A Word in Your Eye

Writing Excuses 20.50: Dan Wells' Personal Writing Process

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-50-dan-wells-personal-writing-process

Key points: Writing with depression. Break it down into smaller pieces. Take a day off! Spectate, recognize when today is a bad day. Everyone's experience is different. Work with professionals. Classic conditioning works. Shape, capture, and reward behavior. Celebrate your writing! Change your venue. Be an active participant in your mental health work. Avoid the thing, or change the thing?

[Season 20, Episode 50]

[Howard] In September, 2026,  Writing Excuses will host an in-person writing retreat aboard Voyager of the Seas, where attendees can learn their craft and connect with fellow writers for a week along the coasts of Canada and Alaska. You can learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats. But I'd like to tell you about our scholarships. Scholarships are available. Applications are due by December 31st, 2025. Visit www.writingexcuses.com/scholarships. But don't delay, the deadline is coming right up. Recipients of these scholarships, the Writer of Color scholarship or the Out of Excuses scholarship for writers with financial need will receive full retreat tuition as well as travel assistance for our 2026 Alaskan cruise. Please, share this post with the writers in your life. The rules and application instructions are posted at www.writingexcuses.com/scholarships. And all scholarship applications are due by December 31st of 2025. Our scholarship program has introduced us to some outstanding writers and we're excited to meet this year's recipients.

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[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 20, Episode 50]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon]  Dan's personal writing process.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm  an awkward pause.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] So. Um. We're going to talk about my writing process today. But what we're really going to talk about today is writing with depression. Because my writing process has changed drastically over the last 5 years. Covid hit, and changed a lot of things for a lot of people. I did not expect that it would have as big of an effect on me, because I work from home anyway. And so I thought lockdown would be easy. What I was not reckoning with at the time were, first of all, highly elevated stress and, second of all, I had six kids at home all day everyday slowly going crazy in the other room, which kind of changed a lot of things for me. And the one-two punch of that, plus my diagnosis of severe depression in 2023, really changed everything, and my writing process is basically something I'm trying to rebuild now. We hit the point in 23 when I realized, oh, I'd better talk to somebody about this. where I would just go into my office and stare at my computer for 8 hours, kind of screaming internally at myself to please, please write something, please. And completely unable to do it. Which turns out is one of the many symptoms of depression. And that inability to function. And so I... And I know this is not something that is unique to me. Many people on our podcasts also write with depression, and many of you listeners out there ask... There's been a massive spike in US diagnoses of depression and anxiety since Covid. It is up now to one in five Americans have some form of depression and/or anxieties. So, that's kind of what I want to talk about today. But first, because I want to know how other people pull this off, because I'm still learning, I want to ask the rest of our podcasters. Because I know this is something, Mary Robinette, that you have gone through a few years earlier than me. And have found some things that help you.

[Mary Robinette] For me, I found that it's breaking it down into smaller pieces. Things that I didn't realize about myself before I got diagnosed... I was 40, and at the time that we're recording this, I'm 56. So, in hindsight, I have done this pattern my entire life. But now I know why and can recognize the downward spiral. And I think that's been the most helpful thing with getting the diagnosis has been recognizing it and that I have... I can activate tools to kind of head it off before that. But what I realized was that when writing is hard, a lot of it is because, at its core, writing is basically a series of decisions and prioritizations, in terms of the mechanics of it. You're chasing an emotion, and all of that. The problem is that when you try to write with depression, nothing is interesting, there's no joy. And so what I learned was that I could... If I had to write, that I could craft my way through it, and that I could do that by breaking it down into smaller things. So, like, sitting down, it's like here's a bullet point list of the objectives that I need to accomplish in this scene. And just chunking through, piece at a time, really, really mechanically. That's the joyless way of writing. The thing that is better and healthier is that I treat it like an emotional injury, and I would not try to power through a physical injury, because I know that there will be consequences for that. And there are consequences when I try to power through an emotional energy... Injury. So unless it is... Unless there is, like, some really compelling reason that I have to write, I find that it is better for me to take a day off as a conscious day off, so that I'm not adding guilt and shame on to it. And I'm like, yep, you are injured right now. You're going to take a break, and you're going to go do something that makes you feel healthier. So to quote my friend, Margaret Dunlap, sometimes that means doing stupid exercise for my stupid mental health.

[Howard] The step that was unspoken there, Mary Robinette, is a step that a lot of people don't even realize it's a step. It's a cognitive behavioral therapy technique that expands out into spectating, but it is the ability to recognize when today is a bad day. It is the ability to look at your emotional state and say... And interrogate the circumstance and determine is today awful because I read about the dumpster fire of the world, or is today awful because something biochemical is wrong? And it is very difficult, at first, to make those sorts of determinations. I think of spectating like there's a guy up in the nosebleed seats who's watching the game, and he's me. I'm also on the playing field, but he's the me who doesn't take the hits and who doesn't have to do any of the exercise and who is just back there spectating, just watching, and will, every so often, tell me, hey, you know what, today is one of those days where you don't go shopping and you don't make big decisions because right now you're not thinking clearly. No, I can't make the decisions for you. That's all I've got. That's all the spectator does is tell me when things are going to be bad. And that's, for me, the first step. Every step thereafter is built out of coping strategies.

