20.02: Q&A Aboard the Writing Excuses Cruise, with Mark Oshiro and Kate McKean
This episode was recorded live at our 2024 Writing Excuses Cruise. (Did you know that we host a writing retreat on a cruise every year!?! You can learn more at https://writingexcuses.com/retreats/.)
While on a boat in Mexico, we were joined by author Mark Oshiro and literary agent Kate McKean. In addition to our hosts, they answered questions that were asked by our cruise attendees. Our answers included things such as how much space a character should take up and how to find the balance between plot-focused and character-focused novels. We also tackled questions about worldbuilding, motivation, and deadlines.
Homework: Ask someone a question about writing, either to learn more about what they’re working on or to work through a project of your own.
Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, Erin Roberts, Mark Oshiro, and Kate McKean. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
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Transcript
Questions and Answers:
Q: How do you know when a character is taking up so much space in your book that they need to die and maybe never come back?
A: Is the character redundant? Is the character related to the general themes? Does the character fit the tone of the book? Is this a more interesting character, so I need to make them the star? If you take the character out, does it affect the story? Are they filling a role that nothing else fills? Is this a protagonist, main character, or hero?
Q: If the story is very plot focused, how can you make it more character focused?
A: Who is the most interesting person for this plot to happen to? Why is this character staying in this plot? What ability do they have to participate in this plot? Why is this character unsuited to solve this problem?
Q: Say you have some cool thing that doesn’t quite fit the story. How do you decide whether to rip it out or find a way to shoehorn it in?
A: Is it going to baffle readers? Save it for a later opportunity. Can it do some other things? Don’t buy cool solar powered lights for your garden path if you don’t have a garden path. Does it fit with the characters?
Q: What are some strategies for finding the motivation to work on something that has a deadline when there are other fun things to do instead?
A: Money. Fear. Think about what you will lose if you don’t finish it. Don’t trade what you want most for what you want at the moment. Reward yourself with joy. Break it into small pieces, and use checkboxes. Think about why you don’t want to do this. Write the ending first, and then use it to remind yourself where you are going.
Q: When do you call a manuscript done?
A: Everything can be made better. Can this be more of the thing that I want it to be? Art is never finished, only abandoned. Realize that there is a lot of refinement afer the point where you say it’s done. First, is there a little voice saying, “Chapter 3 is really weird?” Second, make it hard for the editor to say no. You get more than one chance.
[Season 20, Episode 02]
[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 20, Episode 02]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[Howard] Q&A on a ship.
[Mary Robinette] I’m Mary Robinette.
[Howard] I’m Howard.
[Erin] I’m Erin.
[Dan] I’m Dan.
[Howard] And we are joined by Mark Oshiro and Kate McKean here on Navigator of the Seas. Hey, Mark, tell us about yourself real quick.
[Mark] Hello everyone. I am a young adult, middle grade author of some books that I’ve won some awards and been on some lists and I’m trying to pet every dog in the world.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Short and to the point. Kate! Tell us about yourself.
[Kate] My name is Kate McKean. I’m a literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency, and I’m very excited to be here.
[Howard] Well, we’re excited to have you. And our students here at WXR right on the Navigator have been excited all week to learn from you guys. This has been awesome. But they still have some questions. So, let’s turn it over to our students and have someone ask a question.
[Someone] Well. How do you know when a character is taking up so much space in your book that they need to die and possibly never have been in your book at all?
[Howard] Restating the question, how do you know when a character is taking so much space in your book that they need to die and maybe never come back?
[Mary Robinette] So, one of the things I look at is… The same things that I look at… I evaluate the character in many of the same ways that I evaluate a line. Is it redundant? Is the character doing things that other characters are doing? Is the character related to the general themes? Does the character fit the tone of the book? Those are the things that… It’s the same kind of metric. But you’re just applying it to a different sort of experience.
[Dan] There’s a… One of the things that I do in this case and in many other cases, any time the outline goes off track, is ask myself, do I need to get this back on track or is this a better track than I had in the first place? It could be that the character’s taking up so much space precisely because you love them and they are more interesting than what anything else is going on. So you might need to just retool a little bit and let them be the star.
[Mary Robinette] Also, then, in some cases, where those two guys should be one guy. And you can just give all of that stuff to one guy, and then cut but you don’t need.
