Recorded live at CONduit with the inestimably valuable help of our friends at Dungeon Crawlers Radio, here’s an episode full of the randomness that is “questions from the audience.” These include:

• What do people get wrong when they write military science-fiction?
• How do you develop action sequences?
• What makes a good foil character?
• How do you schedule your time as a writer?
• How do you write good, true-to-character dialog for each of your characters?

Our podcasters for this episode were Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, L.E. Modessit Jr., and Robison Wells.

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Haze by L.E. Modessit, Jr.

Writing Prompt: Why does she NOT sound like the guy she’s interested in?

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Transcript

As transcribed by Mike Barker

Key questions: What do people get wrong about writing military? Discipline and insubordination. How do you develop a good action sequence? Discovery writing. Motivations of both sides. Long lead up, short action sequence, long cleanup and consequences. What makes good foil characters? Contrast and conflict. How do you schedule your writing time? All the time; early mornings; in the office; structure makes productivity. How do you write authentic dialogue for different characters? Personality and word patterns or rhythms. Highlight differences. Know what each character wants to get out of the conversation. Look for flavors.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses Season four, episode 22, Q&A at CONduit with LE Modesitt, Jr. or Modesitt, because I can never get his name right.
[Rob] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you’re in a hurry.
[Rob] And we’re not that smart. That’s it.
[Dan] And we don’t know who’s supposed to say what.
[Brandon] As we just proved.
[Dan] I’m Dan.
[Brandon] I was remiss last time in mentioning Dungeon Crawler Radio who are awesomely recording this because producer Jordo is gone and Dan and I were scared of the equipment.
[Dan] It tried to bite me.
[Brandon] You guys… it’s dungeoncrawler.com or… how do they find you?
[Dungeon Crawlers] dungeoncrawlersradio.com
[Brandon] Dungeon Crawlers with an s radio.com. A wonderful podcast of which I have been a guest before, and lots of us have been. It’s a great podcast. Go listen to them. Thank you guys very much. We once again have Rob Wells filling in for Howard. He’s our Howard this week.
[Rob] Hi.
[Brandon] Hi, Rob. We also have Lee Modesitt… I got it right… who is filling in… well, guest starring for us. We’re going to do some Q&A. Do we have a question? All right. Come on up.

[Question] This is a question for Lee. It’s a Memorial Day question, because he’s a veteran. Lee, what are the things you think people most often get wrong about writing military in fantasy, as well as science-fiction?
[Brandon] Wow. Excellent question.
[Lee] There a number of things people get wrong about writing the military. One of which is most people understate the element of discipline in the military. There are far too many insubordinate both call it rankers and noncommissioned officers in most military fiction. There is an element of insubordination in the military, but unless you’re career or have had time in the military, you’ll never recognize it. It’s very insidious. It’s a polite, “Yes, sir” with the overtone of “you’re a complete idiot, sir, but I will do exactly what you say, and we will see the disastrous results of following your ill-advised order.” Or sometimes they will say, “Sir?” With a comment which basically says, “Ask me a question. Any question, because I really don’t want to do it that way, because we’re gonna all get killed.” Or if they’re really desperate, they’ll say, “Sir, uh, what exactly did you mean by that?” Or words to that effect. But nobody will say, “Sir, you’re a complete asshole.” They may say it by tone, but every word will officially be polite. I’m going to tell a very quick, 30 second anecdote about that, on my very first assignment. I was sent to Vietnam with the special landing forces. Before we left, I was a junior ensign in charge of a boat load of enlisted crewmen and our job was to land Marines. The captain asked me before we went, “I want to ask you, Ensign Modesitt, why are you in charge when you don’t know anything and they do?” Of course, I was stumped. He looked at me and says, “Because if anything goes wrong, we need somebody to hang.”
[Brandon] Wow. OK. Other questions? Right here, come on up.

[Question] I’m interested in hearing about how you guys develop action sequences. I think with Lee having been a veteran, I can learn pretty good about that from him. To develop a good action sequence, what do you look for?
[Brandon] OK. Developing good action sequences. I’m actually going to throw this over there first, so that Lee has time to gather his thoughts. We’ve put him on the spot already. So, Dan or Rob, action sequences?
[Dan] Go for it, Rob.
[Brandon] Rob! How do you develop an action sequence?
[Rob] The way that I do it, and the way that I’ve always done it, and I really enjoy doing it, is that I don’t plan it out. I set up the situation, I create the setting, I… we know who the characters are, and then I just let it play out, and I try to figure out how it’s going to happen. I know what this person would do in various situations, I know what the other person would do in various situations, and I just let it play out and see what happens. I end up having to trim a lot or add a little bit more here and there, but I am a discovery writer. I think that is the best for action because it doesn’t seem like you’re leading to anything, because you’re making it up as you go.
[Brandon] OK. Lee?
[Lee] Two things. One, I really concentrate on the motivations of both sides of the action sequence before I ever get started. The second thing is, action is far, far shorter than usually the description of that action. Having been in a number of situations, and having been a Navy pilot, one of the descriptions of flying which is… or combat situation flying which is tremendously accurate is flying is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror. Action sequences are pretty much the same way. Fights, contrary to all of the television, all of the military stuff, they don’t generally last very long. The lead up is longer, the cleanup is longer. When you look at wars, it’s the same way. Brief periods of action filled with enormous consequences thereafter. You may have a long, long battle, but what it really is, is a series of very short action sequences paused by waiting and regrouping — a very short flurry of actions paused by waiting and regrouping, or in the case of a battle which covers a large front, you will have sequential battles across it, where this group advances or that group advances and it’s quiet someplace else. Very seldom in history have you seen a large front assault, and even those that are, haven’t lasted very long.
[Brandon] OK. Other questions? All right.