[DongWon] Yeah, I mean, in my process episode, we talked a lot about my [informatic] needs and sort of these kinds of things. A lot of that is rooted in stuff I learned from my own journeys through mental health stuff. And I want to flag a thing at the top here about everyone's own experience of depression, anxiety, other mental health issues, other types of neurodivergence, is going to be distinct and unique. I spend too much time on TikTok or whatever and the thing that I see on there is a lot of people saying,, ADHD is like this.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Autism is like this. Depression is like this. Right? And I think there are so many different reasons from biochemical ones, situational ones, trauma-oriented ones, to be in a certain mental health place that some tools will work for you, some tools won't work for you. And that always starts with what Howard is saying in terms of that self-assessment, being able to check in, what am I feeling, where am I at, what do I need right now? And, at the end of the day... Or not at the end of the day, at the start of the day, the thing that I would recommend above everything else is work with professionals. Get a mental health professional, get a therapist, preferably not just like better help or something like that. You know what I mean? Like, an actual licensed therapist that you have a relationship with, that you're talking to on a regular basis, and a psychiatrist if you need one. right? Now. This is difficult to do, insurance in our country is the way it is, mental health support is the way it is, I recognize all the barriers because I've had to claw my way through them myself. Right? But I think a lot of writers have this idea of if I'm unhappy, if I'm miserable, it's going to make me a better writer. My pain and suffering will make me a better writer. And, in my experience, unhappy people, they don't write bad books, unhappy people don't write books. Because they're blocked. Because they're letting their mental health get in the way. Their anxiety's too high, their depression is too deep, they're ADHD is helping,,, keeping them from focusing or whatever it is.

[Mary Robinette] I'm going to correct one thing that you said.

[DongWon] Yeah. Absolutely.

[Mary Robinette] You said they're letting their mental health get in the way.

[DongWon] Correct. Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] It's not that. Their mental health is getting in the way.

[DongWon] Yes. Yes.

[Mary Robinette] And they're not being able to address it.

[DongWon] 100% agree.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Letting is absolutely the wrong word choice there. But my central point is if you work on your mental health, if you pursue therapy, if you pursue these things, it will make you a better writer, I promise you. Every time I've worked with a writer who has been on that journey, they just get stronger and stronger.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things I was talking with my therapist about, and it... I frequently am talking to my therapist and she'll say a thing and I'm like, hang on, let me write that down, because that's going to be really good for characters.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But we were talking about... She was asking me how I felt when I went to go sit down to write, and I was like, this sense of avoidance and dread, and she said, "Those are trauma responses. We can do trauma therapy on writing." And what we realized was that I had inadvertently trained myself to dread writing. And some of it was because of circumstances that were not in my control, and some of it was because, as humans, we tend to focus on the negatives, and some of it was practices that I was doing that were like, you have to sit down and you have to write this much, and then if I didn't, I felt like I had failed. So we started doing trauma therapy, and it was kind of astonishing, because... Like, I went from having really a lot of difficulty getting anything done to this period where I wrote every day for like 3 months straight and wanted to. It wasn't the I had a goal for it. But I think that that's one of the things that a lot of people... That, like, I know myself, and I suspect that this happened to you, Dan, when you were talking about screaming at yourself internally, that's months and months of punishing yourself for writing. Or for not writing. So, when we come back from our break, I'm going to briefly describe how you are like a dog.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I don't think that's a brief conversation.

[laughter]

[Howard] I think it's going to take about 10 words.

[Mary Robinette][largely inaudible] One of my favorite things to do when I'm writing is to talk to subject matter experts to kind of get new ideas, or just to dig into a topic more deeply. So, I was watching MasterClass, and they've got this class by John Douglas called Think Like an FBI Profiler. And just in the first few minutes, when he was talking about being a young field agent, story ideas just like started to unfold in my head. A lot of times, as a new writer, you don't know where to go to get access to subject matter experts, someone who can tell you this kind of story or introduce you to the sort of skills that this Thinking Like an FBI Profiler is introducing me to, and MasterClass offers that. With MasterClass, you get thousands of bite-sized lessons across 13 categories that can fit into even the busiest of schedules, like, if you're in a hurry. It turns your commute or your workout into a classroom. With audio mode, you can listen to MasterClass lessons anytime, anywhere. Just like you listen to us. Plus, membership comes with bonus class guides and downloadable content to help you get even more out of each lesson. MasterClass always has great offers during the holidays, sometimes up to as much as 50% off. Head off to masterclass.com/excuses for the current offer. That's up to 50% off at masterclass.com/excuses. And, yes, I am going to say it one more time. And, yes, I am going to say it one more time. Masterclass.com/excuses. And then maybe you too can think like an FBI profiler.

