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20.29: Authorial Intent · Writing Excuses

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  [SPEAKER_02]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patrion.com slash Writing Excuses.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Season twenty, episode twenty nine.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: This is Writing Excuses.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: A forial intent.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Mary Rubinett.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Howard, and I'm Dan.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And we are going to talk to you about this particular that this little aspect of the lens of why called authorial intent, aka why are you writing this book?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: or this thing, or this scene, this chapter, this screenplay, this one dialogue.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: This line of dialogue.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to start with an example from my marketing background.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And the example is a message versus content in advertising.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: The message for an auto ad is like, this car will make you sexy.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: But they can't just come right out and say that.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: That's their intent.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: This car will make you sexy.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Their intent is for you to buy the car.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: The content has to say it subtly.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you intend a book?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: and then not heavy-handedly just stamp authors intent all the way through it on every page.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you do better than the auto advertiser does?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you're talking about advertising now, which is reminding me of my old advertising days.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the advertising maxims that gets shared around a lot is features in form, but benefits sell.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: like you can talk about all the things the car does.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not going to sell the car.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But what will the car do for you?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what will sell the car.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm thinking about that with stories that we tell.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I can absolutely think to myself about what the theme is, what the meaning is, what the structure is, all of the stuff that I have put into it.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That is not going to make you as a reader and enjoy the thing.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That is not going to sell the book to you.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas the execution of it all, absolutely will.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, authorial intent,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: has a lot of different meanings because some of it is what have I put into this?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: What am I trying to say with this?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of it is also just I haven't explored this type of character before and it is my intention to give this very different type of character or setting.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: It is my intent to explore this kind of magic or this kind of conflict.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Those are more of the benefits.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the execution.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I think is going to grab readers.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And I find myself that when I'm thinking about like grabbing readers or something like that, that I often do not think about the the why of the book, like at why on a macro level, because honestly most of the time my why is cool.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I love this idea.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's my wife.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I tried to write another book.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like dragons.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yay, that's my intention.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I just want to spend a couple of months playing with dragons.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: That's my wife.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Can we just put another pin in that and say that's absolutely valid.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: That is enough.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: That is enough why for me.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But when I get into the book for me when I'm thinking about why that's where I start thinking about how I'm engaging with the reader.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm thinking about something that Jane Espenson calls the area of intention, which is the, she was talking about this when you were with jokes.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Why, you know, what am I trying to do with this joke?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Why is the character doing this?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And I find that this idea of the area of intention helps me make decisions online by line basis on why the scene is in the book.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And what I often am thinking about is, for my Y is, what effect do I want to have on the reader?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: What conversation do I want to engage with?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: If I think about Y on a macro scale, it is that what conversation do I want to have, what question am I asking?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But most of the time when I am using Y personally, it is not on the
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  [SPEAKER_02]: the big project level because most of the time that that authorial intention really is just nifty.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Damn.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Why?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Why?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, so the project that I'm working on right now, middle grade fantasy, the intention behind there, the why of the book, why am I writing this book?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, we've talked about theme and meaning before and there is theme there, you know, that I've got something that I'm trying to say with the book and we don't need to go into that because I think that those discussions when they get into very strict details are kind of boring for readers.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They're English class kind of stuff.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas why am I telling the story in this particular way?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, because I got very excited about it.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I was reading some kind of peripheral material to Lord of the Rings in the Silmarillion and talking about the land of area door, which is the land west of the Misty Mountains and how it is basically a vast, unpopulated wasteland that used to be
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  [SPEAKER_00]: a huge kingdom, used to be two huge kingdoms.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And now there's basically Rivendell and the Shire and the Greyhavens and nothing else.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: of any particular import.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And that, for whatever reason, the idea of this vast, lonely land completely captured my imagination.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And so why am I telling the story in the way I'm telling it?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I wanted to capture that almost post-apocalyptic fantasy kind of idea, the idea that
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  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, this takes place not in a bustling kingdom, not in an enchanted forest, but in this huge empty wasteland where there's just a couple of little villages here and there and very little else.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And capturing that feeling, capturing that tone, that is absolutely my intention with the book.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's when you're talking about that, what you make me think of or some of the things we talked about when we were in our who module, that in many ways we're talking about the author's motivation, the author's stakes and goals.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, your goal is to explore this, the Rivendale.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And so the, the why for me as an author is like, what a, what do I want to achieve?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Why am I making these decisions?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And it usually goes back to a core idea of some sort.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: For me, it was the thin man in space with the spare man.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a mood that I want to evoke for the reader.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: There's, uh, which we'll be talking about that when we get to tone, but there's, there's something at the core of it, an experience that I want to have and that I want to share with the reader.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And for me, that's, that is often the why is about
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  [SPEAKER_02]: is about the experience, whereas theme and meaning is about the heady, the cerebral things.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But the why for me is often very visceral.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I was going back to this old advertising maxim.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Features and form and benefits sell.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: How fast can this car go is a very different
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Question from what does it feel like to drive this car?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: What does it feel like to go that fast?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: What does it feel like when the windows are rolled down and you're on that twisting highway and the radio is on your favorite station?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That is such a visceral experiential thing and that's what people are looking for beyond just the boring numbers or the high level engineering that goes into it.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's take a break for a moment and when we come back, I'm gonna say a thing.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Why, how are you?
