You’re going to love this one. This fast-paced episode of Writing Excuses goes out to everybody who thinks Writing Excuses isn’t already fast-paced enough.

We’ve done Q&A episodes before, but this one is special. This time we applied our “shot clock” to each question we fielded, and set out to knock each one down within three minutes.

The Questions:

What’s the right way to kill a character?

Who are the authors who have influenced you the most, and why?

When do you quit your day-job?

Brandon, would killing you and partaking of your flesh grant the killer your powers?

What do you do when you discover you hate a character you’re writing?

How do you respond to accusations of having written Mary Sue characters?

What are some basic tools for ensuring that all characters in a story have different voices?

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

Writing Prompt: Two critics who reviewed Dan Wells’ book and who had completely opposite reactions actually read two different books…

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Transcript

As transcribed by Mike Barker

Key Points:

• What is the right way to kill a character? Bombs. With meaning!
• Authors that have influenced your writing and why? A. A. Milne, because he has so much fun playing with words. Melanie Rawn, because she mixed magic with characters that I cared about. Tolkein for introducing me to the world that isn’t ours. Victor Hugo for finding beauty in the gutter. Jay Lake and Charlie Stross for taking ideas to the nth degree. Pat Rothfuss for showing that even well-worn tropes, done well, are still viable stories.
• When do you quit your day job? When God tells you to. When your wife tells you that you may. When you get your first advance check.
• What do you do when you discover you hate a character? Bombs. Redefining them radically. Have something happen to that character that is grossly unfair.
• How do you respond to accusations of being a Mary Sue? Do you really want to ask that? Is it wrong to write characters that people want to be like?
• What are some basic tools for ensuring that all characters in a story have different voices? Model them on people you know. Check that they are different enough to recognize. Practice having different characters react differently to a single issue. Make your characters individual.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses Season Five Episode Six, Micropodcasts.
[Howard] Three minutes long at a time, because we’re in a really big hurry to answer all these questions.
[Dan] And we’re in a hurry five times.

[Howard] [whistle] All right, let’s go. Brandon?
[Brandon] All right. First question. What is the right way to kill a character?
[Howard] Bombs. [Laughter] Bombs. That’s right, you wanted me to go fast. Bombs, guns, knives, poison…
[Dan] No, no. Not relatives. Characters.
[Brandon] You killed one by having them ju… fall. You didn’t even list that.
[Dan] The right way to kill a character is to have it mean what it’s supposed to mean. There are some characters…
[Brandon] Thank you, the Sphinx.
[Dan] Whose death… I just cut this podcast in half with my mind. There are some characters whose deaths don’t matter. And then there are characters…
[Howard] Redshirts.
[Dan] Redshirts. They can just die because the swamp monster eats them. Main characters should not die because the swamp monster eats them. In a… since you mentioned redshirts, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, when the actress playing Jadzia Dax left the show, they didn’t give her a meaningful death. She essentially died accidentally in a drive-by shooting. It didn’t mean anything, and everyone was very disappointed with it because they wanted a payoff. They wanted it to affect something.
[Howard] I’d say that if you want to have a character’s death be meaningless, and the meaninglessness is in and of itself tragic, you can do that.
[Dan] Yes. One of the Law and Orders did that very effectively.
[Brandon] Right. It can happen. Again, bringing up George R.R. Martin, this is often how… he does it both ways. Generally, I avoid that. When someone dies in one of my books, I don’t sit and I think, “Oh, I’m going to kill this character and make everyone sad.” But I do sit down and say, “Okay, this character… they’re taking these chances. I have to allow them to take these chances. These chances sometimes are going to turn into them paying the ultimate consequence. It’s almost like the characters are demanding the right to put themselves in danger. Sometimes I let them get out of the danger. Sometimes, the story, the plot, what they are doing demands that they don’t survive it. But that’s when I kill characters, when they have specifically taken that risk.
[Howard] There was an episode of House where a character died. It was a suicide. We spend the whole episode where a couple of the characters are trying to figure out, “Why did this character commit suicide? What could we have done to prevent this?” The whole gist of the episode was, “You couldn’t have. There weren’t enough signs. Sometimes these things just happen and the rest of us have to move on.” If that’s the way you’re going to kill a character, that’s not a bad message for your other characters to arrive at.
[Dan] No. Very cool.
[Howard] That’s two minutes and 50 seconds. Time for another question.