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[Mary Robinette] So, before I said this... Before we took our break, I said that I was going to explain to Dan why he was like a dog. We have this puppy... Guppy is now an adult dog, and so we've been working with a trainer, and one of the things that I've realized, or I keep realizing over and over again, is, like, oh, right. Humans are mammals, and classic conditioning works on us. So a tool... You ask what tools we were using to rebuild. One of the tools that I use is the tool that he uses with Guppy when he's trying to get her to do a thing. He shapes behavior and he captures behavior and he rewards it. So if I sit down to write spontaneously, when I finish, and I feel so silly every time... If you are ever in a coffee shop with me, you will see me do this. But I disguise it as a stretch. Inside, what I am doing is that I'm flinging my arms over my head like an Olympic gymnast and internally I'm going, hahaha, victory! The victory is mine!

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Hahahaha. So that's what's happening. And in a coffee shop, it looks like a very gentle stretch. But my internal landscape is doing that.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] And it is... I found that that, finishing writing and saying out loud, good job! You sat down to write. Good job.

[Howard] Who's a good writer?

[Mary Robinette] Who's a good writer?

[Howard] Who's a good writer?

[Mary Robinette] [garbled] so good. Did you do that? Did you do some words? And I feel silly, but I also feel better. And that it's... I talked in my episode about how building up, like writing 5 minutes... But that's shaping behavior. That's rewiring my brain to remember, oh, this is joyful, I love this.

[Dan] And that's such an important thing to do, because you have spent, at that point, months or years shaping a different behavior. It took me so long to take my own diagnosis seriously.

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Dan] Because, like DongWon said, it's different for everybody. I've got a brother with depression, I have three kids with depression, mine didn't look like theirs. So when a doctor told me, I think in 21 or 22, that I had depression... Meaning the year, not my age... I was like, sure I do. Okay. That's fine. I can still function, I can still work. Whatever. And then it took a couple of years before it got bad enough that I had to take it seriously. And at that point, I had already shaped all of these avoidance behaviors and  isolationist behaviors. Which is what all authors do anyway, isolating themselves...

[laughter] 

[Dan] And so, yeah, a lot of what you're talking about with trauma rings very true. I have found, for my current writing process, it works best to get me out of my home office. I've got a great office at home, many of the books that you have read from me and love were all written there. The modern stuff usually isn't. Because I have to go into my Dragonsteel office, or I go to the library, or I just have to get out and move to my kitchen table instead of my desk. Because there are all of these feelings of guilt and trauma and whatever wrapped up in that location. I've also found... I've been working on a project for Dragonsteel for quite a while. Which has itself become a depression and anxiety trigger. And all of these bad feelings are tangled up in it because it's overdue. Because I haven't been doing what I wish I were doing on it. And when I finally decided, you know what, I'm going to back burner this, I'm going to put it on a shelf and work on something new. I was 10 times more productive then, because I was not dealing with that trigger.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. With dogs, going back to mammals again, a lot of times, one of the things when they have a bad response to something and you're trying to desensitize them to it is you remove them from the stimulus completely. And then you give them lots of other activities and give some space in between, and then when you introduce the thing, you reintroduce it slowly and with a lot of treats. Like, for instance, Guppy loves doing agility, and so we have a backyard agility set, and one day she went over the hurdle and at the same time she saw a squirrel, which is very exciting. Squirrels trump everything else. And she knocked the hurdle over and frightened herself. And then didn't want to go near any of the agility equipment. And so I just packed it all away. And then later, we brought it out. Like, waited a week. We brought out one piece and just gave her lots of treats. Didn't try to do anything with the agility set, it was just there. It was just there, and then she... Then we were like, you want to do a hurdle? And she's like, oh, yeah, I love hurdles. But if... I know from experience that if I had tried to push her to go over that hurdle, that would have become more and more and more terrifying.

[Howard] Before the break, I joked that describing Dan... How Dan is like a dog, 10 words. Eight words. Puppy training techniques will work on you.

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] There you go.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] Um.

[Dan] Darn right. There's your other two.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I do want to flag again, that there's a lot of different approaches.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Howard] Oh, yeah.

[DongWon] A lot of different techniques. Right? There's a lot of people for whom these techniques are not helpful.

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[DongWon] You know what I mean? And so, just like [Flanagan] there's lots of different schools of thought, and a lot of what is, is you... There's a saying that comes from a particular program that's... It only works if you work it. You know what I mean? And I think it's something that I really want to get across here and sort of take the note about, like, letting it be a cautionary note here. But there's also a thing of actively pursuing how you engage with your mental health is really important, I think. I see a thing sometimes where somebody's like oh, I'm in therapy. I get medication. It's all better now and that is... Those are the tools that are helping, but you sort of need the two parts of it, of also the active participation in the process alongside the support from a mental health professional and medication, if that's what you need.

[Mary Robinette] I'm going to support you, and perhaps retract a little bit of my objection to the word let. Because I have a family member who has the same diagnosis that I have, and it presents in very much the same way, depression and ADHD. But I look at it, and I'm like, okay, so that's the way my brain is wired. I don't think of it as a disorder. I mean, depression is annoying and I don't like it, but I think, okay, so that's the way my brain is wired, what are the coping mechanisms and workarounds? And my family member looks at it and says, I can't do those things because of. And I'm like, I want to do those things. How do I do those things, even though I have this thing happening in my brain? So I do think that what you're saying about being an active participant is like... With my mom and Parkinson's, the thing that they found was, again, stupid exercise, that exercise was one of the biggest predictors about how someone's Parkinson's would progress, but that a lot of it was also that it was an indicator of who was being an active participant in the disease instead of letting the disease define them by their couldn't do's.