[Mark] Yeah. Any instance I’ve ever had, where I’ve had to completely excise a character, the question became, if I take this character out, does it actually affect the story? If the answer is no, bye. Goodbye. Throw them overboard.
[Laughter]
[Mark] To fit the metaphor where we are. Please don’t throw anyone overboard.
[Kate] No crimes.
[Mark] No crimes. No crimes on this ship.
[Erin] I actually… It’s funny, because I was just thinking about the other side of that, which is it’s possible that the reason that this character is taking up so much space is that they’re filling a role in the story that there’s nothing else there to fill. Like, they’re the one who is advancing the story, at a time where no one else has that plot information. They’re the one representing the characters back story, because there’s nobody else to talk about. So maybe the answer could be that you could either add other characters, give part of what that character is doing to other characters, or figure out if there’s a way that this story can hold it. Because you don’t want to, like, knock out the supporting wall of your house, because you don’t like it, and then be like, oh, no, it all fell down.
[Howard] I come back to the tripartite definition, the protagonist, the main character, and the hero. Who can all be the same person, but they can also be three different people. If someone is taking up a huge amount of page space in a story, and they are not fulfilling the role of protagonist or hero or main character, then I am well off outline, I’m now writing a different story, and it’s time to figure out which story this character actually fits in.
[Someone] So, if you’re writing a new book, and your plots tend to be very plot focused, what are some tricks to making the book more character focused?
[Howard] Restating. So, if you’re writing a book, and the story is very plot focused, what are some tricks to making it more character focused?
[Mark] A question I ask myself, actually, because I’m also an outline or as well, is, very early on in my process of developing an idea, is who is the most interesting person for this plot to happen to? Instead of just creating a character whatnot, think of possible… Not just possible conflicts, but, like, what’s a contrast? What’s a very interesting contrast of this happening to a specific person? That often can help me find a way into a much more character driven story, still within the very plot heavy story.
[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I… Similar to Mark, but one of the things that I will specifically look for within that is why the character can’t just nope out of the plot. So that, for me, then means that being on that plot fulfills a lack, a hole in the character, it’s doing something for them. That can usually allow me to find out what it is that they’re missing, what it is they’re lacking, that they can be on a journey for, separately from the plot, but that the plot is intersecting with, and that that’s part of why they’re moving forward.
[Kate] Exactly. Like, if they are on the plot because it fell in their lap, it is… They can easily nope out of it. But they have to want to be there for a complex reason. If the reason is too simple, you can make it more complex and that will deepen their… At least that character.
[Erin] I also sometimes think about what is the… What is it about this character that gives them the ability… Not only the desire, but the ability to participate in this plot. What is it that lets them take the action that moves this plot forward, and what is that rooted in? What is it that they’re bringing with them to the plot that makes them an interesting person to be advancing it forward? Then, for that interesting thing, what’s a way that you can work in… Somewhere where we see that area of interest outside of the plot? Where can we see it on some… In a side scene, or something else that’s not necessarily plot focused?
[Mary Robinette] You just reminded me of something that… One of the other tools that I’ll use is to look at the character and ask why are they uniquely unsuited to solve this problem? That, again, opens up a lot of tension and just… A lot of juicy, juicy stuff.
[Someone] So, say you have some really cool, awesome worldbuilding thing that you wanted in your story, but it just doesn’t quite do it. How would you balance just ripping it out and just saving it for another story versus trying to find an excuse or a place to fit that into the story?
[Kate] Does it pass the smell test? So, if you’re trying to shoehorn it in there, and you can find a way to make it work, but you’re the only one who recognizes why that works, the reader’s going to be like, “What? Why? Huh? Where?” So you’re better off saving it for something else, which is an opportunity. You have this cool thing, you get to use it later. Not that you don’t, like, use it now.
[Mary Robinette] I had this thing in Martian Contingency that I was extremely stubborn about. Which is that in the real world, when you’re looking at time on Mars versus Earth, you use Sol for Mars, and Earth… Day for Earth. That’s so that people who are talking back and forth can tell whether they’re talking about next Sol or tomorrow. Because they’re not lined up. I was extremely stubborn about including this. People were not getting it. But it did a bunch of things. It helped… I actually needed it, technically, to be able to talk about those two concepts. It also did, like, this is a really cool worldbuilding thing that actually did a bunch of heavy lifting. But it was so hard to explain to people. So I took an opportunity and I took another scene that was a little bit flat, and used that seem to just explain it to the readers as a point of conflict between two characters. So it was… It… Looking for what else can this do. If it’s doing only one thing, you probably save it for the… Look, everybody, here are my extras. Here’s my acknowledgments, which is where the Mars speed of sound went, because I couldn’t fit it into the book.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] I think…
[Mary Robinette] It’s different.