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  [UNKNOWN]: Why?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a keeper.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: earlier Dan, he said, discussions like in English class are just boring.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And it occurred to me that if in my English classes in high school, we'd had discussions where the answer to authorial intent was the author wanted to write this book so that they could sell the book and make money.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: We that never one time never even one time came up My intent in many cases when I sit down to write something is I intend to write a thing that will give someone an experience Just when they pick it up and read the back cover that leads to them buying it that leads to them reading it and enjoying it
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  [SPEAKER_01]: that then plants a hook within them that will get them to buy other things that I write.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a pretty deep-seated intent, and that's not something that I would ordinarily state openly in any of my marketing copy because it sounds a little insidious.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And yet,
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a valid intent.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It's every bit as valid as dragons are cool.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And the Shire exists in a wasteland.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to explore a wasteland.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: My question now is, what are the weird intents that we would never talk about in English class, but that are perfectly valid?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: What are our motivations to write that are just out there?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I guess so here's the thing for me.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: On a certain level, I don't know.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: how useful it is because like I can tell you that my intention is, dragons are cool, I had a dream.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the why of it.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: The ghost talkers.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Why?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Why does ghost talkers exist?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I had a dream and then I was like, oh, I think there may be a story there and I teased it out.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And other parts of Ghost Talkers are there because I put a doctor who cameo in every novel and that's why.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Why is it there?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Because I needed, I needed a chuckle.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But so for me, I think the, the, the why can be so personal to the reader.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And the, the question that I'm interested in, and that I hope that we, we can kind of play with some, with this intention is
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  [SPEAKER_02]: How are you using that intention?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: You've got an intention, but how are you using it?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you use it to make decisions?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: When you're, when you're measuring against the choice of making a view like Rivendale versus in space, how do you, how do you measure that?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: At some level for me, the decision
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  [SPEAKER_01]: that the authorial intent needs to lead to a decision on the author's part to sit down today and do more writing.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I want to have, I want my intent to be compelling enough to me that it keeps me moving.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like
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  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like being able to, and I guess this is my intent for at least this segment of the episode, I want our listeners.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: to evaluate their intents and to realize one, hey, that's a valid intention.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And two, I'm allowed to keep going back to that well if that's what gets me into my chair to keep writing.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So with that in mind, here's a thing that I think is really important.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: The intention that you have when you begin the story does not have to be the intention that you have later in the book.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the problems that I think happens to writers over and over again, especially those of us with ADHD.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: is that it gets boring after a while.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And I am not the same person today that I was yesterday.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yesterday I was extremely fatigued.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I had to do a bunch of teaching that I had not planned on doing.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I was, I had been out in the sun.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And the things that were interesting to me, the things that motivated me, works very different than today.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So for me, if you're talking about that kind of author, that's, for me, that's not authorial intention, that's authorial motivation.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Like what's going to get me to sit down in a chair?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: That for me, I think, like every day, you can ask yourself, why is this story important to me today?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And it doesn't have to be why it was important to you yesterday.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: If I am trying to write a story using an extremely personal example, Martian contingency came out this year.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I started writing that book and had ideas for it.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And in the course of writing it, my mother, who had Parkinson went into hospice as always finishing that book.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: My authorial intention at that point became I have to finish this before Mom dies or I will not pick it up again.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: That is not a sustainable authorial intention.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: When I finished writing it, it was months before I did revisions on it.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a completely different person.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm someone who's grieving.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm someone who's recovering.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: That is a different person who is going through it.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is why I feel like when we're talking about these big broad level, authorial intentions, it's good to think about it.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that you can use it to say, why am I sitting down to write today?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But the reader can't tell.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: when that book comes out that that was my intention.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So for me, the thing that's why I keep saying, I find that thinking about it on a micro level of why do I have this sentence?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Why do I have this paragraph?