19.29: A Close Reading on Character: Barriers vs. Stakes
Our episode today focuses on C.L. Clark’s short story “You Perfect Broken Thing” for how the character’s stakes shape the barriers facing her. We use this story to examine how to tell the difference between barriers versus stakes. We also examine how to do this in a compressed space– whether that’s a short story, a single scene, or a compressed timeline.
Thing of the Week: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Homework: Write a short scene in which your character has to deal with a mundane obstacle, then rewrite it as if that small obstacle has life-or-death stakes. How did you shift it to make the stakes clearer?
Liner Notes:
Sandra Tayler’s new book, Structuring Life To Support Creativity. Preorder your copy today at sandratayler.com!
And help fund Mary Robinette Kowal’s Silent Spaces, a collection of short stories on Kickstarter here:
(Or go to kickstarter.com and type in “Silent Spaces”)
Credits: Your hosts for this episode were DongWon Song and Erin Roberts. Our guest was Arkady Martine. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
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Transcript
Key points: Barriers and stakes. Speedbumps and clinking jars. Use stakes that are tied to the character. Which stakes impact their sense of self. Setting up a barrier? What is the character’s goal, and what stops them from achieving it? Barriers and stakes in ability, role, relationship, and status can interplay. Connect the reader with the character to make the barriers and stakes resonate. Use sensory details. Metaphorical heavy lifting.
[Season 19, Episode 29]
[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.
[Dan] You’re invited to the Writing Excuses Cruise, an annual event for writers who want dedicated time to focus on honing their craft, connecting with their peers, and getting away from the grind of daily life. Join the full cast of Writing Excuses as we sail from Los Angeles aboard the Navigator of the Seas from September 19th through 27th in 2024, with stops in Ensenada, Cabo San Lucas, and Mazatlán. The cruise offers seminars, exercises, and group sessions, an ideal blend of relaxation, learning, and writing, all while sailing the Mexican Riviera. For tickets and more information, visit writingexcuses.com/retreats.
[Season 19, Episode 29]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] A Close Reading on Character: Barriers vs. Stakes.
[Erin] 15 minutes long, because you’re in a hurry.
[Howard] And we’re not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I’m Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I’m DongWon.
[Erin] I’m Erin.
[Howard] And I’m Howard.
[Howard] I drove over here with some glass bottles in the back of the van that were full of what is essentially marmalade for making hot tea. For making, like, citron or honey [honey tea]. Every so often, I would hit a bump, and I would hear the jars clink together. There were no speedbumps. A speedbump is kind of a barrier. Slow way down for it. The glass jars in the back of the van? Those are stakes. If you don’t slow down for the speedbump, you will get marmalade all over everything in the back of the van. So there is my one-trick pony explanation for barriers versus stakes. Now, let’s get out some other tricks. More ponies, please.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] So we’re looking at You Perfect, Broken Thing by C. L. Clark for this episode. One of the things that I very much like about it is… Well, there’s a bunch of things that I like about this story. But, it’s a really good example of barriers and stakes. The barrier in this story is very clear and escalates. It’s that our main character has to run a race. Not only… So, that’s barrier one. Barrier two is that they have to run a race while they are sick. Then, we’ve got this additional thing that there are family members that are dependent on them, and the more that they practice, the sicker they get. The family members depending on them are the stakes. This is the reason that they’re running the race. The need for the cure which is what they earn when they run the race is the… Is one of the stakes of this. So, it’s a really short story, but there are multiple barriers and there are multiple stakes, all interacting simultaneously.
[Howard] One of the things that works so well for me with this story, and I wish it worked less well, because it’s a me thing not a story thing, that is the description of physical pain. The description of… Well, it’s this line at the very beginning.
When I leave the kill floor, my legs are wasted. I shuffle to the women’s locker room. I can’t stand anymore. But I know if I sit, I’ll never get back up. At least, not for another hour.
Oh, I feel so seen. What do the kids say these days? It’s me. So much, it’s me right there. If I sit down, I will never get back up.
[Erin] I also think that that… There’s a great technique that’s being used to demonstrate this a little later in the story, the,
I use the railing like a cane. All my strength bent to keeping my feet for one, two, three, four. Five, six, seven, eight, nine. Ten, eleven, twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen stairs.
You just feel in the punctuation… There’s nothing else going on in this sentence. At that moment, everything stops for the I need to get from step one to step fourteen, and I cannot think about anything else because it’s taking all of my will to get past this pain. Without even saying exactly what’s happening, it’s coming through so clearly in that moment.
