19.47: Final Thoughts on Our Close Reading Series
We reminisce on when we were on a writing retreat on a cruise in 2023, planning this close reading series. We have loved how this series grounded our conversations, allowing us to dive into works that were complex in specific ways. We have loved wading into the waters of voice, world-building, character, tension, and structure while talking about these phenomenal works of science fiction and fantasy.
Thank you, listeners, for reading along with us. It has been powerful to read the same books, and to feel connected to you all through the Patreon, Discord, Instagram, and emails.
Thing of the Week: Forget Protagonists: Writing NPCs with Agency
Homework: Get a group of friends together, and pick a book you love. Discuss and unpack what makes the book work. Then, tell us what it is by tagging us on Instagram, @writing_excuses.
Special Offer: Do you want 20% off a signed special edition copy of The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin? You can order The Orbit Gold Edition set at orbitgoldeditions.com, and use the code “excuses” for 20% off!
Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
Join Our Writing Community!
Powered by RedCircle
Transcript
Key points: Reading for an aspect is exciting. It’s nice to have something concrete to tie concepts to. You don’t read authors because of what they do poorly, you read them because of what they do well. In your own writing, celebrate what you do well. Try compliment sandwiches. Start with what works, what you like about the book, then go into the critical part, then back up and point out what works, what shouldn’t be changed. Try cheerleading critiques, highlight the awesome parts! Analysis! First find the healthiest part, then lift everything else up to that.
[Season 19, Episode 47]
[Mary Robinette] Hey, there. If you missed out on the very cool special edition of one of our close read books for this season… I’m talking about the Orbit Golden Edition of the Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin. This is so beautiful, and we’ve arranged for you to still get 20% off. Listen. The set includes an exclusive box illustrated by Justin Cherry/Nephelomancer, a signed copy of The Fifth Season, fabric-bound hard cover editions of the trilogy, gilded silver edges, color end paper art which I love, brand-new foil stamped covers, a ribbon bookmark, and an exclusive bonus scene from The Fifth Season. You need to read this scene. All you have to do is visit orbitgoldeditions.com to order and use the code Excuses for 20% off. And to let them know we sent you.
[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.
[Season 19, Episode 47]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] Our Final Thoughts on Our Close Reading Series.
[Erin] 15 minutes long, because you’re in a hurry.
[Howard] And we need to read more.
[Mary Robinette] I’m Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I’m DongWon.
[Erin] I’m Erin.
[Howard] And I still need to read more. I’m Howard.
[Chuckles]
[Dongwon] Yeah. So this is… We’ve come to the end of this season of Writing Excuses, where we took you all through very detailed readings of five different works that we love, through five different aspects of the craft of writing. We’re just going to chat a little bit about how we felt about it. Things that we thought were highlights. Any low lights that came up. But, for me, I had the best time in the world doing this. For each of these books, they’re books that I know well, by and large, and in each case, there was a thing that they were doing that I was always so impressed by that I wanted to understand better. So, this was such an opportunity to get some of my favorite people together and force them to talk to me about it. That’s, I think, what all these podcasts should be.
[Mary Robinette] We… I mean, we could completely change the format of the podcast forever, and keep doing this. I was also extremely excited because… I don’t know if our listeners can tell, but we like each other and enjoy talking to each other.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] But, in fact, we do. What was fun for me was that some of the stories I had previously read, and some of them I was coming into for the first time. So it was interesting… Like, the ones that I had already read, This is How You Lose a Time War, I had read some of the C. L. Clark stories, and I had read The Fifth Season. But reading them this way, going back and seeing things, knowing how the story was going to end… Like, I was still emotionally tense through those stories, but I was also… My writer brain was able to dial in, because I was reading them very consciously for specific things. Whereas the two that I hadn’t read, going in and reading Ring Shout and thinking, okay, I am reading this and I am specifically looking at how tension is being handled. It didn’t break the story for me at all, like, the rest of the story, I was still moved by it. But it caused me to pay more attention to things than I normally do, and that was exciting for me.
[Erin] I have to say, I’m getting, like, a little nostalgia moment…
[Chuckles]
[Erin] Because I’m remembering when we were sitting, all on the cruise, actually, like, having I think some sort of meal…
[Dongwon] Yeah.
