[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 21, Episode 7 [SPEAKER_04]: This is Friday excuses. [SPEAKER_04]: Deep dive with their serpent lock. [SPEAKER_04]: Tools and out rules. [SPEAKER_01]: Four writers, by writers. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Mary Rabinett.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Don Lawn. [SPEAKER_04]: I'm Marshall. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Erin. [SPEAKER_01]: And we are very happy that Marshall has joined us. [SPEAKER_01]: He's usually on the other side of the microphone being our engineer. [SPEAKER_01]: But today is my birthday. [SPEAKER_05]: How you birthday? [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your birthday. [SPEAKER_01]: So I often think about this as leveling up day.
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes me feel powerful in a way that I'm 57 years old does not because then I can think about the new gear that I get and the tools that I get. [SPEAKER_01]: And for my birthday, one of the things that I often do is I do what I call a party favor, which is that I post one of my stories, but then I also talk about some aspect of it, sometimes I show you a first draft.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in this case, we're going to talk about this story through the things we've been talking about with beginnings, some of the things we're going to be [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm also going to talk about some ways in which this story shows me leveling up. [SPEAKER_01]: So this is on uncanny. [SPEAKER_01]: It's called with her serpent locks. [SPEAKER_01]: My friends have read this story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And before I tell you where it came from, I would love to just see what your first initial thoughts of it were. [SPEAKER_03]: I really loved it. [SPEAKER_03]: It's, it's really fun even though it comes for a place of like, you know, there's definitely like teeth to the story, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like these, these snakes have a bite.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I really enjoyed seeing that unfold, but it's [SPEAKER_03]: It's I like the way in which the emotion of it is kind of supplemented like there's irritation but it's all filtered through this very like I'm going about my day. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm keeping my cool. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just like doing the things that comfort me in it sort of has all these sensory grounding things but you can feel the simmering rage underneath it that's going to end up where it ends up.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I really, I really liked that emotional terror and it made it a very like pleasant story to read, even though it is coming for a place of like, fuck this.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I agree, especially when I got to the end, it just felt like subtly diabolical, like she's just going about, like, don't want to say it, going about the day, but like there was some planning going on and there was some anger and then the execution of the end was just, it was very satisfying by the time we got to the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I really was thinking about it in the context of like some of what we've been talking about recently about beginnings and opening so I really the end is great, but like was thinking about like how it works and one thing I found really interesting is it's based in mythology mythology that I'm aware of which is something we didn't talk about which is something like you can ground a story in a broader context than like even the context that like
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, which it's not 100% required, but this is a fairly well-known myth, like the Medusa and the turning people in stone. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it was really cool to kind of uncover what was happening on both a personal level for the character who I was not familiar with, but like where it fits into my broader understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: of the myth, which is a fun way to ground, and also makes me feel clever, which we talked about in previous episodes, which is because I'm like, oh, this is that. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it's a little more explicit right after that. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm like, I figured out before it was told to me, which was something really fun that I enjoyed. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and even in the way where I was like, oh, right, I don't really remember this part of the myth.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I remember Medusa was like, one of the gorgans, but remember who the rest of them were, what the set-up was, or even exactly how she died. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I remember the Harry Housin, you know what I'm looking for, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: But it didn't feel necessary, right? [SPEAKER_03]: I got the pieces I needed to get. [SPEAKER_03]: I remember the vibe of the thing more.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that's the thing where like, you don't have to worry too much about reference reality. [SPEAKER_03]: So long as you're not like, [SPEAKER_03]: expecting me to remember every single detail of the thing. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, okay, I know what the Medusa is and I would agree on this. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the title and then getting to that first break. [SPEAKER_05]: the stone of back of a man, hold on the ground, I was like, oh, yeah, I see what's happening.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was like, okay, that is sick. [SPEAKER_05]: I like that. [SPEAKER_05]: But we were talking about grounding the reader a bit. [SPEAKER_05]: But what I thought was kind of cool is grounding these gods with this kind of technology, too, like,
[SPEAKER_05]: like how does a God get from how was the God trying to escape their family and then how are they communicating across time and space and then do that to take a ship over like I just thought I just thought that was that was a really cool touch like the wormhole the real estate and I just thought that was a cool way to like kind of ground gods into yeah and then my story why make it science fiction like what was that what was behind that choice okay so uh i mean yeah so now we now we talk about evolution of a story
