We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. Kaelyn: My sister just finished reading the Grisha trilogy. And she was, of course, more of a fan of the Six of Crows after reading that. But one of the things she messaged me- she was like “yeah, the ending was kind of whatever, but it is very clear that this person was reading Harry Potter when they wrote this.” R: [laughs] K: And I said “Yeah, that definitely comes through.” She gave me this whole list of like, book two is basically just The Order of the Phoenix, and the end battle with all of the Grisha and the stand downs, all this stuff, and I was like “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” To be honest with you, I kinda limped through the end of that book, I wasn’t thinking about that too much. But anyways, it got me thinking about influences in writing and how writers are influenced and how in some cases that’s something that we’re like “Yes! You can tell that this writer was influenced by such-and-such, and they weave it so beautifully into their story.” And sometimes you get my sister calling me to complain about how she basically just read Harry Potter with Russian witches.  R: So was your sister accusing the author in any way of plagiarism? K [overlapping]: Not plagiarism. R [overlapping]: As a reader I’m curious, like how the reader perceives it when it’s that clear when someone’s been influenced.  K: I should’ve asked her before we started recording this - and this is something we’ll get to in there - I couldn’t tell if my sister was accusing the author of laziness or unoriginality.  R: Okay. K: That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about today as we’re talking about influence. What is influence, how are writers influenced? How’s the best way to leverage and utilize that influence? And when does influence cross into the realm of the negative? When is it no longer praise worthy? When is it, for instance, lazy, contrived, unoriginal, or, in worst case scenario, bordering into plagiarism?  R: Yeah, because that’s a tricky thing - if we always wrote a completely original story, you wouldn’t have something like Joseph Campbell’s The Hero's Journey. Because we wouldn’t have a set format that a story would take. So when somebody accuses a fantasy book of being “Star Wars with elves,” well, Star Wars was a Greek epic in space.  K: Oh, I would’ve called it a Western. R: Okay fine. [overlapping] I mean, people have called it a Western. K: [overlapping] I mean, both work. Both work. [laughs] R: Yeah, but I’m just saying, The Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell is, he’s studying the ancient literature, so that’s why I decided to say Greek. But if we could always write something that was completely original, there would be no way to study literature with comparisons and contrasts. There are always going to be parallels between stories written in a similar culture by people who are writing in a similar society. Like, a hundred years apart, you would not necessarily detect the influence of Harry Potter in the Grishaverse. But they’re not written a hundred years apart - it was maybe a decade, probably not. K: I’d be curious to go back and try to time out when these books were being written, and when that coincides with the release of the latter half of the Harry Potter books. But anyways, real quick, I’m big into definitions, so let’s talk about definitions. Influence is the capacity of something - a person, a situation, a circumstance - to have an effect on another person, on the development of the situation, on the behavior of someone or something. Or, in some cases, even the effect itself. You’ll notice there that influence is kind of framed as both proactive and reactive. You can influence something, or you can be influenced. We’re talking today about being influenced.  R: And we’re not talking about Instagram.  K: [laughs] Oh, God. You know what’s funny? I went through this whole thing and I didn’t even think about the concept of influencers, and now I’m depressed. R: Because you didn’t or because now you are? K: [laughs] Because now I am. R: Okay. I’m sorry. I take it back, I didn’t say anything.  K: [laughs] So, writers don’t write in a void. It’s sort of a reverse Heisenberg principle, which is “whatever you study will also change.” Whatever you read changes you, or whatever you consume changes you. So, writers don’t write in a void. If you took a baby and raised them in a box with no interaction with the outside world whatsoever, well, to be honest I’m not sure they’d be capable of putting together an interesting story because they’ve had no influence.  R: You know what’s funny, that’s why I don’t have kids. Because I thought about this kind of thing frequently in high school, like “what would happen if you raised a child in a padded room? And you never interacted with them, and they never saw another human?” So you’re welcome, world, that I have not raised any children. Those children are welcome because I did not abuse them in such a manner.  K: [laughs]  R: But it’s good to hear that someone else has had these thoughts. Although, Kaelyn and I did originally bond over the fact that we’re terrified of the idea of raising children.  K: Pregnancy is just - R: And pregnancy. It’s not for everybody. I recognize that for some people it’s a beautiful process, but for Kaelyn and for me, it is body horror.  K: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there’s an entire nother skeleton in your skeleton. [laughs] R: Yes. And it’s growing. [overlapping] It’s getting larger.  K [overlapping]: It keeps getting bigger. R: And if you’ve never seen an MRI of a baby’s skull, there’s a lot of teeth in there.  K: Yeah, also they’re squishy. R: Well, the MRI doesn’t necessarily show that. It just shows all those chompers, waiting. Waiting.  K: Yeah. There’s a lot of extra teeth in there.  R: Okay. [laughs] Where were we going? K [overlapping]: So for our writing- R [overlapping]: A child raised in a padded cell would probably write a different kind of story than somebody who’s been exposed to Harry Potter.  K: Yeah, and if you take out every third word, it’s their plan to destroy the world with their laser beams.  R: This reminds me of the book The Artist’s Way. I think it’s a month-long program designed to improve your creativity and I think maybe even to come up with… it’s like NaNoWriMo but it’s very classist and elitist.  K: [laughs] R: But the first thing it asks you to do is swear off all media for the month. K: Okay. R: And I put the book down right there. K: [laughs] R: Because I was like, that is literally impossible. I was in art school at the time, so I could not promise that I wasn’t going to have to look at media. And also, this was written in 1992, before anybody was logging onto the internet daily.  K: Yeah, it was much easier to walk away from media for a month.  R: And I was trying to read it, I think, in 1999 or 2000, and it was even easier, at that point, to walk away from media than it would be now.  K: Yep. R: But, yes, it’s called The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. And I imagine that Julia Cameron has a very nice life and is able to unplug from media whenever it is convenient for her to do so. K: Well, in 1992 that meant “turn off the TV.” R: Right, it meant “don’t pick up a newspaper” or, you know. K: Yeah. R: In 2016 they re-released a 25th anniversary edition, and I can’t imagine they did much to it, but it really probably needed a lot of re-examining to - K: Yeah. It’s -  R: - to even be relevant in 2016, I can’t even imagine.  K: Now, was the purpose of this to do a detox of influence from your life? R: Yes. That is exactly what it was, to avoid influence for the month and find out what you write, not what the world around you influences you to write. But I think in her case, she was treating world influence and media and current events as a negative.  K: Mhm. R: And I would argue that if you are responding to the world around you, then the politics of your creativity is going to be more relevant and more well-informed. And I think that’s a good thing.  K: Well, yeah. And this is something that we can certainly talk about with influence - current influence versus longevity. You’ll see a lot of writers that go out of their way to not incorporate things that might later be considered an anachronism in their writing, so that they’re not influenced by that.  R: Mhm. K: So that’s another good example of influence. So, let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way here: influence is not copying. As we were talking about, writers don’t write in a void. You’re absorbing everything that you interact with and consume every day, and, whether you know it or not, it’s influencing and incorporating itself into even your way of thought.  R: You hear that? So if you were following an Instagram influencer, do not copy everything they do.  K: [laughs] Yes. Please don’t. But, again, it’s the reverse Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Whatever you’re consuming changes you. There are entire PhD programs dedicated to studying and understanding the influence that certain parts of literature have had on larger parts of literature. Influence is not a bad thing. In many ways, it’s a scholarly pursuit. Go to any Wikipedia page for any sort of well-known novel, and I guarantee you there's going to be a section in there that says “Influence.”  R: Oh yeah, yeah. K: And it’s going to be a couple paragraphs talking about the history of the genre, or the subject material leading up to this. Influence is, apart from being an important part of writing, an academic pursuit. So all of that said, we are talking about influence in a very positive way here. We’re saying it’s great to read things, and to consume and internalize them so that this can help enrich your writing. Something that you really enjoyed, something you thought was maybe unique, or something that you were like, “Oh, what if I applied that to a character that I already have?” That’s a good thing. I think it enriches your writing, I think it shows layers and growth, etcetera. K: That said, sometimes influence goes the opposite way. [laughs] Sometimes you’ve read something and you’re like, “this is terrible,” or “this was such a ridiculous ending,” or “I hated that this happened.” And that might compel you to go through your manuscript and scrub absolutely everything having to do with that. The whole point is that whether you mean to or not, you are going to be influenced by external components in your writing. You could never read anything else, and you will still be influenced by things in the world just by existing in it. But we are talking more about influences in writing here, so we’ll stick with that.  R: And we assume that you are being influenced by books because, as we say, if you want to be a writer you need to also be a reader. So we’re telling you, go read widely in your genre, and part of that is that we expect you to absorb some of those elements and some of those styles. On a conscious level, we want you to look at the covers, we want you to look at the themes and the tropes and everything like that, but we also expect that on a subconscious level that’s going to influence you and hopefully make you a better writer within your genre. K: And if you read a lot within your genre, you will start to notice trails of influence yourself. If you read a lot of - especially maybe a really niche kind of fantasy or science fiction genre, you’re going to be able to chronologically put some things in order, like “Oh yes, I can see that book A came out at this time, and then three years later this book came out, and there are certainly elements from book A that I can see coming through in book B even though they were written by different authors.” K: So, I was telling Rekka before we started recording–I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole with this, because for reasons unbeknownst to me and possibly the influence of vampiric elements, I, for whatever reason, picked up my copy of Dracula off the shelf and I’ve just been flipping through random parts. And then we were talking about doing this, and I was like, vampires are a really really good example of influence through literature. They’re something that has always been around - the Mayans actually had a god that was basically a vampire, even though they didn’t acknowledge that, bat wings and all. And there’s something that–I think you’d be hard pressed to find a significant culture of any sort of longevity from history that didn’t have some sort of mythological being that displayed vampire-like qualities. K: In the late 1700s, early 1800s, though, there was the vampire craze in western Europe. There were a lot of short stories and things written about vampires, even though they’ve been codified as part of the mythos for a long time. But even then, they were sort of holding up the folklore and traditions of vampires–they were reanimated corpses, they were bloodsuckers that came out at night to drain people of their very lifeforce. In some cases, actively rotting bodies, hunched back and demonic looking, claw-fingered and fangs and scary eyes. A lot of this was the traditional folklore. Then we start getting into sexy vampires. [laughs] R: [laughs] I was just going to say. K: [laughs] And there were a couple specific novels that did this. In 1819, John Polidori published a short story called The Vampyre, and this was the first one where the vampire was more of a character rather than just a mindless bloodsucking dead creature. R: Right. This was a vampire worthy of Bela Lugosi’s eyes.  K: Oh, no one’s worthy of Bela Lugosi’s eyes. [laughs] R: You know what I’m saying. K: I know, I’m teasing. So, it was very popular. So then, a lot of vampire short stories and short novels were coming out where the vampires were getting a little more sophisticated, and all of these were drawing influence from Polidori’s short story. It was a very successful short story. So then, in 1872, an Irish author named Joseph Sheridan [with a mock-French accent] Le Fanu - I’m assuming it’s French which is why I did that accent - published Carmilla, which was a fantastic novel. And this is, I would say, probably a turning point where vampires are unabashedly being associated with a sexual element at this point. It has a not-very-subtle vampiric lesbian... stalking, I guess, going on through this book. It’s fantastic, it’s not that long. If you ever get a chance to read it, it’s great. K: And then of course, a couple decades later in 1897, we come to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I should, by the way, say that Bram Stoker and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu were both Irish. Ireland had a shockingly strong folklore of vampires. In some cases they were fae, which is a whole different category of supernatural elements in Ireland, and in some cases they were just reanimated corpses. Anyways, then we get Bram Stoker, who of course gives us Dracula. And this is considered the preeminent vampire guideline bible, if you will. I think when most of us - granted, Rekka and I are older millennials, but - R: [laughs] How dare you? K: I think the first vampire we heard of was Dracula.  R: Mhm. K: I actually remember, growing up, that there was a kid in my neighborhood who just thought vampires were called Draculas.  R: Yeah. I think that was probably a… Not that I thought Dracula was a noun, but I never expected Dracula to look the same way twice.  K: Yeah. Yeah, Dracula was just like - Dracula, vampire. They were interchangeable.  R: Mhm. K: And that’s how synonymous this became. Now, look at all the stuff that lead up to this in order for us to get the seminal vampire novel of the time. Stoker was absolutely influenced by all these novels that came before. Something else that’s really interesting that Stoker was influenced by is the sexual component of vampires in this. Like I said, that came through hard and strong. Well, maybe I should say most popularly with Carmilla. Here’s something else really interesting about Stoker: he was probably gay. It’s difficult and inappropriate to go back and retroactively categorize people these ways, but there’s a lot of very strong… I’m trying not to say “homoerotic,” I’m trying to say… There’s a lot of very - R: Queerotic? [laughs] K: Yeah, there’s a- R: There’s not a queer person in the universe that will argue this point with you.  K: Yeah. R: I think the LGBTQIA+ are very, very ready to claim vampirism.  K: [laughs] Absolutely. And that’s a great part of the influence of this. Some of Stoker’s best friends were Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman. Actually, I believe Stoker either started writing or finished writing Dracula right after Oscar Wilde was imprisoned, and they were exchanging letters while he was in prison.  R: Mhm. K: You have to keep in mind, this was the mid-Victorian period, there’s very repressed sexuality, but there was also this burgeoning underground masculine sexual component to it, where everyone - R: See people, this is what happens when you don’t let people reveal their ankles.  K: Yes. Yes, exactly. [laughs] So, one of the things through Dracula is this secretiveness, this sense of penetration. Not only the fangs in your throat, but a lot of them get into your head and screw with you that way. This was not something we saw in previous iterations of vampires, who were gross, for lack of a better term. [laughs] R: [laughs] Yeah.  K: So, this influence comes through in a lot of different ways. And as I’m talking more about Dracula I can say like, “Okay, well there’s a lot of very… what we would now consider queer sexual elements that we see in Dracula, coming through with the relationship between Dracula and Johnathan Harker and Dracula and Mina.” But there’s also the influence of other writers who were starting to make vampires actually people, rather than Nosferatu-style monsters.  R: Right. K: Dracula, I would argue, then in turn really helped influence the next generation of common horror. At that point we’re getting into H.P. Lovecraft and existential horror. Lovecraft, who, by the way, wasn’t quite a contemporary of Stoker’s, but was very aware and actually wrote some reviews of his writing. He didn’t really like a lot of it. [laughs] I would argue that that was probably part of what influenced Lovecraft: it was a hard turn from these very sterile, white-marble, gothic horror novels to a lot of raw, and ocean, and dark mold, steam spaces.  R: You can literally write the sentence “I can’t describe this.” and people are like “Woo, that is scary.” K: Yeah exactly. So much of Lovecraft is like, “it’s too horrible to describe!” but it’s like “Yeah, but can you tell me anyway?” [laughs] R: You mentioned earlier that an influence can be “I don’t want to do this.” K: Yes. R: So, here we are. This is Lovecraft saying  “Well, Stoker wasn’t racist enough for me, so I’m gonna write my own thing.” K: [laughs] Oh, God, Lovecraft. It’s so hard to read some of that stuff. [sighs] Psychologists would be better at trying to figure out Lovecraft’s influence than me, I’m certainly not going to. To say the man had issues is an understatement. He was more of a collection of neuroses formed into a human. Anyways, this is just something I was thinking of as a pretty-easy-to-track set of influences. We go from vampires being very loosely defined and having inconsistent characteristics based on what region the stories are being told in, to some stories published that codify certain rules about them, to their evolution from “Eww, it’s a rotting, blood-drinking corpse” to “Huh, maybe I’d like date that person.” R: [laughs] Maybe I would like those lips on my bare neck! K: Yes, exactly. Which is a pretty interesting leap that really did not take that long to get from point A to point B. But all of this was just building on influence and influence, after that.  R: Yeah, all you needed was for one author to pick it up and go, “What if vampires, but sexy?” K: [laughs] Yeah. You know what’s funny, we have this sort of modern-day depiction of Dracula as a very suave, debonair… what’s the word I’m looking for? High-society type person.  R: Sophisticated.  K: Sophisticated, yeah. In the novel, he is those things a little bit, but he is very off-putting and he is... weird to look at, I guess I should say. R: Yeah, there’s that first scene where Johnathan is eating in front of him, and you definitely get a vibe that this dude is not right.  K: Like, he’s talking about his hairy ears. [laughs] R: [laughs] Yeah. K: His weird skin, he looks ill, as if when he’s making his way to the castle all of the peasantry crying and pressing crucifixes into his hands wasn’t red-flag enough for him. R: No, no, no. It’s just a quaint little village, this is the thing they do. There is the aspect of vampirism having the power of glamour, and I think this is probably the most effective display of it. The way that he’s describing Dracula, there’s nothing attractive about this man, and yet. K: He’s very drawn to him. R: Mhm. K: And he wants to help him. R: As is Mina. [laughs] K: And Lucy, and all of them. So yeah, vampires. Great example of influence in literature over the course of a relatively short time, shaping something that we now consider to be commonplace.  R: Mhm. K: We’ve even narrowed it down farther. One of my favorite things about Dracula is, there’s nothing that necessarily says he can’t go in the sun in that book.  R: Right, right. [laughs] K: It’s just that he has no powers after noon, I think, or he loses his powers at sunrise. So he can be outside, but he’s just a regular guy at that point.  R: Mhm. K: So, obviously things continued to change and evolve there, the “no going out during the day” is held over from the much older vampire myths. Anyways. So, all of that said, how do we see influences in writing? When can we pick these out? One of the obvious is the story itself, the plot. Maybe some story arcs. R: I would argue that people tend to pick it up faster when it’s a similar setting. When it’s the worldbuilding, I think people notice it more. K: Okay. R: And I think, again, plot arcs and character arcs are things that we do have to recycle.  K: Absolutely. I think it’s rare these days to see completely original, never-before-imagined setting. In terms of world-building, both the world itself, and in my notes here I put “world systems.” Anything from the way magic functions, or government functions, or society functions. There’s only so many ways you can organize people, essentially. [laughs] So there may have been something that you came across and you’re like “Oh, that’s interesting. What if I did this instead?” The characters- anything from the archetypes and tropes of characters to their storylines and their redemption arcs, or even just the relationships, how they interact with each other. How the characters are broken out either into family groups or groups of friends or hierarchies within that. I think we see that a lot. With plot, we can kind of go back to what I said at the beginning of the episode: sometimes there are things in there where it’s like, “this is clearly Order of the Phoenix.”  R: Mhm.  K: [laughs] We’re just seeing it presented a different way. R: And again, an agent loves this, because you can say “this is my list of story comps.” And if they’re successful books, the agent can use that to sell the story and then the publisher can use it to sell the book. K: Mhm. R: So even though sometimes it sounds like we are poo-pooing derivative work, if it comes across as fresh, nobody’s going to poo-poo that you have a great list of comps to start with.  K: Definitely, yeah. R: And I would like to note that that is the first time we have said “poo-poo” on this podcast. I feel like that should be marked. K: That definitely needs to be denoted for posterity. R: And now it’s been said three times. K: [laughs] Then there’s two other areas of influence I’d like to talk about that are a little harder to quantify. One is style. And this comes more to writing style, and how you’re presenting your story. For instance, being influenced by the way the author just writes in general, their style, I will harken back to one of our favorite examples here. If you’ve read Gideon the Ninth it is a very very unique writing style, not something I’ve ever come across before and I’m sure there are a lot of people who are currently in the process of attempting to imitate it; I don’t know how successful they’re going to be, but I bet they’re trying. R: And then there are others who are influenced by it to say “Oh, I can let loose like that?” K: Yeah. Exactly. Or, “I can try something completely different that I didn’t think anybody would be interested in, but if they’re willing to do this then maybe they would.” Point of view or viewpoint in the book - if you’ve read the second book in the Locked Tomb series, Harrow the Ninth, a lot of that is written second person. The Broken Earth series, large portions of that are in second person. R: Well, the Broken Earth series, the amazing thing is it’s written in all three. K: Yes, yeah. R: So if you haven’t read that I can’t go any further, I do not wanna spoil that, even though it’s been out for years, the culmination of that book is so good that I refuse to ever spoil it. But go read it, if you haven’t read it, for sure. It’s a big one - K: It’s a lot - R: But it is so worth it. I listen to it on audio, and I can recommend that too. K: Yeah. So both of those books have instances of strange, or - R: Disorienting? K: Disorienting’s an excellent word. I remember reading Harrow the Ninth and texting Rekka and going like “Is this like this the entire time?” R: And my only response is “Did you get to the soup yet?” K: [laughs] And it was a mentality shift, and once I just was like “Okay, I fixed my brain to a point that it can accept and read this now.” But another style quality is dialogue. How you incorporate and how you use dialogue in your writing is something that I think is very easily influenced by how other people do that. This can also start feeding into the character influence there as well, how the characters talk and interact with each other is very influenced by dialogue. So then the last kind of nebulous part that I’d like to talk about, and this is a little bit different but it is worth bringing up, is historical influence. There are a lot of books and stories that are nominal retellings of either one or a series of historical events. I’ll use Game of Thrones here as an example, and spoilers for anybody who hasn’t read or watched - R: I don’t care if we spoil Game of Thrones. [laughs] K: George R. R. Martin, well first the basis of a lot of this is the War of the Roses, which was the English Civil War. It was also called the Hundred Years’ War; it was just a long, bloody, drawn-out battle of constantly changing kings and powerful families trying to get their person on the throne of England. R: And the interesting part is, it is a hundred years, so the people who started this have cast this war upon the generations to follow, and if that doesn’t tell you something about where George R. R. Martin is going to be forced to take the end of the books, I don’t know what will, because HBO managed to make the show take what, the war take five years or maybe ten years if that? Just the fact that it was ten seasons, right? Was it ten seasons or nine? K: It was eight seasons. R: Okay, so at most, because of the children aging on the show, it was a nine-year hundred-year war. So if George R. R. Martin is following intentionally the framework of the Hundred Years’ war, none of the characters that you’re rooting for are going to make it. Just in the nature of aging. K [overlapping]: And there’s - you can go through and just read a brief history of the Hundred Years’ War, and you’ll be able to identify characters in there. Like Tyrion has some very clear Richard III vibes to him. But then there’s other historical events and groups of people that he took and pulled into this. The Lannisters are such a clear parallel of the Borgia family that it’s almost difficult to know that and read this and know what happened to the Borgias. The Red Wedding was based off of a famous event in Scotland where something very very similar happened to that. Some Scottish lords were invited to dinner by a Scottish lord with English leanings, and he killed all of them, to get in good with the English. R: After serving them bread. K: After serving them bread, exactly. But again, historical influence - the concept of guestright is very important in most cultures and especially in Scotland. So there’s so many examples of people taking strong influence from either actual historical events or folklore and mythological events, like the Trojan War and things like that, and incorporating it into their writing. There are a lot of writers who decide “I’m gonna do a modern interpretation of such-and-such,” because maybe - for instance the Trojan War, they’re very interested in classic Greek mythology and decide “Hey, that’s a great story to tell; I’m gonna set it in a different place but still tell the story.” K: So that’s some elements of influence, and before we wrap up here, let’s address the thing we started to talk a little bit about but should definitely round out. When is influence just becoming copying, at a certain point? This is hard. Because it’s really about finesse and originality. It’s about taking something that you liked and putting your own spin on it, so to speak. If you’re just re-creating the same story and sticking your characters into it, you’re going to get called at best lazy, at worst a plagiarist. R: Yeah, there are plenty of books out there - and I have one to include in the list - that are retellings of a classic story. The problem is when you don’t approach it as “how do I make this my story?” K: Yes. I’m gonna use young adult genres here because it’s a little bit newer and easier to trace through this, and I’m not going to name books in this apart from the first series that I will name because that author is wildly successful. The Mortal Instruments trilogy - you could probably say series at this point, there’s so many books in that world at this point - by Cassandra Clare, is one of the early and premiere urban fantasy young adult novels. This was copied so many times. Some of the authors were a little more original with where they were setting it, some of them were a little more original with where they were putting the characters or who the characters were, but the magical teeenagers who are part of a secret society that protects humanity was everywhere. ‘Cause these books were a runaway success. They were very original; no one had really seen something like this before. The Mortal Instruments created so many tropes that I can’t and will not try to name them. R: And I think it’s, part of that, somebody loves a book that they experienced so much that they want to hold onto that feeling forever, and one way to do that is to create something completely inspired by that same world. And this is where fanfic comes from, and fanfic is healthy, and it’s a great way to express feelings of “I don’t want to leave this book world.” But when you take it to a publisher and you say “This is going to sell really well because the other one that already did it sold really well,” as they say - don’t follow trends in publishing, because you’re five years behind. K: Conversely, a lot of people were able to get things like this published because the market wasn’t inundated with this yet. R: Right, you had to be among the first to imitate a successful book, which is why they say don’t follow the trends, because you won’t be among the first. There are so many people out there writing that there are easily 500 people ahead of you in the queue for the publisher slush pile. K: Yeah and I wanna be clear, the first book of this entire - I’m not joking, I think there’s over 20 books within this world at this point - the first one came out in 2007. So yes, the Internet was very alive and well at that point; it was not what it is now. Writing communities on the Internet were not what they are now. But all of this is to say that there were people who just straight up copied this genre, this book in some way. Either in terms of setting, in terms of characters, in terms of the magical elements of this, they just straight up copied this and I gotta be honest with you, a lot of them were not terribly successful. [laughs] Some of them were, though, and some of them made some money off of this. R: Well, for other readers who are not writers, when the same thing happens they come out of a book series and they have to wait for the next book, they want more. K: Exactly, they were looking for more. R: This is not unlike when the animation company puts out a very similar cheap animation to the latest Disney release. I worked at Blockbuster, and I saw this all the time. You’d have a big animated Disney release, and you’d have this tiny company out of who-knows-where that put together an animated copy, and they rely on parents and grandparents to grab the wrong one. This is not like trying to give the kids more of what they want, this is like “If we are gonna be next to this Disney movie on the shelf, someone will pick us up by accident and we will make money.” K: Well I always remember because a lot of Disney’s classics, like the Disney renaissance movies, they were all like public domain stories. So they would just make that and they could get it out on VHS faster than Disney could - R: Yeah, they were made direct to video. K: Because Disney left it in - like everyone knew what the upcoming Disney movies were. So if you knew there was gonna be Aladdin, well, the story of Aladdin is public domain, you start making Aladdin right away. [Brief interlude of car noises] R: I literally believe that Mike’s apartment is built on an overpass. K: No, just next to a road with a lot of people who drive like idiots. R: Well that was like a garbage truck, but anyway. K: That was a motorcycle. R: That was a motorcycle?? It sounded like it had at least 16 wheels. K: Yeah. R: Alright, sorry, so Aladdin - K: So everyone knew what movies Disney was making well in advance, and of course these would take years after they were announced to actually be finished and put in theatres. So if Disney says “we’re making Aladdin” - R [overlapping]: Before it’s in theatres! K: - well then, another small studio can also make Aladdin. The animation isn’t gonna be great but then Aladdin’s gonna be in the theatres and then a week later the imitation Aladdin are going to be on shelves, and grandparents are gonna go “Oh my grandchildren want to see -” R: Or “They’ve been talking about this movie and here it is on VHS,” and they don’t know how theatre releases work and so they grab it and buy it, and they spend $18 or $15, seems like a really good deal on a Disney movie, and the animation studio makes their money back. So they do it again. K: So don’t be that cheap animation studio. Don’t be the person that’s taking something that somebody put a lot of time, thought, and creativity into, and churning out the cheap, fast, easy-to-consume version of it. R: Yeah and I don’t think, when it comes to writers - I mean I’m sure there are people out there who go “Okay this is the newest thing, I am going to behave like an algorithm and I am going to make another version of it and then release it, and I will make lots of bucks.” There are those writers that–they do that on purpose. So don’t be them. But I don’t think any of our audience are going to be them. And if you were thinking that that was a great way to make a successful book, let us correct you. But if you are inspired by Gideon the Ninth, or by Mortal Instruments, or anything like that - take the time to develop a story just like you would a completely inspired out of left field story, and take the time to put it together in a considerate and thoughtful and unique way, and then we approve. You get our approval. We’re not promising to buy the manuscript, but we are approving a heartfelt influenced work, not an imitation that is intended to ride the wave of success of someone else. K: Exactly. R: Now when we’re saying “copying,” are you talking about the publishing houses out there who literally lift the copy and try to sell it on Amazon, and just do it again and again and again as they get caught and cancelled? K: [laughs] No, no. Copying

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. We Make Books Ep. 71 Transcription Kaelyn: Today we’re talking about villains and antagonists, and why they’re not actually the same thing, except in the cases that they are. Rekka: Yes, exactly. K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: Perfect. I think that nails it. Sometimes they’re not the same thing, sometimes they are. K: Yeah, and we’ll kinda get to this but, most villains are antagonists - most, not all. Not all antagonists are villains. And in fact you will likely, in any given story, have multiple antagonists, not all of whom are the villain. I went through and really dug up all of this stuff; shockingly, the word ‘hero’ is the one with the most definitions attached to it, and most different con - R: We’re not talking about heroes today! We’re not! K [overlapping]: Well we - but we have to, because we don’t get villains without heroes, and we don’t get antagonists without protagonists. Both villains and antagonists are defined and really only exist so that they can oppose or create conflict for the hero or protagonist. It kinda makes you wonder, if left to their own devices, maybe they’re just a mad scientist in a lab somewhere. R: Maybe they’re the hero of their own story. K: Yeah, and then suddenly someone shows up to fight them and now they’re the bad guy. [laughing] R: “I was perfectly lawful and good until you showed up!” K: Exactly, yes. The basic difference between a villain and an antagonist is that an antagonist is somebody who is there to contend or oppose the main character, typically the protagonist of the story. They’re there to create opposition. A villain is doing that, but they’re evil. R: [laughs] K [laughing]: What they’re doing is, the opposition that they’re creating is either causing harm, causing suffering, will destroy the human race. It could be something more on a micro scale, where they’ve kidnapped the daughter of the main character; maybe they’re trying to get their lemonade stand shut down so that they can sell lemonade that’s gonna turn people into lizard people. An antagonist at the surface is just somebody who’s doing things that’s causing problems for the protagonist. They don’t necessarily have to be evil. R: They could just be a rival. K: Yeah. Or any number of other things we’re gonna get to here, but. And in fact as I mentioned, as you’re reading a book, you’re frequently gonna come across antagonists that are not actually evil. There’s gonna be an antagonist who’s the villain who may be evil at some point, not always, but there will be people that are antagonists. I will use an example that we love to use: Gideon the Ninth. Harrow definitely serves as an antagonist to Gideon through the book. But Harrow is not evil. R: Right. K: That’s a great example of a villain operating without the audience knowing that the protagonist is coming into direct conflict with them because, we don’t really find out who the villain of the story is until the very very end of it. Then we can look back and go like ‘Ah yes I see all of these things now.’ The villain in the story, and spoilers if you haven’t read Gideon the Ninth, but also if you listen to this podcast and you still haven’t read it - R: You obviously are never going to read it at this point. K [laughing]: Yeah. The villain turns out to be Dulcinia, who is impersonating another character - and I stayed away, when writing notes for this and getting into the philosophical of what is evil and what is not - for these purposes we’re gonna call her motives evil, in that she is trying to hunt down and destroy a lot of different people for her own reasons. The conflict that we come into there actually causes the antagonist and the protagonist in this, Gideon and Harrow, to sort of team up to oppose the actual villain, which by the way is a very common writing trope. Antagonists are a necessary component to any story even if they are not the source of central conflict. R: Yeah, because - and I know you’re gonna lean into this example - but in Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy feels like he is central to everything in Harry’s life, even though most of the time he just shows up to spew some awful thing he’s overheard his parents say and then go away again. K: Draco is a good example of an antagonist who goes through a lot of different forms. Draco in the first few books of the series, he kinda shows up to make some comments and then leaves. He’s not really doing much. Even in the second book when he’s talking about the Chamber of Secrets and the heir of Slytherin and he actually is sitting around going ‘God I wish there was a way for me to help him’ - well, okay, that’s what minions do. Small antagonists. R: Most of the time everything that Draco Malfoy does or says is just to reinforce the fact that he’s a jerk. K: Yeah, Draco just sorta pops up to remind all of us that there’s Voldemort out there and his followers are terrible, because we don’t see or interact directly with Voldemort for a lot of these books, so Draco’s there to kind of remind us that he’s out there. But then we finally get to book six, when Draco is given a very specific task to do: kill Dumbledore. And those listening at home, ‘okay well doesn’t that make him a villain?’ Well - does it? Because first of all he doesn’t really actually wanna do this, but he has to. Second, he doesn’t do it. At the end, he’s not the one who carries this out. So again, everything’s relative here. Because to Harry, he is just this thing that Harry feels he needs to track down and find out what’s happening. You could go so far as to argue that Harry is creating his own conflict here, because if he just left Draco alone and went about his life trying to find these Horcruxes, things would’ve gone a lot smoother. R: [laughs] K: Dumbledore keeps telling Harry, ‘Hey. I got the Draco situation under control, don’t worry about it.’ Not in so many words and maybe if he had, again, things would’ve gone differently - R: You know what, communicating clearly is the antagonist of a plot. K: Okay. So that’s interesting that you say that, because antagonists are not always people. R: Mhm. K: Antagonists can be certain external factors that the protagonist has to contend with. A good example of this is nature, in something like the movie Castaway. It’s not evil - R [overlapping]: Okay. I was gonna say Deep Impact, like the meteor is not a villain, the meteor is an antagonist. K: Yeah. Exactly. It’s not evil. The meteor or nature or something is not saying like, ‘Yes, I will destroy the world, and then also Tom Hanks.’ [chuckles] R: If it can twirl its mustache, it might be a villain. K: It’s just there, and it’s something that the characters have to contend with. It can also be something supernatural; the thing I thought of off the top of my head was The Nothing in NeverEnding Story. It’s operating unconsciously, if you will, in the sense that it doesn’t seem to have nefarious purposes. It’s just existing, and it’s just growing. The characters are opposing it, they’re trying to find a way to stop it, but it’s not evil in and of itself. R: A hero trying to stop global warming is not fighting a villain. Unless - K: Ah, there’s some villains in there. R: Yeah never mind, I take all that back. K: An antagonist can also be something like a society or an unjust system that the hero has to live and function in. The example that came to mind was Les Miserables. The main character, Jean Valjean, is sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread because his sister and her children were starving. And we as the audience are meant to understand here that, while Javert - I believe is the name of the officer - is doing his duty by arresting him because he did commit theft, we understand that it is the dire circumstances of his society and his country that caused him to do this. His whole struggle and story is not only trying to lift himself up and overcome this system, but trying to one, make good on people he had hurt and things he had done in the process of this, but two, help other people that are also stuck in this system by hopefully coming up with a way to better it in the long run. I won’t say overthrow it because he actively avoids that whole - R [overlapping]: Right. K: - part of the process in this story, but he is in his own way trying to get things to a better place. R: Yeah. K: I went through and just like, some ideas of antagonists who are not necessarily villains. We talked about Draco Malfoy - I will go to my grave saying that Draco is not a villain, he is first convenient exposition, and then an antagonist and an unwilling one at that. One of the ones I also thought of was Catra, from - R: Ah! K: - the first half of She-Ra, she kind of serves as sort of like a minion antagonist. R: Uh-huh. K: Her character evolves, and we’ll talk about that as we continue to go through this. But she’s an excellent example of just an antagonist. R: And again kind of like that rival thing - K: Yes. R: - like in anime or certain role playing video games, you always have the rival show up, and then by the end you are working with them to fight the actual villain. K: Another category is the conflict creators: people who are not evil, they don’t have nefarious plots, but they’re making the life of the main character unbearable. Mr. Darcy - R [overlapping]: [giggling] K: - from Pride and Prejudice is an excellent example of this. I threw the Lannisters on the list, and I’m sticking with the books - R: Right. K [laughing]: Not the TV show. R: So in this version, the Lannisters haven’t managed to accomplish much yet. K: Yeah, exactly. Because, really, what are they doing? Are their motives evil? No, their motives are promoting and securing the prosperity and wellbeing of their family as much as possible. Now, they’re doing things that again, evil being relative, we might look at this and go ‘oh they’re evil.’ I will choose the beheading of Ned Stark as a good example there. That’s only evil to us because we like Ned Stark. R: Right. K: Because we look at him and see a good, just man who is being undone by his own kindness and mercy. The Lannisters look at him and go, ‘this guy’s an idiot, and not only that he’s a threat.’ R: Mhm. K: ‘If we send him to the wall do you think his family is gonna go, ‘ah ok no problem, no harm no foul.’’ Yeah, Joffrey’s an impulsive little shit, who should not have done that and obviously messed up the plans of a lot of different third parties there, but from the perspective of the Lannisters he’s right. R: Mhm. K: There was no reason to spare Ned Stark’s life. R: It does start with the two incestuous Lannisters pushing a child out of a window though, so. K: Yes, and we can - that’s a whole other episode about - R [overlapping]: [laughing] K: Well, trust me, I could do a whole episode about the evolution in literature, writing, and various media of using sexually-based components of character’s personalities to demonstrate that they’re evil. R: Mhm. K: But yes, this isn’t to say that Jamie and Cersei themselves aren’t evil, but the Lannisters as a whole are conflict creators. R: Okay. K: And within there they’re all opposing each other in certain ways, but they’re all kind of presenting a united front. R: The Lannister corporate machine. K: Yeah exactly. Casterly Rock incorporated. They’re all presenting a united front in the promotion and wellbeing of their own family. There’s obviously a lot of stuff going on there that we the audience know about, but pretend you’re an outside observer in Westeros. Apart from some slight patricide - R: [laughs] K: - but that’s okay, because that was the member of the family who we just barely put up with and obviously there was something wrong with him and we probably should’ve thrown him down a well a long time ago. R: Are you talking about Tyrion or are you talking about Tywin - K: Both, but from the perspective of the Lannisters, Tyrion. [laughing] R [overlapping]: [laughing] K: You can recover from that one, because of course there was something off about him, look at him. Never mind that he’s the smartest and, actually, most caring member of their family, but y’know. That’s not important, apparently. I made up an antagonist category that I’m calling “general pains in the ass.”  R: [laughing] K: [laughs] Where they are not necessarily doing anything, but their existence is just infuriating to the point that it’s creating conflict for the protagonist. The one that I always love to point to is Gary from Pokémon. R: Mm. K: Who’s just Ash’s rival but it’s a very hilariously one-sided rivalry.  R: Right, right. K: [laughs] The other one that I think is very good is actually: Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Mask in the anime. Because he is also trying to get the rainbow crystals.  R: Right. K: In a pain-in-the-ass antagonist - I would throw Rei in there. R: [laughs] Yeah, there you go. K: Again, the anime - the manga did not go into this, but they’re constantly fighting over who’s gonna be the better this-or-that, and who’s doing the better job, and again, it creates conflict for Usagi because Rei is hyper-confident and very good at this, and Usagi is not, at all.  R: Right. It has more to do with Rei just constantly criticizing her and making her progression slower than anything else.  K: Yeah, you’ll notice there’s a lot of overlap here because apart from being a general pain in the ass in that scenario, Rei is also a conflict creator.  R: Yeah. K: The last one that gets a little philosophical is the protagonist themselves. Holden Caulfield is of course the standout example here, but I would take anybody that can’t get out of their own way and put them on this list. One of the thoughts I came up with was Anakin Skywalker.  R: Okay. K: More with the Clone Wars TV show as a better example of that, but you certainly see it through the prequels as well. Has a set of morals and code that he lives by that is in direct conflict with what the Jedi are teaching him and telling him to do. R: Mhm. K: And that’s an excellent case study into a descent into villany by having a singular goal and taking more and more extreme measures to meet it. R: Like Draco, there’s somebody that is coaching him and trying to lead him in a direction that he wouldn’t have chosen on his own almost at any point.  K: I’m not sure I agree with that, because what we see Anakin do over and over again, his singular motivation-- and this is, by the way, his antagonistic component-- is “protect my friends and loved ones.” R: Mhm. K: And so he’s willing to take more and more extreme measures that in some cases are going to get him in trouble, he’s going to have to go in front of the Jedi Council and go ‘I’m really sorry I did that, but I did save Obi-Wan, so I think it all works out in the end.’ And you’ve got Yoda silently screaming in his head, going ‘This is not what Jedi are supposed to do, this is dangerous.’ R: Yeah. K: But then also, it gets him to a point where his moral code is coming into conflict with what is important to him. So, yes I killed a bunch of people on a spaceship, but I saved all of the Senators and the Jedi on it. Well, now I’ve killed a bunch of children because I thought it was going to save my pregnant wife.  R: Mhm. K: And we’re getting to a point where he can’t differentiate those two things from one another because in the end you’re still saving something or someone important.  R: Right. But I still think that - K [overlapping]: Oh, yes, having Palpatine - R [overlapping]: that progression -  K: - breathing in his ear for the whole time was not helping. [laughing] R: Yeah, that was an outside influence that encouraged that progression. K: Absolutely, yeah. So, that’s another antagonistic force - that is an external factor, people attempting to influence the protagonist.  R: Mhm. K: So, we talked a lot about antagonists, and as we said, most villains - not all - most villains are antagonists but not all antagonists are villains. In order to be a villain, you gotta be evil. You have to be a quote-unquote “bad guy.” And you’ve gotta be doing something that is bad, something that’s hurting either a people, or an entity, maybe nature, or a planet itself. Typically, you’ve got selfish motivations here. R: Mhm. K: Sometimes you have no motivations, and we’ll get into that, because the pure evil villains are one of my favorite villains. But, villains are working to destroy a heroic purpose or protagonist. They may not know that that’s what they’re doing, but they’re doing it. Some villains go their whole story without realizing that there’s somebody working their way up to opposing them, because their protagonist is such a little miniscule blip on the scale of this evil plan here that they didn’t even know someone was opposing them. Villains, they have to be bad. They don’t exist in a vacuum. Y’know, we used the idea of the mad scientist who doesn’t know he’s the bad guy -  R: Mhm. K: - until someone shows up to fight him. If that guy’s just left in his lab making some little itty bitty Frankenstein monsters to run around and help him with his experiments and things, then he never leaves and nothing bad ever happens, and the new Frankenstein monsters are happy with their existence, he’s not a villain! [laughs] However, if he’s oppressing those little Frankenstein monster guys, or maybe they’re escaping out into the world and doing bad things to people that they encounter, that then starts to move him into the realm of villain.  R: Now, what if he’s in his lab and his experiments are destroying the planet outside the lab, but he never leaves and he never realizes, and the Frankenstein [ed.: monster]s are happy?  K: Yeah, so this is where it gets weird, because what he’s doing is evil but he’s not doing it on purpose.  R: Mm. K: I’m trying to think what the classification for that would be. An unwilling villain, essentially. Maybe more of an antagonist at that point. I’m trying to come up with an example of something where somebody shows up and informs a scientist or creator doing something that what they’re doing is having a negative impact on the world around it and they had no idea.  R: There is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where they go to a planet where the people on the planet basically take some of the children off the Enterprise because they can’t have children themselves, and the crew is able to convince them that it’s their very powerful computer system that’s causing radiation that’s preventing them from being healthy, and that it would happen to the kids too if they stayed, and so on and so forth.  K: Yeah, I’m trying to - like, this one isn’t necessarily as good an example, but in Ender’s Game, at the very end we find out that the conflict, this whole giant conflict, kind of began almost on a misunderstanding that the human population encountered alien life in the form of bugs that were a hivemind.  R: Mhm. K: And the bugs killed all of the humans they encountered not understanding that there was a life form out there that wasn’t a hivemind. Because from their perspective, it didn’t matter if a few soldiers got killed, they were just essentially vessels for the larger collective consciousness. They didn’t understand the - R [overlapping]: Right. Individuality. K: Yeah. So, that started them as an antagonist, but then this war escalates and escalates and, that one I don’t know if we can come up with “villain” and whether sides are evil, at that point, but. With villains, they might not even need to know that they’re directly opposing the main character. The biggest difference between the villain and the antagonist is that sometimes, but not always, the antagonist forms more of a plot role. It’s somebody to be there to create conflict, to move the story along, or to motivate the protagonist. It’s somebody who may provide opportunities for growth for the protagonist as well, again through opposition. K: Everything is opposition and conflict for antagonists. Antagonists, they can be friends or friendly rivals of the protagonist, but they are a plot role, they are helping to develop and move the character and the stories along. A villain is a character type. This is a potentially necessary component of the story, depending on the type of story that you’re telling, and they have a role to serve within that. They have to be the central point of conflict for evil reasons, to give the character something moral and good and just to fight for and overcome. If this sounds contrived, or this sounds pedantic, I don’t know what to tell you because this is literature. [laughs] R: [laughing] Yeah. K: This is - you will find this across all of human history in literature, the conflict between good and evil. That is the central focus of it. And listen, what we consider good and what we consider evil varies from culture to culture, time to time. Heroes don’t fit a certain set of criteria across all cultures. If you go back and read any Greek myth, and what they consider to be heroes, most of these guys were assholes. Like, really bad people. But they did heroic things, and they lived in ways that were acceptable to the ancient Greeks.  R: Mhm. K: So therefore they were heroes. The Greeks are really interesting in that they did not write what was idealized, but what was true. So even though we know that the way they conducted their society, the way they lived and acted, is abhorrent to us, at the time it was acceptable. Not only acceptable, but encouraged.  R: Right. Perhaps even seen as heroic behavior.  K [overlapping]: To that end—yeah. To that end, evil is the same way.  R: Mhm. K: I’m gonna throw one last monkey wrench [laughs] into this - the villain, as we kept saying, most villains but not all are antagonists, because sometimes the villain’s the protagonist. The villain is only the antagonist when they’re not the main character of the story, when they’re just serving as the sense of conflict. But sometimes in stories, the villain, who is evil and is doing evil things, is the protagonist, is the main character that we’re following. Two of my favorite examples of this are Light from Death Note and Dexter from Dexter. Light is a teenager with a god complex who I wouldn’t even say “starts off trying to do right in the world,” because if you watch the series really he’s just experimenting using bad people until he gets the plan figured out. But, for those who are unfamiliar, Death Note is an outstanding anime that I highly recommend about a teenager who comes across a notebook that is stolen from a Japanese death god and learns that the names he writes in the notebook will die. And he gets more and more specific about specifying “will die at this time,” “will die in this way,” et cetera. And enters into this whole cat-and-mouse psychological thriller thing with himself and the police that are trying to stop this serial killer that they don’t understand.  R: Right. K: The whole thing turns into this god complex of him establishing rules of what he thinks are right and wrong and threatening the entire world with what would basically be instantaneous death at his whim if they don’t adhere to it. So let’s be clear, Light is evil. He is killing people because they’re not acting the way he wants them to. But he is the main character and the protagonist of the story, and if you watch it you find yourself cheering for him outwitting the police, outwitting this detective. One of the detectives, by the way, is his father. And you’re still goin,g “Come on, Light, you can get yourself out of this one!” Dexter Morgan from Dexter is another good example. Dexter is a serial killer. Dexter has kill rooms where he duct tapes people to tables, ritualistically stabs them, chops the bodies up, and drops them in the water off the coast of Miami.  R: Mhm. K: Dexter also has a complex set of morality that he adheres to, and Dexter is a little bit different because he doesn’t want to do these things, he wishes he wasn’t like this, but he knows that he is and there’s nothing he can do about it. The books are a little stranger about this than the TV show. So he’s channeling his awfulness into only killing murderers.  R: Right, and the rules of morality that he follows are not actually his morals.  K: Yeah. R: They were given to him. K: Yes. As a way to hopefully help maintain and control him. But he’s still killing people. And he’s still operating outside the justice system. He’s very careful about gathering all the evidence and knowing “yes, this person’s definitely a murderer,” but he’s still serving as judge, jury, and executioner without giving anyone the benefit of due process. In his mind it doesn’t matter why you killed somebody. You killed somebody. And it’s coming less from a place of morality than an opportunity to be an outlet for his own base urges. Villains can be protagonists. Just because somebody is the main character of the story doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re good.  R: In fact, I feel a little bit better about some books thinking about it that way. [laughs] K: Yeah, absolutely. And, look, there’s a whole thing you can get into with the hero vs. the antihero, and what is considered heroic and what is considered acceptable; god, I think there’s been entire books written about this, with Superman as a core component there. It is very nuanced to kind of sort these things out of where the line is between hero and villain, and even more so where the line is between antagonist and villain. At what point do you stop being just an inconvenience or a pain in the butt that someone’s gotta deal with and become somebody who is an active threat to not just the protagonist but potentially those around them as well? R: I know a book can have antagonists and villains, we’ve established several that do. Can you have a book with more than one villain?  K: Absolutely!  R: How do they not just sort of shrink down to become antagonists, then, if there’s more than one? Or is it just because of their behavior being evil? K: Let’s go back to another favorite of ours, Avatar: the Last Airbender. I would make the argument that both Azula and Ozai are villains. I think there are definitely people who would take Azula and put her more in the antagonist category; I disagree, she’s evil, she has evil motivations. She also wants to conquer and subjugate the entire world and is willing to burn it down to do it. Hers and her father’s ideologies and motives line up pretty closely. The difference is that Ozai sits in this palace and we don’t see him for most of the series, and Azula’s out there running amuck. R: So one can be a subordinate of the other, and they can both still be villains. K: Absolutely, yeah. And villains can work together, we got the superhero team ups on villains all the time. Dunno if you ever watched Venture Bros. - R: Yeah. K: - but the Guild of Calamitous Intent is one of my favorites, not that they’re all teaming up against the same protagonist there. But yeah you absolutely can have multiple villains; one who is working under or for the other. You could have minions that are villains, as long as their intentions are evil. To that end with Avatar I would say Ty Lee and Mai are antagonists, not villains. Because they’re minions who are kinda just there to do what Azula says but like, they don’t necessarily want to burn down and subjugate the rest of the world, they’re just sort of along for the ride. I think with multiple villains, a lot of times when you see that you’re kind of dealing with an ensemble cast, and everyone’s gonna sort of have a little area they have to go break off into. But not always, look at Star Wars. Yeah, Darth Vader was redeemed at the end, but you had two evil villains one right after the other, and again we’re kinda seeing the same power dynamic as Azula and Ozai. K: To kind of round all of this out, villains are evil. And they usually have to have some sort of evil motivation or plan or action to match this. They might be so evil that they aren’t even aware that everyone knows they’re evil and is trying to stop them. Villains do not necessarily have to come in immediate direct conflict with protagonists in order to be villains. They can just be out there doing their little villain evil plan thing and not even know that someone’s coming to fight them to the death until that person shows up to do so. They don’t have to be directly opposed to the protagonist. In some cases, they can be the protagonist. But they’ve gotta have bad intentions. R: For the thrill of having bad intentions. K: Some of it can be for the thrill. The pure villains, those are my favorite ones, the ones that we never quite find out why they’re doing what they’re doing, they’re just doing it. I use the example of Maleficent, from the original Sleeping Beauty movie, not the Angelina Jolie with lots of backstory and sympathetic character origins. Maleficent shows up, she’s mad that she didn’t get invited to the party but we kind of all get the impression that there’s a reason she wasn’t, but nobody quite knows what it is or what’s going on here. R: Because we knew she would make a scene! K [laughing]: I think it’s because she showed up and cursed the princess. R: So they saw that coming, you’re saying. K: Yeah maybe. R: Even though the exact way to prevent that, according to Maleficent, would’ve been to invite her. K: The logic gets a little circular there, to be sure. [laughs] But yeah so, the villain is a character type, it’s not a plot role. The villain is not always necessarily there to advance the protagonist or the plot. They certainly can, but they’re not doing it directly all the time. R: Mhm. K: This is, villains are one of those sometimes-but-not-always-except-for-this-and-then-that-happens kind of situation. Antagonists on the other hand, they’re not necessarily evil, they can be actually just regular cool decent normal people who happen to have a conflicting agenda with the protagonist. They just want different things. Last week we did MacGuffins. The antagonist may just be running around after their own MacGuffin, and for some reason that’s causing problems for the protagonist. Maybe they also want that MacGuffin for a completely different reason, one that is mutually exclusive of what the antagonist wants; they can’t team up there. Or maybe they just also wanna have the top spot at the dojo, and so they’re gonna be in conflict with the protagonist there. The thing that makes the antagonist an antagonist is that they are opposed to the protagonist, and they will cause conflicts with the story’s main character. It’s a plot role, and it doesn’t necessarily speak to the character’s personality or motivations. They are there to create and cause conflict for the main character to either resolve, oppose, or fall to. R: So when I proposed this topic to you, I kind of thought of antagonists as mini-bosses and the villain as the big boss, thinking of video games and the way that’s usually structured. So, this is unexpected. K [laughing]: Listen, an antagonist can be a mini-boss. It’s all about motivations. R: But they can also just be that person living their life that has always bugged you because they microwaved fish in the lunchroom that one time. K: That person might be a villain. R: [laughs] Just wanna contradict me at every turn. K: I dunno, somebody who microwaves fish, that seems like evil intentions to me. [laughing] R: Look, they live with the consequences of that decision for the rest of their life. K: That’s very very true. Anyway, so, Rekka any - R: Can an antagonist be the protagonist? K: No, those are mutually exclusive yeah. There’s somebody who is not evil and they’re the main character of the story, they’re the protagonist. R: So they don’t have a goatee or a mustache to twirl, and they’re the main character, then they’re the protagonist every time. K: Yes. The primary component for being the protagonist is that the story is about you, you’re the principal character. If you are serving in an antagonistic role as the protagonist, you’re still the protagonist, you’re just a jerk. R: So when I get up and look in the mirror in the morning and I say, “Hey, butthead,” I’m still the protagonist of my life. K: You are both the protagonist and antagonist of your own life, yes. R: That feels accurate. K: [laughing] I think most of us are. R: Yeah. K: Well we said, a good example of an antagonist is the character themselves. R: Yep. Alright, I think I get it. K: We can always come back and talk more about it, because this one was fun to do some research on and get some thoughts together. R: So you would say that a book or a story plot requires an antagonist but doesn’t necessarily require a villain. K: Yes, definitely. R: And the protagonist is completely optional. K: Yes, we’re just gonna have a bunch of antagonists running around causing conflict for each other. Well, I think that’s pretty much every murder mystery, so. R: So if it’s a third person omniscient, and there is no main POV, we can have a book with no protagonist. Got it. K: I feel like you’re trying to trick me into something but I don’t know what. [laughing] R: I’m antagonizing you, I’m sorry. K: It’s an important thing to do. R: As an editor you need to have your feathers ruffled every now and then. K: It creates conflict, and conflict creates growth. R: And plot. K: And plot. [laughing] But yeah thank you so much for listening everyone as always, hopefully this was helpful information, I know this was a lot of mincing of minute details, but - R: Yeah I mean maybe this was the episode you never knew you never wanted but - K [overlapping]: [laughs] R: - if there is an episode topic that you do know you want, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram @WMBcast, and you can also find us at patreon.com/WMBcast. And we’d love to hear your suggestions for topics or questions. If we have confused you in any way, then you can blame Kaelyn, and also let us know and we’ll try to fix that. Thanks everyone! K: Thank you so much.

