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20.46: Now Go Write- Break All The Rules (Part 2) · 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 20, episode 46.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: This is Writing Excuses.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Now go right, break all the rules, part 2.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Mary Robinette.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Delong.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm Aaron.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we are back and we have two numbers remaining in my rule breaking thing.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: that I'm doing.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Three.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Three.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Telling instead of showing.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is like interestingly, I think show don't tell became very popular and then very like unpopular and is now maybe researching.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how you feel about.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think people still tell people show don't tell or has that fallen out of favor and I see it.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I see it all the time.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: They do.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: They do.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So part of the thing that drives me crazy about showed on tell is that it's not a real quote, people quoted as if it's check off and he didn't actually ever say it.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: The closest we get what we have is actually a summary of someone else's interpretation of a letter that he wrote to his brother.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And if we look at the actual thing he wrote, it's much more limited and focused in applications.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So, in descriptions of nature, one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes, he gets a picture.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: For instance, you'll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam, a piece of glass from a broken bottle, glittered like a
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So what he meant was that you can use these details to create an image, but he's not saying don't tell people about things.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's not what he's saying, not even a little bit.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the advice I've showed on tell is the way to like joker-fri me faster than anything else, right?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Because the thing is about a novel is that it is mostly the writer telling us stuff.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's that's what that's what writing is is people telling people other things.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like that is storytelling, like most of the time, most of the stories you are told, like when you're not reading something, if your friend is like, I can't believe it, like aliens landed and then zombies attacked me, like a lot of what they're, they're just going to be telling you what happened to them.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They cannot show you the thing has happened.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And but really good storytellers, you could have three friends, something, the same amazing thing happened to them.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And one friend, you know, which has been much better at conveying it.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And like one friend would make it really boring even if it was like the biggest thing because some people know how to tell in a really interesting way and some just are working on that.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I find that I tend to, instead of saying, show don't tell, I tend to talk more about compressing and expanding, that the things that usually things that are not emotionally important were going to compress, so that we can get past them faster.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And things that are emotionally important, we're going to expand it on PACs so we can can live them.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But,
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  [SPEAKER_02]: There are times when you want to compress something that is a huge, emotional, and important thing to give more space for the reader to come in.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So Stephen King, I'm going to quote this not quite right, but in on writing he talks about, you can you can expand, you can describe the amount of pain someone is in.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, the white hot pick lancings through his, you know, like you can describe all of that, or you can say they ripped off his thumbnail.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And like that immediately makes people get right.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But I just told you that.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't just, I didn't show it, right?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But it invites it leaves space for the reader to come in and bring their own experience there.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So there are places
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it goes back to what we were talking about, and the first half of this episode of the karaoke singer, her just belts the whole time.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Right?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: You need to have that variance, right?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes the most effective thing is to zoom really all the way in on the quietest, most nothing moment of a bug crawling across the leaf, because that can be a rich metaphorical image for what's about to happen, and then you'll speed up and be like, and then he went about his whole day and did X, Y, and Z, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: right, and like sometimes that zooming in and zooming out is you communicating to your reader, the information you want them to have in various ways, and sometimes it's not obvious what needs to be written out in extreme detail, and sometimes it's obvious what needs to be told to them to skip past.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I did the translation for a Hilder Knut Stouter book The Night Guest and in it like stuff goes wrong as you may guess from the title at night.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's this one chapter and the entirety of the chapter is I have decided to stop sleeping.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Right?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: No.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: That's not good.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: No.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: No.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just this told thing and then it's just a bull and then it's just blank pages.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you turn.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And like it's.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But again, it's that it's that leaving space, it's the deciding the one detail that I'm going to tell you and then you get to build everything else from that.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I love all of that.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of the things I think telling can be really good is establishing rules of the world when you're not sure what people may take away.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Is there something that's like a fundamental like load bearing wall of your setting and you're like, I really think it's important that everyone understands that this is like underwater.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: like I think there are times when you don't want to just be so showy that people miss it and then they're like wait this was underwater the whole time that changed everything or the opposite happened the biggest mistake I see show don't tell him this applied is in the opening so first page of a book where people be like oh I'm just gonna show them how the rules of this world work but I'm like I'm a baby.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't understand anything yet I don't know are we underwater are we above water and you can say a thing that is a metaphorical
