A Word in Your Eye

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-46-now-go-write-break-all-the-rules-part-2

Key points: Show, don't tell? Or not? Compress or expand. Using telling to establish important points. Systemless magic? ACES: Access, Causality, Ease, Strangeness. 

[Season 20, Episode 46]

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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 46]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, now go Write - break all the rules ( part 2).

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] And I'm Erin.

[Erin] Okay. We are back. We have two numbers remaining in my rule breaking thing that I'm doing.

[Mary Robinette] Three.

[Erin] 3. Okay. telling instead of showing. So, this is, like, interestingly, I think, show don't tell, became very popular and then very, like, unpopular, and is now maybe resurging. I don't know how you feel about... Do you think people still tell people show don't tell, or has that fallen out of favor in [many theaters]?

[Mary Robinette] I see it...

[DongWon] [garbled] hear it all the time.

[Mary Robinette] They do.

[Erin] Okay.

[Mary Robinette] They do. So part of the thing that drives me crazy about show don't tell is that it's not a real quote, people quote it as if it's Chekhov and he didn't actually ever say it. The closest we get... What we have is actually a summary of someone else's interpretation of a letter that he wrote to his brother. And if we look at the actual thing he wrote, it's much more limited and focused in application. So, "in descriptions of nature, we must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes, he gets a picture." For instance, you'll have a moonlit night. If you write that on the mill dam  a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star and the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past it like a ball. So what he meant was that you can use those details to create an image. But he's not saying don't tell people about things. Like, that's not what he's saying.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Not even a little bit.

[Erin] And...

[DongWon] Yeah. The advice of show don't tell is the way that like [garbled] faster than anything else. Right? Because the thing is about a novel is that it is mostly the writer telling us stuff.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] That's what writing is, is people telling people other things.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And also, like, that is storytelling.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Most of the time, most of the stories you are told, like, when we're not reading something...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] If your friend is like, Ah can't believe it, like, aliens landed and then zombies attacked me. Like, a lot of what they're... They're just going to be telling you what happened to them.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] They cannot show you the thing has happened.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And the really good storytellers... You could have three friends. Something... The same amazing thing happened to them. And one friend you know would just be much better at conveying it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And, like, one friend would make it really boring even if it was like the biggest thing.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because some people know how to tell in a really interesting way, and some just are working on that.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I find that I tend to, instead of saying show don't tell, I tend to talk more about compressing and expanding.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That the things that usually, things that are not emotionally important, we're going to compress so we can get past them faster. And things that are emotionally important, we're going to expand and unpack so we can live them. But there are times when you want to compress something that is a nice emotional and important thing to give more space for the reader to come in. So, Stephen King, I'm going to quote this not quite right, but in On Writing, he talks about you can expand, you can describe the amount of pain someone is in. The white hot pick lancing through his... like, you can describe all of that, or you can say they ripped off his thumbnail. And, like, that immediately makes people...

[DongWon] Ow!

[Mary Robinette] Go... Right! Right, but I just told you that, I didn't des... I didn't show it. Right? But it invites, it leaves space for the reader...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] To come in and bring their own experience there. So there are places where you do, I think, want to compress so that the reader will fill in the gaps.

[DongWon] And it goes back to what we were talking about in the first half of this episode, of the  karaoke singer who just belts the whole time. Right? You need to have that variance. Right? And sometimes, the most effective thing is to zoom really all the way in on the quietest, most nothing moment, the bug crawling across a leaf, because that can be a rich metaphorical image for what's about to happen. And then you'll speed up, and be like, and then he went about his whole day and did X, Y,  and Z, blah blah blah blah blah. Right? And, like, sometimes that zooming in and zooming out is you communicating to your reader the information you want them to have in various ways, and sometimes it's not obvious what needs to be written out in extreme detail, and sometimes it's obvious what needs to be told to them to skip past.

[Mary Robinette] There's... I did the translation for Hildurknutsdotter's The Night Guest. And in it, like, stuff goes wrong, as you might guess from the title, at night. And there's this one chapter, and the entirety of the chapter is, I have decided to stop sleeping.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Right?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That's not good.