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Episode Transcript (by Rekka) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. Kaelyn: I love MacGuffins. R: Or weenies. I think we should start calling them "weenies" again. K: Go back to the original name. Yeah, it's funny because like, I think MacGuffin has like a negative connotation around it and I love it as a plot device where it's just like, there's this thing. And everyone wants it. In some cases we don't even really know what it does. There's like oh, the suitcase from pulp fiction. That's a great MacGuffin. R: That was going to be my example. K: In one of the Mission: Impossible movies, the one with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, you know, they're trying to get this, this thing from this guy. And Phillip Seymour Hoffman is this like the most terrifying crime lord in the world. And he can't get this thing. We literally never find out what it does, why they need to keep it out of his hands so badly and, and have it for themselves. But yeah we kinda conceived of this episode is talking about MacGuffin versus plot devices. So, let's be clear. All MacGuffins are plot devices, not all plot devices are MacGuffins. So as I always like to do a, you know, a little bit of history here, MacGuffin the terms often chalked up as being coined by, Alfred Hitchcock and his friend and screenwriter, MacPhail, but it actually goes back quite a bit before that there was an actress in the 1920s named of Pearl White, which I can only assume as a stage name. R: Her movies brought to you by Colgate. K: I genuinely hope that's a stage name. But she was in a lot of spy movies or action movies where everyone was chasing after something. And she was in so many of them that she started calling the items in question "weenies" because it didn't matter. And the, it was almost getting a little formulaic in her movies that it could have been, you know, like a roll of film, a document, a, a key that opens a certain, you know, safe or something. It really didn't matter what they were. It was just, you know, these suspense action inspired movies, everyone trying to chase down the same object. R: The reason that it doesn't matter is because no one actually ever really uses it. You just want to have it, right? K: Yeah. Yeah. It's frequently MacGuffin-related plots are resolved by "the real treasure was the friends we made along the way," which is one of the more infuriating endings. R: I like friends. K: Friends are great. Yeah. But like, okay. So I was going to get to this, to this later and the thing that, like one of my favorite examples of a MacGuffin that becomes un-MacGuffinned and is National Treasure That film is very rare in that they actually find and maintain hold of the treasure in the end of it, think of like, you know, like the Goonies or Pirates of the Caribbean, like Treasure Planet, they all find the treasure, but they don't really actually get to keep any of it. National Treasure really upended that by, by letting those characters not only find it, but then we find out how much money they got for it. R: And Disney's Atlantis. They did have the treasure at the end, too. K: That's true. R: They didn't tell anyone they had treasure. They just suddenly were all very wealthy. K: Yes, it was very good. So yeah, MacGuffins are by definition, it's a functionally meaningless interchangeable object whose only purpose is to drive the plot. The function of a MacGuffin is that there are characters or multiple groups of characters that want it, and they're all competing or outwitting or racing to get this object. R: The method by which it drives the plot. It creates the tension between different parties. K: Yes, exactly. Or it could be, you know, something like a treasure hunt where, you know, the MacGuffin is the treasure. So we know what its function is. It's going to make somebody rich, but it really is just there as an object to be desired. One of the fun things I learned while doing, you know, putting some notes together, researching this is it's generally accepted that one of the first MacGuffin in commonly accepted MacGuffin and literature was the holy grail, which is very common plot device for Arthurian legend. And then, you know, later tales where this is also treasure. Yes. It had religious significance, but therefore making it a worthwhile pursuit for these holy and sanctified nights. But yeah, it was functionally a MacGuffin because once you get the holy grail, what do you do with it? Well, it depends. If you're in an Indiana Jones movie or not, I know. The Arthurian knights were not not planning to make themselves immortal by that. They were planning to just get it and put it somewhere to look at it and go, it's the holy grail. Yay. So MacGuffins, like I said, it's got a negative connotation around it, I believe. And I do think that is that's very unfair. It's often treated like, well, it's just something that they had to put in there to get the characters, to act, to do something. And it's like, well, yeah, but that's a book. R: Yeah. You need a plot. K: That's how plot devices work. I think where MacGuffins get a bad rep so to speak is because they're meaningless and interchangeable. There are a lot of books, movies, TV shows where the MacGuffin is interchangeable. How many, you know, heist films have you watched where it's like, we need to get this thing in order to, you know, make this next step. And then it turns out that it's like, oh no, wait, things have changed. We need get this other thing. It doesn't have to be the same MacGuffin through the course of the story. They can change based on, you know, how the plot's moving or circumstances or the needs or wants of the characters. As I mentioned before, all MacGuffin are plot devices, not all plot devices are a MacGuffin. So that was kind of, you know, we wanted to talk a little bit about what a MacGuffin is and what it isn't thereby, what is a plot device and what its function is. K: Plot devices are basically a technique and narrative use to move the plot forward. It can be anything from, you know, characters and their actions to objects, to gifts of mysterious origins that we're not quite sure about. Now. It can be relationship, plot devices cover a lot of different things. One of them is MacGuffin. So, you know, saying like, well saying this object, it's just a plot device. Well, it might not be just a plot device. It might be a MacGuffin, but plot devices can be other things. Chekov's gun is of course a plot device. The Chekov's gun rule is if you're going to have a gun on the stage in the first act of a play, somebody needs to fire it in the third act of a play because otherwise it's just, you know, a decoration at that point. I don't like that. R: I don't think it's just that it's a decoration it's that your audience is going to wonder about it and that you don't want to distract or disappoint. K: If there's a play going on and there's a gun hanging on the wall and it's set in a hunting lodge that seems fairly normal. R: But for example, if I see somebody in a movie, pick a rifle out of their nightstand and tuck it into their belt, I know that, you know, something's going to escalate. K: Yeah, exactly. Or at least we're, we should be reading into that. Character is planning for there to be some kind of a conflict or a scenario in which they may need to defend themselves. Right. But let's talk a little bit about pot devices. As I mentioned, they're things that are intended to move the plot along. There's an endless list of things that are plot devices. And as I said, these can be anything from relationships. Like a love triangle is a frequently as plot device. Definitely one of my least favorites. First of all, they're very rarely actually triangles. They're more like two lines converging on a single point in order for there to be a triangle, all three people involved need to be having— R: So is the object of the other two's interest a MacGuffin? K: Could be, I've talked endlessly about what a ridiculous character Bella from Twilight is. And I mean, she's, she's borderline a MacGuffin. Like really, you know what, God, that's a really good thought experiment. I'm going to have to like find some kind of a summary now and go, go through this and see if like Bella is actually a MacGuffin. R: If the character themself doesn't have any agency, like the damsel in distress that you don't even see until you storm the castle in the third act. K: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we'll get to things that can be MacGuffin that you might not think would be a MacGuffin. So one of them that I actually stumbled across that I didn't think about as a plot device is the Deus ex Machina. So Deus ex Machina it's was a commonly used plot device, especially in Greek comedies and tragedies, primarily tragedies, I suppose where an improbable event is used to resolve everything and bring the story to a conclusion, usually a happy conclusion, fun fact about the Deus ex Machina, of course, you know, it's the Latin for "God in the machine." it was because that's because in a lot of great tragedies and plays, they'd have this mechanism by which an actor portraying a God was lowered into the stage, does god things, you know, changes whatever's happening, and then that's the end of the story. So God in the machine was what was coined for that. This one I will say generally is something that writers are encouraged to avoid. It's it's not great storytelling. Like if, you know, you're lining up for the big conflict and everyone's squared off and waiting to see what happens. And then an earthquake happens and kills everyone... R: Yeah. You know, the earthquake, wasn't something that had been foreshadowed or anything like that. It's kinda like the "Oh, and I woke up and it was all a dream." K: I always say like the T-Rex at the end of the first Jurassic Park movie. R: Just shows up and chomps. K: Just shows up and is like "Raptors! Mmm!" R: A lot of people were pretty satisfied by the T-Rex if, if it had been T-Rexes in the tragedies, we could've had a whole new view of the Deus ex Machina. K: Yeah. It was a, it was a very satisfying ending and it was certainly a "whoa, holy crap. Like, yeah, I forgot. There's also huge dinosaurs running around here. Right." R: And again, so like that was foreshadowed. It was Chekov's T-Rex for your T-Rex Machina. K: It is a little bit of an ex Machina because first of all, the last time we saw the T-Rex, it was very far from the visitor center. And also no one can explain to me how it got in there. So, but you know. It's fine. R: Hey, look. If you really want to nitpick Jurassic Park, let's just talk about how the Jeep fell into the T-Rex enclosure. They did not get to a fence. And yet there were brachiosaurs. Why were they in the T-Rex enclosure? K: I thought they were outside the T-Rex enclosure along a cliff. R: I didn't see a fence. K: The geography of this is, is definitely slightly slightly suspect. But also a plot device, the T-Rex in this is, you know, serving as, as a plot device, in that it is forcing the characters to act and make decisions really. We all know that if they just sat quietly in the cars, the movie would have been a lot different. R: But the MacGuffin of Jurassic Park would be the dinosaur DNA. K: Yes. in one aspect of the plot, definitely, the Nedry plot. I would argue that that is much more relevant to everything, but like, it is a weird little side plot where this chain of events gets kicked off because of yes, the dinosaur DNA, which is not meaningful for the story. Is it interchangeable? I don't know. I would say no on that, but it definitely, for that particular part of the plot serves as a MacGuffin. K: One of the examples I always use that, you know, people point to and say is a MacGuffin, but is absolutely not, is the one ring from Lord of the Rings. It's not an interchangeable object there, isn't another, you know, another thing that they could go take and throw into this volcano, the only reason they're going to throw in this ring into Mount Doom is because it has to be that specific ring. And it has to be thrown into Mount Doom. We lose the whole story of the one ring corrupting and torturing everybody that's holding it. You know, we lose the the character development that comes from the people who have to carry this ring and what it does to them. So that's one we're, you know, I see like people saying like, oh yeah, and the one ring, the MacGuffin. Like it's not, that is not a MacGuffin. It is a plot device, but it is not a MacGuffin. R: Right. It's an object that everybody wants, but it is a carefully crafted object in terms of the story that is the foundation of the story itself. K: Yeah. The one ring, I would say, even goes so far as to serve as a theme in that story, essentially. One of my favorite plot devices is a plot coupons. Rekka also loves these. R: Like you need the blue key card and then come back with the blue key card. And then, you know, you can open this blue locked door. The idea that you need this thing before the story can go any further and it has to be this thing. But that thing is not going to come around later. It's not like that key will open another door later. It will open this one door that we need to progress, but there's probably going to be another door later. K: And again, this is not a MacGuffin because it's not interchangeable. You need that specific key. The other way to sort of integrate plot coupons into your story is there's a certain number of objects you need to collect in order to get something else. My favorite one of these is Dragon Ball. You want to summon the dragon. I believe his name was Shen. You have to collect all seven dragon balls to do that. So the story is being driven by the quest to find all of these, some in the dragon and then summoning the dragon from there typically drives the plot forward even more. It's very rarely goes the way you want it to when you're collecting, collecting things for a larger thing. It's not like a carnival where you get enough tickets, you get the giant teddy bear and then you go home. That teddy bear might kill you. Yeah. Similarly to, to plot coupons is a plot voucher which is something that a character is given or, you know, picks up on a whim or just, you know, is particularly entranced by and goes, I'm going to take this object. And then it turns out to be incredibly useful or life-saving, or exactly the thing that they needed or didn't realize the value of it. Something like that. R: This is frequently a Star Trek: The Next Generation thing where Wesley is working on this school project and that school project saves the planet later when he connects it to the war coils. K: Yeah. There you go. Yeah. it's a very common thing in especially fantasy because you know, it's this there's a lot of concepts of hidden and mysterious objects where something that you have, you don't realize that's what it is the whole time you have it. And then suddenly it's magically revealed at the end. One of my favorites. I don't know if anyone listening to this or Rekka, I feel like you may have read like the, you know, the subsequent Wizard of Oz books. R: I have not read the sequels. K: Oh really? Okay. Yeah, and um R: I always meant to, but I just never got around to it. K: They're good. They're good. I got, I got really into them and I believe it's, is it in the second book? I can't remember. And one of them were Dorothy returns to Oz and they're trying to, you know, so Oz is now without a leader and she goes off on this whole quest with this boy that she finds who he's an orphan. And he doesn't have a lot of memories from when he was younger and they go in this whole thing and they're trying R: Well that sounds like a missing king. K: Better. It's a missing queen. Because they finally turn— their whole thing is they're trying to track down this witch who may know where the heir Ozma is. And they finally confront her and she tearfully breaks down and points to the boy and says, "I turned her into a boy." Dorothy's had the queen with her the whole time and didn't realize it. So yeah, that's a, you know, that's a good, I'm not sure that really fits the plot voucher, but I'm going to say that it does, because Dorothy does go out of her way to have this boy accompany her. I think the boy's name is Pip because of course it would be. You know, somebody who on a whim picks up like a bulletproof vest or has given a bullet professed and then get shot later. Or you know, there's always like the little meek character that they give like a knife or a gun to, and say here, hold this just in case. K: And then the main character is getting strangled to death and they use it. Those are plot vouchers. Another one— and then I promise I'll stop going through plot devices here, but I, I always enjoy this—is a good red herring. Very common in murder mysteries and thriller stories and even a spy novels. You know, this is trying to divert the audience of the reader's attention away from something and draw it to something else. You know, I mentioned murder mystery. So like this would be like, you know, the whole family's gathered for dinner and the grandmother suddenly dies. And the doctor of the family declare she's been poisoned, and who would have the motive for doing this? And while you, the reader trying to sort through all of this, there becomes a character who it's to you very clear has the best motives, the best opportunity and everything. But in the case of that, being a red herring, what it's doing is it's distracting you from something that's happening in the background, where there is actually a better candidate to be the murderer, but the author doesn't want you to know that yet. Red herrings are frequently used for another plot device, which is of course the plot twist, right? Very difficult to have a plot twist without a series of very well laid out red herrings. Yeah. R: And you have to be very balanced in how you use them. So you don't tip off that they are red herrings. Like they can't be so overtly obvious, although in certain genres they are tropes and people want the red herring and they want to be the smart one who figures out who the actual killer is before the detective realizes they are after the wrong person or whatever. K: Red herrings can actually be used within the book as well. Something that the you know, antagonist of the story does, to deliberately mislead our band of noble heroes and send them off on a wild goose chase so they can continue their nefarious plans undeterred, would be a red herring used within the context of the story. That's I hope kind of a good, "This is a plot device. This is a MacGuffin," but one thing I did want to touch on was things that can be MacGuffins, but don't seem like they would be MacGuffins. Because as we mentioned, MacGuffin is need to be, you know, functionally meaningless interchangeable and lacking agency. And these don't necessarily seem like things that would check off those boxes R: Just by their inherent nature. You're going to say people as your first one. So like you would see a character and you're going to think they're going to act with some agency. They're going to try to manipulate the world around them to get what they want. But sometimes... K: Sometimes they're just MacGuffins. You know, I mentioned, I am going to go back and try to figure this out. If Bella from Twilight is actually just a MacGuffin. My— I'm going to say in some books, yes. For staggeringly, large parts of the book. Baby Yoda is a MacGuffin for a really long time in the Mandalorian. Yes, it's a sentient functioning creature that in some cases does interact with and change the environment, but he really doesn't have a lot of agency. He's just sort of, kind of getting carted around by, by the Mandalorian. R: He wants to eat amphibians. K: He wants to eat amphibians and their eggs. And everybody wants him. Everyone is trying to get this child that—the viewer see some examples of his power early on, but most of the people trying to get him don't realize that. And even, you know, up to the very end, if not like at the, you know, the end of the story so far, he's suddenly become a very involved, interactive character, altering and changing the world around him. He's still, he's an object that's handed off. R: Right. Although technically by sending the Jedi signal homing signal, yes, he does get used. So therefore—. K: Yes, he becomes a plot device at that point. R: He is no longer a MacGuffin, but yeah, for most of the season, he is. K: He's kind of a Deus ex Machina there. R: Well, okay. Is he the Deus ex Machina or is Luke showing up to take him away the Deus ex Machina? K: Spoilers for Mandalorian season two, which— R: If you care, you already know. K: Yeah, Exactly. No, I would say he's the Deus ex Machina because by that point, Luke is a function of him. He only shows up for him. Okay. He's not a MacGuffin because he's not interchangeable if you know, Han Solo showed up that wouldn't have been very helpful for everyone. I mean, you know, extra gun, I guess, but Luke's the one we really needed in that situation, but yeah. And you see this you see this a lot in video games, like the escort quests, where, you know, you just have like some silly character that keeps trying to like run into dangerous situations and you have to prevent them from doing it. That's, they're serving as a MacGuffin at that point. You know, Rekka made the example of like the damsel in distress. People can be MacGuffins for a time and then change into plot devices or then even characters. R: Okay. But when you are looking over somebody or something from a story, how do you say here's where they change? And that changes them like before they weren't a plot device? K: Where, where is the crossover? R: Well, like when you're, when you're saying like, yes, that's a MacGuffin or yes, that's a plot device. Like if, as a plot device that meant that later they did something. So then were they ever a MacGuffin? K: Yes. MacGuffins do not have to stay MacGuffins. Hmm. You can graduate from MacGuffin to plot device and plot device to character. That's what typically is going to take a person from a MacGuffin to, you know, being part of the story, be it as a character or a plot device is them acting either on their own behalf or on the behalf of the people that were basically treating them as a MacGuffin at that point. Some of the common tropes with this is them suddenly gaining a power of some kind, you know, maybe this was like this you know, child princess that needed to be escorted across the galaxy. So she could go back and claim her throne. But basically we just had to keep her hidden and locked away and make sure, you know, people keep attacking the ship and trying to stop us from getting her home. K: But then she touches a crystal that she shouldn't have. And now she's going to get them all safely home she's then, you know, not a MacGuffin at that point, she is, you know, a character or maybe on some level, a plot device, usually in order for a person to be a true MacGuffin, they have to be completely helpless: babies, children that can't take care of themselves or, oh, here's a good one. Macguffins that will—like I mentioned with Ozma in, you know, the Wizard of Oz sequel books—MacGuffins that you didn't realize were with you the whole time. And they transform into something that transcends being a MacGuffin. You know, they were cursed to just be this rock. And for some reason, someone's got the rock with them the whole time and it's a MacGuffin, but then it's, you know, we broke the curse and it's actually a person. R: Or in science fiction, you might have somebody that's like in stasis, in cryo, and you don't know why you're transporting them or why everyone keeps attacking your ship to get them or something. K: Macguffins aren't static. They don't always have to stay MacGuffin. A good example of a MacGuffin that does not stay MacGuffin is an egg, anytime, you know, there's a, a precious egg or something similar that we have to, you know, be transporting and getting to wherever it needs to hatch or something. And then it hatches probably dragons are a really good example or trope here. And then it actually hatches and turns into a dragon. Well, that dragon is not a MacGuffin because it's a dragon. R: And at the very least it changes the plot by being a hungry, now-alive thing. K: Very much so, very much. So other things that can be MacGuffins. We talked about interchangeable objects a little bit, you know, the MacGuffin does not have to be the static standard object to the whole time. It can change. It can be, you know, it's whatever the character or characters desire or need at that moment. R: It could be a relay race of MacGuffins. K: Exactly. Really, honestly it could. It really could. And then the other one that I had made a note of here is a place. So, you know, we think of the MacGuffin as an object that you're trying to hold, but it can also be a place that you're trying to get to that is, you know, maybe not, we're not sure if it's real, if it's a fabled, you know, legendary location El Dorado is a good example of that. A lot of, a lot of treasure seeking-based stories have places that sort of serve as MacGuffins. And to the clear, the treasure being a MacGuffin and the place being a MacGuffin are two different things, because the treasure—like I'll go back to National Treasure—Um they very explicitly stayed in that, that it's been moved around a lot. So they're not trying to find a specific place. They are trying to find a specific thing. They just don't know where it is. R: And once they get it, they're going to remove it from that place. K: Yes. A MacGuffin that is a place is a specific spot that you've got to get to. Maybe it's a sacred temple where you could only perform this specific resurrection spell, or maybe it's a city made entirely of gold or like Treasure Planet was a good one because you had to get to that specific planet and that specific place on the planet in order to, you know, find and access all of this treasure. R: Or in the Mummy Returns, when they are trying to release the scorpion bracelet from their son's wrist, they have to go to this temple specifically to do that. K: Yeah. So places can be a little tricky. They, they verge a little bit more on, on plot devices, but there are definitely a place can serve as a MacGuffin, especially if it's like a legendary one that nobody can really prove exists. K: By the way, if there's a lot to read on a MacGuffin is out there and you know, why they're, they're really not actually a bad, a bad thing. But conflating them, you know, conflating all plot devices and saying it's a MacGuffin is not actually accurate. K: Because plot devices are a lot more dynamic than MacGuffins. And there's a lot of different types and how they can be replied. Plot devices are a writing technique. Macguffins are a component of the writing technique. So anyway, I like a good MacGuffin. I think they're a lot of fun. And I think plot devices can be really helpful for, for writing. Again, it's something that like, there are these things that I think like they just exist. They're things that we have and things we have to, you know, have in our stories, but we talk about them very dismissively for some reason. I'm never quite sure why that is. R: I think a lot of the dismissiveness comes from people who have more of a literary mind with regard to their storytelling. K: Possibly. R: So that either they are dismissive of genre fiction entirely, or they feel like it's their duty to elevate genre fiction by eliminating tropes, which would then eliminate the genre. K: Yeah. R: Um yeah, I think that that's the perception I get anyway from the discourse I see about these things, but yeah. I definitely got the impression as a, you know, emerging writer that MacGuffins, were a bad thing. But you know, as we pointed out, there's a lot of people's favorite movies, favorite stories, favorite movies, favorite plays that are just chock full of MacGuffins. K: All of the Indiana Jones, R: Pretty much, yeah. This belongs in a museum because it can just go behind glass and stay there. But in the meantime, let's fight over it. K: They Ark of the Covenant by the way, is one of my favorite MacGuffins: the Instakill MacGuffin. By the way, this is a trope is the MacGuffin that you get. And you're finally like, "Haha I have the thing." And then it kills everyone. R: The MacGuffin that you should not mess with. K: Yes. I like MacGuffins. R: Macguffins are good. And if the advice is, "I don't know what to do in the scene," "make something blow up." Like why not use a MacGuffin to keep your plot moving forward? K: Yeah. R: There's definitely a draw in like wanting an object. People can understand multiple people wanting the same object. This is the nature of humanity. So it's something we can identify quickly and relate to and understand without spending a whole bunch of time on it. K: If you just exist in your life, you're going to come across a lot of MacGuffins. My current MacGuffin is I really want a bagel. R: But it has to be a New York bagel. So it's not just a MacGuffin. K: It has to be the everything bagel with scallion cream cheese from the place around the corner from me. And the thing is, I don't have time to go get it right now, but I really want it. And for my life, it is functionally meaningless and interchangeable, because I could very easily just go get some toast out of the fridge and that will nourish and satiate me. But it's not the thing that I desire. R: But it's not. Yeah. It's not going to satisfy you. It's just going to feed you. K: Yes, exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, I think that's MacGuffins. Thank you so much, everyone for listening. R: And we'll be back with something else that we have opinions on in two weeks. K: We have a lot of opinions. R: Thanks, everyone.

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Mentioned in this episode: Glitter + Ashes edited by dave ring Silk & Steel edited by Janine A. Southard  Grace's Links: Website ArtStation portfolio Twitter Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. R: Today we are talking to Grace Fong about book art. Now we’ve had someone on in the past to talk about cover art and art-directing a commissioned cover. However, I think Colin would forgive me for saying that you do not want Colin to do the artwork. Kaelyn: He would, yes. R: Yes. [laughing] Would you like to introduce yourself? Grace: Hi, I’m Grace! My pronouns are she/her, I work on the narrative design team over at Wizards of the Coast for Magic: The Gathering. I am also a sometimes-writer, and for the past five years I’ve been doing illustration work for various speculative fiction magazines, such as Strange Horizons, and some anthologies like Silk & Steel and Glitter + Ashes. K: Rekka this is our first like, real artist. R: It is difficult to get an artist on a podcast. I have tried - K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: - for this podcast and the previous one and it is a tricky business. So Grace, you live up to your name in showing up. G [laughing]: We don’t like talking to people, we just like sitting at our computers. R: I completely understand, but doesn’t mean I’m gonna give up trying, so. We’ve finally done it. K: Awesome. So I have been involved in some cover art not as the primary person but as the editor, where I have to look at it and go ‘yeah okay that kinda tracks with what’s happening here.’ We have talked a lot on this podcast before about what to expect out of your cover art, and how involved the writers are going to be in it, and the answer is typically not very, at all. So, when you’re doing this, who is it that you’re primarily working with? G: When I do work for magazines and books I’m usually working with the editor of the publication, so for the anthology it’s usually an anthology editor, or for a short fiction magazine it is usually the art director of the magazine or the editor of the magazine. K: Can you walk us through the process of how you get started on this? They’re obviously not coming to you with a blank slate, they’re coming to you with a series of stories that may or may not have a theme. How do you get started working with this editor? G: It really varies, depending on the type of publication. So for anthologies, because they cover a lot of different narrative ground, usually we try to come up with an image that encapsulates the theme of the anthology. Like for Silk & Steel, I was doing one of the promotional postcards for them. We knew we were doing femme-femme, high fantasy, sword-and-scorcery kind of stuff. So I knew that those characters would have to be reflective of the book’s content. Sometimes editors will give me a particular story that they aim to showcase for the publication, in which case I’ll usually read the story if it’s under 6,000 words, and try and come up with a composition that fits it the best that I possibly can. This is how I work with Strange Horizons. K: At what point do you usually come into the process? Are you typically involved right from the get go, or do they kind of wait until they have most of the story material? G: Usually when editors are doing their selections, they will wait until they have the written content first, because the written content is gonna dictate which artist they’re gonna go to, to look for. Whose style best captures the feeling of their product? It’s actually similar to traditional publication as well. The art directors at major publishing houses usually have a manuscript or summary for new debut authors whose manuscripts are already completed, and then they find an artist based off the existing manuscript. Some covers are completed beforehand, if the publishing house knows the author, knows the brand of that author and knows the kind of proposal or piece they are in the middle of working. K: You’re gonna be sitting down with the editor, they’re gonna give you a story that they particularly wanna feature, they’re gonna give you an overall feeling or theme or - how much creative license do you get? R: I wanna interrupt because you just skipped like a really huge part: the creative brief. K: Yes. R: So what you just said, they’re gonna give you a mood, they’re gonna give you a theme or whatever, this is a whole step. Don’t smooth it over like that. And this is something that actually Grace’s got a little bit of a reputation for her knowledge on. So Grace I know you in, I believe it’s November, are doing the Clarion workshop about creating a brief for a cover artist, right? G: Yes. R: So let’s give this the spotlight it deserves! [laughing] G [overlapping]: Okay. K: Yeah, I’ve written a couple, I shouldn’t have skipped over that, so apologies. G: I mean it’s a specialized skill not everyone has to do them, so yeah. R: Well I definitely want to highlight it a bit, ‘cause you helped me with one - G [laughing]: That’s true! R: What goes into the creative brief? Kaelyn named a couple of things, and this sort of forms the silhouette around which Kaelyn’s question pivots, which is how much creative control do you get as an artist? So what’s in the brief that you consider sacred, and what’s in the gaps that you get to play with? G: So, that - K: Well first, and I’m sorry to cut you off - I’m sorry - can we say what - [laughing] R [overlapping]: I’m gonna interrupt you back! K: That’s fair, that’s fair. Can we kind of say what a creative brief is? G: Oh yeah, sure. So essentially when you are starting to work with an artist, an artist does not have the time to read an entire manuscript of 400+ pages. Their pricing is usually based off of the time that they’re gonna spend creating your artwork. So you need to provide them with what is known as a creative brief, or art brief. And these are small documents that are very instructional, no more than like a page or two long, that explains the kind of image and feel that you are going for, for this assignment. The assumption is that you would have done your research and sent this brief to an artist that you think would do a good job for the publication that you’re sourcing art for. So you’re not gonna go to someone who does only black and white work if you want to sell your book with a big, bright, neon, 80s kind of cover. G: ‘Brief’ is kind of the keyword here. You’re essentially writing instructions for an artist. Don’t try to lead them in using prose writing, tell them what they’re gonna be drawing. It’s a bit like a recipe list. So if it’s a story about vampires and you want your vampire main character on the cover, you would specify that that’s what you’re looking for. Or, let’s say you’re trying to sell more literary up-market fiction, which doesn’t use as many figurative images. Then you would maybe make an explanation about like ‘oh this book is about a woman’s time when she was living as a child in Philadelphia.’ In which case you would sometimes kind of refine that into a visual or item metaphor that you would ask the artist to render in a specific way that captures the mood and feel of the book, and leverages the imagery that’s common to that market, so that it can reach the correct audience. K: Gotcha. Okay. So then you’re gonna get this brief, and presumably dig into it. Do you ever receive a section of text, if there’s a scene in particular that they’d like illustrated? G: Specific scene commissions tend not to be used for covers, because they’re not very good at selling a publication. Scene work tends to be done for interior illustration. So these the the images that go along in the story; you look at these images as you are reading these scenes. But for the front cover you’re trying to provide one image that sells the entire mood of the story to a particular audience. So in general you want to avoid using specific scenes, unless that scene comes in very early, because you don’t wanna spoil the ending of the book. You only have one picture to play with for a cover, meanwhile with interiors you tend to have a series. You can do like a chapter header, like in the original Harry Potter American versions. K: It’s funny you say that, because I was thinking about how I remember when the Harry Potter books were coming out, and there were always the American and the British cover versions, and everyone would be over-analyzing and try to pick apart ‘okay what’s in the background here, what’s happening in this scene.’ But yeah because those covers were all more or less specific scenes from the book. They were a little abstract. G: Exactly, but it’s - the keyword as you just said it is that they were scenes but they were abstracted. Actually tapping into that same visual metaphor that I mentioned earlier, for literary up-market, it’s just because they’re cramming so many things - what they’re actually doing is creating one image that forces you to look harder at it to find all of those metaphorical connections with the story inside. If it has the hippogriff on it and the Chamber of Secrets journal and the Goblet of Fire, these are all singular items that you don’t actually see in those covers how they relate to the story, but you know that this is an important item in the story. Ergo, which Harry Potter volume this cover revolves around. K: Do you get scenarios where somebody says ‘I want you to draw exactly this and I want it to look like this,’ or do you generally give them a few different ideas or rough sketches and then go from there? G: Generally the things that I like to have control over are color palette, camera angle, the stuff that would be considered very technical for an illustration. Perspective. Whether things are shot from above, shot from below, because these are all illustrator tools that help dictate the mood of a painting. And the mood is actually the thing that I usually ask my clientele for. Mood translates to ‘how are we supposed to feel when looking at this?’ Because feeling is very closely tied to genre. G: So, what kind of book am I trying to sell? Is it a horror book? That dictates what kind of colors, what kind of camera angles that I’m going to use. But if somebody tells me ‘I want a top-down shot of something-something,’ then that feels a bit invasive to me because I feel like if I am an artist then I can select the camera angle to best convey the drama that you’re asking for. But the things that are really good for me are the object or character or focus, and if there is a character the kind of action that is being performed. A lot of times we get character description but no action, and the action is actually what tells us what the character is like, and separates it from the design. K: Yeah so you don’t just have two characters just standing there looking straight forward at the camera - G [overlapping]: Yeah. K: - dressed the way they told you to dress them. G: Yes. [laughing] Because basically that would be really difficult to create an interesting illustration for. K: Absolutely yeah. [laughing] G: It’s kind of like going to the mall and you see the clothes being sold on mannequins. Like it helps sell you the clothes but it doesn’t tell you what the story is behind the people wearing the clothes. It helps to have stuff like props, backgrounds, and actions to help convey like, ‘oh yeah if this character is wearing a t-shirt and jeans, is this t-shirt and jeans part of an urban fantasy? Or is it a part of a YA contemporary romance?’ K: How much back-and-forth do you generally have with the editors you’re working with? Like what is the first thing you give back to them? G: This generally varies per artist, including the artists I work with. So usually what I do is between one to three thumbnails or sketches that I hand in to the editor and ask them ‘what do you think of these directions,’ ‘which one of these thumbnails’ - which I then proceed to refine - ‘do you think hits the target best?’ Then if it’s a very large piece of work I might work on a more refined sketch and pass it in, or like base colors and pass it in, and minimally it’s usually the thumbnails plus the finished drawing. So that’s two to five back-and-forths, depending on the size of the piece. R: How much do you let the art director or editor you’re working with go back to the start? I know you probably don’t let them past a certain point, like ok you approved the thumbnail so we’re moving forward, we’re not going back to thumbnails after that, but what if they don’t like any of the initial thumbnails? G: Yeah so basically most artists I know have what are called revision fees, and these are generally written into the contracts that you sign upon working with them. Basically saying ‘you get this many thumbnails, you get to give comments this many times, and if you go over those times there’ll be an additional fee.’ Because artists are basically charging - it’s a service-based industry, and your haircutter charges you per hour, and so does your artist. And generally if they aren’t happy with the thumbnails, then I would then incur the revision fee, but also I ask for further information. G: So, if you as a writer or editor aren’t happy with what your artist is turning back, you need to be able to explain what you’re not happy with. So you can explain like ‘oh I don’t think this color palette is appropriate for this target market. Here are some images of other books that have come out in the same area that we think would be good inspiration for you.’ The only time that revision becomes really frustrating, outside of a timing frame, is when your client says ‘I don’t know what I want but I’ll know it when I see it.’ R: I knew you were gonna say that. [giggling] As a graphic designer I also hate those words. G [laughing]: Yeah. K: It’s like okay I guess I’ll just keep throwing paint at the wall and see what happens. G: Like revisions aren’t bad as long as the client is able to convey what needs to actually be changed. R: Not a series of no-thank-yous. K: Have you ever come across a scenario where you’ve kind of had to take a step back from the project and say ‘listen, I think maybe I’m not the right person to do this.’ G: Usually I’m good enough at heading that off before a project even begins. K [laughing]: Okay! G: That is something you come to with experience, you understand your style, your way of working as an illustrator, and knowing like ‘hey this type of thing is going to be too out of my ballpark,’ ‘this type of thing is not gonna pay enough,’ ‘this type of thing is just too much work for what I’m capable of doing right now.’ That is kind of like you’re responsible, as most freelance artists are independent business owners essentially. They’ll usually say so up front minus extenuating circumstances. Like at work we’ve had people drop out because they acquired COVID in the middle of an assignment, so - K [overlapping]: Oh god. G: - there’s really nothing you can do about that. [laughing] K [laughing]: Yeah. Have you ever been presented with a commission, talked to the person, and thought to yourself ‘I don’t think they have a good enough handle on what it is they’re looking for here, and this may just end up being a headache’? G: Yes. That has definitely happened before, ‘cause I don’t have much time. So if I feel like the client either lacks the direction and communication to give me what I need, or if they’re simply asking for too much, then I will usually politely decline them, within the first couple of emails. K: Obviously you’re not reading all of these books and you’re working off the creative brief. Is there anything in particular that you get these, you’re trying to make sure you’re communicating in the feel of the book rather than an exact representation of what’s going on there? G: Yeah. So I’m not trying to recreate a 1-to-1 specific moment from the book. I’m trying to generate a piece that, as you said, evokes a major theme. A lot of times I’m asked to do character work, mostly because that is something that I enjoy doing and specialize in; I love character and costume design. Like you’ve never seen a spaceship in my portfolio because I’m really bad at it. K: I looked through it, I didn’t see one. [laughing] G: Yeah, don’t put stuff in your portfolio that you are not good at painting and don’t wanna paint. Like people come to me because they’re like ‘oh this person does kind of anime-inspired fantasy characters,’ and so that’s kind of like a niche that you can reach other people who like anime-inspired fantasy characters. So things for me that I consider important is, I like to know a character’s build and ethnicity. G: Stuff like ‘oh the character’s mouth is a Cupid’s bow’ or like ‘they have eyebrows that are waxed to a certain angle,’ that’s a bit too specific. Or like ‘they wear ten rings.’ Because if you mentioned that the character wears ten rings, it automatically makes those ten rings really important. And you have to wonder, are those ten rings really important to actually selling who this character is? Do those ten rings have a narrative function in the story? If so, do you wanna include the rest of the character, or do you wanna focus on that character’s hands and the rings, as a way to say ‘hey this is what this story is about’? Because it’s very hard to include such a small item and such a big item together on the same image. There’s a lot of physical limitations to representational art; similar as it is, it’s really challenging to get a photo with both your shortest friend and your tallest friend at the same time and not have a giant gap between them. [laughing] K [laughing]: Lot of negative space and awkward positions. G: Yeah. R: Well this is where your control over the perspective comes in, right? So that would be a shot from below. K: Or above! Really above. [laughing] G: Yeah. So one of the things that I like to ask for is no more than two or three key items, I would call them, that differentiate who this character is from all the other characters. Like you can say ‘yes, she is a Black woman’ or ‘yes, he is a muscular man of European descent.’ But Aragorn is defined by Andúril, his sword. Once you stick that sword on Aragorn, you know ‘hey this is a high-fantasy Tolkienesque property.’ So I’m looking for a handful of items like that, to help show who this character is and how they differentiate and help sell the genre, setting, and time period. K: Covers are telling people things without explicitly telling them that. Like you mentioned you give Aragorn his sword or a similar character, you’re stating ‘hey this is a high-fantasy book.’ If there’s a background in it and it’s castles built into rolling mountains, that’s also indicating things to somebody who might be potentially interested in reading it. Do you spend a lot of time or give a lot of attention to trying to signal to potential readers that this might be something they’re interested in, or do you kind of let the cover do what it’s gonna do? Like how much do you try to work elements into it that are telling you things about the book without telling you things about the book? G: I usually try to focus on having as I said up to three of those key items - K [overlapping] Okay. [laughing] G: - because, as you said, castles are really common in a lot of European-based high fantasy. So you can leverage that castle, change it up, be like oh is it a floating castle that implies that there’s a certain kind of magic? Is it a castle that’s built into a hillside that implies another sort of magic? And so when I’m doing that I’m not necessarily looking at other pieces that are within the same genre, because the same genre-ness comes from the castle itself. I’m trying not to make a cover that looks exactly like every other cover out there, because this writing is probably not like every other fantasy story out there. K: Mhm. G: I’m actually specifically looking for those key items that differentiate it within its own genre. K: Any good stories, or interesting things that’ve happened here, your favorite piece that you’ve worked on or something that was particularly challenging? Maybe not just cover art but any commissions in general? G: All of my really funny stories are actually just from when I was doing random stuff for anime cons. I’ve had to draw a woman making out with Loki, but the woman is not herself, the woman is Kate Beckinsale. Fandom’s strange. R: So you drew Kate Beckinsale making out - K [overlapping]: Making out with Loki - [laughing] G: Yes. R: And let the woman believe it was her? G: There are certain things you simply cannot draw. You cannot draw the flow of time. If you have a single image, it is very difficult to have anything that goes from step one and step two. [chuckling] And convey two images in a single image. K: Those Animorphs covers used to do that. G: That’s true. And they had the little flipbooks in the back. K [laughing]: Remember that? G: Yeah. K: What advice would you have for somebody who, like let’s say they’re going to self-publish, or maybe somebody who hasn’t really done this before but is looking to commission a piece of art - what advice would you have for them? G: For prospective clients, I generally ask that they do their research beforehand, essentially. Like working with artists, we have our own system, our own language, essentially, for technical stuff, for our materials, our use of camera angles, our use of colors. And to kind of understand what is within and without our control. So don’t expect an art piece to be able to capture your entire story, because your story has some form of linear time in it, which art inherently will not if it’s a single image. And that usually requires a lot of trust on the part of new authors, because this is their baby, right, they spent a lot of time on it and they wanna give it nice clothes. K: I love that by the way - G [overlapping]: [laughing] K: - they wanna give it nice clothes, that’s perfect. [laughing] G: And like, a lot of us really understand this, but it’s really helpful for us if you are to distinguish things that are and are not concrete. If you have a story that’s based on music and you want your cover to celebrate the fact that it revolves around song, artists cannot draw a song. Unless you have synesthesia, you’re probably not gonna look at a piece of artwork and hear music. So you’re gonna have to come up with concrete visuals to convey this. G: So that main character, how do they produce this music? Are they a violinist? In which case yes, a violin can be drawn, that’s very clear, very easy. And so just coming up with those small as I say key items, that would probably be one of them. Coming prepared with those and trusting the artist to interpret that - you can always say ‘hey, my book is about song, that is why I’d like to include these items,’ but don’t throw them into the wind with ‘my book is about songs’ and - K: ‘Draw me a song.’ G: Yes. K: You had mentioned revision fees, now again a constant theme in this podcast is contracts and read your contract and check your contract. Typically if you’re going to engage an artist they’re going to sign a contract with you. By the way, if the artist is not interested in signing a contract with you, and this is a custom piece, maybe that’s not the artist to work with. But you’re going to have a fee schedule, you’re going to say ‘okay up front this is how much I’m estimating this to be but there are additional fees and costs for revisions, for changes, for going back.’ K: We’ve definitely had to, with artists we commissioned for covers, go back and say ‘hey listen, something came up and we need another version of this, can you tweak these things?’ And that’s fine, it’s just an additional charge. Is there anything in particular you would say to the people who are looking to commission an artist to just be aware of and expect, so they’re not 1) shocked or 2) completely overlook something, in terms of costs associated with this kind of thing. G: Art is skilled labor. K: Absolutely. G: It’s gonna vary per artist. Some people work faster, some people work slower. The type of publication is also going to affect the cost. But do not be surprised if an artist asks for a living wage, in terms of hourly money, because this is what they do; it’s generally not a side job. K: Art is a skilled work that needs to be paid accordingly. There’s a reason you’re having to go out and find somebody you need to do this, because it’s not an easy thing to do. G: Yeah, you’re gonna be looking at prices significantly over part-time retail, because this is full-time work. Artists pay taxes on top of their stuff, and they are in charge of maintaining their own tax books. The high prices also cover their cost of living, the materials, 30% of it automatically goes to taxes, so those rates are going to be relatively high. A lot higher than I think what people expect. I feel like sometimes when people are new to commissioning, they’ll expect it to be something in the price range of like ‘hey, I’m asking someone to in their off-time help me out at home with this, etcetera, or babysit my cat.’ R: They wanna pay you 20 bucks and an extra pizza. G: Yeah. K: Well they’re looking at it in like hourly rates, not realizing that it’s not just hourly. Like you said there’s taxes, there’s material, there’s - you don’t get something then immediately sit down and start drawing it, you have to read some things, you have to think about it, you have to process, there’s a lot of invisible hours that go into this as well. G: Yeah. R: You might spend - random number - 12 hours working on a cover, but that skill that you developed to create that cover is not 12 hours worth of skill-development, that is the lifetime that you have put into being an artist. So if anybody is thinking that ‘well the cover for my book is just a box I need to check off on my way to publication’ - G: Yeah and that high hourly rate encompasses the work of emailing back and forth and sending the revisions and all the administrative stuff that the artist has to do. Artists generally do not have assistant teams, and they are not big publishing houses. K: The phone call was two minutes, it took me five minutes to read this thing, and ten minutes to write a response, but all of the stuff in between is additional time. All of your back-and-forth with your artist, all of the discussion that you’re gonna have, all of the time that you the artist have to sit and think about this and do some sketches and stop and walk away and collect your thoughts, all of that is your valuable time. R: We’ve been talking about hourly rates. But every time, in my personal experience, that I’ve commissioned a cover, I have been given a flat number and then the contract as we’ve discussed talks about how many revisions or whatever are included in that number. I assume this is the practice of this person doing covers so frequently that they have a general ballpark of what they need to earn to justify what a cover is. But that’s still based on a living wage that they’re creating for themselves. G: Correct. That’s usually it. R: When somebody gives you a flat rate it’s not that this is a flat rate and someone else is going to just give you like ‘$85 an hour please.’ G: Yeah. K: Well are you calculating your flat rate based on how many hours you, in your experience, know this takes? G: Yes, that’s exactly what most artists do. Because clients tend to not want to bill per hour, because it’s a single gig, most artists will give a flat rate based off their previous experience of how long something is going to take, which is why when back-and-forth gets too much, we incur revision fees. Because usually the flat rate is based off of our average experience of a client who spends this much time talking with us, and this much is gonna have to go to taxes, etc. And because flat rate is generally easier for clients and billing as well. R: Yeah rather than an open-ended number where they have no idea, and there’s probably some paranoia that if you don’t know the person well you might just keep billing them for stuff. G: You’re gonna find contracts that specify hourly rates for longer term stuff, like visual developments or several character designs, or if you have a world that you’re trying to build out for a TTRPG or concept art for a new video game or something like that. But for single one-off jobs, it’s usually the artist will give you a flat rate number based off of their estimation on how long the gig will take, which is why sometimes these flat rate numbers look gigantic. But remember, again, that’s based off of an hourly rate. R: Now do you ever get an email from a potential client and you go ‘oh yeah I better double the number, based on the way this email is written’? G: Yes that has happened before; the asshole tax is a pretty common practice - K [overlapping]: [laughing] G: - among artists. We are factoring in how long something is going to take as well. K: And by the way along the flat rates and the contracts and Grace I don’t know if this is how you typically handle this, but when we would do book covers it was usually half up front, of the flat rate, and half when the work is finished plus any additional revision fees, which for us was always just a like ‘hey here’s the down payment if you will to show we’re serious and to get started.’ Artists put a lot of time into this, and if you say ‘well I’m gonna pay you when this is done’ and then they go ‘I don’t like it. Forget it. I don’t want it anymore,’ that’s a lot of time and energy that the artist has now wasted for no return. G: Yup. Most artists will not start without half to full payment upfront. I’d say like 95% of them won’t. ‘Cause everybody has been burned very early on in their career by somebody who asked for work and never paid for it. So you only let that happen once. [laughing] Yeah. Always be prepared to have the money ready, like half the money ready, before the artist will start working. If you have a relaxed deadline, a lot of artists are really chill about just letting things kind of be like ‘oh I have this email of somebody who’s interested’ but it doesn’t become real and doesn’t actually get scheduled until there’s money down. K: Artists have schedules. And they have open time slots and things that they might not be able to fit you into. How much of a lead time would you say they need to leave, in order to have a fully completed piece of art ready to go? G: I’d say at the minimum one to two months. I know people that can turn stuff around in two weeks, but if you’re looking to get something done in the one month range, you’re probably looking at a rush fee. Artists usually keep one to two jobs forward, like they have something but they’re working on something lined up, and they usually have maybe another one lined up. And so if you demand something immediately, then that means they have to rush the next two. K: Mhm. G: So usually they will include a rush fee for that. K: I mean essentially it’s overtime - G: Yes. K: - at that point, like I’m having to work extra hours outside of my regular schedule so that I can get to your thing faster. G: Yeah. And the lead time will very specifically vary per artist, because if you’re trying to get someone who’s like super super popular, who has a large number of clients already, you may be waiting like a year or two. Like. [laughing] K: There’re science fiction cover artists out there that, like two years, if you want anything from them. Some of those people have incredibly long lead times on these, and their schedules are just full like over a year. G: Yeah. Like for me, I tend to be booked out about four to five months in advance, personally. But I generally, I will do rush fees and I’ll also do smaller client pieces here and there that I know I can fit into a weekend. But again it really is up to that individual artist. I know how fast it takes me to complete a piece, but when I have 50 things going on, yeah it might take 20 hours to do, but if I have ten things that all take 20 hours, then I have a lot of time management that I need to figure out. K [laughing]: Yeah absolutely. When you finish a commission, when you finish a piece, how are you getting it to the person who is actually going to use it then and turn it in for the publication? Because a lot of these pieces are, they’re very high resolution, they’re very large files, and what does this look like - First of all what kind of a file is it, what does it look like? And then 2) how are you getting it, and how do you set it up so that they can manipulate it the way they need? G: So usually for clients I send a flat image, unless a layered image is requested - R: And let the artist know that at the beginning. G: Yes. K: Yes. G: Yes, layered images will usually incur a higher charge, because it implies that you will be editing the image afterwards. And so basically you need to buy some rights, the editing rights, from your artist. So that’ll be a higher charge up front, when you write your original contract. Usually because I do a lot of web work, I just deliver a high resolution JPEG, high resolution PNG, and that’s fine for my clients. For other major work especially if you need a layered file, PSDs, Photoshop files, are generally the common way to do it. In which case you upload a massive, massive file to a file transfer service such as Dropbox, or a lot of companies often have an internal file transfer upload - you log onto their system and upload directly to their system. K: If you’re getting, especially one of those huge high-res layered images, you need to have a program that can manipulate it. You might need something additional on your end to even work with the image then. But also like, these files are huge. Typically they can’t just email it to you. There’s actually file transfer services as Grace mentioned, where you drop these and it’s just in there for like two days. And you’ve gotta go get the file within that two-day period. G: Yeah. I think for major transfers I generally lean on Dropbox and actually just sometimes Google Drive. They’re not exactly super secure, but like - K: [laughing] G: - few very people are going around sneaking your self-pub cover, like. [laughing] They’ll just delete it after you’ve got it. K [laughing]: Well, you never know, Grace. Maybe someday somebody will steal something that you’ve done and leak it to the public, and - G: That actually would be really bad. [laughing] I work for Wiz of the Coast, if it happens then it’s bad. R: Secure FTPs from here on out. [laughing] K: Multi-factor authentication in order to get these files. G: Yeah. R: So Grace, I happen to know, because I am on the inside, that you are - at the time of this episode coming out - you are the guest art director on the next issue of The Deadlands. G: Yes! Yes I am. [laughing] R: So from the other side of the table, how do you go about picking artwork on behalf of who are essentially clients here for their magazine issue? G: Cool. So, for The Deadlands I worked with Cory, who is the main art director, and I looked through the existing repertoire of work that had already been selected for Deadlands publications. Cory was very helpful too in kind of summarizing up the visual style of the magazine, as stuff that’s more dark, more photo-real, lots of use of textured work, and I could see it in all the previous selections that’d already gone through. So based off of that, I was using my knowledge of my time in the art community to find pieces that I thought would resonate with that style. G: I was also provided a showcase short story essentially, for that issue, that they thought like ‘hey it would be good if the cover resonated emotionally with this written piece.’ So I was looking for stuff that leveraged the visuals within that story, visuals of growth and forestry in particular, goes with a nice visceral story. They gave me the rest of the stories to read too, but as just more background information. And so I went to the portfolios of some of the artists that I knew worked in that kind of emotional field, like artists that did a lot of dark work, artists that do a lot of work in monochrome spaces, and so I looked in their portfolios for work to license that fit the forest-y theme of the showcase story. G: And so I took a couple of pieces that I thought were good, showed them to Cory, Cory showed them to the editor, and we moved

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Transcript (by Rekka) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. Rekka: So today's episode is, uh, from a listener request, but I put it in the same batch of listener requests where I didn't write down the names to credit people. So you know who you are. Thank you for the idea. Kaelyn: If you were this listener, get us on Twitter and yell at us. Rekka: We'll add it in the show notes posthumously. Well, hopefully not posthumously. Kaelyn: I was gonna say, "What?!" Rekka: Posthumous to the episode. Kaelyn: All right. Rekka: So today we are talking about writing body language. Kaelyn: This is, I think one of the harder things to do. Rekka: How to be hyper-aware of where you put your hands. Kaelyn: I have, while editing books, actually acted it out and recorded myself. Rekka: Okay. So you have mentioned on the podcast before that you act these out, but you never mentioned that there was footage. Kaelyn: Oh, it's gone. Don't worry. No, it doesn't, it doesn't exist. Rekka: It's never really gone, Kaelyn. Kaelyn: You will not see it, um. Figuring out, you know, body language without slowing down the pace of, you know, the story or the dialogue is, is difficult. So, um, I'd recorded these and then kind of gone like, okay, well, what am I doing here? Does that match up with what I'm reading? So, yeah, it's, it's hard. It's I think one of the more challenging things to do. Rekka: I don't always think about it that way. So the reason that my characters will scratch their neck or, you know, look around the room or, um, fiddle with pages on their desk is frequently because I want to avoid using a dialogue tag because I had too many or, um, or that she said, or whatever messes with the rhythm of my, of my paragraph. So for me, I use body language as a way to use the name of the character that is saying the words without saying "character said." Kaelyn: Yeah. So let's, uh, let's backtrack here a little bit. Why you write body language and how it's useful. So obviously the why is because we kind of need to know what the characters are doing. Rekka: Yep. That's helpful. Kaelyn: Everyone isn't standing perfectly rod straight in a room, staring at each other and taking turns to talk. Body language is very helpful for conveying things that are happening with the characters without actually having to say what's happening. Cultures around the world... There are certain ways that people act there are certain things that they do that convey an emotion or a feeling, even just the situation that they're in. Something like a character wringing their hands is going to convey nervousness or maybe trying to piece their thoughts together. Body language is a non-verbal form of communication that you're giving the reader. You're trying to explain what they're thinking or what they're feeling without having to actually do it. This is a very "show me, don't tell me" tool for writing. Rekka: And that is how I find it most useful. Not because I'm worried about choreographing the perfect movements of my character across the room, but because it helps break up the inner kinda monologues, it helps break up the exposition. It helps break up the dialogue. It's like, this is the thing that's happening here in this moment. As you say, grounds the reader where if I'm trying to choreograph something, it's going to be very, it's like might be a whole paragraph of the character's movement versus it's like just a sentence and then moving on. Kaelyn: Yeah, exactly. So, um, what did, what do they say? Something like about half of human communication is nonverbal. Rekka: They say that. Yeah. Kaelyn: Um, granted in the age of the internet that may have, that may have changed a bit. Rekka: Yeah. Half of human communication is now text-based more Kaelyn: Than that. Probably body language, as Rekka said, um, it adds depth to dialogue. It does it doesn't make it. So you have a wall of Kaelyn said, let's look over there. Sure said Rekka, I'll follow you. Instead it's Rekka gave a thumbs up and followed after her. It also is very helpful to show characters' emotions. Somebody who is relaxed and having a good time with their friends is going to have very different body language than somebody who is getting ready to, you know, go fight a dragon. For the record. Nobody fight dragons. Dragons are meant to be pet and given snacks. Rekka: Admired. Kaelyn: Yeah, exactly. But that's where it can certainly get a little hard, I think is trying to figure out how the balance is between describing a character's body language and their actions and what they're doing versus keeping the pace of the story. There is no good answer to this. Kaelyn: This is something that you're only going to come up with through trial and error. And to be clear, I'm not talking about blocking. Blocking is very different from body language. If you're writing a fight scene and there's a lot of stuff going on all at once and you have to figure out, you know, who's where and how far apart they are from each other. And who's, you know, been stabbed and is lying on the ground. And are they in a position where someone's going to trip over them? That's not body language. That's. Rekka: action. Kaelyn: Yeah. Action. Rekka: I like to think of it as body language adds the context to the dialogue. It communicates what the character's reactions are to things or how they're trying to use their words to manipulate a situation. Kaelyn: Yeah. And conversely, um, body language can be a giveaway, you know, especially if you have like a first person limited POV in your book and you write that, you know, somebody that the audience is already feelin' a little iffy about has like a sadistic smirk on their face. Well, that's a good, you know, give away that they're probably up to no good. So that's another thing about body language is it's also the perception of whoever the POV is at that point. Rekka: Yeah. And how close you are to that POV character determines a lot of how much they notice. So for example, if you have a character that you want to be fooled by someone else for half the book, then they need to notice that they have a very charming lopsided smile, as opposed to a sadistic smirk. Kaelyn: Yes. This is another thing that you can use with unreliable narrators. Everything is open to the interpretation of the POV character. Are they wringing their hands because their nervous or are they wringing their hands because soon their laser will destroy Metropolis? Body language... So, not only to help add richness and depth to the scenes, it can also be used to manipulate and move a story in a certain direction. To make the reader think what you want them to think. Because even though all of this is nonverbal communication and we as humans are, you know, just in our daily lives are pretty good at perceiving that sometimes we're not always great at perceiving it, or sometimes we want to take it exactly the wrong way, because we've already made up our minds about something it's helping to sort of build a character and round them out a bit. Something that I really enjoy about body language is when you see a character doing the same thing over and over again, to the point where they don't, the author doesn't need to explain that's something they do when they're nervous or that's something they do when they're planning. It kind of helps your reader latch onto that character and make them feel like they know them. Rekka: Yeah. Or they sort of know what's going on anyway. Like, oh, you're doing that thing again that you always do when you lie. Kaelyn: Having other characters in the story recognize the repeat body language of different characters also is, I think, a good way to sort of build the story and build the characters. So actually writing it: you know, how do you, how do you know when you need to, you know, throw some body language in there? Rekka, I know you like to defer to that rather than using— Rekka: Dialogue tags. Yeah. I would rather have somebody grind their jaw. I'm hyper-aware of how will the sound read out loud, whether in a reading or as a narrated audio book. And the repetition of dialogue tags is something that kind of catches my ear a lot. So it's, it's something that I've got a bug about. So I will always try to use a descriptive action by the character who's speaking instead. And also I find it helps kind of move that scene's plot along as well. Now maybe "he said" would be two words, whereas, you know, "and then he dumped his coffee out in the sink and slammed the mug on the counter" is a lot more words, but it also, it connects it to that statement and keeps the whole thing moving forward. Like you feel like there's a tumble of real life action happening. Kaelyn: Yeah. And it's also communicating something about that character. Not only are they clearly frustrated, but depending on the context of this, maybe they got frustrated very easily or for no reason. Rekka: Maybe they just don't appreciate a cup of coffee. Kaelyn: It's very possible. I hear those people are out there in the world. Rekka: Yeah. They're around. That's why I use them. That's how I use them. And that's how I decide when to use them. Do you have editor advice? Kaelyn: I would say that when you should use them at minimum is if things are changing, if characters are moving around, if the intensity of a situation is being escalated, if somebody has picked something up and put it down, you know, and we need to know if they're doing that just because they, you know, it wasn't what they were looking for. And then they put it down in a, you know, angry way. I think when there's things that are happening, that is when it's important to show body language. This isn't to say that you need to overload your writing with this. You don't need tons of adverbs. She tossed the book at him angrily. Rekka: Right. And I think if you start falling on the adverbs and you're not really writing the body language. You are telling again. Kaelyn: Yes, exactly. My kind of metric for when you need to include body language is sort of action-based and update based. Did somebody do something? And if so, how? Yeah. What is it conveying about them? It was not conveying anything about them. If it's just that they went to get a cup of coffee because they like coffee, then, you know, you don't need to say, "they happily skipped towards the coffee machine humming while they—" I don't know. Actually, I feel like that's how I would write Rekka getting a cup of coffee. Rekka: Prolly not skipping. You already used an adverb in that sentence. So... Kaelyn: I did. Rekka: I would blend it with the dialogue. Like, "I'm going to need coffee. If we're going to continue talking about this" and then go to the coffee machine or grab the grinds from the canister or something like that. I agree with you. It should be relevant to what's going on, not just to replace dialogue tags. So if I find myself, like, I don't know what this character would be doing right here that I could use in place of a dialogue tag, then I'm probably overdoing it. And then I'll just use the damned dialogue tag. Kaelyn: I think actions and updates are a good way to use body language. Your character's doing something or something is changing. So for instance, if there's a discussion going on and it's starting to get heated body language is going to be a good indicator there. Rekka leaned forward in her chair and leveled her days at Kaelyn. Yeah. Rekka: And see no adverbs there. And I'm not saying Edwards are bad (and we'll probably do an episode on adverbs. I don't know... Eventually), but in this moment they're not serving the purpose that you're going for. You are trying to use that show-don't-tell to communicate what's going on and an adverb weakens your argument for all that. So when you say updates and changes and actions, sometimes adding a character action with body language, to a dialogue tag, I will suddenly realize that there's something else going on in the scene. And hopefully the other characters can participate in it too. So that by having them do their steps of whatever the process is, I can insert their attitude. Are they relaxed? Are they stressed? Are they terse? Are they unengaged? Is there a competition going on for somebody trying to do one thing while the other person is trying to get them to do something else? Like it can become a whole scene in itself that can communicate a lot about the characters. But yeah, if it's just like this person sitting in a chair and that person sitting in a chair, I don't want to have every paragraph, a character like scratches their nose, or, you know, crosses their legs or uncrossed their legs or anything like that. Kaelyn: I call those AI movements, things that we build into these robots and stuff to make them appear a little bit more human. And I think in most scenarios in books, we don't really need those because well, you know, the characters, they may be human, maybe something else. But unless there's a reason, like for instance, you know, people are just sitting talking and you don't need to have them crossing and uncrossing their legs, scratching their nose unless it's serving something. Like, are they fidgeting? Is the fidgeting showing nervousness? Or is this just somebody, you know, such a hyper ball of energy, they can't sit still, right? The body language should serve an action. It shouldn't be there just to communicate that these are dynamic real people, like we would build into a robot that we're trying to convince the rest of the world is as human as the last one. Rekka: Right. Which nobody believed in any way. Kaelyn: No, every time they come up with a new one of those, I'm just kind of like, why are we doing this? Kaelyn: So you can absolutely overuse body language. It doesn't need to happen, you know, every time somebody needs to show a function in which they're human. You don't need to tell us that they're constantly blinking, that they, you know, are clearing their throats. Unless again, they're clearing their throats to get attention or something. We don't need to hear about, you know, how their finger itches or— my finger riches right now, actually. So that's why I was thinking about that. Rekka: Kaelyn, we don't need to hear about it. Kaelyn: Exactly. No one needed to know that. But used correctly, body language is an excellent literary and storytelling device. Rekka: I would also caution that you would want to make the movements natural and not stereotyped. When we started talking about body language, the first thing I imagined was Ursula, the sea witch, telling Ariel not to forget about body language. Kaelyn: Never forget body language. Rekka: Then shakes her hips percussively. You might fall into a trap of thinking all women will move in a slinky manner or run their perfectly manicured fingertips against their collarbone and speak in a hushed whisper kind of thing. Kaelyn: If you want to see some good examples of how to not write body language, go on the subreddit "men writing women." Rekka: Yeah. That about covers it. Kaelyn: There's some gems in there. Rekka: And you know, um, sometimes men writing men, there's, you know, there's a muscle flex at every possible opportunity. It's just something that's not going to serve your story, unless you're telling a very specific kind of story. In 2021, if you're telling that kind of story, I hope it's a commentary. Kaelyn: Yeah. Commentary or meant to be so over the top that it's, it's humorous. In which case then yes, it is commentary. Rekka: Right. Exactly. Kaelyn: So just to kind of round out this discussion, this can be hard. It can be hard to not write the same action over and over again. And the reason for that is because as humans, we do the same thing over and over again. In the time that I've been recording this with Rekka, I must have crossed and uncrossed my legs about six times. Rekka: Right. I see her touching her nose. Kaelyn: Yes. Okay. Here's a good example. I'm having terrible allergy problems right now. My skin is just like, it's very itchy. So Rekka's been watching just, you know, scratch my cheeks and my eyebrows and my nose and my neck. Rekka: Which doesn't make the itching go away by the way. Kaelyn: It doesn't, no. Rekka: So if you write your character doing this, have them like working themselves up into a frustrated frenzy of itchiness as they're trying to survive this job interview or whatever the scene is. Kaelyn: Yeah. Because nobody needs to know about how my nose itches. Unfortunately, all of you do. And I'm sorry for that. Rekka: But in a scene, if you're trying to make a character uncomfortable, allergies is a way to do it. Kaelyn: Oh, definitely. Yes. That's a very good way to do it. Rekka: But choosing which body language and knowing where to put it, you were starting to say like, it can be difficult. Um, and I think that's part of the trick is we are told that our characters need to be doing something in a scene. And then we start inventing movements and yes, if you use the same one over and over and over again, it can be repetitive, but you can also use it as a tell for that character, as we said earlier, or tick that shows that they're anxious. Same thing. That's still a tell. Kaelyn: By the way, a very good literary device for hidden identities. That if you want somebody to go back and go, oh yes. Now I can see, you know, that's something that you see across, especially a lot of epic fantasies, you know, with like sprawling stories where— Rekka: The princess was allergic to strawberries and this one character keeps avoiding the strawberry patch that they have to cross through. Kaelyn: Yeah. Or, you know, something like that, but also just, um, you know, somebody who maybe has like a weird habit of like pulling on their, their ear. And then, you know, sometimes you see them doing it. And sometimes they don't and it turns out they were a twin all along. Or, um, characters that are two different characters encounter the same person, but don't identify them. But the reader can tell they're the same person because of body language or, you know, the way that they stand. This is something very commonly seen. Writers will use exactly the same sentence or the exact same words to describe what a character is doing because they want the reader to pick up on this is the same person. Rekka: Yeah. And you have to also have some repetition in order for that reader to pick up on things at all. Like if you want it to stand out, you do need to repeat things. Sometimes not just word for word, but multiple times, because a reader might skim over that at that particular moment. And then you miss it. Now, like you can't be responsible for a reader with poor attention on your book. That's, you know, hopefully something that doesn't happen because your plot moves and your stakes are important to the reader, but you don't want to repeat something that you did 400 pages ago and assume that the reader is going to remember what you said in passing 400 pages ago. Kaelyn: It's definitely a balancing act with that because, you know, conversely, you're also not responsible for, if you have hyper hyper aware readers, picking everything apart and going well, they said this person scratched their nose using their middle finger. And then somebody else also scratched their nose using the middle finger. And I know one of them is, you know, a 42 year-old woman then the other is a six year-old boy. But I think they're the same person secretly somehow. There's another far end that that could go to. Kaelyn: Body languages. You know, it's really helpful in a lot of different capacities in writing. It can be used as a storytelling device. It can be used to, you know, help grow and develop characters. It can be used to set a scene. It's something that I think you get better at. I think it's something that you get good at in revisions. I think a lot of times, you know, after your first draft of your manuscript's completed, you're going to go through and see a lot of dialogue tags in there. She said. He answered. They, you know, screamed. I think that body language is something you refine on subsequent passes. Rekka: I think that's fair, until it becomes natural. And then, you know, you'll just be refining it like you do the rest of your manuscript on your revision pass. But until you do feel comfortable doing it, you know, put it on a whiteboard somewhere as a thing that you are going to pay attention to as you go through. Kaelyn: This is something that if you're struggling with, I would recommend, frankly, just Googling. There's a lot of helpful information about do's and don'ts of body language, um, suggestions of how to incorporate it without, you know, weighing down your writing and your reader. Things to avoid versus things that are a little more descriptive with maybe less words and how to properly navigate adverbs. Rekka: So really you don't need this podcast at all. New Speaker: No. New Speaker: You just need us to show up every other week and tell you to Google it. Kaelyn: But normally I don't like to say, just get out there and punch it into Google and find stuff because you never know what you're going to come across. This is an area where there's a lot of good, "write this, not this." Some of them are just like charts and lists. Essentially. Rekka: The other thing you can do is read and pay attention to the books you're reading and how they're handling it. Especially a book where you're like, I don't remember any body language. You go back and read through the first chapter of that and I bet you'll find some. Kaelyn: Yeah, definitely. One of my go-to suggestions is always, if you're having trouble with writing: read more. It really helps internalize certain things. Rekka: Yeah. Go find somebody who's doing the thing that you like and see how they're doing it. Kaelyn: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Rekka: And on your manuscript, you can take a highlighter and go through on your revision pass and highlight body language and see how frequently you're using it versus highlighting, in a different color, the exposition or the internal monologue or the narrator's omniscient voice versus what's happening in that moment. And I think you'll start to see some patterns. And if you're not sure if you're doing it well, that might be the place to start. Kaelyn: If that sounds daunting, let me put it this way: It is. But editors and readers will absolutely notice these things. It's a subconscious thing that a lot of readers will do. It is a very conscious thing that a lot of editors will be looking for. Rekka: And... You know, again, practice and do it on all your books, make it part of your process and eventually it will become more natural and it won't be as much work because you won't have to think about it as hard. You won't find your first draft completely devoid of action sentences when you've practiced adding them, they will start to happen in your draft. Kaelyn: Yeah, exactly. I think that's a good little span about body language. Rekka: Yeah. I mean, it doesn't have to be a long conversation to be a podcast episode. Kaelyn: That's true. Rekka: It doesn't have to be a long sentence about the movement that a character is making in order to be body language tag. But we do have a listener comment, uh, this time, uh, we actually had it the past few times, but we were doing interviews, and then the last time it was just the two of us, I just plum forgot. Cortneylyn says, I love listening to this podcast. It feels like I'm still being productive on my work in progress, even when I can't work on it. Like when I'm driving great voices, great hosts, and helpful writing slash publishing insights. So thank you, cortneylyn. I hope everyone agrees. If you do agree, please go join cortneylyn in leaving a comment and rating because that really helps our podcast be discovered by other people who might find the information useful. And we like that. We'd like to be discovered. Kaelyn: We definitely do. Yes. Well, um, everyone, thank you so much for listening. You know, if you want to leave us a comment or a thought, or maybe you disagree with our assessment of body language, or maybe you want to describe what your body language is like as you've been listening to this. Rekka: I'm not sure I want that, but we do welcome comments and questions at @WMBcast on Instagram and Twitter or on Patreon, you can find us under the same moniker. You can DM us on Twitter if you have a question you want to keep to yourself and we will anonymize it, or maybe unintentionally anonymize it if we forget to write down who said it, but, uh, we are always open to answering your questions in future episodes. And one of those future episodes will be coming in two weeks and we will talk to you then.