[SPEAKER_01]: So I run this thing called a short story cohort and one of the things we do at the beginning of the cohort is I check in with people, I'm like barriers to writing victories and one of the people as a barrier to writing said she had a lot of stuff going on with her family and she just felt like her brain was full of angry snakes. [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that I always say is, when you're having a big emotion, try to lean into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether it's giving the character that emotion and then helping them pivot away from it or leaning even further into it. [SPEAKER_01]: And so that day for the writing prompt, I said, our writing prompt is Angry Snakes. [SPEAKER_01]: And so what I wrote down, I saved this, what I wrote down was angry snakes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the next thing I told them to do is just set some intentions that they should set a couple of things that if they accomplished those, they would feel satisfied by the end of the day. [SPEAKER_01]: And the lowest bars possible. [SPEAKER_01]: So the things I said were, start a new story, decide where, who and what the problem was. [SPEAKER_01]: That was it. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I was like, decide where. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, bag your out on a planet with rings.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was like the sum total of what I wrote down. [SPEAKER_01]: Who reduces sister? [SPEAKER_01]: Problem, Zeus wants to visit. [SPEAKER_01]: Like that was what I wrote. [SPEAKER_01]: And then this is one of those stories where I got lucky. [SPEAKER_01]: I talk about the sometimes where you get lucky and you kind of cough a story out. [SPEAKER_01]: I got a most of the story during that two-hour block of writing. [SPEAKER_01]: not all of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were pieces that I was like, well, I have to fix that. [SPEAKER_01]: But the opening line of the story was not originally the message from Zeus. [SPEAKER_01]: Originally the message hung in the air. [SPEAKER_01]: It was the second line. [SPEAKER_01]: It was where I started. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and my very first take was it was actually going to be Medusa, and then I went over and I was like, let me, let me just check on Medusa, like, what are some things?
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember again, she has the sisters, she's dead, so who else is around, and that was when I learned that the Gorgans, some of them were immortal and some were not. [SPEAKER_01]: And also, I was like, there's got to be a star named after, you know, like all of the other things. [SPEAKER_01]: And indeed, there is, like I didn't make up the name of that, that's, I made up the idea that there's a planet that's habitable there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm like, okay, so you've got immortal gods. [SPEAKER_01]: That means if we go into science fiction, they should still be around theoretically, unless someone is killed them. [SPEAKER_01]: And that was kind of where I started, but I didn't know the ending when I started. [SPEAKER_01]: I knew that I wanted a confrontation between the two of them. [SPEAKER_01]: I knew that she was dealing with grief.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew that she hated this asshole because I mean, really, Zeus is like rotten. [SPEAKER_01]: And the other thing that I knew as I was going was that I wanted to play with form. [SPEAKER_01]: Because I tend to do this fairly immersive kind of, I don't tend to be flashy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the idea of doing this thing where you're out is just doing the why, the where, that the question words as my transitions was really appealing to me and trying to do these very condensed scenes that were doing a lot of lift, but actually not a lot happens in. [SPEAKER_01]: Also, very appealing to me that it's this, it's this correspondence between the two of them, [SPEAKER_01]: I knew what was going to happen to Zeus.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew that she had taken steps, but I had to go back and plant some of that stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: I had to go back and plant the, I don't know, basil lily or whatever it is. [SPEAKER_01]: I had to go back and plant some of that stuff so that it was there. [SPEAKER_01]: I think she was originally cutting lemon instead of a pomegranate and then like, it's a Greek myth, what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, including a pomegranate, it's such a good sensory detail, it's such an involved task. [SPEAKER_03]: It takes these different steps, and it's always technique involved. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's just this beautiful red luscious image. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But one of the other things that I was trying to do to level up is something that I will talk to you about after the break, because it's about delaying information.
[SPEAKER_01]: So before the break, I said that one of the leveling up things that I played with was delaying information. [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the pieces of information that I was very deliberately delaying was the word Zeus. [SPEAKER_01]: And also that yes, this really is a Gorgon and all of the commentary about her hair [SPEAKER_01]: But that's actually pretty hard thing to do. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not something that I would have been able to do when I was a beginning writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's one of the things that I felt like I had more control over. [SPEAKER_01]: So I am curious about how that played for you and what you see as the tricks I was using to be able to do that. [SPEAKER_01]: Or anything else you want to talk about there? [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you mentioned the hair, not being a metaphor or not being, you know what I mean? [SPEAKER_05]: Something that was actually happening.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think I started to kind of figure that out when she sat down and one of them was [SPEAKER_05]: Like, the child of the chair, that was a bit the chair behind her, and she just was kind of doing something with it. [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, well, that's interesting. [SPEAKER_05]: These are actually snakes responding as she's feeling things. [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, okay, that's really cool.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then that, um, when, uh, trying to remember the other spot, uh, oh, she just didn't want any more statues haunting her house. [SPEAKER_05]: That line. [SPEAKER_05]: I love that line because now imagining all of these [SPEAKER_05]: people coming there and her just being like, okay, now you're stone. [SPEAKER_05]: Sorry, bro. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, you know. [SPEAKER_05]: And I just I just thought that was cool.
