[SPEAKER_04]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. [SPEAKER_04]: If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patrion.com slash writing excuses. [SPEAKER_04]: Season 21, episode 19. [SPEAKER_04]: This is Writing Excuses. [SPEAKER_02]: Getting everything connected. [SPEAKER_04]: Tools not rules. [SPEAKER_04]: Four writers, by writers. [SPEAKER_04]: I'm Mary Rubinette.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Aaron, and I am going to be talking about getting everything connected, which gives me the opportunity to use a phrase that I did not learn until I started like taking writing classes, which was the causal chain, which is the idea I believe that each thing in your story links to the next thing with some sort of [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, chainingness in between it, but perhaps one of you has a better way to describe or explain that than I do.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, there's two things when we're talking about a causal chain. [SPEAKER_04]: One is the idea that everything has a consequence and that each thing that your character does leads to the next problem. [SPEAKER_04]: So that there's this continual link and that if you pull one thing out of the story that the whole story collapses and that if you can't, if you can pull something out then it's not connected and you should pull it out.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then there's another thing which is not exactly the causal chain but that Edgar Allan Poe called unity of effect which is that things are thematically connected together or tonally. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, one thing I think of, causal chain is one of those things that I think of as an artifice of fiction, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the places where a fiction is different from real life, because in real life, not that, I mean, things are causally connected because we live in a universe, but also it often doesn't feel, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: The world is complex enough that what happens to me now feels very disconnected or is impossible for me to predict based on what happened five minutes ago, [SPEAKER_02]: some event will happen overseas or on a national political scale that affects me personally that I truly had very little control over, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But in fiction, when something is happening on the page that feels really disconnected from everything else, it will feel random and it will be an unpleasant narrative experience for your audience. [SPEAKER_02]: your reader wants a causal chain.
[SPEAKER_02]: They want everything to feel connected either in a plot-oriented way, in terms of action A had a consequence that consequently is the action B. [SPEAKER_02]: Or in a thematic way of, you know, somebody is dealing with personal strife at home and they turn on the news and war has broken out overseas, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I think there's ways to do it of how that randomness, but that randomness needs to feel integrated in the bigger y of the book, and if that's missing, it will feel purely random and unpleasant. [SPEAKER_01]: One of the funny things, this is not a writing thing exactly, but it occurs to me that when you hear people talk about their writing careers, it's a sort of connect that one. [SPEAKER_01]: You will see people attempt to create the causal chain out of the randomness of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, so you're there'll be like well, obviously, I took that one class what a Tuesday that day and therefore and like and this and this and this and it all led to why I'm a best selling author today and in truth life is a lot more random than I think we want it to be I think also a lot of conspiracy theories are built out of the idea that we want things not to happen at random. [SPEAKER_01]: that we want there to be a causal chain.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think one thing I'm curious about is do you think there are ways to exploit the human desire to create cause even where cause doesn't exist in order to create momentum in a story? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it's it in life. [SPEAKER_02]: I tell my clients all the all the time don't narrow device this, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Just because this book didn't work doesn't mean that the next book's not going to or just because this book did work had nothing to do with the previous book. [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like there's such an urge because we are creatures on pattern recognition, right? [SPEAKER_02]: I talk about this all the time. [SPEAKER_02]: we want to find story. [SPEAKER_02]: We want to find patterns everywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you encounter events in life, you will build a story out of them. [SPEAKER_02]: It's impossible not to. [SPEAKER_02]: It's important to resist it sometimes. [SPEAKER_02]: So you don't take away the wrong lesson from it. [SPEAKER_02]: But when you're writing fiction, you should be using that against your reader, right? [SPEAKER_02]: You should be letting them draw the connections, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so going back to what we were talking about, contrast and juxtaposition for the last episode, [SPEAKER_02]: The reason that works is because of the urge to narrow device, is because the urge to make A and B connect even when A has nothing due to do with B, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So if you show me two different things, I'm going to try and connect them reflexively.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if there's truly no connection, then I will realize that later and be annoyed and it'll feel like you made a mistake. [SPEAKER_02]: But if you can make me connect those two different things, that feels like magic, right? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's a, there's a thing they say about, I think Philip K. Dick, that maybe it was Harlan Allison, who knows?