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Mentioned in this episode: Unfettered Hexes KickstarterInfomocracy Redbubble Shopdave-ring.comneonhemlock.comneonapothecary.comdave is @slickhop on Twitter and InstagramNeon Hemlock Press is @neonhemlock on Twitter and InstagramVOIDMERCHNeon Hemlock's Threadless shopRiddle’s Tea ShoppeHailey PiperGlitter + Ashes anthologyMatthew Spencer, illustratorThis is How We Lose the Time WarTracy TownsendDancing Star Press Transcript (by TK) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. R: Let’s see what happens if you drape the oracle cloth over top. dave: I have a thousand of those. R [laughing]: Yeah. Kaelyn: Speaking of SWAG. d: Does that help? R: Exhale. d: [wheezing] R: Yes. K: Yes! R: It’s not just good for laying your cards out on. K: [laughing] d [overlapping]: [laughing] R: Okay! I’m gonna have to leave this in. d: [laughing] K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: dave, why don’t you introduce yourself to start, and then we’ll get going? d: My name’s dave ring, I’m a writer and editor of speculative fiction. I’m also the managing editor and publisher over at Neon Hemlock Press. Which comes with a bevy of other, like graphic design layout, and - K: [laughing] d: - products, placements, whatever else I’ve come up with lately! K: Many, many other hats in different shapes and sizes. R: So the reason I wanted to have dave on the podcast was because it occurred to me that something that comes up pretty frequently, especially around conference season when we’re meeting in person and around book launches as well, is that authors wanna know like ‘do I need a bookmark? How do I do a bookmark? What else can I do?’ K: ‘Do I need swag?’ R: Yeah, so swag. Swag - Kaelyn, I’m just gonna cut in to your definition and say that swag is an acronym for Stuff We All Get. So - K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: To that point, this is not going to be all free swag. K: Yes. R: Swag implies that it is free, that you’ll pick it up as you visit the author’s signing table, or that you’ll get it in the mail for preordering, or some little bonus bit like that. The person that we are speaking to today has taken book tie-in items and - what would you wanna call it? I don’t wanna say paraphernalia, but I love that word, so there. You’ve taken it to a whole new level. And a lot of it has to do with Kickstarter, would you blame Kickstarter for this? d: Maybe some of it. And I like paraphernalia, the word that I am often drawn to is ‘ephemera,’ but I like both. Depending on the particular object, maybe one is more appropriate than the other. But I blame Kickstarter for a lot of things in terms - R [overlapping]: [laughing] d: - of connecting with a lot of the people who are buying the books that Neon Hemlock’s been putting out. R: So it’s hard to say ‘blame’ in that sense. d: To [unintelligible] - blame. K: [laughing] d: Yeah. But some of that’s been driven from that, and some of it’s been driven from just sort of nerdish excitement over different things. And then because I’m the one in charge, no one says no to me, so - K [overlapping]: [laughing] d: I just keep having ideas and doing the thing! K: Let’s talk about some of the different kinds of swag, of paraphernalia, of - oh I just lost the word now - ephemera! I didn’t really know that book swag was a thing until I started going to conferences. Like obviously I’ve been to book signings and things, and there’s like bookmarks and maybe a pencil or something that they give out. K: But then I’d get to these conferences and I was like ‘wow there’s a lot of stuff that authors are handing out, or publishers’ - like everything from those bookmarks, pins - enamel pins are a big thing. I’ve seen people that showed up with special printed editions of the book that they only had like 10 of them and they were just handing them out at the conferences and that was it. If you didn’t get them there, you were never gonna get this. It’s interesting that this is something that comes around books, because you think well the thing you get out of this is the book. Why does the book have accessories that come with it as well? But I think you kinda hit the nail on the head, this nerdy-dorkiness of like ‘I love this so much I want to be able to have it with me at all times, not just on my Kindle.’ d: Book lovers are already in this spot where you can - maybe you’ve read the book on your Kindle, but you want to have the physical book as well. So there’s already that feeling that people have, and then sometimes it sort of extends to further things. Like I remember Dancing Star has made a lot of beaded earrings that match the covers of their books and some other popular speculative books. Of course you don’t need to wear a particular pair of earrings in order to enjoy a book, but there is something sort of satisfying about - R: When you really enjoy the book, and then suddenly you need the earrings. d: [chuckling] K: Look at anything from TV shows to movies to video games, like there’s all sorts of things that we wear and little accoutrements that we have that’s sort of like a signal nod-and-wink to somebody else that’s like, ‘ah yes, I also like that thing.’ I was wearing a pair of my Sailor Moon socks recently at a house party and I’d taken my shoes off, and somebody was like ‘is that Sailor Mercury on your socks?’ I was like ‘it is, yes. Yes.’ R: And that’s how you know your people. K: Exactly. Yeah but it is this thing of like, that’s one of the - it’s a signal, it’s a secret language of how we identify each other. R: And this is speaking from more like the fan side of why you would want to display these things, in whatever way they are meant to be displayed, whether they’re earrings or whether they’re a pin, whether they’re a sticker, a patch, something. I know that when I first started thinking of swag, I was thinking of things I have to give away for free, that are going to keep me in mind in a potential reader who isn’t ready to pick up the book or not in a position where they can buy the book. R: Like I meet someone in a coffee shop and we’re waiting for our coffee and we end up talking and somehow it comes up that I’m a science fiction writer and they wanna know about it. If I carry bookmarks in my purse, it’s a book-related item, and it can have the sales copy on the back of the bookmark, or a blurb from another author promoting the book. And then you have some of the cover art on the other side and the title and my name, and therefore they have everything they need to find me later. And, if nothing else, they’ve got a bookmark that maybe they’ll hang on to, ‘cause the art’s cool, and then later they find it and they go ‘oh yeah,’ and it’s kind of like putting my branding in front of them multiple times. Every time they come across it, it might be one step closer to them buying the book. R: So that’s one thought I had and why I chose bookmarks, ‘cause 1) they’re relatively cheap, paper is or at least was a relatively cheap material, and so if your swag is made of paper it’s not a huge upfront investment. You can maybe get 500 bookmarks for $75 or something depending on your printer. Book swag seems to have really - K: Oh the game has been stepped up. R: Yeah. I remember Tracy Townsend giving out little plastic-covered notepads with a pen built in, neat little binder, and I still have it by my bed. So I can’t imagine that that was anywhere near the price of a bookmark. There’s gotta be a level at which we go ‘okay this cannot be free anymore.’ And some of that is related to the publisher, like is the publisher funding some of this? R: This Is How We Lose the Time War had pins, and they were giving them away with proof of preorder, and you picked your side, red or blue, and you got the pin. But the publisher I believe, and I may be incorrect, it may have been self-funded, but - the impression I got was that the publisher was providing those. And so I’m curious, ‘cause dave, you charge for some things, and some things are thrown in the box when you send out something. So like between stickers, bookmarks, and whatever else, what’s your thought process of where it becomes a merchandise item versus a promotional item? d: Hm. You’re making me think I need to have a thought process. R: Sorry. [laughing] K: [laughing] d: No I mean anything that’s more than a couple dollars to make usually is in the… either I bundle it with something else or it’s charged for on its own. Maybe one thing that slightly is confusing is I have this thing called Club Serpentine, where folks sign up ahead of time for everything I published in a given year, and those folks I give all the swag to for free basically, so. But in other cases like these tarot altar cloth-slash-bandana, depending on your perspective, slash microphone dampener - K: [chuckling] d: - those, I’m gonna give those away to the authors in Unfettered Hexes but I’m gonna also sell them on the website. And then like, I made an oracle deck, which is similar to a tarot deck, for Unfettered Hexes, and we’re using the interior illustrations from the anthology as part of that deck. So again I’m giving those away to the authors but everyone else is paying for them. And there’s a, I’m calling it an oracle coin, but there’s a coin that also goes inside that deck, that comes with the deck, but otherwise you can also buy it separately. d: So the writers or folks that are part of Club Serpentine are getting things for free as it were, but they’ve either written a story for me or they’ve invested. So it’s not really for free, it’s still being part of the project in some capacity. Whereas stickers for me maybe is where the line is drawn. Stickers, I just like making them, there’s a website I pay attention to that every once in a while will list a 50-stickers-for-20-bucks, and so I just get those every time it comes up so that I can dish them out like candy. R: They are very much like candy, I have quite a few stickers from both Neon Hemlock and Neon Apothecary. d: We like stickers, yeah. [chuckling] Especially when they make the luminescent ones, we’re like yeah we like that deal! We like those a lot. K: [laughing] d: Maybe Rekka’s right and it’s also like Kickstarter campaigns because with the most recent novella campaign, I was like ‘oh I wonder if I can incentivize folks to back us on the first day.’ So I had what I was calling Launch Day Loot, which I commissioned this artist I work with a lot, Matt Spencer, to make a print of a character from each of the novellas, and so I’m sending that to everybody and I also used that print to make bookmarks as well, out of pretty paper. d: So I am slightly regretting this, because it means that I can’t use my fulfillment center to do book shipment, it means I have to mail them all myself. So I’m surrounded by piles over here on my side. So those are the first time I actually thought, these are like swag in the traditional sense, like this is free stuff that I’m gonna give you if you buy it on a given day. Whereas the stickers nobody actually expects those, I just have been getting them and sending them to people. K: Nobody expects the book stickers. … Monty Python? No? Okay. d: [laughing] K [overlapping]: [laughing] d: It made me think of the ‘Nobody’s gonna know.’ ‘They’re gonna know.’ ‘No one’s gonna know!’ K [overlapping]: [laughing] ‘No they’re totally gonna know!’ So let me ask this then, this is a lot of work, this is a lot of effort. Why do you do it? Apart from [laughing] - R: That’s a nice smile, dave. d: [laughing] K: Yeah for those listening at home, dave has a lovely smile on his face right now. Yeah it’s - completely, for joy, for getting things out there that show people enjoy your books and what you publish, that I think is fantastic. I’m sure it’s delightful to run into somebody who’s got something, a sticker or a bookmark or something from one of your publications or something that you did a special run of, but - How do you think it benefits not just you as a publisher, but then also authors? There’s like you, who you’re gonna do it on behalf of what you’re publishing, or authors, who might do it on their own behalf. Why would you recommend book swag? d: I don’t know that I have a metric or anything that would say that they categorically increase sales by x percentile or anything like that. But there is a sort of impression that I have that, just folks get excited by stuff? And giving people something to be excited about feels nice. There’s something especially about writing where it often doesn’t have a physical form that often, so. Like yeah you have a cover you can point to sometimes. Short stories often don’t have their own art. It’s nice giving things physical shape. K: I agree. Yeah. d: Like I’m not making a fortune over here making bandanas, I haven’t become a bandana empire quite yet - R: It’ll happen. K: Give it time, give it time. d: Maybe next year. R: [laughing] K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: So what was your progression? Did you start with stickers and then you just sort of said ‘oh I could also do this, and then I can also do this, and I can also do this,’ and now you have oracle decks and bandanas and coins. d: Honestly, Unfettered Hexes, this anthology has really fed all of my most rabbithole impulses. Because it’s all related to witchery, it’s really - like the accessories are great - Any time I think of one it’s hard to say no to. We went for an enamel pin, more than 40 illustrations in the book - These tarot cloth, the oracle deck, the coin, I think I stopped there. Well I made stickers, too. And then I made these mini prints from the cover, so. Part of it is I can’t get out of my own way, and I just keep making things. And part of that too, maybe because I’ve got the interest both in the editing side and in the design side, there’s no one here to tell me otherwise. I just keep making up - R: But you are working with artists for pretty much every little item that you come up with. d [overlapping]: Yeah. I do the design part but I don’t do the illustrations. R: Right. d: Yeah. R: So the oracle cloth in front of you has some line art illustration, the coin itself I assume needed to be 3D - d: Oh the coin I made actually though. R: Okay. d: But I designed that with someone who then 3D-ified it. R: Yes. d: That’s the technical term. R: It is. [chuckling] Yes. So you say you don’t get out of your own way. I do wonder, do you go to any sort of ledger and say ‘Can I do this, with the budget I have?’ d: Oh no. R: [laughing] K [overlapping]: [laughing] d: No. R: That gets in the way of the joy. d [laughing]: Yeah I only work with feelings, I don’t work with numbers. R: [chuckling] d: No but two-thirds of these ideas are during an active Kickstarter, and I’m saying I’ll do it if I reach this goal. So there was some math there. We just barely hit the oracle deck stretch goal. Because we hit $12,000, and then I said we wouldn’t do the deck unless we had $18,000 and then we did, so. Whereas before I had lots of little stretch goals. R: Yeah the oracle deck is not a small project, as you said. Lots and lots of illustrations. Now if you hadn’t gone with the oracle deck, were you still going to have the interior illustrations or were those the same item? d: Well, no they were different. So Matt Spencer, who did the illustrations for the oracle deck, he was on board to do some interior illustrations, but it was probably going to be like a chapter heading, maybe a couple of spot illustrations here or there, like we had a few things worked out. R: Mhm. d: And then once we hit the oracle it was like hey, what if instead, we just use every single one of these. R: [laughing] d: And you don’t do the other illustrations. K: Since we’ve mentioned it a few times here, can you explain what the oracle deck is in relation to, and why you ended up making these cards? d: Sure, so an oracle deck is like a tarot deck. Rather than being a set number of suits and major and minor arcana, it has however many cards you decide. So we made this deck to go alongside the stories from an anthology called Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness. K: A certain podcast co-host here may or may not have contributed to that. d: Yeah, and as my penultimate story in the anthology. R: I’m happy because I also love the world ‘penultimate.’ K: [chuckling] d: I’m actually not 100% sure because after, you’re technically the last story, but then there’s a poem after you. So you’re the penultimate… K: Entry? d: Entry? Mm, yeah… [thinking noises] R: Hmm… K: Contribution? d: But you have two illustrations, right? R: Yeah. d: You’ve got both your oracle card one and then a two page color illustration. R: Somebody’s playing favorites here and I love it. K: [laughing] d: I - y’know, we could say that. But also, it’s a really good story, and it perfectly hit one of the themes I really wanted from the book, which was basically friendship in space. [chuckling] K: [chuckling] d: It just nailed it perfectly, and so it was a perfect tie-in for the end of the anthology. So I couldn’t resist making all these pictures of it. R: I appreciate your inability to resist your impulses. d: [laughing] R: It has served me well! d: [unintelligible] R: So the oracle cards, as you said there’s - what is it, 23? 24 stories? d: Ah, don’t make me say a number right now. I think we just totally made it up - R [overlapping]: Okay. I - d: We’ll say 24. And then… yeah, 24 that are directly inspired by the stories themselves, two each for each of the story games that are in the book, four related to the characters on the cover, and then four related to different Neon Hemlock themes. I don’t know if this is that interesting, sorry. K: It is! No, it is. d: [laughing] R: You broke my math brain, so I was trying to follow along and get the total. d: I told you, I don’t do numbers. R [overlapping]: Yeah, okay - d: So if those don’t add up to 40, just - R: 92! Got it! Okay. K: [laughing] d [laughing]: Just roll through it! R: Yeah. So you commissioned all this artwork. You had an artist create individual, unique pieces for you. You also have the cover, you also have two interior color illustrations. I have also seen chapter art designs, a textured placeholder page. I think you said this is like 200 pages longer? d: It’s a beast, yeah. R: Compared to Glitter + Ashes - d [overlapping]: Glitter + Ashes, yeah. R: - it is. d: It’s like 160 pages longer. K: Wow. R: But it really seems like a project that came out of great enthusiasm, which is delightful. d: Yeah, glee, even. It’s just - [chuckling] So we’ll see if - I don’t even know if I can recreate this excitement with a future project, ‘cause it just has been really exciting. Although, my problem with making things is already going further with - I won’t tell you the exact - K [overlapping]: Oh no. d: - nature of it. K: Oh no! [laughing] d: But the next one will involve 3D printed figures. K: Wow. R: Oh my gosh. d: So we’re already going out to left field again. R: Yeah. K: Okay. R: You can’t not outdo yourself. It’s like every published book is a stamp in history, and you look back and you go ‘Pfft, that guy. [scoffing] I can beat that.’ d: [chuckling] R: So given everything you’ve learned, having gone through these processes, for sourcing objects that are not typical - like, okay, a lot of authors could probably tell you where to go to find somebody who will make an enamel pin for you. But a bandana, for example, or oracle cards, a printed coin. You’ve obviously had to figure things out, do some research on your own, and get creative about things. d: I also had to marry a chandler. R: That’s true! And we all appreciate that sacrifice. [chuckling] d: [laughing] R: I have a lot of Neon Apothecary candles around me just so you know. d: I just needed to make sure I could lock that down for future projects. K: [laughing] R: Yeah there are candles to coordinate with the stories in Glitter + Ashes, in the novella series that you put out. Aside from ‘there’s no reason you can’t do anything’ - you can’t use that as the answer - what advice do you have for somebody that’s into all this left field kind of paraphernalia and ephemera, and wants to do something for a book? Either as a self-published author, an author that’s promoting their work and it’s all on them versus the publisher contributing to this, or to a small press, or even a Tor.com? What words of sage wisdom would you pull from your oracle cards to give them? d [laughing]: The new moon would tell us that - K [overlapping]: [laughing] d: Well, I think it’s about scale, right? So I’ve definitely looked up different projects and then realized that they weren’t feasible for me based off of my maybe modest scale. Depending on the project I’m looking to make like 100, 300, or 1,000 units of something, right? Which is small beans for a lot of projects. But, it’s also far too many for some others. So like one writer, Hailey Piper, she just put out a horror novella. And her press did a limited-edit, handbound version that you could preorder at not a cheap price. d: But they only made those for those preorders, and then they’re not gonna make any more. And that’s something that, I know a local press in Baltimore that’s since folded, but they handbound all of their special editions too. And that’s something that is pretty special, and when you have it you know that you’re only one of 20 that has one, so something like that could be an option for people. I think handcrafted things in small batches can be pretty meaningful. K: I have some experience with that, and yes. [laughing] d: Maybe you have to do it via raffle or some other way, maybe it’s not a mass-produced thing. With the bandanas I had to price four or five of them, and the first three were like ‘what is this question you’re asking? ‘Cause you’re not really asking this very well.’ [chuckling] K: [laughing] R [overlapping]: [laughing] d: And eventually I figured it out, and then took the price from one and brought it to the more ethical company and asked them if they’d match it and things like that. If anyone ever wants to reach out to me and hear about how I made a particular product I’m happy to talk people through it. With enamel pins, Juli Riddle of Riddle’s Tea Shoppe walked me through that at every step of the way. The candles, again, the husband, so I cheated that. R: [chuckling] K [overlapping]: [laughing] d: And the coins I can talk to people, it’s all just sort of been shots in the dark. Reaching out to people and then either asking dumb questions or having someone who already asked them tell me the way to do it so I can get through them. R: It’s a lot more communicating with people who have done something similar figuring out how you would do this thing, as opposed to like pick your merchandise and upload your graphic. d: That’s what I meant about scale, too. Like the minimum number of coins I can make is a thousand, you know? R: Yeah. K: Yeah. d: So you can’t do that on a whim, right. So there’s different mediums that are harder. Although it’s funny, I realized I’m wearing my fictional show t-shirt that’s based off of fictional bands in a novella that I published. K and R: [laughing] d: And I have that available through Threadless, which is sort of like halfway between those swag sites and a custom thing, where it feels kinda nice but it is an image that I uploaded and put on there. K: I mean I remember when I did vests. Just to buy the vests is expensive, but we ordered just one, because I just wanted to make sure this was not gonna look like garbage before I ordered 200 of them. And I had to convince the manufacturer to just make one. He’s like ‘you know it’s gonna cost like $50 to make this one vest, then plus you need to buy the vest?’ I’m like ‘yeah that’s fine, I’d rather spend $70 now and have it not look right than spend 5,000 down the road and it’s terrible.’ d: A lot of places now will give you a cheaper deal for - I can’t think of the right word, it’s not prototype, it’s similar. R: Like a proof? d: Proof, thank you. Yeahyeahyeah. Like with coins they charge you for the molds either way. So those start already at like 300 or 400 bucks, depending on the kind of thing. Whereas at least with bandanas, they didn’t do a proof for me there, but they can do a really nice mockup ‘cause it’s only one color. And they will sort of make sure that you know that bandanas are not perfect squares, and - R [overlapping]: Yes. d: - and your image will be slightly off, those little kinds of things to make sure that you understand. K: Have there ever been any pitfalls you’ve come across, anything where you’re just like ‘oh my God, this is not at all what I should’ve done here,’ and can you look at things now and go like ‘ah yes, I have come across this problem before, I should go down a different path’? d: I mean… yeah? But also, even when you think you’ve got something figured out completely, like I just had a miscommunication with my printer where they didn’t get my proof approvals, and two of my books are like three weeks late. So… things will happen either way, I think it’s more getting a sense of timelines and knowing that you don’t need something ready two weeks beforehand, you need it ready like a month and a half beforehand at least, so that then you’re building in a little bit more buffer. Always build in more buffer. K: Anything that you’ve ordered or tried to design or something and got it and gone like ‘this is not at all what I wanted this to look like, or what I expected it to look like,’ or? You seem like you’re pretty methodical and thorough along the way. d: Oh, oh no. No no no. K: [laughing] d: I have a box full of ruined prints where they - even though I proofed an image that was fully spread, they sent me one that was with four inches of white space on every side. And then you just have to email them and say ‘this isn’t like my proof’ and so, even when you think you’ve got things figured out they still can kinda get screwed up. R: So you mentioned scale, and there are, just to name the ones that come to mind are CafePress and Redbubble, that you have the option to create one-offs, or to create a store without putting in any overhead other than the time to set it up. So that is an option, but it doesn’t create that immediacy of like ‘I’m going to send this to you as a special treat,’ or ‘this is part of our relationship as author and reader or publisher and reader,’ so it allows you to create things without having to go through printers, without having to go through all the proofing processes. I mean you might wanna order one for yourself anyway just to make sure, ‘cause some of those shirts, the printing quality on them is better or worse depending on the fabric, but - K: Some of the fabric is better or worse too. [laughing] R: I mean there are options for people who don’t have the ability to invest a little bit up front, or a lot up front. d: Well that was how I started using Threadless artist shops, because I had like three or four shirts from Void Merch - I don’t know if y’all know them - and then I was like wait, they’re making these on Threadless artist shops. And I commissioned like a metal band version of my logo for Neon Hemlock, and I was like I want this on a shirt! And like at this point I feel like 60% of my wardrobe is Neon Hemlock tank tops, so. I’m not only a client, I’m also the president. K: [laughing] R: Yeah. d: Yeah. R: Yeah so I mean there are ways to do this from small to large, you can put up a CafePress shop. I have actually, I forget who I saw recently was putting up merchandise online through one of these print on demand shops, and people were getting excited - oh it was Malka! Malka Older. Dr. Malka Older. She had Infomocracy related t-shirts and coffee mugs and all that kind of stuff and people were like ‘what! Where’s the link?!’ and getting excited about it on Twitter. I’m sure that resulted in a few sales. R: And then there’s printing or having your own SWAG made, and you take it to a conference and you hand it out as part of rubbing elbows with the readers and the book-signing group kind of thing. And then there’s Kickstarter rewards where you kinda have to - I don’t know who started the stretch goals, but you gotta love them but you also kinda wanna hunt them down and throttle them. Because now people go ‘well this is exciting! But they’re out of stretch goals, so I guess they’re happy now and they don’t want any more money for their campaign.’ d: I think that’s like a fundamental misunderstanding with Kickstarter though. Like I’ve had plenty of people, like I’ve sent them a link to a Kickstarter and be like ‘oh well you made your goals, so you don’t need me to pre-order.’ And it’s like ‘but I’d still really like it if you did!’ K: We could use more money. [chuckling] R: If you support this now, you won’t forget to buy it later when it comes out. d: Well it also means you have the money to print it beforehand - R [overlapping]: Yeah. d: - which is pretty critical. R: Yeah, exactly. ‘Cause dave’s books are very well produced, they are not POD one cover texture, they are not the typical POD interior pages either, like the paper quality is - dave is hand-selecting these things, and proofing them, and showing them to his friends in the morning writing Slack. K: [laughing] d: We do a lot of show and tell. R: We had show and tell this morning, it was great. d: I keep trying to see if people can see like, can you tell it’s embossed? R: [laughing] K: [laughing] R: So there’s lots of stages. I don’t want anyone to feel pressured to generate oracle coins right out of the gate. d: But I’d buy them. R: But dave’s ready to buy them, along with your band t-shirts. [chuckling] And if you want inspiration, just check out the Kickstarter stretch goals for Neon Hemlock, the tie-in merchandise for the anthologies that he does. And it’s always nice and cozy to think of a publisher that is enjoying the stories as much as the readers will, and feeling inspired by them to create stuff, and then having the authority for that to be official stuff is also really cool. But yeah, an author, a publisher, small press - K: It’s very doable. It just depends on how much you wanna do. R: How much you feel comfortable doing what you’re excited to do, and if you’re not excited by a thing I would say don’t do it. K: Yeah. Definitely. ‘Cause it’s not gonna get better once you start. R: And it’s not cheaper if you don’t love it. d [chuckling]: And like I said, if anyone ever has questions about how to get started and wants to reach out, I’m happy to at least give you the initial walk-through. K: Well along those lines, dave, where can everyone find you? d: Neon Hemlock’s at neonhemlock.com, and also just neonhemlock all one word at all the socials. And then my personal Twitter would be, it’s SlickHop. S-l-i-c-k-h-o-p. Oh and I’m at dave-ring.com. R: So thank you dave so much for coming on! d: Thanks for having me. R: And all those links will be in the show notes in the transcript and everything. K: Check out dave’s upcoming projects, ‘cause Rekka is in a couple of them. R: That’s not the only reason to do it though. There’s a lot of people - I am - d: [laughing] K: Absolutely not the only reason. R: I am thrilled to be on this table of contents. It’s a very good table of contents. K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: And the oracle deck I cannot wait to hold in my hand, I cannot wait to spill it out over this bandana which is actually an altar cloth, and flip that coin, and all the good stuff. I am really looking forward to seeing all these things that you’ve teased on camera in person, and I can’t wait to see how you’re gonna top it for the next anthology! d: Aaaaaah! Pressure! K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: Well with the 3D figures that you’ve already - d: These are secrets! No one tell anyone, that’s a secret. R: Okay we won’t tell anyone, we promise. d: [laughing] K: Everyone who listens to this, you’re not allowed to tell anyone. d: Shhhhh. R: Forget everything you heard. Except the good advice. K: Yes. R: Alright. d: And maybe my website. R: Yes. dave-ring.com, neonhemlock.com, and, hey! neonapothecary.com while you’re out there. d: True. R: Give that chandler his due. d and K: [laughing] R: We will have a new episode in two weeks, and in the meantime you can find us at @WMBcast, you can find us at Patreon.com/WMBcast, and you can leave a rating and review on your podcast apps because we basically exist to breathe those in and smell the scents and not be creepy about it at all. K: That’s a candle we need. R: Rate us highly please, and we will talk to you next time. Thanks everyone for listening!

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Mentioned in this episode: The Dancing Plague of 1518 MICE quotient The House of Untold Stories  storyenginedeck.com/demo deckofworlds.com Peter on Twitter and everywhere   Transcript (by TK) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. Kaelyn: We’re talking about tropes today, which is something that I think a lot of people hear spoken about in a negative context: falling back on using too many tropes, or stories following really common tropes. Rekka: And we don’t appreciate that kind of shaming. K [laughs]: No, we certainly do not trope sh--see this is gonna be a problem because I was doing research for this and the word ‘trope’ is difficult to say over and over again. R: Trope, trope, trope, trope, trope. K: It’s, what do they call that, when a word becomes a sound? Semantic satiation. R: Yes. K: Yes. The word ‘trope’ has become more of a sound to me and it’s sort of lost meaning [laughing] at times but--So quick definitions, there’s the actual word ‘trope’ comes from Greek, because of course it does, it all does-- R: You mean it isn’t a contraction of tightrope? K: It should be, that would be so much better. R: [laughs] K: A literary trope is using figurative language, like words, phrases, images, for artistic effect. So there’s a bunch of different kinds of tropes that fall under literary tropes. Things like metaphors, irony, allegory, oxymorons; those are all considered tropes. Hyperbole is another good example of that, really over-exaggerating. The way this came about was, apparently, because it is Greek and it’s from Greek theatre, of course, ‘to alter, to direct, to change, to turn’--all of these translations kinda line up with that, but they’re considered an important element of classical rhetoric. Especially in Greek theatre where it was very dialogue-heavy, and so you had to sort of use all of these words and everything to paint a picture to explain to the audience what was going on. All of that said, we’re not really here to talk about literary tropes today. They’re an important story-telling device, though, and they’re something that is considered, I would say, necessary to higher literature and writing and if you’re panicking going ‘oh my God, I don’t know all of this stuff’--well the thing is you’re probably doing this anyway and not realizing. R: A lot of writers don’t come from writing backgrounds and don’t know the terms for the thing, don’t stress too much about it. K: We’re talking today primarily about story tropes. I think a lot of times you’re gonna encounter this in a negative light. It’s a frequent criticism I feel like that’s leveraged especially against fiction, especially against fantasy and science fiction books and writing; in some areas of fiction it’s actually celebrated. R: Right. K: You pick which trope you’re gonna write. R: You cannot proceed without mentioning the other half of that, which is that some people are like ‘Okay, I pick my books based on the tropes I wanna read about.’ K: Yes. R: Like, ‘Where’s my time travel?’ K [laughs]: Yeah. We wanted to talk about why that is. We wanted to talk about what story tropes are, and why they’re not necessarily as bad and, in our humble opinions-- R: Not so humble. K: --not so humble opinions, as everyone thinks they are. So, definition: what is a story trope? It’s a commonly used plot or character device, essentially. A story trope is something that shows up in literature and stories over and over again, to the point that it may actually be a subgenre within a broader genre. R: That’s not to say it is an entire plot of a book that shows up over and over again, like the Hero’s Journey is not necessarily a trope. K: No. R: The smaller pieces of plot or character might be the trope. Like the farmboy would be a trope. K: Yeah, the farmboy is a trope. The surprise hero is a trope. R: Prophesied one. K: Yeah, the prophesied one; time-travel to go back and reset the future, that could be a trope. The noble outlaw-- R [overlapping]: Right. K: --is a good trope, the secret relative, the-- All of these elements and story parts that are things you just see all the time in books. So if you’re going ‘well, I like those’-- R: Right. K: Like yeah, of course you do! R [overlapping]: Yeah. K [laughing]: That’s why they’re popular! That’s why these keep coming up. Anything from like, a secret legacy or an unknown lost child, unfound powers that suddenly appear at just the right time, or anyone being secretly special for some reason. R [overlapping]: [giggles] K: But these are part of what make stories fun. They’re not the larger plot, they’re the elements that make up the characters and the plot. R: And you can use them like spice in a recipe-- K [overlapping]: [laughs] R: --to come up with something that is entirely your own but tastes familiar and pleasing. K: Yeah. Now obviously, different genres are going to have different tropes that you see recurring in there. So before we get into why tropes are good, let’s talk a little bit about why they’re frequently seen as a negative. R: I have feelings about this. K: Okay. R: I think they’re frequently seen as a negative because if you come to lean too heavily on tropes, they can make your story feel either derivative or predictable. K: I was gonna say contrived, yeah, but same. R: Don’t you ever say that about one of my stories, Kaelyn. K: I would never say that about one of your stories. If you’re leaning too heavily on tropes, if you’re just pulling things that you know are popular or cool things you read in other books that you went like ‘oh wow that’s awesome, I wanna write something like that,’ you’re almost not writing a story. You’re putting together a sequence of events and characters that you liked from other things. R: Is that fanfiction, is that what you’re implying? K: Ohhh, oh, there’s a--God, I’m not ready to wade into that question! [laughs] R: But we should touch on the fact that tropes are major fanfiction fuel. Sometimes that’s the entire point of the piece, is that ‘take this trope and apply it to this IP that I love.’ K: Yeah. R: In that case, that can be the goal. To be, not that contrived but obviously, specifically derivative--not in the negative sense of the term, but like you’re writing fanfiction, it is derivative of this IP, and you’re applying this trope to it because you just think that would be fun. So people can have fun with it. K: Absolutely. R: And not for the right reasons, but it might feed into this impression that tropes are derivative or contrived. K: I think also it goes to storytelling abilities. If your entire book is just laden with secret Targaryens and lost bloodlines and magic powers nobody knew about, chosen ones and prophecies and it’s just the entire story is that, it’s probably not a great story, because it doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of room in there for character development and arcs and intricate and original plots. R: Having said that… K: Or, wait, other direction: it may be way too complicated. Because that’s a lot of stuff to juggle. R: Well there’s that, yeah. Having said that, I don’t think you could say that there is a restrained amount of troping in something like Gideon the Ninth. K: No. No, absolutely not. R: So it can be done. K: Here’s the thing. That story is set in such an original setting with such original characters, in original worldbuilding and magic system if you will, that I think it more than makes up for all of that. That’s just my opinion, ‘cause you know Rekka and I can’t get through an episode without referencing Gideon the Ninth and using that as an example of-- R [overlapping]: I think there’s one or two. K: [laughing] R: But specifically when you talk about things that are trope-based, or fandom-based, I think you have to acknowledge that there is always an exception to this ‘be careful around fanfic,’ or ‘be careful around tropes.’ Like ‘don’t put too many in’--or! Put them all in! K [laughs]: It’s I think a matter of knowing how to use them. I don’t think a lot of writers set out with the intention of ‘I am going to write to this trope,’ it’s just something that happens. R: Although I think a lot of tropes have inspired anthologies. ‘I want this kind of book, I want an anthology full of that kind of story.’ K: Yeah. R: And it’s one or two tropes smashed together, or it’s a trope applied to a certain genre or character type. I think it’s happening a lot, where people are looking for a way to find joy. And tropes really are like candy. K: So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about why tropes are good, why these things that show up in every story show up in every story--it’s because they’re fun! R: It’s also really good marketing. K: Yes. R: It’s a lot easier to come up with comp titles when you’re pitching a book if everybody’s drawing from a fairly reasonably sized pool of tropes. K: Let’s be clear here. These things can go in cycles. I remember a few years ago everyone was retelling or reinterpreting old fairy tales. I felt like that was just something I saw all the time. I will call that a trope, more or less, that is something that speaks to a specific reader and something that somebody’s gonna wanna pick up, like ‘oh well I really liked when this person did it, I’m gonna try this book now as well.’ R: So that speaks to what you said earlier about them becoming like a niche genre. K: Yeah, absolutely. Young adult fiction, especially within science fiction and fantasy, I think is constantly at the mercy of whatever trope is popular at the time. YA definitely fell to the fairy tale retelling trend at some point; YA books with a central character, usually a young woman or older teenage girl, who was not necessarily a prophesied champion but has to save everyone on her own even though she doesn’t want to; science fiction, there’s everything from time travel to artificial intelligence to very specific kinds of space battles and things, but! It speaks to a certain reader. K: There are these things that create these subgenres, and that’s really helpful for readers, because I think what we’re skirting around that nobody wants to say is, you don’t want to put readers in a position where they’re just reading the same story over and over, but I know a lot of people who just like to read the same story over and over. People who are very into romance novels. R: There’re definitely a set of tropes that romance novels have to pick from, just like there are tropes that other genres have to pick from, and when you read a book that you really love, and romance often tickles a specific audience, they want more like that. Think of the first Thor movie where he tries coffee and he says “I like this beverage. Another!” and smashes it down on the floor-- K [overlapping]: Yes! [laughs] R: People will smash their books down on the floor and demand another because they read through it so quickly and it was exactly what they wanted, and they want to feel that feeling again. Just with new characters. K: I’m gonna qualify all this by saying none of this is a criticism of the romance genre. Romance writers a lot of times write to specific tropes: the marriage of convenience, or the marriage of ‘we didn’t know each other beforehand but someone found this legal document that our families betrothed us’-- R: Or a fake marriage-- K [overlapping]: Yeah. R: --that turns into a real marriage. K: Co-workers to friends to lovers type thing. R: Only one bed. K: Yes, exactly, exactly. R: These are by the way coming into genre fiction, science fiction and fantasy-- K [overlapping]: Yup. R: Where romance is becoming more welcome in the books. K: Yes. R: Actual romance, as opposed to ‘you are a buxom babe who stowed away on my spaceship therefore we are a couple.’ The depth of character is now allowing for these tropes to trickle in as characters get to know each other in a more interesting way, and less classic pairing-off. K: I’m sure most people listening to this know or probably even a family member that just obsessively consumes romance novels. I think back to my grandmother and my aunt having stacks of those mass market paperback ones that all have like, essentially the same cover just different backgrounds and clothes. R: Hey look, when we talk about your cover art, you need to look at what your industry in your genre is-- K [overlapping]: Yes, absolutely! R: --putting on the shelf and you want to communicate that you are making the same promise to the reader. So you have very similar covers in romance, ‘cause there’s only so many ways to be austere while still posing two characters together. K [laughing]: I would say that the two genre groups of readers that will most vivaciously consume media are hard military SF and romance, who will just tear through these books and stories, which is fantastic. I have friends that will read at least one, possibly two, romance novels a week. A lot of them do the Kindle Unlimited. R: Yup. K: Because there’s a lot of romance novels on Kindle unlimited. R: Well the two systems kinda fed each other. K: Exactly. But, they have their tropes that they like. Forced into a marriage of convenience, or stranded on an island somewhere. R: Those are the good ones. K: Yeah. [laughs] And Kindle will very helpfully keep recommending more and more of those to you, and I don’t want anyone to leave thinking I’m putting down those readers for just wanting the same thing over and over again. Books are there to give you comfort and to spark joy and interest, and if that’s what you wanna read, if that’s what’s making you happy, then that’s what you should be reading. R: Right. And in that case, tropes are very very good. K: Tropes are incredibly helpful. R: And they’re a marketing tool; the people producing the work, they know that their readers like this trope, so an entire world where that trope is kind of central to what’s going on is going to delight people. K: Something that I see a lot now, and especially with submissions I was seeing this, was a really hard and concerted effort to avoid tropes. And it’s hard to write like that sometimes. Don’t get me wrong; there are books out there that are successfully doing it, that are coming up with really original stories. That said, I don’t think it’s possible to write a full-length novel without having at least a handful of tropes in there. R: Plus, if it’s successful and it’s original, then someone’s going to mimic that. K: It will become a trope on its own, eventually. R [overlapping]: And it becomes a trope. I mean this is where tropes come from, they are not fully forged in the heart of a star. K: [laughs] R: Y’know, they’re a process of people recognizing a thing they like in a book and making sure it’s repeated. That’s exactly what’s going on, so you come up with a story that’s completely original and you’re so proud of it, well, maybe you get to claim being the first, but you’re not going to get to claim being the only for very long. K: Tropes go back to basically the genesis of human writing. R: Mhm. K: I mean, we consider the Epic of Gilgamesh to be the oldest more or less complete epic story written down, at this point. It’s very clear, if you’ve ever read it, that even though we don’t have anything that came before that, there’s elements of the story that were just commonplace storytelling devices of that time. There’s other parts of it that then pop up in later epic tales that it’s impossible to tell well, was this influenced by the Epic of Gilgamesh, or was this influenced by common storytelling tropes of the time and the Epic of Gilgamesh just happens to be the one that lasted the longest that we still have? R: Right. K: If you ever look into the literary history of Robin Hood, Robin Hood as we know him today did not start off like that. R [overlapping]: Right. K: He was just like a straight up highwayman. R: Bandit, at some point yeah. K: Bandit, there we go. He regularly kinda killed people to get their money. But, the character evolved as storytelling tropes evolved. We went from Robin Hood being just a lawless bandit who’s funny and laughing while he’s doing all of this to, no no he’s actually the son of an earl who went off on the Crusades and came back and he’s stealing from the rich and giving to the needy. Yeah Robin Hood was just straight up stealing originally-- R [overlapping]: Wow. K: --in all of these. [laughs] R: Until suddenly he wasn’t. K: Until suddenly he wasn’t! R: And someday in the future, those tropes might change, and the story of Robin Hood would be told differently, and everyone would think that was the best version. K: There’s actually a lot of what we would probably think of as ‘modern’ tropes that show up in medieval European literature. The special chosen one is very tied to Arthurian legend, which again, if you ever wanna try to put that together, go and--good luck. R [laughing]: You figure that out, we’re not doing it for you. K: No [laughs], no. That’s another good example of the evolution of these tropes. And then there’s actually like conflict and everyone was writing different versions of Arthur but because there was no printing press at the time, and there certainly wasn’t any form of mass communication, there’s all of these different versions of what virtues and what values they wanted to highlight in Arthur, based on what was common storytelling at that time. I think that there is this push to write something no one’s ever written, and the thing is you’re never gonna do that. R: And maybe it’s not even something you wanna aspire to do. K: No, and it’s okay for authors to write a story based on the story they wanna tell, not based on like, ‘I need to be the most original writer in the history of writing.’ That said, there are definitely readers out there who are always looking for something they’ve never seen before. Maybe you can write one of those! But, it’s still going to have tropes in it. R: Yeah. K: They are inescapable. They are inevitable. R: Yeah, the level of trope that you include might go up or down, depending on your story, but. Don’t revise your draft and like strip out everything that was fun at the time, just because you’ve seen it before. K: Rekka and I are obviously coming from a place of primarily Western-fueled literature. R: Right. K: Y’know, if you get into different parts of the world, different storytelling traditions, they will also have their own tropes. [laughs] R: Yeah, they’re not gonna be the same tropes, so if you wanna totally wow a Western audience just go borrow someone else’s tropes. K: Prophecy and chosen one’s just all over the historical literature, there’s mythical places and people with secret lineages, I think that’s something you’re gonna come across no matter what, because uh. Almost like humanity just really enjoys those facets of storytelling. So. But yeah anyway, when I would get submissions sometimes that I could tell there was a writer that was just trying to be really really original, to just stay away from anything that may have been done before. One of the things I always thought was, “I don’t know how I’m going to sell this to anyone.” R: Right, ‘cause what do you compare it to? K: Yeah, that’s not necessarily a dealbreaker. But it does make things very difficult. Because if you’re trying to describe something in the context of ‘well do you like this thing? You may also like this’-- R [overlapping]: Mhm. K: --and you’re not able to do that, it’s hard to sell a book. R: Right. Exactly. And that’s how the conversations always start, you got the elevator pitches, you’ve got the comp books. And those are the quickest way to get people’s attention, and now you’ve cut yourself off from that. K: Yeah exactly. That said, nothing wrong with trying to be original. Just be aware it could be, depending on how original you’re going, it could be a little bit of an uphill battle. Again, I will use Gideon the Ninth as a weird pitch-- R [overlapping]: [laughs] K [laughing]: --for that book, ‘lesbian necromancers in a broken down palace in space,’ and don’t get me wrong, that definitely piqued my interest, but you can see how that might not be everyone’s cup of tea. R: And if it’s the first original book to present this-- K [overlapping]: Mhm. R: --to a major publisher, they’re going to say, “Who do we put this on the shelf next to? Where do we market this? We don’t use these tropes.” K: Yep. R: “How do we do?” Y’know? K: [laughs] R: It takes a brave publisher to try something new, even if that new thing is built out of all these amazing fantastic fun tropes. K: Yeah, exactly. R: So you can be original, and still combine all these tropes, and just do it in a way that makes people go, “Sorry, what? Say that again?!” K: That’s kind of one more thing that I would like to talk about. We skirted around Gideon the Ninth-- R: I don’t think we skirted around it. K: Well--is just trope after trope and I said yeah, but it’s very original in everything else. So if you have sort of what you’d think of as like ‘ugh is this story too cookie-cutter, is it too predictable and too tropey?’ the thing you need to then consider is, alright but everything else I have in here, the worldbuilding, the characters, the technology or the magic system, is that original? You can make up for a lot by having a really original, engaging world that this is set in, and writing really great characters that we’re cheering for and boy do we really want them to be the long-lost secret half-sister of the wizard-- R: Right. K: We’re just cheering so hard for her, I want for her to have magic powers. So-- [laughs] R: Especially if you start to lead toward a trope, and you don’t deliver on it, your readers are going to be pretty upset with you. K: Or maybe they’ll go, ‘wow that’s awesome. I wanna write something like that.’ R: And then it becomes a trope again. K: Exactly. R: Alright, is there anything else tropey to discuss? K: They’re an endless cycle. R: Get your innertube and just jump into the lazy river of tropes, and-- K [overlapping]: [laughs] R: And enjoy, just come around again and it’ll be good. Just write your story. K: Yeah. R: If it’s got tropes in it, that’s cool. If it doesn’t, that’s cool. It will soon. K [laughing]: And they’re not lazy, let’s be clear! R: They’re not! K: No, yeah-- R: But that’s what they call it at a theme park when they jump in with the innertube-- K: No no I’m just, yeah. R: Okay! So, tropes are good. If anyone tells you otherwise just take your book somewhere else. Someone wants them. They want them very very badly. K: Also, being constantly rejected and not seeing the brilliance of a character is a good trope too. R: Yes. And, going for the tropes of podcasting, you can find us online @wmbcast on Twitter and Instagram, and also at Patreon. And if you would be so kind to leave a rating and review, we would love to read it on the air. You could also ask us questions at any of those social media-- K [overlapping]: We love questions. R: --accounts. That can feed a future tropey episode. Or maybe not tropey, I don’t know! We’ll find out when you ask us questions. Thanks everyone for listening and we’ll talk to you in two weeks!

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Mentioned in this episode: The Dancing Plague of 1518 MICE quotient The House of Untold Stories  storyenginedeck.com/demo deckofworlds.com Peter on Twitter and everywhere   Transcript (by Rekka, uncaught mistakes by Temi)   [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.   Rekka: Peter, I'm going to have you introduce yourself—because I completely failed to have you pronounce your name for me before we started recording—and tell us how you came to stories.   Peter: Yeah. so my name is Peter Chiykowski, or at least that's how I say it. And I write, I illustrate I do some graphic design. I've designed some creative tools for writers and artists and storytellers. And I do create content for tabletop RPGs. And I write songs as well—Um mostly like comedy styled songs. But I do, I do a bunch of things creatively. And I would say that story has been a very big link between them. And definitely one of my passion areas is looking at how different creative disciplines and different like creative techniques and skillsets can combine to create story in different ways or to tell stories in different ways. Or even if like you're not doing something multimedia and you're only working in your one medium, how learning from other mediums gives you more tools for telling stories.   Peter: And I always find that really exciting. But yeah, I think like my, before I was writing anything as a kid, I loved role-playing games. I remember there was this sort of very improvised six-sided die-based game that my friends and I would play in at recess in like grade three that was, there were no rules written down. I don't think it was based on anything, but I do think that we, one of our dads had played D&D and had somehow rubbed off the concept of like rolling dice to tell a story and telling a story collectively. And there was no table top because we were not at a table. We were like out on the playground at recess, but we would like bowl these dice across the entire playground and then run and see what the number was and the story would evolve from there.   Peter: And it was all kinds of silly fantasy adventure stuff. That's the first time that I remember like really getting hooked into telling the story and getting excited about collaborative storytelling. And then it's all been downhill from there. Once, once, once tabletop roleplay gets its hooks into you you, you get, yeah, you look for any avenue to tell stories. So I've done everything from like poetry to short fiction. I've written campaigns for tabletop RPGs, like Ember Wind. I wrote a bunch of poems for a video game. That's now unintended switch called Fracter. We were trying to tell story, but also give clues for solving puzzles in this like existential platform or game, called Fracter. And I've just kind of loved playing in the story space and finding different ways to tell stories. Yeah, and that's kind of the weird mixed bag of experiences that I, I come to story with, but it's such a, such a passion area for me.   Rekka: It does seem like you're absolutely perfect for the topic that we're going to talk about today. You're the perfect person to put this together, and that is the Story Engine, which is almost a role-playing game, almost a multiplayer game.   Kaelyn: I was trying to describe this to somebody recently and I couldn't. So maybe you can.   Rekka: Yeah, well, let's, you're the perfect person because you've probably seen all the marketing. If you didn't create it all yourself for the Story Engine, what is it? And how did you conceive of it? Like, did it come out of a need or did it come out of a like 10 minute space of time where you weren't actually doing something else? Cause it sounds like you're as busy as we are.   Peter: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely wear too many creative hats and I jump from project to project, but Story Engine was something that was definitely, it was definitely filling a need that I had. I write a lot of micro fiction. Like one of my more consistent projects I've worked on is called the shortest story and it's basically, I call them postcard stories. They're stories that fit on postcards. And I actually format them in like a, as like a four by six style postcard, but it's text over an image. And it's meant to be like a little pocket universe that you, you read something from, or like a, a story that's almost an alternate life or a path you never took in your own life. That's that your you get to read. So I called them like post "postcards from alternate worlds" or "postcards from impossible worlds" is kind of like the tagline for that project. And what I was finding, I used to write longer fiction. I used to write poetry and longer fiction and submit to journals. And when I was really getting into the grind of like trying to become a creative full-time and I was working a full-time job, and then also trying to do comics on the side and publishing there was just like, I, it was so hard to maintain enough energy and to find inspiration. And there was so much pressure on the rare pockets of creative time that I would find that I'd often block myself out from creating by feeling like I'd have to optimize this hour and a half I have before work. There's so much pressure cause like maybe I won't have time for another week and I would freak myself out by, by putting that pressure on it.   Peter: And it took a lot of joy out of the creative process. And I found that I was having less and less time to create longer projects as a result, like even long short fiction, like anything longer than a thousand words. So I started creating micro fiction. And this was amazing for me because it meant that I could like pick up a project or pick something up and put it down an hour and a half later and feel like I've created something that stands on its own. That's like a contained creative ecosystem. And that I feel good about it and I can share that with people. And what I found is that I was getting a lot of the ideas from, for stories, from a combination of looking up like publicly available free-for-use photography.   Peter: So I would, I would see an image and the image would start something in my head. And then sometimes it wouldn't be the image. It would be like, I'd have a sense of a conflict coming in as a story seed in my head that like, oh, I want to have a story about somebody who has to choose between like a friend and like a dream that matters to them. And that would be kind of the story seed or it would sometimes cement like the idea of a particular character. Like I'd love to do a story from the perspective of like an entomologist, like suddenly all of an entomologist in my head. So I was paying attention to what was inspiring a lot of these stories seeds in where a lot of the stories were coming from and trying to think like, well, how can I create a tool that would help other people find stories, seeds, or build their own stories, seeds from the parts that speak to them?   Peter: And that's when I started playing with the idea of a story prompting deck and, you know, it's not the first story prompting deck. There's, there's many of these tools out there and people create them in different ways. But I wanted to create something that was really open-ended because I find that with a lot of writing prompts, they're really interesting, but sometimes the prompt is so closed as a system, but it doesn't really give you room to create your own idea. It's just kind of there to see, like, what's your take on this? And that's great, but it's hard to generate a lot of, like, it's hard for those ideas to be reusable. If the card has a really closed system where like the only thing you can do with it is this. Then once you've gone through 60 cards, the deck is is not obsolete, but like you've tapped it out.   Peter: And that's like, great from a marketing perspective, because then you can sell someone the next deck, but I really wanted to create something that was like, you could just keep using it forever. And the creative force behind it was not the idea of putting the cards, but using the cards as a space for someone to create their own idea or bring their own idea to the spread. So from there, it was basically like mixing a bunch of different influences to create a tool that would do this. So like, it was a huge inspiration from tarot. You know, this is a system of cards it's been used for hundreds of years to understand and analyze patterns and have people tell their story or understand their lives in ways that make sense. And that are like interpretable and re interpretable that you can rotate to create new meanings.   Peter: And like all of that went into the deck. Some of it was borrowed consciously from tarot and some of it was like I realized afterwards, I, oh, that's basically what tarot does. Like the fact that you can combine the cards in different spreads and patterns is like, it was very consciously tarot inspired. And then the other like influence that I like to acknowledge it that I think was really big is basically this one sentence from a Canadian novelist who wrote a lot about story and what a story and Douglas Glover wrote in a book called the enamored night that a story consists of someone wanting something and having trouble getting it. And that's such a simple sentence and I don't, I don't generally like, like reductive definitions of this is what a story is, and this is under, this is what this counts as writing and this doesn't that's, those definitions are often very artificial, but I do think that's one really helpful tool for understanding the anatomy of story and how you can combine these parts and, and slot different things in for who the someone is and what they want and what the trouble is.   Peter: And if you look at the Story Engine deck, a lot of the w five card types map against the elements in those sentence and that sentence where like the, someone is the agent card, it's that your character and the wanting is the engine card. It's the thing that motivates them. The something that they want is the anchor, usually an anchor card or another agent card. And then the trouble is the conflict card. And then the aspect cards are there to, to layer more detailed or make the story feel like more like your own. So that was kinda the other influence that, that came together to make this tool. But it's, it's hard to explain what it is cause it's very, like, it is a story prompting system, but it's very, open-ended like, you can play it like it's an RPG. You can use it as inspiration for a solo RPG. You can use it to just create character ideas. You can use it to create art prompts. Like it's, it's hard to market a multi-tool because you kind of need to tell people like a simple story about what it's going to do for them.   Kaelyn: But you did a great job marketing it because this was on Kickstarter and oh boy, did you hit your goal there!   Peter: Yeah. This, this Kickstarter took off in a much bigger way than I had anticipated. I launched it in, I think September, 2019, and I was blown away by how fast it took off. And I had thought at the time that I was launching like a new collection of my stories and then also, "Hey, this cool tool that went into creating a lot of these stories and that might help you." And very quickly it became like, okay, there's a book there. That's just going to be an add on the main thing was like, people were really interested in the deck and what it could do.   Kaelyn: And do you have how many booster packs now at this point? 6?   Peter: Yeah. So the, the, the core deck that, that, that launched off that Kickstarter was one main deck, three expansions and six boosters. So that way people can like dabble with different genres and they can kind of almost make their own like genre cocktails by combining different elements from different genres. And then the latest Kickstarter for my world building deck, the Deck of Worlds that that's introducing three new expansions for the Story Engine and six new boosters for the Story Engine, so that's going to be 12 and six. And the main deck ended up a bunch of expansions for the world building deck. So there's a lot of cards.   Kaelyn: That is, yeah, that is a lot. Wow. That's awesome.   Peter: What I tried to do with both those systems is make them so that it's like, it's about how you layer the cards. Like I think the, just the main deck, that main Story Engine deck has 32 billion possible permutations, just, just including the main deck, just in the simple prompt format where you have the five, one of each card of the five cards laid out in a certain order. And so like the extra stuff there in case you want to bring in genre elements, or you want more to work with, but like, I tried to make a system where if you just want the core deck that's gonna like, that should do you for, for, for decades of story ideas, if you personally exhaust all of the possible combinations in your deck in your lifetime, you know, I, I will personally come and bring you an expansion.   Rekka: Challenge accepted. Well, I happen to have a base Story Engine deck with me, and I was looking through it and looking through the instruction booklet and you're right. Like, there are so many ways that you could do a story with this, lay them out. You were talking about like the tarot arrangements. It's very much like that. The direction that you read your cards in, the way that you layer them, the orientation of them, turning them so that they fit your story more. But I also really appreciate how much of the instruction booklet is, like "throw out whatever is holding you back." And they're also very broad. Like I realized like a science fiction writer and a romance writer could get the same spread and write two very different books. You know, and obviously that was your intention, but it really does open it up rather than close it down.   Rekka: Like, you know, you hear the story prompt, like, "oh, if you're stuck, make something explode." Well, it, explosion is a very specific thing, but yours might be something like, you know, a possessed assassin walks in kind of thing. Like, and that works in any genre. I mean, like, you know, there's no specificity to these cards, it's that our brains do all the work of figuring out what that means for the way we write, the way we write stories, or the specific story we're talking about. What was the process of narrowing down something that you felt confident enough in to print? Because that's a scary thing for me as a graphic designer also, like when it's time to actually print the thing, you're like, okay, that means no more revisions, you know. How'd you get to that point?   Peter: Yeah. So I eased myself into it a few ways and I definitely had had help and input. I I had a brain trust that I was emailing with questions usually with more specific focused questions around like like the name for the agent deck versus it could have been called the character deck or like "what are your thoughts and how these come together?" But there were a few people who I handed early prototypes to, and just like, didn't tell them what it was and asked them to just play with it and see what came out and then got their feedback. And then within the specific questions. And definitely I got some really, really helpful feedback, like the entire system of using... When I first conceived it. I only had in mind that basic spread the story seed. That's just like basically the first page of the the guide book now.   Peter: And it was my friend Cintain, who's done a lot of tarot reading. And who's also a writer who looked at it and said actually this was we were, at the time we were doing like a Skype call or a video call. So I had the deck and he would tell me what to do with it. And he said, "okay, I want you to tell me this card and then this card, and then this type of card and this, and then do the same thing backwards." And he created what is pretty close to now, the circle of fate format. And he's like, "I want to, like, when you give me those cards, I want to play, play with it and like create different spreads and directions." And this is like, you know, tarot, once you get to advanced tarot, creating different styles of spreads can be its own art.   Peter: And that really blew my mind. And that really opened up like a huge amount of functionality in the deck because it was both like getting to create these different pre-packaged spreads that people could use and then also just trying to teach people to treat the deck as a system where like once you've learned the spreads, what I've really done is kind of given you the basic building blocks for creating your own spreads and patterns. And that's helpful not only because it gets you more use out of the deck, but it also helps you realize that story itself is malleable. Story itself is modular. You can always out a character in switch in a different character and see how that changes the particular resonances of their struggle. Or you can transfer a character's motivation from one object or character to another, and that creates a change in the story or a shift in the story. How all of these elements are things you can play with and have fun. And I think that the reason that it really helps dismantle a lot of what I, you know, we all have theories about what writer's block is and if it's real, what it, whatever it is, it definitely there - people get stuck.   Kaelyn: It's, it's real. What it's a function of, I can't say, but it is real.   Peter: Yeah. And I think people come at writer's block for different reasons and, and can solve it in different ways. But I think that one of the things that helps about this tool is that A, it brings a sense of play back to writing and to story development. And B it helps you make choices that, you know, you can undo. Okay. Cause sometimes the hard part, the, the, where you get locked up is feeling like, well, there's so many directions I can go and I don't want to go down the wrong one. And then I see what the deck, so it lets you literally visualize, like here are the choices that I've made about what I'm including in the story and what the story is. And if this one starts to not work for me, I can just chuck that card and replace it or I can rotate the card because this meaning this particular interpretation isn't quite working for me.   Peter: But if I turn that card 90 degrees, now I have a new meaning that I'm tapping and that's one that I'm connecting with. And it also limits the choices that you're dealing with. You're not dealing with 32 billion story ideas at once. You're dealing with the two to four options per card and making those limited choices that you can always redo. And it, I think it helps people get to the starting line where like, they're just having fun with the story and pass those like really pressuring questions of like, is this good enough of an idea to write about? Or where am I going with this?   Kaelyn: It's very interesting because in my experience, in my encounters, you know, with writers over the years, I, the, again, I hate the binary. I hate, you know, it's this or this, but like, I will say like there's two dominant large groups that I come into contact with people who have a story in their heads already that they just really want to write and people who really want to write, but don't have a story. And they each are coming across like gonna come across their own problems, their own conflicts in that. But you know, the people who are like, like you and Rekka like writers and creatives and are, you know, constantly coming up and generating new ideas. What I really liked about this deck was like, I think every, I think like to the outside world, we hear like, oh, a writer, like, you know, will they just come up with a story and then they write it. It's like, that is not how this works. And what's really cool about this deck is kind of, you can take all of those elements, break them out into pieces that you can see, move and shift them around, modify them, tweak them to, you know, where you want it to go. And could you do this on a piece of paper? Sure. But one, it's not as fun to, it's not as organized and three, these are colorful.   Rekka: I also think there's a certain element and probably not for everyone, but like the hand of fate, you know, that you've been dealt these cards, you've drawn them. And then you feel like this is a challenge that I can rise to as opposed to like, well, that's my crummy idea. Something else would be better.   Kaelyn: And I think that's why anthologies are such a good thing for emerging or new writers because it gives you something—it's a challenge in some regards. So it's also very good for, you know, experienced writers—but it gives you something saying, I need this. And I think that's one of the things that's so scary about. Just write a novel is it's. So open-ended, it's just   Rekka: Also long. A long commitment to an open-ended idea that you came up with in silence. Yeah.   Kaelyn: And it's like, well, what do you want me to write? And so then there's this pressure to go, well, what's popular? What's everyone going to read? Well, by the time you get this written and published, that's not going to matter. So don't worry about that. Okay. Well, what do I like? Well, I like these things. I'm not sure I can write a whole book about that and I'm worried it will ruin that thing for me. So I, it is good to either have someone give you, or in the case of the Story Engine, give yourself direction in a way to organize your thoughts.   Rekka: And that was one thing that occurred to me was like very frequently when I start getting the seed of an idea, it's a concept; it's a sentence. It's like elements, ingredients, like you said, here are things I like, I want to combine them. Do I have a plot? No.   Kaelyn: Those aren't important.   Rekka: Well, eventually you're supposed to maybe have a plot. And what I like about the Story Engine deck is that in your instructions, you say like if you know an aspect or if you're writing in an existing world, there are parts of this. You can lock in place, you can go and dig and find the cartoon to read or write it, you know, yourself or whatever or you just know that it's locked in what you're looking for are the other elements, which create a plot. And that just, I knew the Story Engine deck was for creating ideas, but I didn't realize what it could do for the ideas I already have and getting them to the point where I'm ready to write something with them.   Rekka: Cause I'll let something percolate for a year or more and just write it, write what I know down so that I don't forget it, but it can take a long time before I figure out how that fits into point A to point B to point C and how many characters and what are their desires and all the things that could be decided for me, or at least inspired for me by drawing a random card and just getting an idea. And now, do I think that writing that story from the story engine would get me the same story that I would have come up with after a year or more of letting a story percolate? Probably not, but it's really interesting. The immediate sense of, "oh, I know what to do with that." When you get a suggestion, like Kaelyn was saying an anthology theme, all of a sudden you're like, "oh. Oh, I know what to do with that."   Rekka: And a story engine deck really reads to me in a similar way that like what I have put, you know, a, a series of things together, like the cards are going to come out in whatever orientation I choose? Almost absolutely not. You know, unless I'm really being finicky and like digging for the cards I want across the entire thing. And then maybe I'm just drawing out an idea. I didn't know I had, which is also useful. It's really flexible. And I really, I, I I'm really impressed by that. There's a lot, there's a lot of brain in this box.   Kaelyn: I think that one of the things that is very, as you know—that's exactly it, there's a lot of brain in this box, but really it's just, it's just kind of leeching onto your brain and like, you know, like some little like computer chip, that's going like, "ehhhh, it's a little bit of a mess in here. Let's, let's clean this up." but I think what is good about it is it gives writers a way to provide their own prompts, to, you know, just take things that maybe they wouldn't have considered, but, or it could be interesting, engaging, advancing elements to a story that's sort of half exists in their head already. You don't need to come to this with a blank slate.   Peter: Yeah. Yeah. You can come with as much of the story as you have formed and work with what you've already got, or you can come with nothing and just it'll lay out some track for you and you don't have to use all the elements of the track that you lay out. You can swap things out, you can ignore it. Like I ignore parts of the prompt all the time, because I just wanted to get started on. I wanted to find something to be excited enough about that I just start writing. And if that's this half of the prompt and not this half, then I'm going to pretend that the card I drew was actually this, cause this works better in my head, but the rest of it, I'm going to use the conflict and I'm going to use the aspect and the the descriptive part. And I'm going to use that the story is anchored in some way on a meal. A meal between two people or something. Cause that's what I drew. But yeah, like I said, like there's yeah, the reason that it works is because the brain, the brain is not in the box. I would, I would counter that and say like, the brain is 100%.   Rekka: No, I'm sorry. You can't come on our podcast and tell us we're wrong. I'm talking about like the brain that put this together neatly and you managed to get out of the way of the end user.   Peter: That was exactly. That's yeah. That's exactly the language that I use when I talk about it. It was getting out of the way of people and letting them bring their ideas to it. Like there were early drafts of this that were more focused on like... Like one thing I love about the writing prompts subreddit on Reddit is that there's some really interesting creative prompts that are just like, wow, I never would've thought of that in a million years. But the thing that I have trouble with is that they're always very closed. Like it's almost always like write your version of this highly specific high concept premise. And so there's less mileage to work with there. And I found that I was trying to do some of the, the, like, I want to create a really dazzling idea with the writing in some of the early drafts.   Peter: And the more I tried to make that work, the more that those ideas couldn't plug very easily into A, like what the reader wanted to do with it, or sorry, what the writer wanted to do with it. The creator wanted to do with it, the end user. The more it made it hard for them to read something into it or bring their own idea to it. The more I realized those ideas aren't working and then the more trouble that those ideas had plugging into other cards and connecting to other cards in an open-ended way that also ended up being what I discarded. So I ended up like scratching a bunch of material that I thought was extraordinarily clever. But that really wouldn't have served the end purpose and like the question that I asked myself now when I'm looking at prompts and deciding like, will this work is is it going to be useful for the writer, for the end user?   Peter: And is it going to leave enough room for them to bring their own gift basically? Like it's a little bit like button soup, the story button soup, where like someone starts off and like, "oh, I'm gonna make this special soup. The first thing I need is a button and then, oh, hold on. Do you have any carrots? Do you have any...?" And you know, the, the town brings ingredients. And it's very much that, like it's, it's the, the, the deck is a button that gets you started making a soup and it's just an excuse for soup and who doesn't, who doesn't want an excuse for soup? That's my new, that's my new marketing logline. "The Story Engine is an excuse for soup."   Rekka: Yeah. And the the cleverness is, has gotta be tempting, but the, the terms that you ended up using for example, I just drawing a random card. I have these are the agent cards, the four corners, or the four sides of this card are an introvert, a dreamer, a grump, a wanderer. Those are pretty dry and pretty basic terms. And even so, whatever genre you like to write in, whatever world is, you know, your brain is currently marinating in, you've already got an idea of who each of those four people are, and they're not the same as mine. And that's, that's really nice. And that can not be easy to create that openness, like you were saying.   Peter: It took a lot of, a lot of rebalancing the cards and the, the, what was going onto the cues. One thing that I found was really important was like some of the play tests that I did early on, some of them were with writers and creative people who could like get a simple prompt and spin out this fantastical universe and they could run with it. And then I would also show it to people who work in science and they would have like a very literal interpretation of what the cards would mean. So I realized quickly that like, while the primary target is writers, there's lots of different ways to use cards. And some people don't want the open ended things. Some people want literal prompts. So for the main deck, especially the prompts are designed to be... So like the agent cards are balanced in a particular way where there's a main, very open-ended prompt. That is the prompt that faces you when the card is in its like neutral position, basically. The cards are meant to not really read as being like this way is up or down, but there is kind of a neutral position. So that that's meant to be the most open-ended generic interpretation on that card. And then the other three around the edges are different facets of that concept. Either zoomed in on, in a more specific detail or blown up in a in a bigger, more exaggerated way.   Rekka: So the neutral way is the way that has like the little portrait.   Peter: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the healer is the generic sense. Whereas a therapist is a very specific expression of, of a healer. So if someone who was being very literal got that card and like, didn't really know what to imagine for a healer, it's too big, therapist gives them a very specific thing that they can work with. We all know roughly what a therapist does and, and that would give you a very literal way to start. And that's, I think for the other card that you drew, I think grump was the thing where like we all, literally we can understand what a grump is pretty literally. Yeah. whereas an introvert it's more generic that gives you a lot more room to operate. A wanderer is a bit more specific and active. So there was a, there was a lot of thought that went into how we balanced the levels of narrow prompt versus broad prompt, especially on the agents for the anchors bouncing those cards is more a function of making sure that every card has a setting, a prop something that's a little less non-literal and more interpretable and that all of those felt thematically linked.   Peter: So like a prison and a cage and a key are all thematically linked. And it's meant to keep things in a bit, a bit of a tight space so that people aren't, it doesn't feel like they're dealing with a huge scattershot of different ideas at the same time. Like they understand, okay, I'm thinking about introverts. And I'm thinking about what it means to withdraw from people and that's kind of a headspace you're in for the character, and they can choose different ways to express that same thing when the same balancing act went into the anchors. So yeah, again, a lot of the goal was to put my brain power and not into like making the individual cards impressive, but for removing as many barriers to the system, just working out of the box as possible by balancing things. And like the, it was interesting because for the, the world building deck, world building in some ways is a more specific and yet even more broad and open thing to do. Because there's so many ways to build what is a world and what differentiates one area from another, and what, what makes us having interesting, like there's so many different ways you can differentiate a setting and figuring out, figuring out how to balance those cards was its own...   Peter: Like I had to start again, like none of the lessons that I learned from Story Engine got to be carried over. Like I completely had to start from ground zero again. And and it took, it took a long time to get that one, right. Oh my gosh. I think like Story Engine came together fairly quickly, I think because I had a pretty intuitive model of how I wanted it to work between tarot and that sort of definition of story that has often informed my storytelling choices. But yeah, the world building one, I, that one took so many more iterations to get the balance on those cards. Right.   Kaelyn: So how did you have to tackle the world building deck versus, you know, the story and character building one? And I know it is more of the first, the first set is more of a story-building, but there's definitely some character elements to it as well. Are you going to do a character building one at some point?   Peter: I I've thought about that, but honestly, the, the Story Engine does so much character building stuff and it can be, you can, you can do informed choices with it to make so many different types of characters that I don't think there'd be a whole lot to add to it. Like, I, I, I'm not saying no to that, but I feel like the main thing does such a good job of it. And I don't like developing products just to have new products. Like I would really like to give people something that, that adds a ton of value to their creative process. And right now, I don't know how to add enough value to the character creation process that isn't already there in the Story Engine deck. So that's an idea that's like it's in my notebook, but unless I really have an aha moment where I'm like, oh, this is a way to really open this process up for people and I can justify their time and explaining why this is different from this thing I've already made. Then I'll definitely do that.   Rekka: They need a deck to help you create decks.   Peter: Oh, now that would, I would get, I would, that would be perfect. I could retire, I could retire young and and just let that work. So the, the, the concept that I'm kicking around right now in my head is an open-ended solo RPG that you play by writing. And so it's meant to be like a, almost a campaign where at the end of it, you have 50 new pieces of writing, inspired by different things. And that might actually use draws from the Story Engine deck to generate the content that you're playing in. But the goal is that you write the scene.