[Howard] I have a question, Dan. You say you gotta write outside of the office, because the office now has... And I'm paraphrasing... Your office now has baggage.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Howard] If you were to remodel, repaint, refurnish, re-whatever the office, all the way down to the sight lines, desk goes in a different place, eye lines are different, everything. Would that fix it, or is it just the process of walking through the door that...

[Dan] I think that would definitely, I don't know, fix it or change it for the better. Because it would be different. A lot of it is just the memory that comes from sitting down. And a lot of that is just your muscle memory. Because it's... The desk has been in the same place forever, and moving it to a different place would change that. Yeah. So. Did you have a further point to make on that?

[Howard] The question is related to the point which is sometimes the solution... That may not have occurred to you. To me, it feels obvious. The room is broken. Can I change the room to unbreak it? Rather than abandoning  the room all together? And I just bring it up because any time you're running into a case where your process is broken because of a thing, there are two approaches. Approach number one is go around thing. Approach number two is change, modify, morph, break, whatever, the thing.

[Mary Robinette] I have done the changing of the room, but I've also found that if I move from one place to another, like, this is the place that I do my email, and this is the place that I do writing, that my brain makes those connections. Speaking of connections, it is, I think, time for us to connect to homework.

[Dan] Ooh. That is quite a segue.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] No. Listen...

[Dan] I now diagnose you as homework.

[laughter]

[Howard] It's terminal. Sorry.

[Dan] There's two parts to the homework today. Number one is I want you all to just be very kind to yourselves. This is something that I am struggling with. Clearly from this episode, it's something I'm still trying to figure out. And if you are dealing with this, be kind to yourself. If you know someone who's dealing with this, be kind to them. And I guarantee you know someone who's dealing with this, because, like I said, it's one in five Americans deal with this every day. If you don't know who  that is, figure it out.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] And be a better friend. The other point of homework is some actual working homework. We've talked a lot about changing venues. I would like you to try to figure out what your ideal is. This is a process that I went through years ago, and that I'm redoing now that my brain has changed. Figure out what times of day you are most productive. Figure out in what locations or circumstances you are most productive. Often, what these questions come down to is just circadian rhythms and physical environment and all of these other questions. Is there a type of music that you should or shouldn't listen to? Is there something else you need to take care of before you can feel good about yourself writing? Just take a good look at your life and your schedule, and try to identify those moments of when you are best at getting work done. And then try it and see how it feels.

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-48-now-go-write-how-to-pitch--your-work

Key points: How do you, as a writer, talk about your own work in a compelling way? Pitching is a skill, you can train, practice, and get better at it. Be who you are. How does this fill some one's need? Comps and comp titles (like...). Content and presentation. Think about your audience. Conversations, first and foremost. Not distilled plot, but tone, vibe, what you're going to think about. Category, vibe, and why. Comp titles, and Venn diagram overlaps. Back copy: character, conflict, setting, hook. A keyhole peek at your book. 

[Season 20, Episode  48]

[Erin] Hey, everybody. This is Erin, and I've got a question for you. What have you learned from Writing Excuses that you use for your own writing? Now, we talk a lot about tools, not rules. Which means there are things that we're going to say that you're going to be like, yes, that is for me. That's the tool I'm going to use in my next project. And there are others that you're going to be like, uh,  I'm going to leave that to the side. And what we want to know is which of the things that we're saying have really worked for you? What's the acronym you're always repeating? What's the plot structure you keep coming back to? What's a piece of advice that has carried you forward, when you've been stuck in your work? Or that you've been able to pass on to another writer who's needed advice or help? However you've used something that you've learned from us, we want to know about it, and we want to share it with the broader community. Every month, we're going to put one of your tips or tricks or tools in the newsletter, so that the rest of the community can hear how you have actually taken something that we've talked about and made it work for you. And I'm personally just really excited to learn about those, because a lot of times, y'all take the things that we say and use them in such ingenious and interesting ways to do such amazing writing that I'm just like chomping at the bit to get in these tools and tips and share them with everybody else. So if you're interested, please go to our show notes, and fill out the form there, and be part of this project and just share with us what you're doing, what you've learned, and how are you using it so that we can share with everybody else. Really excited, again, to get all this in because, honestly, what we say is made real and important and meaningful by what y'all do with it. With that, you're out of excuses. Now go tell us what works for you.