[Mary Robinette] No. No. And it's just this cold thing. And then it's just blank pages. And then you turn...

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] And like it's... But again, it's that leaving space, it's the deciding the one detail that I'm going to tell you and then you get to build everything else from that.

[Erin] Yeah. I love all of that. And I think one other thing I think telling can be really good at is establishing rules of the world when you're not sure what people...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] May take away. If there's something that's like a fundamental, like, load-bearing wall of your setting, and you're like, I really think it's important that everyone understand that this is like underwater. Like, I think there are times...

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Erin] When you don't...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] To just be so showy...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That people miss it.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] And then they're like, wait, this was underwater the whole... 

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That changed everything.

[DongWon] Or the opposite happens. The biggest mistake I see show don't tell mis-applied is in the opening of books. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Oh, my goodness.

[DongWon] The first page of a book, where people be like, oh, I'm just going to show them how the rules of this world work. But I'm like, I'm a baby, I don't understand...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Anything yet. I don't know, are we underwater? Are we above water? And you can say a thing that is a metaphorical beautiful image, and I will take it so literally and be like, wait, this isn't an underwater site, that was a metaphor?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You know what I mean? Because I don't know enough yet to not know that that wasn't literal. Right? And so the openings of books is a place to be telling people information, and you want to do it in ways that are engaging and well written and captivating. But you can tell people stuff in interesting ways. Just because it's telling doesn't mean it's inherently boring or doesn't have layered information or doesn't have thematic resonance. You just gotta get better at telling people stuff.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I called this playing coy with the reader.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Where it's like I just want you to figure it out. It's like... I'm like, or we can communicate.

[Erin] If you think about it as a baby, it's great.

[laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] like, well, like how do you walk? Well, you figure it out. Like, you know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] There's a certain amount of that you can do, but at a certain point, I think, you do have to like eventually tell the babies a few things once they understand language.

[DongWon] Or at least don't get mad at the baby when it walks into a table...

[laughter]

[DongWon] You didn't tell it about tables. You know what I mean? One area where I think this really comes from is because so much of our narrative language has become visual. Right? We talk about movies... I mean, you'll hear me do it on this podcast constantly, of using movies and TV as reference points for how we tell stories. Right? The problem is that a book is wildly different...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] From a visual medium, because they only know literally what you tell them. They don't know anything other than what words you put on the page versus when you're watching an image on a screen, you're  absorbing a ton of information about what are they wearing, what's the lighting like, all of these different things. All these other departments are coming into play in a way in which you don't necessarily get in a book.

[Mary Robinette] But that actually is one of the places that show don't tell has come from...

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] Is that one of the things that people took it from, like, this whole Chekhov idea was during the transition from silent films to talkies. And the show don't tell was don't use narration cards... Or not silent films to talkies, but to silent films. Don't use narration cards when you can just... When you can show it, because they were like, this is a visual medium, you should be using those tools. We also say, in puppet theater, it's a puppet show, not a puppet tell...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Because...

[DongWon] Yeah, well, Chekhov was a playwright.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he was a playwright. But... Yeah.

[Erin] And I do think there are times when, like, you can... I think sometimes the positive of show don't tell is if you're used to visual media and you're trying to, like, write that way, you may forget to include some of the stuff that you take away...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] From... Like, when you see an actor, like with a single tear going down their eye, like, as they watch a sunset, you're filling in a lot... You're telling yourself, like, a little bit of the story. And sometimes that part of the telling gets lost.

[Mary Robinette, DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But a lot of times, I think, it is about telling really well, and we're... We're running long. But I will say that I think some of the ways that you can tell well are think about the way you pace,...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] The way you're telling things. Watch really good kind of stand-up comedians, who are... Who tell really interesting stories that lead to a joke. They use the rule of threes, they sort of increase in their cadence and pace as they get closer to the big thing that they want you to understand. They  use really interesting words when they're telling you something. I mean, I'm completely... not to judge your friends at home, but if you think about the way your not as good at  telling things friends might tell you something versus your friend who could tell you a trip to the grocery store and make it sound like the most epic adventure ever, it's because they... A lot that they're telling you, they use language that makes it sound very exciting. And so you can use all of those tools as a thing.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And I think also the very fun thing about telling is that it reveals the teller.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So the way somebody tells a story says a lot about the way they see the world.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And when you want to reveal something about your protagonist, having them tell the reader something also tells the reader something...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] About who they are.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Speaking of telling you things, you do your final number...