[Howard] I think about that one time I was shopping and saw some just really cool solar powered garden path lights. I was like, oh, these are amazing. They’re so neat. I mean, you can program the… I don’t actually have a garden path. This is one of those situations where no matter how cool it is, it doesn’t belong in my yard, because it’s just going to end up as, like, a fairy ring or something. See, that would have been awesome.
[Dan] see, that would have been amazing.
[Howard] Oh, well.
[Dan] For me, this comes back to character. Which is kind of what Howard was just saying. Howard, as a character, had no plausible interaction with a garden path. So there was no point in putting extra time and effort into one. Because one didn’t exist. If my characters can plausibly interact with and be harmed by and make interesting decisions about the cool thing that I’m struggling to include, then it will be fairly easy to include. Whereas if it’s just some neat bit of worldbuilding that I made up that doesn’t actually affect the characters in any way, then, yeah, it needs to go.
[Mary Robinette] Hey, friends. The 2025 retreat registration is open. We have two amazing writing retreats coming up and we cordially invite you to enroll in them. For those of you who sign up before January 12, 2025… How is that even a real date? We’re off… [Background noise… Friend?] As you can probably hear my cat say, we’ve got a special treat for our friends. We are offering a little something special to sweeten the pot. You’ll be able to join several of my fellow Writing Excuses hosts and me on a Zoom earlybird meet and greet call to chit chat, meet fellow writers, ask questions, get even more excited about Writing Excuses retreats. To qualify to join the earlybird meet and greet, all you need to do is register to join a Writing Excuses retreat. Either our Regenerate Retreat in June or our annual cruise in September 2025. Just register by January 12. Learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats.
[DongWon] Heading into the new year, we’re all thinking about what our intentions and goals are. It’s hard not only to set your targets, but to live up to them. Especially as writers and creative’s in a world that doesn’t always seem eager to support you financially. That’s why building your financial literacy and starting to work towards a stable financial base is an important aspect of developing your writing career. We talk a lot about the creative tools you need, but peace of mind about your bottom line will give you the space to pursue your goals and develop the career that you want. Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing, so your money has a chance to grow for you, your kids, and your retirement. You don’t need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that fits you and your money goals. You don’t need to be rich. Acorns let you invest with the spare money you’ve got right now. You can start with five dollars or even just your spare change. Head to acorns.com/WX or download the acorns app to start saving and investing for your future today. [Garbled inaudible]
[Someone] What are some strategies you have for finding the willpower for finishing a project that you have a deadline on, so you have to finish it? But you don’t want to work on it, you’ve got another cool thing… [Garbled]
[Howard] What are some strategies for finding the motivation to work on something that has a deadline, but there’s… There are other fun things to do instead?
[Mary Robinette] Money.
[Unknown] Spite.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Fear.
[Laughter]
[Dan] They’re very primal urges here.
[Mary Robinette] Do you want to give them actual useful information, Erin?
[Erin] I’ll try. I don’t know. But I think part of it is not thinking of it as motivation. You know what I mean? Because I think there are certain things in life we just do because we have to. But because writing is so personal, sometimes you think, like, I will always write when, like, the moment is there and when I want to. But as somebody who does a lot of deadline work, ultimately, it’s about… It is a little bit about fear. Like, I’ll lose this… I will lose this next opportunity to write something cool if I burn this bridge by never getting back to this person when I said I would. I will lose the money that I was going to receive from this project. But part of it is thinking, like, I don’t actually need to be motivated to work, you just have to work to work. If that makes sense.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] Sometimes it is just putting down one sentence and saying that’s all I’m going to do for today, but at least it gives yourself a small goal to get through that doesn’t require motivation, just action.
[Howard] There’s an aphorism that I come back to all the time that I think applies to just adulting in general. It is, don’t trade what you want most for what you want at the moment. I come back to that all the time. In my doing this thing now because it’s just what I want to do now or am I doing it now because it’s leading me to what I really, really want.
