Writing Excuses

If you haven't yet read "Parallel Perspectives," from Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, we have a PDF for you to download and read before you start listening to this episode. It's a 33mb file in a public DropBox folder.

Parallel Perspectives PDF for Writing Excuses listeners

Got the file? Done reading? Okay, let's go...

This week is a Project in Depth episode focusing on a 13-page graphic story ("comic book") found at the end of Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, and our focus this week will be story structure. It's fun, because the process of structuring a bonus story begins much differently than most projects, and the structure was laid in support of a four-creator collaboration.

The creators? Howard Tayler, Brenda Hickey, Travis Walton, and Keliana Tayler.

(If you'd like your own hard-copy of Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, you can get it from Amazon.com or directly from the publisher.)

Wesley Chu joins us for a literal shake-up of our structure for one episode. We had loads of fun with this one.

The I Ching is a collection of poems which you consult with numbered sticks. You ask a question, shake a random stick from the cup, and the corresponding poem holds your answer. In writing The Man in the High Castle, Phillip K. Dick used the I Ching to make plot decisions at crucial points. We decided to turn that, and our format, on its head, so we used the I Ching to ask us questions.  Understanding exactly what the I Ching was asking was at least as much fun as answering the questions we inferred.

Here are the I Ching's questions.

* Although he reached a great position, Wise Liu did not care for earthly things. He brewed instead the pills of heaven, forging immortality in his earthly crucible.

* Marriage is a blessed union indeed, when done in accordance with Yin and Yang. The dragon and the phoenix coil together, uniting in a sweet dream of love.

* All names in Heaven are unique, and even earthly things cannot be the same. Your future is set within the book of fate, which never confuses praise and blame.

* Emperor Ming slew his one true love, but a shaman took pity, and eased his heart with dreams of roaming upon the moon, his beloved mistress forever at his side.

* Two scholars went to the capitol for examinations. One passed, and stayed. One failed and returned, carrying a letter from his friend. He fell ill, but eventually, thank Heaven, came home.

 

Important Cultural Note: The I Ching is far more complex than we've been able to describe in this podcast, and is worthy of a lot more attention than we were able to present to you in this 'cast.

Want more Wes Chu? Wes didn't say a whole lot in this episode, possibly because he was exhausted from the grilling we gave him earlier. This episode was recorded directly it AFTER recording a guest episode with him that will be airing in coming weeks.

Audio Notes: Many of you have complained about the audio quality of the show, especially in the last few months. We went to significant additional effort and expense to make this latest set of sessions sound better. If you like the changes, please let us know.

 

This month's syllabus topic is story structure, and we'll be starting with the part we start with. And that part usually isn't the beginning -- that's where the story starts for the reader. We're going to talk about where the story starts for you. It's the answer to questions like "where is my story coming from?", "What kind of a story is this?", or  "What questions does it seek to raise, and subsequently answer for the readers?"

Structurally, it may help to revisit our discussion of the M.I.C.E. quotient. Knowing that your story is primarily a milieu story, as opposed to a character story, is a pretty big thing to know before you start writing.

Of course, if you're not outlining, this whole discussion may seem irrelevant to you, but ultimately if you discovery-write your way into a good story, you'll have answered these questions during that process. Knowing that this is a thing you do will likely help you do it better.

The Sherlock Episode Howard referenced was "The Sign of Three"

Homework For an upcoming "Project in Depth" -- you may wish to acquire a copy of Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, because we'll be digging into the bonus story, "Parallel Perspectives," which plays with POV in some ways that required significant re-writing during the collaboration process.

It's time for a Q&A on characters! The questions for this episode were provided by the attendees at the 2014 Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat:

* How do you have a character grow in power and/or expertise without needing to ridiculously overpower the villains?

* How do you give a flawed character a growth arc without changing what originally made that character likable?

* When you have a 1st person POV, how do you convey the emotional complexity of the non-POV characters?

* How do you create an interesting an engaging story with a main character who is not the protagonist or hero of the story?

* Is there an easy way to tell when the plot is driving the character instead of the other way around?

* How do you write a character with egregiously offensive views without you, as the author, appearing to espouse or condone those views?

* How do you write a character who has a belief that is different from your own?

* What are some tips for writing a sympathetic antagonist?

 

Liner Note: The Tumbler to which Mary referred is Diversity Cross-Check.

Note: We offered to take questions on Story Structure during March, but we'll be recording that episode two days from right now. Send us your story structure questions now! Do not delay! If you tweet them to @WritingExcuses they'll pile up in a space where we can quickly find them.

Our character-focused month continues with an exploration of the challenges involved in building a cast for your story. Whether you're building a large or small cast, you need to know why you're putting these people in the book, whether they're main characters, secondary characters, or spear-carriers, and what purpose each of them actually serves in your story.

Max Gladstone joins us to talk about worldbuilding, and how many genre settings seem to revolve around whatever gifted, magical, or otherwise special sort of people our heroes and villains happen to be. Jedi, for instance. Consider, then, the plight of the "regular" people, like Han Solo.

We talk about how to tell whether or not this is problematic for the story you are telling, and how one might work with the trope in ways that make stories better.

Characters are the focus of the Writing Excuses Master Class during February, and we lead off with an exploration of a common problem: the main character is often the least interesting person in the story. And of course, in the process of exploring the problem, we look at the sorts of things you can do in order to solve them. It something each of the hosts has struggled with, and we talk about the solutions we've arrived at (insomuch as we've managed to solve the problem.)

Sidebar: In Season 9 we talked about character attributes using a slider metaphor. If you want to catch up on that, here are links to Episode 9.1 (the three-prong model), Episode 9.25(sympathy), Episode 9.26 (competence), and Episode 9.32 (proactivity.)

At the Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat we premiered the Season 10 concept, and we invited our attendees to give us the questions we need this month. (They'll also be the ones providing our questions for February, but we'll cast our net wide for questions in March.)

* Ideas are hard! Is it ever acceptable for inexperienced writers to write derivative works?

* How do you keep from being discouraged when something similar to your idea comes out?

* How do you know when your idea is a novel, vs. when it's a short story?

* Should you only write for themed anthologies if you already have an idea ready in that theme?

* How can you practice description when your idea is set someplace completely unfamiliar to you?

* When should you abandon an idea you love?

Liner Notes: We talked about novel-length vs short-story-length ideas in Season 6, Episode 10 when we covered the M.I.C.E. quotient, and again in Season 8, Episode 20, when Mary talked about short story structure. Also, the anthology into which Howard was drafted on the basis of a spur-of-the-moment idea is Shared Nightmares, and his story is called "U.I."

Cherie Priest joins us for our "wildcard" episode on Lovecraftian horror this month. We're still doing the master class format, and part of that format is that once per month we'll have a guest, or otherwise step away from the month's topic a bit.

This episode talks about what Lovecraftian horror is, its influence on genre fiction, and the tools it offers for modern writers.

Writing Excuses Season 10, the podcasted master-class, continues with this exploration of that critical second step: what do do once you've got an idea that has story-legs.

(Note: When we say "two weeks ago" over and over, that's just bad math. You haven't missed an episode.)

We talk about our various approaches to this, many of which center around finding the person or people who are most affected by the thing our idea conjures into their world, but that's really only the very beginning of it.