[Erin] And, like, now we’ve actually gone through and done it. I think what I loved about it is that I love talking about random abstract things, but I think sometimes it’s nice to have something concrete. So that when you talk about a concept or you’re mentioning something, it doesn’t just feel like it’s floating in the air, it feels like it’s attached to a work. So, even if you like these works, you hated the works, at least it’s something where you can say, “Oh, I get that is a specific example.” It also stopped us from using Star Wars as examples all the time…
[Dongwon] Yeah.
[Erin] Which was… It is a personal love of mine.
[Dongwon] I love Star Wars. But it’s not that useful as an example, actually, is what I’ve found over the years of teaching.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And it is a movie.
[Dongwon] Yeah. So, getting to talk about actual books that were complex in specific ways, and let us really dive into what is voice, what is worldbuilding, how do you use it? We kind of touched on this, but each of these books could probably, or each of these works could probably have been used to teach any of the subjects. Right? We could… Absolutely could have used Ring Shout to teach character. We could have used the C. L. Clark to teach structure. By God, the structure in his stories…
[Mary Robinette] Oh, my goodness.
[Dongwon] Right? We could have used Time War to teach worldbuilding. Right? Like, we could have swap them around. So, the puzzle for us as we were planning this series was often, like, where do we put these books?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Dongwon] It was a very fun puzzle to solve. I feel really good about how that kind of worked out. But, I’m curious, was there one where you found yourself restricted from talking about an aspect of the book because we were focused on one aspect and you wished we could focus on a different thing?
[Mary Robinette] I really wanted to be able to talk about character when we were in Fifth Season.
[Dongwon] Yeah. That is absolutely true. Yeah.
[Erin] I don’t know. I think I liked the mismatch. In fact, I was just thinking that it’d be, like, a fun game to, like, take all of these aspects, think of them as, like, you have, like, a regular D6 six-sided die and then, like, next time I read a book, or in my rereading something, roll and be like, I’m going to pay attention to its use of character this time, or this time I’m going to pay attention to worldbuilding.
[Dongwon] Well, that’s a great way to introduce the concept for next season Writing Excuses where we’re going to do the same five books… No, I’m kidding [garbled]
[laughter]
[Howard] For… Gosh, 16 years? Writing Excuses started in February of 2008. For many, many years, the conversations that we would have about books were… That we had all read… Were restricted to kind of a narrow overlap of things that everybody had read. We didn’t do deep dives on them at all. But, off mic, we would often have really deep conversations, one or two of us, about a book we’d just picked up. Then a third one of us would come into the room and say, “Why aren’t we mic-ing this? Why aren’t we having this conversation?” The answer is because it’s going to take another eight years for us to be clever enough to figure out…
[Dongwon] Yeah.
[Howard] That if we just give ourselves homework to all read a book, we can do this thing.
[Dongwon] Well… [Garbled]
[Mary Robinette] It’s not so much giving us homework, it’s giving you…
[Dongwon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] Our dear listeners…
[Howard] Well, yes. We gave our listeners homework. But you gave me homework.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Okay. I had to read… I hadn’t read… I’d read Time Wars. I think that may have been the only one of these.
[Mary Robinette] Oh, wow.
[Howard] That I had already… That I already read. From one standpoint, I was like, oh, gosh. They’re giving me homework. Never used to have homework.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Used to be I could just talk about Star Wars.
[Laughter]
[Howard] But from another standpoint, to use the rotate the object and see how the shadow changes, from another angle, what this looked like for me is, wait a minute, I get to have these fun conversations that we had off-mic on mic. With friends who love reading and love writing and understand craft in ways that I do and in ways that are way better than I do. I still love being the you’re not that smart part of the tagline, because that’s still my job. So this close reading series… It’s been magical for me.
[Dongwon] Yeah. I think that that hits on a really important point for me, which is I’m still relatively new to the podcast as a full-time host, and I have never felt so connected to our audience than I did through this series. Because we ask you guys to read along with us. Right? Knowing that, knowing that we could have these really in-depth conversations because you guys showed up, you did the work, you read the works, and we didn’t have to worry about spoilers. It really felt like we were having a conversation with you all in the room with us. Right?
[Mary Robinette] It’s one of the things that I’ve been enjoying on our Patreon…
[Dongwon] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Going into the Discord that’s attached to it. Because watching… That’s one of the places that we can really see the listeners having a conversation and we can engage in it too. That has been a lot of fun watching people… Especially when we did Ti… Well, I guess, as we are recording this, not all of the episodes have released yet. So… But I recall this whole conversation about Time War where people were going, oh, my goodness, I understand what’s happening now. My mind is blown. I’m like, yes. This is why we picked this episode.