[SPEAKER_05]: So that connection of the hair and that image and then zoos shows up. [SPEAKER_05]: I just thought that was really well done.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love the pattern also you set up of the who what when we're why you know what I mean just the single word questions Which you like hang a lantern on because she's like I'm being deliberately annoying by just saying one word But then it leads to the who right and so I think it's just like fun to set up a pattern that he's going to resolve in that way and Resolve in the other thing of like I was like it's probably Zeus you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: I like had a sense of like there's but there's plenty of gods in the Greek pan beyond that are complete assholes [SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, there was something about it that I was like, what if it's going to be Zeus? [SPEAKER_03]: And then it was, which was very satisfying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think one thing I found really interesting was at the end of the first paragraph after the spoken line or the hanging in the air message was about the asshole favorite grandson who got away with rape and murder and incest, which is interesting because her reaction to that is very blase, which to me speaks like something is going on beyond what you're
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, it's not like she's like, and I will alert the authorities to this or like, you know, it's just sort of like, oh, this is just like a known thing. [SPEAKER_00]: It's happened this again. [SPEAKER_00]: Which is something that is very, I was like, well, what's going on with that guy? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, that seems messed up like, Why is nobody doing anything about you? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like, why is nobody doing anything about you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's like that. [SPEAKER_03]: Feel like somebody should be like, can you tell somebody? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it feels, it's, it's, I mean, we did the, it's very outside, it's right?
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, I don't think any of us know someone who's that terrible, but I do think a lot of us have someone in our family that's a little bit like, oh, like that person more than they're like, you know, it's also like I'm not clear on how bad of a person they are, but maybe they're not like perfect, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or just like maybe it's just like a little bit, but that exasperation and discomfort with somebody you're connected to in your circle that you can't [SPEAKER_03]: right. [SPEAKER_03]: And so I think setting that up as like the grounding emotion is really helpful there. [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to point back to a thing that you said when you were talking about setting up the pattern of the who-where-well, that I had to switch, I remember having to switch something one of the the where's the one of them in order to get the the beats to hit right. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, but the, at the very, very end, uh, I also deliberately, the where, where would you like to be? [SPEAKER_01]: I also deliberately gave from more words when she was talking to her, her, her sisters.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also, in terms of, and this is, you know, will we, we'll be talking about endings much later in the season. [SPEAKER_01]: But the, the last line was originally considered the best spot for a hero. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I was like, that's not her relationship with her. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: The love of sister feels so much more the core of the emotion of the story, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: It's such a tenderness to her too.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and I think you do a good job of showing that early, you know, both in terms of we think of that as somebody doing these nurturing tasks, preparing food, gardening, but also just like her relationship with her. [SPEAKER_03]: awful little silly I covered. [SPEAKER_03]: It was like so adorable, but also when I think about it, I'm like, I don't want a million words. [SPEAKER_03]: That's so bad to think about.
[SPEAKER_03]: But also you made it very sweet and very cute and very tender, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I love butter scotch. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: Those are insanely good character moment, too. [SPEAKER_05]: And like, although it was a little off-putting, like, [SPEAKER_05]: She loves this awful little creature and I love that last line that section.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're like frolicing in the moss and I'm like thinking of this thing with all these legs like you do. [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, she likes that, but that sounds awful, but okay, listen, I'm sorry you missed the pantomime. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, is that a thousand little legs or a set of marry a net no one, they're not talking to us as many of the net.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a question for you, I know we don't have endless amounts of time, but you talked about feeling like you were leveling up. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm curious, like, what that felt like to you and like, how did you feel that what specifically did you feel like you were able to do that you won't before?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I know that, like, I've had control over delay of information for a while, but this kind of slow reveal in such a compressed space, that felt like something that, like, I know I couldn't, I know I couldn't have done that when I started writing, and I'm not even sure that I would have been like five years ago doing that. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not certain, but I felt like the feeling that I had really was, oh, I know how to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I, it wasn't actually that I know how to do this, oh, I've internalized this, that was the thing. [SPEAKER_01]: When I've done this before, it has been a very, very conscious thing. [SPEAKER_01]: Where I've had to think about it, and I've had to tweak and adjust it. [SPEAKER_01]: And this time it was, oh, I haven't internalized how to handle that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, I think, part of why I described the stories, like I just coughed and the story happened that I was chasing the, [SPEAKER_01]: It's very short for people who have not read it, it's only 1,700 words, so it was something that I could write, it mostly write in one sitting, which meant that I was kind of in the same headspace for the entire time, so it really did feel like that thing I was talking about with puppetry where I've internalized it, the figure is just moving.