[DongWon] One of the things I really love to see is when I can feel the writer in the story itself. I can feel their perspective in it. I can… I get such a sense of C. L. Clark’s own experience with exertion, with working out, with pain, with exercise, and it’s coming through so clearly. I think, when you think about character, when you think about projecting and empathizing with someone who’s not us, but also don’t forget the ways in which you can utilize what is you to really enhance the reading experience.
[Howard] One of the places where the barrier and the stakes… The line between the two begins to blur, is the… If you’ve experienced the pain of that with a really tough workout, and have experienced the pain of, I think I’ve injured myself. We get both of these. “It takes a long time,” I’m quoting now. “It takes a long time for the lightning pain in my ankles, knees, hips to dissipate to a dull throb.” For my own part, when I work out, which is not a thing I do much anymore, but when I’ve worked out in the past, if I start getting lightning pain, it’s time to stop. I am past the barrier of I am exhausted and I am into the stakes of how much do I really want to pay for the rest of this work out. Do I want to pay with not being able to walk tomorrow?
[Mary Robinette] I think that this is a great example because it’s so personal to you. When you’re trying to choose a stake for your character, you’re looking for a stake that is tied to the character. You can have big global stakes, but when we’re talking about character stakes, it’s something that is going to affect the character’s sense of self. So… We have this, right in that first sentence, or in the first paragraph. “When I leave the kill floor, my legs are wasted. I shuffle to the women’s locker room. I can’t stand anymore. But I know if I sit, I’ll never get back up.” So, that is directly tied to the character’s ability. That… This very small stake. If I sit, I do the thing that I want to do, which is to sit down. That’s my goal, I want to sit. But I can’t. I can’t. What is at stake is my ability to stand back up. I can’t… I don’t have that ability anymore. So when you’re looking for those, you can interrogate the character’s identity which we talked about in the previous episode to find the stake that is going to most directly impact their sense of self.
[Erin] Yeah. I think that the barrier… I think one of the things that really works for me here in terms of that identity barrier is if it’s hard to sit, to stand, to climb, and the stakes are so high for something that is much more physical exertion than, Lord knows, I’m doing on a daily basis, then how hard is it going to be? I really feel when the race starts, I’m not anticipating that the main character’s actually going to make it through.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] To be honest. Like, I’m like… Like, you are not even making it from, like, barely to the starting line. How are you going to make it…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] All the way through? There is a surprise… I think I get the same surprise in ability that the character does, which is great. It brings me on the journey with the character, because as Coach is learning, like, Oh, I actually did climb this wall, and did murder that person. I’m also learning that that’s what they’re capable of. Then that, actually, makes me identify with them more, and makes the emotions of the story hit that much more… Like, much more… With much more of a punch.
[DongWon] In what is a very brutal story, one of the most brutal lines, in my opinion, at the end of the first section when it just says, “This is not my first race.”
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] We understand that she has done this before, and she may do it again in the future. That’s how she’s thinking about it. Even though we see how much her body is breaking down, we see how much she’s at the limits of her ability, but the idea that she’s been doing this for a while is just heartbreaking, and it sets the stakes of how important this is, that she is going to keep pushing herself to accomplish this.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] I’m going to read a bit of the breakdown for you, after the break.
[Erin] This week, I have got to plug one of my favorite books of all time, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson. This is a voice story, like, from start to finish, in my opinion, which is why I love it so much. It starts with this opening paragraph. “My name is Mary Catherine Blackwood. I’m 18 years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.” If that doesn’t get you to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I don’t know what will. So check it out.
[Mary Robinette] When you write a novel, there are often things you have to leave out. Scenes that predate the main book, situations that just didn’t fit in, character moments that hit the cutting room floor. I’ve taken nine stories like that from the Lady Astronaut series and put them together into a short story collection called Silent Spaces: Tales from the Lady Astronauts. It’s on Kickstarter right now. It includes stories about the arrival of the meteor in 1952, the race to the moon and Mars, and my Hugo award winning novelette, The Lady Astronaut of Mars. And there’s one story, Silent Spaces, that is 100 percent new for this book. The Kickstarter funded in eight hours, so this is not so much a please help me make this, as a please help me make this even cooler. Because the stretch goals bring the Lady Astronaut series off the page and into the real world with tons of memorabilia, like patches, drinkware, teletype reproductions, recipe cards, spacesuits, and more. I hope you’ll be a part of its journey and help out Silent Spaces on Kickstarter.