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Mentioned in this episode: Premee Mohamed's website @premeesaurus on Twitter Premee on Curious Fictions Beneath the Rising (Book One of Two!no!Three!) A Broken Darkness (Book Two of Two!no!Three!) The Void Ascendant (Book Three of Two????) These Lifeless Things – 5 Feb 21, Solaris Books (Satellites) The Annual Migration of Clouds – 28 Sept 21, ECW Press And What Can We Offer You Tonight – July 21, Neon Hemlock Press  The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin   Transcript for this episode (by @Betty_Bett_) Rekka: In episode 58, Kaelyn and I talked about writing book two in a series of three or more. In Episode 59, we capped that conversation off by talking about book two in a duology. And what more do you need to know because that's it. Well, that's the only kind of book two you would write, of course. So, also of course, we are here today with Premee Mohamed, and we are going to talk about writing book three in a duology. So, Premee, you are here because you are now the new expert on this. [laughs] Premee: I think I would like to become an expert on this. It fell on me like a meteorite. Rekka: So, why don't we start by having you introduce yourself and talk about books one and two in this duology? Premee: Let's talk about that. Sure. So yeah, I'm Premee Mohamed. I'm based in Edmonton, Alberta, which is in Canada. And I'm a scientist, and I write short stories and novellas and novels. My debut novel came out in 2020, that was called Beneath the Rising. My second came out this March and was called A Broken Darkness. And I also have three other books out this year. In February, there was These Lifeless Things which was a novella that came out with Rebellion's new novella imprint which is called Satellites. And in July, we're looking at And What Can We Offer You Tonight from Neon Hemlock Press, another novella. And in September, ECW Press is publishing The Annual Migration of Clouds which is a cli-fi novella. So I'm excited about all that. Kaelyn: So you've been busy? Premee: I have been busy. It also sounds like I'm a lot busier than I am, but Clouds was written in 2019 and just got published this year. And Lifeless was written in 2017 and had a home, and then it was kicked out of its home and went wandering around for a little while, and then got rehomed. So it's not like everything's been written and published immediately. Publishing is like transit, like sometimes four buses show up at once. [laughing] Rekka: Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. Premee: Yeah, the first book, I wrote actually when I was an undergrad, my first degree. So when I was writing it, I was actually sort of a peer with Nick the narrator. So it starts when he's about 18. And I was about 18 when I started it. And I finished it the year I graduated, and I was 20. And I set it aside because that's what I did with everything I wrote because writing was—is—still my hobby. If I played golf with my friends, I wouldn't go out and tell everybody to come watch me play golf or pay me to play golf or try to get into the PGA or whatever. It was just something I did because I like to do it. And it was a good number of years before there was any evidence at all that I might be good enough to make money off my hobby. So when that became clear, I started trying to publish short stories. And then my friends were nudging me or bugging me, "We know that you've got a trunk full of books. Why don't you try to publish some of them, you could make more money than a short story?" And I was like, "More money than a short story, you say?" Well, everyone has their price—mine is low. So I dug Beneath the Rising out of the trunk and gave it a light polish. And for something that was written when I was 20, it wasn't terrible, I thought. And it was also done; most of my stuff was not done. It just went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and never finished. And it just lost the plot. And this one had the words “The End” at the end. And I was like, "Congratulations, you have been chosen." Kaelyn: That definitely makes a huge selling point for the book. This one is done. The other ones are in various states of actualization; this one is finished. [laughing] Premee: Yes, I'm sorry book, you didn't get picked because of your merit. [laughing] You got picked on other grounds. But I thought maybe if an agent likes this, I could interest the agent in something else, something that was good. So I queried with that because it was done. And yeah, got literary representation and got a book deal. And what happened was—so this is why I'm in this situation now—I wrote it as a standalone because I wrote everything as a standalone. I never wrote sequels to anything, especially because nothing ever ended. But I had never written anything that came after a thing. I didn't know how you did it. I'd read a lot of sequels, because fantasy and sci-fi is lousy with series. And I thought it was very nice that other people could do that. And my agent was like, "Well, publishers really like series. So, why don't we pitch this as a trilogy?" I was like, "You know what my dude, you know the business, so pitch it however you want." So, written as a standalone, pitched as a trilogy, the publisher bought two books. So I was like, "Okay, well, that's manageable. I can write one more book. And I know the deadline for that book." So after the first book came out, I wrote and handed in the second book. And a couple of months before the second book was published, so when it had—and this is crucial—when it was already done all edits and was galloping down the road to publication, my editor emailed me and was like, "Sup. So let's talk about a third book." And I sat there like, "Let's talk about a third, sorry, let's talk about a third book? The time to talk about a third book was when the second book was in edits! Because you bought two books, and I wrote you two books. And the ending of the second book is an ending that makes the third book a little tricky along certain axes.” Kaelyn: Were you shocked by this call? Premee: I was genuinely shocked. Kaelyn: Okay. Premee: It was an email and it was cc'd to my agent. The agent found out at the same time that I did. It didn't come with a contract or anything. It was just a friendly, "Hey, what's up? So, third book, huh? Pretty excited?" I was like, "What third book?" I think this was a case where it's like he was having a conversation in his head and also I was talking along in his head, but we didn't actually have the conversation. Kaelyn: Look, we're all guilty of that. I frequently do that with my co-workers and friends. Rekka: It wasn't because it was pitched as a trilogy, and he thought there was a third book planned that you just had? Was that maybe...? Premee: I think that was the case because otherwise, I am 99% sure that he would have asked me to change the ending of the second book. Rekka: Right. So he was like, "Hey, Premee knows where this is going." Premee: Yeah, I don't know. Again, there were some doors shut at the end of the second book. I genuinely think if, during edits, he had been like, "Hey, let's make this a trilogy." He would have said something, to me, during the editing process because we went back and forth twice or whatever for developmental edits and then for the copy edit and line edit. And also we talked on Twitter and stuff all the time. The third book really seemed to just fall out of a clear blue sky. And while I was delighted to have the offer, I didn't really have a third book planned. So I had about a week to basically come up with a plot and then send that back to my editor, with my agent’s blessing because he was like, "You don't have to do this if you don't want, genuinely." So we negotiated out a contract with that and for another unrelated book. So I worked out some kind of a plot, I wrote some kind of synopsis, I just barfed it all out into the page and cleaned it up a little bit and sent it back so that my editor could take it to acquisitions. And came back and was like, "Yeah, here's your new deadline, have fun." I was like "Have fun? Okey dokey." Kaelyn: That's a lot to unpack there. It sounds like when you wrote all of this and by the way, just for people who are listening, if you haven't read these yet, we are not going to be spoiling anything about these two books, so please feel free to— Rekka: Except the only spoiler is you will regret it forever if you don't read these books. Kaelyn: Warning or spoiler? Rekka: Spoiler, I will come and get you if you don't. Kaelyn: Advice. Advice! Rekka: All right, now it's a threat, it's advice, whatever. Read these books. So I read my books in bed at night, it's dark. This was the first book that made me go, "Ah, creepy!" for a really long time. Kaelyn: Rekka actually texted me and specifically said, "Okay, you need to read Beneath the Rising because I'm genuinely freaked out by it." It takes quite a lot to freak Rekka out, so congrats? Premee: Good job team, because I never really thought that I wrote horror because I don't read a lot of horror. It's very scary. And I don't really watch a lot of horror movies or TV or anything like that because they're scary. I wanted the characters to be scared. I didn't think people reading it would be scared. Kaelyn: Scared for them, I was very scared for them. Rekka: Well, it's very easy to transpose what's happening to a character to yourself when you're reading in the dark at night and you're slightly sleepy. And if you look around the room, there are monsters in your shadows anyway. Kaelyn: I mean, that's where they live. Rekka: But I haven't had that feeling at night of that like, "Ooh, I don't want to stick my head above the covers." I haven't had that feeling at night in a very long time. So, good work. Premee: Thank you. Rekka: I will say the creepy factor, it was most intense toward the beginning, before you really know what the characters are dealing with. Then of course, as you learn things, things get less scary for some reason like that's how brains work. Premee: Yeah, cause I think it goes from a horror because they don't know what's happening to more of an adventure story where they're thrust into problem solving mode. And the things that they're solving problems against are scary, but they're also not the biggest problem. I mean, like, for instance, a plane crash is a problem. And I think we should all be discussing how dangerous a plane crash could be. Kaelyn: Generally, those are considered problems, yes. Premee: Yeah. Kaelyn: Okay, so they said, we're going to pitch this as a trilogy, they came back and gave you a two-book contract. So you're going into this going, "All right, this is going to be a duology. I can do a duology. No problem." Premee: I can do a duology. Yeah. Rekka: You wrote the first book as a standalone. So, did you change anything about it knowing it was going to be a duology as you were editing? Premee: Not really, no. Rekka: Okay. So you wrote a standalone, then you had to write a second one to cap off that duology, and now you have to write a third one to cap off that duology as another almost standalone. Premee: That was also an issue because A Broken Darkness was the first sequel I had ever written for anything. And I sat there for a month afterwards going, "How do write se..quel? Hang on, maybe I will google.” And when you google it, it basically goes, "Well, you have to plan the entire series starting from the first book. And I was like, "I hate the Google." Okay, what if you get a sequel sprung on you after you didn't expect to write a sequel? So, I outlined something and then I sat there. And I was like, "Actually, this is identical to the first book and has the same conflict and problems." And tossed that outline out. And I think where I eventually ended up going back was studying the first book a little bit. I actually re-read the first book, which was great cause it let me find all the mistakes that I left in it. And trying to pick out not so much like an overarching structure that I could work with, but like some threads that I could grab and pull on hard enough that they would come into the second book. And I think I had left enough at the ends that there was something to pull on. Again, without getting too specific, at the end of the first book, the world has changed quite a bit. Governments have different attitudes, the attitude towards scientific research has changed, the public attitude towards Johnny Chambers and her businesses has changed. Nick and Johnny's friendship has changed, his relationship with his family is damaged, there's a lot of trust issues, there's a lot of opportunity for something to be quite quite different from the first book. Again, that's where I started on the outline for the third book, is, “okay, did I leave enough threads to pull on?” Because I would have liked to have some overarching structure or goal. And when I think of that, what I think of actually is N.K. Jemisin’s the Broken Earth trilogy, which really feels solidly planned and like a trilogy. You can feel that it's almost like a suspension bridge, there's the big structure and then there's things hanging off the structure. And each of those holds up something in that book itself, and also in the next book. And I don't feel like I have that. I just have the hangy things, but I'm working as hard as I can with the hangy things, trust me. Kaelyn: I have this habit of if I find an author that I really enjoy what they've written, I start stalking them. So of course, I've thoroughly gone through your website. And I very much enjoy all of your posts, but you actually did one about writing the second book. Premee: Yeah, because that was the hardest book I've ever written in my life. [laughing] Kaelyn: It's interesting because you're very aware of this. And I think that makes it so much harder because since you are so aware of this, you wrote a finite ending for the second book, that was the end of the story. Premee: That was the end, yeah. When I think of stories, I do think architecturally, and I think of novels as several things, but a house is pretty common. And I really think that a lot of doors were shut at the end of the story, the house is pretty well locked up with whatever it has inside it and whatever is left outside of it. And I kind of threw the keys into a storm drain. [laughing] Again, without getting too specific. Kaelyn: It turns out there was a monster in that storm drain. Premee: It does turn out there was a monster in the storm drain. “I just got—what? Plink! What was that noise? Oh, it was an email from my editor.” [laughing] Rekka: The monster in the storm drain was the email from your editor all along. Premee: It was actually, yeah. Analogies are hard. [laughing] Rekka: No, this is perfect. This is exactly our style of analogy. So as Kaelyn and I have discussed before, when you're writing book two after you've written book one and you think you have a trilogy, you have a nice book one which could be standalone. Kaelyn: Yeah. Rekka: And then you take that arc and make it bigger and write that over the next two books, which you would have liked to have known it was time to do. Premee: Yes. Kaelyn: It's very common with publishing contracts to get one book with an option for two more. And, yeah, so that a lot of times writers will write it as this could be a standalone, but there is absolutely doors and windows and maybe a missing wall left open so that we can continue to work on and expand the house. Premee: Yeah, see, I didn't know any of that. And also, after I announced the third book, I had friends pop into my DMs with like, "Congratulations. FYI, same thing happened to me. They bought two books and now they're asking for a third book, but because I knew this was going to happen, I had the third book ready to go." And I'm like, "Congratulations." [laughing] Kaelyn: “Oh, isn't that so great for you?” Premee: I'm glad you can't hear a tone in Twitter. Mneh-neh. I'm just going to be under my desk drinking rum. Yeah. Kaelyn: Okay, so what are you going to do? Did you have more stories set in this universe with these characters in your head or had you just completely written them out of your mind? Premee: They were actually all in the first book. I had to reach back 18 years or whatever it was to write the second. Because I was like, "Okay, book all done. Have a nice life, you guys." [laughing] Rekka: Moving on to something new, something shiny. Premee: Yeah. Turns out that you can go right back to it if people give you money. But we finished the paperwork to absolutely confirm that, yes, you, Premee Mohamed, will be writing a third book for absolute sure in I think February. So the first thing I did was panic for a week and not write. Kaelyn: That's fair. Premee: I hid under my desk a little bit with the blankets, which didn't help, but... Rekka: You have to honor the feelings. Premee: I had to honor my feelings and just let them run around a bit. And then I crawled back up and looked at what I had sent David [Moore, editor at Rebellion Publishing]. And what that was had been based on the three or four-sentence long pitch that was in the original pitch that we sent to the publisher, which was, "Oh, here's the book that we are pitching to you at this moment. If it's a trilogy that you want, here's a paragraph about the second book." And that completely turned out to not be what the second book was whatsoever. And here's a paragraph about the third book. And that had about one sentence in common. And I was like, "Go past me." So I went back to the pitch and broke it apart into its components, and sorted it into two piles like, "Okay, this pile is stuff that I wrote out of panic and expectation, let's just push that aside. This pile has potential to be part of a novel, let's move those over here." And from that, I just tried to build out on everything that I thought was interesting in the second pile. Rekka: Okay. Premee: So, where could this happen? What are the issues? Who can I involve? Who's the bad guy for this component? Who's the good guy for this component? Later on, do they switch places? What's difficult or interesting or what feels impossible about this component? What about this component could be reversed as opposed to how it goes in the start of the book? Maybe it can go backwards later. What's the tone that I want for all of these? What's the vibe that I want for this book? Because the first one I felt had a Indiana-Jones-but-kids vibe. And the second one, Nick is trying really hard for it to be a spy novel vibe. And it's not, it's a bit more post-apocalyptic almost because the apocalypse is happening slowly around them. And people are like, "Oh, yeah, this is weird. I'mma go home and make supper. I don't know that there's anything I can do about this.” I wanted to combine that second pile and the expansion on it which ended up being something like three to five pages or around there, with what I wanted to pull out of the first book and the second book, and make sure that I included in there in some way. And when I was done, I had sort of the mental equivalent of a deck of cards that I could shuffle and try to put together. And from that, I printed that out and marked it up and put some stickers on it and did some drawings, then wrote what I thought was a pretty workable outline for a third book. This heavily on the difficulties in the last quarter of the second book, really heavily from that. So that's how that went. And that is in the process of being written now, not entirely in order, but I know about the 40k mark, somewhere around there. And it's due in September. So hopefully, we can do this. And the nice thing, I guess, about this random third book is that at least I'm working with an editor that I know who edited the first two books. And so if I'm making certain choices or putting people in certain places or opting to have something happen a X time instead of Y time, I think at this point he understands pretty well why I chose to do that and isn't going to put a comment in there like, "Oh, why did this happen?" Because he's like, "Okay, I know why this happened. And now I'm braced in about 75 pages for that to go terribly, terribly wrong." [laughing] Rekka: It definitely helps that you're not also shuffled between editors for this process. Premee: It does, yeah. Rekka: Now, when you wrote that plot outline for book three, did you work on it with your agent at all before you sent it to the editor or you're working directly with the editor at this point? Premee: Oh, yeah, yeah. My agent was like, "Oh, this is good. I would read this." And I'm like, "Bless you. You say that about a lot of things. Thank you." And she forwarded it to my editor. He's like, "Oh, this looks good. I would read this." And I'm like, "Thank you." Again, you're trying to make money off this so just tell me what I need to fix. And he's like, "No, it's fine. I'm going to go take it to the acquisitions committee, and I'm going to act it out." I'm like, "Oh god!" Kaelyn: Yeah, can you please record that? I would love to see it. [laughing] Premee: I think my actual reaction was something like, "Please don't." Kaelyn: “I don't know if I'm going to be able to look you in the eye again after knowing you acted this out.” [laughing] Premee: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But turns out, it worked out and they were like, "We want that third book and we also want dibs on a next book." And I was like, "Well, I haven't got a next book." They're like, "Well, if we give you money, will you write another book?" [laughing] So it turns out that's how publishing works. At some point, you don't have to give them the finished book. They just ask you for a book and they give you money upfront. Rekka: Once you're inside the secret bunker. Premee: Once you're inside the secret bunker, I had no idea, yeah. I don't even have a plot for that one, that was just called “untitled fantasy novel.” Rekka: Now, did you put it in your contract that they cannot ask you for a fourth book in this series? Premee: I did not. Kaelyn: Are you sure that this is the last book? Premee: No, I'm not. They keep referring to it as a trilogy now though. Rekka: Okay. Kaelyn: All right. Okay, all right. Premee: On their announcement, they were like, "Hey, we got the final book in the Beneath the Rising trilogy." And I'm like, "There are 10 things wrong with that sentence." [laughing] First of all, you published the first two books, thirdly, you're making me write the third one. You phrased this entirely wrong. Oh, “we get to publish.” No, you asked for it. You literally... Okay, anyways, have fun. It's a nice cover. I'm going to get back to writing now and drinking heavily. [laughing] Kaelyn: My favorite word in that sentence was “the final book” because it's like, "Well, funny story, I already wrote the final book." Premee: I wrote the final book. Kaelyn: And then you decided that wasn't the final book anymore. So now we have a new final book. So, is this the final final book or is there going to be a final final final book? Premee: If they ask for a fourth book, I'm going to quit publishing and go live in a tree. I literally have a plan, yeah. Kaelyn: It's a good thing you have a plan. You should go south though a little bit to one of the big redwood trees. If you're going to live in a tree, make it, yeah. Premee: I'm planning the coast but not quite the coast because they're expecting, you know, the big one and the tsunamis and stuff and I don't really want to get washed out to sea. Kaelyn: But you'll be in a tree, you'll be fine. Premee: Yeah, but I figured, yeah, if I'm a little bit further inland, me and my tree will survive. Rekka: I love this. However, you have already confessed on this podcast that if they offer you enough money, you will write the book. Premee: Yeah, at this point, it would have to be more money than they offered for the third book. And I mean a decent amount more money, not like $6 and a coupon for half-off a frogurt if I buy a large. Kaelyn: Oh, now I want frozen yoghurt. Premee: Me too, actually. It's supposed to be really hot here by the end of the week, apparently. I'm a little nervous about that because I'm pretty far north—we’re at Latitude 53—our houses are really built to keep in the heat because it gets down to -40 in the winter. We're not really prepared for it to get up to +40. Rekka: If you don't open the door, will that thermos house also keep out the heat? Is it like a double-walled drink cooler, where... Premee: It would be if I weren't in a crappy condo with a giant gap under the door but anyways, we'll see how it goes. I may come to the local ceremonies wearing a dress made out of ice packs. Rekka: That would be fashion. Premee: I think it would be fashion. Kaelyn: Yeah, that's definitely fashion. Premee: I am cosplaying somebody from a Disney movie. She is… frozen. They'll be like, "Which one are you?" I'm like, "I don't know their names. [laughing] I am the one who is… frozen. I'm her." Rekka: The one who has to run to the freezer to get more ice. Premee: Yeah, exactly. [laughing] Rekka: Okay. So, writing three standalones and faking a trilogy, you started it thinking, “standalone book, cool, I'll write this and then I'll move on with my life. And maybe in 18 years or so I'll come back and write a second book or someone will pay me enough to write a second book. And then maybe, after I finished writing that and it's edited and it's gone gold, as they say in video games, then maybe I'll consider writing another one.” Do you have any tips for just wrapping your mind around it? Or I mean, hiding under a blanket for a week is an excellent advice but... Premee: Yeah, I think that was going to be my first tip. My second tip is that rum is not as helpful as one would think. Because it does actually erase the memory of knowing that you have to write a third book. But afterwards, when you check your email, you actually still do have to write the book. Rekka: You can't just make it go away, huh? Premee: You cannot just make it go away. You can damage your few remaining brain cells, but the book still has to get written. I guess in terms of tips, yeah, the big one was do a reread. And that also helps forestall some of the panic, I think, or at least it did for me. Do a reread; there is so much that we put into novels that I think people think is local color or throwaway detail or “well, gee, that was a fun little anecdote.” But again, it's a novel, things are in it on purpose, they have a purpose for that story. But they can have a double purpose for later books. And again, that's something that I find myself doing very much with this third book, is reaching in and finding things that didn't have significance and lending them some significance on purpose. Which isn't to say that every goofy childhood story is now going to be hugely explained. But a novel is not like a short story, a novel has room for things to sit in there apparently without purpose until they're needed. And if I did end up having to write a fourth book, now that I've done the process of having two surprise sequels fall through the roof and hit me on my head, I think that's something I would do. Even with this third book, the doors that I shut and locked and went, "Hahaha, that's closed!" word to the wise, past me, no door is ever shut forever. And because we're writers, we can always think around a problem that seems unsolvable. I mean, how many times have we, in a short story or a novel, written ourselves into a corner and said, "Oh my god, I outsmarted myself. I have set up a situation that these characters cannot get out of," let sit for a couple days and take some walks and have a bath, and the solution just shows up. And I think even with the ending of the second book, which again was supposed to be the ending of lots of things, it's maybe not as final as it looked at first glance. So I guess the big tip is look at everything in more detail and see how you can tweak it or twist it or stretch it. Rekka: So if you were writing a trilogy and you wanted to go back and make sure that it was very connected, you would take things that happened in the third book and go back and foreshadow them as you edit when you have the chance to edit all of them at once. And then you would foreshadow all the way forward so that you look very clever, by the end of it, to your reader, and they think, "How did you think of all these little things to add?" This is how I always thought mystery writers wrote was linearly like I do. And then I realized, "Oh, no, you get to edit before anyone sees it." But you had the reverse, where you had to go find the foreshadowing you didn't know you were foreshadowing. Premee: Yep, exactly. I had to declare that it was foreshadow. I was like, "Well, yeah, this is a detail. Now I gotta make something out of that detail." It's like finding a bunch of random stuff in your fridge and being like, "I'm putting that on a pizza." It is no longer a random thing. Now, it is a pizza topping. Yes. [laughing] Kaelyn: There's always stuff that you already wrote that can help with this. It can be an offhanded comment, it can be something that we understand about the character, the setting, the world building, something along those lines. I don't believe in the “writing yourself into a corner.” Unless you have published a book and then write something in the second book that directly contradicts a very specific plot-related thing that happened in the first book, and now you have to somehow correct it in the third. Well, that's what time travel is for. [laughing] Rekka: Time travel, unreliable narrators, yeah. Premee: Unreliable narrators, people who show up with helpful macguffins at exactly the right moment, you're like, "Hey." Kaelyn: Look, sometimes you get handed an ex machina. It's just how things work. Premee: I know there's a rule—and I don't like writing rules, but I know a lot of them now. Now that I have five books that are going to be out in the world, I should probably teach myself how to write at some point. I don't have a writing background, I don't have any writing education. I have spent about the last two years reading a lot of craft books and doing classes and going to panels and reading everything so I can literally learn how to write. But I have heard this rule that you can use coincidences to get your characters into trouble, but you can't use them to get your characters out of trouble. And I don't believe that. I believe that the definition of “coincidence” is being misused. And that if circumstances are set up so that something can happen and then it does happen, it's not a coincidence. And if it does manage to get the characters out of trouble, and they're like, "Oh, woah, that was lucky," I think you're allowed to do that once per book. [laughing] Rekka: If you rely on it for maybe too much, people are going to start quoting writing rules at you. But I think a lot of people break a lot of writing rules and are celebrated for it. Kaelyn: In real life, we all do occasionally get lucky. It's just a thing that happens. Premee: And in real life, coincidences do get us out of trouble pretty frequently, even things that people don't even think about, like, "Oh hoho, that was bad." And then it turns out that your email program actually didn't send the email, and you're like, "Oh, dodged that bullet. Now, I will rewrite it. I'll delete that one, I'll rewrite it, and then I'll send it to my boss," that kind of thing. Kaelyn: I always go, well, there's this thing called the theory of quantum immortality, which is that every decision you make the ones you're dying, you just stop existing in those realities. So you just keep paring yourself down and paring yourself down until eventually, you get to a point where you have no other possible alternatives. But I just always enjoy that one. So your existence just keeps getting pared down to eventually, they'll only be the one left and it ends. Premee: Well, and what that also made me think of, too, was the other idea that coincidence can't get your characters out of trouble. Well, okay. I'm going to use a coincidence here because I set it up previously, I'm allowing this to happen, the structure of the book and the setting allows this to happen, so it happens. Then what I'm going to do is let them get into a different type of trouble because of the coincidence. Kaelyn: So there are consequences. Premee: There are consequences, so it's kind of you know, like the improv. And I was talking about this with someone on their Twitch stream a little while ago, and she taught me the phrase that I haven't seen in a lot of writing books, which is, "Yeah, in improv you go, ‘No but’ or ‘Yes and,’" so if your improv character succeeds, there's also something tacked on to it that is going to be in some way a pain in the ass. If they don't succeed, maybe they get something that's a little bonus or sends them off sideways rather than forward, so the same thing. She was like, "I see that you do this in your books all the time." It's like, "Hooray, we have solved the pro— We have another problem." [laughing] Kaelyn: “This one has three heads, and it's dripping acid from its teeth.” [laughing] Premee: Yeah, exactly. It's like, "This one is touching my ankle." [laughing] Rekka: We talked about the improv ‘yes and’ a lot, in fact, in the most recent episode. I hadn't heard the ‘no but’ part, which is interesting, because what I was always told was like, "The ‘no’ stops the whole process from going forward and you killed the game by saying ‘no.’" But if you say ‘no but,’ I like that. What it does is it propels you forward and almost speeds things up again. It says, "Your reaction, you have to think about it for a second. But as soon as you start saying ‘and’ or ‘but,’ words start tumbling forward and things just start happening." If you're Premee, it's more trouble. I like that. Premee: Yeah, that's what I like about the ‘no but.’ A success is fantastic, but we all know that in fiction a string of successes gets pretty dull. We want things to go wrong so that these characters that we’ve started to care about, or in some cases want to throw into the river, can show who they are and how they react to things. And they should have a lot of ‘no’ on their journey towards the end of the book, which of course they don't know is the end of the book. They should have a lot of ‘no,’ but what I like about ‘no but’ is that, exactly like you said, the ‘no’ stops you dead, it stops the plot dead, too. The ‘no but’ is, “okay, what you wanted you can't have right now. You could want something else, and maybe that's something you should go for.” And they're like, "We could and if that's our only option at the moment, we'll go for the ‘but,’ and we'll come back to what we wanted the original ‘yes’ for later on if we can. Maybe the ‘no but’ sets of circumstances for a later ‘yes and.’" Rekka: Exactly, your characters are motivated to try and get to their specific goal and they might do some of this negotiating along the way, or just trying to move forward so that they can keep moving at all. Like our plots have to do. [laughing] Kaelyn: The other thing that I will say that can stop as dead and this is a very funny conversation I had to have with my father recently was ‘perfect!’ My sisters and I have a habit of saying, "Okay, perfect." And my dad finally was like, "What is this?" We're like, "Because it's good, because there's nothing else to add, it's perfect. That's great, we're going to keep going forward just with that." So yeah, apart from ‘yes and,’ the ‘yes and’ can't be ‘yes and perfect.’ There's got to be something else happening there. [laughing] Premee: Yeah. Rekka: You've got to have more of a ‘yes, that is okay….’ Kaelyn: ‘Yes, and...’ Premee: Or it's like “yes and what's the catch?” Oh, there's a catch. The catch is chapter seven. “Okay, everybody, let's head into chapter seven. I can't believe this happened to us after we just achieved our goal.” I'm like, "That wasn't your goal. That was a mini goal, you didn't know that." They're like, "Do you hear something? Sometimes we're in a tough spot, do you hear somebody talking?" Maybe you guys could try the other thing. “What?” Kaelyn: “The door, there's a door behind you, move the tapestry.” [laughing] Rekka: So, I'm going to redirect this a little bit with the time we have left. Kaelyn, as an editor... Kaelyn: Oh God, okay, yeah? Rekka: This is my ‘yes and.’ What advice would you have given Premee, before this got going? Or while Premee is trying to write it, at 40k, and still has the rest of the book? Premee: Give advice, thank you. Kaelyn: I would have apologized to you profusely just to start out. So I would have been like, "Listen, I know you've worked really hard on this. The thing is that it shows and we really like that. We were maybe hoping that you would want to do another one of these." Premee: That would have been a much nicer email to get. Kaelyn: That would have been on the phone, because then, after you stop screaming at me,

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Mentioned in this episode: This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett A Ship With No Parrot by R J Theodore (MetaStellar) Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. Kaelyn: We’re talking today about writing with a friend. Hopefully a friend. If not a friend, then a partner. Rekka: Hopefully a friend for longer than it takes to write the project. K: Hopefully a friend after you’re done. [laughing] R: Yes, before and after. Hey, even after is probably more important than before. Let’s be clear that you don’t wanna destroy a relationship, but you can make a new friend. K: Yes, absolutely. Let’s talk first about, why would you do this? R: [giggles] K: Why would you want to - and, okay so maybe a little context first. I will admit I have never worked on a project that a single story had been written or contributed to by two different people. R: As an editor, you mean? K: Yes. R: Ok. K: So why would you do this? It seems like a difficult thing to do. And for context, Rekka has done this a couple times. So Rekka, why would you do this? R: Because writing is lonely, and the idea that someone else will work on a project with you is just like the biggest longest most creative sleepover ever. K: Okay! R: It’s a good reason. K: That is certainly a good reason, writing is lonely. I think a lot of writers, their editor when they get one is the first time they’re really having somebody to collaborate with, and to talk to. R: To go back and forth. K: Yeah, but the editor is not writing the book. R: I know! Which is unfair, honestly. K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: I wanna know who I talk to about this. K: Yeah but you know what you’re right, writing is a lonely process. There’s a lot of time spent sitting by yourself just having to think. R: And having feelings. K: Yeah. If you’re writing with someone, you get to share those with someone else. R: And shout about things. K: Absolutely. Shouting is a necessary component to that 100% — R: It’s actually kinda how it gets started, there’s a lot of enthusiastic shouting about an idea. K: [laughing] R: But you know what stinks? Is that you still have to write alone. K: Well and that’s exactly what I was gonna ask you. So okay, let’s go through this. You’ve decided I’m tired of being alone here, I want to also inflict this upon somebody else. So what do you do? R: [deep sigh] How do you find someone else to inflict things upon? So the first person that I sat down to write a project with was a friend, and we said like hey we should try this out! And we were both writers to begin with, writing in fairly different genres but still genre fiction. And we decided we were going to do a project and we said hey, it will be this, like we outlined it together. We - or we didn’t so much outline it together but we concepted it out together. K: Okay. R: And then we each created a POV character as part of that concept. And then we wrote our chapters back and forth, so that the tone, the voice, for that POV character is consistent. K: Mhm. R: And so that you can have a character that’s slightly unreliable, just because like you couldn’t catch all the continuity errors, that you and your partner - K [overlapping]: Mhm. Yup. R: - created. It also lets you kind of reshuffle the scenes if you need to later, uh move things around a little bit easier, extract things if you need to without losing too many threads. But my other experience in doing it we did not, we had one POV. So, it doesn’t have to be done that way. K: Tell us about the time you wrote one POV. R: I sort of went through my text file that I keep on my phone that’s just like the little random lines and concepts, phrases that occur to me. And so the writing partner latched onto one and said, “That’s interesting, let’s work with that.” And then that was it, we just kind of went. I wrote something and sent it to him, and then I think we gave a week or two weeks max for each turnaround, so that one person wasn’t waiting on the other forever. So it kinda bounced back and forth, and it would twist a little, like I’d get back and reread what the new words were and I’d be like oh okay, that’s where that’s going now. K: [chuckles] R: So it felt a little bit like improv, where somebody tosses you something, and y - the guide for improv is don’t say “no,” say “yes, and...” So I think I had more of that spirit in the second project than I did in the first time attempting it, where um. As a kid I used to play with my friends and we’d get the toys all out and I’d immediately have a plot. And my friends would never adhere to it - K [overlapping]: [chuckles] R: Because of course they didn’t know it. They would have whatever toy they were holding do a thing and I’d be like “No no no not that, have it do this.” So I can’t imagine I was much fun to play with. Nor was it probably much fun to try and write with me on the project where I didn’t have the spirit of “yes, and...” I had more like “mmm. That’s interesting, how’s that gonna fit back into where I’m taking this?” K: Well and that’s a very good point, is I think if you’re going to write with somebody it has to be a genuinely collaborative effort, rather than someone coming in with a story and having someone else tell it. R: Yeah and like I said, both times it was starting from a concept that, it wasn’t like, “Oh I wanna write this book, do you wanna write it with me?” K: Mhm. R: So it was two people coming together each time saying “let’s work together on a thing, what should we work on, do you have any ideas, yeah sure how ‘bout this concept, okay that’s interesting what can we do with that? And then how do you wanna do this? Like okay I’ll write some and then you write some and then I’ll write some and then you write some. K: So like just examples off the top of my head, did you read This Is How You Lose the Time War? R: Yes. K: Yeah, so that was, so that’s a novella actually written by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. And I remember going like huh, I’m curious to see how they did this, and I went back and I think I read an interview or something with them, and sure enough what they did was they outlined a plot, and then they took turns writing the letters in it, and - R: But not only that, interesting point that maybe you want to cut me off and say we’ll get to that in a second - K: No, no prob. [laughing] R: But they wrote it at the same table, part of it at least. K: Yes. If you haven’t read This Is How You Lose the Time War, read it, it’s very good and it’s a quick read. R: It won awards for a reason. K: I - yeah, it won a lot of awards. [chuckles] But the entire story is told through letters being sent back and forth between Agent Red and Agent Blue, both of whom work for separate agencies that go back in time and change things to make history fit what they want it to be. So I remember reading in this that sometimes they were, like they were writing the letters and then mailing them to each other essentially, and letting the other person correspond and reply, it was almost a bit of role-playing. But yes they did write some of it sitting across from each other. But then another good example that’s the opposite: Good Omens was written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett and they both - R [overlapping]: [laughing] I was thinking of The Omen, and I’m like, I didn’t know - wait what?! K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: They wrote that? Okay, I’ve caught up, continue. K: Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett, one of them wrote a lot of the main story, and then the other one fleshed out a lot of it. There’s a main plot that but there’s a lot of other stuff going on, and there’s a lot of ancillary characters that turn out to be important to the plot but they never really gave a clear answer if it was like an assignment list so to speak, if there was like a breakdown of who was doing what. It sounds like they are just very good friends who were both very talented writers and were able to do this. I do see a lot of times when there’s two authors involved, it’s two different POVs, and - which is a perfectly intriguing way to do it. R: The way I always imagine it is that it starts with some sort of conference call or in-person visit, and the bones of the story are shaped out there. And then, at least far enough ahead that people can get to work writing. Because okay we’re back to writing being lonely, you do have to go back to your own desk - K: [giggles] R: - and work on the project from your side, by yourself. I have heard of people writing in Google Docs so they can see the other people’s words appear at - that just seems like chaos mode. K: I will say that’s how I take notes at work when I’m on a call with multiple people from my side and like, I won’t say it’s easy, it’s not terrible. R: It’s very distracting. K: [chuckles] R: So I mean that would be a tremendously interesting way to do it, I would love to try that sometime. But coordinating that puts you back into the whole like ‘we have to be at the same place at the same time’ aspect, which is probably not one of the benefits that most people would list of co-writing, is that you write your part of it without having to wait for the other person until like your check-in, and then you see what’s come up with the other person’s side of things and then you go back. And I will say again, the first time I tried to do this, we were writing in a shared Scrivener file. K: Okay. R: This was before Scrivener had real integration with Dropbox. K: The dark ages, yeah. R: Well no but - K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: I don’t think it would work now, because back then two people could open the same Scrivener document. Now Scrivener will tell you sorry, you can’t. It would have to go back to Google Docs or something, if we wanted to do it that way where we could see all the bones of the project coming together. The second time, we were just emailing a Word document back and forth that was updated and trying to keep them straight and not work in an old version. Which didn’t happen, it was short enough that I don’t think either of us were confused. K: How important is it to set down rules, so to speak? Of like, “Okay. This is how this is going to happen. Then we’re going to, you know, everything must be tracked here, or you have to let the other person know if you’re changing something to this.” I imagine it would depend on, are you both writing in the same document or are you each writing from a separate POV and then they’re gonna be combined. How did you manage that? R: So it’s interesting you ask that, because the first time, my partner and I actually wrote up a contract. K: I almost asked you, and I was like you know what, that seems like something maybe you wouldn’t do right at the start of this, but - R: No, I think it’s important. It’s a good idea to have a contract that outlines who’s responsible for what, how quickly people are expected to get things back - K: Mhm. R: How royalties are going to be split. K [overlapping]: Okay. R: Like if somebody’s only responsible for the outline, in terms of word count they haven’t contributed the same as the other person, but is it possible that you’re splitting it 50/50? Either way, put it in writing, because that protects your estate later on from trying to come after somebody in arguing how much should or shouldn’t be shared. It also can say like alright, this project is dissolved if the person takes more than two months to come back with their paragraph contribution for the week. K: Yeah. R: You know, all the questions that you just outlined can be described in there, including things like how are we going to edit this? Are we going to finish this project by taking it to a professional editor, like all the nitty gritty details can go, if not in a contract, in a project outline that can be referenced in a contract. K: All of the things we’ve been saying in the 60-something episodes of this podcast, now imagine you have to okay them with somebody else. R: Yeah. K [laughing]: Like - R: It depends on the personalities involved. One person might be like, ‘I’m going to leave all these decisions to you.’ K: Mhm. ‘I’m just here to write,’ yeah. R: Well ‘I just wanna write’ or ‘I am - my faith in you and your ability to do these things is greater than my willingness to try and learn them,’ and then the other person saying like ‘Yes, I agree to also take on all those tasks.’ K: Mhm. R: So yeah. The first project, we drew up a contract and we said what the project was, who was going to - that we were splitting it, not necessarily like even chapters but that we were going to have two POVs and the POVs would each be the responsibility of a different person. K: Did you have an expected word count? R: Yeah. I think it was a little bit like a query letter, in terms of the way that the project was described. (I was looking for it but I couldn’t find it.) In the way that the project was described and then in the way that we talked about the production timeline after, it was a little bit more like a marketing plan even. Including distribution: how were we going to release this? Was it going to be Kindle Unlimited or was it going to be distributed wide through all the retailers? K: You do need something like that, because let’s say you start writing with somebody and you get pretty far down the path and it turns out you fundamentally disagree on what to do with the book. Well each of you have the files now presumably, [laughing] so - R [overlapping]: Mhm. K: What are you gonna do? R: You have to trust that the other person’s not going to run off with it. Also, that’s what the contract is, to ensure that they don’t. K: Did you sit down and kind of come up with some agreed upon stylistic choices? R: In the sense of what? Like, comp title kind of things? K: Not just comp title, but stylistic in terms of writing. Granted if you’re writing two different POVs you can attribute these things to a character, but like did you decide ‘Okay this is going to be descriptive, we’re going to really emphasize the natural beauty of the setting,’ or ‘we’re going to make sure the characters always take note of a certain thing so that we can note it to the reader.’ How’d you handle worldbuilding? How did you come to terms with all of the things that an author typically has to decide on their own? R: We did not, I think in either case really, get into that. K: Okay. R: We knew enough of each other’s writing to sort of know what we were getting into. K: Yeah, and that’s a very good point by the way; probably don’t try to collaborate on a writing project with somebody whose writing you’ve never read before. R: Yeah. At the very least read some before you finalize all your contracts. K: Yes. I’d say that’s important and, I’m not saying this to be mean or flippant, the last thing you want is to get started on a project and find out the person’s not actually a very good writer. R: Or that your styles just don’t make for good story together. You are not going to find a writer who writes exactly like you; don’t assume that you aren’t going to come up against like ‘Oh, I don’t actually enjoy reading this from you.’ K: Yeah. R: You want to challenge yourself and see how you can make your two styles fit together. Because if you’re not growing as you work on anything then why bother? But you also don’t want it to be such a challenge that you cannot enjoy the process. K: So what do you do when you have disagreements about something? R: Well hopefully the answer is something that you’ve already figured out in the contract, like if you’re - K: Okay. R: It’s kinda like when a company goes back to their mission statement to figure out how to proceed with something. K: What about if it’s a story-related thing that’s not necessarily outlined in the contract? R: Give me an example. K: Alright so, let’s say in the end of the fifth season of Buffy there was like a fight in the writers’ room about - uh, spoiler for a show that’s been off the air for about 15 years, everyone - ‘we think Buffy maybe needs to die,’ ‘no there’s no reason she has to die,’ and then… there’s a fight! [chuckles] R: Hopefully your contract has a walking clause. Something that says like alright, if at some point the parties can’t decide on where the story should go, they can walk away, and at that point maybe they decide, or maybe in your contract it should say, that you need to pick who gets to take the story with them - K [overlapping]: Mhm, yeah. R: - if somebody still wants to write it. ‘Cause that’s something that wasn’t in the contract for my first one, and part of me - like I wouldn’t write the same story -  K: Mhm. R: We never finished it. I wouldn’t write the same story but there are elements I’d like to take, but they’re elements that would be recognizable enough. K: Mhm. R: So, how should we have proceeded? Probably one of us should - well at this point I could write to the person and say, “Hey, I wanna write this story, do you mind if I write this story on my own, not giving you any credit?” K [chuckles]: Yeah. Or if you do, how do I compensate you accordingly? R: Or just an acknowledgement, like I’ll acknowledge that the story started, and then y’know life happened, we didn’t finish it. K: Well that’s a form of compensation. R: Yeah. Acknowledgement is like credit in a certain way, without - but again, in that email you say, “Okay cool.” And they write back and they’re like, “Fine,” and I say, “Great. Here’s something I’d like you to sign, just to say that like you are aware that I am writing this, and that I’m writing it all on my own -” K [overlapping]: Yup. R: “Using new material. And that, the only thing you expect is to get a nod in the acknowledgements.” That’s something that you can do if you get to the point where you disagree on something and there’s no - it’s like if you’re to the point of fisticuffs you should probably walk away, or take a break. Are you so stressed about either the project or whatever that you’re just lashing out, or is this actually a problem, this relationship that you’re working in? K [overlapping]: Mhm. R: So, you know, be an adult. K: And listen, by the way. I have writers that get, I mean, so defensive, about just - no one that I’ve worked with on a published book, but people I’ve talked to, people who’ve asked for advice and different things. And they’re so defensive about the story to an editor. Imagine, again, trying to write this with another person. R: That’s the thing is you really have to gauge how well you’re going to work together with this person. K [overlapping]: Mhm. R: Do you just wanna do stuff because you’re friends and you like spending time with them? That might not be enough to go on for the amount of, like think of the anguish that you put into a novel project in the first place. You would think that co-authoring means you share that anguish, but you actually just each have your own anguish - K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: - which might make you less compatible than you are at the start. K: My grandmother always says to never marry somebody before you’ve taken a three-day bus trip across country with them. I kind of feel like with writers it’s like alright, I wanna see you two cook dinner together in the same kitchen, making the same dish. Like you, you have to collectively present me with one dish. And let’s see how that goes. [laughing] R: Are you following a recipe or are you creating a recipe? K: You have to decide. R: Hm. K: But you actually, you kinda touched on something interesting there, which is the other form of collaborative writing that I’ve seen in query letters a lot, you said “Is this just your friend that you wanna hang out with and spend time with?” And where I get a lot of those from is roleplaying games. R: Mhm. K: There’s a lot of thought and worldbuilding and character development and everything that goes into those. The, I hesitate to even call them players, by that point they’re basically writers, put a lot of time and effort into developing these characters and these worlds and things and then they interact with other people who help them contribute and grow, and that is a way that I’ve seen some collaborative writing come to fruition is, start out as a game. R: You have to be a very caring person to be a good gamemaster, in that you have to care about the experience of the people that you are essentially having a collaborative worldbuilding experience with. You have to want them to have fun, or they’re not going to have fun. K [overlapping]: [chuckles] R: You have to have set up different paths that they can choose to take so that they have some agency in the experience as well, and you have to be willing to say ‘yes and’ rather than ‘no.’ And you have to be willing to accept that sort of spontaneity. The best path forward may not always be the one you expect, but if you care about working with someone in a way that 1) doesn’t negate their contribution - K: Mhm. R: - and make it seem like ugh, well that almost matches what I would’ve done; like it’s not about anybody looking for permission from somebody else, it’s unwinding this coil of like where is this going, and unwinding it together. So we mentioned before that there are experiences where somebody writes the outline and somebody else writes the story to the outline, and I think that’s another balancing act because as somebody writes to an outline that they’ve made for themselves, they feel free to deviate from it. And I imagine that also happens when they write to an outline that somebody else has written. But also, writing an outline doesn’t quite transmit everything that goes into a story. It’s very hard to imagine what a person intended for an entire scene based on a single sentence or a couple of sentences. So there’s gotta be a lot of letting go; if one person is handling one creative step and another person is handling another creative step, again that contract but also your expectations have to be that like that first person is going to be letting go of a lot of control of the story if they’re not going to participate in the writing of it. K: It certainly is an exercise in having to give up and trust somebody with something that you created and love. R: It’s interpersonal relationships on a scale that usually you can separate from your personal creative self, and you would expect to put this much work into a business project or a marriage or opening a business with somebody - and again like, have a contract. Yeah you are putting that much effort into this. K: You’re opening a business with someone in a respect; you’re creating a product. R: Yeah we’re creating a product here that can be sold and resold and rights have to be licensed and - K: Mhm. R: You have to envision the success of this to really get a grip on all the things you have to consider. You can’t just ‘oh haha this’ll be fun’ if you are going to publish it, because you never know where it’s gonna go. K: Look at some of the greatest duos of what-have-you that fell apart because of differences in ideas. R: Mhm. I mean here are the advice like, never work for friends, watch out, you’ll ruin your relationship if you try to do this, I mean that’s kind of true of this if you don’t go into it with the right mindframe. K: So now that we’ve scared the hell out of everybody and never gonna wanna write a collaborative project together. What were some of the fun things about it? R: The brainstorming at the beginning was definitely really fun. Sit down with somebody that you like and you talk about what ideas might come out of something, depending on your level of prepwork, you might’ve had a really long conversation or you have lots of these little visual pieces that you’re gonna see how you’re gonna string together. Or you might have just kinda said ‘well let’s just see where it goes.’ K: Mhm. R: Which I think was my experience the second time, once we picked that concept out of my Word doc of random ideas that I’ve had. K [laughing]: By the way, if you’re listening to this and you wanna be a writer and you don’t have a Word document of random ideas you’ve had please start one immediately. R: Hopefully if you’re called to be a writer and you go ‘oh, you mean I should’ve been writing all those down,’ as opposed to like ‘oh I’ve gotta start coming up with ideas’ - like I think if you’re at the point where you don’t even have ideas - K: I’m saying for ideas you’ve already had. R: Okay. K: You need to have a good place to keep them. R: Jot them down. But yeah, so we picked something out of my book of ideas. If it’s a collaborative effort between friends, it might’ve even been something like that started as a Twitter conversation and now you’re writing it. So wherever you get your idea from, it usually starts with social connection, friendship, enthusiasm, and hopefully it’s all mutual. And then you go to the, ‘okay, are we really doing this?’ K: [giggles] R: ‘Let’s start the contract.’ If the person’s not comfortable entering into a contract with you, then that’s a red flag right there, that one of you is uncomfortable with what it’s gonna take to finish this project out. Because the contract is the thing that’s gonna see you through it all, so if you stop and you refuse to move forward at that point, that saves everybody some trouble. But the fun things about it are that starting moment, where the excitement is just zapping back and forth between the two of you, whether online or in person. K: Mhm. R: And then seeing what the other person wrote every week and getting to respond to it in like kind. It’s a little bit like writing fanfiction, in real time, with an author. K: [laughing] R: And then the other person can feel the exact same way, that they are the one writing the fanfic in real time with the author. And hopefully it is a surprise every time that you open the document to see what’s new. And then you pick someone whose writing you like, whose writing you enjoy, and then honestly it kinda carries you through the submissions process. ‘Cause you’re like okay well it can’t be that bad because I respect this person’s writing - K [overlapping]: Mhm. R: - so if they liked it, then there’s just a little like ‘no, this isn’t bad,’ that you can hold in your heart when you get a rejection from a magazine or something. K: Aww. R: Because like, you have faith that the other person knows what they’re doing, and they have faith that you know what you’re doing, and together you have this piece that you both believe in, even if you are believing in only half of it. [chuckles] And not the half that, you know, you worked on. So it’s just really nice, yeah. K [overlapping]: In the end you’re coming together to all believe together. R: Yeah I mean, we kinda, like in the second case it was a short story, and we did finish it. So, going back and forth, one person writing a few thousand words or like kinda getting to the end of a scene, like that break moment kinda thing where like - K: Yup. R: Fade to black, commercial break, whatever you wanna call it, and then going ‘ok! I just feel good about that writing session; I’m sending this back to you.’ We did that a few times back and forth. One of us sent the first 500 words in November. By the time we had finished it, it was February of the following year. And, so that’s pretty quick - K: Yeah that’s really quick. R: We were both on top of it; we only sent it back like a couple of times. I think our total word count is 4100 words, so, at most that was like eight back and forth of - K [overlapping]: Mhm. R: - 500 words each, or I think some of them were a little bit longer. I think once we sorta started to see where it was going some of us were - some of us - [chuckles] K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: Half of us - one of us would write more of that, and the other person would write more of the other. K: Okay. R: So, and then after that, we started talking about like okay what do you wanna do now, ‘let’s sit on it for a month’ was the response, and then we picked some markets to target and one of us was just in charge of submitting them. K: So you, you had a system, you had a plan. R: Yeah. We didn’t have a contract on that one, maybe we should. The nice thing is when you say you’re co-authoring, the magazine tends to send two separate payments. K: Okay, nice. R: Or at least in my experience so far, of selling this once. K: [laughing] So overall, a good experience? R: Yeah! Yeah, that one was a lot of fun. Like I said, having a totally different attitude toward where it was going and who was in charge - which was neither of us or both of us? - it was a very different experience than the first time. My first experience was with someone, we were trying to write a whole novel, and I think our intent was it might be a series. So this was like long-haul planning, and it wasn’t long before I realized like I don’t think our styles really mesh. And he also wrote really really fast, and kind of expected me to write really really fast, so I would turn around something after working on it for like a week or so, and then the next day he’d be like ‘okay, your turn.’ And I’d be like ‘oh, see, um, this isn’t the only thing I wanna work on.’ [laughing] K: Yeah. [chuckles] R: And so it was also, I think, in the middle of the final phases of getting Flotsam out, so it probably felt like a disruption, and the fact that he was turning things around so fast was like, frustrating to me. Whereas like I would work on something for awhile and then think like ‘okay, there, done, check it off my list’ - K [chuckles]: Deep breath, yeah. R: And the next day it’d be on my list again. K: That can get a little stressful, certainly. R: Yeah. K: I guess the takeaway from all of this then is whether or not you have a good experience with this, a lot of it comes down to you. R: And planning and expectation yeah. K: Yeah. R: You could go to the Happiest Place On Earth and be a total stick in the mud about it, so - K: Yes. R: Like, that’s true of everything. K: Yeah. Yeah but there’s certain things you can do to make sure that it doesn’t become a miserable experience, certainly. R: Yeah. Or, that you have a way out if it does. K: Yes, yes, there you go. So yeah I think that’s - any, Rekka, any parting thoughts, any final suggestions or advice? R: If it’s something that you’ve wanted to do, I definitely recommend doing it. Try it out and see. Hopefully, it doesn’t break a friendship - [giggles] K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: Y’know, the first time you try it. Having that contract will go a long way to having a mutual not-fun-anymore clause. If neither party is interested in going forward, then that’s it. That’s all that has to be said, and the project is dissolved. And if the other person is loving where it was going and wants to keep going with it, then you just have that release agreement, where like “I don’t expect any royalties or anything from this, you go ahead and have fun with it.” You hate to think that you need a contract to go do something that you and a friend both love doing, but ahh, I really think it’s a good idea. K: It’s probably, yeah. R: At worst, it doesn’t hurt, and at best, it protects you and it gives you something to fall back on if things aren’t going well. But, hopefully things go very very well and you end up with a story and you sell it, like I did! K: There you go. Rekka, what’s the story you sold? R: [giggles] K: You knew I was gonna ask you about - R: Maurice Broaddus and I wrote a story called The Archivist, and it sold to Lightspeed magazine and should come out sometime within the next nine months or so. One day I imagine I will wake up and have been tagged on Twitter. K: It’s just gonna be on there, yeah. R: And I will be able to share it then. My recent story on MetaStellar I was told the date, and then a few days ahead of time I was told what the URL would be and when it would go live, so I was able to prepare, which was nice. K: Very nice! As always, we hope we left you with some food for thought. R: It’s worth doing, if only to find out whether you enjoy it or not, but also keep in mind that it takes the right pair of minds to do it. So if you don’t enjoy the first time, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun again. But I hope you love it, ‘cause I did enjoy it, and I really am proud of the story that came out of it. I would not have written that story on my own. K: Oh, okay, well great! R: Which is another point, like I shouldn’t leave off without saying that, but like we created a story that neither of us would’ve written if it was just working alone. K: Greater than the sum of their parts. R: Or at least greater than the sum of half the parts. [laughing] K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: Alright, well that is probably enough. If you want more, or you want to be notified when the story goes live, you can send us a message on Twitter or Instagram, we are @WMBcast. You can also find us on WMBcast.com with all our old episodes. If you are listening from the future, I might come back and add the link to that story when it does go live, to the show notes. If you are listening from a very very profitable future - K [overlapping]: [giggles] R: - you might consider going to Patreon.com/WMBcast to support us financially, but we don’t need that! What we would really really love are some ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast aggregator, whichever you’re listening to right now. That would be so, so helpful; it helps people find us. We had someone shouting on Twitter the other day saying like ‘why are more of you not listening to this podcast?’ I guarantee it’s because it’s hard to find podcasts, unless they have really good ratings and reviews. So please, drop us some five stars and some glowing words, they don’t have to be expansive. Just like ‘this podcast rocks!’ I mean, that’s what I think, that’s what I would write. You can use that though. I’m not gonna hold you on a contract or anything. K: [laughing] R: Alright, two weeks from now we’ll be talking about something entirely different, but probably just as goofy.

