[SPEAKER_01]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. [SPEAKER_01]: If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patrion.com slash writing excuses. [SPEAKER_01]: Season twenty, episode thirty-six. [SPEAKER_01]: This is writing excuses. [SPEAKER_05]: Deep dive and all the birds in the sky. [SPEAKER_05]: Through the lens of wind. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Mary Rabinette. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm Don Juan. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm Dan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Aaron. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Howard. [SPEAKER_00]: And we are going to be looking today at the lens of wind, which is a little bit of a cheat because when we did our lenses, we put where and when together. [SPEAKER_00]: And we did I think a single episode about time. [SPEAKER_00]: And I am also going to cheat in that this story takes place. [SPEAKER_00]: This book takes place in multiple time periods, but I'm completely uninterested in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, what interests me is the use of foreshadowing. [SPEAKER_00]: When I think about time, I think a lot about flashback and foreshadowing, where you are in the time of the story, the when of the story moment. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, and it's interesting because this book takes place in four different times, but they are not presented chronologically. [SPEAKER_03]: There are a lot of flashbacks in it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so she is using time very intentionally and very specifically, and just because something took place like in school for Patricia doesn't mean that we're not going to hear about it at the end of the book, because that's when emotionally it needs to be there. [SPEAKER_03]: So it's chronologically [SPEAKER_02]: We start, we start in grade school, and we end with them as adults, but when the plot requires it, we flash back. [SPEAKER_02]: Chronoplautologically.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is not worse. [SPEAKER_03]: I like how so many of our jokes are Howard saying a weird thing, and then we all stared him, and then he explains it and we go, okay, actually. [SPEAKER_03]: That's not actually the definition of a joke. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a joke we'd be laughing with me instead of anything. [SPEAKER_01]: That's not the function of you. [SPEAKER_02]: And we're back to the lens of who. [SPEAKER_00]: Did you take us back to the lens of the lens?
[SPEAKER_00]: Go back to when. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that I found really striking in this story is the the Adolfus. [SPEAKER_00]: I assume that is how you pronounce his name. [SPEAKER_00]: When the Adolfus is introduced to show us the horrible future that will happen to these kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure the Adolfist does other things and he does, but this is I feel like was a huge thing because it is a big flash for it's a big jump forward to show us this future and to really I think set up how we view these two kids and I'm wondering like how did that affect you think you're reading of the story to know that there was a future when that we are theoretically like hurtling towards for the rest of the story.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, the foreshadowing felt really essential because it creates tension throughout the book, right? [SPEAKER_05]: It gives us stakes in the relationship beyond just the general interest in the characters, right? [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, I think a couple episodes ago, we were talking a little bit about the tension between a literary impulse and a genre impulse, a little bit.
[SPEAKER_05]: And this is, I think the connective tissue is in here, right, in terms of [SPEAKER_05]: What she wants us to do is pay attention to the nuances of a relationship and she's going to give us this genre of framing device around it around prophecy around doom and end of the world and apocalypse kind of visions. [SPEAKER_05]: But the thing that's also so interesting about what she does with the Adolfus is she goes through a great deal of work to humanize him. [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: He isn't assassin who knows all these different ways to kill people, but a he can't kill these kids, which makes him like a card Sunday morning card tunes sort of villain in a funny way, but also the way in which he genuinely enjoys being a guidance counselor.
[SPEAKER_05]: added so much dimension to him and add so much paythos to when we see him again in the future as sort of the sad broken man on the street right and sort of reiterating the doomed prophecy that he was given initially right and so there's this thing of [SPEAKER_05]: He's a character who is there as an antagonist out to kill these children who we've grown very fond of, or hopefully have grown fond of.
[SPEAKER_05]: But because he's shown to be a creature of empathy and understanding, it adds so much texture and context to the doom that he protects. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and also it's interesting, as you were talking about it, I was reflecting this prophecy that he was given at the beginning. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, actually, no, that's not when he was given it in terms of when we experienced the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: So his scene is contained both a flashback and foreshadowing, because we meet him after the kids have played their game about, you know, what are these people? [SPEAKER_01]: And then the narration does a quick flashback as it happens, she was correct. [SPEAKER_01]: And then we meet him and then he is another flashback to the going to look into the seeing hole or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how he gets the prophecy and [SPEAKER_01]: And then, but the prophecy is about the future. [SPEAKER_01]: So it is this interesting back and forth. [SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the things that I see Charlie Jane doing with this is choosing the moment when to flash back and flash forward. [SPEAKER_01]: Choosing a moment where it's going to add to the tension.