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[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 20, Episode 48]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Now Go Write - how to pitch your work.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[DongWon] And this week, we are continuing our series talking about our upcoming craft book, and this is another one of the business topics that we are getting into. I want to talk about one of my very favorite things to talk about, which is pitching. Which is fundamentally just how do you, as a writer, talk about your own work in a compelling way. Right? I think this idea of pitching can feel very stressful to writers for a number of reasons. I think there's a lot of pressure around it because it's an important skill. Right? When we think of pitching, we think of going to... Trying to find a literary agent, trying to find an editor, and writing up the copy for your book, and having your perfect elevator pitch, and all of those things. Right? These are stressful moments, and I'm not denying that, but also, I want everyone to realize (1) what a career skill pitching will be. That it's not just confined to these little moments, that it is something you will continue to return to over and over again as an important skill as you meet readers and try and convince them to buy your books, and as you talk to your publishing team about future books you want to work on. Those are simply the most obvious examples of when you'll be pitching. Before we started recording, Erin and I were chatting about even just going into a freelance job and having to say, yeah, here's the idea I came up with, here's what I want to work on here. And that is also a form of pitching. Right? Once you start to understand the principles of how to pitch, you'll start seeing it in a number of other places and start being able to apply that. So the first lesson I want to get across here is that pitching, like any other thing, is a skill. And because it's a skill, that means you can train it, you can practice it, and you can get better at it. Right now, you're probably pretty bad at it, because everyone is bad at it. It's really hard to do. Right? And right now, you just haven't done it before. It's not a normal way to talk. Sort of. And I'm going to get more into how you can start thinking of it and integrating it into your daily life. But what you're doing is figuring out some specific strategies and some specific processes to start talking about pitching.

[Howard] Um. I'm going to say a thing, and then I'm going to invite you to hear me unsay it. And that is that the skill set for pitching is 99%, it's like coffee coaster Venn diagram overlap, with the skill set for sales.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Howard] If you are a good salesperson, you already know how to pitch, you just need the right content. If sales terrifies you and makes you feel filthy and you don't want to be in sales, you don't even want to think about sales, then I'm now unsaying it.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] And you can pretend that pitching is a completely different skill.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Because what you're pitching is something you made, not something someone else made.

[DongWon] Right.

[Howard] And invited you to sell.

[DongWon] Right. But at the end of the day, if you want to make your money from being a writer, you're selling your work. Right? At the end of the day, you are, to some extent, in sales. Because to get paid for your book, you gotta sell a lot of books. Right? So having that core skill of being able to pitch is sort of as a baseline how you're interacting with the world once you've written your thing. Right? So what is a good pitch is where I kind of want to start with. Well, actually, let's back up a second. For each of you, like, what was the place where you guys started when you were on your journey of, like, learning how to pitch your project? Like, that first query letter, that first talking to a friend about your book, what was the thing that you felt like was the first key where you're like, oh, wait, I'm starting to get how I'm supposed to talk about this?

[Howard] WorldCon Denver, I think it was 2007. We were trying to figure out how to hand sell Schlock Mercenary to science fiction fans. And we came up with epic science fiction, four panels at a time. That was the pitch.

[DongWon] Great.

[Howard] It is an epic, and four panels... What does four panels at a time mean? Well, that evokes thoughts of a newspaper comic, which says comedy without necessarily saying comedy out loud. Because declaring that something is funny is inherently unfunny and is a challenge. You're challenging people to believe you when you say it's funny. But if you say four panels at a time, they tell themselves it's funny. And yes, there's this whole strategy that goes into what you say versus the actual message that comes across. We sold so many books at that convention. We ended up printing slicks that said epic science fiction, four panels at a time on them, so that we could talk less and hand people things. And we moved a lot of books.

[DongWon] Well, to unpack why that works. Right? Is you tell people what the thing is very clearly. It's epic science fiction. Here's the category, here's how I think about it. Then you're giving me the thing that gives it texture and makes it interesting, which is a juxtaposition that's unexpected, which is the four panels at a time. I'm not expecting epic science fiction to be broken up that way. And you've structured the whole thing as a joke. And therefore, what you've communicated to me is that this is humor by the form of the pitch itself. Right? So the density of the information in that one sentence's incredibly high, comprehension, very easy. And I think that's one of the things that makes a great pitch, is getting as much information across as possible very quickly, and you're using all the tools in your kit to do it.

[Howard] And just so we're clear, that was the first pitch that really worked.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] That was where we started to see traction. I don't remember how many other pitches we had, how many other conventions I did where the hand selling was just a chore.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] But it was definitely iterative, and I...[Argh] one of those other things I may want to unsay... You don't want to hear that you're going to have to iterate this and work on it until you figure out that it works. But that's what I had to do.

[DongWon] No,  that's my opinion here, is you keep practicing it, you get better at it. Right? Your first pitch is going to suck, and then you try it on somebody and see how they respond, and then you find a better one.

[Erin] Actually, makes me think about karaoke.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] I don't actually think that I'm great at pitching. I just tend to... I have a hard time doing it in the world. But what I've learned about pitching is that, like, being who you are is helpful. Like, in some ways, like, you have to be able to carry off the pitch that you're giving.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] You give somebody else this pitch and it will feel, like, weird and wrong and off because it's not you. And I think about when you sing a song that you really like at karaoke, sometimes what will happen is, you'll try something in the moment. You'll be like, oh, I'm going to go up for that note instead of down, or, I'm going to try to, like, add this little flourish, and sometimes it lands and people react to it, and you go, ooh, that was good. And that was something I came up with on my own. I should try that again next time. And, like, over time, you build the best version of the song...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] In some ways. You still never know how it will go on the day, but you have a sense of, like, I've tried this and it works for me.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because it comes somewhat organically from how I would do this, but I'm still adjusting to match what my audience is reacting to. Because a pitch only works if it lands, to a certain extent.