[Howard] Welcome back. I promised you some reading. There we go. Our protagonist is climbing a climbing wall.
The colorful rubber is rough under my fingers. I think of Little and try to imitate her gibbon’s grace. Each contraction of my lats pulls me higher and my biceps thrill at their strength. My legs forget their fatigue and I’m –
I’m a goddamn orchestra.
Until I’m not, and numbness webs across my back, a note out of tune. Maybe it started in my fingers and I didn’t notice and now it’s too late.
I have been in… I have been in that… Not exact position, not on a climbing wall, but I’ve been in that position more times than I care to count. It really struck home to me. The feeling of oh, I can do this, I’ve got this, oh, I’m fine. And then all of a sudden, there is pain and I realize not only am I not fine, I’m not fine and I’m in a place where I should not have put myself. This is another one of those barriers that blurs into stakes because we failed to clear the barrier properly.
[Mary Robinette] So I’m going to talk about how to set up a barrier. Again, you’re looking for something that your character can’t get through. So if you think about what their goal is, like, her goal is to run the race. So, if she can run the race well and quickly, then story’s over. Immediately. So you have to put barriers. The barriers are the things that stop your character from achieving their goal. So the first thing we do at the beginning is we establish what our goal is. Then we have a series of barriers. You can tell the reader what those barriers are, and disguise it as part of the character thinking. So when there’s a part where right before the section that Howard read to you where she’s thinking about, she puts the climbing harness on and her teammates say, “Don’t do that. Shut that shit down. You just ran a mile’s worth of sprints.” “I didn’t need them to tell me that. I calculated our needs the night before, our weak spots. I accounted for his lack of stamina, for Shell’s lack of speed. My pain. Our weakness will come with us to the race. The wall is there, too, and I need to be able to take it.” So, very clearly, we’ve laid out exactly what the problems are, we’ve foreshadowed what’s going to happen in the race. Doing that allows the reader, knowing what the barriers are ahead of time allows the reader to anticipate those and to anticipate the failure points and also to be surprised when they play out in different ways. But all of these things are, again, still tied to that goal of I need to run the race and we’ve also been told what’s at stake if we don’t run the race. So it’s the here’s the goal, here are the things that are going to stop me from hitting that goal, and then when we actually get into the race, there are even more things that go wrong.
[DongWon] I still love that line, our weakness will come with us to the race.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] It’s just… You just feel it in your chest when you read that.
[Erin] That’s life, though.
[Laughter]
[Erin] Also, Mary Robinette, when you were talking, it made me think about the fact that there… The barriers also can exist in those ability, role, relationship, status, and that when a barrier hits in one, then maybe one of the others can be the thing that gets you past it.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] So I’m thinking about the other moment in the race, where, like, the strength gives out, and then somebody’s like, “You got this, champ.” Which, as a former [crossroader?] Like, there is something very powerful weirdly about some random person being like, “You can do it.” It is the role. You are a champion. A reminder of the role that helps you get forward a little more. Then, when that runs out, it’s something of the relationship.
[Mary Robinette] Yep.
[Erin] To the people that you need to bring this medicine forward to. So it makes me think about my own work, how can I create a barrier in one of these areas and then solve it with another, and then hit a barrier there and solve it with another, and sort of pass back and forth between the different aspects of character is a way to create story moments.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I want to be clear that there are other ways to create barriers for character. You can use milieu. So… We’ll see this in the race itself, where the place itself is the problem. You can create things with the questions. That… If a character has a question, they can’t get the answer. I’m specifically in this section, because we’re talking about character, thinking about barriers to the character and to their sense of identity. But I want to be clear that barriers can, in a lot of different ways.
[Howard] It’s important to note that the… This several extreme connection that I developed to this story grows out of the very close parallel between the physical experience in the story and some of my own physical experiences. It’s challenging to set up a barrier or to set up stakes when that connection isn’t apparent. For instance, the wizard who just needs to cast that spell right. But it’s not tied to exhaustion or hunger or migraine headache or any… It’s tied to some magical sense. Finding a way to communicate that so it is personal to us, the reader, can be a challenge. That’s where, for me, stories that fail to deliver barriers and stakes in ways that resonate? That’s usually why they fail. It’s because, for some reason, worldbuilding didn’t connect me to those things.