[SPEAKER_01]: and and help keep the story moving where I see the failure mode of this with a lot of early career writers when I've done my own stuff is the flashback happens like in the middle of high impact action scene and and everything stops because the story is now no longer moving towards a goal it is looking at the foundation work.
[SPEAKER_05]: One of the things I love about this book in general and this comes and I see this in how she uses time, so flashboards and flashbacks and foreshadowing and things like that and how she uses POV in terms of getting close to the character and out zooming in and out and all these things is she does a lot of this in ways that break conventional rules. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_05]: It's like, oh, you're not supposed to shift POV like this.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're not supposed to have just a character. [SPEAKER_05]: Like, do you at all this kind of comes out of nowhere as this POV character? [SPEAKER_05]: And I was like, who's this guy? [SPEAKER_03]: What's he doing? [SPEAKER_05]: And yet it like, we just worked. [SPEAKER_05]: There's so many things that she does because it works in the moment more than it works in the meta structure of the book.
[SPEAKER_05]: And without disrupting the meta structure of the book, I don't think she does that. [SPEAKER_05]: But there's a priority that she has in terms of impact in the moment that makes us such effective storytelling for me. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm wondering if you're trying to do this, you know, and you're like, okay, I understand the chronology of the story. [SPEAKER_00]: I understand the plot of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm going to try chronoplatology, which is, as we know the point of view of doing that. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do you actually figure out when is the time to flashback? [SPEAKER_00]: When is the time to project forward in order to create a release attention? [SPEAKER_02]: I have found [SPEAKER_02]: an almost iron-clad rule for when not to flash back.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is, don't flash back as a tool to relieve tension by stepping away from the tension and telling another story, because that's just gonna upset me. [SPEAKER_02]: You find a different tool to relieve the tension, you know, if I have to explain something in order to move this other scene forward, [SPEAKER_02]: I need to explain it somewhere else rather than breaking tension in order to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So all I've got for you right now is my personal ironclad don't, which is not going to be ironclad for anybody else. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I often refer to one of my favorite tools, which is the My Squishant, that if a lot of times the flashback is because I need to start the story, this thread moving. [SPEAKER_01]: But if I put that thread in where it belongs chronologically, it does not work chronologically. [SPEAKER_01]: How would I hate you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Why have we done this to ourselves? [SPEAKER_01]: It's a useful, unfortunately. [SPEAKER_01]: It is actually a very useful construction. [SPEAKER_01]: I just wish it were easier to say. [SPEAKER_01]: But if we had done all of these things, [SPEAKER_01]: Strictly chronologically, we would have been starting with, you know, the Adolfus and his vision about these kids. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not useful.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the way I think about what I'm talking about, the mice quotient, is it's about the sequence in which you're telling the story to the reader. [SPEAKER_01]: So I look at which things are the things that I want to keep tension on. [SPEAKER_01]: And then when do I need to introduce something in order to activate either existing tension or introduce tension that is moving forward? [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of that then has to do with additional decisions.
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem was giving a lot of advice on this is that we can kind of say, here are the metrics to look at, but it is very much a season to taste. [SPEAKER_05]: Well, what's also really important about the way the foreshadowing and theater office work in this first section is that it's not about the stakes aren't the end of the world. [SPEAKER_05]: The thing we're concerned about isn't that the world's going to end.
[SPEAKER_05]: The thing that hits us emotionally is that [SPEAKER_05]: Patricia and Lawrence are going to be a war with each other. [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, it's the fracture of the relationship that is the stakes and what the at all does to these kids because you can't kill them is try to turn them against each other, which is a thing that he's actually successful at doing in in large part and is the thing that's most hurtful to these kids and to us the reader who's experiencing this journey, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: So the foreshadowing works [SPEAKER_05]: and is introduced on a point where we already care about their connection. [SPEAKER_05]: And now you can have stakes because there's something at risk. [SPEAKER_05]: And the risk is how these characters see each other and how they feel about each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: not to like overindex on the idea that we're talking about lenses, but this actually makes me think of going to the eye doctor and I promise this all connect is like when the when when the eye doctor is like doing the like is it better if you look through the left eye or the right eye what they do first is the big thing like the big like how basically like how near sight or far sighted are you and that's the main lens and then they'll do small adjustments to like a stigmatism that are like is it this is when they're like is it one or two and you're like you're making this up here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think one of the things that I'm thinking about with this is figuring out what is the major lens through which you want your reader to experience the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here, as we talked about in talking about who the major lens is who and what the when does is it's those smaller things that actually make the who clearer or less clear as it needs to be for the story, but it doesn't take over as a when focused story would be which would be to take us from the beginning into the end. [SPEAKER_00]: and speaking of taking us from the beginning into the end, we are going to take a break and when we come back, birds.