[Mary Robinette] I have a similar thing, which is what gift can I give to my future self? But the other piece that I will say is that one of the tools that I use is coming from dog training. We’re having… We’re working with a dog trainer on Guppy and while I said money, the fact is that my dog gets a form of payment for doing the things. It’s a joyful form of payment. So, for me, the thing that I have to do… That… I shouldn’t say that I have to do. The thing that I’ve found that is most effective… I can force myself to work. But that just makes work worse. It makes me resent it, and it starts to bleed over into the writing that I’m doing for fun, when I’m having to force myself to write. So, if I can make it more joyful, that helps. One of the things that you do with dog training is you do a lot of small sessions. So I will break things into smaller pieces. I will give myself ticky boxes, because the joy of watching a ticky box turn green is like… Um… Like… It should not be that effective. It makes me mad that it is.
[Howard] Our episode spreadsheets… I went to great trouble to program our episode spreadsheets so that all the little checkboxes are red until you check them, and then they turn green. That gives us joy every time we finished recording.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, for me, it’s like oh, when I finish this, then I get to do the next piece of it. And I get to cross something off. Like, I have literally given myself gold stars before.
[Kate] I have also done that. And I love a checkbox that I can physically do…
[Chuckles]
[Kate] What I do is turn it around and say why do I not want to do this? What am I scared of? If I’m scared to take the next step on this project, or I don’t know what scene I’m writing next, or when I… I have to do the big edit when I finish this task. So when I… Even just say, like, I don’t want to do this because I don’t know what I’m doing after. Saying it out loud makes it less scary. It doesn’t mean that the actual fear goes away, but you’re like, oh, I’m just afraid. Great. That’s easy to be afraid.
[Dan] That’s so much better than the technique I got from dog training, is I wear a shock collar.
[Laughter]
[Dan] Then, anytime I get off of the main document, it buzzes me. Don’t actually do that.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. You actually need a different trainer.
[Laughter]
[Mark] If I can add to this too. I… A thing… So I do actually something before I’m drafting. Some of you have heard me speak about this. Which is it’s very important that when I’m about to start a book, I know how it ends. And I want to be absolutely unhinged and feral about that ending. Because then when I’m in those moments where I’m stuck, I will actually turn to the end, because I actually write my final scenes, final line first, and remind myself, like, that’s where I’m going. Which often sort of related to you will help me figure out, subconsciously, why am I stuck in this moment? Why does this moment feel unmotivating? I will also say if you do just really require motivation, often, for me, it’s I want to get this done so I can go to the shiny new object over here and work on the other thing that is also making me slightly feral and unhinged.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] Yeah. Sorry. One last last thing which is, like, what I love about all of these different answers is I think what they remind me is we’re also different in the ways we handle this. I think one way that’s good is how have you ever forced yourself in your life to do anything else? Like, if you are like I always… When I don’t want to go to a party, make… Say, I can get a pizza on the way home, then maybe you’re, like, reward, like, focused. If you’re somebody who… Like, whatever the thing is that works for you in other areas of your life can also sometimes be repurposed for your writing life.
[Someone] When do you call a manuscript done, because it seems like you could be stuck in each [garbled step of the process?]
[Howard] You had me at when do you call a manuscript done.
[Mary Robinette] So, here’s the thing. Everything can be made better. There is not anything in the world that can’t be made better. I think if… Some people have heard me talk about this when we’ve been doing office Hours where you’ve come to me for one-on-one. So I know I’ve said this multiple times on the ship. When you’re… If you talk to someone who worked on the Princess Bride, which is a perfect film, I am certain that they would say, “If I would’ve just had one more day.” So, for me, the question is not can this be better, but can this be more of the thing that I wanted to be. Like, if I got a chair, if you look at the chair, listener, that you are sitting in right now. There’s probably a scuff on it. Could you fix that scuff? Yes. Would it make it more of a chair? Would it make it more useful, would it make it better for you? No. So, when the thing is doing what you wanted to do, then it is done. Can you make it better? Yes. But you don’t have to.
[Howard] I think it was Picasso who said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” And I have taken that as a gospel truth. I never finish anything, I decide to abandon it. Which is very emotionally liberating.