[Erin] I will do my final number, which is one, and this is one I'm going to... This is my, like, most controversial number. And I'm just going to run through it and tell you, because I have a saying that I believe, that magic doesn't have to have a system, is my last one. I think system magic is fine, but I'm a huge fan of systemless magic, or magic just exists in the world. And the way that I think about this is through a framework that I call ACES. Which is, A is access. So you're thinking about how magic is going to work in your world. A is access, who can do the magic? Can everyone do it? Can only people from the bloodline of Rohisla do it? Which apparently is now a family. Can like...

[Mary Robinette] So that's what the of Rohisla was [garbled]

[Erin] That's right. Like, is it... So who can do it? C is for causality. How direct is you doing anything from you getting what you want? Is it like every time if I clap three times, click my heels three times, and say there's no place like home, I will go home? Or is it like I'm going to wish and like it might not come true exactly the way that I want it to? The more causality you'll find in, like, a D&D style magic where you know exactly what the spell does. But there are... You could have a form of magic, and when it's just like I think it'll do this, but I don't know exactly how to make it happen. E is for ease, how easy is it to do the magic? Do you have to sacrifice your first born child or cut off your toenails every time you need to do magic? Or is it like you could just wake up tomorrow and do it? And then finally strangeness. How weird is what the magic is doing compared to what we are doing? Are you turning people inside out? Are you turning them into a frog? Are you just making them walk slightly faster? Like, how it is. And so thinking about what those things are, and in my essay, I will go into depth about how you can think about those things and use them against each other.

[DongWon] I certainly think Lord of the Rings would be better if Gandalf the White said, I'm casting a level 9 Fireball...

[laughter]

[DongWon] So you consume meta magic sorcery points to make it a maximized style at this range.

[laughter]

[Erin] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I don't disagree with you, because I've read stories where...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And also, I disagree with you only because the people using the magic or existing in that world are usually humans, and humans are pattern seeking creatures, and we will turn everything into a magic system, like the bus. How do you get the bus to come? The spell you cast is you walk away from the bus stop. Like, we will find... Like, don't say that thing out loud. Like, we will systematize things that do not have systems.

[DongWon] But I think superstition is still resistant to systemization. Right? Like, people have ideas of what works and doesn't versus what the narrator is telling us works and doesn't work. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Because, like, there are also times where I knock on wood and then the bad thing happens anyways.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? Am I going to stop knocking on wood? No. Does that... And so I think in so many ways, making magic not numinous and strange and unpredictable can sometimes... For certain kinds of storytelling, bleed something out of it, and then for other kinds of story, I want to know exactly how my magic works in a really detailed way, in the way that I want to know how the engines work in The Expanse.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? But I don't really care how the engines work in Star Trek. You know what I mean? It's just another tool in your kit.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think the difference is that in The Expanse, we want to know how the engines work because it is almost always a plot point.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] And it's never a plot point in Star...

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Trek?

[DongWon] Star Trek. Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I mean, dilithium crystals. But whatever. Like, we know enough. So... And I think, to quote the founder of this podcast, the Sanderson's law, that the... Oh. I can't... I'm not going to quote him, I'm going to paraphrase him. That the definition of the magic system is proportional to the amount of plot that it carries.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, like, if it's like this thing always happens if you do... If you say Beetlejuice three times, like, we don't need to know why that works, we don't need to know any of those things.

[Erin] Yeah. I think, two things I would say. One is I do think we are pattern seeking creatures. But I also think there are a lot of folk traditions, especially like around, like, ghosts and haunts, where, like, people don't really understand it, nor do they want to. I think there's a feeling that this is beyond human understanding, and attempting to understand it will actually make it bad for you.