[SPEAKER_04]: See, meter, this is what we call for, shadowing. [SPEAKER_04]: That was a call of shot before the break. [SPEAKER_04]: And we all just cocked her hands and looked at Aaron seeing of this one's end result. [SPEAKER_01]: Can't wait to see the bird. [SPEAKER_00]: So the birds, in this story, there is a thing about time on the page, which is at the birds to show up throughout the latter half, to say, to late, to late, to late.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's interesting because it is, what is that? [SPEAKER_00]: Would you consider that to be foreshadowing? [SPEAKER_00]: Is it? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it doesn't end up completely coming to pass. [SPEAKER_00]: What is the purpose of having the birds remind us of where we are in the world and the story as an in-story element? [SPEAKER_02]: And this comes back to the timing of introducing the Adolfus. [SPEAKER_02]: We had to earn.
[SPEAKER_02]: The Adolfus had to earn the right to be prophetic. [SPEAKER_02]: And he earned it by us believing that Patricia saw the tree and had magic. [SPEAKER_02]: And Lawrence created an AI in his closet. [SPEAKER_02]: And so now we can believe that this guy had a prophetic experience. [SPEAKER_02]: If we heard it first, we wouldn't have believed it. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, so now we've got unreliability of narrators set aside for a moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: We come to the birds and we have earned, or Charlie Jane has earned. [SPEAKER_02]: The story has earned the ability to convince me that when a bird says a thing, it's important and it's true and the bird might not fully understand what it's saying, but [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm supposed to feel something and what I feel is increase intention a little bit of dread. [SPEAKER_02]: It's too late. [SPEAKER_02]: How far too late is it?
[SPEAKER_02]: But if we'd lead with the birds, which obviously we couldn't, but if we'd lead with it, the story hadn't earned it yet because it hadn't told us that the birds could do this. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't remember if this works exactly, but I'm pretty sure it does, as the birds kind of replace the Adolphus.
[SPEAKER_03]: He disappears from the story fairly abruptly, and it's after that that the birds start saying too late, and I think a big part of that is, we don't need the prophet anymore because it's already happened. [SPEAKER_03]: The thing he was prophesying is here. [SPEAKER_03]: Um, and so that's what the birds are is, you know, okay. [SPEAKER_03]: This thing is happening now. [SPEAKER_01]: The bells are tolding.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things as we're talking about foreshadowing that I kind of want to draw attention to is that there's there's kind of two modes of foreshadowing that are happening. [SPEAKER_01]: One mode is stuff that Charlie Jane is doing deliberately, thematically and very visible. [SPEAKER_01]: And those are the things like the [SPEAKER_01]: There's a prophecy, that kind of thing that are very clearly on the page and addressed at the reader.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's also invisible or covert foreshadowing that you don't notice until you read it a second time. [SPEAKER_01]: Like some of the things that I was calling out in earlier episodes where she's saying, this is the thing that she had learned about Lawrence that you couldn't count on him.
[SPEAKER_01]: that those, you know, there's reasons that that comes back later and it's not necessarily something that you would notice on the first time as, oh, this is a big thematic thing. [SPEAKER_01]: When, like I've talked to early career writers who are trying to figure out, well, how do I put the foreshadowing in?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I want you to know is that mechanically the way you do that is that most of the time the foreshadowing is you getting to the end of the book and saying, what have I put on the table already and what ingredients can I use? [SPEAKER_01]: And grabbing those in writing, so that a lot of the invisible foreshadowing or the foreshadowing, the reader doesn't necessarily notice the first time around.