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. We Make Books Ep. 62 Transcription After intro: [00:26] Kaelyn: We’re talking today about reader tension and tense situations and managing these things. And you know getting the, kinda grabbing everyone and wanting to be like ‘this is important and there’s peril and stakes here, and you should pay attention to this.’ Rekka: This was another topic that was suggested to us by an uncredited listener, because I failed to write down all the people who suggested a very long list of topics that we will be going through. So I apologize, feel free to @ us on Twitter and take credit for the topic. But the original question posed was how to manage reader stress, and I assume they mean the tension and anxiety that our reader feels as they go through your plot. Because, as Kaelyn pointed out, you don’t want to get so anxious and wound up over a plot that you can’t finish the story and you need to protect yourself for self care reasons and back away. K: We’re interpreting this question as not managing the external stress of readers. There’s generally not a lot a book or an author can do about that, so please don’t try. R: Although! A good book can really help you escape. K: Absolutely, yes. Maybe a book that’s just full of pictures of puppies. R: Also good! K: Yeah. R: Yeah. So, the anxiety and tension that we’re talking about is being cast upon the reader intentionally to draw them into your story. But how do you make sure you don’t go too far, and how do you ramp up tension where you want it so that they aren’t just kinda reading it and being like ‘I don’t care about any of this.’ K: Building tension is, it’s difficult. For two reasons: one, it’s a hard thing to do in writing, but then two, it’s also very difficult to place it in a story. Let’s qualify here depending on your genre, if you’re writing a suspense thriller that’s just going to be a tense situation [laughing] throughout the book. Most books, I would argue the majority of books, have some sort of conflict in them. There’s going to be a point at which things come to a head. It could be physical, it could be mental, it could be, you know, strictly verbal confrontation. It could be characters that never actually meet but you know were seeing each other’s perspectives as they, I dunno interact over the computer, they’re both trying to hack the same database at the same time.  K:I have a friend who trains people in various business ventures, and one of the things she always says is “conflict is crucible.” And what she’s kinda saying there is that when you’re trying to solve a problem you have to resign yourself to some conflict, because conflict helps you get information, it helps you understand what you’re looking at, it helps you understand the stakes. And I think that applies well to writing, because the conflict, first of all, builds richer characters, it builds a better storyline, it helps us understand motivations and actions better. But it’s also really engaging. That’s kinda what we’re here for. R: Yeah, I would say that a story without conflict is going to be a very milquetoast kind of story. It doesn’t matter what scale the conflict happens on, but - K: Mhm. R: - you want some kind of ‘what’s going to happen’ to linger, right up until the end of your story, you just want to kind of change like ‘ooh! Now that happened, what’s going to happen now?’ You know, it kind of elevates in stages. So every story is going to have conflict that’s on a - that is proportional to the scale of the story being told. So, it doesn’t always have to be end of the world scenarios; it can be ‘this person needs to sort their life out, and will they get that job they want, and will their roommate discover that they’re actually a sorcerer?’ K: I mean I hope so. R: Right? Those kinds of conflicts can be big or small; it’s the stakes of the story. And you want your reader invested in the stakes of the story, so you want them to feel a little bit of anxiety about how the story’s going to go. If they don’t, then they can drift away from the book at any point and forget to pick it up ever again. K: I look back at things that I read as an adult, and things that I read as a kid, and the like really intense parts where you’re like trying to keep yourself from skipping ahead on the page - R [overlapping]: [giggling] K: - and you know reading as fast as possible - R: Kaelyn that is cheating. K: I know! But like I - tell my brain. [laughing] R [overlapping]: [laughing] K: You know but where you’re like ‘oh my god I gotta know what happens, I gotta know what happens!’ And then sometimes - R: Just so everyone knows, as an editor Kaelyn wants to know the end - K [overlapping]: Yeah. R: Like as soon as the author knows it. So don’t feel like she just skips to the end in books she picks up at the bookstore, no she wants the spoilers all the time. K: I need to know the end to a story. I’m not one of those people who waits ‘til a series comes out to read the books, because I can’t wait that long - R [overlapping]: Mhm! K: - to be [???], I need a fix in there somewhere. But this is why I’m like weirdly into unsolved mystery kinda things, because I just need to know what happened, like [laughing] I always say if I could have a superpower, it’s not that I want to time travel. I don’t wanna like go back and interact and change things. R: Or go forward and get lottery numbers. K: Yeah I just wanna be able to like astral project or something so I can just, I just wanna see what happened. I just wanna know what actually happened, you know, who shot JFK? What’d they do with the aliens at Rosland? Did we land on the moon? I mean - R: Roswell. K: Roswell, yes. Why did I say Rosland? R: Maybe you know something we don’t because you went back in time. K: It’s possible. It’s very possible. But yeah, I am someone who like feeds off of that tension. And I love intrigue, I love building the story, and by the way I just touched on another way you build tension here, which is not always necessarily conflict; sometimes it’s mystery. Sometimes the stakes are trying to find something, or figure something out, or solve a puzzle, or learn someone’s true identity. There was definitely a heyday for this sort of thing in the 90s and 2000s, especially with young adult literature, where a lot of the tension that was building in the book was people trying to get answers about a mysterious prophecy or an object or find a lost relic. R: Ohhh, I love a good lost relic. K: Ah, the best. Romantic tension is also a thing. R: You would have to imagine it is, because in the romance novels like that is - K [overlapping]: Yup. R: - the main plot of the book. So a will-they-won’t-they is a ‘what’s going to happen next?’ K: Yeah, a will-they-won’t-they, or how will they get through this, will they ever find each other again. So I think when we say like tension in the book we’re picturing like a big Lord of the Rings style - R: Oh I’m imagining the boulder in Indiana Jones just hovering over everybody. K: Okay! Or that, you know we’re thinking of like direct action and conflict. But tension can be built a lot of different ways. It’s not always ‘I’m going to fight this knight now to free the dragon,’ and yes in my scenario we free dragons, we don’t slay them. R: Absolutely! K: Dragons are people too. R: Yeah. K: Creating tension for readers is part of what’s compelling about a book. Now, sometimes these get a little out of hand. I’m gonna qualify that again, genre matters a lot here. If we’re talking about like a spy thriller, if we’re talking about a murder mystery, a suspense thriller, something like that. Yeah, you should go in expecting a lot of tension, you should know what you’re getting out of that genre. Rekka, can you think of any books offhand that you had to like put down and walk away from? R: Because there was too much tension? K: Because the situation, the intensity of the situation was making you uncomfortable. R: Hmm. K: I can think of a couple. I’m not gonna say what they are, but I’ve definitely had that happen. R: So you’re asking if that’s happened? K: Yes. Has that ever happened to you? R: No. I’ve never put down a book because I was uncomfortable with high levels of tension; I’ve put down books because there was little tension and I wasn’t grabbed. K: I’ve got a really thick skin when it comes to this stuff, there isn’t a lot that bothers me. There’s been two books that, one where it was just like the violence and the tension was just getting gratuitous. With that case it wasn’t that it was making me uncomfortable. It was almost like coming full circle and getting pedantic. This is so ridiculous it’s almost erased the tension, I’m no longer able to suspend my disbelief. R: Okay. So, what does that say about the author’s ability to manage the tension? K: Not doing a great job. R: What was broken, if you wanna use that word, in that case? K: I think in this case, there was too much trying to shock people. Trying to shock the readers reading it. R: Okay, is that tension though? K: The scenario of the book was a group of people going through some kind of a building, I don’t even remember what it was, and they’re getting picked off by monsters and booby traps the whole time. It started out well, because it’s dark, there’s a lot of sounds and things and nobody’s quite sure what’s like, is that us, is it something else, is something following us, we know this place is full of danger okay we just have to get through here, and then what was happening was characters were dying. They were dying in horrible ways, and they were being very - described in great detail. And again, I have a really thick skin for this. That kind of stuff doesn’t bother me. But what was happening was it was actually getting to the point that it was breaking the tension a little bit, because they were losing me there.  K: So I think the author’s intention was to really up the scale and the stakes, because it wasn’t just like ‘and a hole opened, and Jonathan fell through and we heard screams and then nothing.’ Like first of all it was breaking the tension of the story stopping to describe all of this stuff. But beyond that, it was - I don’t know. It was a very strange reaction, a very strange feeling, where it was kind of like I can’t tell if this is making me nauseous or if I’m bored. R: Okay. This is making me think of the movie Thirteen Ghosts. K: Yes. R: Does this, is this ringing true for you? K: That is definitely ringing true for me. I had a similar experience with that movie. On the flip side, the other one that I had to put down and walk away had to do with sex. The tension that they were building with this couple that wasn’t really a couple, and the dichotomy and the power struggles here, and the clear anxiety of one character vs not the other that I think was supposed to be building romantic tension, and ooh they’re so into each other, it didn’t at all. R: Okay. K: It was actually, I can’t read this. As I’ve been talking through both of these you sort of pointed something out: was it the tension or was it things that writers were trying to use to create tension that weren’t actually tension-building devices? R: Right. It sounds like people are trying to use some visuals and elements that are, let’s say, flashes in the pan - K: Mhm. R: - in terms of the effect they have on the reader, versus something that’s actually building a landscape over which the story is traveling. And it’s the landscape I would argue that you want, because jumpscares are great for a horror movie, but once you’ve calmed down, that’s all there is. Versus actually building, in that case, dread or fear. So things that have an intense effect but the effect is not lasting I don’t think are going to be what you want to use when you’re trying to control how the reader paces themself to get to the end of your book. K: I think in the example I used with the violence one, you know you have these characters, they’re trying to get from point A to point B, and they’re getting picked off or killed horribly one by one. And on some level I understand what the author was trying to do there. Instead of simply saying ‘and this person’s dead now,’ they’re upping the intensity of the situation by showing that they’re not dead, they’re dying horribly. So you’re getting the collective fear and horror built into the group of the remaining survivors so you’re empathizing with them more. In that scenario, I see what they were doing. They were trying to use this gore and this violence to instill an intensity in you, but it got to the point that it was too much. R: So it wasn’t flash in the pan, it was just overreaching? K: Overkill, if I can make that pun? [overlapping] A little bit, please? R [overlapping]: You cannot. I’ve checked with our producer and - K: [grunts] R: - they’re shaking their head. K: Alright, fair. [chuckling] There can be times that you just take the device you’re using too far, and it jumps the shark a little bit and becomes ridiculous. R: In the case of something getting to the point of ridiculosity, are they even employing the tools that would work and just overdoing it, are they overutilizing the tools, leaning on them too heavily, abusing them, or are they in the wrong toolbox entirely? K: Exactly, yeah. R: No, I’m asking you. [laughing] K: Oh. [laughing] Um no I was going to say those are all things to consider. I think that’s something you have to work with an editor on, and I think that’s something that you have to have readers give you feedback about, because this for a lot of writers becomes a can’t see the trees for the forest scenario. You’re so deep into this, you’re not reading this for the first time like most readers will be, you wrote this. Rekka you tell me, when you’re rereading things that you wrote, either for fun or doing revisions, does your heart beat a little faster when you get to these scenarios? R: If it’s been long enough that I forget where I’m going with them. [laughing] K: Exactly, yeah. R: Because you know what you’re trying to build to, and when you’re trying to write it sometimes you can feel like you’re being sooo hamfisted about it. K: Yeah. Writers need help for contextualizing this, I think. Because first of all you know what’s gonna happen, hopefully. [laughing] Second, you’ve been through it so many times it doesn’t have the same punch, the same meaning that it did. R: That’s one of the frustrating things about being a writer, trying to know whether you’re being effective. You burn through beta readers because you need somebody who hasn’t read it before to tell you whether it’s working. K: Yeah so circling back to is it too much, are you leaning into it, are you in the wrong toolbox entirely, that can be a really hard thing for writers to understand. I’ve definitely read books where I’ve felt like after a few revision paths, every time the author was going through and trying to up the scare factor or the intensity factor in everything, I think that’s something where you need an editor or a very good friend to help you there. R: [laughing] K: It’s a balancing act. You have to maintain believability. There is a difficult-to-track issue of understanding when a situation is intense and when it’s not tense enough or too intense. I’ve definitely read books where important things have happened, and I didn’t realize that was an important thing because the writing and the way the characters were behaving didn’t indicate to me that that was a significant event. And if you’re going ‘oh well, what does that have to do with it?’, that’s building intensity. R: I recently gave someone feedback that said like ‘hey, I think this moment needs to slow down for a second, and I know there’s a lot of other stuff going on, but like if you don’t linger on this, it’s not going to have the impact you want. K: You don’t wanna have to be in a position where you gotta insert a character in the story jumping up and down screaming at the reader that something that’s happening is important, but if you can’t signal to them in some way that it is, that’s not great. R: You have to figure out how to signal it without really putting a wavy-armed balloon man in front of it. K [laughing]: Yes. Exactly. It’s difficult, and there’s a reason that authors that can do this well are very successful in writing, you know, murder mysteries and spy thrillers and suspense novels and stuff. Because there’re people that eat that up. That’s like what they live for. I can take it or leave it. But then there are people who avoid it like the plague. R: Like you said, genre has a lot to do with it. We’re getting to a point which I think is good where people are starting to put content notes on books just like you would get at the beginning of a TV show. So you know this has depictions of graphic violence, sexuality - um, there’s a difference between sexuality and nudity - endangerment of a child, trauma, stuff like that. And that helps people dial in, like ‘do I wanna read this book, is this the kind of intensity I’m looking for or not?’ K: Now, and that said, there may be things that happen in the book that it never would’ve occurred to you to put a content warning about. R: And hopefully maybe your beta readers can highlight a couple things too. K: What I’m getting at is there’s going to be things that happen - in books, in movies, in TV shows - that are upsetting for a specific person for a specific reason. R: Mhm. K: There’s no way to predict all of these - R [overlapping]: Yeah. K: And try to compensate and notify for that. It sounds terrible to say stick to the obvious and take in the advice of others, but that is what I would say. And I’m not saying don’t write these things. Be aware of what you’re writing. R: Be aware of what you’re writing and then be willing to take the responsibility for the people who are going to be upset by that and say like ‘yes, this is something I felt was necessary to the plot, but I promise you I gave it thought and hopefully the people who’d be extra upset by it will be warned by friends or somebody before they pick it up.’ K: For anyone who’s sitting at home going - and to be honest I don’t think many of our listeners think this, but maybe who knows - ‘why do I have to bend over backwards to accommodate this?’ You know what, honestly, you don’t. R: It’s a choice you make, yeah. [chuckles] K: But it’s really shitty not to when it’s so easy to do. And believe me, people who suffer from particular anxieties or trauma and everything, they’re ultra-aware of this stuff. They’re typically not going to go into a store, pick up a random book, and say ‘I’ll just read this now’ because, exactly for that reason: they don’t wanna put themselves in a position where the intensity of the book is going to induce an anxiety spiral. And if you think that doesn’t happen, I don’t know what to tell you at this point because you’re wrong. [laughing] So! R: And it’s also not necessarily the intensity of the book, but the specific situations and the intensity of that person’s personal experience laid over top of that. K: Yeah. Exactly. So, for readers who are saying “how do I keep myself safe from this kind of thing” so to speak, read content warnings. Read reviews online. Here’s a thing: read the bad reviews, read the people who didn’t like the book, because the ones who are complaining about things are gonna give you a little bit more insight probably, into areas that you might find distressing. R: And you can always just post a question on Twitter, like “hey - K [overlapping]: Yeah. R: “ - here’s something that really bothers me in books; I’m thinking of picking up this one, anything you wanna warn me about, I’d appreciate.” K [overlapping]: Yeah. You know, I’m not saying this to put all of the onus upon the reader who’s concerned about this, but, I mean do your research. If you know this is something that’s important to you and something you need to manage and minimize as best you can, the best judge of character for that’s gonna be you. R: For the writer, you know, sensitivity reads are not a bad idea. Like we said, we can’t cover everything with a single sensitivity reader but they might be able to give you more insight. If your intensity of your plot is overlaid with a certain kind of life experience, I guarantee you can find a sensitivity reader for it. And if you don’t, ask around and someone else will be able to help you. K: Yeah but I mean beyond that, content warnings do a lot. R: You can’t cover everything and everyone, like - K [overlapping]: No. R: - Kaelyn was saying, you can give it a fair attempt. K: Listen, if your fair attempt is something along the lines of ‘contains violence, gore, and depictions of furries,’ like, that’s that’s giving everyone at least a heads-up of what’s in here. R: And a Venn diagram of figuring out where they fall in that. [chuckles] K: I will defend the writers a little bit here in saying that there’s only so much you can do, to a certain point. [laughing] R: In order to indicate everything that happens in your book, you literally have already done that, you’ve written the book. You can be broad and you can welcome people to send you a note and ask you if they have a specific concern they’re afraid of running into. K: I would call it a good faith gesture to do that. And, I think if there’s parts in there where you’re going ‘I wonder if I should explain this,’ the answer is, maybe decide what it is and then just mention that that’s a thing that’s gonna happen in there. R: Okay, so this is managing the readers’ stress literally, and kind of the external forces as we said we weren’t going to cover. K: Well I mean I was joking about just like daily life stress. [laughing] R: Right, but I mean this is kind of tied to their personal experience. So, going back to considering it now a positive to build stress and anxiety, what would you say to an author who brought you their story, and it reads as a little flat. What would you tell them, how to increase anxiety in the reader, by which I mean tension in the story? K: I’m gonna flip that and ask has that ever happened to you? I know the answer to that is no because I read your writing [laughing], so! R: You know, I am really surprised by how many people have told me that my books are really tense. K: Yeah my blood pressure’s definitely spiked a few times over the course of events. [laughing] R: Is it just because of Hankirk? Like is it just because he’s infuriating? K: It’s a lot of things, um - R [overlapping]: [laughing] K: And actually you’ve touched on something that I think is very interesting that you do in your writing - and this is another kind of tension that I think we don’t really appreciate as a different kind of tension to build - is hopelessness. And despair. R: Aw, now I’m mad. I didn’t mean to be hopeless! K: No, you weren’t, but this sense of like ‘what are we going to do?’ R: Mm. K: And things just like um, a sense of despair and despondency, and I’m not necessarily talking about - R [overlapping]: Look, my characters have to come back from like their lowest low, like I’m gonna make that low real fuckin’ low. [laughing] K: Yeah, exactly, but that’s a kind of intensity too. So yeah, you definitely do not suffer from not having well-built intensity. R: You’re avoiding my question. You turned it back around on me, as though we needed to analyze me, but we’ve just clarified we don’t need to analyze me - K [overlapping]: No, no. R: What do you say to an author who is not me, who needs a little dose of, I guess some me-ness? K: I’m very much into helping writers solve their own problems. R: Yeah you do that. K: Yeah. I find that authors frequently know there’s a problem and at least have the inkling of an idea of how to fix it. I would write them back and ask them, first do you have an outline of your story? If you don’t, well, depending on our timeline here, write one; if we don’t have time for that, I want you to highlight for me what you think the most important points of the story are for the plot. And depending on what was going on, I might tell them I’m gonna do the same. And let’s see if we match up. I like to do that one a lot. R: Yeah you do. K: I want them to highlight the most important parts of the plot, and then I’d want them to pull out some areas where maybe it’s more introductory, more worldbuilding, more establishing, and compare how those are written versus the important plot points. And look at your language, look at the way you’re communicating with this, because this is - and I won’t go too far into the weeds on this because it’s slightly off topic, but it is worth mentioning - your language changes when writing intense situations.  K: The way you describe things, the way characters communicate with each other, the way they take in their scenery, a lot of times you’ll notice writers that do this well have short-clipped sentences that match the franticness of the situation. Minimal description, because they don’t have time to stop and look and describe something. So I would say that you know look at this and if these very important points of the story, these parts where it should be intense where the reader should be concerned and involved and engaged, and you’re writing it with the same tone and cadence that you do with the part where they’re walking through a meadow - R [chuckles]: The meadow is full of velociraptors. K: Ugh. You’re describing heaven. R [muffled]: Stay out of the long grass! K [laughing]: I’m just picturing them with flower crowns now. R: Ohhh, they’re so happy. K: [laughing] R: Beautiful queens!  K: [with accent] “Don’t go into the long grass!”  R: We really just need to admit that this is a Jurassic Park fancast. K: Yeah we do talk about it a lot. So, I would say that that’s a good place to start. And in terms of like exercises you can do, read it out loud. Act it out! I stood in a room with a manuscript and like held in front of me and like done both parts of the characters and imitated how they would be yelling at each other or what have you, just to make sure that like it sounds okay and it’s coming across the right way. Because if I’m doing this by like kinda like staging a play here,  then hopefully you’re getting that across to the reader. I think also developing your characters and having a good idea of how they would react in intense situations. If they’re acting the same across the book no matter what, well, I don’t know, maybe they’ve got a really good valium prescription. R: [laughing] K: You should see changes in not just their actions but their body language, their speech. If Rekka and I were trying to diffuse a bomb right now, I wouldn’t be telling “okay, so um cut the green wire, um,” okay and then like imitating the scene from Jurassic Park where John Hammond’s giving Ellie instructions over the radio and he’s like talking so calm and everything - but that’s a good example because even though he’s talking very calm and walking her through everything, his voice is very intense. R: And he’s having an argument behind the scenes. [laughing] K [overlapping]: Yes. He’s having an argument with Ian, but like his voice is very intense. And now granted, movies get to use music to help with this kind of thing. R: Yeah they cheat. K: Yeah but if I were having a conversation with Rekka and it was a genuinely tense situation where I’m trying to give her instructions on how to diffuse a bomb - now granted– Okay so we’re getting a little sidetracked here but I just wanna point out Rekka says he’s having a funny argument with Ian, part of the reason for that was the shock value of the next scene. R: Right. K: You’re luring the reader into a false sense of security of going like, oh look it’s fine, John and Ian are arguing, Ellie’s got this, and I think - “Mr. Hammond I think we’re back in business!” And then an arm falls on her. Oh no, wait first the raptor attacks her, then the arm falls on her. That’s a good instance of diffusing a situation only to re-intensify it immediately. If I were talking to Rekka and I was talking even in the same tone that like we talk in this podcast, like ‘well you know I guess if you wanted, like, so think about the green wire, think about why the green wire is important to this bomb. And if you take the green wire out what’s going to happen?’ Like that, you know, that’s not a good way to write that scene. R: Yeah ‘cause meanwhile Mr. Arnold’s arm has fallen on my shoulder and I am flipping out. [chuckles] K: I always wondered why the velociraptor didn’t eat that, or how that happened. Like - R: I assume it like got bit off and then went flying and got caught in that little corner - K: I guess, but like it seems - R: Look, they needed it to fall on Ellie’s shoulder. K: I know, but like it seems like it was in like wires, and it’s like how did that get there? Did the raptor go back and - R [overlapping]: This is, this is going back to the believability of the situation and is it going to suck your reader out of the moment and go, ‘wait, how?’ K: I remember being 10 years old and watching that and going, ‘how did that get there?’ R: I also had that thought but I didn’t linger on it, because - K [overlapping]: Ah, no. R: Ellie was being chased by a raptor, dragging a big flashlight, and I was worried like the flashlight was gonna get stuck on something and she wouldn’t be able to keep going. K: But yeah it’s, that would be kind of where I would start. And if the problems are still persisting, if we still can’t get to a place where I feel like okay I understand that something important is happening, I understand that there’s peril here, I understand that these two characters have left very angry at each other, that sort of thing, then that’s a different conversation. That’s a conversation about writing style and technique. And, that’s harder to fix. R: You can’t just add six more raptors and fix it. K: Six more raptors fixes everything, Rekka. R: Okay. Back up. You can just add - K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: - six more raptors; there’s your fix for everything. K: Yes. R: But you do have to exercise it with extreme care. K: More raptors! R: - because people will pick up if you just do it every time. K: Yeah. If your solution to everything is add more raptors - R: Get your own solution - K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: - my solution to everything is add more raptors. K: Yeah that’s, that’s fine. R: Yeah, I thought so. K: It solves multiple problems, not just intensity of the situation problems, so. R: Mhm! K [chuckles]: I think that’s it. If it’s something you’re struggling with, I hate to say this, but like this is something you just kinda have to work on. It’s one of those style and technique things that, I won’t say can’t be taught because absolutely you can take writing classes that would help you with this, but I think it’s something that also just comes from practice and learning. R: And I would suggest doing it with short fiction, because that’s a really great way to learn how to control the pedal. K: Absolutely. R: To adjust your pressure on your reader. And also to build it quickly, because in a short story you don’t have a lot of room, so it’s a boiled-down condensed version. And also being shorter you get more practice, ‘cause you get to write more of them. K: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, that’s my final thoughts on managing intensity in books is: it’s not easy. There’s a reason people who do it well make a lot of money off of it. R: It’s not like if you aren’t making a ton of money off of it that you’re no good at it. To that point, pick up a book and see how someone else is doing it. K: One of the best ways to get good at writing is reading a lot. R: Yep. And steal everyone else’s tricks. Except mine; the raptors are mine. K: Only Rekka’s raptors. Ahh, that’s what we need, a book series called Rekka’s Raptors! R: Vick’s Vultures but - K: I know. R: But it’s dinosaurs. K: I’m already unfolding it in my head, trust me. R: Oh yeah. K: [laughing] R: Send me the outline. [giggles] K: See this is the problem is, I have all of these ideas of books that I would love to exist in the world and I need someone to write them for me. [laughing] R: That’s what I said, send me an outline, I work really well off an outline! K: Yeah. So I think that’s, that’s the end of the episode. Hopefully it wasn’t too much for you. R: Even if it’s not the end of the episode, we’re done. [laughing] K: Yeah. I think that - R [overlapping]: The raptors got us. We’re in the long grass. K [laughing]: Does he say ‘the long grass’ or ‘the elephant grass?’ R: You know what? I recently read an article about how we all remember lines differently - K [overlapping]: Yes. R: - because of the different aspects we’re focused on. So let’s just assume that anybody quoting Jurassic Park to the point where you get the quote, has said it right. K: Okay. That’s fair. R: I think that’s like a way to be kinder to other people. K: Tension! It’s good. R: The right amount is good. The wrong amount is bad. K: Yes. I can’t even say in moderation because sometimes it’s not moderation that makes it a - R: Sometimes the whole point is not moderating it. Except moderating the effect that you want in terms of, ‘hey, I the author have control and am moderating how much I want,’ there. That’s - K: Yep. R: That’s the moderation that we’re talking about. [laughing] K: Exactly. R: We should stop. K: [laughing] R: This episode isn’t going to have a nice end, it’s just going to - K: Ooh, maybe it just cuts to black mid sentence. [laughing] R: Well that’s not a great pressure valve on your tension. Yeah no, let us know how this episode needs to end. You can @ us on Twitter and Instagram @wmbcast, you can find us and all our old episodes at wmbcast.com. Please remember to subscribe, please remember especially to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and if you somehow just really wanna support my love of velociraptors, you can go to Patreon.com/wmbcast and send us some financial support, and I promise I will spend it on dinosaur plushies. K: Oh, I was gonna say velociraptor food. R: Well, I am the velociraptor food. K: Which now that I’m saying it I think is just goats, so. [laughing] R: No that’s T. rexes, and it didn’t work anyway. K: Yeah, they dropped the cow in the velociraptor. R: Yeah that’s true - oh wait am I a velociraptor? Because I’ve been eating cow this week. K: You have, yeah. R: Hmm. K: Hmmmm. R: We’ll have to investigate this in a future episode. K: Hey, because the mystery is building tension. R: Yeeeah, that’s it. K [laughing]: Alright everyone, thanks very much for listening. R: For your indulgence. K: [laughing] R: Take care everyone!

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. Kaelyn: So it’s funny you picked this when I was still studying history, that was something we always had to consider. Is this group, is this person part of determining where they fit into historical context as determining do they have agency? Can they act on their own behalf? Structure is what keeps someone in place; agency is what allows them to act freely. Rekka: Where would you put Odysseus, in this context? K: I would make Odysseus a failed attempt at agency. R: [laughing] K: Well, maybe failed agency isn’t the right--because he is displaying agency. He’s trying to do something, and he’s having to frequently overcome obstacles. That said, those obstacles are things that keep happening to him, rather than him directly engaging. R: Right. K: So it’s a little bit of a, uh. R: Weird example. K: No it was a good one, I liked it. R: No it’s a good example but it’s not a good role model for agency in your novels. K: Odysseus isn’t a good role model for a lot of reasons. R [laughing]: That’s just one of them. K: [laughing] R: Be the person who ties yourself to the mast, rather than give in to the sirens. Actually fuck it, give in to the sirens. It’s 2021, let’s just go for it. K [laughing]: That’s a very bad--I feel like 2020 was the year to give into the sirens. [laughing] R: Yeah, but what is 2021 but 2020 persevering? K: No, we’re slowly defeating it. We’re claiming some agency for ourselves. R: I am still in this room. K: [laughing] R: I have always been in this room. How are we defeating anything? K: I think I was born in this room. R: Kaelyn, have you and I met for smoked meats in a restaurant? K: We haven’t. R: Right. So, nothing has changed. K: Yeah. R: Have we hung out in a library with random strangers at the same table? K: No. Some of whom are handwriting books. R: Yeah, no. This is not happening. So today I called you here to talk about agency. K: So in that scenario do I have agency? Because I made the decision to join you. But-- R: But--are you allowing this topic to happen? Or are you actively engaging in the expression of our ideas? K: Oh both. R: [laughing] K: Definitely. R: Once you get past some of the other, like, identify your theme, and helpful advice for writing like that-- K: Strengthen this character arc, you know, the really nice vague feedback. R: The really helpful, helpful specific feedback. You might also end up hearing that your character needs more agency in a scene, or in the story overall. And as with the others, this can be really helpful advice. If you know what it means. K: Yeah um, it I think falls into the category of frustratingly vague advice that is absolutely rooted in important context. R: But it’s also really true. K: Yes, yeah. R: Which is just the worst part. There’s nothing worse than vague advice that is also correct. K: It is vague advice, but I think when you’re dealing with things like ‘work on your character’s agency,’ ‘strengthen this arc,’ ‘identify the themes in your story,’ those are big picture things. So. Definition—as always love to start off with that—uh, agency in general, the definition is “an action or intervention, especially as to produce a particular event.” Acting, essentially. Taking action. Doing something. Trying to influence the outcome. R: Not just action but pro-action. K: Yes. For characters in books, agency is basically when a character can make choices and act on their own behalf. R: What is it about agency that gets turned into a secret agency that acts against aliens, or whatever--I’m just playing around with etymology here-- K: [laughing] R: But how’s that word get turned into that meaning? K: The way I always took that was that an agency is meant to act on behalf of a group of people or towards a certain end. So, if we wanna take S.H.I.E.L.D. - R: Okay. K: So agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Their job, their directive, is to protect Earth from large-scale global threats. Everything they do, every action they take, is to further that outcome. Real world example: the CIA, Counter-Intelligence Agency. They have a very specific job. It’s to try and out-maneuver, out-intelligence if you will, foreign and domestic hostile powers. R: Okay so the word is not trans-mutated in any way, in the way that it’s applied to an organization. It still means taking proactive action toward a goal. K: Yeah, so I did look up the definition of agency in that regard: “a business or organization established to provide a particular service, typically one that involves organizing transactions between two other parties.” R: So like, a literary agent. K: There you go. Here’s a good example, the Environmental Protection Agency. R: Mhm. K: Their directive, their job is to protect the environment. What do they do? They organize, they create scenarios, be they either laws or policies or transactions even, that further their goal of protecting the environment. R: This is a group of people that are acting for one goal. In our writing, when we talk about agency, we’re generally referring to character agency. As in we have a main character, they are serving as our POV - point of view - and think of that term as the window through which you experience the story. Your viewpoint into this story and this world. So, everything that this character chooses to do is how you experience the story. So by acting on a desire, they create tension as to whether there will be an obstacle that they can overcome, whether they make a decision to do something that frightens them a lot, or whatever - you get to experience that tension. So if this character goes with the flow - K: [laughing] R: - how much tension do you get to experience? K: Yeah so what this means when you get this feedback, ‘I need you to work on your character’s agency here,’ is that it means the character is being very passive. They’re being more reactive than proactive. Oh I’ve got a good example: Twilight. R: Bella is a classic example and often referenced example of a character who doesn’t actually do much. And this is part of that Mary Sue criticism that gets used in the wrong places a lot, but in this case what we’re talking about is Bella is a bodysuit for you to crawl into, and see this world. K: Well Bella is almost worse than that. In some cases Bella is an object. She is sort of a MacGuffin that furthers this story. Something I always like to trot out is, if this character weren’t here, would things go that differently? R: [laughing] K: Now, in Twilight yes they would. Because a lot of conflict, a lot of the story, whatever, does center around Bella, but it is more just the fact that she exists than anything else. If she were a particularly tasty cow that all of the vampires also wanted to eat, well - that’d be a different story too. [laughing] R: Yeah, that’s a weird one. K: No, but if she were something like a magic ring that lets the vampires turn back into humans or something, you could possibly just sub her in with a magic ring. And a lot of those story elements could still happen. R: So is your character interchangeable with an inanimate object? K [laughing]: My favorite one, ever, that I promise I’ll stop on this side note - Indiana Jones. R: Mhm. K: - is completely irrelevant to the first movie. If he weren’t there, everything would go exactly the same way. That said, Indiana Jones has agency. R: He is trying. K: He’s trying. He’s not doing the best job, but he’s trying. Um so, you can have a character that maybe if they weren’t there things would progress as normal. My whole point is Indiana Jones, regardless of whether or not he not only shows up, exists, the storyline with Marion and getting the Ark of the Covenant, we still end up with the Nazis opening the Ark of the Covenant on a remote island. R: Just turns out it was a bad idea. [chuckles] K [laughing]: Just turns out you shouldn’t go poking around in these things. R: Yes. And that had more to do with Belloq being his agency to, as he put it, take whatever Indiana Jones had, and possess it himself. K [overlapping]: Yes. R: And then him not being able to resist looking in the Arc. Now, had the Arc made it to Hitler, would Hitler have known how to use it? I mean, he studied all this stuff. It’s very possible that he might’ve put it to more diabolical use, rather than just frying himself as Belloq did. K [overlapping]: Yeah. Yes. Um, you know, in Twilight, the character that has agency there is not Bella, it’s Edward. R [overlapping]: Mhm. K: He’s the one who’s making all the decisions, he’s the one who’s making the choices. He chose to stay and pursue Bella. He chose to let her know that he was a vampire. He chose to eventually make her a vampire. R: Mhm. K: Bella is a thing that all of this is happening to. R: The prize to be won. K: Yeah. Bella’s a very passive character, and there’s points in the story where she does make decisions, but the choices then are even things that are forced upon her. R: Here’s an example of not, apparently, including much agency in your character, and still having an incredibly successful book series. K: And movies. R: So as with all advice- K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: - feel free to break the rules and have a smashing success and good on you. K: There is an exception to every rule to be sure. But, as you kinda said right at the get-go, one of the biggest criticisms of Bella is that she is an empty skin suit for the reader to crawl into and make themselves feel as though they are the star of the story. People who have agency don’t feel like that. It’s part of character development. If Bella were making a lot of choices and decisions and stuff, you’d have readers going “Well that’s not what I’d do, why would she do that, that’s so ridiculous.” And then you distance yourself from that character because you’re establishing them as a fully realized person. R: Right. K: Rather than the empty skin suit slash object. R: Right. Now, Big Lebowski. K [laughing]: Oh God, that’s a good one, okay! Um, God I haven’t watched that movie in forever, I love that movie. R: So he starts out, he gets up, he goes to the grocery store, he gets the ingredients for his White Russian, he drinks half of it there, he goes home. K: “Where is the money Lebowski?” [laughing] R: This has happened to him so far. Somebody mistakes him because he shares a surname with a very rich person, and they walk into this very shabby home and somehow think that they’ve found the right place. Now he isn’t gonna do anything about it. K: Yeah. R: He goes on with his life. He just is kind of sad about it, but his friends convince him - K [overlapping]: Yeah. R: - that he needs to do something about it. K: Except the guy pees on the carpet. And that carpet really tied the room together. R: It really tied the room together! But he is not going to act until he’s convinced by his friends to act. K: This is another thing with agency. It’s okay for characters to be sort of passive and have things happen to them. That’s what starts the story- R [overlapping]: Mhm. K: - going. You don’t, don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of stories out there with someone going “I woke up this morning and decided to do this thing.” R: Mhm. K: Or they start out with a quest, or they come up with something on their own. [overlapping] R [overlapping]: You’re in media res, so you’ve already gotten to the point where they want something. K: Yeah. But typically even if we pick up within that point something had to happen to them a lot of times beforehand, for them to want to go get the magic ring that lets you turn back into a human. R: Yeah and often you find that the character starts off trying to do a thing that isn’t the thing they decide they need to do in the end. I mean that’s kind of part of the whole character arc, is deciding what it is they really want. The Dude really wants a nice comfy life with his White Russians - K: And his bathrobe. [laughing] R: And the rug that ties the room together. K: Yeah. R: So it bothers him enough to complain about it, but not enough to act on it. Then he is cajoled into acting upon it. And he goes and finds himself embroiled in a large plot, where things kind of continue to happen to him. K: With movies you can watch a series of strange events unfold, because there’s the visual component that - often these are comedies. It’s almost slapstick. We’re just watching this person who all he wants is to go bowling with his buddies, sit in his bathrobe, and drink White Russians. And he ends up getting pulled into this bizarre situation. R: Being sent to have a physical ‘cause turns out he’s gonna father a child, and also toes get cut off - K: You want a toe? I’ll get you a toe next week. [laughing] Lebowski is a rather passive character. He doesn’t have a ton of agency. That said, once he gets involved in this he does make decisions even if they’re just ‘I want to get out of this alive.’ R: Yes. And he observes clues and he starts to put things together that probably they expected him not to do. They really thought that he would just kinda take the fall for things, or just go along, get paid, go home, and return to his life. K: Yeah. By the time he gets to the end of the story, his motivation is something between ‘I need to figure this out’ and ‘I’m not letting this random guy who got me tied into all of this get away with it.’ Does the Dude have agency? Sometimes, a little bit, if he can get the energy and motivation together to feel like it, which is by the way very in line with his character. R: Yeah. K: It is very typical with books to start out with characters just living their life. People by nature are passive. But you ever notice that when someone says “I’ve decided to do this thing,” it’s usually an announcement. It’s usually like “I’ve decided to change jobs.” “I’ve decided to buy a house.” “I’ve decided to ask this person to marry me.” It’s a decision you make to take action. Whereas most of our lives are just kind of us living our life, yeah after I’m done here I’m gonna have some soup I made, I’m very excited about that. I’m deciding to have soup. Is that agency? I don’t think so. You know in your day-to-day lives, agency are things that you’re trying to act for your benefit. I’ve decided to buy this house, because I worked very hard and I think this is a good investment and I think I’ll be happy and comfortable here, and this will improve my life a measurable amount that I want it to. R: Mhm. K: When characters act with agency, you know a lot of times they’re in situations that are not normal day-to-day things. There aren’t a lot of books out there about someone’s decision to work really hard, save money, and buy a house. R: Well that’s the first 25% of a book, that 25%, that storyline is gonna go away, or be severely altered. K: That house is haunted as hell. [laughing] R [overlapping]: Mhm. K: For a character to have agency, they have to do three things. They have to be able to act in their environment, which means that if you said a character, let’s say a human being, and you put them on an alien planet where literally everything is made of gas, that character’s not gonna have any agency because they can’t do anything. R: Right. K: But not only is everything made of gas, but the lifeforms that live there physically cannot communicate with the human, or have no interest in doing so. R: Right. K: So that person can’t interact with their environment; they’re not gonna have any agency, they have to just sit there and wait for something to happen. R: Unless the plot of that story is ‘how do I get to the point where I can talk to these aliens?’ There have been many Star Trek episodes like this, where you can’t communicate with the other aliens and the plot is ‘how do we find common ground?’ So, the decision to do so is agency, but the human who says “Well, all these molecules are just too far apart, I guess I’ll just sit here.” K: [laughing] R: That character has no agency. K: So the second thing is a character has to be able to make meaningful decisions. So, in the case of our character sitting on the gas planet, they’ve gotta make the decision of ‘I’m gonna find a way to gather all of this gas and condense it into something solid that I can use to my benefit.’ R: Right. K: They have to have a way to work towards their own benefit. Even if it’s not working towards their own benefit they have to be presented with situations in which they can make a decision. Even if it’s ‘the army’s invading, there’s two sides of this city, we’re only gonna be able to fend them off from one, we have to evacuate the other.’ The character making the decision of ‘okay, we’re gonna evacuate the east end, move everybody into the west end, and here are the reasons that we’re doing this and that’s why it’ll give us a better advantage.’ That’s displaying agency. The third thing is the character’s ability to affect the story. And this is different from making decisions. This is where Indiana Jones fails. R: Right, right. K: Because he doesn’t actually affect the story really. Sure, he’s got some wacky hijinks, he shoots a guy who just wanted to have a nice sword fight - R: Cracks a whip. K: Cracks a whip, somehow hitches a ride on a submarine, you know, things happen. R: If it wasn’t for Sallah he wouldn’t have even made it halfway through the movie. K: Exactly. Is he entertaining? Absolutely. It’s a delight. But he doesn’t do anything that changes the outcome of what’s happening. So, this is different than making a decision. Because a character needs to have an impact on the story. If you erase them from the story and nothing changes, that’s not a good character. R: You have some characters who maybe aren’t the decision makers, but if they’re the person with the special skill, or you know they’re the person with the strength or the fortitude to go ahead with the story that the other character doesn’t have, and you end up with a nice balanced team-up of brains and brawn. Obviously if you take the brawn out of that story, it is going to affect the story. Now, take Indiana Jones out, and you definitely have a very different movie. K: Absolutely, yes. R: Sometimes the character is required for the tone. K: Like a swashbuckling adventurer. R: Think of Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China. K: Okay. R: He’s not actually the hero of the movie. At one point a big fight scene starts, and he shoots his gun in the air and ends up knocking himself out when the ceiling falls on him. And for the greater portion of this fight scene he is prone on the ground. He’s almost like the story’s style, but he’s not the story’s main active character. K: Yeah. R: You know there’s parts where yes, they need him because he’s tough and he can fight, but so can the other characters. There’s a lot of characters doing a lot of stuff in that movie, and Jack Burton - you would notice, if you saw it and they removed him and then you watched it again, you would definitely notice his absence. But does his absence change the story? Would his friend have not gone to rescue his girlfriend? He definitely would have. And he definitely would’ve done it without Jack, but he talked Jack into helping. It’s interesting how many stories we enjoy end up with characters who draw a lot of attention to themselves, like Indiana Jones, like Jack Burton, without actually making a huge difference in the plot of the film. Or, I’m saying film ‘cause we like to use movies as shortcuts. But um - K: [laughing] R: How does this work in a book? Let’s go back to our favorite, Gideon the Ninth. Gideon kinda doesn’t have a clue what’s going on! K: Gideon is a little bit of a passive character. R: Yeah! But it’s delightful [laughing], just like Indiana Jones and Jack Burton. K: She gets dragged along on this adventure, which we find out is basically one giant series of death traps. She doesn’t know why she’s there. She’s there to serve as a lens of the story for the reader, because the other main character that we’re introduced to here is of course Harrowhark. R: Harrowhark has a lot of agency, and it’s all off the page. K: Because Harrowhark can’t be bothered to tell anybody about it. And, if she did, if she was the point-of-view character in that first book, we would have no idea what was happening. We need all of this to be told to us through the lens of Gideon, who is more like us than, like, Harrowhark. R: Yeah. Right. K: Of course by the end of the book you know this changes; we’ve learned some things, we’ve solved some mysteries. But Gideon is sort of a passive observer. Yes, she’s poking around, she’s talking to people, she’s gathering information, but really she can’t do anything with it until Harrow tells her what’s going on. R: And she’s only there because Harrow has made her promise to go along on this venture and then she’ll get the thing she wanted in the beginning, which she was pretty close to succeeding except Harrow was the obstacle. So Harrow said, “Do this thing with me, and then I’ll give you what you want.” And so Gideon goes along specifically for that purpose, and how much more passive can you be than just being like ‘if I just tap my foot throughout this book, I’ll get to the thing I want.’ K: Yeah. She literally just wants me to sit in a room and do nothing. R: Harrowhark has even said “do not speak to anyone.” K: Yeah. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t do anything, stay in this room, be here when I get back. R: So of course, the plot happens because Gideon’s like uhh you don’t tell me what to do. K [laughing]: Yeah it’s not agency so much as annoyance. R: Two people who can’t stand each other so why would one do what the other one wants. K: Yeah. Exactly. R: That is kind of the plot of Gideon the Ninth, but in the most delightful way that I just made sound as flat as possible. K: You’re right, because Gideon serves the purpose of one: as I said providing the reader with context and perspective, but two: also, she’s awesome! R: Yeah. K: And we like watching her swing this giant sword around, and be muscle-y - R [overlapping]: Yeah, flex for the other people in the book. K [overlapping]: Yeah. R: And also like look at people and go “There’s something wrong with you” [laughing], you know? K: Yes. Yes. Um, be the perspective of ‘This is all really weird, how am I the only person who sees that this is all really weird?’ R: Mhm. K: So. Um, yeah, so that’s a good example of characters who are passive but are compelling. So if you’re thinking to yourself ‘well, if that’s a thing that’s allowed, why do I need to strengthen my character’s agency?’ Because it depends on the story you’re telling. And it depends on what you’re trying to do here. If you have a character who is supposed to be your main character, your protagonist, they’re supposed to be leading the charge, and what they’re doing is they’re tripping from event to happening back to other event, just sort of letting stuff happen to them rather than doing things themselves, that can get really boring to read.  K: The second and third book in the Ember in the Ashes series, there’s a character in there named Helene. And - I won’t ruin too much for anybody who hasn’t read these, and full disclosure I’m still finishing the fourth one - in the second and third books especially, Helene is running around putting out fires. She is desperately trying to manage an unmanageable situation. At the same time though, she’s trying to figure out ‘how do I solve this bigger problem that I’m trying to face? How do I mitigate these circumstances?’ I was so excited whenever it was one of her chapters, because that was the thing that I thought was most interesting, was watching her just get things heaped on her. Every time she turns around something else bad is happening, that is just one more thing she’s gotta deal with. So was she displaying agency? In the second book I would say not as much, by the third book we’re certainly getting there. But, it’s still compelling because the way she is acting on her own behalf is not necessarily for herself maybe, but for other people. R: Okay. K: Watching someone deal with and try to mitigate overwhelming circumstances, I would say, is a form of agency. Even if they are just running around putting out fires. R: Trying to survive - K [overlapping]: Yes. R: - this moment, as opposed to having a plan for the next two weeks to six months - K [overlapping]: Yeah. R: - toppling the empire, etc. It’s okay if they’re just trying to get back to normal. K: Yes. Or, just trying in the case of Helene, just trying to make sure her family’s safe. Let’s start there. That’s small step number one, I’ve gotta work on that. Okay small step number two, now I’ve got a deal with the residents of this city. Now I’ve gotta figure out how I’m gonna deal with this other maniac, and there’s all of these forces and factors that she can’t really do much about. But she can make decisions. R: Right, so in an earthquake, a character obviously isn’t going to defeat the earthquake. K: I defeated an earthquake last week, Rekka, I don’t know what you’re talking about. [laughing] R: Okay. In a typhoon, Kaelyn’s not gonna go punch a typhoon. K: No no, earthquakes are far more punchable than typhoons. R: Right. So you can trust that Kaelyn’s gonna go check on friends and family, uh, Kaelyn’s going to act in ways that clearly are important and have great meaning to her personally, even if they’re not going to fix the fact that there’s a typhoon, or the fact that you know FEMA’s gonna have to come in and that sort of thing. So what about characters with examples of great agency? Like the Quest plot. Is that agency or is that ‘this wizard told me I need to go do this thing’? K: Well okay so I will, we can talk about the Quest plot and then I’ll give you what I think is a good example of someone who has agency and, I’m going to put them into the same story, which I know we’ve been talking about this series a lot, Shadow and Bone and the Six of Crows. For those who haven’t read or watched it, hopefully you know that one is a trilogy, the other is a duology, they’re separate storylines but the Netflix series collapsed them both into one. R: So go read the books anyway, because Netflix made some choices. K: So the first trilogy Shadow and Bone, Alina Starkov is a very, a little bit of, especially for the first book, a passive character. You know she discovers she has this power, and she is tasked with solving this big problem because she has this power. She does start to display agency in the story but if things had just progressed along that sort of Quest storyline - you could argue that it even does a little bit because ultimately there is a problem that she is the only one that can solve. R: Mhm. K: So, is that agency? Well, the way she goes about handling it in the story, breaking away from the wizard character and trying to decide to do this her own way is certainly displaying agency. R: Right. K: Conversely, in the Six of Crows, we have the character Kaz, who is sort of your underworld rogue-type but not in a charming way. I would actually say he’s quite the opposite of charming. He’s very stoic, very serious, very no-nonsense. But Kaz makes a lot of decisions to try to accomplish goals and to better the lives of him and his friends. There’s some revenge scenarios here, but in the revenge scenarios it’s reclaiming things that were taken from him. R: Right. K: There’s friends to liberate, there’s people to try to help and better their lives, there’s people they encounter along the way that get into bad situations. He is a character with a lot of strong agency. Even before we meet him, we can see everything he’s done, everything he’s worked towards to build himself up to a point where one day he can maybe do this one thing he’s trying to get to. I would say he’s a great example of somebody with a lot of agency. R: Right from the start. K: Yeah. R: So he’s got a plan, and this plan is the focus of the story. K: Yes. Of course, wrenches get thrown into it, because - R: Just in terms of Luke Skywalker just wants to escape the farm life, that’s his desire at the start. But what he ends -- I mean he does get that, but it turns into a much bigger story. K: Katniss Everdeen from Hunger Games. Does she have agency? She is mostly reactive. She only volunteers because her sister got picked as tribute. R: But she’s volunteering to protect her family, which you might say is proactive decision. K: At the same time though, if Katniss had not volunteered, would any of the subsequent events in the story have happened? No. Her decisions are impacting the story. That said, she is very manipulated a lot through this entire story. R [overlapping]: Oh yeah. And I think that’s just the way that as a character, we express that just ‘cause you’re a hero doesn’t mean you can’t be fooled, you can’t be misguided, you can’t be manipulated as you said. I thought that was incredibly different from anything I’d read of an adventurer-hero story, because you realize a hero doesn’t always make the right decisions. K: Yeah. I have a lot of mixed feelings about that book series as we’ve discussed in this - R: I’m not saying I’m happy with the way it ended, but that definitely opened my eyes, and I think influenced me. As a result, my characters definitely made decisions that they thought were sound, or they thought were motivated correctly, or were the right thing to do or whatever, that end up making more of a mess. K: Yeah. Now that said, with Katniss one of the things I will say bothered me a lot in this, and this is I think a product of trying to shoehorn motivations into areas where it doesn’t already exist, Katniss is -- there’s a scene, it’s much more pronounced in the movie but it is in the book -- where they’re at District 13. And they’re all sitting in this bunker and it’s ‘let’s talk about a time Katniss has inspired you, she’s this symbol. She is the Mockingjay.’ I don’t know if this was on purpose, I don’t know if this was the intent, but I couldn’t come up with a better way to just be like this character is almost inconsequential to what they’re doing. They just need her to stand heroically in front of people. I really think that a 16-17 year old girl was probably not the sole motivation for overthrowing an entire super-oppressive government, but. [laughing] R: Again, I am not going to jump in front of a train for this book series - K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: But I could see the development of a character who stands up to the government on TV that the government requires everybody to watch. K: Yes. R: Like this is a program that the government is putting in front of people’s faces because they want people to know that people will pay for their past transgressions, until they deem that they’re done. And Katniss says, “No. It’s not gonna be one survivor, I’m not going to kill the person that I grew up with because I need to survive; we’re both going to survive” and that turns into a big moment- K [overlapping]: Yes, it did. R: Also she honors the person from the other district with whom she’s supposed to be competing, but they all see her treat Rue like a human being, which is not something that you get from this government. K: There’s these tiny acts of rebellion. But I would say that it’s all undone by the fact that she doesn’t actually want any part of this. She wants to go back to her life and be done. Now that’s, I would argue, not agency, because what she’s having to deal with is the fallout of decisions that she made for survival, rather than because she wanted to make a statement. R: No I understand that, but I’m saying again with the hero doesn’t always make the right decisions, also, person who makes a couple decisions where other people can see them suddenly find themself turned into this bigger than life character - K [overlapping]: Yup. R: I felt like that was part of the character arc, coming to terms with being this person everybody now expected her to be, and sometimes needed her to be, in order for them to go on. K: I found book Katniss a very grating character, I didn’t - R: You are not the only one, I have heard this plenty of times. K: I didn’t like her much but one thing I appreciated about her was how much she just wanted to be left alone. [laughing] R: Yeah! I mean, we can all relate to that. K [laughing]: We can all relate to that. It’s just like, I get it. I don’t really like you that much but I totally get it. She’s capable, as you said, she’s a fast thinker, but she’s not a leader. In fact in the second book they have a whole plot going on behind the scenes that she doesn’t know about until the very end, because everybody looked at her and went ‘I don’t think she’s gonna be helpful here.’ [laughing] R: Yeah. K: We would be better off just doing this on our own. R: Yeah. K: And I really appreciate the writer’s acknowledgment of that. [laughing] But again, in the second book she is reverted back to a very passive role, this stuff is just happening to her. Even more so than in the first one. R: And then it continues in the third book, where they take her on this SWAT team adventure, and she’s just like ‘what the fuck’s going on?’ K: Yeah ‘cause they’re gonna go shoot all of this war footage of her. But then, she does make the decision ‘I’m going with this because I wanna get us into the Capitol, so that I can go kill the president.’ R: Right, right. K: So there we do have Katniss with agency, with a plan. R: Mhm. K: How important do you think plans are to characters having agency? R: This is a really good question. We’ve just described a lot of main characters who don’t really have a plan. K: No, no. R: And who are all highly successful IPs. Sometimes I think figuring out the plan can be the character’s arc. They know they want something. They try and fail and try and fail, and it’s because they don’t know how to go about it, or there’s something that they need to let go of or gain in order to figure out the best way. You know like a heist movie. K: I swear I was just thinking of a heist movie. [laughing] R: The plan is happening all along. K: Yeah. R: And it’s the reader watching it, and being misled about things going wrong that it turns out were part of the plan anyway because there’s always that aspect of the heist that you don’t hear about ‘til the end, and you get to watch it again and go ‘Oh now I see!’ K: ‘Yeah that guy was in the background the whole time.’ R: Yeah so obviously in that case the plan is not the plot. The reveal is the plot. The red herrings are the adventure, I don’t know. Sometimes a character figuring out what they want is the plot. K: Mhm. R: The idea I think is that the character starts with a sense of the way things are right now are not good. K: I think there’s a lot of this in anime. I’m thinking of Inuyasha right now, did you watch that? R: No. You’re gonna have to talk Sailor Moon if you’re gonna keep me on your level. K: Okay, let’s talk Sailor Moon. Let’s talk the original anime run, where they really fleshed out a lot of the episodes, and remember at one point they’re trying to track down the seven rainbow crystals. You know Sailor Moon becomes Sailor Moon not by choice, she just is. R [overlapping]: Yup. K: And she’s got a talking cat that tells her to fight demons. R: And yells at her for not doing her homework. K: And at the same time, she’s not only gotta find these other sailor scouts, and identify them and get them to accept their fates and roles but because this is anime everyone’s like ‘Ah yes! This is what I was meant for the whole time!’ In the first season of the anime they’re tracking down these seven rainbow crystals. So they don’t necessarily know why they’re tracking them, and at one point Tuxedo Mask has one and they’re like that’s fine, he can just hang on to it. R: [laughing] K: They’re just like well we don’t want the bad guys to get these. We don’t know why. But then we find out, oh no wait, it turns out we actually need all of them. R [overlapping]: Yeah. K: Why? Well

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Links for this episode: Worldbuilding for Masochists Podcast Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. Rekka: She was tuuckered out yesterday. I was tuckered out yesterday. [laughing] The trainer had us running around a field and it was the first time I had done any real, like, quick movements, certainly out in the sun on an 80 degree day, when I had forgotten water for both me and Evie, and the trainer only said “oh I have some in the car,” she only gave it to Evie, she didn’t give me any. But she’s like “jump around! Be active! Be real animated!” And I’m like ohh my goodness, do you not realize, that this is me animated.   [both laughing]   Rekka: So I was like, how about I lay down and pretend to be a dead squirrel, dogs love dead squirrels. [laughing]   Kaelyn: [laughing] Aww.   R: So we were all tired yesterday. So today, we are talking about worldbuilding.   K: We are.   R: We are. We are talking about mostly not overdoing your worldbuilding.   K: And because it’s me, we’re certainly going to be talking about some of the elements of worldbuilding as well. Worldbuilding is the process of creating, constructing, and coming up with the rules for an imaginary world, or sometimes an entire fictional universe. There’s a lot of elements that go into this - interesting fact that I found while doing some research for this: the first time “worldbuilding” was used was actually in 1820.   R: The term, or..?   K: The term “worldbuilding” was first used in 1820 in the Edinburgh Review.   R: Okay.    K: Fiction has existed in one form or another all through the course of humanity, obviously, you know, as we got into more recent centuries, literature became a little more organized? I guess? For lack of a better term.   R: So that’s the first time it appeared in print as far as we know, in English, and presumably someone would have said it aloud and said “hey that sounds pretty good.” K: Yeah, you know what, I have to - I’ll try to dig up the article because I am curious but, the Edinburgh Review was, of course, just reviewing published stories and literature and reviews of different things. So the term really gained a lot of traction in the early 1900s when we saw a lot of science fiction and fantasy writing. A really good example, actually of thorough worldbuilding based off of existing history, would probably be Huxley’s Brave New World, and I think that was 1932, I believe.    K: Regardless of where your story is set, what time it’s set, how much you’re using and building off existing human history, or if this takes place in a galaxy far, far away, there’s certain elements you have to have in worldbuilding. One of the good places to start is geography. If it’s Earth: you’re done. No problem. [laughing] You have established that the world is Earth.   R: But do you? Do you even say [laughing] that you are writing a story on Earth, if you are on Earth?    K: You name a place that the reader would presumably have context for. If, you know, the story is set in Delhi, India then yes we’re on Earth. Tokyo, places we’ve heard of.   R: So in fair Verona, on planet Earth where we lay our scene.   K [laughing]: On planet Earth, yes, Shakespeare did always make sure to specify that.   R: That’s what I was kinda saying is that -   K: Yeah.   R: - because of context, because of cultural understanding, some books, current for the audience they were intended for, are going to need less explanation of the setting than others.   K: Yeah, now the other component of geography then, especially if you’re writing a fantasy or a science fiction story, there’s probably some hidden world elements in there. It may not be a hidden world story, but there’s probably some things that regular people don’t see, or some locations that you have to create. So that’s part of establishing your geography.   R: Hidden or invented?   K: Well, invented and hidden.   R: I’m just making you define your definitions.   K [laughing]: Okay.   R: When you say hidden, do you mean literally, like underground caverns? Or do you just -   K: Could be! R: - mean secret societies -   K: It could be any of those. For secret society, we’d be talking about the place that the secret society meets. In some cases, this could be established places that you’re repurposing for your story, but you still need to establish the geography of what these are and where these are.   R: The Mall of America.   K: Exactly.   R: Where my cabal meets every Sunday.   K: Wait, that’s where I’m hiding my Deathstar.   R: It’s a big mall.   K: It is a big mall. Yeah.   R [overlapping]: You could do both things.   K: So [laughing] geography is just a good way to get yourself grounded of where things are especially in relation to each other and that’s very important if your story is set on the road. Because otherwise we start ending up with some Game of Thrones style jetpack -   R: You mean like fast travel? [laughing]   K: Yeah, there were some characters that the running joke was like, for them to have gotten from place A to place B in that amount of time they must have some secret Game of Thrones jetpack that they’re [laughing] doing this with.   R: Well, then you need fossil fuels.   K: Yeah, or dragons.   R: This really - well, yeah, how about you just hop on a dragon! Turns out, everybody was riding dragons in these books -   K [laughing]: Yeah.   R: - it’s just that some people made a bigger fuss about it than others.   K: [laughing]   R: We all ride dragons! All the time! You’re not that cool.   K: So geography is a good way to get your story grounded, so to speak. Now if you’re building one from the ground up—a world, that is—you may not know exactly where everything is when you start writing, and that’s okay. But having a rough idea is very helpful, especially - as I said - if your characters are going to be traveling from place to place because knowing how long it should take them to get from place to place is critical to the story.   R: Yeah, I was just gonna say this is a very story critical element, not just -   K: Yeah.   R: - the setting, some stories could happen almost anywhere, and the setting is not 100% ingrained in the story.    K: Yes, and geography then also plays into one of the other major elements of worldbuilding, which is culture. So where your characters live and what their setting and environment looks like, is really going to affect what type of people they are. But if you have an entire village set on a rocky island in a stormy area in the middle of nowhere isolated from the rest of the people of this kingdom, and those people aren’t good with boats, that’s probably a problem.   [Both laughing]   R: Well, it depends how rough the water is, maybe the water is an actual obstacle.   K: Well, see? And there you go.   R: [laughing]   K: Because the geography there comes into play, because maybe this is an isolated group that never gets off this island because the water is too rough.   R: Maybe the water’s frozen!   K: Maybe the water’s frozen!   R: [giggles]   K: This is going to feed into their culture and what these people are like. This isn’t just culture based on their surroundings though, you have to establish everything about culture which is: their past, their current social structure, religious elements, what do they eat, what do people do there for a living, are they part of a greater entity and if so, what is their contribution to this greater entity.   R: I feel like now would be a good time to make a nod to the podcast Worldbuilding for Masochists.   K: Yes! Yes. [laughing]   R: Which, if you haven’t heard it, goes episode by episode just taking one aspect, and for a while there the hosts were actually building a world with no intention of writing for it, just literally like “okay what’s another thing to consider about this world?” and each host was handling a certain element or a certain region and it’s good evidence of how you can worldbuild and never ever ever get to your story. Because as Kaelyn’s outlining, there’s a lot to go into a finely detailed world for your narrative story, so this way trouble lies -   K: [laughing]   R: - if you are on deadline, for example. [laughing]   K: And there’s a good example of this: Tolkien.   R: Mhm.   K: Tolkien wrote a lot of his books because he was a linguist and he came up with all of these languages and then created history around the languages - because languages are intrinsically linked to history - and then developed this very rich, millenia-long history of Middle Earth, and then he wrote a story set well after he’d actually established all of these things. So he spent a lot of time creating a world and this history to not tell stories that were necessarily set in that, but to tell stories that were a product of everything that he had created.    R: But for this later world that he writes his setting into, the history he created is their history and you can tell.   K [overlapping]: It’s very important to the story as well, yes. If you’ve ever read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you will know that there is an exhaustive amount of time spent with characters having conversations in different languages, and that’s because this is what Tolkien was all about.   R: That's what he really wanted to write. [chuckles]   K: Yeah, he was very into creating languages. And that, by the way, is why people can learn Elvish, because it’s an actual language with an alphabet - so to speak, if you want to call it that - grammatical rules, syntax, all of the things that need to be there to create a language.   K: But anyway, so culture elements are important because, especially if you are creating a brand new world, if you’re fabricating or you’re building from nothing, you have to have a world that these people live in. You can’t just take a group of people, plop them down, and say: “and then one day a dragon came!” Because we have no context then for: is this a good thing? are they happy the dragon’s there, or did the dragon come to eat them? Is this a frequent problem, are dragons kind of like rats, do they just pop up every now and then and you’ve gotta deal with it? Do they have methods for this? If the dragon eats all of them, is that the end of the story, or what happens to the dragons? [laughing]   R: Was the dragon prophesied? Have they been anticipating their arrival or -   K: Exactly.   R: - was it a surprise? [laughing] like surprise dragons.   K [laughing]: A surprise dragon! The best kind of dragon.   [both laughing]   K: So, establishing the culture, apart from being good for worldbuilding, helps a writer figure out how characters would react or act based on certain events. Leading in from culture, next I would say is cosmology. And I’m gonna put this in two different perspectives here: the science fiction and the fantasy. For science fiction, you gotta establish what’s up there.   R: [giggles]   K: Stars and planets and who lives on what and how fast can you get to them, what's the gravity like, what’s the air situation like, are they all just the planet Venus which is incredibly toxic, or are they all just Saturn and we don’t really know what they’re made up of? [laughing] For worldbuilding and science fiction, that’s very important especially if your story is set in space. And you still, by the way, can absolutely have science fiction set on Earth, in which case the cosmology is ours. And that’s fine, just establish that. But anytime you’re involving space marines, aliens, wormhole travel, you gotta establish, not just Earth, but everything else that we’re interacting with.   K: So then on the fantasy side, it’s a little bit more metaphysical. This kind of leads into the culture aspect. We need to know you know, on this planet - or setting or town or wherever it is - how do these people think about their place in the universe?   R: Is it the center of the universe? Do they have awareness of other life sustaining planets? Do they understand that there are planets or is it just sparkly things in the sky?   K: Are they the dominant species? Is there another one that’s equivalent to them? But also how do they see themselves in the world? Are they a chosen people of a deity that put them there? Are they the rejected children of an angry god? Did they just accept that they evolved from whatever was swimming around in the primordial ooze and now that’s -    [both laughing]   K: - that’s where they are? A lot of times in fantasy, there’s beings of varying degrees of power and there’s frequently like a hierarchy of these and now, granted, some of them - they may be all the same species and some of them are just more powerful than others.   R: Mhm.   K: But typically when you involve magic there’s an otherworldliness to it; the magic is coming from somewhere, so that’s something that needs to be addressed in the cosmological metaphysical scale, if you will.   R: Okay.   K: So then that bleeds into the fourth one, which is physics.   R: You know what, just throw physics out the window, it’s very optional.   K: Well, ‘cause you gotta decide: are you sticking to real world physics? If so, what are you gonna do when you need to invent things, are you gonna try to apply the rules that we theoretically would apply to these things? Or are you just gonna kind of make up like, “yes and we’ve invented a way to take dark matter and make it into energy.” Don’t do that unless you can really back that up. [laughing]   R: Hey, lots of people try. The other thing is, if you can find out the largest argument against doing that, like if other people have tried it in their books and real world physicists have offered their criticism of the method, then you have a scene where one character says: “how did you solve the such and such quandary?”   K: Yes.   R: And you invent a method, give it a name but do not explain it, and just hand wave the heck out of it.   K: Yeah, so how much are you gonna stick to real world physics, and how much is gonna be magic? And obviously magic tends to dabble more into the fantasy side, but you can still apply physics to this. You still have Newton’s primary laws involved there, you know an object in motion tends to stay in motion, okay so a spell that’s already cast tends to continue to be cast -   [both laughing]   K: Maybe you get a little more into a Fullmetal Alchemist with the equal exchange principal, which by the way, is also rooted in physics: matter cannot be created or destroyed.   R: Right.   K: That, though, ties into cosmology frequently which is: where is the magic coming from?   R: Mhm.   K: All of these things that I’ve talked about here, these are how you are going to establish your “rules” of this world. Be they geography, travel, physics, magic, society and culture - this is how you have to set these up in order to place your characters in a setting that makes sense.   R: Okay. Would you say that concludes the definition?   K: Well I would say those are my four elements that I would highlight.   R: Okay.   K: There’s definitely more, and like, subelements within those but I think those are always a good place to start.   R: Okay. So this episode topic was proposed to us as: how do you create worldbuilding that doesn't trap you in both rules and details? So now that you’ve just told people to invent everything -   K [overlapping]: [laughing]   R: - from the Big Bang to the point of your story, how do you make sure you don't?   K: I’m assuming in this scenario we’re talking about multiple books or short stories set in the same world.   R: Why does it have to be multiple?   K: Because, if you are building a world and worried about trapping yourself, you would be able to write your way out of it if it was one book.   R: You think.   K: I think, yes.   R: My answer to this is don’t put all the details in the book.   K: Yeah, absolutely.   R: Understand your rules and understand your basic principles, but don’t reference them in the book because that does then therefore hold you accountable when you get readers who are so enthusiastic about the world you’ve created that they start to write these things down.   K: Writing yourself into a corner with world building - I’m not saying this to be critical of anyone’s writing style, but this is why planning is important. There are certain things that you kind of just need to know are gonna happen in the story in order to construct the world properly. If you get too far into it, you keep adding too much backstory, too much history of the characters, you’re gonna start to run into situations where - like Rekka was saying - there’s contradictions. When you really start to have problems with writing yourself into a corner is when your stories and characters get large enough that they have to keep expanding, that you’ve gone on and on and on in this world for a while.    K: George R.R. Martin has fans who are sort of archivists for him, that he will send them the books or novellas or even like preview chapters, to check against what he’s already written to make sure he’s not contradicting himself in any way. He let them write The World of Ice and Fire book, that was written by just fans of the series that were documenting all of this stuff, so they worked in conjunction with Martin on this, and even with that, he still - things still slip in those books. The scale and sprawl of the world in A Song of Ice and Fire is gigantic; I would argue it’s the biggest problem in getting these books released now -   R: Mhm.   K: - because you’ve flung all of these characters to such far corners and come up against these problems of how do we get this person to here to interact with this person but then get them back over to where I need them to be at the end of this story.   R: A dragon with a jetpack.   K: Yes. Yes. Oh, so the dragons have jetpacks now?   R: I mean it makes more sense; they’re the fireproof ones.   K: That’s a good point, yeah. So in terms of not writing yourself into a corner. This isn’t maybe the most encouraging answer, but I’m going to say that if your world keeps growing and you have to keep adding history and new characters, it’s going to happen.   R: It’s absolutely going to happen. This is a problem that, on the one hand is frustrating, but on the other hand can be good to have. You end up writing more about your worldbuilding and more about your details than writing out your story.   K: This, again, falls into a lot of early epic fantasy where it felt more like there were characters that we were just watching interact with a world so that we could learn more about the world. And the story itself [giggling] wasn’t as important. There’s definitely a balance, but the thing about worldbuilding - about good worldbuilding - is that once you establish it, your reader shouldn’t need a lot of context for it. They should kind of understand: this is the world that this story and these characters are set in, and be able to apply that to the rest of the book as they’re reading it.   K: I wanna distinguish here between setting and worldbuilding, because worldbuilding is not necessarily describing a specific place -   R [overlapping]: Mhm.   K: - it’s describing all of the places and giving the reader context for them. A setting is “places that the characters are.”   R: Right, but if you are showing off your worldbuilding -   K: Yes.   R: - by describing your setting -   K: They certainly can cross, yes, but they -   R [overlapping]: - how do you stop yourself from doing that? Just get a really good friend to smack your hand and tell you “no you’ve gone too far here?”   K: You mean when you’ve gone too far in the world building and we’re getting into like, an exposition dump?   R: Yeah!   K: Yeah, that’s editorial to be honest with you. That’s something that you revisit in drafts, that’s something that you get feedback on. If you have a really richly built and developed world with history and culture and all of these interesting things that you’ve spent time and effort thinking about, there’s gonna be this inclination to just dump all of it at once, to just do a lot of: “these such and such people lived here, and they had spent a lot of generations at war with this and that people who were allies of the third people.” There’s ways to do this and it’s a skill you have to develop, it takes a certain amount of finessing.   R: Usually, some allow more for it than others.   K: Yeah absolutely, and there’s a lot of clever ways to squeeze this in there, and by the way, this isn’t to say that there’s something wrong with a character giving the reader information - either through an internal monologue or explaining something to someone. There’s all sorts of great articles - and, I would imagine, Youtube videos, subreddits - about worldbuilding tips and tricks. So there are ways of incorporating that into your story without having to give a long, tiresome, and confusing explanation. Dropping a lot of information on the reader, they’re not going to retain that.   R: Mhm.   K: Whenever I’m reading a book where I have to keep track of certain places or groups of people or what different types of magical abilities do and mean, I need to re read that a couple times. When there’s a page that has information on I usually bookmark it so that when later -   R [overlapping]: [laughing]   K: - I see it referenced, I can go back and be like okay, yes, those are the people that control fire, you know? [laughing]   R: Kaelyn doesn’t read with bookmarks, she reads with post it notes. [giggles]   K: I - yes. I do still read physical books and sometimes it is bookmarks and post it notes. [laughing]    R: So that brings to mind the idea of how much a reader has to remember what you write in your exposition. If you’re just describing a setting, can you get away with more than laying out the way things work?   K: My experience tends to be that readers will remember descriptions well, because when they’re reading through something and you’re describing, you know, vast mountains capped with snow and trees stopping at a certain point because of the -   R: So that’s imagery.   K: Yes, because you’re giving them something to picture in their mind. What is kind to do for readers, especially if these are things you’ve made up - let’s pretend in Avatar, waterbenders were called something specific. [laughing] You remind them, Katara was a whatever the word is, she controlled water. There are ways to drop those reminders in there so that readers don’t get frustrated by like “I don’t even know who this person is or where they’re from at this point.”   R: But that is a good point. When you’re naming things -   K [overlapping]: Mhm.   R: - consider being a little bit more explicit in the name than to come up with secondary world terms.   K: Yes but, if you do decide to do that - this is where I’m gonna, not derail us a little bit, but talk about another element in the book that can be helpful here which is maps and glossaries.   R: Mhm.   K: We did a whole episode about maps and why they’re so useful and helpful, one of the great reasons is worldbuilding. It’s really nice to open a book and, assuming you can do it without spoilers, see a map there to give the readers some context of where the world is and what’s going on there. I always, whenever I get a map, I like to take a look at it and look at some of the names of places and get an idea of like “okay so I guess we’re going here eventually, we’re probably going there eventually.”   R: Mhm.   K: Glossaries are good for that too, especially when you have to create a lot of stuff, it’s good for the reader to be able to flip back to one of those terms to go like “oh yes, okay, that’s this kind of magic.”   R: Right, and this is a spot where unfortunately, digital and audio do not help us.   K [overlapping]: No.   R: Like if you’re reading a paperback of something you can flip to these things, you can keep your finger in it as you go through, as opposed to - you can put a post it in it! - whereas it is really difficult on, say, a digital reader. It’s still not as natural an experience -   K [overlapping]: Yeah.   R: - as flipping to either the start or the finish. All of my Peridot books have glossaries in them and I feel bad every time I think of anyone reading it in audio.   [both laughing]   R: Because it’s not there, and while yes you can download the files to pair with the audio, you’re generally doing something while you’re listening to an audiobook.   K: Yeah.   R: But I agree with you about the map. The worldbuilding that you get out of a map is pretty impactful in terms of the distance between things, as you started off saying, like how many jetpack refuels does your dragon need -   K: [laughing]   R: - to get from point a to point b in your story.   K: I’ve also seen a lot of books now, especially where there’s a large caste of characters and certain groups or family units, in the beginning of the book they’ll just have a list of them or maybe a family tree.   R: Speaking of Romeo and Juliet again like you have the dramatis personae -   K: Yes, exactly.   R: - a real quick rundown of how they relate to other characters and stuff, again not helpful in audio. Again, this is front matter back matter -  if you had the clout, you could print a separate book of your world bible.   K: And by the way, if you have a glossary, a map, a dramatis personae in this, that is not an excuse to not do the worldbuilding.   R [overlapping]: Right, that’s what I was gonna come back to was like, okay so you’re sticking it outside the actual story, but I would argue that it’s important to be able to read the story and understand everything without supplemental reading material.   K: Yeah, that should be there either for prestory context - reader, I’m gonna throw a lot of people at you, I know it’s gonna be a little tricky to keep track of it have this helpful guide to who these people are -   R: Mhm.   K: - or it’s just a “hey heads up here’s everyone in here,” but that still means you need to do the actual worldbuilding and do the work in the book.   R: Right. So using a prime example, a recent example is the Gideon the Ninth -   K [overlapping]: Ah, yes, one of our favorites [garbled through laughter]   R: [overlapping]: - The Locked Tomb Trilogy. I would much rather talk about Gideon all day than A Song of Ice and Fire, let’s be real.   K: [laughing]   R: So, it begins with names from each of the houses. Not only that but it sets a little bit of tone  -   K: Yeah.   R: - for each of the houses without saying “these houses are like this.” So it begins with, in order of House appearance: “The Ninth House, keepers of the Locked Tomb, house of the Sewn Tongue, the Black Vestals.” And that in itself is worth like six paragraphs of explanation that -   K: Absolutely.   R: - this is just what goes with that name. And then you have the multiple names of the characters that you’re going to encounter from this House, and no explanation as to what they’re like or anything like that. So you’ve gotten a tone for the setting, the Ninth House, you get that like, the names all sort of have a structure to them, and that’s what you get from that pre reading list. And then you get in and then you get the characterization, just like you would if you were not going to have forty characters dumped on you in the course of this book.   K: Yeah, and by the way, because this author is diabolical, by the time we get to the second book, the dramatis personae in the beginning is doing an extra level of work here because they had to do it without spoiling things. So it’s actually creating this air of mystery - which absolutely contributes to worldbuilding by the way. There’s something weird going on here because there’s some contradictions in this, or some people that you can tell are deliberately left out, and then you have to start wondering why.   R: And Kaelyn was very aware of this -   K [overlapping]: I -   R: - jumped right on those little details after reading it the first time, before the second book was out; the second book came out, Kaelyn read it and was texting me like “I have questions!”    K: [laughing]   R: But yeah in the first book you’re introduced to twenty-eight people in three pages, and their alliances that they’re gonna start the book out with, and then you get to meet them. So a dramatis personae is not all the details, it’s not the hair color, it’s not attitude, it’s not history, it’s just “here are the names so you can keep them straight, who was that again, okay that was this person” and maybe then you remember that they had a pinched little mouth.   K: There’s a [laughing] a lot of ways to do this, it just depends the amount of effort and detail you wanna put into it.   R: And some genre expectations too.   K [overlapping]: And some genre expectations, to be sure, absolutely.   R: Always.   K: This can get as straightforward as set in Denver in the present day, and it's primarily just regular human beings and -   R: At a grocery store.   K: At a grocery store, yeah. You still need to establish that so you’re still building your world there -   R: Mhm.   K: - or you can take this as far as something like -   R: New Denver Colony!   K [laughing]: Yeah, exactly, something like Lord of the Rings or Star Trek where there’s just layers and layers of history and characters and different races and species and it’s so expansive that you can just keep adding and adding to it. So what’s the right way to make sure you don’t write yourself into a corner? Well the thing is, if you’re gonna keep developing your worldbuilding, you’re going to [write yourself into a corner] eventually.   R: Yeah. The fun part of being a writer is figuring out how to get yourself out of that corner without being able to change the stuff that’s already been published. I’ve done it! [giggles]   K: Yeah! Leaving yourself some backdoors, if you will, is not a bad idea.   R: Although that requires that you -   K: Plan them.   R: - predict a little bit of the trouble you might run into.   K: Which is a very possible thing to do.   R: If you have a magic system that has a bunch of rules, you could always say “but then there’s Chaos Magic.” And then Chaos Magic can just be a little bit of the antirule that you need later on.   K: Yeah, making something forbidden or the lost art, something that no one has access to, just to have in your back pocket -   R: But just know your readers are gonna wanna hear about it.   K: Yes, absolutely.   R: You might have to write a novella outside your main storyline just to satisfy some readers about that lost locked tomb art of chaos magic.   K [overlapping]: Yeah, Chekov’s Chaos Magic. But again, Rekka’s right then, if you bring something like that up and you’re like yeah, well, that’s forbidden, nobody practices that anymore, you don't have to say, but you have to indicate why. Was it because they destroyed the world, was it because whoever used it died horribly -   R: [giggles]   K: - was it because they just forgot how to do it? There’s historical instances of that, Greek fire is a real thing that existed that we lost the recipe for and nobody can make. There’s theories as to what it was but [laughing] no one can recreate it.   R: And maybe we should leave it that way.    K: Yeah probably but -   R: But what kind of book would it be if we did?   K [laughing]: Exactly.   R: And that’s the other part of it, it’s not just making it explained ‘cause you don’t wanna be like “there’s this forbidden art which we don’t do ‘cause it killed people,” like okay yeah fine, but that forbidden art is gonna be in this book. You say forbidden as a storyteller and I expect somebody to crack that nut.   K: Yeah, the readers will start salivating at that point.   R: Mhm.   K: I’ve read books where there were things that were mentioned that never were discussed again and it's infuriating.    R: Yeah, what happened to the fireworks factory?   K [laughing]: Yeah that’s exactly -   R: That’s a Simpsons reference, yeah.   K: Got too close to the Greek fire.   [both laughing]   R: Yeah, well, there ya go.   K: So how to not write yourself into a corner, the best advice I can give is try to leave yourself a backdoor. And this means that you have done a really good job of worldbuilding, because as Rekka said, you’re anticipating where you could run into problems. And that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go down that road, it just means that you also need to have another road that you can diverge onto -   R: [laughing]   K: - in order to circumvent this problem and come up behind it, attack it, defeat it, be victorious over your own book.   R: I mean that’s the goal every time.   K: Yeah. Yeah, you really are just sort of in the act of defeating something.   R: Take your project and beat it into submission.   [both laughing]   R: That’s actually writing.   K: [laughing] Will be defeated into the ground.   R: Hey, I am learning right now with puppy training that what you wanna do is be more interesting than the problem -   K: Yep.   R: - so that you can distract and be fun, and reward. So I feel like that’s a good way to - can we apply that to writing, can we just distract the reader from the flaws -   K: No.   R: - in our logic, and the rules -   K: Nope.   R: - that we backed ourselves into?   K: Nope. [laughing]   R: But it works - what if there are liver treats?   K: [laughing] I don’t want any of those.   R [overlapping]: Squeak toys?   K [laughing]: Okay, I’ll take a squeaky toy.   R [laughing]: Okay.   K: But you know, the thing is Rekka, eventually I’m gonna chew the squeaky toy apart and then I’m gonna be like hey, wait, hang on, you promised me forbidden chaos magic.   R: Well, too bad, I have to take you to the vet because you swallowed the valve and now we have to have [laughing] your stomach operated on.   K: [laughing] Yeah, so you can keep trying to distract the reader but eventually you’re gonna have to answer for these