[Dongwon] Exactly. So, making this, which is largely us talking in a room that you guys get to hear, feel more participatory, feel more open to the audience as well… I don’t know. It’s been really nice.
[Erin] Yeah. I was thinking about during our last book, we talked about what’s in conversation. What books are in conversation with… And it just occurred to me that a podcast is us in conversation with each other, but because we all read the books, and you’ve read the books, like, we are in true conversation with you. I think of that as like, really beautiful, and I think one of the things I’d love to chat about more… I’m sure we have to go to a break soon, but… Is how do you create that kind of conversation now that you’re going forward?
[Dongwon] Yes.
[Erin] If we’re not doing this, if we’re doing something different, how do you keep that up so that you can have that kind of conversation outside of our podcast?
[Dongwon] One of the best ways to do that is to go to patreon.com/writingexcuses and join our Discord… No.
[Laughter]
[Dongwon] Yeah. I would love to talk about that more in depth, but let’s take a quick break first, then we’ll come back on that.
[Howard] Writing doesn’t have to be a solitary activity. That’s why we host in person retreats and workshops. At the Writing Excuses retreats, you’ll get access to classes, one-on-one office hours, critique sessions, and activities to keep you inspired and motivated. Become a more engaging storyteller and learn how to navigate the publishing landscape. As you make meaningful progress on your stories, you’ll also build connections with your fellow writers that will last for years to come. Check out our upcoming events at writingexcuses.com/retreats.
[Erin] My thing of the week this week is an article, making you do the work of reading essays that I really love. I have recommended the essay Forget Protagonists: Writing NPCs with Agency to, like, everyone I’ve ever met, and so now I’m going to recommend it to you. It is a great look at how do we make the characters, in a game in this case, but in your writing as well, how do you make them feel like they live when the focus isn’t on them from the narrator, the focus isn’t on them from the main player? How do you make your NPCs, how do you make your secondary characters feel like they exist? This writer, Meghna Jayanth, she talks about it from the perspective of writing the game 80 Days, but it really works from anything that you’re doing, thinking about how do you not center your protagonist to the point that it feels like all of the other characters are just paper dolls waiting to be played with by them, and instead, make them feel like real living people that your protagonist gets a chance to hang around with. So, check out the essay Forget Protagonists: Writing NPCs with Agency. It has lots of pictures in it. So, it’s fun, it’s cool, and you should learn from it.
[Mary Robinette] So, the thing that you were talking about, Erin, is actually homework that I assign to my short story cohorts sometimes. I will give them a short story to read. Sometimes it is as simple as saying why don’t you all subscribe to Sunday Morning Transport or to Uncanny? So that you get reminders, so that your all reading the same story at the same time. But you can do this with just a group of friends. Yes, does this sound like a book club? Yes. Secretly.
[Dongwon] Was book club the thing we keep accidentally calling this series internally? Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. But, the difference is that, as you will hear about later in the season, when we have a conversation with Gabriella from DIY MFA, one of the things that you can do is to do this kind of deep read and read specifically for anything. So if you have a group of friends and you’re like, hey, let’s read a book, but let’s read specifically for how they’re handling voice. Or maybe even assigned, if you want to assign each other homework, you can be like I’m going to read for voice, and someone else can be like I’m going to read for tension. And just go in and read intentionally. But still reading for fun.
[Dongwon] Yeah. That’s such a cool idea. Like, I could see each of us having done that with this. A different way to structure it is each of us have taken an aspect and recorded an episode per book on each aspect. But… Not to rebuild this season as were wrapping it up…
[Laughter]
[Dongwon] That would have been a fun way to do it.
[Howard] I just realized that one of the things that Sandra and I love most doing together is TV time where we’re just watching anything together, but we’re both very writerly, very artsy, in the way we approach things. One or the other of us will often grab the remote and say, nope. Stop. I gotta rewind this because this thing… Just look at what they did with the light, or the color, or the dialogue, or the whatever. We deconstruct it on the fly, and you can’t do that in the movie theater, and you can’t do that with friends who don’t get why you’re doing it. You only get to do it with your friends who love taking art apart in order to be able to make their own art better.
[Mary Robinette] When we talk about taking art apart, frequently what we’re talking about is nitpicking and being like, oh. They did this. I’m so annoyed about that. Why are all of these women in the Regency wearing spandex gloves? But I was talking to… Spandex doesn’t exist yet, Erin.