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Why do I have this chapter?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: That is dealing with the person who is in the chair in that moment.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I actually have a spreadsheet to track those things.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: My authorial intent for this scene, this scene, this scene.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: What is this supposed to do?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: What is my intention for these things?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, you're right.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: At some level, it's authorial motivation for me to sit down in front of the spreadsheet and look at today's list of intentions for what needs to be written.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We're recording this on the cruise, the writing chooses cruise, and I just thought a class yesterday about fight scenes in my, I think they're terrible.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Really enjoyed that class of why I and I have like very much I like was taking notes and I'm very excited to talk to you more about that.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But Dary on fit please so one of the things that we talk about in there is why are you putting this fights into your story why are you putting this action scene into your story and
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  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the comments that we got, several of the comments that we got were exactly what I expected, which is, well, I've read better books before and there were fight scenes at this part of it, or I've watched movies that I love and there's a fight scene at this part of the story.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like so often that is our intention, and that is a very shallow intention.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: When we get to that level of thinking, why is this scene in the book?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is this chapter in the book?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And if your answer is, because I think it probably ought to be, I mean, yes, you might be right, but that's a terrible way to start, and that's not a helpful way to go into the scene.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're writing it out of obligation,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: without a specific purpose, if it's purely topological.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The scene exists because I know that it exists.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: You need something more than that.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There needs to be some kind of question that you are asking or answering.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There needs to be some kind of exploration of who the characters are or revelation about the setting or the technology or the magic or something.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There needs to be a specific intention beyond
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I've read other books and they have this kind of scene at this point in the story, so I'm putting one in.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I find that there's the authorial intention and then there's the character intention.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And often when a story is falling flat, it's because the authorial intention
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  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, the author is like, I need the character to do this.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I need the character to have this fight right now.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And the character, like, there is no sensible reason that they would do that.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Their intention is to try to based on everything that you the author have set up to that point has them pointed in a different direction, but you force them to do it without providing them a sufficient motivation, sufficient intention.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: all the things we're talking about before with character.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So for me, again, it's like with the author, what is my goal for the story?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: That is the why that I'm interested in.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: What is my goal for the story?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: What is my goal in this moment?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that you've brought up, Dan, is the importance of understanding the why of
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  [SPEAKER_01]: the form in which we're working.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Why are there action scenes in movies?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Why are there fight scenes in other books?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Why are there, why are any of these things that why are there happily ever afters in romance?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't understand some of those wise, if you don't understand some of the intent of the authors who have come before you, the intent to ape what they have done by making your own book follow the same pattern,
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  [SPEAKER_01]: is going to be broken because it's not what you mean.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not you don't you don't understand why this was done and so you're doing it.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't want to suggest that you're writing your book for the wrong reasons, but you might be writing that part of the book in the wrong way because of wrong reasons.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and that's often why someone says that a story feels formulaic.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: is because the formula has become more important to the author than the characters than the plot.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Because we are following this because we know we're supposed to and not because the characters would naturally do these kinds of things.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and that's why, you know, one of the things we're doing this season is a little unusual that we have, we're doing a lot of really, really deep dives and we're going to do this whole extremely deep dive into structure in season twenty one.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: we were talking about the what and the how of our big questions.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And it is hard to evaluate something when you don't know why it exists.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that might be a good place for the homework.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: You ready for homework?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Take your work in progress and in two sentences, describe to yourself
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Why you are writing this?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Might be a scene, might be a chapter, might be the whole book, might be a screenplay.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Two sentences.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Why you are writing this?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, for bonus points, one sentence, why is that the reason that you're writing this?
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're out of excuses.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: This has been writing excuses.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Now go right.
• 21:46
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  [SPEAKER_02]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal, Dan Wells, and Howard Taylor.
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