[DongWon] Because it’s really about character choice. Right? To bring all these barriers and all these stakes back to creating a character that we are interested in, engaged with, whether we hate them, whether we love them, whether we empathize with them or not, it has to be about choice. So when this comes down to that moment of Coach in the mud pit, right? And making a choice about what she will do to win this race, what is worth it to her? I think that’s one of the things that communicates so much about the character, about the stakes that are going to occur, and our understanding and compassion for her, even as she does something that in some ways is unforgivable.
[Erin] I also really like how we’re taught a little bit how to read that moment. So, one of the things that I love is the series of, like, the very long kind of sentence paragraph of just things that are happening, that I will not read, because it’s very long. But there’s a series of things that is going on as she’s in the mud and trying to get out of the mud. When I was looking back and doing a close reading, I noticed that we… It’s not the first time we get this long sentence paragraph. We also get it with the meal the night before, which is also, like, a moment of, like, just really being in the moment. So, sometimes you can be in the moment with the food and enjoying it and the companionship. Then, the next day, you’re in the moment of survival. I don’t necessarily relate to life or death survival in that way, but I do relate to eating a good meal. I feel like the story sort of taught me a little bit how to take in that kind of sentence, and how to be in that moment with the character, and then used it for something that I was less comfortable or less familiar with.
[Howard] We actually talked about that principle in the very first season of Writing Excuses, a bazillion…
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Bazillions ago. The idea of get one thing, one small thing, exactly right and we will follow you along for the big thing. If you can connect me with the character enjoying a meal, then I will stay connected when they are trying to cast color magic using their sense of [oxareen].
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] I love picking Clark for character because they do embodied character so well. Right? They do sensory detail. I always feel I am in the room with them. I feel like I can smell the things that the character smells, tastes the things, feel the pain and the burn in my body.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] It’s so wonderful to be so deeply entrenched in a perspective like this.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The other thing that I love about it is how they managed to do that with such often sparse description.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] Like the section…
I don’t want to tempt the ache in my body, but I don’t want to die tomorrow without remembering the good things my body does. So we’re two bodies, in flexion, extension, the slow eccentric stretch and the isometric clenching hold, over and over, until we can release.
Like, she does not tell you what is exactly happening in that scene, but you can understand it and feel it in your own body. The other thing that I want to call out about that particular section that I read is that this is also one of the two moments where she makes… The character makes it clear that she is not expecting to survive the race. That her motivation has changed. Which, for me, also helps with that moment in the mud. Knowing that this is something she’s doing for other people. That the relationship aspect of it…
[DongWon] Drowning another runner is okay because she doesn’t expect to survive herself?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Right? There is… If she weren’t willing to sacrifice that much, it would make that moment less sympathetic. Then, of course, we get the moment at the end which… I don’t know why, it caught me off guard. I was surprised by it, when she turns down the shot for herself…
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] And gives it to the kid. In retrospect, it’s, of course, and that’s what so lovely about that moment is when you’re doing character and you’re setting up the stakes and all these things, getting to that moment of, oh, of course, this is what they would do even when you didn’t see it coming, is so much what let’s character drive a story. Because it means you’re leaning into choices, it means you set up the stakes well. Right?
[Howard] It’s ironic almost to the point of a pun to say, Mary Robinette, that example you read is a fine example of muscular prose.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Because it’s giving us so much information. All of the words are doing the metaphorical heavy lifting for us, explaining to us what’s going on.
[Howard] I’ve got the homework for you. We’re going to return to the speedbump metaphor. But you’re not allowed to use my speedbump and my jars.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Write a short scene in which your character has to deal with a mundane obstacle. Then, rewrite it as if that obstacle now has life or death stakes. How do you shift it to make those stakes clearer?
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go write.
[Erin] Are you struggling to find time and energy for creative work or writing? Sandra Tayler has a new book that might help. Structuring Life to Support Creativity is a resource book for creative people who want to make more space in the life that they have for the creative work they want to do. This book is drawn from 30 years experience in juggling creative work along with everything else life throws at us. Inside the book, you can find such topics as managing your mental load, arranging your physical space, how to come back to your creative work after life goes sideways, the problem of motivation, and more. The whole book is written with a focus on adapting for how your brain works instead of trying to change you to fit expectations. The book is not prescriptive. Instead, it provides concepts and tools so you can find the ones that work for you. This makes the book autism, ADHD, and neurodivergent friendly. Preorder your copy today at sandratayler.com. Just make sure that Tayler has an e r in the Tayler.