[Laughter]
[Erin] I looked at my hands like what is wrong with them?
[Mary Robinette] But I was… I took this class by Tobias [Bechel?] called Finding Your Spark. One of the things that he said in it, which so resonated with me, and is what we were doing with this whole series. He said you don’t read authors because of what they do poorly.
[Dongwon] Yeah
[Mary Robinette] You read them because of what they do well. So, example that I have of this, it’s something that most of you have read, maybe, or at least are aware of. Nobody reads Isaac Asimov for his characterization…
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] Or his portrayal of women. Like, that is not why you read him. At all. But you do still read him. And you, as a writer, there’s… Well, some of you still read him.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] His career seems fine.
[Dongwon] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Let’s put it that way. When you do read him, it is not for those things, is for the ideas, it is for other things. And with your own writing, we tend to discount the things that we do well because those are easy for us, and we think easy is not valuable. And it’s not that you shouldn’t push, but when you’re reading something, when you’re doing one of these deep reads, when you’re watching something in… A fun way to look at it is to celebrate, like, what are they doing really well. I’ll do that even when I’m going to something that is really terrible. I try to find at least one thing… This is some live theater that I’m thinking of very specifically…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] But at least one thing that they’ve done well.
[Dongwon] It’s… I think more of my job than people realize is sitting authors down and telling them what they’re doing well. Right? I think it’s hard to see when you’re in it sometimes. So I view a lot of my job as being like, hey. You’re really good at this part of this. You are doing this really well. Yes, do we need to work on X, Y, and Z? Sure. But there’s all this other stuff. Right? There’s a form of critique feedback called the compliment sandwich…
[Mary Robinette] I call… Yeah, go on.
[Dongwon] What do you call it?
[Mary Robinette] I just realized, the moment I heard sandwich, I realized we’re talking about two different things. So…
[Dongwon] We are talking about two slightly different things, but go ahead.
[Mary Robinette] No. Talk about yours first, and then…
[Dongwon] Okay. Okay.
[Mary Robinette] Do you want a segue into that more neatly, or…
[Howard] This is fun. Our listeners love this stuff.
[Laughter]
[Howard] This is compliment sandwich Dongwon.
[Mary Robinette] Carry on.
[Dongwon] The compliment sandwich. um… The compliment sandwich is very, very important. And that… Whenever I see somebody skip the bun as it were, which is you start talking about what works about the book, what you liked about the book, then you go into the critical part, and then you come back out and you explain again. Yes. Also remember these are the things that work, don’t change these things. Make sure that that stays. Is what people don’t understand about why that structure’s really important. I think a lot of people are, like, yeah, yeah, compliments. Let me get to the hard stuff, the work that needs to be done. I think both editors can feel that way and authors can feel that way. But from my perspective, the compliment part is an alignment exercise. It gets me making sure that I understand the vision of what you’re trying to accomplish. There are many times where I’ve done the compliment sandwich, and the author’s like, wait, wait. Nope. You’ve misunderstood. This is what I’m trying to do. Right? Like, or you haven’t read this part yet, because I only sent you the first 10,000 words. Here’s what’s happens in acts two, three, and four. Right? So that exercise of understanding how the parts of this work is really important both for me as an editor, but also for you as a writer. I encourage you to as much as possible when you’re reading… Engaging with art that you’re interested in, think about what does work about it as much as you think about what doesn’t. That will give you some of the tools to look at your own work and be like, damn, that was a good sentence. I like this character arc. Sure, do I need to fix the villain? Absolutely. But this part is working, let’s preserve that and [garbled]
[Mary Robinette] So, the type of thing that I was talking about is very similar, but it’s a critique that’s called a cheerleading critique. You… I had this idea that when you’re critiquing, and we’re talking about critiquing as opposed to…
[Howard] As opposed to critical reading.
[Mary Robinette] As opposed to critical reading. But in… I ask usually people to tell me about things that are awesome, boring, confused, or disbelief. But with a cheerleading one…
[Dongwon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] I only want them to tell me awesome. And that is so important for writers to know. Frequently, they do not know what they are doing well. We had a… I ran into one of the authors and I won’t betray which one, but one of the authors that we’ve been talking about this season. Ran into them at a convention, and one of the things that they said was, thank you. I’ve never had anyone talk about my work this way.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] I was like, oh, no. But they just… It was so meaningful to them…
[Dongwon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] To hear someone get really critical, really like in the how is this working? Why is this doing? They’d never heard anyone discuss their work in that way before. That’s something that you can set up for yourselves with a critique group, or the type of reading that you’re doing.