[Question] Sometimes to create a good character, you use foil characters. I was just wondering if you have any good examples of foil characters, and what would make a good foil character for you?
[Brandon] OK. Excellent. Foils. I’m going to throw that at Dan, first.
[Dan] OK. I actually can answer this one. My first book, I Am Not a Serial Killer, is basically designed around a character and his foil — the good guy and the bad guy. It was kind of built so that you weren’t sure at any point which one to actually root for. The way I did that is I looked at my hero — I started the book with that character, John Cleaver, and this is what I wanted him to be, these were the things I wanted him to be good at, these were the things I wanted him to struggle with, and then just flipped it around. And said, what would be interesting? Specifically, looking at what are great conflicts I could create. If he’s bad at this, then let’s put him against a character who’s good at this. Making sure to maximize all those points of conflict between the two of them.
[Brandon] Lee?
[Lee] I don’t use foil characters so much as I use interactive characters, in the sense that no one character is a foil for any other, but there is an interplay between generally the group situation. Probably the largest foil I often use is male-female conflict. Because men tend to be far more impulsive and interactive than women, although I have some daughters that go against that. But women generally are a little bit more thoughtful about what they do, perhaps because the consequences they see are far graver.
[Brandon] OK. Excellent.
[Dan] I want to amend what I said just a little bit, because I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to say if one character is weak at something, another character should be strong at it. That’s not really what I meant. I think that if both characters are struggling with the same issue, but attempt to solve it in different ways, that can also be a very effective foil.
[Brandon] All right. Other questions? Come on up.

[Question] I’d like to hear how you schedule your time. Do you write for eight hours straight, do you have multiple writing activities, how do you schedule your time?
[Brandon] OK. Let’s go to everyone on this one. Let’s… do you want to start with this, Lee?
[Lee] Sure. My wife says I don’t schedule anything, I just write all the time. That’s not quite true. Basically, I start the day with a 45 minute walk so that I’ve got some energy, and I also feel virtuous about the whole thing. Take a quick shower, sit down at the computer, spend about 15 minutes answering e-mail, and then I start to work. Generally, I work about 50 to 55 minutes out of every hour. Take five minutes off to get a break, walk the dogs, what have you. Go back to work. Sometimes I take a break and go grocery shopping or something like that, but generally it’s about a 12 hour day from the time I first sit down until the time I give up.
[Brandon] OK. Rob?
[Rob] Mine is a little bit different, because I still have a full-time job. So my writing is generally nights and weekends and early mornings. The best thing that I’ve found for my writing is to write in big chunks of time. I know there are a lot of people who… they write full time or whatever, when they’re trying to find time to write, they’ll take 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there. That just doesn’t work for me. I know it works for other people. But what I will try to do is block off all Saturday. So that’s where I was today, until I came here for this. And that’s where I’m going back to. All Monday, I’m not doing anything on the holiday, I’m just writing. But one of the best things for me, as far as just finding time to write, is I have started waking up at 4-4:30 every morning. I absolutely adore it. It is… I mean, you can…
[Dan] That’s because you’re insane.
[Rob] You can get two or three hours of writing in before you have to go into work. Your mind is clear…
[Brandon] That’s when I go to bed.
[Lee] I’d interject here… that’s actually the schedule, even though he’s a full-time writer, that’s also the schedule that Joe Haldeman uses. He wakes up at four o’clock and writes for four hours.
[Brandon] There are a lot of authors that do that. You still have a full-time job? Didn’t you just sell a book series for like an obscene amount of money?
[Rob] I have not received the obscene amount of money. But, yeah.
[Brandon] We do appreciate Rob sitting in. We didn’t give him as much of a promo as he deserves, but he writes young adult science fiction, and his first book will be coming out in 2012?
[Rob] Fall of 11.
[Brandon] Fall of 11. Wow. Fast. Cool.
[Rob] Yeah. Pretty quick. Just a month ago is when we finalized it.
[Brandon] OK. Dan?
[Dan] I’ve talked about my schedule before, but, very briefly, what I will do is I’ll get up in the morning, I do go to an office. I will spend a few hours in the morning checking my e-mail and kind of maintaining my online presence. It’s important to me to try to post something on my blog every day. Then when I’m done with that, I will go through what I wrote the previous day. Read through it for minor errors. Then by the time I’m done with that, I’m kind of in the zone, and ready to go. I will then write for three or four hours.
[Brandon] By office, he means…
[Dan] I mean Brandon’s basement.
[Brandon] The Dragons Steel Entertainment Headquarters.
[Dan] Yes. The Dragons Steel Entertainment Headquarters. Which is Brandon’s basement.
[Brandon] That’s right. I’ve talked about my schedule before too, but for me, I just want to emphasize that structure is really important for writers, I’ve found. I’m not a really structured person. I don’t have a Day Planner, and plan things out and whatnot. But I’ve found that if I don’t enforce some structure upon myself, it’s not good. I do like to keep it loose and free, I do like to be able to take time off when I want to, and work when I want and not what I don’t want to. But you need some structure. I’ve found that the more structure I enforce upon myself, the more productive I actually am. Despite being a non-structured person. So that’s a piece of advice, there.