[Mary Robinette, DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And that we should just sort of, like, leave it out there... Like, will the ghost of your great aunt show up? Maybe. And why is she showing up tonight? I don't know. Like...

[DongWon] None of my business.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] None of my business, and I'm not going to ask.

[DongWon, Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] A lot of questions about that. But she's just there.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] But I do think that the role of plot, to me it's more...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Does it solve problems? Or is it part of the problem? And the way I think about that is gravity. So if gravity, like, if you're like,, I can't move because gravity is too heavy, you probably don't need to know, like, how gravity works in order to just understand its effect. But if you controlling gravity is what's going to fix that problem, then you're going to want to understand...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] How it works.

[Mary Robinette, DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So you can have magic be a problem creator and you just need to understand enough to know, like, oh, no, I said this three times and this person appeared. I guess that's what it does. But what you don't want to have happen, I think, is for the way in which it works to be the solution, but only you the author understand it, it never...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Becomes clear.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] Either to the characters or for the reader.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, basically, I think we... I completely agree with you, I just needed to...

[DongWon] Totally. I think we're really on the same page.

[Mary Robinette] I just needed to poke at it a little bit.

[Erin] What?

[Mary Robinette] I know...

[Erin] It's like we're on a podcast together...

[Mary Robinette] I have opinions that are accepted.

[Erin] Speaking of being on a podcast, we are going to go to the homework. And your homework is to pick one of the four things we talked about. So, systemless magic, inactive protagonist, telling versus showing, or passive voice. Take a scene that you've written and rewrite it where this is the thing that you're doing. And see how much it changes.

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

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-44-now-go-write-how-to-handle-relationships

Key Points: Kowal relationship axes: mind, money, morals, manners, monogamy/model, and mirth. Aspects of self: Ability, role, relationship, and status. tools of a healthy relationship. Communication, compromise, and commitment.

[Season 20, Episode  44]

[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.

[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  44]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon]  Now go write - how to handle relationships.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] And I'm Erin.

[Mary Robinette] And we have an exciting announcement. Writing Excuses is going to be publishing a book. It's called Now Go Write. It's all of us talking about the things that we have been talking about on the podcast for the past 20 seasons, but in a handy paper formula... Formula? [garbled] format. Formulation...

[DongWon] A formula format.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So that you don't have to listen to us doing things like that.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Because the book will be copy edited, unlike the podcast.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So, to give you a teaser of that, we are each going to be sharing with you one of the topics that we have written a chapter for the book. We're going to start with me. And I'm going to be talking about how to handle relationships. So. This is based on this whole conversation that I had with my mother-in-law, honestly. But one of the things that you see repeatedly in all sorts of media are relationships that are built around the characters, like, fighting with each other, the whole will they want this, where they have a good relationship, and then they have to break up for plot reasons. It's deeply annoying. But once you have characters, they have to interact with each other, whether it's a romantic relationship or friend relationship. So, this is some tools to look at how to make that believable and also a source of momentum. So, I mentioned my mother-in-law. She has this thing that I call the Kowal relationship axes...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Which is dating advice she gave my husband. He modified it, and I modified it a little bit more. The theory is relationships exist on multiple axes, and the more closely aligned you are on these axes, the more you'll get along. So these axes are mind, money, morals, manners, monogamy, and mirth. Don't worry, those are going to go in the liner notes, and also, there's a handy chart that will be in the book. But. mind is both people have the same level of intelligence. Money, they have similar attitudes about money. Morals, the same kind of sense of right and wrong. Manners, the same idea of what is polite. This is also,  by the way, sometimes you know people who are assholes online, but you meet them in person and they seem charming, because their manners are aligned with yours, but their morals are deeply messed up. Monogamy is not actually... My husband just needed them to be all m's. The original one was hot, burning kisses, from my mother-in-law.

[awww... mmmm....]

[Mary Robinette] There you go.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] But the idea is basically that you have the same idea of what the relationship is.

[DongWon] Right.