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. Kaelyn: Did you get your second shot yet?   Rekka: We get it on Saturday.   K [mumbling]: Okay.   R: ‘Cause cool people get the vaccination.   K: You hear that kids? Be cool, get vaccinated.   R: Be Extremely cool. Be cool like me. [laughing] I don't know if that’s selling it but-   K: [laughing]    R: -that’s what i’m gonna go with.   K: I get mine May second. I got the moderna one so I had to wait four weeks and -   R: Mhm. Yeah, I get two weeks between mine [loudly] it depends on your publisher.   K: [laughing]    K: Speaking of things that come in part two-   R: Yep, speaking of duologies-   K: The covid duology, oh there we go.   R [overlapping]: Yes, well the vaccine duology, not the covid itself-   K [overlapping]: Yeah.   R: Because you don't wanna get covid and then long covid, that’s one duology. The duology I’m all about is the mRNA duology, let’s do that one.   K: We’ve got shots part two coming up here.   R: Mhm.   K: And you know, in many ways the vaccine is kind of similar to a duology. The first one’s the build up, the first one’s to get you a little bit of a taste there, get your immune system going like “hey, what is this? What's going on? What's happening?” and then the second one, that’s BAM, you know? like-   R: That’s when it all happens   K: - fully immune. Yeah and that’s [laughing] that’s why everyone’s getting sick from the second one.   R: Ugh yeah, I don’t think this metaphor’s gonna last us too much longer. But, we are talking today about duologies.   K: As promised.   R: Yes, we are following through on the promise, the commitment we made, to follow last episode’s trilogy discussion with a discussion of duologies, and why they are harder than the thing we made sound really hard.   K: Yeah, so. You know, last episode we talked about trilogies, and how trilogies can be really challenging, and one of the things we touched on was: if you’re really having a hard time with this, maybe you don’t have a trilogy. Maybe you have a duology. So, a duology, obviously, is a series of two books rather than a trilogy being three, although quadrilogies are becoming a thing now. Four books is getting super common. So, just to clarify some things here. If you’re going “I did not hear the word duology ever, until about a year ago, or so,” you’re right, you didn’t. [laughing] This wasn’t really a very common thing.    R: This wasn’t a thing, there was a book and a sequel but there wasn't a thing called a duology.   K: Yeah and by the way, let’s clarify this real quickly here, the difference between a book and a sequel, and a duology. A duology is a story split up into two books. A book and a sequel is, presumably, one complete story and then another complete story.   R: In the same world, usually featuring the same characters, spun off somehow.   K: Yes.   K: Contractual finite book series are kind of a relatively recent thing. You know, for those of you who have been reading science fiction and fantasy for a long time - especially, you know, when it first started, you know, the trade paperbacks and the pulp and everything was really popular - will know that series, especially genre series - and not just science fiction and fantasy: mystery, murder, thrillers, spy novels, war novels -   R: Mhm.   K: - they tended to go on infinitely. Each book would be a standalone story, sometimes encompassing a bigger arc. Fantasy, this was very common, I mean, look at the Wheel of Time -   R: You could start a series, see success, and the publisher would just keep printing it because they felt like they were printing money.   K: Yeah, and a lot of times what they would do is: you’d get a book published, and you’d establish a, typically a main character or a world, or - maybe something like an overarching story plot -   R : or a concept at least. K: Yeah, in fantasy that was a lot more common in this sort of epic quest that was just gonna keep going and going. Lord of the Rings is actually kind of unique, in that it was a specific trilogy published at that time. That wasn’t very common.   R: Right.   K: You know, these epic fantasies tended to just, they just kept writing and writing, and that's why so many of them have such complicated character family histories, a lot of world building, a lot of different races and imagined and created history in them. But anyway. Then you have some of these other series that, each book was its own individual story, and they just keep going.   R: Mhm.   K: That is not a trilogy or even a duology, even if it ended up being only two books. Trilogies and duologies have an overarching story that it’s gonna take three, two, four, however many books to tell. But with a duology - there’s a reason there aren’t a lot of these: they’re really hard to write. A lot of times when you have a duology on your hands, you’re deciding either: do I have a standalone, single book, or do I have a duology, OR, do I have this whole trilogy, or do I have a duology.   R: How much of this ends up being up to the author, and how much of it ends up being a way to market the story? Like, trilogy in general, I would imagine that an author comes in thinking: okay, I have this story and then I can see where it’s going from there and I can wrap it up in three, versus I have this story, is it too big for a book?   K: You kind of hit on something interesting there and something we talked about in the trilogies episodes, is: I have this story, is it three books? Remember what we said in the trilogies episodes, a lot of them - a lot of contracts are: “we’re buying the first book of your trilogy, and then the next two are contingent on sales.”    R: Mhm.   K: So the first book, typically, is somewhat a self contained story. It’s enticing you to the second and third books, but if that’s it, it's a satisfactory ending.   R: Mhm.   K: That does not happen with a duology. Duology -   R: You will not have a satisfying ending, got it. [giggles]   K: You are not gonna have a satisfying ending in the middle of a duology. There is an appeal in marketing for duologyies. Some people don’t want to commit years to waiting for the next book to come out. They just want two books to be done and come out and, by the way, that tends to happen with duologies. Because it’s one big story, you probably get it out faster. Duologies, when someone sits down to write them, you tend to write the entire thing, or at least do really good draft work on the entire story, because at some point you gotta decide where to stop the first book.    R: Can’t you just, like, divide the page number in half?   K: What I would do usually is drop it on the floor, pick up one page, and that was the end of the first book. [pause] Sometimes it was the fifth page into the book, it was really awkward. [laughing] but you know-   R [overlapping]: I was gonna say like, if I just picked up a stack of papers of a printed manuscript and dropped it on the floor, I think the cover page would be the first one I pick up.   K: Well, you have to throw it down the stairs so that it gets a nice -   R: Oh, you have to be specific about your method -   K: Yeah, yeah I’m sorry, you’re right.   R: - we’re supposed to be providing usable advice.   K: Stand at the top of the stairs, face backwards with the stair behind you. You take the unbound pages, throw them over your head, walk halfway down the stairs and pick up a page from the middle stair. And then that’s the end of the first book.   R: What if nothing settles on the middle stair?   K: You gotta get all the pages and do it again.   [both laughing]   R: But you have to put them back in order first- K [laughing]: Yeah, exactly.   R: - because otherwise it’s not authentic. Okay but joking aside, I think you were about to give us very good advice on how you do choose that moment.   K: Okay so, this goes to why duologies are so difficult to write because stories, traditionally, have a beginning, middle, and end. Anything that you’re telling somebody, be it what you ordered for lunch, or your epic road trip doing the Cannonball Run, is going to have a beginning, middle, and end. Granted, in one of them you end up in Los Angeles, exhausted and smelling funny, and in the other, maybe you have a disappointing sandwich from Subway.   K: But there is - so, in a duology, you’re not breaking this up into three pieces, you're taking something that is three segments and doing it in two. This is why they’re hard to write, because  where does the “middle” of the story go? There’s some different schools of thought on this. One of the less popular, if you will, is that the first book of a duology is actually setting up the main story of the second. I don’t buy this. [chuckles] I don’t go along with that because -   R: Yeah, ‘cause that’s what you were sort of saying the trilogy does.   K: Exactly, yes. But also because it’s only two books, you've gotta get going here a little bit. You can’t make the reader think that they just read however many hundred pages of world building. The middle of a duology, in my estimation, should be at the of the first book. This is where everything should really pick up, and the plot and the stakes should be clear. If you finish the first book in a duology and do not have clear, compelling stakes, motivation, and reasoning behind the characters and what they were doing, that’s probably not a good place to end the duology. And if you’re going “well I don't get to that until this point,” maybe you don’t have a duology. Maybe you have a single book and it’s really long and you’ve gotta trim some stuff down.   R [laughing]: I thought you were gonna say “maybe you have a trilogy” and I was like wait a minute!   K [laughing]: No, no.   R: I feel like I’m stuck in an infinite loop!   K: No, but at that point, you may have a single book. And this is hard to - it’s hard to make that distinction of: “Is this a standalone single book or is this a duology?” So, what might make something a duology, why might you want to write a duology rather than a single book?   R: This is sort of what you're describing to me is that I’ve got like a 225,000 word story -   K: Mhm.   R: - and there are, as you described, as a failpoint in choosing where to split them, that there’s a lot of world building.   K: Yes.   R: So what you seem to be describing to me is a book where the author really takes their time developing a world and developing concepts and digging deep into whatever the story elements are.   K: Yes, nailed it.   R: So where I break that is, I assume, where a smaller plot point that maybe had some big stakes is resolved but the overall story is not resolved.   K: I’ll give you the opposite of that, what about a point at which it’s escalated?   R: Well, of course by solving a thing, you’ve fucked up and made it worse.   K: [laughing]   K: Of course, of course.   R: Of course, so that’s - that’s the solve point, is that you didn't solve anything by completing the action you thought was going to solve things. K: Yeah, so duologies have this weird balancing act where you can't backload the end of the first book and you can't front load the beginning of the second. The way these kind of work, and you have to remember that coming at this from the perspective of a reader, there are absolutely very successful books that the next in a series picks up and it’s just chaos and you get thrown right back into it. But frequently you've gotta build the story up again, you’ve gotta ease the reader back into what was going on, remind them of what was happening here, and then, typically reassess and recenter your story and characters. Because at the end of the first book, something should have happened that’s gonna require that they do that.   K: So, duologies are really great for when authors wanna take their time and give a lot of attention and detail to characters, to worldbuilding, to story arcs, to history. It’s taking a long story and breaking it up into two. And so if you’re wondering: well how come there's like 700 page books in the world, why -   R [chuckling]: Right.    K: Yeah, “why isn’t everything just one really long book?” There’s a few answers for that. One is that some publishers are going: “No one is going to just pick up your 700 page book and read this. We need to break this up into two books.” But the other is that in some cases, those giant 700 page books, they’re really just one story. And even though I keep saying a duology is one story, you’re telling it in two parts. So they each have to have their own story elements to them.   R: So there’s an intermission, the curtain drops, you feel like that could have been a mini play but it’s not over yet, you know, let’s come back to see where that cliffhanger leads us.   K: An intermission’s actually a really good way to describe it. You know, think of most plays that you’ve seen or even old movies like Gone With the Wind where there was an intermission. The intermissions are not typically dead smack in the middle of the story.   R: No, when you come back the story has changed -   K: Yes.   R: - something has shifted. I think an example of this that everyone is probably fairly familiar with, at least from Spotify, is Act I vs. Act II of Hamilton.   K: Yes.   R: Very very different experiences. Act I is energy, it’s building up, it’s all this hope, and then Act II is all this grief, and all this loss, and all this settling, and rediscovering hope. It’s very -   K [overlapping]: I was gonna say the Phantom of the Opera.   R: Yeah.   K: Act I is very mysterious and almost enchanting and like wow, you know, look at this.   R: Mhm.   K: Act II of Phantom of the Opera, you come back and you’re like, oh this Phantom is dangerous.   R: Yeah.   K: The tone of everything has shifted to this sort of fanciful “oh yes haha the opera ghost, oh this is such a funny, silly little inconvenience” to “this guy’s gonna kill all of us.”   R: Yeah.   K: So there’s renewed sense of urgency, the stakes are much more clear -   R: Mhm.   K: - and there’s - R: There’s an immediate action that needs to happen in order to save someone’s life.   K [overlapping]: Yes. Exactly, yes, that’s what I was trying to articulate there.   [both laughing]   K: So that is another good component of a duology is, by the second part of the story, something should have shifted.   R: And you gotta act right away, there’s no time to open up your world and introduce characters and all that kind of stuff, you have to get going.   K: The best duologies I’ve read have such a distinct difference between the first and second book, with what I think of the characters and how they’re behaving. If you Google “duology” right now, the first thing that’s gonna come up is The Six of Crows.    R: Mhm.   K: Part of the reason for that is because the Netflix series Shadow and Bone is being released two days after we’re recording this, and they’re incorporating elements from the duology into the trilogy. So, search engine algorithms being what they are... but I read the books; I thoroughly enjoyed them. The first one is very much a heist book. The second one is as well, but the stakes of it have been escalated to the point that it’s “oh, it’s not just that we’re stealing this thing that we want, we are now having to get stuff to save, not only ourselves, but a lot of other people from suffering a terrible fate.”   R: Yeah. You said it was hard though, but then you said it was just “picking a good spot in your book to split it,” so why is that specifically hard?   K: I think, where that becomes hard, is if you don’t know what you have on your hands. If you have -   R [overlapping]: So it’s more in the determination of whether you should split it, or -   K: Yes.   R: - extend it or just publish as is.   K: Well, so there’s two components of this. First is identifying: do I have a duology vs a standalone book or a trilogy.    R: Mhm.   K: If you have a standalone book, and you’re like “well this is just gonna be long and that’s just how it’s gonna go,” then you write the book and that’s what it is. If you’re looking at this and going “I have a duology,” there’s something in there that is indicating to you that this is a duology rather than a standalone book. A lot of times that is that breaking point, so, sometimes finding the part where the first story should stop and the second should start isn’t that hard, but then actually digging down into it and making sure that you’re telling a compelling, engaging story in both parts, can be very difficult. Because you may say “oh this is the perfect part, the door has burst open, everybody’s gasped and we’re cutting it off there.” Is that the best place to end your story? Or do you go to the Pirates of the Caribbean route and reveal that it’s Captain Barbossa coming down the stairs at the end.   R: Mhm.   K: And intrigue the heck out of everybody else.   R: I feel like we could do a whole episode on reveals, so maybe we’ll -   K [laughing]: Yeah, maybe we will.   R: - just put a pin in that one ‘cause I wanna talk about that but let’s do that in another episode. Okay, so is that a matter of how much satisfaction you are willing to give your reader at the end of book one, versus just lopping it off where it is the most convenient between what is essentially the midpoint of an arc that can feel like a partial arc or a semi completed arc.   K: So I think with duologies, there’s a lot more leeway to, I don't wanna say mess with, but to play with -   R: [giggles] Be honest, we are messing with our readers. We are always messing with our readers.   K: [giggles] - to play with reader expectation because people who are reading a duology presumably understand that what they’re reading is part one of a story that’s gonna be told in two parts.    R: Do we know when we have a duology though? Is it made very clear when the first book is released? ‘Cause I don't feel like it is.   K: I think that’s a matter of advertising and publishing. Most duologies that I’ve come across, and by the way, this is very common now in publishing because they plan much farther ahead than they used to. The series are finite, you’re contracted for this much, so typically, before a trilogy or duology is actually released, the series already has a name, the books might say, you know, definitely in their description and Amazon and Barnes and Noble, if not on the book itself, book one of however many in the series or book one of the such and such duology, book two of the such and such trilogy.   R: I would say that there are as many new books on my shelf that do not indicate how big the series is going to be as there are that do.   K: Mmkay. But in Amazon -   R: In fact - well maybe in Amazon but you can only create series on Amazon when you have more than one book in it. You know what I mean?   K [overlapping]: Yes, yes.   R: So -   K: But in the description a lot of times it will say that, the cover copy could say that. Publishers sort of expect at this point that anybody who really enjoys a book or even things that they’re thinking of reading, they’re gonna go research it, and, if nothing else, the publisher will likely have something on their website or some description about how long the series is going to be.   R: You give the reader a lot of credit for researching a book.   K: When you go to pick up a book, and it’s clear that it’s a series, you don’t go and see how many books it’s gonna -   R: [overlapping] You think it’s clear that it’s a series, that’s the part I’m debating. I cannot tell you how many books I’ve picked up only to find out - I’ve got one right around here somewhere - I picked up this book -   K: [speech garbled through laughter]   R: Endgame by Anne Aguirre.   K: Yep.   R: “A Sirantha Jax novel” is all it said on the cover. To me, that did not indicate that this was the last book in a six book series. I read the last book first.    K: [laughing]   R: And I read it anyway even though I figured out within a few chapters that it was the last book in a series. But I have done this my entire life. You’d think that, after a few, I would learn. So what is it that does not indicate anywhere on here, that this is a long running series, this is book six in a series? I picked it up because of the cover art. That is always what I do.   K: [laughing]   R: And there was nothing on this to indicate it was book six out of six. That - it was called Endgame and I did not understand that it was endgame of the series.   K [laughing, overlapping]: Yeah, I’m starting - I’m starting to think that -   R: So you may be doubting me, but I’m just saying, I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, I would like to think.   K: [laughing]   R: But on a bookstore shelf, this was the only one there, the bookstore didn’t put out the other books next to it, you know? So why was I supposed to know that this was from a series? There’s literally nothing on here that says “by the way, you picked up a book that’s part of a series, you might wanna go check out book one.”    K: Well, I will say that’s bad marketing and bad work on the publisher’s part.   R: But I wasn’t exposed to the marketing, other than the cover. I was not exposed to the marketing, this was before I started writing and publishing. So -   K: But the cover is marketing.   R: No, I understand that. The cover is product design and marketing, just like the box for a microwave would be. So yes, this was supposed to be marked as book six. If I had seen “book six,” I might have looked for book one. But Ace Science Fiction, an imprint of Penguin, did not deign to make any sort of indication on the outside, presumably because they thought it was pretty clear because of course you’ve heard of Anne Aguirre and of course you have heard of the Sirantha Jax novels by then. But I hadn’t, so I picked up book six in a series and I read it without any backstory, and I really did feel rather dumped into a world that other people knew about.   K: How was it?   R: Um. It was fine.   K: So, here’s what -   R [overlapping]: Some things were not my mode but that’s okay.   K: [laughing]   R: It’s still in my shelf so it can’t be that bad.   K [laughing]: Okay, fair. Yeah, listen, the - how do you know that something is a duology, a trilogy, a what have you?   R: And is your publisher making the conscious choice to not indicate that?   K [overlapping]: That’s very possible-   R: - do they think they are indicating that, you might wanna run it by your grandma or -   K: Rekka.   R: - somebody who hasn’t -   K: [laughing]   R: picked up a book off a shelf apparently without ever failing to pick up the third book in a series.   K: You did tend to to do that quite a lot.   R: I did it a lot as a kid, I think - I picked up The Babysitter’s Club at book number twenty-four and I guarantee you that bookstore had all of them.   K: Wasn’t that all like, standalone stories, kind of, though?   R: Well they were procedural in that every book started with the main character’s POV introducing all of the babysitters in the club, and giving them some tidbit to characterize them that was also a little bit of backstory from one of the other episodes, and - I mean they really were episodes, they were not so much sequels as episodes - and then you’d go into the meat of the story, and everything would return to normal, there might be small developments and like, there was continuity through the books but the characters got older, they added new babysitters to the club, some left, you know, stuff happened and then it didn’t unhappen at the end of the book.  But even though, yes, any book would have been an entry point in the series, I guarantee you I just picked up a book from the middle of the long, very uniform looking line of Babysitter’s Club books, and this one was about a cat, so -   K: Aw, kitty. [giggles]   R: - I got that one. ‘cause Tigger ran away and was missing -   K: Aw :(   R: - so that was the first book I read out of that series! And then I read them a lot, this was my first experience with sequels, so it’s no wonder that I have no problem imagining that you would stick with a world forever and ever and ever and never write anything else. But I also read the rest out of order.   K: Yeah.   R: Like I had no respect for the concept of “oh! I should go back to the beginning and read forward,” that - I read number ten and then I’d read number eighteen, then I’d read number two; I just didn’t care. So it’s interesting to me, like, yes that was me at age twelve -   K: Well, also -   R: - that was very different from an adult reader, but as an adult reader obviously I have continued this. The Chanur saga, I think I read book two before I read book one, I didn’t care. Plus, if the book’s written well enough, you get introduced to it and you don’t lose anything for not reading the first one first in a series, an intentional series, but here we come back to the idea of duology; if you pick up book two in a duology, you have missed some shit.    K: Yeah, and I completely disagree with you, and this may just be -   R: [laughing] Of course you do.   K:  No, this may be just a compulsive thing on my end: I can’t not read a series from the beginning.   R: No, see, I am completely all about my organizational tics, but for whatever reason, growing up, reading books in order was not a big deal to me. And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was not aware that if I asked the bookseller to get me book one because I was picking up book two and I wanted to start from the beginning, that I would have it pretty soon. Like, in my head, that would be -   K: Yeah.   R: - weeks and weeks and weeks of waiting. Plus, in my head, it probably cost more. Like I thought I would have to pay for shipping, I thought I would have to pay for a book that would, like he’d charge me twice as much just because I wanted it.   K: And see that’s just -   R: And also I would have to speak to a human and ask for something which I was very much not all in for, so.   K: And this just goes to show how funny and different we were as kids, because I remember there were book series that, I would go to the library and I would - this is, I’m about to demonstrate something about myself that I have kept secret - I’ve read all of the Wizard of Oz books.   R: Oh, cool! I always meant to.   K: And - they’re interesting. [chuckles] and my library didn’t have book seven, out of, like I think there’s like ten or twelve of them in the series, and I had to get it from my county’s huge central library, and my mom was like “well, just get book eight!” and I was like I can’t, I can’t do that, I will wait two weeks for that book to get here -   [both laughing]   K: But something like - okay, well, getting back on track [chuckles] here, something like The Babysitter’s Club, as you said, each book - the reason the POV character is introducing everyone is there’s a lot of books in this series. The Boxcar Children was like that; the first one is about a group of relatively young children running away from some abusive family member and deciding to live in an abandoned boxcar in the forest, and then eventually their wealthy grandfather finds them, and then every other book is about them solving mysteries [laughing].   R: Oh! Okay.   K: The first book is like a weird survivalist book and then every other one is just them [through laughter] travelling with their grandfather and solving mysteries.   R: At least the continuity is intact.   K: But with duologies, we’re gonna assume that this is a known duology - and I couldn't find any example of this, I swear I did look - a duology that started out intentionally a duology but then became a trilogy after book one was published. I couldn’t find any examples of it, I’m sure it’s happened but, in theory, especially in publishing and especially with contracts being what they are now, you’re going to have - especially for a duology - a contractual set of the books that are going to be in it, the two books. You may even have some specifics in there about book one: this stuff has to happen, book two: this stuff has to happen. Publishers are a lot more hands on with these kinda things now, because before it was just like “cool, you got another one? cool, you got another one? Alright, let’s get the next tale of the otherworldly alien investigator who came to Earth to find the stolen gem of her people but solves mysteries along the way.”    K: So, with a duology, and with where the middle of this is, and what you can play with with reader expectations. I would say you absolutely have a little more leeway. “What if they don’t know it’s a duology?” Well, that's on the reader. I don’t - there’s no good answer -   R: Or is it on the publisher and their marketing department? [laughing]   K: Or that. The thing is that you could stick right on the cover: Book One of the, you know, We Make Books Duology. Maybe someone doesn’t read it, there’s no way to make everyone understand what this series is going to look like. I never buy a book before I know, you know - is it a trilogy that I’m getting myself into here, is it a duology, is this just gonna keep going on and on forever? I understand not everyone’s like that, most people are far less - what’s the word I’m looking for here - less fussy than I am. [laughter] Some people are just pure chaos like Rekka, who walk into bookstores, pull something off the shelf, and just go “look’s good!” [laughter]   R: I’m here for a good time!   [both laughing]   R: Look, I’ve found a lot of books I liked that way.   K: Yeah! No, that’s great.   R: Mhm.   K: But I remember going to Barnes and Noble back when I was in high school and college and we used to hang out there, and they would always have the table of the $5 books -   R: Mhm.   K: If they didn’t have books one and two and this was just book three, I wasn’t gonna pick it up and read it because I needed to know how it got there [laughing]. I think with duologies, you definitely have a little bit more room to play with that because the understanding is that this is more like a first and second act. And the reader should understand that: “you’re being presented half of a story, the second half is coming.” And there’s a difference between having halves of a story versus having to present a whole coherent story like you have to when you get into trilogy mode. Because if you’re breaking up a story into three parts, the first part is going to be really dry if you’re just telling one long, giant story.    R: Yeah ‘cause that’s set up still, that’s just pure set up.   K: Yeah. Find a 700 page book. Go to page - what would it be? - 233 and, in that area, decide if you think that’s about a good place to end a first book that seems like a good story has been told. Now conversely, I would say that picking up a 700 page book and going in the middle could go either way. Depending how the story’s structured, maybe that is an interesting middle-halfway-stopping point. There’s a good chance that it’s not because standalone stories tend to be backloaded.   R: Right.   K: Most of the action, adventure, and intrigue, happens in the last third of the book.   R: I would even say -   K: Last quarter?   R: Last quarter of the book, yeah.   K: How do you know if you have a duology vs a trilogy vs a standalone book?   R: Someone tells you.   K: [laughing] You know what? Honestly, that might be the answer.   [both laughing]   K: That really might be the answer.   R: Please, someone tell me!   K: [laughing]   K: An agent, a publisher, a good friend who reads your stuff might say: “This isn’t a standalone story, this is two books.” You know, with a trilogy it’s a little easier. Are you having trouble filling the middle book? Are you having trouble figuring out what’s gonna happen in book two, and are you just coming up with stuff because you need to create -   R: A third book, yeah.   K: - about 300 pages of content so that you can get to the third book? That’s a good indication that maybe you don’t have a trilogy, maybe you have a duology. For a standalone book, it gets a little harder. One is length. There aren’t a lot of 700 page books published anymore and, depending on the genre you’re writing in, there might be none of them. Fantasy tends to have a little bit more tolerance for that kind of length -   R: We wouldn’t have the phrase “doorstopper” in our current lingo if they weren’t really happening anymore. I think they are still happening. Like you have Jenn Lyons.   K: Yep.   R: Jenn Lyons writes some big books and there’s like, five of them [giggles] in a single series.   K: But you brought up a very interesting point: why we have those doorstopper books. Because, for a publisher - first of all, a duology however many years ago, even a decade ago, that was not a very common thing.   R: Mhm.   K: But if you had a long story, and especially if the publisher was uncertain about it, it was cheaper and less of a risk for them to just do a giant run of one big book, rather than two smaller or three smaller ones.   R: Okay. Because you lose readers as you go further down the series.   K: Well you lose readers, but there’s also overhead.   R: Right.   K: It’s cheaper to publish one giant book than it is to publish two smaller ones.   R: Right because you need cover artists, you pay the printer for each one of those sets, you print a minimum quantity for each of those, yeah. No, I’m not arguing that with you, I’m just saying like -   K: Yeah.   R: - one of the considerations is also to be: how will you be able to earn that back if you lose 20% of the readers each sequel down the line.   K: Yeah, exactly. There’s a lot of factors in why publishers might say, “nope, this is just gonna be one giant book.”   R: No, there’s one factor: it’s money.   [both laughing]   K: There’s a lot of factors that go into the money factor. [laughing]   R: The accountant is taking many things into consideration.   K: Yeah [laughing]. Touché, Rekka.   R: Mhm.   K: But, if you’re writing this story and there is a lot of stuff happening in the first half of the book that is then still not resolved when you’re getting towards the end, you might have a duology on your hands. Now granted, you may be like: “Oh well it’s only 180,000 words.” Well, yeah, maybe you gotta write a little more and flesh this out a

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Episode Transcript  Rekka (00:00): This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. Kaelyn (00:26): Y'know, it's funny because in movie trilogies, I always think it's the third movie that kind of slumps. Rekka (00:33): Okay. So maybe this is a poorly conceived episode. I don't know. Um, but the impression I have from the person asking us the topic... They did say "writing Book Two in a series of three or more." Assuming that you come out of the gate strong on Book One, you are heading toward some final book, and we'll assume trilogy for the purpose of this conversation. Kaelyn (01:01): Yeah, I was going to say, because writing Book Two in a planned trilogy is very different than writing Book Two in a, "Oh, we'll see how this goes." Rekka (01:08): Exactly. Uh, which is my experience of writing Book Twos, both times, even though they're now both trilogies. But anyway, so assuming that it's going to end in the following book, how do you tell a chunk of your story, keep the reader interested by—one supposes that you are ramping up action, and tension and danger and all these? Oop. I've already said something wrong. Kaelyn (01:40): No, no. I was going to say, I understand the question that they're trying to ask now and whatever they're trying to write should probably be a duology. Rekka (01:49): Oh no! Okay. That's a separate episode. We already figured that out before we started recording. Assuming that we are going to end this in the following book. Kaelyn (02:00): Well, that's fine. If we, if we start recording and we talk about this, I can explain what my thinking— Rekka (02:05): Oh, no, we're recording, and this is the episode now. Cause I phrased it very well and I felt very eloquent. So now we're going to go with it. Kaelyn (02:10): Oh goodness. Okay. Yeah. So, um, you know, we're talking about second books in trilogies and um, I think that for a lot of authors, this is going to be either the easiest thing they ever write or the hardest thing they ever write. It really depends on how, how your story's going. So if you're asking this question, "I feel like I'm trying to come up with stuff to fill the time in between the beginning and end of my story." Rekka (02:34): Okay. That's one way to interpret it. I have a second interpretation, but let's talk about that one first. Kaelyn (02:38): Well, wait, I want to hear your interpretation. Rekka (02:39): No no no. No, we're gonna go with that. Kaelyn (02:43): Okay. Um, there there's two reasons writing the second book in a trilogy can be, um, very difficult. One is that what I just said. You're, you feel like you're just trying to come up with, you know, stuff to happen so that you can get to the end of it. And that's what I was— the point I was making that, if that's the case, maybe you shouldn't be writing a trilogy. Maybe you should be writing a duology. Your story is your story. Um, unless you have a contract for a trilogy and they're like, you must generate this. And by the way, I would hope that before you signed that contract, you had discussed, um... Rekka (03:15): Where the trilogy was going. Kaelyn (03:18): Yeah, some outlines and some, uh, some story points there. Um, the other reason is you have a beginning and you have an end and sorting through everything to get to that end in a satisfying, fulfilling way is overwhelming. Um, so sometimes it's that you have too much and sometimes it's that you don't have enough. Rekka (03:38): Isn't that every book though? I mean... The misery of the writer is that every book has to have a beginning and an end and you have to get there without losing everybody on the way. Kaelyn (03:50): I'll make it worse for you. A lot of them also have middles. Rekka (03:53): No! No, this is a lie. Kaelyn (03:56): And uh, and the middle, the middle is what takes up most of the series. Rekka (04:01): Okay. So— Kaelyn (04:03): What was your interpretation of that? Rekka (04:05): "How do you structure a book that doesn't begin and end your story?" New Speaker (04:13): Okay. New Speaker (04:13): You see what I'm saying? New Speaker (04:15): Yes. New Speaker (04:15): You have this— New Speaker (04:16): It's the middle. New Speaker (04:17): It's the middle, but it's also not the middle-middle it's part of the middle, because the middle is actually going to expand into the end of the first book and the beginning of the third, book it— by the 25% arc, you know, act structures. The middle is the middle 50%. So in this case, it's bigger. Kaelyn (04:39): And this, by the way is why I have trouble with authors who are pantsers. Rekka (04:46): Okay. Since you're targeting, probably like 80% of our audience, please explain yourself. Kaelyn (04:53): Nope. Um, I shouldn't say trouble. I'm a planner. Like in every aspect of my life, especially when it comes to writing though, because you have, I, I kind of think that if you're writing a story, you should at least have an idea of where it's going. Rekka (05:08): What is the structure of Book Two, when Book Two falls in the middle of a larger story arc? Kaelyn (05:15): Things that typically happen in Book Twos. And in this case, we'll also throw some movies in there because I have a lot of, uh, a lot of examples I like to use there. Rekka (05:23): Let's just say that movies are not a substitute for books. Everyone knows the book was better, but, um, movies are a quicker consumption item that if you haven't seen for some reason, then you can go and see what we mean without investing 18 hours in reading a book. So that's why we keep popping back to movies. Not because movies do it best or do it right, even. Kaelyn (05:47): Yeah. And let's clarify here. Movies are frequently written by committee. Um, I want you as the author to imagine writing a book, polishing it, having some other people look at it, then handing it to an editor and the editor gets to do whatever they want with it. Without consulting you, because that's frequently how a lot of movies go. Rekka (06:06): And then the producers come in and say, "we want giant mechanical spiders." Kaelyn (06:09): Beware the giant mechanical spiders. Rekka (06:11): So we are using movies. Not because they are the perfect examples, but because they are easily grokked. Kaelyn (06:17): Yeah. I'm assuming most people listen to this have seen Star Wars. If you look at famous trilogies and you know, I had mentioned Star Wars, I'll throw the Godfather in there. Spiderman. Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, something a lot of these have in common is everyone seems to like the second movie of the trilogy best. Why is this? Well, there's two different— Rekka (06:39): You stopped before we got to one of the best trilogies ever. Kaelyn (06:42): Which was? Rekka (06:44): Back to the Future. Kaelyn (06:45): Oh yes, obviously. Yes. And I would argue back to the future or back to the future too. Is that what it's called? What's the second part called? Rekka (06:55): Yeah it was Back to the Future II. Kaelyn (06:57): Two, okay. I couldn't remember if they started doing funny things with the names. Rekka (07:01): Like Forward to the Future, Back to the Past? Kaelyn (07:04): Yeah, exactly. Rekka (07:04): Oh, we also forgot the Matrix. Kaelyn (07:06): You're highlighting a good point here. Um, both when writing for books and movies, but especially books, there's a big difference between writing something that is a standalone and you know, ends on a conclusive note, ends with resolution and, you know, satisfaction versus writing something that is planned to be a trilogy the entire time. You know, in movie-making as in publishing, um, producing these things is expensive. So a lot of times what happens is you have a contract in which you're contracted for Book One with option for Book Two and three, should they be successful. Rekka (07:43): That option may not even be for more books in the series. They may just say, you know, we want your future works and you don't even know if they want more of this story or if they just want more. Kaelyn (07:53): Yeah. This is why in so many trilogies, you'll kind of feel like the end of Book One was a complete story. Good writers always find ways to leave the story open for more to happen. They may even tease you with ideas or open-ended scenarios where it's like, okay, well I understand that like right now they're safe, but what's going to happen when the wizard realizes they took his medallion? Because eventually he's going to come looking for them and surprise, guess what happens in Book Two? Um, this is a lot of times, as I said, why you see sort of a wrap-up if you will, in the end of Book One. If that's the end of the story, that could theoretically be a satisfying end of the story. Not all trilogies are structured like that because sometimes somebody goes in with such a amazing pitch that they say, "yep, three book deal right off the bat. You're going to write all of these." One is not necessarily better than the other. Um, it's I mean, obviously everyone like to say like, "yeah, they took all three books right away. That's how great they think my book is." Rekka (09:00): However, if you go in and you expect to write a trilogy, but then the trilogy is cut short because of poor sales or something, but you still have fans that liked the first book, you've left them with a cliffhanger or an unsatisfying ending. So just because you know you're going to get to do the trilogy, maybe, maybe starting the first book off with a satisfying ending would not be the worst thing. Kaelyn (09:27): Yeah. So when you're writing a trilogy where you're not sure if or how you're going to write the rest of the trilogy, it can be tricky because you're actually doing two stories. You've got the bigger story and then you've got the story that fits within the bigger story. And then books two and three are another slightly larger story that also fit within the bigger story. Rekka (09:48): So would you say books two and three, by your recommendation, would be a duology in the same world as Book One? Kaelyn (09:54): Not in, not by those definitions. No. Um, I understand what you're saying there. That, yes, you're kind of doing a standalone and then a duology, but all together, they're all one sort of story. And you know, for those of you paying close attention, what you're noticing is that I'm saying that well, Book One is usually its own encapsulated story and then Book Two usually ends on a cliffhanger and yes, that's the case. Um, think back to any trilogy you have read or watched, you will see that over and over and over again. And there's a reason for that. And this feeds into my reason for why I think so many times, the second book or the second movie is usually a fan favorite. It's because after we see success from the characters, after we see them, you know, make progress, achieve some measurable amount of victory, or even just settle to the point that they can feel safe and peaceful, that is completely upended in Book Two. This is where we usually see characters fail, or we see their plans fall through. Where we see that they weren't the smartest, the fastest, the strongest here. Rekka (11:04): This is where we prove that their adversary is insurmountable. Kaelyn (11:10): Yes. And Book Three then is where they have to regroup. Um, one of the other things we were talking about before we recorded was I think what is interesting going into a lot of Book Twos and you know what let's talk about Book Twos and what to put in them. And some things you should keep in mind while working on them. Rekka (11:31): Since that was the point of, I guess we should, we should broach that at some point. Also, I feel like, um, we need to say at this point that all of this is coming from a very Western perspective on storytelling and that storytelling in non-Western countries and, um, traditions may not fit this formula of where these beats fall and everything like that. Not all storytelling falls in the three-act structure. Kaelyn (11:57): Absolutely not, but it does have a beginning middle, and end. Doesn't necessarily mean it's divided up into three acts, but anyway. Rekka (12:05): Right, right. There we go. Kaelyn (12:06): So when you're starting on a second book, it's hard, because—especially if the first one was successful—because the instinct is going to be, everybody loved this stuff about the first book. Rekka (12:20): Do it again. Kaelyn (12:20): I should do this stuff again. Yeah. That's great. Except they probably don't want to read the same book again, just slightly different. So it's hard, there's a balance between keeping what worked and what people liked and what made them intrigued and want to read this in the first one, versus putting a new enough twist on it now, that it's not the same thing happening all over again. And this is plot. Rekka (12:45): Which is really rude. Kaelyn (12:48): It's straightforward plot. This is where you have to move your characters along. Things have to happen to, or around them that influence them and cause them to go forward or to not stay where you left them at the end of the first book. Um, it's really tempting to just pick up exactly where you left off and say, and now these things are going on. And by the way, some, uh, some books do that very effectively with, um, you know, the last sentence of the book, dropping a new bit of information that changes everything. Um, I will admit that I watched too much of True Blood. Um, I didn't get all the way to the end of it because it just got absurd. But one of the things that I always enjoyed about that show was literally the end of every episode is a cliffhanger. So then they were very cruel about that. Next episode always picked up exactly where the last episode left off. Rekka (13:46): Keep in mind. This was not the, you know, Netflix weekend-premiere of an entire season. This was every Sunday for however many weeks, and all week long, you'd be like, Oh my Godddddd, what is going to happen? Kaelyn (14:03): Yeah. Rekka (14:03): And that was, that was very effective use of cliffhangers. They, they resolve the story plot, but then there was also a new complication every time. Kaelyn (14:14): It's hard to balance these things. Um, there's, you know, I think there's also a lot of pressure on writers to sometimes start introducing new elements to the book, either through new characters or if it's, you know, a fantasy based book, maybe new magical elements or, um, new locations, to try to keep it fresh. And by the way, that's not a bad thing to do. Rekka (14:36): But as you add these new characters and places and elements, you have to know how they're going to wrap up. Unless like we said, you're creating impetus for a five book series or something like that. Kaelyn (14:48): [cough] Song of Ice and Fire [cough] Rekka (14:51): It's a garden that grows. Kaelyn (14:52): Yeah. It's, it's a series of weeds that are strangling everyone at this point. Um, but you know what, that's actually a good example because, um, Song of Ice and Fire was, uh, pitched and signed as a trilogy and he kept adding stuff and kept adding, you know, the world kept growing, had the adding mythology and characters, et cetera. And now we're up to seven books. So, you know, that is something to keep in mind: if you are contracted for a trilogy and you're not George R.R. Martin, you better make sure that you're actually writing a trilogy. So, well— Rekka (15:30): I mean, I kind of wish George R.R. Martin had also made sure he was writing a trilogy. Kaelyn (15:33): Yeah. Yeah. But along those lines, here's the other thing about the second book? The stakes have to be different now. It's funny because we were talking again about, uh, the Hunger Games. And I remember like I finished the first book and then I was like, "Oh wait, the Hunger Games, it's like the Hunger Games Part Two: Hunger Game Harder. Like, what are we doing here? This is exactly—" New Speaker (15:55): The Hungrier Games. New Speaker (15:56): There you go, the Hungrier Games. But yeah. And I was like, "wait, so this is Book Two? We're just doing the Hunger Games all over again?" Rekka (16:07): Can I say, though, I really liked the world building of the, like the arena? I was kind of sad that I didn't think we were going to get that. Kaelyn (16:18): Oh yeah. I absolutely enjoyed that. And I think that's, you know, one of the, this is a good example of one of the strong points of the book that readers enjoyed. So you want it to carry through because then even by the time we get to the third book, the city itself kind of becomes a Hunger Games arena. So there's still that consistent element through the book of anything could kill us at any time and we don't know how. Rekka (16:40): If you didn't have that aspect in each book, you might lose some readers who really, like, bit into it because of that. Kaelyn (16:49): Yeah. If the Hunger Games had suddenly turned into a super political machination centered book, or I would say even the elements from the beginning of the third with, you know, the secret underground rebellion and stuff, I don't know if there would have been that appeal to the readers who, I think, one of the things they really enjoyed was the suspense and the love triangle (of course, know your audience), but the suspense of trauma dome. Rekka (17:15): Right. And there was the, um, seeding of like, what is District 12, you know? And that, that comes around in the third book. So that neatly stitches the series together by the overt trauma dome, you know, element. And then the more subtle, like here's a mystery of like, what did this government do to its people? And why was there an uprising and what happens next? Kaelyn (17:46): Yeah. And this is by the way where we come to themes and I'm—for the record, I am not calling the trauma dome a theme. Rekka (17:55): Survival in the face of designed disaster? Kaelyn (18:01): That's what the themes are: survival, uncertainty, um, staring down at the odds, and constantly feeling unsafe. They do a very good job at creating this sense of not only could you just like we show up 'n arrest you at any moment, you could just die horribly out of nowhere for no reason. And you have very little power to stop it. So that underlying theme of, I will just call it terror through the book and overcoming that is something that carries through. So, you know, all of this talk we've done before about themes and plot, and you know why this stuff is important. This is why it's important. That said it's tempting to clutch everything, to hold on to everything you don't want anything to change. But often it has to for the story to progress, you know, the characters can't be in the same situation, setting, and I would even go so far to say same characters as they were in the first book. Um, it can get very dry. Rekka (19:06): I wonder how much of this is, um, that the author is writing the second book under contract after the first book has already been well-received and like, we assume that there've been arcs out already or something when they're drafting the second book—how much of this comes down to confidence and that imposter syndrome? Feeling like they need to follow a formula because they no longer have confidence in anything except for the thing that was already sold? Kaelyn (19:34): Yeah, absolutely. And, um, you know, I would say that's, there's no good answer to that. There's certainly something to be said for taking feedback or maybe criticism and incorporating that and addressing it. Um, there's also something to be said for, you know, if you're getting rave reviews, this author can do no wrong. Don't take that as a challenge. Rekka (20:01): Well, you're taking that the opposite of what I'm saying— Kaelyn (20:04): No but I understand. You know, there's, there's extremes, you can go to, you can over-correct and you can just throw the entire manuscript into a mulcher. Rekka (20:11): You can over-swagger. Kaelyn (20:14): And suddenly there's clowns from outer space in, in Middle Earth. Rekka (20:20): Okay. So we've said what you want to do, but have we? Like, have we answered the question? Kaelyn (20:29): So let's go all the way back. We were talking about these stories within a story. And I think we do ourselves a disservice when we start to think of all of these as different parts of a story. Yes, it is a beginning, middle and end, but within each of those books we're kind of still following the same basic story structure. I hate using this, but it's correct. The same four act structure. We have a setup, a response and attack a resolution. The resolution does not have to be good. It just has to resolve the setup does not have to take a long time. It doesn't have to be the same as the first book where you're establishing and world-building and introducing characters, but you still need to set up—and by the way, the setup at that point in the second book and definitely into the third book is setting up what the story is going to be at this point, rather than setting up the characters in the world themselves. Kaelyn (21:29): So the setup is, you know, establishing the stakes, the quest, the incident, whatever you want to call it here, then we've got the response. You know, the characters have to react to what's happened either, you know, by force or by choosing to.You have the attack portion of this, where the characters have to proactively do something and the villain has to as well. And then it resolves. And I think we, you know, because second book, second movies often end on, you know, a lot of open questions and threads and scenarios. We don't think of it as a resolution, but it is it's "okay, I need the next steps now." Rekka (22:14): So when your resolution is a lack of something like, "whoops, the kingdom fell." Kaelyn (22:21): I hate it when that happens. Rekka (22:25): You know, like we tried really hard in this book to protect the kingdom from the big dragon, but the dragon attacked the kingdom. We got the important people to safety, but we lost the kingdom and we still have to fight the dragon. So like, would you, would you say that's a place where you could pinch off the second book? Kaelyn (22:43): Let's look at a great example of that. Avatar, the Last Airbender. Just a great example of everything. The second season ends with the line, the earth kingdom has fallen as they're all escaping on Appa. Aang is incapacitated. Zuko has apparently gone back over to the dark side. Everything is a disaster. At this point, the resolution there is "we have to start over." Rekka (23:09): Is that satisfying, though? Kaelyn (23:11): No, but it's not meant to be satisfying. Rekka (23:14): But it feels like, okay, so maybe here's the problem is: our pressure is on to make a book that makes the reader happy when they've finished reading it. They go, "I am so glad I read that. I am so excited for the third one," but not angry. Like, "Oh my God, the earth kingdom has fallen. That guy's cabbages..." Kaelyn (23:33): That poor guy's cabbages. Exactly. So when you watched that, I'll tell you what I felt: "Holy crap, what are they going to do?" Rekka (23:42): Right. And why do I have to wait to find out? I get angry. And maybe that's the problem. The pressure is on. You don't want to leave a reader going, "well, it really likes the first book, but at the end of the second book, I was just angry." Kaelyn (24:00): I think there's a difference between leaving a reader angry and leaving them intrigued. In my case, I, I mean, granted, you know, I desperately want to know what happens next, but when I read the end of something and I'm just like, "Oh my God," I'm impressed! Rekka (24:18): It is very difficult to read a second book. So here's, here's part of the, this is the scenario: Kaelyn (24:22): Okay. Rekka (24:24): Someone has read your first book and they really liked it. And they were very satisfied by the ending. Because as you said, it ended in a good place, a solid, there was solid footing. Even if there was still a threat in the larger world, there was a feeling of triumph at the beginning, at the end of the first book, agreed? Kaelyn (24:42): Books often have satisfying endings. Yes. Rekka (24:46): So now we've got someone who's interested in our, in our world. Book Two comes out. They've, pre-ordered it. This is awesome. This is very good. We love pre-orders as authors. Um, and then they read it in a day. Kaelyn (25:01): Yeah, now they've got to wait a year and a half. Rekka (25:03): Now they've got to wait probably 18 months to read the third book, and the book no longer ended on triumph and satisfaction. Now your reader's going to wait 18 months and they don't really feel great about your story anymore. They're left uncomfortable. When they think about your world, like what— There is tension, there is, um, perhaps sadness, perhaps pain, perhaps loss, perhaps anxiety at the very least. How does that reader separate—And this is a totally different question from what was being asked, but I think it's the pressure. And I think it's part of the concern is that—if you're creating a new arc, it's going into the third book and you stop the reader before you get to the end, that will satisfy one way or the other. And I realize this is coming down to the reader, the writer, trying to please the reader, as opposed to trying to write the story. But I think that's, maybe the fear is like, how do I create a second book that has all this great tension? Is the only way to do it by putting a big battle toward the end so that it feels like the middle book had that surge of energy and can come down from that before it has a bigger surge? And I guess, I guess this is part of the problem is like: does every book have to be bigger than the last book, because that's what Hollywood thinks about trilogies, right? Every, every story has to have a bigger dinosaur than the previous work. It's not just good enough to have a T-Rex. Now you have to have a spinosaurus. Kaelyn (26:39): The more explosions, the better, to be sure. Um, listen. To, you know, to address the first part of this. Um, I'm not saying this to sound heartless: there— You're never gonna— Rekka (26:48): No, it's fine. I just dumped my heart out on this table in front of you. And please by all means, tell me that I'm being silly. Kaelyn (26:56): No, you are, you are never going to be able to control the way a reader feels about your book. Rekka (27:04): But what if I was a really good writer? Kaelyn (27:06): You are a really good writer. You still can't control that. Yeah. Rekka (27:10): I don't like that answer. Kaelyn (27:11): I'm sorry. You're never going to be able to control the way a reader feels about your book. I can't tell you how many people I talk to that tell me, "well, I don't read books until the series ends," and my answer to that is always, "that's fine. Just make sure you're buying them and putting them away for when you're ready for when the series ends." Rekka (27:29): Yes. Can we, we should say that. If you are a reader listening to this: if you want your trilogy complete, you have to buy the books and support them because the publishers are not looking at whether the story is done. The publishers are looking at the numbers. Kaelyn (27:43): Yeah. I, I completely understand the people who say, "I'm not reading this until it's done, because I just want to be able to take a weekend and go through the whole thing." That's fine. Buy them when they come out and wait until they're done and then read them all at once. Rekka (27:57): At the very least get your library to pick them up. Kaelyn (28:00): Yes. At the, at the minimum. Rekka (28:03): Yeah. Honestly, buy four copies. That's really.... Kaelyn (28:07): I think that, you know, having a reader have a visceral reaction to something, having them be taken aback, having them need to know what's happening and what's going on next. Um, that speaks well of you as a writer. That means that you've really struck a chord. So to speak. That also means hopefully that that person is really excited to read what's coming in Book Three now. Now, do you have to top it? I think that's not a good way to look at this. You don't need to top it, but it needs to be different and interesting in a new way. Rekka (28:43): So what you did in Book Two, where you changed the scenarios and you changed the stakes and you make the characters do and try and fail and succeed in different ways... Now you gotta do it a third time? Kaelyn (28:53): Do what Star Wars did and go back to the way you did it the first time. Rekka (28:59): Star Was has done that several times. Kaelyn (29:01): Several times. Um, it's all building, it's all leading up to what your ending is. And it can be very hard to order these things and to keep it in a satisfying way. Before when I was talking about the four act structure: you can't have a second book that is just a middling of events happening with no real climax leading to anything in that book, because the climax is in the third book. Rekka (29:29): Okay? So this is going back to "this isn't filler." Kaelyn (29:34): This is not filler. Rekka (29:36): And you're not stretching out the middle act just to make it three books. Kaelyn (29:41): This is still a story. It's still, even though the trilogy is a beginning, middle and end, your second book still needs a beginning, middle, and end. It still needs a setup, a response, attack, and resolution. It's a very basic form of story structure, but it's a good one to kind of build off of. And it's broad enough that you can interpret it. And by the way, it's not at, "I must be at the resolution at 75% of this." No, like, you know, you can, some of the books I've enjoyed the most are books where I'm like reading through them and going, like, I feel like there's a lot to go here still, and we've only got 15 pages left. And some of them are rushed and I'm kind of like, "all right. I just, they finished that." But some of them, you know— Rekka (30:25): That last 15 pages is not what you expected, but it wraps up the story in a new way. Kaelyn (30:30): Yeah. And some of them, we just drop an Ex Machina in there and call it a day. You know, it's, um. Rekka (30:36): It's a choice. Some of our greatest playwrights've done it. Kaelyn (30:41): But sometimes that works. Sometimes it's kind of like, "yeah, that makes total sense." And sometimes— Rekka (30:49): The thing is like, if it makes total sense, it's not a, I mean, it may function as a Deus Ex Machina, but if you've set it up, it's still going to be satisfying. Kaelyn (30:59): Yeah. And then sometimes it's the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the end of the first Jurassic park movie who absolutely could not fit through any of those doors and creep up quietly behind everybody, but we still really enjoyed watching it because it was cool. Rekka (31:11): Yes, it was, it was extremely cool. Kaelyn (31:13): It was very cool. Rekka (31:14): That roar with the banner. I mean, I would, I would live in that moment if I could. Kaelyn (31:18): And it's standing on top of a skeleton of itself. Rekka (31:22): Yeah. Kaelyn (31:23): Yeah. That was great. Rekka (31:24): That was good stuff. Give me more of that. And then they tried to, and then they failed. Okay. So to wrap up what we're trying to say here: you can't wrap up what we're trying to say here, cause this is Book Two. So you can't really wrap it up. Kaelyn (31:41): No, but. Rekka (31:41): So we're just going to stop. No satisfying ending, just the anxiety of, "where are we going from here?" Kaelyn (31:48): I don't know. Some cops are going to burst in and arrest me and we'll call that the Ex Machina. Rekka (31:51): I heard a lot of sirens before we started. Kaelyn (31:52): There were a lot of sirens. Rekka (31:54): Book Two is still a book. Kaelyn (31:56): It's still a book. Rekka (31:59): Write a book. Plan it out, according to Kaelyn. And frankly, I agree, especially, okay. So if I were, um, just real quick, like my method for, for what I do with a trilogy, which is bullshit because I wrote every Book Two thinking that there'd be at least five books. But! What I did was I imagined the end that I was trying to get to with the end of my story. And I picked a clinch point in that story that I could use to write up to with Book Two. But I didn't like just think of this as writing to the end of my story, but stopping early. I thought of this as, what is the structure of this? Like where are these people moving? Kaelyn (32:42): Rekka, you're singing to my heart right now. Rekka (32:44): I, yes. So once I picked where that story was going to end, that became the end that I was looking at. And like, yes, I, I seeded it in things I could use later, because we're still in the middle point. I can still Chekov these Rifles, um, for a little bit longer. And then, um, and then I write the story and I make it, again, you know, the right number of acts. I put things in the right place. I, I make sure that there's an arc to it. And then I adjust it in revisions. That's the nice thing! You can re adjust all these things in revisions. Kaelyn (33:22): No, No, Rekka. Once it's written, that's it. Rekka (33:22): No! You can! You can adjust them a heck of a lot. So maybe don't worry about it too much... question mark? Kaelyn (33:34): Well... Again, I think if you're concerned about it, make sure, take a step back and make sure that you are not writing a second book in a trilogy for the sake of writing a trilogy. Rekka (33:46): And also make sure you are not worried about writing the second book in a trilogy because you're worried about the reader's reaction. Kaelyn (33:53): Absolutely. Um, this is the, the heartless thing for me to say: you are there, you were writing a book to, write your book to appeal to the people who are going to like it. It is not necessarily going to be everybody's particular brand of vodka. Rekka (34:08): It is literally not going to be for everyone. So if you write the story along the lines that you approached the first story, but treat it as a slight broadening of the world, you know, you're not, you're not just trying to like make the same souffle the second time. Kaelyn (34:34): I'm going to say something that is going to horrify Rekka. So I apologize for the— Rekka (34:39): I can edit it out. It's okay. Kaelyn (34:41): Your job is not to make the reader happy. Your job is to make them interested. Rekka (34:48): As exemplified by George R.R. Martin. Kaelyn (34:50): It's an excellent example because I am so frustrated with that man, for a lot of reasons, the day The Winds of Winter comes out, I will probably take a day off work and read the book. Am I proud of this? No, but I resign myself to the fact that this is probably gonna happen. Rekka (35:10): I've read all the books and, given the HBO series, and given his history, and given his obvious inability to take this in for a landing, I think I'm done. Kaelyn (35:31): Oh, no. I'm not. New Speaker (35:31): I will let you tell me... but like one of the books— Kaelyn (35:36): In six years when this comes out, I'll let you know. Rekka (35:37): Well, that's the thing. Okay. So here's our advice for writing the next book in your series, whether it's Book Two in a trilogy or book 18, in a maybe-he'll-survive-long-enough-to-finish-this. Just write the book so that your audience isn't waiting six years between books. Kaelyn (35:59): Yeah. Um, you know, there, look, there's definitely something to be said for like the books come out when they come out. Um, you know, not just George R.R. Martin. Authors in general. Um, there is a point where you kind of feel like this is starting to feel a little rude. Um, you know, anyway, all of this is to say that like, there's, I, I know a lot about like the, uh, the history of going into the, you know, how these books were written and the versions and things that changed. It's frustrating. I wish I didn't know this stuff. I wish I just thought that he was just a really slow writer. That said, I'm not necessarily happy with all of this stuff; I am very interested and intrigued because I want to know what happens here. And that is what your job is as a writer. It is to entertain, to interest, and to intrigue. You want to keep people coming back for more. Rekka (36:55): Okay. So go from, "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" to "there is no Ba Sing Se" and, um, and leave them wanting more for Book Three, which hopefully you know where it's going. At least roughly. Kaelyn (37:13): I will say that watching the season finale of the second season of Avatar was possibly the most stressed I've been watching a television show in a long time. Yes. And I, I was, I was DVRing all of these and like getting home and watching them immediately. And when it concluded, I was kind of like, "of course that's what had to happen. That's the only thing that could have happened here in order for the story to make sense. I still want to kill the writers of this because how dare they!" But I can take a step back and go, "This is excellent storytelling. And I cannot wait to see what happens next." Rekka (37:52): Right? Well, hopefully, listener, you are going to write us a trilogy where we are carried by the momentum you create into the third book to finish it off to a very satisfying third book ending. Kaelyn (38:08): If anyone listening to this is going, "well, I know what I'll do, I'll just write all three of them upfront and that way they'll all be