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of them had a list of titles, random list of titles, and when they wrote a short story, they would just slap a random title on it. [SPEAKER_04]: And the reader would draw a connection and be like, oh, well, that's why it's called this. [SPEAKER_02]: I haven't heard that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's the Kulishov effect, my chance to talk about the Kulishov effect, the, uh, it's which is like a film thing from the early days of filmmaking where a guy he would show a picture, let's say it would be like a grave and, and then a man's face and then he would show an apple and a man's face and then he would show like a wedding and a man's face.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he would say, okay, well, what is being shown here and there would be like in this first one you can see how sad he is in this second one you can see how hungry he is and then you can see how joyful he is and it's the exact same clip of the exact same man making the most neutral fan ever [SPEAKER_01]: And, but because we want to make the things connect, we will actually say like see in someone's face in a motion that is not there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just think that's such a fun thing. [SPEAKER_01]: It's, I think it's used a lot more to be honest in games where people will take something that's like a visual and associate it with an action that is happening and use that to make the player feel in the rest of the gaps of the story and find space for themselves within it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think, as you were talking about that, I was thinking, oh, you can also use this, the reader, like making those connections, you can also use that with the logical causal chains of world building. [SPEAKER_04]: Also, it's like, well, if it's like this, then why isn't like that? [SPEAKER_04]: Or they've done this, air go, that must be the way it works. [SPEAKER_04]: And the author's like, no, that wasn't what I planned.
[SPEAKER_04]: But, [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I talk about world-building as playing the game of Go sometimes, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And the thing is when you play Go or Paduk as we call it is, you're trying to capture territory on a board, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And so one thing you will do at one stage in the game is start putting pieces down in random open parts of the board where you haven't had a big fight about it yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: What you're telling you other players I'm interested in this area, but we're not dealing with that right now I'm just letting you know that we're gonna have a fight about that later and so sometimes when you're doing world building It's in in in game principles We call this draw maps and leave blank spaces, right where you will put a marker down somewhere and be like Yeah, there's something about how magic works over here or the some G of graphical feature over here and then we'll Come back to that and build out that detail But sometimes you can just do that for your reader to let your reader fill all that in you have to tell them the thing
[SPEAKER_02]: Let them do the work of drawing the connections and building that out and that gives them participation and buying into the story in a way that is hard to get other ways. [SPEAKER_02]: I think this is going back to video games part of why Frums off fans are so feral about those games.
[SPEAKER_02]: because in the Dark Souls games there's no very little like narrative that's told to you, you're forced to assemble it all from like two line descriptions of items, but when you start piecing together it feels really magical to feel that world to hear even though what you're getting is a bunch of random little points on a map.
[SPEAKER_04]: What I love about that analogy is that we can go from that back over to plot where you can put a little rant, something that looks like a little random point on a map that later links to something huge that you deploy. [SPEAKER_04]: And so that link is still there. [SPEAKER_04]: And that is a fun thing to play with as a conscious tool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's interesting, because I think in novels, you see that more in short fiction, I love the random outside world building point as a way to make the world feel bigger in a play and say like, I'm not going to explore that in this story. [SPEAKER_01]: Like you're playing the game. [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, in another story, perhaps we would talk about, you know, what's going on there. [SPEAKER_01]: But today we are not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, it's like you're like talking about like, [SPEAKER_01]: I suddenly met this orphan whose parents were killed in like the geese plague of 2028. [SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, not going to, I've given you just enough. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And what I think makes those work is they usually have a chain or two within, they have a couple of links within themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually they have like a word that tells you something like a geese plague, you know what a geese is? [SPEAKER_01]: You know what a plague is? [SPEAKER_01]: That sounds bad together. [SPEAKER_01]: Who knows? [SPEAKER_01]: Are they closet? [SPEAKER_01]: Were they the victims of it?