[Mary Robinette] Like, you've met someone, and they think you are BFF, and you are, like, we have met at the water cooler. And it's really uncomfortable.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And then mirth, you find the same things funny. So, now, any of those axes where you are out of alignment is going to be where your source of conflict is. So, for instance, my husband and I are closely aligned on all of those, but we're a little bit out of alignment on money. We both agree about what money is for, but in the Aesop's fable, I am the grasshopper, he is the ant. And then the other place we're a little bit out of alignment is manners, because he is from Hawaii and I am from Tennessee. Those are not the same.

[DongWon] Yeah. Just a little different.

[Mary Robinette] Just a tiny bit different. So if we have outside pressures pushing on us, those are the places where our conflicts will show. So when you're creating characters that you want to get along, you try to keep them as closely aligned as possible. And when you want them to disagree, like be in wild conflict, then you can move those things wildly out of alignment. So, those are the Kowal relationship axes. I have two other tools that I want to toss at people, but I thought we would talk about these before we move on to the others.

[DongWon] It's impossible to not start immediately mapping every person in my life onto those [garbled]

[Mary Robinette] Uhuh.

[DongWon] Of, like, all of my friends, my partner, my like relationship to other family members. I'm like, oh, where are we aligned? Where is the misalignment coming in?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing. I was like, and next, Writing Excuses will create a dating app...

[laughter]

[Erin] Where you could align yourself, and it'll be called, Now Go Date. No, just kidding.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But, it did make me think, like, where you might pull out of alignment could also be an interesting, like, thematic thing with a story. Like, you could say, like, in this story, I really want everyone to have really different morals, but be aligned on manners...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] To talk about, like... That's an observation I want to make about society. Or I really want to have a money thing, because I want to explore how capitalism affects the way that our relationships are.

[DongWon] Right.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And so that could be really fun.

[DongWon] Well, one thing that always strikes me is how much like Regency Era romances are much more about money than contemporary romances.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Where it could be almost like inappropriate to make it about that in a certain way. But, like, what someone's income is is so important in that era for, like, women trying to find their romantic match.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah, and it was considered, like, kind of understandable if you prioritized money.

[Mary Robinette, DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, if she's like, oh, he didn't marry me because he found this woman worth 10,000  pounds a year, and everyone's like, well, I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like people...

[DongWon] And the scandal is taking the monogamy match.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Or the morals and mind match...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Over the money match.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right. You can see that in, like, Jane Eyre and things like that. And it makes those so rich and responsive to the thematic elements of those books.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And one of the other things that's interesting also is that these are all the starting states. And for the most part, people stay more or less aligned, but there are things that you can push out of alignment during... Over the course of the story. So, like, when someone comes into a big inheritance. Or if someone is in an accident and they have some brain damage. Sometimes people don't respond well to that. If someone has a moral awakening and they're like... If they become woke...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And they realize, oh, I am...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Now out of alignment with people that I thought were my friends, but I can't... I think some of us have had that reaction to some books. So these are things that you can push around also during the course of the book to introduce tension, even if you don't start there. And you can also bring them more closely in alignment where... And it's like, oh, oh, I was wrong about a thing.

[DongWon] Yeah. Or just change the lens. Like, where you're putting your attention. Where when you first meet somebody, maybe you're not thinking about morals...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] As much. You're focused on the chemistry there, you're focused on, oh, we like find the same things funny. And 3 months into the relationship, you're like, oh, no, we think about how we should treat other people very differently.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And I think, like you were saying about how manners can cover up a difference in moral or mind in interesting ways...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And, going back to Jane Austen with Darcy and Lizzie, they are actually really closely aligned. They are not as far off... She thinks they are significantly farther off on morals. Like morals, they're actually pretty aligned, family is the most important thing. They are out of alignment in terms of manners, because her family is...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] A lot. But that's also where the conflict is between them.

[Erin] That's interesting, because she also thinks that he has bad manners in the less, like, social class way and the more like you just rude kind of way.

[laughter]

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So it's interesting because, in fact, her family is the, like, wow, did you invite them to the party...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Family. But, I mean, while she spends a lot of the book sort of judging his manners...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Within a mannered world.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Exactly. There's an interesting idea in the Regency that manners are an outward expression of our opinion of others. Which is different than etiquette, which is formally codified rules. And so there's a line somewhere in there about how he has manners that are not calculated to please.