[Dan] Yeah. One thing that I did not realize when I was very early career, when I was still trying to break in, is how much refinement there still is to do after that point when it is done. Right? The agent is going to help you make it better. Your editor is going to help you make it better. The copy editor, the proofreader, like every step of the process will continue that refinement. It doesn’t need to be completely perfect. It never will be. But it’s good to remember this is good enough right now, and there’s a whole army of people that’s going to help me make it better later.
[Kate] I did two kind of litmus tests, both as a writer and as an agent. The first thing I do is I ask myself, whether it’s my book or somebody else’s, is there, like, this little voice in the back of your head going, “Chapter 3 is really weird.” The quieter it is, the more I need to go back and look at chapter 3 or whatever part. The loud voice that’s saying, “This is horrible and you’re a blah blah blah blah blah.” That’s not your intuition, that’s just fear and anxiety and all those things. It’s the tiny little bit, like, yeah, this scene doesn’t make that much sense. Then you go back and fix that one. When I’m in… When I have my agent hat on, and I’m editing a client’s manuscript, my goal is to make it really hard for the editor to say no. But that goal is not make it perfect and ready to go to the printer. Because that’s not my job and I don’t have the power nor the time to do that. But when I look at a manuscript and say, okay, well, the beginning’s a little slow. That might derail an editor. Let’s fix that. Let’s address that, and then not worry about some hand wavy things in the middle. Because by the time they get there, they’re invested and they’ll want to know the end.
[Mark] Most of the time, I’m teaching to young kids who haven’t written at all, or very interested in it, have never even finished a short story. So a lot of their questions are around, like, well, how do I know it’s done? Like, when do I know? Is it just writing The End? Which, often times, I’m like, yeah. Actually, yes. Then you’re done. It’s done. But I also like to talk to them about how those of us, especially here in the States, we have been raised in a system in which we are taught you have one chance. Right? You write an essay, you take a test, you get a grade. The end. That’s it. So they often approach writing the same way. I see adults then struggling with that in adulthood, of I only have one chance to do this. So I love how all of us can sort of dispel the notion of, like, the thing you’re writing is… You don’t have one chance. It’s not you write this manuscript, it’s done, and that’s the only chance you’re ever going to get. So, for me, at least with my process, I know a manuscript is done initially, just when I reach that ending point that I’ve already written. It’s done. Then I can give it to my agent. I can start having conversations with my editor. Then, even then, as it goes through developmental edits, line edits, and then we all get down to pass pages, where we’re reading the proof of your pages. For me, I know it’s done when I can read long periods of the book without stopping and going, oh, this doesn’t make sense, something here is tripping me up. That’s when I’m like, it’s done. Maybe five or six things over the course of a whole novel, I’m like, I don’t know if I landed this. But if it’s very few of them, then I’m like, this is done. Like, I can let this go. Or abandon it, to use that language.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The UK edition of Shades of Milk and Honey is three chapters longer, and 5000 words longer, than the US edition. Because they made the mistake of asking me, “Is there anything you’d like to change?”
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Laughter]
[Howard] You made the mistake of answering.
[Erin] I think that just shows the power of time. Because I will sometimes abandon, whether temporarily or permanently, a story because I’m like, I am not where I need to be at in order to make this any better. Like, I have done… All that I’m doing now is… I… Always call it like shuffling, is on the Titanic. All I’m doing is making very minute changes. Nothing is changing at the core. Because if there’s something wrong at the core, I cannot figure out how to change it now. Sometimes I send it out anyway, and it’s like, I hope that the editor at the magazine is, like, oh, actually it is this, or, you were wrong, it’s fine. I accepted it. Then I’m like, oh, well, maybe that was all in my head. But sometimes, it is years later, I’m like, oh, I could have written this different, better story, but the story I wrote was fine for the writer I was at that moment. I think it sometimes nice to, like, acknowledge who you are and what you can do now, and worry about what your future self can do later.
[Howard] So you freeze the document in your trunk cryogenically until you’ve developed the technology to really fix it.
[Howard] We’ve got time for one more question. No we don’t. We do not have time for any more questions. What we have time for is homework.
[Mary Robinette] We’re going to give you the same homework that we are giving the participants in the Writing Excuses workshop here on the Navigator of the Seas that is the daily challenge. Asked and answered. Ask someone a question about writing. Either to learn more about what they’re working on or to work through a project of your own.
[Howard] This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go write.