[Howard] I would say analytical instead of critical, even though the word critical is the right word.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] Because analysis is less value laden.
[Dongwon] Yeah.
[Howard] I love analysis. We took form and analysis classes for music in college, and I came out of some of those classes wishing that I could hang out with this group of people once a week and dissect a piece of music together again. And I just now remembered that wish as I’m realizing, oh. I’m kind of getting to do that with a new group of friends and a completely new medium, and it doesn’t have music in it…
[Laughter]
[Howard] But I’m okay, because I love words too.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] I think there’s something really nice about figuring out, also, like, how sometimes the things that you maybe need to work on are themselves complements of things that you’ve done well.
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Erin] In the way that it is not maybe until you are listening to a particularly amazing piece of music that you realize that your speaker system could be better.
[Mary Robinette] Right.
[Erin] You see what I mean? But until then, you’re like, whatever.
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Erin] But then you’re like, oh, wow. Like, so sometimes it’s like I love the characters so much that, like, I really wanted them to experience more tension, because I just wanted to see how they would deal with that.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] And really, celebrating that, like a lot of times, there is some gem that is shining so brightly that it’s just that we want the rest of it to shine as brightly as that.
[Dongwon] Yeah.
[Erin] As opposed to… The other parts are not holding it down it’s just that we just want to make the entire thing shiny and bright.
[Mary Robinette] Have I told you about my re-wilding of the landscapers experience?
[Dongwon] A little bit, but go on. Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] So, it has… Is changing the way I’m approaching revision. Because we’ve got this property, it’s got a lot of invasive species on it, so we are re-wilding it. We’re pulling out the invasive species, replanting it with native species or species that are at least are not poisonous. And so one of the things that I expected was that they would start in the section that was filled with privet hedge and English ivy. The landscapers said no. We want to start in the healthiest part of the landscape, because that tells you what the rest of the landscape is supposed to look like. I found that when I’m… Now, when I’m looking at my manuscripts, that I look at, okay, what is the healthiest part of it, what am I trying to support, what am I trying to nurture? When I’m reading other people’s, I’m like, what is the healthiest part of this? What is this doing really, really well? Let’s lean into that, let’s play to those strengths. How can we lift everything else up so that it’s doing this too? How can we get that better sound system? How can we pull up the English ivy?
[Dongwon] Yeah. What I love about this is you need to learn what the good version of this thing is. The thing that you’re trying to accomplish, need to have a sense of what the healthy version is, what the accomplished version is. The only way to do that is by encountering it in other people’s books.
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Dongwon] That’s where you start. You start by reading. If you want to write, you have to read, and you have to love reading, and you have to be excited about the category that you’re in. Because, again, it’s a conversation. If you want to participate in the conversation, you need to know where it came from. Now I’m not saying you need to have read the entire canon. You don’t need to read X, Y, Z work. But what you need to do is understand why you’re excited to write this thing. Why do you want to write it? What’s the conversation you’re trying to start, to participate in, to evolve?
[Howard] You’re using the word conversation… If you want to participate in a conversation, you have to spend a lot of time listening.
[Dongwon] Yes.
[Howard] If all you do is talk, it’s not a conversation, you’re lecturing a group of people who already know more about what you’re trying to say then you do.
[Dongwon] On that note, I have a little bit of homework for you that’s going to help you start this conversation, participate in it, and be an active participant in the work that you’re trying to create. So, what I want you to do… This may not be surprising, given the conversation that we had, but what I want you to do is get a group of friends together and pick a book you love to discuss and unpack what makes the book tick. Then I want you to find us on Instagram and tell us what book you picked and how that conversation went.
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go read.
[Howard] Have you ever wanted to ask one of the Writing Excuses hosts for very specific, very you-focused help. There’s an offering on the Writing Excuses Patreon that will let you do exactly that. The Private Instruction tier includes everything from the lower tiers plus a quarterly, one-on-one Zoom meeting with a host of your choice. You might choose, for example, to work with me on your humorous prose, engage DongWon’s expertise on your worldbuilding, or study with Erin to level up your game writing. Visit patreon.com/writingexcuses for more details.