Tools, not rules. For writers, by writers.
We’ve spent the last month talking about “A Memory Called Empire, and now, we are so excited to welcome the author, Arkady Martine, to the show! On today’s episode, we talk with Arkady about the origins of her novel, and dive into how she navigated the dense and intricate world-building.…
Today, the gang talks about their final thoughts on Martine’s “A Memory Called Empire.” We conclude with some lessons we’ve learned through analyzing her work, and we share our favorite bits! Thing of the Week: Pasión de las Pasiones Homework: Find a piece of world building that you love and come…
The imago technology lies at the heart of this novel thematically and narratively. How does this technology create a world, delineate Mahit’s culture from Teixcalaan, and ask enormous questions about identity and empire? Thing of the Week: “Rotten” (Documentary Series available on Netflix) Homework: Come up with three technological or magical…
What cultural and worldbuilding information is embedded within the smallest of word choices? Today, we dive into three specific sections from throughout Martine’s “A Memory Called Empire”: the word for empire, assimilation and naming, and learning the word for bomb. We unpack how Martine uses language to establish important principles…
How do you use language and scale to focus your writing? Today, we think about scale and movement across vast spaces. What do characters’ movements tell us about empires and also—force? We talk about Martine’s incredible work establishing an empire across time, not (just) space. We read aloud some of…
Why is worldbuilding is essential in your writing? Today, we answer this question and dive into some working definitions of how we want to talk about it. After the break, we discuss why we chose this book Arkady Martine’s “A Memory Called Empire” and highlight what it does well. We…
Sometimes we know the action and themes of your story, but you don’t know how to build an economy that supports those. Well today, we explain just how to do that! What are some questions you can ask yourself about the worth of certain goods and services in the world…
How do you find the right size for your story? And speaking of size, what do novellas do differently than both short stories and novels? What even is the difference between a novel and a novella? How many characters do they usually have? How many subplots? How do you know if your…
Today we get to talk to the inimitable Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar. Amal and Max are on the podcast to tell us about how they wrote a book together (hint: they didn’t write it together in the form of one voice.) They talk to us about the practice of…
As we conclude our first deep dive of our close reading series, we want to explore how the evolution of voice helped carry readers throughout “This Is How You Lose The Time War.” We also talk about the relationship between character arcs and language, learning and voice. Stay tuned for…