[DongWon] And it's still an expression of you. Right? When you're doing karaoke, you're making that song yours in some way, finding some way to add you, but you're doing it in a context where people can still easily understand what's happening and what the name is. It's recognizable. I know that this is science fiction. I know that this is fantasy. But also, this is coming from a person who has a perspective, and that's coming across. If you try to use Howard's pitch of epic fantasy, four panels at a time, it would  fall so flat because the cadence would be wrong, the delivery would be wrong, the type of thing you're doing is wrong. You have to find your own voice in it.

[Mary Robinette] For me, it depends on kind of what we're talking about when we talk about pitching, because I started with pitching puppet shows, and pitching them in person. All cold calls. And so there I was always trying to figure out how does this fill someone's need. And when people ask me which of my books they should read, the first question I ask them is what are you reading now? And then I pick a book that I... That seems most closely aligned with what I'm guessing their taste is. But when I'm doing the novels, like, hello, we're going to send them out to the world, I've found that if I can figure out what a tagline is for it before I start writing the book, that it helps me focus the thing. And I figured that out with Shades of Milk and Honey, which I described as Jane Austen with magic. And it... And every time I needed to make a decision, I would go back to it. It's like, oh, I want an evil overlord, but that's not Jane Austen. So it helped me there. Jane Austen writes Oceans 11 was the one that probably made me... That cemented that...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, this is a very helpful thing to have in the world. The books that I have the hardest time selling and describing are the ones... And, honestly, the one that I have... Had the hardest time writing was Martian Contingency. I did not come up with any kind of tagline to it before I started writing. I love the book. But I have a hard time telling you what it is about. It's like, we're on Mars! [garbled]

[laughter]

[DongWon] Well, this is, I think, a real thing about as you get deeper into the series, the pitch is this is more of the series.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Right? And I think it makes a lot of sense that, for Martian Contingency, there isn't like a clear  external pitch, because it's not a standalone. Right? It's this is a new book in the series. If you like the series, you're going to like this. The pitch that you have that's really specifically honed is for the series itself. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah, and that is... And that has shifted, also.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Because the available comps have shifted.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I was writing it before Apples for All Mankind came out, so I was describing it as Apollo era science fiction with 100% more women and people of color.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And that I... It begins with an asteroid hitting Washington DC in 1952. Which is not a particularly compressed pitch, but it's one of those things that gives people the sense of, oh, it's going to be hard science fiction, and, oh, I like the idea of destroying Washington DC.

[laughter]

[DongWon] And I think that's also an important thing, that a really pithy pitch can be helpful, that one sentence thing. But also, sometimes you're packing so much information into that, that it's hard to parse.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You know? And so it's okay for it to breathe a little bit. You can have a little bit longer of a pitch, provided it's still engaging. Provided people are still excited and bought in on it. Then you have that space to talk about it a little bit more. And one thing I want to sort of emphasize is, as we're talking about in all of these, it's an iterative process. You're practicing it, you're trying it out, and you're doing all these different things over time to learn how to get better at it. But...I want to talk a little bit more about what that process looks like and how you actually do that. And we'll do that after the break.

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[unknown] kimi no game system... [Japanese ad for Lenovo]

[DongWon] Okay. So, before the break, we were talking about, like, how people sort of came to learn how to pitch and a little bit about what that is. I want to start getting more into the nuts and bolts of it now, of how do you actually get good at it. And the  thing I really want to emphasize is we are surrounded by pitches all day long. Every commercial you hear, every movie poster, every book jacket, every... The copy on the back of that book... All of that is trying to convince you to engage with media. Right? You are watching video game trailers, your friends are telling you, hey, you should play this thing. You should go watch this thing. Right? And you are also engaged in this. You're trying to tell your friends about media you consume that you like, of, like, I ate at this restaurant, here's what I like about it. I watched this TV show, here's what I liked about it. Right? That's all pitching. You're already doing this every day to the people around you. All I want you to do is start noticing when you're doing that and noticing when you're consuming it, and start getting intentional about it. Right? Getting a little bit more focused about how do I convince my friend to watch this TV show I love.

[Howard] There are two aspects for me to the pitching skill set. And I just break them out as content and presentation. Content, what are the words that I'm going to say? How do I come up with epic science fiction, four panels at a time? How do I come up with... Is there a formula, a magic? No, there isn't a magic. I do have a formula, but it doesn't always work. And on the other side, how do I bring myself to say that thing in a way that's natural and convincing and conversational if I'm in an environment where that's appropriate versus when an agent or an editor has come up to me and said, pitch me your novel? How do I cold start that?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] I mean, because that's an opportunity that you may get once or twice. And if you're not ready for it, boy, you'll be reliving that moment for your whole life.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] And it's... For me, it has always come down to take whatever content I think works, and practice saying those words until I've memorized them, and then just bank it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Well, I think one thing Mary Robinette was saying when you were talking about getting good at this in terms of pitching puppet shows, and when talking to a reader about which book should  he read, is thinking about your audience.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? And remembering that these are conversations first and foremost. Right? So even when an editor is coming to you and is like, pitch me your project, I think it is a conversation that you're trying to get into and making it feel like a personal connection. And what Erin was saying about karaoke, where are you in this, is really, really important for making that really effective as a pitch, and getting them really on board. So, when you're thinking about pitching... That's why I like this model of thinking about, oh, how do you tell your friend about something that you like? And now, you just need to do that for something that you wrote. Which is, I recognize, harder, but still is bringing that same energy to it, that same consideration of who's my audience. Right? What are they excited about? Why would they like this? Am I trying to get them to watch Star Wars? Or watch Andor? Oh, do they like Star Wars? Great, I'm going to go this way. Do they hate Star Wars? Oh, I'm going to be like, oh, you don't need to know a thing about Star Wars to watch Andor. It's about politics and revolution. Right? Like, how you're pitching that thing depends on your audience and knowing that can be really, really helpful to start honing in on how do we put english on that ball.