[DongWon] Interesting.

[Mary Robinette] And I'm like, yeah, no, he did not want to.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So when we come back from the break, I'm going to introduce you to a couple of other things. I'm going to introduce you to aspects of self, and then how to apply these. Because this tells you how to create conflicts, but it doesn't tell you how to use them.

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[Mary Robinette] Welcome back from the break. This is one of my favorite topics, honestly, so I'm really glad that I get to do a whole chapter for it. Okay. So. Aspects of self. One of the things that you can do when you are looking at a relationship in a book and how to handle it, is to treat the relationship like a character. So the relationship itself is a character. Which means that that relationship can go on a character arc. That's the kind of thing that you're going to do if you want the character of the relationship to change. Enemies to lovers, that kind of thing. It's also a thing that you can think about if you do not want the relationship to change, if you want it to be stable. So, if you've got... If we think of it as a character, I think that there are four things that, four aspects of self definition for people, not talking about, like, the outward things, but how we self-define. Ability, role, relationship, and status. So, ability is defined by areas of competence, things you can and cannot do. Role is defined by responsibilities, tasks. Relationship is defined by loyalty, and status is defined by power, basically. So the idea is that... Let's say that we have a heist scene. We're doing an ensemble. We've got an ensemble.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] They're stealing the ace [garbled]

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yes. Yes, we have to have the  jewels of Rohisla and the extra exclamation points and apostrophes that go with...

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] That. So. The team is fully committed to each other. They are absolutely, like, we are a team. But one of them identifies as ability. Like, we are a group of thieves because we steal things, I have the ability to crack safes, you have the ability to climb walls, you have the ability to impersonate anybody, we have these abilities. That's... This is how we work. We've got these abilities. And someone else is like, no, we are a team because we're thieves. That is what we do, We steal things. If we didn't have those abilities, then we would find other ways to steal things. And someone else is like, no, no, guys, it's not that, it's about our relationship, we're a family. If we couldn't steal things, we would like open a pizza joint. I love you so much.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And the last one is like, no, we steal things because that gives us money, and money gives us power, and that's why we do this. And we are a team because we are all the best at that. So they're all fully committed to each other, but if there is friction about whether or not to go on with the heist, that is the place where one person might pop out a little bit from the team. And then you can go back and look at how those arguments manifest by looking at the relationship axes. So. Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah. I was going to say, like, I'm thinking about ways in which each of... Each person might, like, nope out. So, if you're like, it turns out the gem is actually worthless, it's really hard to steal. Like, it actually requires a lot of ability. But it will... We can't sell it for anything. It's just like we're doing it for the fun.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] The person who's into status is like, well, if it's not worth anything, like why would we go through all this, like, trouble to do it? Or if somebody's like, oh, I can't, it's a safe that I would have trouble cracking. The ability person might say no. Or somebody who believes in the role as thieves would say, we still gotta try. Like, we're thieves, we're gonna try to find another way around it. And so I think it's really cool to, like, look at how they might each drop out of the heist.

[DongWon] Well, you can use that to sort of highlight the thematics of the story you're telling. Right? Like, I'm thinking about the second arc of the first season of Andor. The Aldhani Heist, that entire squad, each of the members of that team have different reasons for being there.[garbled] Vela is there for relationship, Cinta is there for ability, Nemik is there for status, because it's all about the cause for him.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? And the entire arc of the first season of Andor is Andor moving from one role to another role in that breakdown. And so by highlighting the differences between them, you can use that contrast to really emphasize the thematic points you're trying to create.

[Mary Robinette] Exactly. I think that's a great example. And it also... I'm glad you said moves from one role to another, because...

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] That's also a stress point for an individual and for relationships.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So if they have a sudden status drop or if someone has to shift roles... If they have to add someone to the team and then figure out how they fit in, like, all of these things can cause stress. And it's very grounded stress. It's not the, like, oh, I don't like the way you make coffee, I'm out of here. Sometimes people just, like, make up weird things. You don't pronounce Rohisla with enough emphasis.