[SPEAKER_01]: is what I think of as hindsight foreshadowing, which is usually the writer mechanically reaching back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have found that when I have attempted to put foreshadowing in, unless it is this very conscious, very visible, you know, if I want the subtle foreshadowing that the reader, that every single time I am telegrafting things in ways that are unpleasant for the reader, and that [SPEAKER_01]: Charlie Jane is managing to do these two different types of foreshadowing without following into this annoying. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I can see that coming.
[SPEAKER_02]: One thing that may not be obvious to readers is that you are not reading books in the order, you know, word for word page for page in the order in which they were written with rare exceedingly rare exception. [SPEAKER_02]: You are reading something where it's been written and then [SPEAKER_02]: And then the smarter version of the author has gone back and retroactively foreshadowed or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be very interested to learn if the Adolfus was in the first draft of the novel. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I mean, my suspicion is not. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: I think what's so interesting about the way foreshadowing a works here and this, you know, really going back to over indexing on the metaphor of lens here, right, is the way the foreshadowing the way prophecy works and this is a lens into character over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_05]: How the characters interpret the information they are given influences [SPEAKER_05]: how they behave in the future, which reinforces their trauma, their rifts, their disagreements. [SPEAKER_05]: And so the adult face, a creature of violence, sees the violence coming at the end and cannot imagine a resolution other than the end of the world.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then Patricia being told that Lawrence is going to do this thing and that she must kill him [SPEAKER_05]: can only see that she must distance herself from this person who has distance himself from her. [SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: And so it's just like this repeats over and over again. [SPEAKER_05]: And then, you know, where the bird prophecy comes in at the end of the two late two late is simply Patricia interpreting that of, oh, it is too late.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's too late to save the world. [SPEAKER_05]: It's too late to do the things I needed to do. [SPEAKER_05]: Lawrence has gone, I screwed all this up. [SPEAKER_05]: And that is her own negativity, her own depression, her own cycles of trauma, sort of repeating itself in that. [SPEAKER_05]: When actually the birds are talking about something completely irrelevant. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, to spoil the ending here, it's like the the riddle from the birds, it don't matter at all.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just her getting back to the tree. [SPEAKER_05]: That's the important part. [SPEAKER_05]: She was too late to come back and answer the riddle, but the parliament of birds are kind of just a bunch of idiots as far as we can tell. [SPEAKER_05]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_05]: Delightful idiots, I love birds, but that seems accurate.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, I mean, and so it is this thing that because it is so closely filtered through the unreliable perspective of the character, we can see the language for shadowing becomes yet another tool in her toolkit. [SPEAKER_05]: A to create tension between these characters and create that for momentum of the plot.
[SPEAKER_05]: But to let us understand the perspective of these individuals and the flaws in that, that drive them to make decisions that are quote-unquote not optimal in that way of like, well, why didn't they just do X, Y, and Z, and that would have saved everything. [SPEAKER_05]: It's like, because that's how people work. [SPEAKER_05]: People make flawed decisions on imperfect information for good reasons all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting to me that both of the magic and the tech people are sort of, they feel like they are in a foreshadowing. [SPEAKER_00]: Like they're both, they both project forward what they believe the future will be and then attempt to do something heinous to control it or change it or flee from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of the entire book is in some ways like what happens if you see the future and you don't feel like, you know, you see it coming and it feels like there's nothing you can do to change it.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is where I'm going to reveal that I an unreliable narrator lied and do you want to talk a tiny bit about the time in which it is set in a world that is not ours but is very technologically similar to our own and so I'm wondering like how does that do you think that changes the way you read the story or like the disasters of the story in that it feels like it could it's not an impossibility to the when of our own time [SPEAKER_00]: or was that just me?
[SPEAKER_05]: The whole book is so heightened, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Everything about it is heightened from the way the kids experience their adventure, the emotions around, you know, the the refuge between them, and then the disasters that are happening at the end.
[SPEAKER_05]: And yet, you know, I mean, in the year since this book was published, we've all experienced natural disasters, we've experienced, you know, conflict, we've experienced a lot of things that are hinted at or explicitly described in this book.