[Mary Robinette] You just reminded me of something that I was talking to an agent... No, or an editor? I think it was... Anyway, years ago, I didn't have a novel out in the world, and he wanted to know what I was working on, and I was like, oh, you know, this thing, blah blah... And he's like, no, no, no, no. You're telling me the plot.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] I want to know what it's about.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And then he said, Andor, it's about politics and revolution. I'm like, yes. That's often the key is that we try to distill down to plot, but it's really about this is the tone, this is the ride you're going to be on, these are the things you're going to think about.

[DongWon] Yeah. The two... The three things I want to know when I hear a pitch are what  category are we in? Is this a science fiction/fantasy? Is this adult [garbled]? Right? That's like the baseline that I need to know. The second thing I need to know is what's the vibe? Like, what kind of tone are we going for? Is it comedic? Is it super serious? Is it really ethnic? I think getting that. And then the third thing is why did you write this? What's the why of the thing? Why are we talking about this? Why am I spending my time listening to you talk about this? And that has nothing to do with  who your protagonist is, and everything to do with who you are and what you brought to it.

[Dan] The thing that really changed the way I pitch stuff is something Mary Robinette already touched on with Jane Austen, is using comp titles. I remember when I first started pitching I Am Not A Serial Killer, first to agents and editors, and then eventually to audiences when it got published. And I have a pitch. It used to be long and kind of twisty and windy. But I've got it honed pretty much more better now. But my agent... I was with her while she was pitching to someone, and all she said was, it's teenage Dexter in an episode of The X-Files.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Dan] And that changed...

[DongWon] Perfect.

[Dan] The way I think about it. These days, just because time has passed, I usually say, teenage Dexter in an episode of Supernatural. Because more people are likely to have...

[yep]

[Dan] Seen it more recently. But that's one of my favorite games to play now, is how can I find the right things that this person is going to be familiar with that will let them know what is the vibe of this story? What... How does it feel to read this book? And comp titles are a really useful tool for that.

[DongWon] Thank you for the perfect segue, because this is the thing that I also want to talk about in this back half, is the importance of comp titles. Especially when you're talking to Industry professionals, and this is... If you're talking to science fiction/fantasy or publishing professionals, editors and agents, we think in comp titles. because when we are taking a project on... When an  editor's acquiring a book, they have to fill out a thing called a p&l, a  profit and loss statement. When they fill that out, they will say, I think this book will sell X copies. The way they make the argument for why that number of copies is they're saying, it's like these other books. So you've un... At the time of acquisition, when you fill out your p&l, you have to say, this book A is like book B and C. B and C both sold at this level, so reasonably, we can expect that book A will sell at the same level. Do not come to me about the logic of this...

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] There are many problems.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And I will say that one of the things about this is that the comp titles that you use in Industry are very...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Different than the ones you can use out of Industry.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, for instance, I am working on a new book now, and I would comp it to you as Becky Chambers'  To Be Taught, If Fortunate meets Ray Nayler's Mountain in the Sea.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But to someone outside of Industry, I would be like, it's when the Vulcans first arrive on Earth. It's optimistic science fiction. But the Vulcans are aquatic.

[DongWon] Exactly. You don't need to be using the strict form of comps in the way that we do in house. Right? But I am telling you that part so you understand why, when you talk to a publisher, they're always thinking in comp titles. Because it's literally baked into how we do our jobs. Right? The entire job, every part of it, comes down to a comp. What does the cover look like, what is the copy like, what is the... What are we editing for? All that is driven by the comps. And so, a couple of things I want to get across here. One is you can be way looser than your Becky Chambers and Ray Nayler comp. Right? Great comp, by the way.

[Mary Robinette] Oh. Yeah.

[DongWon] [garbled]

[laughter]

[DongWon] You can... You don't have to be that specific, because that's like inside baseball stuff. You can be looser in terms of... What Dan was saying is a great one, what your broader one was... The Vulcan one was also a great one. Right? One thing I want to get across, and the first mistake I see people make when they talk about comp titles is that they think it's about all of A and all of B.