[SPEAKER_01]: And often when I was performing, I would remember the show from the point of view of the character, even though that's not, like my body is not in that memory, even though I know that I was there, but I had internalized what I was supposed to be doing so much, that I was just acting and living the moment. [SPEAKER_01]: And that was very much that feeling with this. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I've internalized this. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just acting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just feeling the moment, which was really good feeling. [SPEAKER_03]: Does it really ease to the story that comes through, right? [SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't feel effortful or forced in any way, not that your fiction normally does, but like there's a there's a brisiness to it that I think makes it so appealing and easy to read.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was like, I think that that can happen with my other stuff, but often it's something that I had to really work for and like polish off the rough edges, and this time it was like, no, I know exactly exactly what I'm doing with this one, which was, which was a nice feeling. [SPEAKER_01]: It's awesome.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I know we're not talking about revision really right now, but like, that's something good, I think, for [SPEAKER_05]: Like in my writing community where a lot of new writers or aspiring writers or however you want to call it are trying to figure out is this ready, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_05]: And so I guess [SPEAKER_05]: I like hearing the fact that you were able to do this, but this isn't something that happens all the time, but it's also something that will happen the more you do it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if there's a question there, but like, do you see them say? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I think it absolutely is a thing to know. [SPEAKER_01]: because you're right. [SPEAKER_01]: It is so frustrating when you are working for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I see that also a lot with people who've just taken a writing workshop that they come out of it and everything is so conscious that writing feels incredibly hard because you're trying to do everything, you know, trying to use all of these new tools. [SPEAKER_01]: And so knowing that, oh yeah, once you do that work, there is this payoff on the other side. [SPEAKER_01]: It just may take years before you get there. [SPEAKER_01]: It's all practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I started, I sold my first story, I think, in 2005. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's right. [SPEAKER_01]: I started a couple years ago. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I'm about 20 years into doing this as a career, which is, woof, I'm not actually said that out loud.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the other things that I was going to say is that when I was writing this, we also took a couple of breaks, so even though it's a two-hour span that I wrote this in, I know that I took a couple of breaks during that in which I walked around and the breaks were only two minutes long. [SPEAKER_01]: which is long enough to go get a couple of water, long enough for things to kind of kick over my head and then come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like one of the things that I've got in here is in the original is a prompt that I used when we came back, which is after she took a face mask out of another drawer and hooked it around to her ears and I've got, I preserved to the prompt which was what the hell.
[SPEAKER_01]: And originally, like in my, you know, and again, like this is a two hour span, I know that I was planning on like I was thinking about how many iterations, how much back and forth, and then I was like, what the hell haven't just show up. [SPEAKER_02]: like he just shows up and just like the help.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like forget all of this and that was also one of those things that that again, the internalizing of sometimes you can actually just make a decision to stop a tri-fail cycle and just move to the next beat. [SPEAKER_01]: Like you don't have to like build sometimes you can just be like, what the hell? [SPEAKER_01]: This is happening now and just and just and just move. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I love that. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Any other questions before I give them their homework? [UNKNOWN]: No. [UNKNOWN]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, first of all, thank you all so much for coming to celebrate my birthday.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I want you to take a strong emotion that you've experienced recently and describe it as a metaphor. [SPEAKER_01]: Then I want you to use that metaphor as your writing prompt. [SPEAKER_05]: This has been writing excuses, your out of excuses, now go right. [SPEAKER_01]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. [SPEAKER_01]: Your hosts for this episode were a Mary Rabinette Koal, Dom on Song, Marshall Card Jr. and Aaron Roberts.
[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.