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Titles referenced in this episode: Ken Follet  https://ken-follett.com/books/WMB Episode 43 with Antoine BandeleThe Martian by Andy WeirInto Thin Air by Jon KrakauerWriting The Other Workshops and Resources Episode Transcript: Rekka (00:00): Welcome back to another episode of, we make books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. I am Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore. Kaelyn (00:11): I'm Kaelyn. I am the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. And today... So today we're talking about the phrase, "write what you know," and how I dislike it. Rekka (00:22): Quite a bit. As it turns out. Kaelyn (00:24): I feel like it can be, without context as Rekka points out in this, a little bit of a cop out. A little bit of a, like, I don't know what to do here. Well, write what you know. Um, as a writing exercise, I think that's fantastic. But as a problem solving technique, I think it's lacking. Now, granted, as we point out, Rekka and I are coming from a genre fiction background, so we don't actually know a ton about aliens yet; we're working on it. So, yeah, I, um, I don't know. I'm not a big fan of the phrase, but, uh, we, you know, get into all different aspects of this. And then we spend a lot of time talking about, okay, well, how do you write what you don't know? And how do you know what you don't know? And if you don't know what you don't know, what do you do about that? Rekka (01:12): And do— and what if you don't know that you don't know anything, are you allowed to write? Kaelyn (01:16): Certainly hasn't stopped people. New Speaker (01:19): That's a, we didn't get into that. So, uh, here comes the music and we'll keep going on this. On the other side. New Speaker (01:40): I'm running out of cappuccino. Kaelyn (01:43): Sorry to hear that. Rekka (01:44): I'm getting very low. Kaelyn (01:45): So what happens when you've run out of cappuccino? New Speaker (01:48): I switch to water. Kaelyn (01:49): But how do you feel? Rekka (01:52): Um, let me tell you about it... In prose form? Were you trying to make that a segue? Kaelyn (02:00): Yes, I was. Rekka (02:00): I was not on the, uh, the wavelength of how that was exactly going to transition. Kaelyn (02:05): Well, that's because you're running out of cappuccino and you're caffeine deprived and your brain is not working at the, uh, super caffeinated level that you would like it to be. Rekka (02:13): Gotcha. Kaelyn (02:14): So if you were writing a character that was in desperate need of coffee... Rekka (02:18): I would know exactly what to write. Kaelyn (02:20): Yeah. So today, um, we're talking about the, uh, pervasive and very strange phrase, write what you know. And I say very strange, because everybody seems to have different opinions about what this means. And Rekka and I even have different opinions about what this means. Rekka (02:38): Well, the people who've said it to me have had different opinions about what it means. Um, sometimes it's somebody saying literally dig into your own life, and that's the only place where your inspiration or subject matter can come from. That kind of precludes the entire genre of science fiction and fantasy. Kaelyn (03:00): I don't like when people say that, because I think what ends up happening is you have a character or multiple characters that's experiences are limited to your own experiences. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to read a book that's just about me. I'm not interesting enough for that. Rekka (03:18): Writers already have to struggle to vary their characters enough so that you can identify them by their dialogue alone, for example. don't then tell that writer to rein it in and make the characters more alike by making them all like the author. Kaelyn (03:34): I think it's a little bit of a trap and a trick to tell people, write what you know. Rekka (03:40): Well, I know Star Wars. Can I write Star Wars? Kaelyn (03:43): Absolutely. Rekka (03:44): Okay, cool. All right. I'm happy with that answer. I think we can end it there. Kaelyn (03:49): All right. Problem solved. End of episode. Excellent. Rekka (03:51): Everybody write Star Wars or your favorite thing. Kaelyn (03:54): Quick clarification. We're obviously talking about fiction here, because if this is a nonfiction book, then you're doing research essentially. Um, or you're telling a narrative story that happened, presumably there's documentation to back up. Um, obviously Rekka and I work in genre fiction. You know, we tend to lean a little more towards the science fiction and fantasy side of things here, but I think this applies to characters and stories across the board. Although we will get a little, as we get, dig a little more into this, we'll get a little into things that are unique to science fiction and fantasy. And in this regard, I think though, that saying write what you know, and limiting yourself to your own experiences— I mean, I don't have that exciting a life ... if I'm limit— If I'm writing a book, and we limit it to my own experiences, it's going to be a lot of pizza. Beer, Mets games, pizza, hockey, a lot of documentaries. Rekka (04:56): Makeup styling? Kaelyn (04:58): Yeah. A lot of makeup. So, I mean, do you want to read 80,000 words about that? Cause I don't. Rekka (05:04): So you don't like the minutiae of write what you know. Kaelyn (05:09): No. Rekka (05:12): So allow me to talk about the minutia for a minute. This is the knowledge you have that sinks the reader more deeply into the character at any given time, even though it is what you know about a situation, it's what you know about being deep in that situation as a human being in that space. And even though sometimes we write aliens, we still occasionally need to feel like humans in a space, uh, to connect with our readers who are, in theory, human. So in the case of the cappuccino, because one example is probably as good as another. If you know what it's like to be busy and reach for your cappuccino and realize you drank the whole thing without appreciating it, because you were so distracted by whatever you were focused on. Or, you know the feeling of looking into the bottom of your cup and seeing just that little bit that sinks into the depression formed by the curve of the bottom. And you still have a headache and you still need coffee, except it was a cappuccino and you just spent $5 on your coffee instead of a proper $2. And now you can't go get another one. Um, the feeling of realizing that it's time to switch to water and you didn't really want to drink water because it's cold and you wanted to be cozy and you're in a bad mood and you just wanted your favorite cozy drink. Um, these are all little details that you can apply to a scene that doesn't have to be cappuccino. Uh, you know, if you're relating your cappuccino experience to your science fiction character's favorite beverage that they drink in the morning could be raktajino, could be caff. The characters who can't live without it. Uh, there's also the characters who can't live without their coffee, but only on a chemical level. They actually don't like the flavor and they drink it as fast as they can. These are different kinds of relationships that people can have with something. And so you are writing what you know, and you know it, but it may not be universal. And these are very micro, visceral things that people can generally relate to. Because even if people don't like coffee, they might love tea and they know what it feels like to not have their tea in the morning. Um, or they just know what it's like to not have that piece of their routine, or for the piece of their routine that they hold sacred to be forgotten because something else is going on. So these are all things that can draw your reader in because they create a more relatable experience. And you don't need to have a degree in coffee roasting to understand how this works. You don't need to look, on the internet, what other people say about drinking coffee? Um, if it's not coffee, you know, you don't want to talk about coffee? Talk about your favorite pillow. Talk about your favorite sweater, your slippers. Write about these little things that matter. Um, write about what it's like to be sad, and then have the weather does change and the sky opens up on you, and now you're sad and soaking wet. Like these are all things that readers can relate to, even if they can't relate to your science fiction scenario or your fantasy world. And that's how you write what you know on a micro level. Kaelyn (09:01): It's useful. You're writing something and the character's exhausted, and they've just run out of cappuccino. Rekka (09:06): I literally did. Just so you know, I literally just ran out of cappuccino Kaelyn (09:11): And boy, do you know what that feels like. Rekka (09:13): I do. Kaelyn (09:14): That said I'd like to get a little bit more to a macro level. Do you have any other, any other thoughts? Rekka (09:21): Um, I'm trying not to cry. I'm in that moment where the cappuccino is gone. So continue go to your macro level. Cause I'm, I'm still here in the micro and I'm suffering. So pull me out of it. Take me with you. Kaelyn (09:33): So on the macro level, this is what I kind of call the research area. Now, people who are like true, write what you know people: if you're not a doctor, you have no business writing, anything that has to do with being a doctor. If you are not an astrophysicist, you should not be writing anything that takes place in space. This is nonsense. There are not a lot of astrophysicists in the world, so we don't get to have all of the astrophysicists writing perfectly correct science fiction. Limiting people to writing only what they know is going to produce a very limited amount of books that could end up being very dry. Kaelyn (10:14): This kind of then branches into, okay, well, you have to do research on the things that you don't know about. Let's start with research and how much of it you do and where you get it from. And then we're going to move into how you apply this to your writing and the worlds that you're creating and the characters that are living there. The research all depends on what you're researching. You know, if you're writing historical fiction, you better be really well-versed in what was going on in history at that location at that time. You better have some primary sources from people who were there. Uh, you'd better be really clear about, you know, the, um, you know, the location, the political environment of the time, the class of the—you know, let's say it's about a family—their social class, and you'd better know what the important things that you need to identify with them are like, for instance, if you're writing about somebody, um, living in reformation era England, you'd better know what was going on between the Protestants and Catholics. And you'd better say which one this person is. Rekka (11:23): That's why I write secondary world fantasy. Kaelyn (11:26): Yes. Exactly. So in some cases like that, you know, like if you're writing fiction that is set, you know, in, in our world at a different time period or, um, a different place, you need to do research to, to find out what that time or that place or that people are like. And you need to do it, not only just to build a compelling character, but to be accurate. Because if this is an area where, if you're setting something, you know, in our quote-unquote reality, you gotta be accurate there otherwise... Well, one, I don't think anyone's really gonna publish it, but two, it's not going to go over well when it's published, it's not something that a lot of readers and reviewers in the community have. Rekka (12:15): patience for. Kaelyn (12:16): Yeah, exactly. The example I always use is Ken Follet books. Uh, Ken Follet writes these thousand page tomes of meticulously researched stories. One of his series is about a specific family through various generations. And then the other is about a town in, uh, the high middle ages in England. And my God, the research this guy did into—I think it was like 12th century—English stone masonry techniques. And then, uh, the wool industry open— it, you know, like, uh, how they died and all of this stuff. And you know what, no one can poke holes in that guy's research cause, Oh my God, did he do his research! But he still wrote really compelling characters. And you know what? He didn't write what he knows, because he's not a 12th century peasant from England. He has no context for the series. Rekka (13:14): At least no one has found his time machine yet. Kaelyn (13:16): Yes. Yes. So there are certain scenarios in which, you know, you can't write what you know, you just have to do the research. Rekka (13:26): But there's also, you don't know what you don't know. And sometimes you're just going to get it wrong. Kaelyn (13:33): Yes, definitely. There are some instances of, "we don't really know, so I'm going to speculate or I'm going to make something up here" and you know, then sometimes, maybe a decade later there's a new archeological discovery and that thing that you made up, wow. That was exactly wrong. New Speaker (13:48): Yeah. Or exactly right. New Speaker (13:50): I was going to say, it'd be weirder if it was right. Then, you know, you have the Dan Browns of the world who take some theories and present them as fact and just really run with it. And sure, it makes for compelling reading and an interesting story and everything, but it's not correct. Rekka (14:08): And not going to hold up to much scrutiny. Kaelyn (14:10): Yeah. Rekka (14:10): Look, you're not there because you think you can take a college course in this. Kaelyn (14:15): Yeah. Rekka (14:15): I hope. Kaelyn (14:17): So. You know, historical fiction, obviously you really need to have all your ducks in a row, but we're talking about some different kinds of fiction here. So let's just talk about, you know, maybe not people set in earth. Rekka (14:29): Okay. Kaelyn (14:30): I live in New York city. There are a lot of books and movies and stuff set in New York city. One of my favorite things about when I'm watching something set in New York and there's a chase scene through Manhattan and I'm watching the famous locations that they're running by and none of these are close together. This person ran a mile and a half uptown, to turn around, run two miles the opposite direction, and now is somehow in New Jersey. Kaelyn (14:59): And so if you're, you know, even if you're just writing a, you know, a fiction story that is like, again, I'll use New York as an example, set in New York city and you say, "Oh yes, my, um, character lives all the way out in, um, you know, Flushings Queens in a giant 200 story, you know, whatever building," okay, well, that's not a thing that exists. If they're going to, you know, have certain places and settings and expectations of stuff that they should be doing based on that character, you need to be familiar with and you need to research these things. Rekka (15:36): Yeah. Your New York character is not going to hop in the car and go to the grocery store. Kaelyn (15:41): And this is ridiculous, but also like, just get out of map and look up the subway stations. If you're going to make it, like, if you're going to be specific, like, Oh, they got on the 1 Train and went to Queens. No, they'd didn't. The 1 Train doesn't go to Queens. If you're not sure, just say they got on the subway. Rekka (15:58): They definitely have maps of New York that you can reference. Kaelyn (16:04): Yes. Rekka (16:04): I think there's a danger of writing what you looked up, as opposed to writing what you know and understand. Kaelyn (16:14): If you remember, uh, you know, quite a few episodes back, we talked to Antoine Bandele was a, an episode about creating maps for your book. And I mentioned to him that I live in Astoria, Queens and he said, "Oh my God, I was just there. Uh, I needed to come and do research." And I said, "what do you need to do research on in Astoria?" He said, "I'm writing something set in New York. And one of the characters is Brazilian." And I said, "ah, and there is a small microcosm of Brazilian people in Astoria." And I mean, it's not even, you know, like, uh, Chinatown kind of concentration, but there is a small concentration of, uh, Brazilian shops and stores and restaurants and stuff. And he came out and had a look around because sometimes you just got to get out there and see it. Rekka (16:58): I mean, like, you will never understand, from a Wikipedia page, what it's like to walk through a place. And things are getting a little bit better with uh, Street View. Kaelyn (17:09): Uh, Google Maps can be a big help with. All of this is to say, "Oh, so what you're telling me, I should just write about my, you know, town that I grew up in, in Pennsylvania and nothing else?" No, absolutely not. I mean, but you also don't have to travel anywhere, but just be aware of, and try to do as much research on everything as you can, to get a level of authenticity there. Um, in this case, you know, you may not be capable of writing what you know, because you don't know what it's like to be in a particular place. Rekka (17:41): Yeah. Like don't write about rural Pennsylvania, if you are from Nebraska and you've never been to Pennsylvania and you don't feel like anything up about it. Kaelyn (17:50): Especially if you live in rural Nebraska, because then you could just write it there. Rekka (17:55): If you're writing a small town, why not pick the small town that you know, or at least a stand-in that's based on the town you know. Because then you're less likely to get the details wrong. So if you're writing about Grant's Pass, Oregon, but you've never been there and you're from New Jersey, do you honestly know what it feels like to be in Grant's Pass, Oregon, maybe write about your small town in New Jersey or, you know, put a little effort into it until you do know it and then you can write it. Kaelyn (18:27): Yeah. So, and this is, you know, we're still right now in the realm of things that actually exist in the world. They are, that's a lot easier to decide what you do and do not know. Um, once we get into the realm, Rekka and I operate in, science fiction and fantasy, where you're having to invent things, I think people get the, "well, it doesn't matter what the research is. I'm just going to make up whatever, whatever I want." Yes. However, your world and your characters still need to abide by rules. And unless you want to create an entire new set of rules from everything from biology to have gravity works, then presumably you're going to be carrying over some of our real life applications of this into the book. Rekka (19:17): What do you say to me, who does write science fiction on planets that, you know, from which the characters have never heard of Earth? Like, do I get to break every rule? Kaelyn (19:30): No, of course not. Rekka (19:32): Which rules do I get to break? Please, I'm asking. Kaelyn (19:37): You get to break whatever rules you want, Rekka. You know that. Just you though, not everyone else. Just you. Rekka (19:43): Give the qualifier because people are going to be confused. Kaelyn (19:45): Yeah. The genuine answer is it depends. Because it also depends on how much work you want to be put into the book of explaining why this rule doesn't exist in this world. And genre is going to matter a lot here, hard military SciFi, the expectation there is that we're adhering to the basic tenants of physics as we understand them on earth right now. Fantasy, I think a lot of times, doesn't get too bogged down in this, unless it has a reason to. Everywhere you go, the gravity is the same. The air is presumably breathable, unless it's not for a specific reason. Um, science fiction has a little bit more to make up for there, you know, because we're setting it in like, yeah, it's, it's fake in terms of, you know, in, in the sense that the author has made something up. But you know, what if something's set on Alpha Centauri? Like, we do know that Alpha Centauri is a real place. And while we don't know the exact conditions there or what, you know, for certain is orbiting it, we can make some speculations. Now you can, you know, of course, write in "everything we knew was completely wrong!" So I think the way you've got to sort of approach this and we're going to, we're going to talk large scale and then we're gonna narrow down from here. Okay. What are you keeping? What are you getting rid of? Kaelyn (21:08): Always start from a position of everything that is true on earth and physics as we understand them on Earth, I can apply across the board here. Your reader is going to start from that understanding unless you tell them otherwise. Rekka (21:24): Their default is everything they think they know. Kaelyn (21:26): Yes. New Speaker (21:26): Which you can't control if they're wrong. But whatever they think they know, that's what they're going to apply as the default understanding. So if you're going to break a rule, redefine it as early as you possibly can to avoid confusion. Kaelyn (21:43): Yes. So if you're getting to the point where you have to start explaining things that, you know, we're, we're beyond what I think the average reader is going to understand, you've got to decide, "am I going to make something up or am I going to do the research and explain this within the context of what we understand in terms of, you know, physics and biology now?" So all this research I'm talking about, how do you do this? Well, there's no good answer to that. And sometimes the best way is to hope, you know somebody who knows a lot about this stuff. Rekka (22:20): Sometimes, um, I would say, wait until you learn something that excites you, and use that as the opportunity to dig deeper into that subject and research. And you don't know what you don't know. It's hard to even research something that you're completely unfamiliar with because you don't know the right keywords to even type in. Kaelyn (22:44): So a really good example of this is Andy Weir's book, The Martian. Andy Weir is very lucky because he is the son of a particle physicist and an electrical engineer. There's all of these physics components that come in. So we've got mechanical and electrical engineering, biology, physics, computer science, all wrapped up in this. Andy Weir is not a, not proficient in every single one of those things. He had to do a lot of research and talk to a lot of people. And he wrote in a scenario that technically doesn't exist. Because we don't know how all of this would really go on Mars, but we can speculate. Rekka (23:24): Yeah. And he studied orbital mechanics, astronomy, and like the history of space flight in order to make this as well-founded a story as he could. Kaelyn (23:35): So that's an excellent example of science fiction grounded in reality, even when these things don't actually exist and we're still going, "well, maybe on Mars, this is what it would be like." But it goes to show you what comes with this kind of hard work. Anyway, The Martian is an excellent movie, excellent book. Um, and it is an excellent example of how far good research can get you. Whether, you know, it's The Martian or Harry Potter or Ender's Game or something. All of these things have fantastical elements to them, but there's ways to rationalize them and to make it seem like something that could be feasible because you've established that's what this is. But you're not writing what you know. Rekka (24:20): Yeah. Kaelyn (24:21): You're learning. Rekka (24:21): Yeah. You're learning in order to better write a more convincing scenario. Kaelyn (24:26): Yes. In some cases the, you know, write what you know is you've got to come up with something and teach it to yourself. Rekka (24:35): Yeah. And sometimes you have to seek out other people who can tell you what you need to know that you don't know. Kaelyn (24:39): Yeah. So let's talk about that a little bit. Let's say, um, you're writing something where there's a lot of biology involved for whatever reason. Human, alien, or otherwise. So what are you going to do here? Well, there's so much information on the internet and, you know, first of all, establishing what reputable sources are is very important, but you know, the American College of Physicians, uh, the Mayo Clinic, a lot of, you know, hospitals and research facilities, they have a lot of information online about these things. Um, the other really interesting thing is, uh, YouTube, there is a lot of interesting videos out there about "here's how this functions" and they're made by, you know, doctors, scientists, and reputable people. There's a lot of really good how-to videos out there. There's so much information out there. I think two of the biggest areas that, um, you know, where it's like writing what you don't know and not doing a great job of it, is probably, um, law related things and medical related things. Rekka (25:50): Yeah. And there are doctors who have written books to help you because they're sick of seeing you do it wrong. Kaelyn (25:54): Yeah. I remember a panel I went to at the, uh, Nebula Conference about death building. One of the panelists is an emergency room doctor. And you know, they're talking about there's tolerances that the human body is allowed to sustain in writing that in actuality would never happen. One of the examples he gave was like, Sean Bean's character in the first Lord Of The Rings movie, who's got like a thousand arrows sticking out of him, but he's still standing up and swinging a sword. Rekka (26:21): To be fair. He does die eventually. Kaelyn (26:24): He does. But as this doctor pointed out, he was like, "yeah, one arrow to the stomach is enough to make most people not be able to stand up." Rekka (26:32): But also he's Sean Bean. So that's what killed him. Not all those arrows. Kaelyn (26:37): That's very true. You know? So there's, there's a certain degree we're willing to accept there just because it's know it's stakes, it's intensity, it's, you know, trying to, you know, scare the reader a little bit. Um, if everybody in fantasy books and science fiction, really, any books got, uh, incapacitated the way they should from, you know, a basic— Rekka (27:02): "The way they should." Sorry, I'm getting punchy. We're super fragile. Who made us so brittle? So, so delicate. Kaelyn (27:12): Blow to the right, you know, area. Like I always laugh when I'm watching and there are these sword fights and like the people are whack at each other in the legs. And I'm like, "that's a shredded ACL." "That's that meniscus is gone." "That person doesn't have a knee anymore." Anyway, there's a level of tolerance we're allowed to have there, but that said, if somebody is getting cut in half and they survive, they'd better be living in a world where getting cut in half is part of the reproductive cycle or something, you know, they just become two smaller versions of, of that person. Although I will say in the same panel, I was listening to the, the doctors presenting, uh, give us an example of a guy who came into his ER in two different ambulances and survived. So... Rekka (27:59): On that note! Kaelyn (28:00): On that note, Rekka (28:02): What do you know, anyway? What does anybody really know? Kaelyn (28:06): You know, look, we've, we've all heard the stories of the fantastical and the extraordinary. But to kind of, you know, circle back to our original thoughts here, you know, of writing what you know, and writing what you don't know: research is very important. Um, limiting yourself to writing what you know—unless, you know, I dunno, maybe you've had a really interesting life. Maybe you've had a lot of things happen to you. You've done a lot of stuff. Um, then that's great. But you know, the other end of it is if you haven't, you're, and you want to write an interesting, compelling story, especially if it involves like fairies and leprechauns. I'm kidding. Those are real obviously. Rekka (28:48): Obviously. Kaelyn (28:49): You're going to have to do some research and you're going to have to come up with your world rules and parameters. And in the course of the research, identify what you decide you're going to keep versus what you're going to change. And then you have to explain that you're changing it. Rekka (29:07): I always come back to: the more detail you feel like you have to include to justify the things you're doing, possibly the more research you need to do so that you truly understand it. Kaelyn (29:20): I'll give you another really good example of this. And this is actually a nonfiction book that falls really interestingly into the write what you know category. John Krakauer's book Into Thin Air. It's about the 1996 Everest disaster. He got, according to his account, talked into coming on this Everest expedition. And it just so happened that while he was there, and this was in the May climbing season, this massive blizzard storm or what have you, struck the people as they were all trying to come back down the mountain and eight people died. This story, it's harrowing, it's terrifying, it's heartbreaking. And it makes you never want to go anywhere near Mount Everest. Rekka (30:11): I don't even want to read the book. Kaelyn (30:15): But the reason he went on this expedition was he was going to write an article about it for the magazine he worked for. And now he's writing a book about this terrible disaster that took place. So he's coming from a place where he's actually very knowledgeable about, mountaineering and know, you know, knew all of these people and knew how everything was supposed to go. And now he's got to do a bunch of research and collect information and accounts from different groups and stuff about why what happened happened. And he puts together a really interesting case and story about all different aspects of the, uh, culture surrounding, like, people trying to summit Mount Everest and, you know, the situation of like people who really don't have any business trying to climb Mount Everest and just paying a lot of money to guides to get them up there. There's all of this speculation that, um, one of the things that happened that made this so terrible apart from, you know, a blizzard on Mount Everest, was some kind of a pressure system came through and dropped the oxygen to nothing. So that's a nonfiction book where, you know, this guy was writing what—he set out to write what he knew, and then ended up having to incorporate a whole bunch of stuff he didn't know as well. Rekka (31:26): That is a very literal write what you know. We've already covered the micro writing, what, you know, in a very personal, um, tangible, you know, physical and mental sensation sort of way, to add realism to a scene. And that can create tension and, and, um, drama, uh, especially in like a, um, you know, third person limited perspective or first person perspective. But, uh, we've also covered researching to learn what you don't know so then you can write it. And we've covered writing what you don't know, because nobody knows it. Kaelyn (32:15): One thing I'd like to just point out quickly before we wrap up here, there is a difference between writing what you know, writing what you don't know, and writing something that isn't yours to tell. Rekka (32:28): Yeah. And we didn't go into that this time on purpose because that's a whole topic. Kaelyn (32:33): You know, saying that there's ways to degree search and gain experience is not the same as saying, "I am a straight white cis person. I am going to write about a gay black trans person, and I will just do a lot of research and that makes it okay." It doesn't. Don't do that. That is not your story to tell. Rekka (32:52): That is... Writing... Don't write what you think you know. Don't write what you think is hot, and just assuming you know enough about it. And when I say hot, I mean, popular, uh, will attract attention. Kaelyn (33:10): There's always ways to include diverse characters into your writing. But anytime, you know, you're really going like, "wow, I don't know anything about the type of character, this person, that I'm writing here." That's probably a good point to take a step back and say, "is this something I should be writing?" Rekka (33:33): If this person is nothing like me? Kaelyn (33:35): Yes. Rekka (33:36): In what ways are they not like me? And are those ways that I should not be attempting to explain to other people? Kaelyn (33:43): You know, like I said, this is a whole other episode. We're not going to, you know, go into this, but it was worth making the statement that it's one thing to research places, locations, history, physics, medical sciences, researching people, outside of historic context, to use as a character is probably a place where you should take a step back and decide whether or not that's something you should be writing. Rekka (34:12): Um, if you are looking for a resource on knowing when it's okay, you know, cause casual representation in books is good. So look for a series of lectures and of courses called Writing The Other. That's a fantastic resource. They cover all sorts of different marginalized identities. And, um, the courses are paid and they should be because this is someone's time and effort to educate you. Uh, so that would be the best resource I could think of. And if we were ever going to cover that topic, I would be bringing someone on from the Writing The Other courses in order to talk about it. So honestly, I'm just going to refer you to them. Kaelyn (34:53): For all of this, you know, saying like there's nothing stopping you from doing research and trying to learn and build here. There is a line where research does not matter anymore at that point. Rekka (35:04): Right. It's just not appropriate. Kaelyn (35:06): This will not ever be a situation in which you're writing what you know. Rekka (35:10): Yeah, exactly. Kaelyn (35:11): So, um, you know, on that note, that's, it, it turned into a little bit, I would call this writing what you know versus researching what you don't. Rekka (35:19): Right. Versus keeping your hands off what someone else knows. Kaelyn (35:23): Yeah, exactly. Um, look, you know, I have definitely, um, you know, in the course of my life, like when I was in grad school, I had people, you know, who would say like, "Hey, I, can you tell me about this historic thing? I need it as a point of reference for something," um, a lot of people who in specialized, you know, areas, professions, or educations or stuff are frequently very happy to talk to you about them. You know, this isn't to say that you can just inflict yourself on anyone and say, "tell me all about the human nervous system. I need to know about every ending." Rekka (35:57): Ideally you have something to offer them. Whether it's money or your own experience in a way that will help them. Kaelyn (36:04): Yeah. Or just let me take out to dinner. And if I can just bounce a few things off of you, if this is a friend of yours or something like that. Um, when we're able to go out to dinner again, don't take anyone out to dinner, right now. Rekka (36:14): Yeah. No, that's bad. Be a good person. Keep people protected. Kaelyn (36:18): Yes. So, you know, don't be afraid to try to reach out to actual human resources that are experts or have more knowledge about these things than you do. It never ceases to amaze me the hobbies that my friends have that mean they know all of this stuff that I can't believe they know a lot about. But yeah. I think, uh, I think that's a good place to end. Rekka (36:45): Okay, well, if we haven't hit all the marks or you still have questions, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at @WMBcast, you can find us on Patreon at Patreon.com/WMBcast. Or you can even leave your question in a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. We would love if you would do that over there, because we want more reviews so that more people can find us and ask us more questions. So hopefully that answered some of your questions about this nebulous, strange advice that you hear so often. Kaelyn (37:17): It's just the worst advice. Rekka (37:20): I don't think that it's completely without merit. It's just not good without explanation. So, um, with context, it's, uh, a fun thing to consider and something to keep in mind. All right, we're done. I swear. We're done talking about it. We will talk to you in two weeks, hope you all have a lovely time. Stay safe, wear a mask, avoid other humans.

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Tools Referenced in this episode: Grammarly ProWritingAid   Episode Transcript   Rekka (00:01): Welcome back to another episode of, we make books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. I'm Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as R J Theodore. Kaelyn (00:10): I'm Kaelyn Considine. I'm the acquisition editor for Pu... Pu... Wait, I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. And we can edit that out. Rekka (00:20): Yeah. Is that a line edit? Kaelyn (00:24): Oh God. You know what? That's a good question. That, uh, I think that would be a line edit. Yeah. Uh, yeah. So today we're talking about editing. Um, I know it's something we've talked about before. I think we, we really were very focused on developmental edits. Rekka (00:40): Well, sure. Because that's your favorite, right? Kaelyn (00:43): Yeah. You know, there's, there's different components and different people you're going to encounter through the process of editing a book and they'll all want different things from you and be asking you to change different aspects of the book. So— Rekka (00:56): Oh, one thing we didn't say: that you are the author and your name goes on the cover. So all of these edits come from people who are hired because this is their specialty. However, this is your story. So it is up to you to stand by these edits. And if you don't feel comfortable standing by the edits, then you should not accept them. Kaelyn (01:22): Qualifier. I will have there: check your contract. Your book may have been accepted conditionally pending you making certain changes. So there's uh, there's contractual obligations for edits. But you know, as Rekka said, at the end of the day here, his name is on this. We talk a little bit at the end of the episode, about how, you know, people are, might yell at you online about things that you had absolutely no control over. So control the stuff that you can. Rekka (01:47): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So anyway, um, there are lots of kinds of edits and they are variably painful each in their own way. Kaelyn (01:56): Some are far more excruciating than others. Rekka (02:00): And on the other side of this lovely ditty, we will tell you about them. Kaelyn (02:17): ...that landing devices on Mars is becoming as routine as something like that can be, is, is very, is very cool. So yeah. Rekka (02:27): Yeah. Speaking of routine. How's that? Kaelyn (02:33): You've probably heard us say things like developmental edits, copy edits, line edits. And if you're going okay, well, what the heck is all of this art? Don't I just edit the book. No, you don't. Rekka (02:46): Sometimes you edit the book. Sometimes someone else edits the book, sometimes a third person edits the book. And sometimes you get a stack of pages and you hope that someone edited the book real well. Kaelyn (03:02): Yes. There's three main kinds of edits. You're going to come across while working on a book and then a fourth step in this order: developmental edits line edits and copy edit. Then after copy, edit, typically comes a proofreading. We're going to go through these step-by-step and instead of giving you definitions upfront, explain what they are as we're walking through them. So Rekka, as somebody who's gone through this process, what would you say your favorite part of all of these edits are? if you had to pick one of the three, what's your favorite? Rekka (03:36): Page proofs. Kaelyn (03:39): Really? Even as a writer? Rekka (03:40): Yeah. No, I mean, cause you're almost there. This is the point where you are just making sure that nothing weird happened in the process of getting this into a layout and you get to reread the book. You're in theory, looking at an immutable copy. So you can't keep fiddling with it. And all you're doing is checking to make sure that there's not like a weird space before a period, or something strange like suddenly you've got smart quotes and—. Kaelyn (04:17): Let's save that for when we get there. Rekka (04:19): That was the wrong answer, folks. Apparently I wasn't supposed to say that. I was supposed to say the dev edit is my favorite. Kaelyn (04:24): And that's because that's everybody's favorite because the dev edit— Rekka (04:28): No the dev edit means you have to tear out your heart and write it all over again. Kaelyn (04:33): The developmental edit though, is the part where you're still writing. Rekka (04:37): I'm not in this to write. I'm in this to have written. Kaelyn (04:43): Fair. Um, yeah. So the first thing you're going to hear about, you know, with the first one you're gonna encounter is developmental edits. Developmental edits are where it is what it sounds like you're still developing the story. Um, this is what's going to happen generally um, at any stage of this before your book is finalized, pretty much. So anytime you're getting feedback from anyone, be it a writing group, um, a friend, an agent and editor, uh, some random guy that you started talking to and told the story. Rekka (05:16): No, don't start talking to those guys. Kaelyn (05:19): That is, that's a developmental edit. There's obviously different levels of intricacy and sophistication to this. Um, if you're working with an agent, they'll probably give you some high level stuff, especially for the beginning of the book. If you're working with an editor, however, they're gonna be much tougher on you. This is the part where they're going to say, "okay, I like all of this. Here's the thing. Your magic system doesn't make any sense." Or "it seems to have some rules and then it's breaking them" or "the world-building is inconsistent" or "there's a plot hole here." Um, a lot of times you're going to start big, you know, like, all right, let's like, I've had authors where I'm like, ""I need you to send me a document of how magic works here. Or "I need you to send me a timeline of the events before this story because there's characters referencing things and they're contradicting each other. And I don't think it's a case of an unreliable narrator." Rekka (06:16): Unreliable author. Kaelyn (06:20): There's a lot of those. So your developmental edits are where you're finishing the big parts of the story where you're narrowing— you're nailing down, um, the rules of the world, the world, building the characters, addressing any plot holes. In some cases you may be making massive changes to the book. Sometimes it's not "this sentence contradicts something another person said," sometimes it's, "Hey, um, I don't think you need this character. They're really not doing much. Get rid of them." Rekka (06:54): Right. And in which case, all the threads of the story that have to change as a result. Kaelyn (07:01): Developmental edits can be, you know, for as much as they are probably the most fun, I guess, of the book, writing process. Rekka (07:10): That's a big question mark in your voice, there. Kaelyn (07:14): Well, they're the most fun for me certainly, but, um, you know, I think, uh, I would hope that people writing enjoy working on their books and look, it can, developmental edits can be like, they can be brutal. Um, a developmental edit can result in a significant overhaul of what you were writing. Now, this isn't to scare anyone because the thing is, if you're working with an editor at this point, they wouldn't have bought your book if they didn't like it and think there was something good in there. Rekka (07:46): Right. Kaelyn (07:47): So remember your editor just wants what's best for your book. You maybe not as much. Rekka (07:55): Well, what about for people who are self publishing? Kaelyn (07:58): So for people who are self publishing, you know, it depends on how you're doing this. Did you hire an editor? Maybe that's the person who's, uh, who's doing this. But if you're doing this on your own, hopefully your developmental edits have been more of the process of writing and refining your book, getting feedback, incorporating it into there. But that's where this is all coming from because somebody reading it and saying, "yeah, I like this" is different from somebody going, "okay, well you have this character, Laura. And she went into the bathroom and then we never heard from her again." Rekka (08:37): Look, this happens sometimes. Kaelyn (08:39): Sometimes people go into bathrooms and never come back out. Um, but that's, I mean, developmental edits is so broad compared to the rest of these because it's all of the work that gets your book to a point where it is quote-unquote done in terms of developing the story. You've stopped developing the story, everything after this now is grammar and syntax and prose and making sure the story is coherent and flows well. Um, Rekka, as someone who has gone through some pretty significant, uh, developmental edit overhauls... Rekka (09:21): Yeees? Kaelyn (09:21): How'd that feel? Rekka (09:23): Is 60% significant? Kaelyn (09:27): Oh, that's nothing. Rekka (09:27): What about when you do it twice? Kaelyn (09:29): Well, that's 120%. Rekka (09:31): Okay. So I've rewritten 120% of SALVAGE. Um, yeah, it's— look, it's funny because it's a lot of work, and I'm the type of person who will grind myself into the earth to get work done on a deadline, regardless of what that deadline's reasonable level is. Kaelyn (09:55): Well, now let me ask you this, because your books specifically, you know, especially as you got farther into the Peridot Shift series with various POVs and everything, when you change something, the, I imagine it's a bit of a butterfly effect. Rekka (10:12): Well. Kaelyn (10:14): Okay, let me rephrase that. I know it's a little bit of a butterfly effect. Rekka (10:16): No, but it even goes beyond that because the first revision was to add all the POVs. Kaelyn (10:22): Yes. Yeah, that's true. Rekka (10:23): Um, the, the first book was one single POV and I felt as though that was now a requirement of the series. Um, specifically an earlier editor that I contracted to help me revise FLOTSAM told me, "dump all these other POVs and just follow Talis." So that's what I thought I needed to do for book two, because that's what I had set up as an expectation for the reader, I felt. So it came as a shock when the publisher's editor that, um, I started working with on SALVAGE as a new editor, came back and said, "I think you could fix a lot of the issues you're having with this book, if you introduced new POVs." So you've seen that meme of like Cosmic Brain. Like that's what happened to me. I was like, "this is an option?? I can go in and add more POV's and show people more of the mindsets of the different people in the, in this world?" It was amazing. I was, I was pumped. I was ready to go. By adding other POVs I was able to go to where the action was happening and get the information to the reader without it having to pass third hand to my main characters. Kaelyn (11:55): You did a really significant overhaul, but then I'm sure that presented a challenge because after you overhauled and rewrote this book to include these other POVs, anytime you made a change, then you have to account for that. Rekka (12:10): Right? Because like, it was, most of my characters weren't even present, um, in the, between the two drafts. Kaelyn (12:16): It's not only, and this is, I mean, we could do a whole episode on this, but it's not only where Talis is, who she's with, and what she knows. You need to track these other characters, encountering other characters, other places, and gathering their own information that they may or may not be sharing with other people. So one change trickles down into all of these other characters and it's something you have to account for. Developmental edits, especially from a multiple POV book: It's a process. Rekka (12:44): It's probably where a lot of the, um, like the timeline inconsistencies happen that readers catch that no one else seems to during the process of getting it out into the world. Um, it's not that the writer was drafting in a flurry and forgot what they wrote. It's more that they drafted in a flurry, revised it themselves, send it off to somebody else. And then somebody else stuck their fingers in and said, "let's pull on these threads and see what happens." And then you have little details you forgot all about that you overlook even when you reread. Kaelyn (13:17): And this, by the way is the reason I am a big fan of having an outline. Rekka (13:21): Oh, but it's the little details. Kaelyn (13:23): There are books that I read that, you know, it's not even just the little details it's "this does not line up. This makes no sense." And in developmental edits, that's where you're supposed to catch things, but you know, a big secret here: uh, editors are people too. And sometimes we, you know, in all the course of all of these changes, miss everything. This is very much turns into, can't see the trees for the forest kind of situation. It's always good to have somebody who is not so in the weeds on this take a look at it, to be able to take a step back and point out, "hang on. That girl never came out of the bathroom." Rekka (13:58): Right. I know you're still worried about her. Kaelyn (14:00): I'm very worried about like, is she okay? Is she having a medical emergency? Was there a portal in there somewhere? What happened to her? So this is, this is making this sound scary and overwhelming. Developmental edits. I find are always the fun part where you really get to, you know, have somebody who's excited to talk to you about your book and you get to tell them all the details and you know, all the secrets and the nitty-gritty stuff going on here. So, um, I enjoy them, but you know, that's just me. I just get to torment people with them. Rekka (14:29): It is a very, very good thing to enjoy the teeny tiny details of your book. Both as the editor working on it and the writer creating it. Kaelyn (14:42): I find one of the most important tools for developmental edits, especially for books with a lot of characters or places is a timeline. Timeline of events before the book and timeline of the events during. I have had books that I've worked on where I've just gotten an Excel sheet to track which character is where at what time to make sure that we're not accidentally saying they were both in this town on the same day. Your editor is going to do a lot of work on this because your editor is going to be your sanity check here, to use the, uh, well, the developer term. Um, you know, does this make sense? Does this work? Is there something here that is very obvious that we're missing? Developmental edits are also where, you know, you're going to, besides all of these checking for problems, you're also going to flesh out characters, their arcs, their motivation, their stories. You're going to do some world-building as well. Probably. Um, again, some of it will be clarifying. Some of it might be like, "Hey, this is really interesting that you mentioned in passing. And later in the story, we need a new setting. Why don't you use this?" So developmental edits can seem a little like, "Oh my God, it's going to be all the mistakes. I'm going to have to rewrite everything." But they're also the time where you really get to have fun with your book. In my opinion. Rekka (16:08): I get really excited about developmental edits because someone has challenged me on something. For example, like how I handled my POVs or a detail of why my character does this, or suggests that, you know, a stake isn't high enough, or suggests that things are happening too conveniently, you know, dominos are falling in too straight of a line. And by being challenged on these things on a broad level, I tend to get all my gears really cranking and suddenly things that, you know, don't occur to me when I'm drafting on my own from, you know, building the outline on my own, coming up with the concepts and figuring out where the book is going on my own. Suddenly when you have another person reflecting back what your story is saying to them, it gets very exciting and I get very motivated, and inspired, to come up with new solutions that, um, address the concerns and probably do some other stuff too, that weren't even brought up. But like, you know, this is where suddenly like, "Oh, these two characters come together at the end and how perfect that they end up in the same spot and that just sets this up to happen...!" And those are the sorts of, um, it feels like serendipity when all your dev edits make the story you wanted to tell, come out of the story that you actually drafted. Kaelyn (17:55): Aww, Rekka, that was beautiful. Rekka (17:56): Thank you. Kaelyn (17:59): So, yeah. Dev edits: they're fun. You know what's not fun? Line edits. Yeah. So once your story's, you know, finished quote-unquote. And by that, I mean that the story exists, it's complete, everyone's happy with, you know, the plot, the character arcs, the timeline, everything going on. Rekka (18:20): I like how you say, you know, "once your story is finished, QUOTE-UNQUOTE..." Kaelyn (18:26): Yeah. You thought, you thought you were done here. Um, this is— so something that you notice in editing, as you continue down the chain here, the burden shifts more and more to the editor. So line edits are next. Line edits, you are probably still doing with your actual editor. This is probably still going to be the same person. A line edit is something that is addressing writing style, language use, um, combing the manuscript for obvious errors, like run-on sentences and redundancies, at a sentence and paragraph level. So this is where— and this is also typically, especially if you're, self-publishing where you do your read aloud. "Did I just use the same word three times in one sentence? I did." Rekka (19:13): You will not know it until you read that thing aloud. Kaelyn (19:17): Um, I did. You know why? Because there's only so many ways to say "rock." Rekka (19:21): Right. Well, sometimes you have a word that does not stand out when you use it three times in a sentence. Other times when that word is, you know, ostentatious, then you do hear it over and over and over again. Cause you just, when you're drafting or rewriting, you just like you get a groove somewhere in your brain and a word will stick in it and you'll end up using it over and over and over again until you clear that. Kaelyn (19:45): Yeah. So you're going line by line and looking at this now. You've got the broad stuff. Every step we take in the editing process, we're going through it with a finer and finer tooth comb. Um, you know, for developmental edits, everybody breaks these out different ways. You know, there's like, "okay, first, we're going to address this. Then we're going to do this. Then we're going to do this." Every book's different with, you know, how to address that. Line edits are much more standardized here. The read aloud is very helpful, especially if you're self publishing, but what you're doing here is you're going and looking for like repeated words, redundant sentences, unclear pronouns, you know, maybe there's like two men in a fight and you just keep saying, "he, he, he, he" it's like, "okay, well, who got stabbed here? Who's bleeding to death on the floor who, who died? I don't even know now." I like to not do line edits right after the developmental edit is finished because you, you become like unable to see things in the manuscript. But line edits are really important because what they're also going to come up with is this is a very, very strange thing, passages that just don't read well parts of the book that to a reader who hasn't been working on this for months are not going to make sense or are going to seem disjointed. And this could be something like a shift in tone or phrasing that is a really awkward. Um, this could be digressions in the narrative that sort of take away from the scene at hand, it could be pacing related. Now let's be clear. This is not the copy edit. We're going to get to that next. You are still going to have to do sentence-level work here where you may have to add, change, and remove things. This isn't like "change 'she' to 'Rekka.'" This is "rewrite this paragraph because the whole thing is very confusing. And I don't know who just died." Rekka (21:48): Right. Kaelyn (21:49): Um, I've gone through line edits where I've crossed out entire paragraphs and said, "I need you to condense this down to one sentence, one or two sentences for the pacing of this scene, because it's a fight and this is taking too long." Um, I've added notes where it's like, I mean, my, I think my most common line edit is "describe this more, expand on this." Rekka (22:13): Expand on this. Kaelyn (22:13): Expand on this. Expand on this. Rekka (22:15): Tell me more. Dive deeper. Kaelyn (22:17): Yeah or, you know, this is where a, an editor might say, "throw in a couple words here and tell us what they're thinking or how they're feeling, throw in a reaction." This is where you're checking to make sure everything is coherent and communicating what you want it to. Line edits are an incredibly time consuming process. Rekka (22:39): They do seem like they might be the worst. New Speaker (22:42): They're not my favorite. Um, I personally can't do them for more than an hour and a half to two hours at a time, or things start to wash off your back. And this is where you've gotta be really sharp on what you're looking at and making sure everything is, is making sense. Editors do line edits differently. In some cases I will, you know, when I do this, I put a note in there of, you know, for instance, "expand on this, tell me what this person is feeling at a reaction here." In some cases I will go in and just edit the sentence if it's a matter of, you know, flipping the, uh, the phrases in the sentence, or this sentence should come before this one. Now obviously, you know, all of these, are— none of this is being dictated to authors. If it's that way for a reason, we'll discuss it. Right. But this is the first time probably that you're going to get something back from an editor and have to go through an add and accept changes. Rekka (23:45): That's a whole new nightmare, if you haven't worked with track changes before. Kaelyn (23:49): If you are to the point where you're getting ready for a line out of it, and you've never done this before, maybe talk to your editor and sort of agree on how this is going to be done. There's different ways to track changes and you can always modify it. But, you know, it's just something to keep in mind. You know, developmental edits, you're going to be getting, you know, multiple passes of that. Some of it will probably be a letter then, you know, as you get farther, further into it, it'll be, you know, notes directly in the manuscript and that sort of thing. Line edits are when you're getting back a document that is marked up, that, you know, if it were a physical copy, it will have looked like someone's stabbed it to death because it's just going to be covered in red. There's no such thing as a manuscript that is so perfect it doesn't need line edits. Some of the best writers in the world have editors for a reason, because you need a fresh set of eyes on this. I definitely will. Sometimes when working on a manuscript, if I catch something really glaring right off the bat, you know, just take care of it right then and there. But the actual line edit pass is, it's a very lengthy process to do it well. Rekka (24:56): I can't even imagine attempting to do a line edit. How do you stay focused and not get swept up in looking at one aspect and forget what else is going on? Kaelyn (25:09): I think my record was 2000 changes in like a 90,000-word manuscript. That was changes, not additions and deletions. For the author, this is the first time where something like this can seem really overwhelming because you've got to sit down and go through all of this now, and now you've got to be clear and fresh on all of it. Um, and on top of that, then sometimes your editor is going to hand you something and just say, this paragraph doesn't work and it's unclear fix it. And you're going to go, "well, I'm the one that wrote it. How am I supposed to fix this? This seems clear to me." In that case, you know, you go talk to your editor and you work through it. This is another one where you'll have a couple of calls, probably, you know, minimum, a couple to get through the whole thing. That's line edits. It is definitely my least favorite of the edits. I will. I mean, really my side. I only do two, the developmental and the line. Um, I obviously definitely prefer developmental. Line edits are they're, they're hard, but obviously very, very important. Which brings us to our third step in the editing process and the last of our true quote-unquote edits. And this is the copy edit. Now the copy editor is probably a different person. Rekka (26:34): In an ideal world the copy editor is a different person, because you want a new set of eyes on this. Kaelyn (26:40): Copy Editors are magical creatures who can at a speed incomprehensible to the mortal brain, go through a document and check for things like spelling, grammar, punctuation, syntax. Rekka (26:55): Just a mistaken word. Like you typed the wrong word or, or a homonym. Kaelyn (26:59): Yeah. Incorrect hyphenations, inconsistent uh numerical formatting, inconsistent formatting in general. Weird fonts. Weird capitalizations. Any factually incorrect statement that you may have made. A good copy editor will catch things that should have been caught in line edit that weren't for whatever reason. Copy editors are the people that go through and say, "this is correct English." Now, if you're writing nonfiction, this is more straightforward. There is, you know, what typically happens is a copy editor ascribes to a certain manual of style. Then there's also, you know, depending on which dictionary you're using, Oxford versus Webster, um, which that just tends to be American versus English-English. And they'll also have, you know, their, their stylistic format, um, even in non-fiction, you know, there's things you have to grade on, like, um, "how are we writing out numbers? Are they going to be a numerical value or is it going to be a Roman numeral? Or are you going to write out the entire number?" Now when you get into science fiction and fantasy, this gets a little more tricky, obviously. So, um, a lot of times what we've done with our copy editors is provided, you know, a list of characters. "Okay, here's their names. Here's the absolute definite correct spelling. Here's a list of places. Here's the absolute correct spelling." Rekka (28:18): I would like to suggest as you go over the line, edits from your editor, that this is a good time to catch any name and build a glossary, if you haven't already done it. Any proper name or unique word to your world that people might be like, "huh? I wonder what that is." This is a good time to make a glossary. And then you've chosen the official spelling and you can refer to it yourself. You are going to use this glossary more than your readers ever will. Kaelyn (28:45): Absolutely. If you have naming conventions in your world, if there is, um, you know, like "this is how this title is formatted," "this is how you address, um, somebody from this place," uh, "this should always be..." This is what you need to give the copy editor because the copy editor needs to know what to flag as possibly incorrect. Copy editors also, I mean, like auto-correct can do some weird things sometimes, especially if these are, you know, made up names and places. Rekka (29:24): Neo-pronouns. Autocorrect loves to just wreck havoc on them. Kaelyn (29:28): Yeah. So sometimes autocorrect will change something to make it correct as autocorrect sees it. And the copy editor needs to know that that's not what that's actually supposed to look like. So arming your copy editor with the resources and information they need is super important. A copy editor is going to give you back a manuscript that is going to have thousands of changes in it, because they have been moving commas and periods— and commas, by the way, are something that your line editor is going to go and have opinions about, and then your copy editor is going to say, no, that's wrong. So there is going to be a little— don't worry, it won't just be you fighting with the copy editor here, your regular editor's going to be doing that too. Rekka (30:14): She's not wrong, folks. Kaelyn (30:16): Yeah. And you know, generally you defer to the copy editor. Rekka (30:20): Right. They're hired for their skillset. The previous editor was hired to help you craft a better story. Kaelyn (30:27): Exactly. Yes. Copy editors are very, very special people. Always be nice to copy editors. Rekka (30:35): They're precious and wonderful. And you're not! Going! To anger them! Kaelyn (30:40): No, do not anger the copy editors. Copy editing, by the way, just as a side note is an incredibly valuable skillset. We talk a lot about "copy" over the course of these episodes: "back copy," "cover copy." "Copy" is words. It's words that you have written and you were getting ready to send out into the world. A copy editor's job is to make sure the words and the grammar are being held to the standard that they are supposed to. Rekka (31:10): That they're doing what you want them to, which is communicating efficiently. Kaelyn (31:15): Anything that you have read that is published, that is not a simple sign (and even in those cases, sometimes that could've used a copy editor) has probably gone through a copy editor, or it should have at least. They're— copy editors work in all sorts of industries that are publishing adjacent. You know, like marketing companies will frequently have somebody who, maybe it's not their full-time job, but can do copy editing for them. It's an amazing skill set to have and it is something that if somebody put a gun to my head and said, "you need to copy edit this. I don't think I could, because I can not maintain that level of detailed consistency. Rekka (31:54): That's the thing is like, when you're talking about a novel that could be a Sanderson novel of 500,000 words, a copy editor, you know, should sit on a throne of diamonds and wear a crown and be served all their favorite— Kaelyn (32:12): The skulls of their enemies. Rekka (32:14): It is absurd, the amount of work they do to make us look good. Kaelyn (32:19): By the way, if you are self publishing and you're going to hire a copy editor, not to scare anyone, this is a heads up. They're not cheap. Rekka (32:27): They shouldn't be. Like, listen to how much work they're doing. Kaelyn (32:30): Yes, exactly. It's obviously different, but it's like going to hire like, you know, a welder or, you know, a, a stone mason or something. This is something that they have been trained to do. Rekka (32:42): So pay them. Kaelyn (32:44): Yeah. Copy editors: wonderful people, pay them, be very nice to them. So that's really the last stage in like the editing editing. And you're going, "Oh, well, that's great. I'm done." You're not. You're not. Rekka (32:55): Oh, sweet summer child. You are not done. Kaelyn (32:59): Because next is proofreading. Now, if you're sitting at home and going like, "Oh my God, proofreading, like my teacher would tell us to do in elementary school before I turned something in? Like, 'Oh, make sure you proofread this.'" First of all, your teacher was using that word incorrectly. Um, what they were actually telling you to do is copy edit. Rekka (33:19): Well, no. Copy edit and then proofread. What your teacher didn't tell you was to do it twice. Kaelyn (33:24): Yes. Yes. So let's do some terms here. Cause you know how I love definitions. We talked about what a copy editor is. They edit copy. We know what copy is. Proofreaders: that's exactly what they do. They read proofs. So this is, you know, in the days when you still had to use to print these things and mark them up manually, you would print a proof. So like if you've ever gotten formal pictures taken and it says like there's a watermark on there that says like "proof only: not for distribution" or something, that means that that's the version that's not final. We have to look at this and make changes to it. A proof editor is checking for the quality of the book before it goes into mass production. "How does this look now?" Is, you know, and Rekka can certainly speak more to this than I can, being a graphic designer. Um, but is this like, "are there huge rivers through the text? Are the margins okay? Are there massive gaps between words?" A proof editor is also going to flag any mistakes that they see, obviously. You're always flagging mistakes as you're working through this. Rekka (34:34): And an author also gets their proofs, um, sometimes called galleys. And it's now your last chance to make sure that everything came across the way you intended. And sometimes, that can involve the placement of a word on a page. "Does this sentence get chopped up and become unreadable because of the way it falls across columns or pages?" Kaelyn (35:02): Yeah. And you know, I did this once with Rekka and there's all of these terms I had never heard before. Like um what do you call it? An orphan when there's like— Rekka (35:10): Right? You've got orphans, widows, rivers, there's lots of terms that, um, it's up to the graphic designer. The page layout artists has hopefully looking at these too. Uh, the publisher is hopefully looking at these too. Hopefully there's like the entire team is, either together or separately, sitting down. You know, you want to say that in this digital age, we don't need to print these out anymore, but you really do. Because looking at it on the screen is not going to show it to you the way it's going to appear in the printout. And keep in mind, we're not talking about the e-book proof here. Kaelyn (35:47): And it's funny. Cause I was going to say actually is the other thing that a designer and a proofreader is going to do is try to account for anything that could end up looking really funny on an e-reader. There's only so much you can do with that. But there are certain things that stand out that are like, "this is just going to look strange." Rekka (36:04): Yeah. So depending on how everything's structured, because it's entirely possible that you have a different person doing the design of the print book than you do creating the e-book, or you may have somebody who comes in and takes the designer's files and converts them to an EPUB to try and basically get the most recent version. Um, but then you have to watch out for things that a designer for print will do that does not translate well to EPUB. And um, so there, there's a lot of work on the proof that like, I'm aware of and this all may sound like a big pile of overwhelm, but basically what Kaelyn is bringing up is that there's a reason that people print out or create proofs. And that's where the word comes from for "proofreading," because basically it should be called "last chance editing" because after this, it costs a lot of money to make any changes. At this point, it will cost money to make changes. But this is one copy. When you have a print run of 10,000, now we are talking "Too late. Sorry." Kaelyn (37:17): I mean, it's also it's design and quality check too. It's you know, for all of the time we were talking about when you're doing a line that it's about, does this make sense? Is this going to distract the reader? The proofreader, the designer, is doing this too, where they're looking at this and going, "hang on, like something's weird here. And this is going to be confusing." That's really, as Rekka said, this is your last chance. This is when— Rekka (37:47): This is when you hope you find any mistake that made it through the cracks, because these are going to be the mistakes that those one star reviewers zero in on, and just drag you across the coals for. And sometimes it's nothing to do with you, the writer, um, sometimes it's a formatting issue. Sometimes it's the result of weird behavior from copy-paste between programs. Kaelyn (38:10): But I love those reviewers that are like, "and the author clearly did not check their margins." Like, no, they didn't. They're the author. That's not their job. Rekka (38:17): That's not their job. Yeah. Self-publishing maybe, but even then a lot of these things are outside the author's control depending on the tools they use. Kaelyn (38:25): So yeah. So then at that point you are actually done, that's it. Rekka (38:31): One hopes. Now it's time for your, um, launch strategy and your marketing plan and your book tour and... Sorry, you're not done. Kaelyn (38:41): That's your edits. And we, you know, we made it sound like this was just a neat step-by-step, but you know, let's, let's be honest. We all know that's not true. Rekka (38:52): Oh, God. It's like, "hurry, hurry, hurry. What the heck does this mean? I don't understand this grammar rule you're explaining to me and I don't have the Chicago Manual of Style. So I'm just going to try and interpret what you said or maybe I'll rephrase the sentence, so we don't have to even have this conversation. And then I'm going to submit it back to you..." Kaelyn (39:11): The times where I was like, "look, I'm done with this word. I'm not doing this anymore. We're just getting rid of it." Rekka (39:17): Sometimes we just write around a word. Yeah. Kaelyn (39:20): You know what I would say and what I hope anybody who, especially if you're going through this for the first time is: take this, and I'm not saying this to sound condescending, take this as a learning experience. This is a really difficult thing to do. Um, you know, like you thought writing the book was hard. Well now you've got to edit it, but take it as a learning experience where you can try to gather as much information about the thoughts and process and everything that goes into this on your own. You know, really try to engage and pay attention to what's

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Lots of links this episode!  A.Z.’s website https://www.azlouise.com/@az_louise https://twitter.com/az_louise“Chorus of the Captains” by Amanda Gorman (Performed at the NFL Super Bowl) https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/super-bowl-2021-read-the-transcript-of-amanda-gorman-poem-chorus-of-the-captains/The Hidebehind: https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/HidebehindThe Iliad: http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.1.i.htmlShakespeare: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poem “She’s Not A Phoenix” by A.Z. Louise (Strange Horizons): http://strangehorizons.com/poetry/shes-not-a-phoenix/AASHTO Manual: https://www.scribd.com/document/118295981/AASHTOAnnihilation by Jeff Vandermeer: https://www.jeffvandermeer.com/book/annihilation/Twisted Moon: http://www.twistedmoonmag.com/5/louise.htmlSubmission Grinder: https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/   Episode Transcript (by Rekka, blame her for all errors) Kaelyn (00:00:00): Welcome back to another episode of We Make Books, a show about writing publishing and everything in between. I'm Kaelyn Considine. I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. Rekka (00:00:07): I'm Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as R J Theodore. And I might start writing some poetry as R J Theodore. Kaelyn (00:00:15): Yeah, really? Gonna, you're going to take that dive, that plunge? Rekka (00:00:19): Well, look, I've written a lot of poetry in my life. I've just spared everybody. Kaelyn (00:00:24): I didn't know that about you actually. I feel, um, not betrayed. Um, what's the word I'm looking for here? Uh, surprised. Rekka (00:00:33): Surprised. But not disappointed. I hope. Kaelyn (00:00:35): No, no, of course not. I've never disappointed at any of your writing. Uh, so yeah, we, um, We Make Books took a little bit of a turn—but it turns out not too much, if you listen to the episode—um, into the realm of poetry, because you know, it turns out people do actually publish poems and stuff. Rekka (00:00:52): Yeah, quite a few of the markets that publish the short stories that we sub out (and sometimes trunk) are also seeking poetry and some exclusively, and some anthologies are all about poetry, and some single author anthologies end up being all about poetry. So if you've got a poetic bone in your finger somewhere, maybe this is the episode you need to hear to, um, try and draw some of that out. Kaelyn (00:01:16): Rekka was able to interview poet A.Z. Louise, who, um, was kind enough to take the time to sit down and, you know, talk about like some things I really didn't know about poetry and the publishing industry. Rekka (00:01:28): Yeah, it was great to have A.Z.. A.Z. Louise is a lover of birds, a killer of houseplants and a former civil engineer. Their love of speculative fiction has been lifelong, but they became a speculative poet by accident. Their work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fiyah, and The Future Fire. Kaelyn (00:01:45): I think poetry is a little intimidating. I don't know why a poem is so much more intimidating than a full length, novel to a lot of people, but it certainly is for me. Rekka (00:01:55): I think there's a certain expectation of highbrow, um, of elevated intellect that is required for good poem or to understand a good poem. There, there seems to be some sort of requirement to get in the door to poetry. Kaelyn (00:02:16): Yeah. I think everybody's got this notion in their head that like to understand poetry, you need to have gone to school for it, which I don't know why nobody thinks that about writing. Rekka (00:02:26): Well, I hope it's not true about writing cause I didn't go to school for writing. Kaelyn (00:02:30): Yeah, exactly. Um, you know, and I think there's definitely a lot of theory and craft behind poetry to be sure. Um, and you know, this is, uh, it's an area of publishing that I think, in mainstream publishing, is not talked about as much. So, um, A.Z. was kind enough to spend some time with Rekka going through some of the nuances of it. It's very interesting. Rekka (00:02:51): I think so. Kaelyn (00:02:52): Yeah. Rekka (00:02:52): And I wanna try it now. I don't know when it will, but I'm gonna. Kaelyn (00:02:57): Well, um, on that note, we're going to let Rekka go, uh, you know, compose us a nice haiku about—. Rekka (00:03:03): Maybe a Limerick to start. Kaelyn (00:03:05): Oh definitely a Limerick. Yes. To start. Rekka (00:03:20): The world has just seen the first major American sporting event with a poem as featured part of the entertainment, um, which is just wild to consider. Um, because it doesn't feel like the world is getting more open to that sort of thing. But at the same time, this was scheduled like long before the same poet, Amanda Gorman, um, read a very moving poem at the inauguration of the president. So somehow poetry was already on the schedule for— I'm talking about the NFL Super Bowl. I just don't know how that happened. A.Z. Louise (00:03:57): It was so wild, absolutely wild to see. Rekka (00:04:00): And I love it. And um, so it is total coincidence that we're doing a poetry episode not long after that. just like I said, I needed a cohost and I jumped on A.Z.. A.Z. Louise (00:04:11): Hello! Rekka (00:04:11): Because A.Z. was missing podcasting. Um, so yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be very happy if poetry, I wanna say came back. I don't know if that's fair to say, but it feels like poetry is more of a 18th, 19th century thing. And here we are in the 21st century and we are getting a lot of poetry, but it's in the form of like, "I have eaten the Lego pieces that were on the carpet and which you were probably building into the razor crest, forgive me. They were delicious. So sharp and so crunchy." There's been a different sort of poetry discourse lately, but there are poems constantly being published and there are poets out there constantly creating new poems. So let's, um, let's talk about poetry cause I want to acknowledge it. And if anyone in our audience has felt like, okay, I love poetry, but I have to write short stories to get published. Like, let's, let's put that in the bin. And so tell us, cause you write both. A.Z. Louise (00:05:15): Yes. Rekka (00:05:16): Um, what makes you write a poem instead of a short story? And when you write a poem, what's your thought process in terms of like where it's going to go when you write it, or do they just sort of happen? A.Z. Louise (00:05:34): So I kind of have two different modes for poetry. Uh, one is where I feel like I either miss poetry or need a break from prose and I just need to let the ideas and images flow. And the other mood I have for poetry is I'm processing something. So a lot of times for me, poetry is a first pass on emotions. So if you have wronged me, I've written a poem about you. Because frequently that's where I go when I'm really upset about something and I don't feel ready to talk to another person about it. And I just want to process it with myself for a minute first. Um, so frequently I will just have a line appear in my head and it will be too strange or too unstructured to be part of a short story. Um, and then after I put it down on the page, I can connect it to other ideas and that's how it becomes a poem. Rekka (00:06:47): Okay. A.Z. Louise (00:06:48): So it's sort of a connect the dots process, which is different from my short fiction process, because my short fiction process, I typically have a specific scene in my head, um, with specific people who are doing or saying specific things. Rekka (00:07:08): Okay. A.Z. Louise (00:07:09): So it's much more primordial. Um, however, I have written a poem and actually submitted it a few times and the other poems I had submitted it with got picked up, but not that one. And I was like, okay, there's something about this that isn't working. And I ended up writing a whole short story out of it Rekka (00:07:33): Based on the poem or using some of the words from the poem and just making the poem flow less like a lyrical experience. A.Z. Louise (00:07:41): Yeah, it was... So do you know what a Hide-Behind is? Rekka (00:07:48): I do not. And I bet some of our listeners, don't either. A.Z. Louise (00:07:51): So it's um, uh, a fearsome critter. Um, so it's this Appalachian cryptid. Um, and one of the things you have to do to protect yourself from the Hide-Behind is to drink being drunk will keep the cryptid from eating you, I guess. Maybe he's on the wagon. I don't know. Um— Rekka (00:08:15): Or he doesn't care or, you know, like you just won't care if the Hide-Behind eats you at that point and that's the going advice. A.Z. Louise (00:08:21): So that, um, that idea really stuck with me in part because my mom is from that area. So I felt that kind of cultural connection, but also because to me, the Hide-Behind is, uh, a creature who is dealing with trauma. Because if you were a logger back in the day in the Appalachians, your life expectancy was not very long and you were losing friends all the time because it's an extremely dangerous profession. And so that hit me because, um, I am Black and that hit me as "We are drinking. We are coping with an inter intergenerational trauma." So I wrote a poem about a father whose job is to hunt the Hide-Behind. So he is drunk a lot, but when he comes home and he's sober, he's teaching his daughter small scraps of his hide behind hunting craft, knowing that she'll have to go into it. Um, even though he wishes she didn't have to. So it is like a Black parent coming home and having to talk to their kids about all the horrible stuff in the world. And you wish you could shelter your kids from that, but you have to tell them, so in looking at this little poem and what I had done with it, I was like, "Oh, that's a whole story." Yeah. Obviously that's an entire story that deserves more than like 14 or 15 lines, which is my usual length of a poem. So it just sort of—the poem grew beyond being a poem and needed to be a story, which is not to say that a poem is less than a short story. It is that, for me with a poem, I'm creating mood and emotion and with a short story, I am creating, um, more of a scene. So a poem for me is like a piece of music that you listen to. And a short story is a play that you would watch or a musical. Rekka (00:10:40): Yeah. Or even the music video sometimes. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I, when you try and I mean, the plural, you, um, when you try to define poetry in terms of how much it should encompass, I find that really tricky because I mean, you have the Iliad, which is technically a poem. You have Shakespeare, which is technically poetry. Um, what, like— English class taught me in public school, so many things about the structure of poems and how poems should behave, never really encompassed the subject matter of poetry and the kinds of poems that I liked, uh, such as the Highwayman, were nothing like the poems I was writing, which were these scraps of teenage angst. And I'm not going to give myself any more credit for them than that, even though, like, I did have one of them published, but it was one of those like "Send in your poem and $40" kind of thing. So I'm going to put an asterisk on that one. But it's funny, I recently considered going back and sort of writing like a response to that poem from this end of my life. And— A.Z. Louise (00:12:08): That sounds like a really cool idea. Rekka (00:12:11): Yeah. And it was a short poem too. I think it was like nine lines or something like that. And I feel like it would be so completely an interpretable to anyone else even paired like that, even if I gave you some context. So I'm always curious how publications can say "this is a good poem," you know, or, um, "this is the kind of poem we're looking for." Do you think there's a format that commercial or literary poetry magazines are looking for? A.Z. Louise (00:12:46): Uh, so I write almost exclusively speculative poetry. Like, I write other poetry, but I don't usually go out and try and get published because I just love speculative stuff. I didn't even know that you could write speculative poetry, and then I saw a call for submissions. I was like, "Oh, hey, that's a thing." And then I went back to the poetry that I loved in high school and college. And for me, poetry is very much about feeling and metaphor. And I write mostly very short form poetry. So if it's not more than a page, it's poetry, like, and if I feel like it's going to be longer, it's not poetry. But you know, I try to work, uh, the poetic phrase and metaphor into each line of what I'm writing when I write short fiction. But I think that when you're trying to sell a poem, it has to encompass something. A.Z. Louise (00:13:57): Uh, so I have a lot of poems about anger because I am a Black person, I am mentally ill, I'm queer on Earth. So when I'm writing a poem about something like that, I am trying to—usually through metaphor because it's about like a dragon or something—I'm trying to encompass the whole world of things, uh, that are causing that anger into a very small package. So every single line has to inform the other lines and frequently my poetry is... It works in a bunch of different orders and I have to work and work and work to figure out what the best order for each line is. Uh, and because short fiction generally has more plot and more character. Rekka (00:15:03): Right. There's a sequence of events. A.Z. Louise (00:15:06): You can't write character development, say, out of order, it's going to be weird. And obviously there are stories that are told out of order, but, um, there is still, uh, a basic structure there. A.Z. Louise (00:15:23): And, uh, obviously people talk a lot about how, uh, many editors are—and readers and writers are—trapped in a very Western sort of three structure. Plot-driven conflict driven structure. And while that is true, and I'm very mad about it, uh, because I do work outside of that a lot because of my mental illness—my brain simply doesn't put things together in the way that other people's do—um, there are still many different structures outside of the Western Canon, the editor or reader just doesn't know about it, you know? Um, they're not structureless. Um, they just have a structure that is not known to the reader. Um, now there— obviously poetry has structure, but I read mostly freeverse. So I'm just out there throwing things out. Um, and then sort of collecting them. It's like catching butterflies in a net. And then I was going to say mounting them, but that's like really sad. That's real, real sad. Um— Rekka (00:16:40): And, and studying them before, releasing them A.Z. Louise (00:16:42): Again. Yes, I am taking, I'm taking each little butterfly, I'm drawing a little picture in my field notes, I'm taking my notes and then I'm setting them free. Um, and then I collate my notes into something that feels whole, if that makes any sense. Rekka (00:16:58): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the ultimate judge of when the poem is doing what you want is of course you, the composer of the poem. Yes. Um, I, and, and that part makes a certain amount of sense to me. I have, in my poetry that I've written, and we're talking years ago, um, though like making the bed like a week ago, a poem sort of started to come to me and I was sort of like piecing together. Like, I didn't know where it was going, but I felt like, "okay, you know, this piece or that piece might need to change." Um, which was weird for me to be like analyzing it before I ever wrote it down. Cause you know, making the bed. Um, but then in my head I'm immediately going "Okay, but someone's going to judge this without any of the context of where I wrote it from, and to me, the only way to take something that was coming to me from a deeply personal reaction to something was to make it so, either vague as to be universal, or specific as to have a plot structure or something, uh, if not plot structure, then like thesis statement and supportive arguments. A.Z. Louise (00:18:18): They give the context to the reader. Rekka (00:18:21): Yeah, In your experience, do you feel like the magazines respond better to something that feels, I mean, feels universal or feels deeply personal? Because like, for example, She's Not a Phoenix, which you had published in Strange Horizons is clearly deeply personal. A.Z. Louise (00:18:38): Yes, yes. For sure. That's an anger poem, that's a slight poem. I have been slighted! Rekka (00:18:45): But it's something I can relate to, even though I do not have the experience that you do, that the poem came from. Um, and I— like, I'm just, I'm in awe of it. And I want to know how you did it and how it, how it developed and like why did Strange Horizons pick it? A.Z. Louise (00:19:08): That poem is obviously a metaphor for something that happened to me and— Rekka (00:19:14): And our listeners can find it in the show notes it's available online publicly, which is why I'm using it as an example. Um, so that they can go read it and feel the space in the chest where the bird belongs kind-of-thing that I'm reacting to. Like, um, the line in specifics is, um, "My rib cage, a crucible too hot to hold her." Like that is a big feel, you know? And I feel like everybody can relate to that. And I feel like this poem at the same time is ineffable to me because it came from you and I don't know why, even reading it. A.Z. Louise (00:19:59): So that one was about feeling betrayed. I am a person who often feels like I'm too much. Um, so that line is about all the times I have felt like I'm too much. And the thing is, is that everyone on Earth has felt betrayed. Most people have felt like they are too much for somebody else. And I feel that one of the beautiful things about Twitter is that, um, it is easy to see that almost every feeling you've ever had somebody else has had too. Rekka (00:20:38): Right, yeah! A.Z. Louise (00:20:38): And so when I wrote it, it did feel, it actually did feel so personal that I didn't think anyone would pick it up. And then the first place I submitted it took it and heck, Oh my goodness. It's Strange Horizons! I love Strange Horizons! Rekka (00:20:54): Yeah. I mean, what a, what a bingo card moment too. A.Z. Louise (00:20:57): I was shook. So it was kind of like, "Oh, this is one of those things where somebody tweets something super relatable and it immediately goes viral." Like I felt like I had captured that feeling of seeing a complete stranger on the internet experiencing the exact same feelings I'd had. And nobody, I mean, it's not that everyone has experienced the exact same sequence of events that spurred me to write that poem. But I do feel like even if somebody didn't get the idea of betrayal out of that poem, they probably still felt it. Um, and I'm not saying that you have to make your feelings universal because we can talk about how the entire whiteness and, you know, straightness and neuro-typicality et cetera of publishing frequently tells you that say, your characters are not relatable enough. So I don't think you want to be writing to be relatable so that an editor will read something and say, "Oh, I felt that before, I will buy this poem." Um, but to know that whoever is reading your poem will assign meaning to it no matter what you put in it, I mean, your making-the-bed poem: somebody might get something totally, completely different from what you put into it, but you have to make, um, you'd have to make the metaphors, um, speak. If that makes sense. It's really hard to describe. Rekka (00:22:47): Yeah. It's almost like the way you write it, you make it more personal, but in doing so, you make it more relatable. A.Z. Louise (00:22:55): Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. The, the, the more you dig down deep into yourself, the more people will read it and get some crumb of what you're feeling and be able to apply it to their own feelings. And I think that's why poetry is really powerful. And actually I wanted to bring it back to when you mentioned the poetry we're taught in school. Um, because one of the things I was not taught about, because I went to a incredibly white school, I think there were a dozen black kids in the whole school. Rekka (00:23:29): That is more than I had in my, very, very white school. A.Z. Louise (00:23:32): Yeah. So one thing I didn't have a huge education on is rap and hip hop, and that's poetry! And so popular is because even if you are rapping about something that somebody else has never experienced, people love it so much because they feel it. So. A.Z. Louise (00:23:55): Also forget iambic pentameter, to hear somebody rapping, it is the most like awe-inspiring jaw-dropping thing. A.Z. Louise (00:24:03): Yeah. I truly wish that my poetry felt like it could slide into that because I love it. So the form of poetry can go so many places and touch so many people. And I feel like that's why it's super important to drill deep down into what you are feeling because you never know who's going to read it and really feel it because one of the poems I love the most is "This is just to say," because my mom was getting her English major when I was a child and she had this gigantic tome, like four inches thick of poetry. And she would read to me out of it, um, for her reading assignments. And one of the poems she read to me was that one. And it reminded me of my grandma's house, um, where we would go in the summer. And it gave me such a feeling of belonging that has stuck with me my entire life. So I am that very corny person, who says that "This is just to say" is their favorite phone, cause it hit me exactly right. Rekka (00:25:13): And you know, when you expand poetry into, um, you know, the different forms we've talked about, like, I grew up reading the Highwayman and like, other European poems, and I am—you know, like I enjoyed them. I got stories out of them. There was, there was something in there for me. But as soon as I got out of my, you know, Connecticut life and I went somewhere where I was exposed to other peoples whose experiences I had never been exposed to before. And suddenly my favorite poems were music, talking about things that my poetry classes would never have considered appropriate subject matter. We'll just put it that way. Like I looked at while we were talking, I looked up the definition of poetry because I expected irony. And here it is: A poem is a metrical composition, a composition in verse written in certain measures, whether in blank verse or in rhyme and characterized by imagination and poetic diction." Like, there is nothing in that about connecting to other people and their humanity and relating or anything like that. A.Z. Louise (00:26:32): I love it so much. I'm so happy right now! Rekka (00:26:36): It's just the worst, right? And I think that's, the problem is like we are, when we are instructed on what a poem is, we, we, I don't know. We get the implication that there are masters of it. And then everybody else who should not even try. A.Z. Louise (00:26:53): It, it, I think it's really similar to the way that, I mean, prose is taught, right? You get a book and then you dissect it into a million tiny pieces until it's no longer enjoyable. Um, and that's what your teachers teach you, is like, deep reading. And the thing is, I love deep reading and I love criticizing my favorite things. It brings me joy to pick apart the things that I love. Cause I'm the worst. Um— Rekka (00:27:19): No, I do the same thing. Like I exit a movie or something like that, and I absolutely spend the next hour and a half ruining it for my husband and he goes, "But I thought you enjoyed it?" I'm like, "I did." A.Z. Louise (00:27:28): Yeah. Yeah. Rekka (00:27:30): "But these things could be fixed." A.Z. Louise (00:27:31): My story brain completely turns off when I'm in the movie and that over the next week I start remembering things and I'm like, "Oh man, I have to annoy someone with this. Right now." Rekka (00:27:43): Yeah. So I understand like enjoying the, the criticism aspect of it. Um, but— I'm sorry, I cut you off to relate to what you were saying. A.Z. Louise (