[Brandon] Here we go. This one’s from Michelle on twitter. Name some authors that have influenced your writing and why. What is it about them that brought your own talent out?
[Dan] K. First one. A. A. Milne. The Winnie the Pooh guy. When I was a kid, I had the Christopher Robin poems. I’ve actually only read the Winnie the Pooh story once. I’ve read to point of destruction two different copies of the Christopher Robin poems because I love the way he plays with words. He’s having so much fun with what he does that as a child reading those, I said, “That’s it. I’m going to be a writer. That’s what I want to do with my life.”
[Brandon] There are lots of writers I could mention and lots of them I have mentioned. I often mention Robert Jordan. This time I’m going to mention Melanie Rawn, because if you haven’t read her Sunrunner books… her use of magic mixed with her ability to write characters that I cared about but sometimes made bad decisions are very big things that influenced me as a writer.
[Howard] Tolkein introduced me to the world of it’s not our world. From there, I went to Stephen R. Donaldson, because I figured I loved epic fantasy. I ended up reading Larry Niven and discovered I loved science fiction. Brin, Bujold, Baxter, Bear… those are the Bs.
[Dan] We could go on… for 24 more letters. Victor Hugo is one of my very favorite authors. I love Les Miserables. I love the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I love the way he lends despair an incredible beauty. Some horrible thing can happen, but it is just heartbreakingly gorgeous the way it happens. To find that the beauty in the gutter, so to speak, is Victor Hugo’s big gift. I think that’s influenced me quite a bit.
[Howard] Does the question allow us to talk about recent reads that have influenced…
[Brandon] Yeah. Go ahead.
[Howard] Jay Lake’s Mainspring with a steampunk universe where the universe itself is made out of clockwork was mindblowing and I loved that. Charlie Stross’s Glasshouse which deals with a post-singularity universe and was mindblowing. These are things that I love to read because they show me ideas taken to the nth degree that I toyed with once, maybe, but never went there. Somebody else went there and did it brilliantly.
[Brandon] I’m going to mention, to close this out, Pat Rothfuss. The thing that I really liked about The Name of the Wind and why… I don’t often mention why I liked it so much. Two things. First off, you get a frame story in a way that made me say, “Wow. This could really work. This isn’t a cliche.” We talk about not doing this sort of stuff just because flashbacks are terrible. Then he goes and shows me that it can be done wonderfully. Second, because it’s simply… and this kind of plays to the same concept… taking a well-worn trope and doing it in a brilliant way is still a viable way to write a story.
[Howard] Absolutely.
[Dan] In his case, it’s the apprentice goes to magical school, the Harry Potter thing, but done so brilliantly and so new.
[Brandon] But see, before I read that, I had been in the mode of, “No, you can’t do any of these old things. We can’t, we can’t, we can’t… they’re overdone, they’re overdone, they’re overdone.” I read this and said, “No, it still can be done.”
[Howard] All right. Next question.

