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20.44: Now Go Write- How to Handle Relationships · Writing Excuses

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, this is Erin, and I've got a question for you.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: What have you learned from writing excuses that you use in your own writing?
• 0:12
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• 0:20
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• 0:22
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• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what we want to know is, which of the things that we're saying have really worked for you?
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's the acronym you're always repeating?
• 0:36
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• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: 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.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: 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.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: 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 have you actually taken something that we've talked about and made it work for you.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm personally just really excited to learn about these 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 up the bit to get in these tools and tips and share them with everybody else.
• 1:33
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• 1:41
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• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: 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.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: With that, you're out of excuses, now go tell us what works for you.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends.
• 2:11
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• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Season 20, episode 44.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is Writing Excuses.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now go right, how to handle relationships.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Mary Rabinette.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Dung Lung.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Aaron.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we have an exciting announcement.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Writing excuses is going to be publishing a book.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's called Now Go Right.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is all of us talking about the things that we have been talking about on the podcast for the past 20 seasons.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in a handy paper formula, sure that's format, formulation, formula format.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that you don't have to listen to us doing things like that
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: the book will be copy edited unlike the podcast.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to start with me and I'm going to be talking about how to handle relationships.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is based on this whole conversation that I had with my mother-in-law, honestly.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: But one of the things that you say repeatedly in all sorts of media or relationships that are built around the characters, like fighting with each other,
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: The whole will day want day where they have a good relationship and then they have to break up for plot reasons.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's deeply annoying.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: But once you have characters, they have to interact with each other whether it's a romantic relationship or friend relationship.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is some tools to look at how to make that believable and also a source of momentum.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I mentioned my mother-in-law.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: She
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: which is dating advice that you gave to my husband.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: He modified it and I modified it a little bit more.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: The theory is relationships exist on multiple axes.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the more closely aligned you are on these axes, the more you'll get along.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So these axes are mind, money, morals, manners, monogamy and merch.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Don't worry, those are going to go on the line or notes and also there's a handy chart that will be in the book.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: But mind is both people have the same level of intelligence money.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have similar attitudes about money morals the same kind of sense of right and wrong manners the same idea of what is polite.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: because their manners are aligned with yours, while their morals are deeply messed up.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Monogamy is not actually, my husband just needed them to be all M's.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: My original one was Hot Burn and Kisses for my mother-in-law, but... Oh, there you go.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the idea is basically that you have the same idea of what the relationship is, you know, like you've met someone and they think you are BFFs and you're like, we have met at the water cooler and it's really uncomfortable.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then, Murr, if you find the same things funny.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So now, any of those axes where you are out of alignment is going to be where your source of conflict is.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, for instance, my husband and I closely aligned on all of those, but we're a little bit out of alignment on money.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: We both agree about what money is for, but in the ASUPS Fable, I am the grasshopper.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: He is the aunt.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Those are not the same.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just a little different.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just a tiny bit different.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if we have outside pressure pushing on us, those are the places where our conflicts will show.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when you're creating characters that you want to get along, you try to keep them as closely aligned as possible.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when you want them to disagree, like to be in wild conflicts, and you can move those things wildly out of alignment.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So those are the co-all relationship axes.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's impossible to not start immediately mapping every person in my life onto those groups of like all of my friends, my partner, my relationship to other family members, I'm like, oh, where are we aligned?
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where's the misalignment coming in?
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, yeah.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm beginning the same thing.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, and next, writing excuses will create a dating app where you can write yourself, and it'll be called Nalco date.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're just kidding.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, but it didn't make me think like where you might pull out of alignment could also be an interesting like thematic thing for story.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you could say like on this story, I really want everyone to have really different morals, but aligned on manners to talk about like,
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, 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.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that could be really fun.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, one thing that's always striking is how much like Regency era romance are much more about money than contemporary romance would be almost like inappropriate to make it about that in a certain way.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But like, you know, what someone's income is is so important in that era for like
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it was considered like kind of understandable if you prioritize money.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 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, got to do what you got to do, you know, pick people.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the scandal is picking the monogamy match, you know?
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or the morals and mind match over the money match, right?