Audio Note: Rekka's puppy, Evie, joins us for this episode and there is the sound of a squeak toy and a jangling collar during the episode. If you or a pet in your vicinity would be unsettled by this, it might be best to listen at low volume this time, or just stick to reading the transcript. We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Links for this episode: WMBCast Episode 26: Satisfying Endings American Girl Books (Molly, Kirsten, Felicity, and Samantha's seem to be out of print but Addy's are still available) The Chronicles Of Ghadid series by K.A. Doore Gods Of Jade And Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Until The End Of The World series by Sarah Lyons Fleming Transcript for Episode 54: (All inaccuracies are Rekka's fault)   Rekka (00:01): Welcome back to we make books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. I'm Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore. Kaelyn (00:09): I'm Kaelyn Considine. I am the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. And, um, let's, let's start with the elephant in the— well, the dog in the room, as it were, we have a special— Rekka (00:18): She sounds like an elephant sometimes, let me tell you. Not when she barks, but when she's stomping around, Kaelyn (00:22): We have a special guest on today's episode. Rekka's new — Rekka (00:26): And we should have had a video pod, video cast, but, um, cause her most endearing quality is her face, but you're going to hear the less endearing qualities a couple times through the episode. Kaelyn (00:36): Yeah, Rekka's uh, still fairly newish puppy, Evie, is joining us today. Rekka (00:40): She's seven months old. We've had her for three months. She was so well-behaved right up until we started recording. At the moment. She is biting my leg and trying to chew through my headphone cord. So, um... Kaelyn (00:53): She just has a lot of opinions on things because here's the thing. Rekka (00:56): She has a multi-faceted personality. This facet is very sharp! Kaelyn (01:01): In her short life, Evie's actually had a pretty happy ending. Rekka (01:05): Well, hopefully not an ending, but currently at this, if we were to close the last chapter of the book right here, and of course it would be a series so she can continue on. Um, yes. Well, she's not very happy, right this moment. I mean, she wouldn't be biting me if she were. Kaelyn (01:20): Well, it's a good rags to riches story, you know? Rekka (01:22): She is trying to make my jeans into rags at this moment. Kaelyn (01:26): She went from a porch somewhere, tied up on a porch, somewhere to a house with lots of toys, people to pay attention to her, and a nice fireplace. Rekka (01:34): Very expensive dog food. Kaelyn (01:36): So, um, yeah, today we're talking about happy endings. Do you need one? What is a happy ending? What does that even mean? What is, what makes it a happy ending? Rekka (01:46): This was a listener question. So, um, you know, thank you to people who chimed in when, uh, Kaelyn and I weren't sure what we were going to talk about today. We, uh, reached out and got a bunch of suggestions and I think we're covered for like the next half year or so. So today, Kaelyn was in the mood for a happy story and wanted to talk about how, or if she was in the mood to, um, completely disparage happy endings. It's hard to tell. Kaelyn (02:10): It's been a week, everyone. Rekka (02:10): She is a huge fan of epic fantasy, which means, you know, that gritty-kill-your-main-character-halfway-through-surprise-this-ten-book-series-is-about-someone-else. Kaelyn (02:19): I read a novella once, that was like a horror novella, in which the two main characters ended up, sucked into a demon dimension through a shattered mirror. And that was the end of the book, was the girl turning to the guy and going, "No, you don't understand this is it we're stuck here now." Rekka (02:37): I mean. Kaelyn (02:38): It was a happy ending for the thing that was coming to eat them, I guess. Rekka (02:42): But, yeah. So, I mean, without the context of the rest of the story, to me, that doesn't sound very satisfying. That sounds like the inciting incident. So, um, you know— Kaelyn (02:52): Well, we're going to talk about this a little. I think, you know, there's, there's a need that we have sometimes to appease the reader, to, to, you know, "give the people what they want" so to speak. Rekka (03:03): I mean, I like to get what I want. Kaelyn (03:04): Yeah. We all, we all do. Rekka (03:05): Evie likes to get what she wants. Kaelyn (03:08): We all do. But, um, maybe that's not the way the story goes, but it's not an unhappy ending. Rekka (03:16): Yeah. So, you know, we have more to say on this, so let's get that music going and we will talk about it on the other side. Rekka (03:22): [To Evie] Oh, you have a toy. Thank you. [To Kaelyn] She brought me something this time. Sometimes she just comes to me like I've got magical toys in my pockets and I can just pull it out anytime she wants me to throw something. Kaelyn (03:52): I mean, I always assume you have magical toys in your pockets. You frequently are able to produce things to both entice and distract me. Rekka (04:02): Yeah. Ahhh, Okay. So enticing and distracting plot lines that hopefully lead to conclusions, but... Okay, so this, this question came from the audience. Do we have to have happy ending? Kaelyn (04:18): Abso-fucking-lutely not. Okay. End of the episode. Glad we talked about this. Rekka (04:23): We're done! There's Kaelyn's opinion. Kaelyn (04:25): Well, when Rekka and I were, you know, getting prepared for this and when we were talking about this episode, Rekka made, I think a very important distinction, which is, you know, there's two different kinds of happy endings here. There's, you know, does your main character or your protagonist, whoever get an ending that they want? Get something that is for them as the character satisfying and fulfilling? And then there's also, well, does the reader feel good when they close the book? What have you done to the reader here? Rekka (04:56): Yeah, I mean—and of course, this has a lot to do with genre and preference because there are people who want to be ripped apart and destroyed by the books they read. Kaelyn (05:05): Yeah if you're writing— If you're writing romance novels, somebody had better end up happy at the end. Rekka (05:11): Right. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a law. That's not even a guideline. Kaelyn (05:15): People read those books for a specific reason. The payoff needs to be there. Rekka (05:20): Right. Kaelyn (05:20): So to speak, um, Rekka (05:21): You got to hit that G-spot ending. Kaelyn (05:23): Yeah. Thank you. Rekka (05:25): You're welcome. Kaelyn (05:25): We, we could do this all day. Rekka (05:28): I don't think I could. Kaelyn (05:29): We're going to, we're going to look at it in these two different ways. You know, the main character versus the reader. Rekka, you can't do this. It's really distracting. Rekka (05:37): But it's keeping her from biting me. Do we tell the listeners what I'm doing or we just, uh? Kaelyn (05:46): Uh, yeah. So for those, for those listening at home, Rekka has stepped away from her desk a little bit and is dancing with her puppy to try to keep her happy and entertained. And it's very, very adorable. Rekka (06:00): She's standing on my shoes and moving her feet with my feet. Kaelyn (06:06): So, um— God, podcasting in the pandemic, people. Rekka (06:09): Podcasting with puppies. Kaelyn (06:09): This, this is what we, what happens. Rekka (06:13): This is my best life. Kaelyn (06:15): So yeah, there's, you know, there's two different specific ways to think about this. You know, we've got the main character, we've got the reader. Let's talk about the main character a little bit first before we get into all of the, you know, emotional reader kind of stuff. Um, does a main character have to have a happy ending? No, they don't. Um, a lot of them, a lot of books, main character just dies. I mean, you know, for most people that's probably not a happy ending for the main character. Rekka (06:44): Some main characters are the villain. Kaelyn (06:46): Sometimes the main character's the villain. We did a whole episode on books having a satisfying ending. And I want to take a moment and distinguish between what we're talking about, in terms of a happy ending versus satisfying ending. Um, go back, listen to the satisfying ending episode. We talked a lot about, it was very series driven, um, you know, with how you wrap up a series and make sure that, you know, you've covered all your bases and the make the reader feel as though reading this was time well spent and not an exercise in frustration. That has more to do with storytelling and writing technique. In this case, we're talking about, you know, does everything need to work out perfectly in the book in order for it to be a satisfying ending? And no, of course it doesn't. Very rarely is a book compelling if everything ends exactly the way the main character or the protagonist wanted it to when it starts, because what's the point of the book? What's the point of the story and the journey? Rekka (07:43): Yeah. That kind of defies the character arc itself. Like, because we frequently say your main character is going to find out what they thought they wanted in the beginning is not what they find out is actually going to make them happy at the end. And using that H word again. But like, if your character is going to change throughout your book and not be like an Indiana Jones or a Han Solo — and even Han Solo kind of changes his mind over the course of the three movies. But if you are going to make your main character get the ending they wanted from page one, then there isn't a story [ed.: Meant to say "character"] arc. Kaelyn (08:22): Well, it's also, yeah, it's, you know, I was, I was talking with a friend about this recently and I was describing, you know, the way you break down, um, you know, particular thing. And I said, okay, well you introduce the character, you establish the setting. And then you talk about the problem. And he was like "the problem?" And I was like, "yeah, there's always a problem. Because if the book is just about how happy everybody is, and there are no problems, that's not really very compelling reading." So to that end as Rekka mentioned, maybe the thing they wanted isn't what's going to make them happy. Maybe, you know, they need something in order to save somebody else. Maybe they're questing for a specific mythical object that's going to save their town. They can still get those things, and it's a compelling story, but getting there—the whole path along the way—it's like, there's going to be some bodies, essentially. Rekka (09:13): There are always bodies, especially in Kaelyn's warpath. Kaelyn (09:17): I am a big fan of killing off characters and, uh, you know, using that both as a way to re motivate or drive main characters or force them to reevaluate what they're doing. Rekka (09:30): Or clear the slate so that you can start the plot over again. Kaelyn (09:33): Yeah. Or that that's fine too. Rekka's referring to A Song of Ice and Fire, essentially. But, you know, along those lines, um, I think that that was, you know, obviously in a lot of mainstream, um, fiction, apart from horror and maybe, you know, kind of like psychological thriller, you had pretty much everybody get through everything intact. Um, I don't remember reading a ton of stuff, you know, Young Adult or even adult Adult growing up where, you know, the group of friends and all of the group of friends [ed. didn't] survive. And that's, that's, I think become more rare these days. Now, if you have a group of friends that are starting off in a story, you know, there's a very, very good chance that not all of them are getting out of it alive. Rekka (10:20): So the ending needs to be a compelling conclusion to what the character was trying to accomplish, which is to say that it has to wrap everything up because if they don't, if the main character gets nothing of what their goals were, what they were trying to accomplish, that's not the end of the book. Then they either have to die [ed.: with] it not being complete, or they have to keep going. Otherwise, you know, you're telling half a story. There, there needs to be some sort of a conclusion. Now it does not need to be a happy one, but it needs to either satisfy or totally frustrate to the point that, you know, you're killing someone off or imprisoning them or making them so they can't continue on here. Rekka (11:10): Well, when you say frustrate as — this is gonna be great, she does not usually squeak this toy — You mean frustrate as in "impede," not frustrate as in "make mad," Kaelyn (11:26): Yes. Yes. Yeah, frustrated as in "impede." Rekka (11:26): Because if a character is frustrated, they're going to be motivated. But if they're frustrated in terms of like what they're able to do, because their ability is impeded, such as they die, which is what Kaelyn is really going for, then that's different. Kaelyn (11:45): It's not the only way to, you know, impede a character's progress. It can be, you know, maybe they're not dead. Maybe they're just mostly dead, or in a coma, or imprisoned somewhere, or, you know, removed from the storyline in a way that what they were trying to do is no longer relevant. You know, like if you're dealing with like, uh, some kind of intergalactic, uh, space military, they've been reassigned, this isn't your problem anymore. But, then it's gotta be someone else's problem because the problem didn't just go away. You know, to kind of, to kind of wrap this up in terms of, you know, your main character, they need to make some kind of measurable progress that they are happy with. I think is a good way to say it. Rekka (12:30): Gotta have that denouement feeling at the end. You know, like I can sit back for a little while, like I can go take a vacation or I can have a breather. Um, I can go to the throne room and collect my medal. You know, like something I've done has brought this segment of my adventure to an end. Kaelyn (12:51): And, and by the way, this doesn't even necessarily have to be your main character. It's the, the ending, you know, the happy ending, the completed ending. I think maybe sometimes you're better served looking at that in terms of resolving the problem, the conflict, the quest in some way, maybe it's not the main character that does it. Maybe they don't get exactly what they want, but the plot elements that set all of this in motion are resolved. Rekka (13:21): Yeah. That's a good point. Like I put this in, in terms of, um, which personality gets what they want? Like the main character or the reader, neither or both, either or, but you're right. It's not a character that gets what they want. It's a story that gets the ending it deserves. Kaelyn (13:40): Yeah, exactly. Speaking of the reader getting what they want. Like, that's an excellent question, Rekka. Do we have to make the reader happy? Rekka (13:47): Do you want them to pick up the next book you write? Kaelyn (13:49): Trick question! We don't care about readers and their feelings. We want them to cry. All the time. Rekka (13:54): Well if the reader wants to cry, we want them to cry. We want the reader to have the experience that they think they signed on for. You don't want them to think they came in for a happy ending and then kill everyone and raze the ground after. Kaelyn (14:08): I think everybody listening to this can think of at least one, probably multiple books, off the top of their head that they put down and they were like physically shaken by. Which, by the way, that's the sign of a great book, and a very talented writer. Rekka (14:26): I mean, you can be visibly shaken by happiness. Kaelyn (14:29): Yes. Yes. Rekka (14:31): In fact, I wouldn't mind some of that. Kaelyn (14:34): So, you know, in terms of, do you need to make the reader happy? No, of course not. It, you know, that might not be what you're trying to do. You might not be trying to make the reader happy. You might be trying to make them think, you might be trying to make them angry. You might be trying to leave them—you know, especially if you're doing a series—you may trying to leave them going, you know, incredulous, wondering what is going on here, what could be happening next? This notion that we need to, um, you know, kind of make the reader happy, I don't know where it comes from. So many storytelling traditions before, like fiction was, you know, something beyond like fairy tales and myths and legends and oral histories and traditions and everything. A lot of those don't have good outcomes, you know? And granted, many of them were used for lesson teaching or, you know, to show how clever somebody was or wasn't, if we're talking about like legends and myths, you know, they're used to demonstrate the might of a religion or the gods of that religion. Um, and the mortals are just pawns in it, so nobody really cares how they, how they feel. Um, you know, epic tales, a lot of times, aren't so much about the reader being happy about it, as it is telling a history through a story. So I really don't know where this notion of like a happy ending came from. I imagine it's something that emerged from like a post-war... Rekka (16:06): It was a bunch of parents deciding that they were tired of their children crying instead of sleeping at the end of story hour. Kaelyn (16:13): Yeah. You know what, that's not unfair thing to think about. So, do you have to leave your reader happy? Well, it depends. What kind of a story are you writing? Are you writing a story where you want everybody to kind of walk away feeling good, to feel like "I was with them that whole time and Oh boy, did they do awesome and kick ass, and now we all went through this ride together and this is going to be, this was great." Rekka (16:39): "Their success is my success." Kaelyn (16:41): "I, I feel better for having read this book." Rekka (16:45): And I guess that's the question. We've, we've danced around it a little bit, but like a happy ending: is it something that leaves you feeling happy, or is it something that leaves you feeling like the adventure was worth the journey and you're happy you read the book? Kaelyn (17:04): I think, uh, a good sign of a compelling book, a compelling story, is that nobody is necessarily a hundred percent happy at the end of it. You know, the characters and the reader are both like, "well, I'm glad everything worked out for them, but I'm really sad that these other things happened to them along the way." Rekka (17:23): In Chronicles of Ghadid by K A Doore, which is a series that is now concluded, so I'm going to still try not to spoil it cause it's very good and you should read it. Kaelyn (17:33): I haven't read it yet, and it's on my list. Rekka (17:33): So I'm not going to spoil it for Kaelyn. Um, in that series, we lose characters. We lose beloved things. We lose beloved places. Um, shit goes real wrong, and still, the books are satisfying in terms of my happiness having read them, even though I am miserable for the characters and terribly angry with K A Doore. Rekka (18:02): Counter to that in Gods Of Jade And Shadow by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, there is a plot line that feels like a building romance. And, um, at the risk of spoiling it, it's not quite, I mean, it's not the plot spoiler, but it is character relationship spoiler. The characters don't end up together, as you wouldn't imagine they could at the beginning, but you start to have hope through the middle. And then at the end, um, the characters get exactly what they were trying to get. But at the same time, you're no longer happy that they got it. So it's, it's not a bait and switch. It's not a, it turns out they needed something else. So they got something else. And I mean, they kind of did, it's hard to describe. It's a really good book. You should definitely read it. Um, it's it was a quick read. I tore through this book and it's, um, it's just got really good story elements too. So definitely go check that one out. Um, but yeah, the, the characters start out wanting one thing and that's the thing they get at the end, but in the middle, there's a whole plot line of them sort of developing other goals that don't quite work out, which sounds like it'd be really unsatisfying, but it's not at all. It's, it's fantastic. Kaelyn (19:36): It's very difficult, you know, to predict what kind of emotions your books are going to invoke and people beyond, you know, the, the general like, "everybody got what they wanted and this worked out well. So that will make the reader happy." "I killed off everybody except last girl. And, uh, it was really sad and described in gruesome detail that will make everybody sad and slightly nauseated." Now, all of the said, I definitely think there is a trend in trying to make sure things don't work out well and perfectly for everybody because we've got this thing in our head that that's not good storytelling, either. Rekka (20:20): Right? If you don't confound your characters and force them to like, stay on their back heel, then what are you doing? Are you even plotting? Kaelyn (20:29): "Are you even plotting?" Um, you know, somebody accomplishes their goal, but like they can't accomplish it with no loss along the way. No, um, you know, something bad happening to them. Um, I don't necessarily think that is a hard and fast rule that, you know, you can't let everybody have everything they want. Um, I'll use the example of like one of the greatest cartoons ever made—which yes, it's technically a children's cartoon, but let's be honest, it's for everyone—is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Avatar: The Last Airbender is, I think, a good example of a satisfying happy ending. That is very good storytelling. Now, granted, you know, this, like, it is a children's show, it aired on Nickelodeon. Um— Rekka (21:14): And it also deals with genocide. So... Kaelyn (21:17): Yeah, there, it deals with some, some really heavy themes. Here's the thing though, with the genocide, we don't actually see any of that, you know, so we can say like, all of the air benders were killed a hundred years ago, but like, we're not going to make the kids sit through it. Rekka (21:32): But we did have to sit through Aang discovering it. Kaelyn (21:35): Yes, we did. Rekka (21:36): Which was not any easier. Kaelyn (21:37): That was awful. Um, you know, we have to hear about general Iroh's son dying, but again, we just hear that he died and we see him, you know— Rekka (21:46): Mourning him. Kaelyn (21:47): —but they didn't kill anyone off, even the Fire Lord. And what was really cool was they actually discussed, "why did you leave him alive?" Rekka (21:58): Right. Kaelyn (21:59): You know, Azula also makes it through alive. I won't say intact, but alive. Um, everyone's love lives or relatively figured out, Rekka (22:09): Everyone gets paired off appropriately. Kaelyn (22:11): Iroh gets to open his tea shop. Zuko becomes the Fire Lord. He and Aang are best friends and ends up with Katara, uh, whatever Momo was looking for, I'm sure he eventually got. You know, there were characters that had to deal with loss in their— Kaelyn (22:26): Cabbages. Kaelyn (22:26): The cabbages. Ugh. Cabbages. Um, there were characters that had to deal with loss in there, but it all happened before we met them, pretty much. Aang being the exception there. So we get to the end, and everything kind of works out the way they want it to. Rekka (22:44): Well, I mean, Zuko never gets the approval of his father. Kaelyn (22:47): Yes. But Zuko realized he doesn't need the approval of his father. Rekka (22:51): So it's a happy ending, even though he didn't get what he wanted from page one? Kaelyn (22:55): Yes. Because he's happy because he knows that his father's approval is worthless and he should not want it because look at Azula. If anybody is listening to this and has not watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, stop what you're doing right now and go watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. Rekka (23:11): Not because we don't want to spoil it, because I'm sorry, we are outside the window. Kaelyn (23:14): This series concluded quite a while ago. And then it's been on Netflix for a long, for a long time. And everybody's been inside with nowhere to go. Rekka (23:23): Yeah, we want you to go watch it because it is totally worth watching. Kaelyn (23:26): Yes. Even, you know, even if you know how it ends, it's still totally worth watching. But anyway, like it ends very happily. You know, there's... Rekka (23:35): There's a sense of satisfaction. There's a sense of peace. There's a sense of, uh, resolution. Kaelyn (23:42): Yes. And I think they're able to do that because we've seen the characters try so many things and just fail repeatedly. If the humor present in this show was not there, this would have been really difficult to watch. Because everything they try, everything they do fails horribly, and in spectacular fashion in some cases. So that happy ending works, you know, they've got what they wanted, but was it worth it? Or now I'm miserable. Rekka (24:13): At what cost? Kaelyn (24:16): Yes. Yes. There is– There's very little at what cost factor in the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender. And it's still a great ending. Rekka (24:25): The funny thing is the "at what cost" from The Last Airbender is part of the throughline of the story. You know, go to the Earth Kingdom and the Earth Kingdom has preserved itself, but at what cost? Kaelyn (24:40): Yes. Rekka (24:41): You know, the, the water tribes are still there, but there has been a great cost. So it's, it's interesting the order of the, the loss and the "at what cost" that happens in that story, that still creates a very dynamic world with lots of, um, impactful events and impactful characters and impactful plot points and emotions. But it doesn't happen in what people seem to be veering towards where the "at what cost" comes to the end. Kaelyn (25:14): Sometimes even just the point of getting what you're trying to get to, or obtain, is enough to kind of make a compelling ending that is still a happy one, but clearly the character, the protagonist, has come out changed for this. Rekka (25:33): And the question is, um, I think, is the happy ending one where our values judge the main character to be better now than they were at the start? Kaelyn (25:48): Yeah. This is a thing to keep in mind, you know, in terms of the readers, like a happy ending is not the same for everyone. I can't tell you how many books I've finished, where I have one, two, three characters in my head where I go, "they should have killed that one." There was, you know, it would have enriched the story. It would have, you know, made the decisions that were made more interesting, compelling or clear cut. Um, I, you know, I, I'm definitely one of those people that wants to see a little bit of blood and loss along the way, um, Rekka (26:25): Kaelyn is heartless. Kaelyn (26:28): Well, we know this I'm an editor, Rekka. I have a giant red pen. Rekka (26:32): But why do the obstacles for character have to be blood and loss? Like, why does that satisfy you, personally, more than just frustration and obstacles? Kaelyn (26:43): Exactly. And that's what I was about to say is, this is going to be different for everybody. For me, I look at a lot of this in terms of death and relationships. You know, either relationships being destroyed or ended by death, or, you know, people having to, um, you know, separate and will not see each other again, you know, sort of like those kinds of scenarios. I am very relationship-driven with this kind of stuff. So for me, that's compelling. Not everyone may feel that way. So no matter what you do, the book is going to come across differently for, you know, for everyone. Rekka (27:22): Should we give, um, people some perspective? Um, what is a book that you have really enjoyed lately? You know, just to make it like, so they get the context of where we're coming from. Kaelyn (27:33): Well, here's an example, actually, this is, um, the series is called Until The End Of The World. And it's— these books came out a while ago. I just discovered them at some point. Um, it's about a zombie apocalypse. It's about a group of friends living in New York City. Um, and a zombie apocalypse begins, as is wont to happen in, in New York. Um, in this book, characters are just constantly being killed off in really terrible, brutal ways. And what's very interesting about it is that, every time this is happening, the characters are having to reassess and re-establish relationships. Um, there's—God, I really wish I could talk about all this stuff that happens in this, because it's really interesting the way, you know, the loss compounds and drives the story. But at the same time, the characters are at the mercy of their world, which is full of zombies. Kaelyn (28:38): So there's only so much that they can do and that is impacting them more than anything. And it keeps taking things from them and they just have to keep trying to gather the pieces and rebuild both not only in, you know, their survival and their ability to survive, but also their personal relationships. Um, I like how we see these characters that, when somebody dies—and it's not just the main character, we see this with her friends too—there's sort of like a swap. There's like, well, this person's going to fulfill this role for me now. When we get to the end of the book—again, I won't say what happens—but it ends in a very surprising way. We're—technically yes, they have gotten to what they need to get to. They've accomplished what they set out to do. And, personally, the main character is even in a satisfying, happy place. But you look back on how they got there and the writer, through the main character has the wherewithal to say that like, "I can't try to get things back to how they were. They're never going back to how they were. This is my life now. So I'm going to be happy with this." Rekka (29:52): But that is the, um, the 25%, the arc shift of a book is, we can't go back. Kaelyn (29:57): Yes, exactly. Yeah. There was, I mean, like I was reading this book and like, you know, I'm, I don't cry much at things, I was reading this on the—this is to tell you how long ago I read this—I was on the subway when I was reading it. Um, and something happened and I missed my stop because I was crying. I was like, borderline ugly, crying, tears, running down my cheeks. I can't imagine what everyone around me thought. Rekka (30:27): I remember being like, I don't know, maybe 11 or 12 or something. Maybe not even that old, but I was reading a book, and of course it was about horses and, um, and I was sobbing. And, um, my father walks by, and I don't know if he'd ever seen me cry that wasn't the result of like an injury or, you know, like a blood sugar drop. And so he's just like, "are you okay? What's wrong?" And I'm like, "it's just this book." He said, "you've read that before." I'm like, "I know, I love it a lot!" Kaelyn (31:02): Um, another example I'll give.... um, Rekka, did you ever read any of the American Girl books growing up? Rekka (31:07): Oh my God. Like pretty much every one that came out until I stopped collecting them. Kaelyn (31:12): Yeah. And they're really good. Yeah. Rekka (31:16): They're actually like really great studies in, in like, simple but effective stories. Yeah. Kaelyn (31:21): Um, you know, the way, so, uh, for those who aren't familiar, you know, the American girl series was, um, it started with three of them and it was about, I think all of the girls were 10. Rekka (31:33): Yeah. They're all the same age. And it all happens on a year that ends in four. And that like, they have a formula, but each girl has her own specific life experience and world situation and geopolitical situation too. Kaelyn (31:48): Yeah. It's... Every girl is growing up in a different time period in American history. So Molly is growing up during World War II. Samantha is growing up in Victorian New York. Kirsten is a Swedish immigrant coming over to America in the early 1900s. Addy is a slave on a farm in the South. Felicity was Colonial America at the start of the revolutionary war. Every one, you know, every book is "Meet So and So" then the next book is "So-and-So Learns a Lesson." Then the next one is the birthday one. The last book is always "Changes for, you know, Whoever." Rekka (32:22): And then there's some big shift in their life. Like for Molly, the war ended and her father came home. Uh, Kirsten managed to buy her family a house. Kaelyn (32:30): Yes. Um, characters keep coming to a satisfying ending where you're happy for them and they've made progress and feel good about the story. But then you go back and look at the story and go, "Oh dear God." Um, Addy is a slave on a plantation, um, with her grandparents, her mother, her father, brother, and baby sister, and the— this is the first book by the way. And this was meant for children, and don't get me wrong, I'm glad it was because it's, you know, something everybody — Rekka (33:03): Yeah, they tackle a lot, just like Avatar, they don't back off the serious subjects. Kaelyn (33:07): Oh, they, they did not pull their punches on this. Um, so she's a slave on a tobacco plantation and it's 1864. So it's towards the end of the Civil War. And looking back on it as adult, you can read in between the lines and see like the plantation owners are getting worried about what's happening and so they're doing things. So her father and her brother get sold and Addy ends up getting whipped for interfering and trying to stop it. And I think there's also some interesting, subtle things in there about somebody who is interesting in purchasing Addy, for maybe not just working in the house. Rekka (33:41): Yeesh. Yeah. Kaelyn (33:44): So her mother decides they have to run away. And not only do they have to leave the grandparents, they have to leave the baby because the baby could cry. I read this now and say that the mother decided she had to run away to protect Addy from some things that I think they were maybe trying to infer was going on there. The end of the first book, they successfully make it out of the South. Um, you know, there's a nice little history, interesting, about the underground railroad and they end up in Philadelphia. Um, so there's this joyous moment of they've made it, they're in Philadelphia, but also her father and brother had been sold. They have no idea where they are. The grandparents have been left with the baby. The grandparents are absolutely going to be punished because Addy and her mother ran away, and they've had to give up their lives and family and, you know, to try and get away to what they hope is a better one. It's– I know there, they're, they're definitely children's books, but if you can find them somewhere, they're very good. Rekka (34:46): Oh yeah. They're still, they're still out there. And, um, it is impressive, the topics that they were ready to tackle back when they wrote them, where a lot of major corporations designed around selling dolls might not have gone there. Kaelyn (35:04): Yeah. Um, the, you know, there there's so many American Girls now there's like, I think there's like over a dozen and you know, all different time periods and places and everything. Um, but I think that's a good example of, "I was happy at the end of all of these books because good things were happening to Addy." But again, at what cost? You know, her life had been terrible. So just because a few good things was happening and I, the reader was going, "yes, I feel better about this, doesn't mean that it was—" Rekka (35:43): We're still back to "at what cost?" Kaelyn (35:45): Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But that is to say that you can come up with a happy and satisfying ending, even if everything is not neatly wrapped up and finished, you know, in a pretty little bow. Rekka (35:56): And I do like a story that ends with a few loose ends, because even if there's not a series, you—or I—enjoy the notion that this world, the curtain doesn't drop and everybody takes off their costumes. Kaelyn (36:10): Exactly. Rekka (36:11): And when there are pieces to pick up from a satisfying yet messy ending, that gives you the space to imagine where these characters are going next. Kaelyn (36:23): Yeah, exactly. So, um, you know, that's, that's kind of my, my ending thought here is that, you know, imagining them as real people who are going to have lives and things after this, you know, like, you know, look at, look at your own life. Like I will tell you, like, I'm a fairly happy person, you know, I'm, I'm pretty good. Does that mean everything's perfect? No, absolutely not. Did I not fall asleep until three the other morning? Of course I didn't because I was worrying about, about things. But that doesn't mean that, you know, I'm unhappy or have a bad life or things are not going the way I want them to. Rekka (37:00): yep. same. Kaelyn (37:00): You know, having your characters. I think get to that point in a book is what's gonna, you know, and again, this will not be the same for everyone. These emotions will not translate across the board exactly the same for everybody. Rekka (37:11): But the point is there. To the character, this is not the end. Kaelyn (37:15): Yes. Rekka (37:16): Like they may have done a thing, but they intend to try and go to sleep that night and not stay awake til 3:00 AM. And they intend to get up the next day and carry on and do

We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Send us your questions, comments, and concerns! We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Transcript: Kaelyn (00:00): Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of We Make Books, a show about writing publishing and everything in between. I'm Kaelyn Considine. I am the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. Rekka (00:09): And I'm Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as R J Theodore. Kaelyn (00:13): Would you call that your title? Rekka (00:14): No. It's a name. Kaelyn (00:15): Oh, okay. Rekka (00:19): But you can name a book by giving it a title. Kaelyn (00:21): Mine's a title. Rekka (00:22): Well, yes. You, you provided a title. I did not say, "I am Rekka, author." Kaelyn (00:27): Yes. That would be your title. So, um, well today we're talking about titles, uh, books. They need them. Rekka (00:33): Better titles than just a job description. Kaelyn (00:37): Yes, than just that. Um, you know, this is how people are going to find your book. A weird thing is if you don't give a book a name and you just kind of like put it on a shelf, it makes it really hard for people to find, be that shelf physical or digital. Rekka (00:49): Yeah. You definitely need it. You need something that somebody can find your book by. So how about a title and then how do you pick it? How long should it be? Kaelyn (00:57): Yeah. Titles seem like one of those things that are very easy and in some cases they are, but when they are not easy, they are very difficult. Rekka (01:07): And sometimes you can just get like a total mental block about like what you call your book, even though you've spent years, potentially, with this book and you know, every word because you've written it three times over, you know, like sometimes it's just really hard to say, like, "how do I encapsulate the experience of reading this book in a few words, that's somebody who's going to understand who hasn't already read the book?" Kaelyn (01:30): Exactly. Yeah. So, um, you know, we talk a lot about things that titles should do, how they should serve the book and how they're being used to market your book and make sure it finds its way into the hands of the reader that's most going to enjoy it. As always, we hope you enjoy and we'll see you on the other side of the music. Kaelyn (02:01): Oh yeah. Well the rogue star just keeps going. You're not orbiting the rogue star. Rekka (02:05): No, no, no, no. I know, but it pulls you off your orbit and then you're moving. And if you are on a planet without propulsion, you are at the whim of that. I'm talking about generational ships where like there's some agency in which direction you're headed. Kaelyn (02:19): Well, like I wonder if we hit Jupiter, like we approach Jupiter at the right angle, if we could end up just coming into orbit around Jupiter. Not that that would be especially good. But anyway, so Rekka, what would you call this book? Rekka (02:38): Um, well, let's see. It sounds like it's science fiction, so it should probably be... Galaxy's Orphan. Kaelyn (02:47): Oh, that's a good one. Thanks. Could you just come up with that off the top of your head? Rekka (02:51): Well, based on our conversation, but yeah, I'm pretty good at titles. I have been told that I'm pretty good at titles. Kaelyn (02:56): You are, you are very good at titles. I have personal experience with that. Today we're talking about titles and books and like how you wrote all of this thing and now you've got to call it something. Yeah. Titles are incredibly important because if no other reason it's how people find your book. Rekka (03:11): Right. And it's, um, it's gotta be memorable. Like that is just, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've had to go find a post that somebody posted so I can remember the name of the title of the book that they were raving about, because the title of the book just is not sticking with me. Kaelyn (03:30): Yeah. So, well, let's talk about that real quick, because we're going to, we're going to go through a few things here about, you know, what your title should do, but, you know, in terms of one-word bullet points, what your title should be so memorable. Certainly. Um, and I said one word bullet points, but it's actually. Rekka (03:48): She immediately lied, Kaelyn (03:49): But I lied. Um, easy to say and pronounce. Um, this is, you know, if this is a book written in English, try to keep the words to English as much as you can. I understand that, in fantasy and science fiction, sometimes you're going to want to throw the name of like a, you know, a fictional place or object or something in there, but we will, we will get to that and how you should do that and when that's appropriate. Um, but you know, if that name is or place is like 32 letters long that shouldn't be in your title. Come up with a different title. Rekka (04:23): Yeah. And you know, if somebody is spreading the news of your book by mouth, you want it to be translatable to when that person goes and searches for the book, by typing it into the keyboard. Like they know how to spell the word that they heard. Even if the word they heard wasn't, uh, daunting. When you sit down to type it suddenly you're stuck. Kaelyn (04:46): Um, so your title should also indicate to the potential reader, what kind of a book? This is, um, there's two ways to do that. Genre and tone. So genre, you know, we'll get a little more into that later in this, but not every book is going to immediately establish the genre by the title. But if that's something that's important to you, that's certainly a factor to take in consideration. And it should also kind of set the tone of the book. Um, if this is, you know, sort of like a dark fantasy or like a horror, you know, novel, the title should reflect that, Rekka (05:23): Not include the word "bubbles," maybe. Kaelyn (05:25): Yeah. Very little mention of unicorns and luck dragons and things like that. Regular dragons, fine, but you know, not luck dragons. Um, and the last thing that is very, very important and has to, where you combine all these together is, this needs to be unique because your book needs to be easily searchable. This is not always possible. I, I can't tell you how many books there are that have the same or similar titles out there or rearrangements of the same words. Rekka (06:00): Yup. There's a children's book called Flotsam that, uh, comes up, uh—for a while there we were going back and forth in the number one search position for the word on Amazon. And you know, it's a children's book. So if say my mom, you know, tells a friend about my book, they might buy the children's book because it's not like my mom was a science fiction reader who was recommending to another science fiction enthusiast, a book. This was, you know, mom telling a friend that their child wrote a book. You know? So, um, if, if there's any doubt in the person's mind, they're probably going to go for the first search result. And if that's not you, then your title not being unique, did not do you any favors. But there's also just the combination of words. If you have your title is, um, one or two words, but it fits into someone else's title that's three or four words, then you're going to be, you know, getting tangled up with their search results as well. Kaelyn (06:57): This is for instance, not a good time to put out a book called Wintery Winds. If you put that into Google, it's immediately going to ask you, "did you mean The Winds of Winter?" Rekka (07:12): And you might go, "Oh, maybe, I don't know. Someone said it on a bus one time." Kaelyn (07:15): "I don't know like, this book, Wintery Winds, I heard it was really good." Being aware of how easy it is to find your book. And now part of this also will depend on your name. Um, if your name is John Smith, first of all, you may want to come up with a pen name for writing, but if you're like, "no, my name's John Smith and I'm going to be John Smith, the author." Okay. You need to make sure your books have really unique titles. So along those lines, you know, you're picking a title. How do you start doing this? This is a really daunting prospect. And I should pause and say, you're picking a title and "you," the author here. Rekka (07:55): And that does not mean that this is the title you are going to print with. Kaelyn (07:59): I can't tell you how many submissions I've gotten that had titles that I did not think were accurate representations of the book. And you know, it didn't matter because, you know, we, we just read these and then nothing really came of them. Um, but there's nothing wrong with submitting an untitled manuscript or just giving it, you know, a name and indicating that this is a place holder because you needed something to call it. Rekka (08:27): Although, I would say that any agent or publisher is going to know that your title is a placeholder, because they know that titles change. But if you can exhibit that, you know how good titles work then that might actually be an advantage. Kaelyn (08:48): Agreed. One thing I will tell you that, you know, if you're kind, if it's a place holder or if it's just sort of a generic sounding title, um, that won't make a great impression, it'll make a neutral impression. A bad title will make a bad impression. Rekka (09:05): Yeah. And that's something you can get feedback on from beta readers. And, you know, other writers that you know, is like, "Hey, here's my title. Here's my—" you know, you might give, uh, your, your pitch or your synopsis or something like that. "Like, does this feel like it's the right title to, you know, any thoughts?" Um, but here's the thing, someone who hasn't read it is not going to know the details. And if you, like, I do, um, tend to pull like story elements or something like that to create a title that resonates with the book on multiple levels. Then, um, you know, somebody who hasn't read the book, isn't really going to be able to tell you whether, you know, like workshopping that title just on the surface level. Kaelyn (09:52): Yeah. Rekka's titles have layers. But yeah. So a publisher and agent might say, "Hey, this is a great book. We're really happy. It's done. We're going to call it something else now." Um, this is, you know, like what you envisioned your cover, looking like. Um, the end of the day, well, titles, titles a little bit different, you know, that's a series of words versus a large commissioning of a, of an artistic endeavor. Rekka (10:17): Well, at the same time, it's as important to sales as the cover. Kaelyn (10:21): Exactly. Rekka (10:21): And so you might get as much, or maybe even more pushback from the publisher. If you come to a disagreement about what the title should be. I mean, I think the most important thing to consider when you are trying to pick your title is that the idea is you are trying to reach the reader who is going to love this book and leave it a five-star review. Like that's who you're targeting, right? Kaelyn (10:47): Yes, definitely. Um, we're going to talk about like some tropes and things with, uh, naming titles. And there's a reason they're effective though. It's because that signals to the reader, "Ah, yes, this is something I like." Rekka (10:59): "I am familiar with this format." Kaelyn (11:01): "And also it's telling me something here that I know how to interpret correctly." There's a lot of code in titles. That it's sort of a little inside joke that readers will will know. "Ah yes, this is, this is meant for me to understand, because I like science fiction and therefore I get what's happening here." Rekka (11:17): And that's not the thought process going through their mind, the thought process going through their mind is much more subliminal. I think in that, like when you have, you know, "The X of X and X," that is a comfortable pattern that that reader goes, "Ooh, that one." Kaelyn (11:32): People really like patterns. Rekka (11:34): Yeah. And they gravitate towards familiar patterns. Kaelyn (11:37): Yeah, exactly. So the, the marketing with the title doesn't come so much from the, you know, the actual title itself, it comes from where it's resonating with the readers who are going to like it. Now it's funny because I've had many instances where I've had to tell people the title of a book that like, maybe as a genre, they read a lot. I'm talking mostly about my parents here, you know, say like, "Hey, you know, I know you don't read a lot of science fiction or you read a lot of fantasy, but you might really like this book." And then they're like, "Oh, cool. What's it called?" And I'll have to be like, "The guardians of blah-blah-blah" and have to tell them a title that I'm realizing like, "Oh, somebody doesn't like, that is really not going to appeal to them." Or in some cases it's a very simple, straightforward title and I can trick people into reading. Rekka (12:27): Okay. But here's the thing. Do we want to trick readers into reading a book that they might not like? Kaelyn (12:33): Well, that's the only time I trick readers into that is a, when I think it's something they'd like, and they just need to give it a chance. Rekka (12:40): So you manipulate them. Kaelyn (12:42): No, no. I, um, I do things with their emotions to produce an outcome that I find beneficial to me. Rekka (12:47): Right. Okay. Definitely not manipulation. But, um, but this does bring up the point, like the title is trying to find a reader. It is not necessarily trying to encapsulate the entire story in one phrase. Yeah, exactly. And so you, as an author might feel like "I need to capture my story perfectly and wrap it up in a bow." Whereas your publishers like, "Um, we want, uh, this demographic and people who like this book to pick up this book. And so we care that the title appeals to them for those reasons, not that they're able to immediately connect with your main character before they've even opened the cover." Kaelyn (13:27): Yep. So publishers agents, marketing strategists, they're trying to come up with a title that hits all of those things that we mentioned before, but then also appeals directly to the demographic that you are trying to hit. Um, something that is, you know, a fantasy novel, the title shouldn't be, you know, about like a peanut butter sandwich, unless, you know, it's called "The Magic Peanut Butter Sandwich." Rekka (13:58): Yeah. I mean, it really depends on the tone of your book, but like, think about the silliest, um, fantasy book that you can and, you know, like I go immediately to like the Discworld series. Those titles still had that air of propriety about them. And you just kind of knew, from the series, what you were getting into, if that makes sense. Kaelyn (14:25): Yeah, absolutely. The marketing department with your publisher, what they're going to be doing for a title is, you know, apart from everything that I mentioned before, hitting those marks—it's easy to remember and pronounce, um, it's setting the tone, it's intriguing people. Um, it's easily searchable—they're also going to be aware of things in that particular genre and the demographic that you're targeting that might appeal to people. There are certain, I don't want to call them naming conventions. It's not that, but there are certain tropes, if you will, that you find across a lot of genres and what the signals to people when they're browsing for books and stuff is, you know, they may just have a long list of them and see something and go like, "Oh, hang on. That sounds like a, YA book that sounds like a science fiction book. That sounds like a romance book." Based on the title. Kaelyn (15:17): So that could also be something that is a factor in what your publisher is looking for in a title for your book. So how do you get a good title for a book? What kind of elements in the book are you pulling forward to put into your title? This is hard because, you know, cover art's one thing. That's a picture. You can do a lot with a picture. Um, you know, we were joking in the cover art episode about how like your entire book is limited to this one picture, but like, you can do a lot in that one picture or that design, whatever you're doing for the cover. Um, the title's the title. You can't, you know, it's a, it's a statement of fact in a way, so you're, you're staring down the barrel of this going "well, there's so many important things here that I want the reader to know about this book" and you're writing them all down and then suddenly there's no cover art anymore. It's just a long series of words that you realize you've basically written the summary and now it's on the front and very nice typeset. Rekka (16:15): Although, if this is YA, that is a new style for the covers. So that might work out very well. Like The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. Um, that one, the cover is pretty much just a little bit of flourish on the text. I can look behind me and find three or four other, uh, you know, YA titles where that's now the norm. Kaelyn (16:38): Very trending in YA right now. But while doing this, I refer you back to that same list I gave you and take that and apply it to your book. What was really memorable about this book? What are some things in there that you think set the tone, or what IS the tone? Is the tone part of the theme of the book? Is that important? You don't have to have just nouns. These could be verbs, feelings, like maybe some Egyptian hieroglyphics. I don't know. No, don't do that because it violates "easily searchable." Rekka (17:11): Yes. It definitely does. Kaelyn (17:12): And "easy to pronounce." Rekka (17:13): Right? Yeah. You, um, you eliminate part of your audience. Kaelyn (17:17): A good way to do this is go back to, if you wrote an outline, go back to the outline, identify, you know, you know, do you wanna focus on the main character? Do you want to focus on a place? Um, is there a particular magical element or a lost relic or something that you'd like to call attention to, to say, "Hey, this story is about this." Do you want to intrigue the reader by, you know, using the name of something that you've created in your world, that it's going to make them wonder, "Ooh, what is that?" Um, there's, you know, identify some themes in your book. What was this book about? Is it a hero's journey? Is it a coming of age? Is it a romance? And make sure that your title hints towards some elements of that as well. Now, if you're saying, "Oh my God, how do I get all of this into two to five words?" You're right. This is hard. Rekka (18:16): I think if you just sort of open your mind to the question as you're working on your drafts and revisions. At some point you start to get like, "Oh, that would be an interesting title..." And you just jot it down while you're working and keep going and just sort of generate a list of things that could potentially be, um, you know, a title or a series name. And we should get into that too. Kaelyn (18:39): Rekka, what's the craziest thing you've ever done. Trying to come up with a title. Well, you're good at titles you usually have—. Rekka (18:44): Yeah I don't usually do back flips or anything. Kaelyn (18:47): You usually have them when you're, when you're working. I can tell you the craziest thing I did was I took the entire manuscript and dumped it into a word counter and it spit out— Rekka (18:58): Oh like a cloud generator? Kaelyn (18:59): Yeah. It spit out a report for me on the number of times a certain word was used. Rekka (19:05): And your book was titled "The." Kaelyn (19:06): I think it was "He," actually. Rekka (19:12): Yeah. "He The." That's what I was going to say. The pronoun of the main character, if it's third person, and then "the." Kaelyn (19:17): "He The A," I think was the title of the book. Um, but yeah, basically like I did a word cloud and you know, was just trying to come up with, um, you know, things to identify from that. And what's funny is, you know, that's not even how we eventually came to the title, but, um, yeah, I got very, very stuck on a book once I was helping someone with trying to come up with a title in there. And it was like a point of like, "I am going to find a way to do this!" Rekka (19:46): "I am going to find the perfect title and everyone will say, 'yes, Kaelyn, that is the perfect title!' and then I will be happy!" Kaelyn (19:52): "That is the perfect title. I know what this book is and I want to read it now." Rekka (19:55): That's what happens if somebody asks me for help with the title, I'm like, I do not give up until I am the one who has come up with the title. Kaelyn (20:03): It is not easy to encapsulate your entire book in a few short words, but that is what you're trying to do. Rekka (20:10): Which is funny because I find it easier to come up with a book title that is one word than I do for a book title that is a few words. Kaelyn (20:20): Um, I I've been on both sides. Um, sometimes I like the short and sweet: Flotsam. Salvage. You know, um, sometimes I like the longer ones and we'll get a little bit more into those and you know why they're getting trendy right now as we progress here. But there's so many things that you've got to consider when trying to come up with a title and put all of this together. Rekka (20:46): And some of it like, um, the meter of saying it out loud, too. Like if you haven't said your title out loud while you're brainstorming it, like, um, the example I gave earlier, "The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue" feels like balanced phrase, even though the word invisible is much longer than any of the other words in the title. Um, and then one thing I would point out is that like, if you're going to have titling and you have a very, very long word and a very, very short word, you are going to, uh, cause your typographer a little bit of a headache to try and balance that on your, on your cover. Kaelyn (21:23): Personal experience, Rekka? Rekka (21:23): I don't know what you're talking about. Um, but, uh, yeah, like consider how it sounds, how it feels in the mouth. I mean, like that adds to the memorability—the point we were talking about earlier—if it feels like the first line of a poem, especially with the longer ones, it's going to be more memorable. If it feels like a phrase that belongs locked-in the way it's written, that's, I think, that gets you somewhere. Kaelyn (21:52): It needs to roll off your tongue. Rekka (21:54): Or pop around in your mouth. You know? Like it needs to feel good to say. Kaelyn (21:59): We don't like to acknowledge this in the English language, but there are combinations of words that are incredibly awkward and clunky and you can try to finesse them as much as you want, but sometimes it's just not going to happen. Awkward and clunky is not a good look for your book, title, Rekka (22:14): The Serpentine Donut. Kaelyn (22:16): I want a donut. Rekka (22:16): But it's made of snakes. Kaelyn, you will be biting into a snake. Do you still want the serpentine donut? Kaelyn (22:24): Uh, no. Cause I like snakes, so I don't want to bite them. Rekka (22:27): "Serpentine Donut" versus, um, "Hissing Beignet." The Hissing Beignet might be full of cockroaches. It's hard to say. Kaelyn (22:39): Oh, I'll take the donut, then. Definitely. Rekka (22:41): But you know, like different ways to phrase things, you know, like Alligator Pastry, there are different ways to phrase the thing that feel very different when... You know, like when you're going through your list, get your thesaurus out, you know, like play around with it. Find that rhythm, find that phrase that like just feels like it clicks. Or word. Single word. Kaelyn (23:07): Or a single word. Flotsam. Although don't use Flotsam. That's taken. Rekka (23:10): Don't use Flotsam, please. I already have competition. New Speaker (23:14): From a children's book. Children should not read your book. Rekka (23:19): Hey, now! I mean you're right, but still. Kaelyn (23:24): I'm going to take us on a little bit of a divergence here because I was just, I swear. Rekka (23:30): She gives me notes, and then she just goes right off onto a different page that I didn't get a scan of. Kaelyn (23:34): Well, it's so funny because I was thinking about, you know, titles I come across. Like obviously I've got like a massive bookshelf full of, you know, stuff. And I was looking at everything and like coming up with these like tropes. I'm going to, these are not official tropes, but I feel like— Rekka (23:52): But they kind of are. Kaelyn (23:53): They kind of are. Um, so, you know, like if you're writing a YA book, like a very common title for YA books right now is "A Something (or The Something) of Something and Something." So like A Court of Thorns and Roses. A Daughter of Smoke and Bone. You know, there's—. Rekka (24:10): Gods of Jade and Shadow. Kaelyn (24:12): There you go. Rekka (24:13): Which actually was not YA I don't believe, but... Kaelyn (24:15): YA and Fantasy, a little bit, sometimes, I feel like there's a little, little crossover there. Rekka (24:23): Yup. But, um, fantasy, I mean, you nailed it. It's "The Noun of Noun" or — Kaelyn (24:29): You did get these notes. Fantasy, I wrote down, it's "The Noun of the Noun of Noun" or "The Noun of Noun." And usually it's "The [Object] of either [Place] or [Title] or [Title of Place]," you know, [Title of Place]. Rekka (24:47): Yeah. "Storm of Locusts," you know, "Trail of Lightning." Kaelyn (24:50): Yeah, exactly. Um, and then it was funny, cause the other one I came up with was Science Fiction. Although Rekka pointed out that Science Fiction does definitely tend to have some single word titles, but the other one was like a "[Possessive Noun]" and "[A Group or An Object]." Rekka (25:05): When we said, what would we name this story, that was the formula it was using? So, you know, like Sun's Orphan, or whatever I said. Kaelyn (25:12): Yeah. Um, I'm going to go ahead and say it: Vick's Vultures. Rekka (25:15): To Fall Among Vultures was the second book and Where Vultures Dare was the third. That goes to another point that you're going to bring up: Kaelyn (25:23): Naming a series. Rekka (25:23): Naming a series, and naming the books in a series. Kaelyn (25:27): Rekka, you have a series. Rekka (25:28): I do. Kaelyn (25:29): Is there a theme to the titles of your books? Rekka (25:31): The titles of the books, all sort of refer to my main characters, the crew of the ship, being underdogs. Um, and it also refers to elements of the story. So Flotsam: there is a I'll call it geographical location in the story in the, in the world called flotsam. And it's a layer of trash that is caught in a gravity well, and so my characters are being referred to in my title as you know, disposable, um, trash, you know, the stuff that polite society doesn't want. And, um, it's one word it's, um, two syllables. So that when I went to name book two, um, I immediately rejected Colin's suggestion to call it "jetsam" because that wasn't the point. Um, and I ended up calling it Salvage because what they do in this flotsam layer is, you know, take their equipment and go salvage things that might be of value. And so, um, in that book, that crew is still garbage, but are trying to salvage things, you know, um, the world, uh, that kind of fell apart in the first book. They're trying to salvage it. And um, so the third book, I break with the one word, but I keep the two syllables and even keep the letter count because so far all the titles have seven letters in it. Um, so it's, it's uh, Flotsam and Salvage, then the third book will be called Cast Off. And in that I'm referring to, um, things that are cast off, you know, more garbage, but also they are going to start life on a new ship and, you know, cast off. I always go for like a double meaning. I always like to, uh, keep the title simple. I like when the titles feel like they match each other. Um, and I'm very proud that I managed to avoid the word jetsam. Kaelyn (27:51): I'm proud of you too. It's not a bad idea, once you've officially named the first book to then kind of start thinking about that naming convention you came up with for it. Um, I think one of the most cleverly named series, if anybody's read, uh, An Ember in the Ashes series. The name is very interesting. You know exactly what it is. There's still a, there's this big pile of destruction and there's a little spark underneath of it. Um, the next book is called A Torch Against The Night. So what's happening now? Well the fire is a torch now, and it's going out into this darkness and everything, then the next book is A Reaper At The Gates. Rekka, what does that say to you? Rekka (28:39): Things aren't going well. Kaelyn (28:40): Yeah, things aren't going great. And then the final book, which just came out very recently, is called A Sky Beyond The Storm. So again, Rekka, what does that say to you? Rekka (28:52): Kind of a bit of hope coming back. Kaelyn (28:55): A little bit of hope, there. Yeah. Rekka (28:56): Blue sky at the other edge of very dark situation. Kaelyn (29:00): You know, I think that's a example of a great way, you know, to name, name your books, while also keeping in mind to tone. You know, that what we're doing here is we're kind of giving the expectations to the reader. Like I remember when the third book, when they announced the title of it and it was like, there it's A Reaper At The Gates. Rekka (29:19): All the fans kinda go [gasp]. Kaelyn (29:22): This is going to get ugly. Rekka (29:26): Um, I'm of course ruining my podcasting, uh, professionalism by constantly turning around and looking at the books on my shelf for this one. Um, but, uh, I'm thinking of, uh, K A Doore's, uh, it starts with the, The Perfect Assassin and then The Impossible Contract. So you have, you know, "The [adjective] [noun]," and then you have words that tie into that profession of, you know, being a contract killer. The Unconquered City is the third book. So that definitely like builds out this, this concept of scale, um, as you go to the third book. And, and of course the series itself is called The Chronicles of Ghadid. So this is, um, here's your fantasy, "The [noun] of [place]," you know, kind of thing that you're, uh, you were talking about before. Kaelyn (30:23): If you're going to have a series, you are probably going to have to come up with a name for the series of, if you don't people reading the book will do it for you. And you might not like it. I don't know if they actually have this on any of the covers, there's so many versions of this book, but you know, uh, "A Game of Thrones "is book one of "The Song of Ice and Fire." Um, George R.R. Martin had been around the block a few times at that point. So he just named the series before all of this got started. Rekka (30:51): Yeah. I'm, I'm honestly like really surprised at myself for how much I dislike puns that I, uh, I named my book series The Peridot Shift. Like that's just a straight up dad joke. And I am very like amused that apparently I like puns more than I realized. And also like devastated that I did this to myself and it's in print. Kaelyn (31:13): It's fine. We're okay with it. There's really no taking it back at this point. Rekka (31:20): Yeah. That's, that's something it's like, you got to live with the series name. If you go, uh, if you kind of like flippantly just come up with something and it's what you were referring to it as, and then it ends up in print on the cover now you gotta live with it. So keep that in mind too. Kaelyn (31:35): So the second thing I'd like to point out is the progression of naming your books in this series and how much you want to assume that people have read the other books. There's no right or wrong way to do this here. Now the Ember In The Ashes series, the one that I just pointed out, um, I think they did absolutely fantastic because as I said, I was able to sit here, read the names of the series to Rekka, who, I mean, have you ever even heard of that series? Rekka (32:05): No, I've never heard of that series before. Kaelyn (32:05): Yeah. And based on the names, was able to kind of paint a picture of what's going on here. Rekka (32:10): How the arc overall is going to go. Kaelyn (32:14): Um, conversely, you know, you get into some of these series where then more specific names and titles relevant to the story keep happening. Now, in some cases, that can be a good thing. Some people, you know, um, it helps readers identify things that you've written easier, especially if this was a very, very long series. But keep in mind, it could be a turnoff to people who are just looking a book to pick up. Rekka (32:39): Yeah. Well, then... Kaelyn (32:43): We'd like to think that they go back to the beginning. I mean, I know people who will just be like, "Oh God, this sounds like a lot of work. So you're telling me, by the time I get to the fourth book, I'm going to know what this means?" Rekka (32:55): See, I used to just, um, you know, back in, in the pre-internet days, I would go to a bookstore and I would pick up a book whose cover and title interested me and I had very little concern, because I wanted a book immediately. If that was book four in a series of books, seven in a series, I didn't care. I'd just pick up the book and I'd take it home. And I'd be a little bit like lost for the first couple of chapters. And then I'd catch up. Kaelyn (33:24): I never did that. I always had to start from the beginning, Rekka (33:27): But this is, you know, like this is a bookstore, it's a small bookstore and there's no Amazon at this point. So what was on the shelf is what you could get. Like, yes, you could go up to the desk and ask to order it. But like, I was like 13 or 14. I didn't really get that. And I didn't want to wait two weeks for it to come in. You know, like I would be like, this is interesting me now. And if I really like it, then I will ask about, you know, books one through whatever, you know, previous to the one I picked up. So I picked up a lot of series where I started, um, you know, halfway through the series or something like that. And some series, that works better than others. Kaelyn (34:08): Yeah. I was definitely the person that was like, I had to wait, like I would order the book and wait or I'd go to the library and see if they had it. There was a good chance that the library might have it. Rekka (34:20): I, um, I had a big aversion to the smell of the books in the library. I was not very good. And in fact, I do support my local library now, but what I do is I pre-order books that are new. So that I'm the first one who gets them. And then I don't ever have to smell library books. Hey, I'm still supporting everybody. I'm just doing it my way in a way that is comfortable for me. Kaelyn (34:43): Fair. Fair. Um, so let's, you know, speaking of like a series and everything, um, uh, I'm speaking to a place of like fantasy, although you see this in SF a little bit, sometimes, this thing of now, "this is volume one of this, this is book one of the such and such Chronicle." Rekka (35:07): This is Kaelyn's Angry Vocabulary Corner. Kaelyn (35:10): Okay. Yes. All right, fine. We're doing this. This is happening now. No. Um. Like, this is, I get it. It's something that, you know, sounds like fantasy-ish or lost alien civilization, or what have you. It is a nice tool to make it sound like this story is part of a larger story, or a fraction of something that has happened. You're only getting to read a little bit of it. Um, if you are naming these seriously, "volume" technically means "a collection of works and writings collected into one thing and bound together." That is what a volume is. Rekka (35:58): So it's more accurate to call a, um, a trade paperback of comic book issues a volume than it is to call book one of a series, a volume. Kaelyn (36:10): Yes. That said you can call book one of a series of volume, but really it's not a volume of chapters. And that's actually, that's exactly the logic behind that. Um, really it is book one of a series. It is not a volume. So to speak. A volume is, um, "The Collected Works of William Shakespeare Volume I." Because then you have all of the stuff we couldn't fit in that one because the book was getting too thick and heavy and we couldn't bind it all together. So here's a volume two. Or maybe Shakespeare is still alive and writing stuff. So we got, you know, all the stuff that he's written so far— Rekka (36:48): Wow. Amazing if true. Breaking news, Shakespeare is still alive and writing stuff. Kaelyn (36:53): Shakespeare is still alive and writing stuff. Uh, consulted on the Mandalorian episodes, interestingly enough. Um, no, but I understand the, you know, the need to make it sound like this lends the sense of this being a grand encompassing massive story. Yeah. Epic story. Um, use the word "Chronicles." That's better. Rekka (37:19): "Chronicles of Riddick." Got it. But yeah, I mean, I think that is part of it. Like you're not going to see as many people calling their science fiction series a volume. Kaelyn (37:28): Yeah. "Chronicles" are commonly used in science fiction though. Rekka (37:31): It's funny because I also think of that in like a Conan-y... Kaelyn (37:35): Well, you're thinking of the "Chronicles of Narnia." Rekka (37:37): Well, no. Just the, the word itself feels like comes out of that oral tradition. Kaelyn (37:45): Call it the captain's logs or something. Rekka (37:49): So here's... For your science fiction. Yeah. If you have a captain. Kaelyn (37:54): If you have a captain. If you don't, call it the captain's logs anyway, they can be the third-party observer recording, all of this. Rekka (37:59): The ship's tardigrade's logs. Kaelyn (38:03): There you go. Um, so then one other interesting thing to kind of note, and, you know, as always, this is with the disclaimer of: Rekka and I are coming from a place, primarily a fiction