[Brandon] Question. When do you quit your day job?
[Howard] I quit my day job exactly 6 years ago today. Today being the date of the recording. September 20, 2010. I quit my day job because I prayed about it and God told me to. I think that’s a fantastic time to do it. It did not make economic sense at the time for me. Dan?
[Dan] I quit my day job when I had enough money and my wife told me that I was allowed. Which basically means we had enough money and we were covered by insurance. At that point, I quit. Pretty much that day, that minute.
[Brandon] I quit my day job when I got my first advance check. I was living in my friend’s basement paying $300 a month for rent and utilities. That was pretty much my only expense. I got to do it. I wasn’t married at the time. The question the person asked when do you quit your day job? My advice to Dan was to quit it sooner than you think you can. He later on told me…
[Howard] That’s when I quit it. I didn’t think it was possible when I did it, but it worked.
[Brandon] Yeah… because… it’s only really goes out to people who have sold fiction. Don’t do it until you’ve sold a novel and you’ve got enough to live on for a little while. But as soon as that book comes out, there are going to be so many more demands on your time. The best writing time you will ever have in your life in many ways will be the time after you’ve sold something before a book has come out because you have very few demands on your time.
[Dan] The business aspect of your new life has not kicked in yet, and you just get to be a poor artist.
[Brandon] Right. But a successful one.
[Dan] Yeah, but a poor successful one for a few months.
[Howard] I would not recommend that people do it the way I did it. I had three months of bills paid in the bank, and no book deal. I mean, I thought I had a book deal, but it fell apart. It was another 15 months before we got Schlock books out and started making money with them. Yes, we scraped by for 15 months on what was initially three months of money. Crazy.
[Dan] Yeah.

[Brandon] All right. Next question comes from Kyle, who asks, “Brandon. Would killing you and richly partaking of your flesh grant me your writing powers?”
[Dan] Man, I hope so.
[Howard] Let’s do it.
[Dan] Because otherwise my weekend is shot.

[Brandon] Okay. There is a real one. From Lynn on twitter. What do you do when you discover you hate a character?
[Howard] Bombs.
[Dan] Your own character or somebody else’s?
[Brandon] A character you’re writing. A friend’s main character is perpetually captured, poisoned, or unconscious. They’re just tired of them. What do you do?
[Dan] Well…
[Howard] bombs, guns, drugs, falling… don’t forget falling.
[Dan] Okay. Well, killing them off is a good solution. Redefining them radically is another one.
[Brandon] But what if it’s a main character? What are we doing?
[Dan] If it’s a main character and you just can’t stand them at all, take a good look at it. Figure out why you can’t stand them. Then, honestly, see to what extent you could redefine them. If you want to give the person a wild change of philosophy because of the things that have happened to them, and that would spin your book off in a new and interesting direction, try it out.
[Howard] Here’s a specific thing you can do. Have something happen to that character that is grossly unfair. They are unjustly accused of something. There’s a huge inequity. That’s one way for us to like somebody more than we would without actually changing their character.

[Brandon] All right. Time to do this week’s book of the week. I am going to promo, based off of that question earlier about favorite books that influenced us. I’m going to use Dragonflight by  Anne McCaffrey.
[Dan] Oh, good choice.
[Randy] We’ve not promo’ed this one before. This was a book that opened my eyes to the fantasy genre in a way that no other book even still has done. It was based off of a Hugo award winning short story. Turned into a novel. It is a genius blending of science fiction and fantasy. Which you might notice is a theme in my own books. Wonderful use of viewpoint. Also using some familiar tropes to us now. But I think even if they’re familiar to you now, reading this book, if you haven’t before, will completely blow you away. So. The book is Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. Go to audiblepodcast.com/excuse to get your free book and have a 15 day free trial. We post the details on our website at Writing Excuses if you want to know further about that.