[SPEAKER_01]: But it gives you enough that you can create a couple of links of chain and then store them somewhere else and think, hmm, that's a chain, that's a causal chain of another story or in a bigger story. [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, these links of chain will connect [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, that's why that is suddenly important. [SPEAKER_01]: What else is important is our break. [SPEAKER_01]: And when we return, we will talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't want has a hand up, and we'll talk about something. [SPEAKER_00]: They call it the best four days in gaming, and I am disinclined to argue. [SPEAKER_00]: Gencon indie is my favorite convention. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a symposium for writers, and it might well be the best four days in writing. [SPEAKER_00]: Will you be there? [SPEAKER_00]: I will, as will Mary Robinette, Aaron Dan and Sandra.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you're putting together your Jencon schedule, be sure to look us up by name so you can sign up for our events. [SPEAKER_00]: There will be a writing excuses podcast Q&A session Thursday night networking party hosted by writing excuses and the session with Howard Taylor that's me and Marie's brought us called a conversation with no shaperones. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe they're letting us do that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can also visit me in Sandra, along with Jim Zub and Stacey King at Booth 1349 in the exhibit hall. [SPEAKER_00]: Along with their usual racks of merchandise, we will have some writing excuses loot. [SPEAKER_00]: JenCon indie runs from July 30th through August 2nd in Indianapolis, Indiana. [SPEAKER_00]: You can buy a membership right now and then you can start creating your wishlist for pals, workshops, and other events.
[SPEAKER_00]: On May 17th of end registration goes live and your wishlist will have you pre-registered for things. [SPEAKER_00]: Get your tickets today and reserve your spot. [SPEAKER_00]: We would be delighted to see you at JenCon. [SPEAKER_04]: For many writers, world-building is also an opportunity for world-breaking, a shattering of existing norms and assumptions of what is and isn't possible.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you've read the work of Inca Gemison, author of the Broken Earth trilogy, and 42nd Grand Master for the Science, Fiction and Fantasy Riders Association, you'll know what I mean. [SPEAKER_04]: This June, in Chicago, [SPEAKER_04]: you can meet in Kajamas in yourself and attend a masterclass on world-building and world-breaking at SIF was 61st annual Nebula Awards Conference.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll be there too, along with other power houses and science fiction fantasy and related genres. [SPEAKER_04]: This year for the first time ever. [SPEAKER_04]: SIF was Nebula Awards include top prizes for poetry and comics. [SPEAKER_04]: We are excited to welcome these [SPEAKER_04]: The Nebula Awards conference is an annual opportunity together as professional and professionalizing writers.
[SPEAKER_04]: Have you bought your tickets yet to join the conversation in person or online and to celebrate our latest stars at the Nebula Awards banquet? [SPEAKER_04]: If you're in Chicago already, you can also freely attend our mass-autographing session on Friday June 5th. [SPEAKER_04]: All details are available on sfwa.org. [SPEAKER_04]: So tell your friends, nod your fellow creators, and reach out to fans.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's break down some old worlds and build new ones together in Chicago. [SPEAKER_01]: We are back. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited here. [SPEAKER_01]: What? [SPEAKER_02]: The thing that I raised my hand to talk about before we went to break. [SPEAKER_02]: I did not expect to get called out. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, my meeting of storytelling is through TTRBG and actual play, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And so what I'm doing is you have to be a dancer in that space.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no plotters in this space because it's all improvisational, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And so one thing that I [SPEAKER_02]: The beauty of AP is that it ends up having this really coherent feeling narrative at the end, even though it's all improvised. [SPEAKER_02]: And so how do you take a bunch of random stuff that comes from world-building and then decisions that players are making and make it coherent into something that is fun and satisfying to listen to, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I think the failures of APs is something that they do feel a little random, but when they really work, they cohere into something that felt planned. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that comes down to what you were talking about in terms of the Edgar Allan Poe saying, in terms of thematic consistency, right? [SPEAKER_02]: and character consistency is also tied into that, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for me, the things I'm looking at early on are establishing really clearly for myself and the players, what the thematic questions we're engaging with in, and then they're building no characters in conversation with that. [SPEAKER_02]: And so as they make character choices, it all is going to be pointing in a general direction until the really magical moment where everything coherent and snaps into a place of like, oh, here's our plot, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it is it's something that like I've been thinking about this since I've been reading a lot of fiction that's coming out of countries that are not Western dominated because especially when I'm reading Japanese fiction, there's [SPEAKER_04]: The plot is often, there's this guy in a four-and-a-half-matte Tommy Roman. [SPEAKER_04]: He's fucking up at school, and that's about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: But there's this, there are these links, so there is this unity of effect that's happening. [SPEAKER_04]: And sorry, my brain made a whole diagram in my head while you were talking, and I'm like, that is, that is a visual diagram, and I don't know how to translate that,
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, but I think it is one of the things that made me start thinking about this idea of somatic links and unity of effect as one of the ways that you can have things that are in a story that look like they're not connected but that on the surface on a plot level aren't connected but are integral to their integral? [SPEAKER_04]: integral to the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, I mean, I think you tell my Japanese fiction, one of my very favorite films in the last five years, maybe the best film I've seen in the last five years is this Vim Vendor's movie called Perfect Day. [SPEAKER_02]: I mentioned the podcast before. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a Japanese language film made by a German filmmaker that is mostly a man who cleans toilets in Tokyo. [SPEAKER_02]: He goes around.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's it's literally partially funded by the [SPEAKER_02]: the Tokyo toilet bureau or something like that like he literally goes around clean these incredibly beautifully designed public toilets around the city and has a series of encounters with people. [SPEAKER_02]: It is the most plotless movie I think I've ever seen. [SPEAKER_02]: There's no A to B to see in the movie.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no like causal connection like [SPEAKER_02]: something as he meets somebody in that person comes back, you know, later in the movie, but it's not like that is building to a big conflict or resolution. [SPEAKER_02]: It is purely a sequence of events, but each one feels thematically resonant because the movie's deeply interested in character and deeply interested in this central question, which is about communication and connection and suffering, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: The question of how did this guy get to be this way? [SPEAKER_02]: Why is his life so magical and special? [SPEAKER_02]: And why do I want to be him in spite of seeing the ways in what she suffers is like the questions in the movie. [SPEAKER_02]: And by repeatedly showing me scenarios in which he gets to express that in different ways, the whole thing feels very coherent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like one of the most coherent pieces of art I've seen in spite of the fact that this thing literally has no plot, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And so, [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's really interesting to think about causal chains and causality in a story that has none. [SPEAKER_02]: And so if you want to like see how to do that, I would go watch this movie. [SPEAKER_02]: If you don't like Art House cinema, you will be like, why did you make me do this?
[SPEAKER_02]: But go with this lens of trying to understand how to make a plotless piece of art that feels coherent. [SPEAKER_04]: I am so glad you started talking about that because I think I can finally articulate this diagram that's right up in my head. [SPEAKER_04]: And that it is when you're talking about logical causal chains, when you're talking about thematic links, unity of effect, what we're talking about is engaging actively engaging the reader's pattern recognition.
[SPEAKER_04]: that all of these things say to the reader, I am making a space for you to link things together in your head, to find patterns where there aren't necessarily ones, whether and so that when you are doing this successfully, you are kind of more actively collaborating with the reader than if it is only A to B to C.
[SPEAKER_04]: that sometimes those logical causal chains are the thing that Erin was talking about, where you have three links here and then later three links and then the reader assembles all of them into a beautiful charm bracelet at the end. [SPEAKER_04]: And I think that that's a fun thing to think about like how am I making space for the reader within this network that I'm providing?
[SPEAKER_01]: And M.I. [SPEAKER_01]: ever accidentally making space because I think you can also like accidentally create something you didn't mean to and games often call this emergent narrative which can be amazing when a narrative comes out of nowhere but I love telling the story so I'm sure I've told it before but my good friend played Dragon Age 2, 3 Dragon Age Inquisition and went and killed there were several dragons and he killed them all.