[Brandon] We’re going to go ahead and pause, and talk about our book of the week. We’re going to promo another one of Lee’s books, and we’re going to have him tell you about it.
[Lee] The book is called Haze. It just came out in paperback as well, but it has been an audio book for about nine months. It’s a story which actually takes place, a third of it, in Utah. It takes place about 4000 years in the future. It’s a cultural clash between, if you want to put it this way, the Chinese-dominated World Federation and an undisclosed outsystem culture which may be alien, may be human, but the planet is shrouded in nano satellites which make it impervious to radiation, and the main character has got to do a recon expedition to find out what’s beneath it.
[Brandon] All right. You can go to audible, go to the website audiblepodcast.com/excuse and download a free copy of Lee’s book, and start your free trial for 15 days. In doing so, you really support Writing Excuses quite a bit, so we appreciate it every time you do that.

[Brandon] All right. Let’s have one more question. Right here.
[Question] My question is… actually, I’m looking for tips. When you’re writing dialogue across several different characters, and I know you’re very familiar with this, how do you really keep it authentic to each different character, so it doesn’t just sound like the same person talking to themselves.
[Brandon] That’s an excellent question. Very good question. I’m going to give this to Lee, like most of them, and see what you have to say.
[Lee] I try and think in terms of the personality of each character, and what their… call it their word patterns are like. There are some characters who, like my Professor Fitzhugh in The Eternity Artifact, likes to use the biggest words he could possibly find and the longest and most complex sentences he could possibly devise. There are other characters, like Jang the pilot, who basically don’t like nouns. Everything’s verbs. These are the two extremes. But you try and find a pattern or a rhythm for each character, because the rhythm is as important as the word choice. That’s also a question. Do they like big words or little words?
[Brandon] I would say on this… this is something that I’ve worked with quite a bit. For me, when I put two characters in a scene, I think about how they as a character are going to be different from the other character. This kind of plays off the foil concept. But with each conversation, I’m trying to create a… we’re going to have people on different sides of the discussion, not necessarily arguing, but they’re going to approach things from their own viewpoints. In the same way, I want their different speech patterns to kind of play off of one another because you can highlight their individuality by the differences between them. When you’re talking about an educated character, it’s more than just big words. It’s more than just whether a character uses contractions or not. Because those are kind of the… those are the surface level sometimes things that make it… sometimes you want to use those, those are easy, but… in some cases, how someone constructs their sentences, how complex their sentences are, how complex their thoughts are. How well they follow the conversation. How easily they may be misunderstanding or intentionally misunderstanding or so dedicated to their personal ideology that they don’t want to understand the other person. That can have a large influence. If a character is not quite as smart as the other characters, instead of just having them use smaller words and things, having them not quite understand and make it come across by the way they speak in the conversation is a better way, sometimes. So I’m looking for each of the characters to foil one another in a conversation.
[Dan] One of the things that I struggle with, actually, so this is what I’m going to mention, is making sure that you know what each character wants to get out of that conversation. It’s usually very clear to my writing group, when they read a scene of dialogue, and they say, “You know, that one character didn’t really accomplish anything. He was just talking because there was space to fill.” Make sure that you know what they want, so that they have a purpose they’re driving towards. Not everyone necessarily talks that way in real life. But in a book, if it’s going to be interesting and it’s going to be believable, the characters need to feel like they’re leading toward something, like they actually have a motivation behind what they’re saying.
[Brandon] All right. Go ahead.
[Lee] I was going to add something quick. Just as far as flavoring the writing. Dan and I have a cousin, and I think yesterday on Facebook, he posted something. He’s a big jeep guy. He likes to go out and drive around, and enjoys working on his jeep. But the other day on Facebook, he posted his status and he was complaining about something. He said, “It grinds my gears.” I think… almost when I read it, I thought he sounds like a bad character in a book. But I mean, you can take that concept of what does this guy surround himself with, and how will that flavor his… the way that he talks, the words he uses, and the analogies that he makes.
[Brandon] Great. Very good to add. Let’s give a round of applause for Lee and for Rob for… we really appreciate these guys. We’re actually going to end this podcast by forcing Lee to give us a writing prompt.

[Lee] All right.
[Dan] It doesn’t have to be a good one.
[Lee] Why does she not sound like the guy she’s interested in?
[Brandon] OK. There’s your writing prompt. This is been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go write.