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  [SPEAKER_01]: and get 50 pages in the book and be like, wait, this isn't an underwater society that wasn't metaphoric, you know what I mean?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I don't know enough yet to not know that that wasn't literal, right?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the openings of books is a place to be telling people information and you want to do it in ways that are engaging and well written and captivating, but you can tell people stuff in interesting ways.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Just because it's telling doesn't mean it's inherently boring or doesn't have layered information or doesn't have,
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  [SPEAKER_01]: thematic resonance.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: You just, you just gotta get better at telling people stuff.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I call this playing clay with the reader.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Where it's like, I just want you to figure it out.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I'm like, or we can communicate.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And think about it as a baby is great.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you would say like a two year old like well you know like how do you walk like why don't you figure it out look you know Yeah, there is a certain amount of that you can do but the certain point I think you do have to like eventually you know tell babies a few things once they understand language or At least don't get mad at the baby when it walks into a table you didn't tell it about tables.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean
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  [SPEAKER_01]: One area where I think this really comes from is because so much of our narrative language has become visual.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: We talk about movie.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: You'll hear me do it on this podcast constantly of using movies in TV as reference points for how we tell stories.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: The problem is that a book is wildly different from a visual medium because
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  [SPEAKER_01]: They only know literally what you tell them.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: They don't know anything other than what words you put on the page versus when you're watching an image on a screen, you're absorbing a ton of information about what are they wearing, what's the lighting like, all of these different things, all these other departments are coming to play in a way in which you don't necessarily get in a book.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: But that actually is one of the places that Shodontel does come from is that one of the things that people took it from, like this whole check-off idea was during the transition from silent films to talkies.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: And the Shodontel was don't use narration cards or not just the silent films to talkies, but just the silent films.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Don't use narration cards.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: When you when you can just when you can show it because they were like it this is a visual medium You should be using those tools We also say in puppet theater.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a puppet show not a puppet tell Because well be sure cop was a playwright.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He was a playwright, but but
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think there are times when, like, you can, I think sometimes the positive of shout-out tell is if you're used to, to visual media and you're trying to, like, write that way, you may forget to include some of this stuff that you take away from, like, when you see an actor like with the single tear go down their eye, like, as they watch a sunset, you're filling in a lot of, you're telling yourself, like, a little bit of the story.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes that part of the telling gets lost.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but a lot of times I think it is about telling really well and we're running we are running long, but I will say that I think some of the ways that you can tell well are think about the way you pace the way you're telling things.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Watch really good kind of stand-up
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  [SPEAKER_00]: really interesting stories that lead to a joke.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They use the rule of threes.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They sort of increase in their cadence and pace as they get closer to the big thing that they want you to understand.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They use really interesting words when they're telling you something.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm completely not to judge your friends at home, but if you think about the way your,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: not as good at telling things friends might tell you something versus your friend who could tell you a trip to the grocery store and make it sound like the most epic adventure ever.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: It's because they a lot of times they'll throw in really interesting details about the thing that they're telling you.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They'll use language that makes it sound very exciting.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you can use all of those tools as a thing.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think also the very fun thing about telling is that it reveals the teller.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So the way somebody tells a story says a lot about the way they see the world.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you want to reveal something about your protagonist, having them tell the reader something also tells the reader something about who they are.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of telling you things, will you do your final number?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I will do my final number, which is one.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And this one I'm going to, this is my, like, most controversial number.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just going to run through it and tell you, because I have a thing that I believe that magic doesn't have to have a system is my last one.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I think system magic is fine, but I'm a huge fan of systemless magic where magic just exists in the world.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And the way that I think about this is through a framework that I call aces.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: which is A is access.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So you're thinking about how magic is going to work in your world.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: A is access.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Who can do the magic?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Can everyone do it?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Can only people from the bloodline of Roheesla do it?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Which apparently is no family?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it can.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Like.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's at the of Roheesla.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, is it?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So who can do it?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: see is for causality.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: How direct is you doing a thing from you getting what you want?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it like every time if I clap three times?