[SPEAKER_01]: and he just leveled up to go more dragons and then at the end he was like I didn't get like a trophy or anything and I was like because the game is about saving the world and he's like it's called Dragon Age they had seven difficult to kill dragons that was a cool number it felt resonant I did it and I got nothing and like I am very disappointed that this game didn't know that I was going to draw these patterns you know
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I kept thinking like what would I do other than just make a trophy for that, but like maybe you don't call a dragon age Maybe you don't make it seven dragons because like we love those odd numbers that you're like it's six dragons Yeah, I felt that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm talking about this a while ago about the way in which like rule of threes and patterns and things like that are part of it [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so some things that think about is like, are you creating a unity of effect or within your story? [SPEAKER_01]: And if so, is it the effect that you're meeting to unify around or not? [SPEAKER_04]: This is, I'm going to also tell an anecdote, which is when I was working on of noble family.
[SPEAKER_04]: I like my characters to be doing something, and so it's like, [SPEAKER_04]: The pineapple reticule. [SPEAKER_04]: She's going to be making a it's a handbag, so she's knitting this thing and then my readers were like, I love the pineapple reticule So I tossed it into the next scene and like she's not done with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: She's still doing this and and they're like, oh my goodness Pineapple reticule's amazing and then in the third scene like these take a long time You know, this is only like three days later. [SPEAKER_04]: I get this comment.
[SPEAKER_04]: I love the pineapple reticule I can't wait to see the payoff and I was like, oh no because I accidentally set up a rule of three [SPEAKER_04]: and they were looking for a logical causal chain that was not there and like briefly looked at can I have her smack someone in her stab someone and it was like not that kind of book so I had to pull it out because of that accident.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I love about this conversation is we started from this point of [SPEAKER_02]: You know, how is everything connected and the answer is sort of it's not you'd trick the reader into believing it is right and there's a way in which I'm going to return to our favorite metaphor, which is a book as an active hospitality right and there's a way in which when you are writing your story if you crowd.
[SPEAKER_02]: the entryway or every room or the sitting room was so much stuff that there's no space for the reader. [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to actually have a bad time. [SPEAKER_02]: We try to draw all the connections for them. [SPEAKER_02]: It feels over prescribed and it feels airless, right? [SPEAKER_02]: But if you make a space that the reader can move through the space you've made for them, find their own place to sit in there, then they will have a different relationship to it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'd add as an extreme that's making room for fan fiction, right? [SPEAKER_02]: But it's also like making space for them to draw their own conclusions about stuff to to come to thematic ideas or those elements without necessarily having to draw it for them, explicitly.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the movie's center is an incredible job of this, of making space for the audience to reach their own conclusions about what's happening there and who's right and who's wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think [SPEAKER_02]: Some of the critiques of that movie is that I think it's very smartly, very resistant to a simple reading, right, and I think sometimes making sure that there's room for the reader to engage with your story and have their own say about their experience of it is the key to making things feel really connected, right, it's letting them realize who the murderer is two sentences before the detective says it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And at the same time, not playing coy with them, like not saying, I want you to make a necklace, but tell them we're not of the links are. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: You know, so you have to give them the tools, you have to make sure that they understand what the goal is. [SPEAKER_04]: But letting them have some participation in their, it is, it is a delicate balance sometimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the risk is their necklace isn't going to look exactly the way you envisioned it, but that's always going to be true, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Once it's out of your hands, once it's published, it belongs to the reader in a certain way. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think sometimes it is accepting that, yeah, their version's going to be a little bit different than what you had in your head, but that's okay because it's still all the things that you put in place for.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And with that, we are going to move to the next step in our causal chain, which is the homework for this face homework. [SPEAKER_01]: I'd like you to take a story that you have and take all the scenes and maybe put them on different index cards and kind of write what happens in the scene. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, they go to the store, the world explodes, the geese attack, whatever happens. [SPEAKER_01]: And just shuffle them all up.
[SPEAKER_01]: and pick out two at random and write a scene that would fall in between them that would help you create a either a unit of effect or a causal chain that would make them work in this random order that you now have them. [SPEAKER_04]: This has been writing excuses. [SPEAKER_04]: You're out of excuses. [SPEAKER_04]: Now go right. [SPEAKER_04]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends.
[SPEAKER_04]: Your hosts for this episode were a Mary Robinette Kowall, Dom on Song, and Erin Roberts. [SPEAKER_04]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds. [SPEAKER_04]: For more information, visit writing excuses.com.