[Howard] Okay. We gotta hit two more questions.
[Brandon] Sure. All right. How do you respond to accusations of being a Mary Sue? Dan, you and Howard both have been accused of this apparently. How do you respond?
[Dan] I usually respond by putting the person ill at ease. Because they’ll come up to me in a bookstore and they’ll say, “So, are you really like your main character?” Or “So, how do you do all this research?” Well, it’s all hands on. Then they stop asking silly questions.
[Howard] Stand a little closer to me and ask that question again. In a softer tone of voice. I like your voice. I like your shirt. And they stop. I’ve watched it happen.
[Dan] How did you write such a compelling sociopath? Well, it’s an autobiography.
[Brandon] Speaking of Pat Rothfuss, someone asked this at Comic Con this year. Just to the panel of me and him and Christopher Paolini. I think it was mostly directed at Christopher Paolini because people were accusing him of Mary Sue. Pat Rothfuss had this great answer where he leaned in and said, “I don’t. I think it’s great. I love that people think my character’s a Mary Sue, because then they think I’m awesome.” He says, “What’s wrong with that?” He said, “I sit down and I write characters… I write this character that I think is awesome, that is everything that a lot of people would want to be. I think there is nothing wrong with that.” He says. It only is an accusation that hurts if the character is a poorly written character who is a Mary Sue or a Marty Stu, would be the response there.
[Howard] People think that Kevyn is obviously me because both of us are bald and wear glasses and have facial hair and are short and may be a little bit on the pudgy side. I… that comparison wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t actually drawn him that way. Kevyn is based on a friend of mine. He’s not based on me. Physically, he looks a lot like me because I think the world needs more short, dumpy, bald, glasses-wearing, facial-hairy heroes. But… I’m pleading the Canadian girlfriend defense. He’s not based on me, he’s based on somebody else you don’t know.

[Brandon] Last question comes from Brian on twitter, who asks, “What are some basic tools for ensuring that all characters in a story have different voices?”
[Silence]
[Howard] [whistle]
[Dan] You base them all on yourself… no…
[Brandon] Base them all on the voices in Dan’s head.
[Dan] But I do actually in a lot of cases I’ll… yeah, I will base them on different people that I know. Not personality wise, diction wise. Just listening to the way my friends speak, and then if I say, “Oh, well, I’m going to get this guy just think about him, think about his voice saying these words,” that will actually change the words that I’m writing.
[Howard] In comics, we talk about the silhouette test, where each character’s silhouette has to be distinct enough that you can tell exactly who it is just from the silhouette. I think the analog for the silhouette test in fiction is to take a paragraph spoken by that character, and line those paragraphs up. If you can’t tell that these are different people, then they’re not different enough. I’m not sure how to make it work, but that’s your acid test, is to stack those paragraphs up and see if you can tell who’s doing the talking.
[Brandon] I would suggest that, just as a practice, picking some aspect of the world… either religion or political issue or some economic issue… pick one and then make sure that each of your characters in the scene have a violent reaction that is different from every one of the others on that single issue… an issue that central to that scene. Do this as practice a couple times. This isn’t something necessarily to do for every book, but it’s something you can practice. If everybody has just a powerful reaction to this religion, and they’re all different… practice writing that way and letting their passion sculpt them as characters rather than letting your mindset sculpt them or letting your natural flow of dialogue sculpt them. See what happens.
[Howard] We’ve talked about this time and again. This question keeps coming up, this topic keeps coming up in the cast. I don’t think we can stress strongly enough how important doing this well is to writing a good book. If your characters are all individuals and all work well as individuals, as separate people… pull that off, and… the world is your oyster?
[Dan] I think it’s important to point out, though, that a lot of that is very subjective, and you’re going to get a wide mix of reactions, no matter what you do. In… for I Am Not a Serial Killer, on the same day, I got two reviews. One of which said, “His dialogue was horrible. If I removed the dialogue tags, there would be no way to tell who was speaking.” And then another review said, “The dialogue was brilliant, and all the characters were very different and unique.” Those reviews came out on the same day about the same book. So… the way people read your book…
[Howard] They were actually written by the same person, but you couldn’t tell the difference.
[Dan] I know.

[Brandon] All right. Let’s wrap this up with a writing prompt. I’m going to go ahead and use one again this time.
[Dan] Excellent.
[Brandon] by saying the writing prompt is that these two different people who criticized Dan’s book actually both read different books somehow.
[Dan] And thought it was the same one.
[Brandon] And thought it was the same book. They both had the same title, they both said they were written by Dan Wells, but somehow two different books were released. How and why is your writing prompt.
[Dan] Compelling.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses, now go write.