A Word in Your Eye

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.