[SPEAKER_05]: not in a literal one to one way but you know a lot of what she's talking about here feels very familiar and it's why my reading of it is so grounded in a specific place in time of like this is about this city's conflict this is about this particular thing that she was working through in her own mind of what do we do about the problem of this city what do we do about this conflict between these communities
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's inevitable that you will read the books through the lens of whichever time that you're in. [SPEAKER_01]: And having an overlap with when the book was written makes a lot of the parallels, I think a little more clear. [SPEAKER_01]: But also as we move farther away from it, the billionaire is just drawing the world kind of situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that, that again, that is something, this specific incarnation of it is something that happened years after a Charlie Jane wrote the book, but it is still, it is still something that resonates that connects. [SPEAKER_01]: But when you read much older books, I think, you know, we still have those residents and connections written, draws parallels, [SPEAKER_01]: to where we are now or when we are now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's inevitable and I think it's something that we can kind of overthink as writers too much. [SPEAKER_00]: That was going to ask you think that's something we should, I know there's something people will worry about, especially people writing science fiction, near future, current versions of us is, do you worry that what you're writing becomes data? [SPEAKER_00]: Do you worry that you're out of time and then people will not relate to your story anymore?
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, this thing is that science fiction is never about the future. [SPEAKER_05]: The science fiction is always about the present moment. [SPEAKER_05]: It's written in, right? [SPEAKER_05]: You know, William Gibson's Neuromancer feels futuristic even to us now, even though the technology is wildly outdated compared to what we have now, right? [SPEAKER_05]: You watch, you know, two thousand one is based Odyssey. [SPEAKER_05]: None of our technology looks like that at this point.
[SPEAKER_05]: But that movie still feels futuristic to us. [SPEAKER_05]: And that's okay. [SPEAKER_05]: You need to hit the feeling of futuristicness, but you don't need to be predictive about technology. [SPEAKER_05]: And you know, frankly, Charlie Jane did a pretty good. [SPEAKER_05]: There's some cold shots in here in terms of like, [SPEAKER_05]: you know, generative AI, billionaires who are willing to destroy the planet just so they can go to Mars, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, you know, there's a number of things that are just called shots here because I think communities show. [SPEAKER_05]: She was in, you know, being a tech journalist for so many years, all those kind of things.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, I think gave her a certain perspective that let her call those shots, but also those things are [SPEAKER_05]: coming true in this moment, ten years now, who knows if they will be, but because the thematic resonances are so rich, I think even if those technological things don't work out, because this book is about a moment in time as all books necessarily are and letting that be felt, I think that it works in a way that I don't need it to
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, in the way that Normans are doesn't need cell phones to feel like crazy cool future tech. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: To address the question, just very, very specifically, when I am writing, I'm writing for an audience who comes from the same chronological context that I do. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not trying to write for a future audience. [SPEAKER_02]: If I were trying to write for future audience, I would write something very, very different.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I recognize that the audience who reads whatever I write today, you know what, about eighty percent of what they get out of what I write is something that they brought with them into what I wrote. [SPEAKER_02]: And a hundred years from now in the unlikely circumstance that anybody's reading anything I wrote a hundred years from now. [SPEAKER_02]: The number will be closer to like ninety five percent.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think the thing that keeps it from feeling dated is when you lean into concepts and trends, like big ideas rather than like lingo in details, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Like if somebody was like, skip any toilet in this, it would be like, whoa, that was a very specific moment. [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, that would be a wild call shot from if you wrote this back then.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, if there were things that are just like so of a particular moment in slang, unless you're running a thing that is intended to be a purity at peace, that's where like you need to find the fine line between what's the idea of the thing versus like putting a specific version of the thing in your book, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: So everything being a slightly abstracted form and like shifted one step of these tech companies and these like [SPEAKER_05]: Billionaires rather than being this is this person doing this thing for this company. [SPEAKER_05]: I think that helps keep it feel from keeping it from being too, you know, dated. [SPEAKER_00]: Great. [SPEAKER_00]: And now we have come to the time for the homework.
[SPEAKER_00]: So pick a scene in your current work, and I want you to think about two moments. [SPEAKER_00]: One moment in the past of that, that is resonance still with that scene, and one moment that will happen in the future that is also resonant with that scene. [SPEAKER_00]: And right two different versions of the scene, one in which the past ways heavily on it, and one in which the foreshadowing of the future ways heavily on it, and then see what the difference is.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been writing excuses. [SPEAKER_01]: You're out of excuses. [SPEAKER_01]: Now go right. [SPEAKER_01]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. [SPEAKER_01]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal, Dong Wan Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Taylor. [SPEAKER_01]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds.
[SPEAKER_01]: For more information, visit writing excuses.com.