[Chuckles]

[Erin][garbled]

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I know.

[DongWon] Not to spoil it or over index on Andor, but like the final turn in that arc is a moment where one character says to him, "you're just like me," and he's right and he looks at what that means and can't bear it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] That's what shifts his status, is him seeing that the relationship... Our moral is the same... And then him looking at that and being like, I don't want that to be true anymore. And then that is what kicks him off on his hero's journey from there, and it's just like this incredible moment...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right at the end of that. So...

[Erin] Oh, God. How Javier of him. My favorite, like, person who in realizing they are the same as the hero is just like, nah...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I can no longer... I can literally not live with myself...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Understanding that like...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] We actually are the same.

[DongWon] Yeah. Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. All right.

[DongWon] That's the kindest reading of Javier I've heard in a long time.

[laughter]

[Erin] Javier? He's just like us. No he's not.

[DongWon] No he's not. He's definitely not.

[Mary Robinette] I'm just kind of waiting for a chorus to break through.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] So the other thing that you can play with is the tools of a healthy relationship. Communication, compromise, and commitment. And unhealthy relationship lacks those things. And this is why the plot line of... If they... That results in readers going, if they would just talk to each other, is so annoying because you know that this is an unhealthy relationship, and it's just continuing to be an unhealthy relationship. So I find that often I can get more tension out of letting my characters talk to each other and having it be an uncomfortable conversation then I can by them not talking to each other. Because just like in the real world, all you're doing is you're avoiding discomfort. And discomfort is where the tension is. The other is just like nah...

[DongWon] I mean, this is a case where you can see the ways in which modeling realism becomes more frustrating as a narrative experience. Right? Because in reality, we know all of our friends who aren't talking to their spouses about the things, that's a huge problem with their relationship, and won't do that for whatever reason. I'm not calling anyone out in particular, I swear to God. But...

[Erin] No, I'm thinking about like every Am I The Asshole post ever...

[laughter]

[Erin] Maybe just asking...

[DongWon] I think most advice columns just boil down to I don't know, why don't you talk about it?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You know what I mean? And this is a pattern that we see in real life everyday, and yet whenever we encounter it in fiction, it's immediately infuriating. You want to just, like, just talk to them and figure it out. You know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] In the same way that it's infuriating in my own life, when I'm like, please talk to them, I'm begging you. But fiction is heightened in that way. Right? We want to explore the discomfort. And so I think just letting it be the real thing...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] The realistic thing is a weird trap in this case.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And I think it's also one of those things where you can split the difference. They don't have to immediately say I feel like we have a conflict and let's discuss it. But there comes a point where it is... You've pushed it so far. And I think the thing you said about how it's frustrating when your friends don't talk to each other, that's the thing, is that the reader kind of becomes a friend.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Who... To the characters in the book. Or at least a stalker.

[Chuckles] 

[Mary Robinette] And they want the characters to do...

[DongWon] [garbled] Your friend too. So, yeah.

[Erin] Yeah. I really like the... What I call the forks and spoons conversations. Which is where, like, you're arguing over the dinner placement, but it's really about, like, your feeling about your mother-in-law.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Not yours. But anyone's. Because I think in that case, they are communicating, they're just not doing it... They're not able to live in the discomfort, and so they're doing it like sideways.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] We see this a lot really well done in theater. And it's like, okay, the audience can read what's going on, and eventually sometimes there's a breakthrough where it breaks from we're talking about the fork, like, wait, are we really talking about Jimmy and school, and that's such a great moment because you as an audience member also get to feel clever. You understood what they were talking about...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Before they did, and then when they finally realize it, you're like, oh...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I knew that's what it was really about, and it gives you that feeling of, like, I am as smart as the people in the story that I think we often enjoy.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] There's an incredible moment in the film Hereditary, which I doubt either of you have seen, but it's to me the scariest moment in the film. It's the thing where nothing supernatural is happening, they're having polite conversation on the dinner table, and one character begins to complain about something and Tony Collette, who plays the mom, freaks out and starts screaming at them about like, I'm your mother. It's just an incredible moment, an incredible speech, and the catharsis is finally saying out loud all the subtle [garbled] things that have been happening throughout the movie.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, yeah.

