reasons You Think You Don't Have Time To Write, which is currently free on the Kindle store. Here is the full list of 21 things, since we could spend an entire cast on just the first one.

The point here is to help you, the writer, to recognize the mental states and attitudes that are coming between you and your writing. It's our hope that you'll end up more productive, and we can't think of a better thought upon which to end Writing Excuses Season 8.

Here is to a 2014 in which you write more, write better, and are happier doing it.