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[DongWon] And it's not that. It's a Venn diagram, it's the overlap space, is defining what your book is. So what you want to do when you're picking your comps is pick two things that do overlap with each other in a way that's narrowly defined enough that I have a clear idea of what it is. Right? I think there's this idea of, like, oh, I shouldn't have Star Wars or Game of Thrones in a comp, because they're too big and I'll seem like I'm getting ahead of myself, I'm being cocky. It's like, no, no, no. That's not the issue there at all. The issue there is that every person on the planet has seen Star Wars, so if you say that, and then you say plus B, whatever the B is, is a subset of Star Wars. Right? Because we're also thinking about  audiences. So, the audience of A plus the audience of B, that defined overlap, is what we're looking for. So if your A is so big that anything else you say will just be a subset, it doesn't really add information for us in a useful way.

[Dan] Another really helpful tool that I think comp titles bring is, similar to what Mary Robinette said about  getting your pitch ready before you start writing...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Dan] I wrote a cyberpunk series in 2014, and I thought to myself, this is great. I love cyberpunk. There's not much out there right now. So maybe I can get some attention. And if I had taken the time to come up with a pitch beforehand, I would have realized that there is no recognizable comp title for cyberpunk for the majority of my YA audience. What am I possibly going to compare this to? Because the cyberpunk video game hadn't come out yet, all the cyberpunk that I read was 20 something years old. There's a handful of anime titles. But I can't rely on every member of my audience being familiar with Bubblegum Crisis or whatever. And so, that book was insanely hard to pitch to people, especially to a YA audience, because they had zero frame of reference for what cyberpunk was.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Dan] And I think that presages a little bit the fact that that series flopped really hard.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] It can be really hard to be the only one out there. Right? And there's a big conversation around this about what does that mean for marginalized authors, what does that mean for innovation in genre, and... That's a separate conversation that I would love to have at other points. I'm just flagging... I see all the problems with comps as a system. It's deeply flawed. But this is how it works right now. The other thing I want to get across when you're thinking about comps is going back to kind of what we were saying about your sort of more narrative pitch, is it's more important to get across category, vibe, and why than it is plot. right? Where I see people get stuck on comps, they're like, oh, but it's kind of like this plot twist that happens in this movie. And I'm like, that's not what I think of when I think of that movie. What I think of is an overall energy and tone from that movie, and a genre category from that movie. So, when you're thinking about your comps, really think about, yeah, vibe and category and sort of like the why of the story.

[Howard] I mentioned there is no formula. But I have a formula. My back cover copy formula is character, conflict, setting, hook. And it's wildly flexible. If I have 20 characters in the book, I can't tell you about 20 of them. I mean, [garbled] 20 of them. I need to pick an interesting  character. I need to pick an interesting conflict. And I need to say it in a way that illuminates the setting and that sets me up at the end to deliver a hook. And, as formulas go, that's a little bit like the bear soup recipe. Step one, kill a live grizzly bear with your bare hands.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Howard] Step 2, make soup.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The first part is really difficult. What is a hook? How do I illuminate the setting in 10 words while talking about the conflict? I don't know. You're a writer.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] You're good at that. You'll figure that out.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Because once you have this sort of a framework, and you can come up with your own, that sort of a simple framework... You can write half a dozen  pitches...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] For your work that... And you realize, oh, gosh, I've just put a great big flag on this character's character arc and suddenly the book is more interesting to me.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I have a formula that I use when I'm doing... When I have to summarize a thing for a query. But that is... That kind of pitching is so completely different than the kind of pitching that we're talking about here...

[DongWon] Yeah. I think query pitching is... I think you have, like, a really good structure there. I tend to invert it in terms of starting with the hook, but again, that's like a whole...

[Howard] Well, Yeah.

[DongWon] Separate conversation. And the thing that I want to get to, though, about what you were saying there is, so often when I'm giving critiques on a copy or on a pitch, what I'm saying is do twice as much and cut 30% of the words. Right? It's hard to overstate how efficient you have to be. And to be efficient, what I encourage you all to do is start thinking about what's the minimum thing I need to talk about here. Right? Don't tell me about your whole book. Don't tell me about all your characters. Think about the one thing you want me to walk away from, that I'm going to be like, damn, I need to know more. Right? And so, don't tell me about all your characters, don't tell me about all your world, all those things. Think of it as looking through a keyhole and letting me see one thing about your book. So when you're pitching, I encourage you, as much as you can, let go of plot, let go of the grand scope of the thing, and focus on what is so cool and compelling about the thing that you did. And with that, I think we're going to end it there. We could be talking about this for many hours. It's one of my favorite topics. But...

[Mary Robinette] Fortunately, people can pick up the book and read it in depth.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[DongWon] Okay. So I have a little bit of homework for you. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to write three pitches. two, three sentence things, just real quick elevator pitches for your book. I want you to write three of them that take wildly different approaches. Focus on different aspects, Focus one on sort of the world building, focus one on a character, focus one on a plot hook, whatever it is. Just riff in three different approaches. Don't let them overlap. And then practice them on another willing subject. Find a friend, find a partner, find somebody who's... A writing buddy. And just practice it. Say it out loud for them, and watch them as they hear it. Where do they get interested? Where do they get bored? Where do their eyes slide off? And where are they like, ooh, that seems interesting and exciting? Practice and observation are the things that are going to help you get better at this.

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[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.