[DongWon] Seeing those forks and spoons conversations for what it feels like an eternity at that point. And so the dam breaking is just an incredible moment of catharsis. But you're right, that has to reinforce my understanding of what's happening here. And because it does, it becomes this beautiful clarifying moment that's also deeply harrowing and traumatizing.

[Mary Robinette] Ah. I love that. I may see if I can work that into the essay.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Um. So the kind of last tool that I want to talk to you about is how to handle these in sort of an arc. So I've already talked about you can treat it like a character arc. So the relationship is undergoing change. This is what you have with the meet cute, where they're trying to decide sort of who they are and is this a... Also the sort of thing you see with breakups as well. You can also apply this in using the MICE Quotient, you can apply it in a couple of other ways. You can treat the relationship like a milieu. The story begins when the character enters the relationship and it ends when they exit it, and you are... the whole thing is then about exploring or navigating a relationship. You could treat it like an inquiry story, which means that there are questions about the relationship. This is one of those things where uneven power dynamics, why is this tall dark stranger so brooding? Like, those can be things. You can also think about it, an inquiry, like [divorce?] stories. If you think of the relationship like a dead body...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] How did it die?

[Erin] Ooh!

[DongWon] The cold [open eyes?] of a divorce...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And then event stories. Event stories can be things like... One of the examples that I think of is actually Inigo Montoya's relationship with the six fingered man. That's this big, powerful thing where he's trying to change the status quo. His father was killed, he wants revenge, he wants to change the status quo. So even though they are not... They aren't on screen most of the time together, his role... His performance in that film is very much defined by his relationship with this character and the fact that he wants to kill him. So, you can do all sorts of fun things like that. And then always kind of you have those other tools that you can play with to sort of create nuance to it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I'm also wondering, like, an event... Cause the event story is like where the thing has come... The meteor is landing on Earth, like, stories where it's like it'll all be fixed on my birthday.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, in a relationship that is, like, not going well, and everyone's like... It's like when the event happens, it will definitely be the thing that, like, changes everything in a good way. Or it's like when your mom arrives. And so it becomes just, like, this impending event that... In some ways, it's about the event, but in some ways it's just about all the things that will lead up to that event.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, reveals...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] About the characters and their relationships with each other.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Exactly.

[DongWon] What I really love about thinking about this way is usually when we talk about something that is not a character being a character, we mean like settings. Like, oh, New York City was like a character in this movie.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Or whatever it is. Right? I love this image of the relationship being a character, because then the stakes are does the relationship survive? Right? Does it live or die? And seeing it as this thing that operates and moves and shifts, and it's kind of its own thing throughout the story, I think is a really useful framework for thinking about pacing and stakes and all the different aspects of the story in a way that I think is really rich and wonderful.

[Mary Robinette] I am so glad that you both liked that.

[future Mary Robinette] Hey. This is time travel Robinette. I am cutting back into the episode to say that when we finished recording this, we decided that model was a better word than monogamy, but we aren't going to re-record the whole episode. It'll just be right when you get the book. So when you tell people about it, mind, money, morals, manners, model, and mirth. And now, past Mary Robinette is going to give you your homework.

[Mary Robinette] So, I'm going to move to our homework. And I'm again going to refer to my mother-in-law.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So one of the things she said was, to my husband when he was trying to talk to her about like, how do you know, and she said, you know it's the right person when you love them because of their flaws. So what I want you to do is I want you to look at your story and see who your main character loves because of their flaws, and just write a little exploratory scene where the character is exhibiting those flaws and the other character is watching that fondly. And then write a different scene where they're mad at them and the flaws are pissing them off. So, now that you've got that homework, there's one other piece of homework that I have and you're going to get this homework again. If you want to find out when this book is coming out, you need to head over to the website and you need to sign up for the newsletter. Because that is where we're going to let people know when the book is coming out. And when you sign up, there is also a little bonus thing that you get. So, head to writing excuses.com, sign up for the newsletter, and now... You're out of excuses. Now go write.