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, like you can see that, and in like Jane air, and in fact, and it makes those so rich and responsive
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and one of the other things that's interesting also is that these are these are all the starting states and for the most part people's things stay more or less aligned but there are things that you can push out of alignment during over the course of a story.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: If someone has a moral awakening and they're like, if they become woke,
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they realized, oh, I am now out of alignment with people that I thought were my friends, but I can't think some of us have had that reaction to some books.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you can also bring them more closely in alignment where someone is like, oh, oh, I was wrong about a thing.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: or just change the length like where you're putting your attention, where you know when you first meet somebody maybe you're not thinking about, you know, morals as much as you're focused on, you know, the chemistry there, you're focused on, oh, we like find the same things funny and then, you know, three months into the relationship, we're like, oh, no, we think about, you know, how we should treat other people very different.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, like you were saying about how manners can cover up a difference in moral
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And going back to Jane Austen with Darcy and Lizzy, they are actually really closely aligned.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: They are not as far off.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: She thinks they're significantly farther off on morals.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like morals, they're actually pretty aligned.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Family is the most important thing.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: They are out of
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: a lot.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: But that's also where the conflict is between them.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It'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.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's interesting because in fact her family is like the like wow, you invite them to the party family, but meanwhile she spends a lot of the book sort of judging his manners with in a mannered world.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: It'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 formal codified rules.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so there's a line somewhere in there about how he has manners that are not calculated to please.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, yeah, no, he did not want to.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when we come back from the break, I'm going to introduce you to a couple of other things.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back from the break.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is one of my favorite topics, honestly.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm really glad that I got to do a whole chapter for it.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so aspects of self.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the relationship itself is a character, which means that that relationship can go on a character.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And 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.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is also a thing that you can think about if you do not want the relationship to change if you want it to be stable.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, if we think of it as a character, I think that there are four aspects of self-definition for people, not talking about the outward things, but how we self-define.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ability, role, relationship, and status.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, ability is defined by areas of competence.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Things you can and cannot do.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Roll is defined by responsibilities, tasks.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Relationship is defined by loyalty and status is defined by power, basically.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, the idea is that let's say that we have a high-steam.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're doing an ensemble.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love heists.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got non-somble.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're stealing the eighth gem of our people.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, we have to have the eighth gem of Roheesla and the extra exclamation points and apostrophes that go with that.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: The team is fully committed to each other.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: They are absolutely like, we are a team, but one of them identifies as ability.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we are a group of thieves because we steal things.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have the ability to crack safes.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have the ability to climb walls.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: you have the ability to impersonate anybody.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have these abilities.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is how we work.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got these abilities.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: When else is like, no, we're a team because we're thieves.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is what we do.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: We still things.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: If we didn't have those abilities, then we would find other ways to steal things.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And someone else is like, no, no, guys, it's not that.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's about a relationship.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're a family.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: If we couldn't steal things, we would open a pizza joint.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love you so much.
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the last one is like, no, we steal things because that gives us money and money gives us power.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why we do this.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we are a team because we are all the best at that.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they're all fully committed to each other, but if there is friction about whether or not to go on with the highest, that is the place where one person might pop out a little bit from the team.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you can go back and look at how those arguments manifest by looking at the relationship axes.
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, yeah, I was going to say like I'm thinking about ways in which each each person might like know about so like if you're like it turns out the gym is actually worthless.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's really hard to steal like it actually requires a lot of ability, but it will we can't sell it for anything.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like we're doing it for the fun.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 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, you know.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: 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 got to try like where thieves were going to try to find another way around it.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think it's really cool to look at how they might each drop out of the highest.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you can use that to sort of highlight the mathematics of the story here, right?
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm thinking about the second arc of the first season of Andor, the Aldani highest, you know, that entire squad, each of the members of that team have different reasons for being there, some of you know, vell is there for relationships and does there for ability, you know, nemic is there for status because it's all about the cause for him, right?
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the entire arc of the first season van dors and or moving from one roll to another role in being that breakdown.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so by highlighting the difference between the team them, you can use that contrast to really emphasize the thematic points you're trying to create.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a great example and it also, I'm glad you said moves from one role to another because that's also a stress point for an individual and for a relationship.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if they have a sudden status drop or someone has to shift roles, if they had to add someone to the team and then figure out how they fit in, like all of those things can cause stress.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's very grounded stress.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not the, like,
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I don't like the way you make coffee.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm out of here, you know, sometimes people just like make up weird things.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: You don't pronounce Roheese with enough emphasis.
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I see.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, not to spoil it or not to, you know, overindex on Android, 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 he can't bear it.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what shifts his status is.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: him seeing that, you know, the relationship are moral is the same.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then him looking at that and being like, I don't want that to be true anymore.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then that is what kicks him off on his hero's journey from there.
• 16:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just like incredible moment.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of that.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, how, how, how Javier of him, my favorite, like person who in realizing they are the same as the hero, is just like, nah.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can no longer, I can literally not live with myself,
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, all right.
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the kindest reading of Javier I've heard of.
• 17:21
  [UNKNOWN]: No.
• 17:21
  [UNKNOWN]: No.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Javier, he's just like us.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, he's not.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, he's not.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's gibberish.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, he's not.
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just kind of waiting for a chorus to verse.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the other thing that you can play with is the tools of a healthy relationship.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: communication, compromise, and commitment, and unhealthy relationship lacks those things.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is why the plot line of if the results and readers going, if they would just talk to each other, is so annoying because you know that this is an unhealthy relationship.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: and it's just continuing to be an unhealthy relationship.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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 than 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.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: The other is just like like
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is a case where you can see the ways in which modeling realism becomes more frustrating as a narrative experience.
• 18:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 18:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because in reality, we know all of our friends who aren't talking to their spouses about the thing that's a huge problem in their relationship and won't do that for whatever reason.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not calling anyone out in particular.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I swear to God.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, no, I'm thinking of like, every M.I.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: the asshole post ever.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just ask you, I'm like, most advice columns just boil down to, I don't know why you talk about it.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know what I mean.