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Click my heels three times to say there's no place like home.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I will go home or is it like I'm gonna wish and like it might not come true exactly the way that I wanted to.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: the more causality you'll find in like a D&D style magic where you know exactly what the spell does.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But there are, you can have a form of magic and when it's just like, I think it'll do this, but I don't know exactly how to make it happen.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: E is for E, it's how easy is it to do the magic?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have to sacrifice your first born child or cut off your toenails every time you need to do magic?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Or is it like you could just wake up tomorrow and do it?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, strangeness.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: are you turning people inside out?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you turning them into a frog?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you just making them walks lightly faster?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Like how it is.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And so thinking about what those things are and in my essay I will go into depth about how you can think about these things and use them again.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: See each other.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still think Lord of the Rings will be a better of Gandalf the White, said, I'm casting a level nine fireball and using two meta-magic surgery points to make it a maximized spell at this range.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't disagree with you because I have red stories where, and also, I disagree with you, only because the people using the magic are existing that world are usually humans and humans are patterned seeking creatures and we will turn everything into a magic system.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, like, the bus, how do you get the bus to come?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: The spell you cast is you walk away from the bus stop.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Like we will find, like, don't say that thing out loud.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Like we will, we will systematize things that do not have systems.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think superstition is still resistant to systematization, right?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: People have ideas of what works and doesn't.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Versus what the narrator is telling us works and doesn't, right?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Because like, there are also times where I knock on what and then the bad thing happens anyways, right?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: am I going to stop knocking on one?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: No, does that, you know, in and so I think in so many ways making magic not luminous and strange and unpredictable can sometimes for certain kinds of storytelling bleed something out of it.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And then for other kinds of story, I want to know exactly how magic works in a really detailed way.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: In the way that I want to know how the engines work in the expanse, right?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't really care how the engines work in Star Trek, you know what I mean?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think the difference is that in the expense, we want to know how the engines work because it is almost always a plot point exactly and it's never a plot point and start exactly track structure.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, not being dilithium crystals, but whatever, like we know enough.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: So and I think to to quote the the founder of the podcast of the Sanderson's law.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: that the, I can't, I'm not going to quote them.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to paraphrase them.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: That the, the definition of the magic system needs is proportional to the, the amount of plot way to carries.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So like, you know, if, if it's like this thing always happens, you know, if you do, if you say, Beetlejuice three times, like we don't need to know why that works, we don't need to know any of those things.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think two things I would say is one is I do think we are patterns.
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can creatures, but I also think there are a lot of folk traditions, especially like rum like ghosts and haunts where like people don't really understand it.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nor do they want to.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a feeling that this is beyond human understanding and attempting to understand it will actually make a bad for you.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that we should just sort of like leave it out there like will the ghost of your great aunt show up Maybe and why she's showing up tonight.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no I know my business and I'm not gonna ask that question about them, but she's just there
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I do think that the role of plot to me it's more does solve problems or is it part of the problem and the way I think about it is gravity So if gravity like if you're like, oh, I can't move because gravity is too heavy You probably don't need to know like how gravity works in order to just understand its effect
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you controlling gravity is what's going to fix that problem, then you're going to understand how it works.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you can have magic be a problem creator.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you just need to understand enough to know like, oh, no, I said this three times and this, you know, person appeared.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I guess that's what it does.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you don't want to have happen.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think is for the way in which it works to be the solution, but only you the author understand it.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It never begins to clear either to the characters or to the reader.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Basically, I think we are completely agree with you.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just needed to total.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we're just needed to poke at it a little bit.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: What?
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's like we're on a podcast together.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a opinion.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're separate.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Beating of being on a podcast.
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are going to go to the homework and your homework is to pick one of the four things we talked about.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So systemless magic, inactive protagonist, telling versus showing or passive voice,
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take a scene that you've written and rewrite it where this is the thing that you're doing and see how much it changes.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: This has been writing excuses.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're out of excuses.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now go right.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Your hosts for this episode were a Mary Rubinette Kowall, Don Juan Song, and Erin Roberts.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: For more information, visit writing excuses.com.