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a pattern that we see in a real life every day and yet, whenever we encounter an infection, it's immediately infuriating when it's just like, just talk to them and figure it out, you know what I mean?
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the same way that it's infuriating in my own life, but I'm just like, please talk to them.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm begging you.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, fiction is heightened in that way.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: We want to create explore the discomfort.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think just letting it be the real thing.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The realistic thing is a weird trap in this case.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it is also one of those things where you can, you know, you can split the difference.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: They don't have to immediately say, I feel I feel like we have a conflict.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's discuss it.
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there comes a point where it is, you've pushed it so far.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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 to the, to the, to the characters in the book or at least
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and they really want the characters to do.
• 20:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you talk or think they're your friend too?
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I really like the what I call the Forks and Spoons Conversation, which is where like you're arguing over the dinner placement, but it's really about like you're feeling about your mother-in-law, not yours, but anyone's because I think in that case, they are communicating.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're just not doing it.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not able to live in the discomfort, and so they're doing it like sideways.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so you see this a lot really well done in theater.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, okay.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: 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 to like, wait, are we really talking about Jimmy and school?
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's such a great moment because you as an audience member also get to feel clever.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You understand what they were talking about.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before they did, and then when they finally realized that you're like, 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.
• 20:55
  [UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's an incredible moment in the film hereditary, which I doubt either of you have seen.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's the, it's the, to me, the scary moment in the film is the thing where nothing supernatural is happening.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're having God conversation at dinner table in one character begins to complain about something and Tona Collette who plays the mom.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: freaks out and starts screaming at them about like I'm your mother.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's this incredible moment it's an incredible speech and the catharsis is finally saying out loud all the sublimated things that have been happening throughout the movie.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've seen those Forks and Spoons conversations for
• 21:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: what feels like an eternity at that point, and so the damn breaking is this incredible moment of catharsis, but you're right, it 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.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I may see if I can work that into the essay.
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the kind of last tool that I want to talk to you about is, is how to handle these in sort of an arc.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I've already talked about you can treat it like a character arc.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the relationship is undergoing change.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is what you have with a meet-cute where they are trying to decide, you know, sort of who they are.
• 22:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can also apply this in using my squash and you can apply it in a couple of other ways.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can treat the relationship like a milieu.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: The story begins when the character enters a relationship and it ends when they exit.
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the whole thing is then about exploring or navigating a relationship.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: You could treat it like an inquiry stories, which means that there are questions about the relationship.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is one of those things with uneven power dynamics.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why is this, you know, tall dark stranger so brooding?
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like those can be things.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can also think about it in inquiry, like divorce stories, if you think of the relationship like a dead body, how did it die?
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: The cold open is fun, isn't it?
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then event stories.
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, invent stories can be, uh, things like, um, one of the examples that I think of is actually, uh, enigomantoyos relationship with the six fingered man.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, that's a, that's this big powerful thing where he's trying to change the status quo.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, his father was killed.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: He wants revenge.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: He wants to, to change the status quo.
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So even though they are not,
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you can do all sorts of fun things like that and then you know always kind of you have those other tools that you can play with to sort of create new ones through it.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm also wondering like in event because the event story is like where the thing is come the meteor is landing on earth like stories where it's like did it all be fixed when on my birthday like in a relationship that is like not going well and everyone like it's like when this event happens it will definitely be the thing that like
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: changes everything in a good way or like when your mom arrives like and so it becomes this like impending event that you know in some ways it's about the event but in some ways it's just about all the things that the lead up to that event like reveal about the characters and their relationship with each other.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah exactly.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I really love about thinking about it this way is usually when we talk about something that's not a character being a character we mean like
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love this image of the relationship being a character, because then the stakes are, does the relationship survive, right?
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does a liver die and seeing it as this thing that operates and moves and shifts in its kind of its own thing throughout the story.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a really useful framework for thinking about pacing and stakes and all the different aspects of the story in a way that nothing is really rich and wonderful.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am so glad that you both liked that.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, um, this is time travel Mary Robinette.
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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 rerecord the whole episode.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: It'll just be right when you get the book.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when you tell people about it, mind money, morals, manners, model and birth.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now past Mary Robinette's going to give you your homework.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to move us over to our homework and I'm again going to refer to my mother-in-law.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things she said was to my husband when he was trying to talk to her about how do you know.
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she said, you know it's the right person when you love them because of their flaws.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And just write a little exploration scene where the character is exhibiting those flaws and the other characters watching that fondly.
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then write a different scene where they're mad at them and the flaws are pissing them off.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: 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 when we're going to let people know when the book is coming out.
• 26:53
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• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, head to writingexcuses.com, sign up for the newsletter, and now you're out of excuses.
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now go right.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your hosts for this episode were a Mary Robinette Kowall, Don Juan Song, and Erin Roberts.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: For more information, visit writing excuses.com.