We Make Books Podcast

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Kaelyn: My sister just finished reading the Grisha trilogy. And she was, of course, more of a fan of the Six of Crows after reading that. But one of the things she messaged me- she was like “yeah, the ending was kind of whatever, but it is very clear that this person was reading Harry Potter when they wrote this.”

R: [laughs]

K: And I said “Yeah, that definitely comes through.” She gave me this whole list of like, book two is basically just The Order of the Phoenix, and the end battle with all of the Grisha and the stand downs, all this stuff, and I was like “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” To be honest with you, I kinda limped through the end of that book, I wasn’t thinking about that too much. But anyways, it got me thinking about influences in writing and how writers are influenced and how in some cases that’s something that we’re like “Yes! You can tell that this writer was influenced by such-and-such, and they weave it so beautifully into their story.” And sometimes you get my sister calling me to complain about how she basically just read Harry Potter with Russian witches. 

R: So was your sister accusing the author in any way of plagiarism?

K [overlapping]: Not plagiarism.

R [overlapping]: As a reader I’m curious, like how the reader perceives it when it’s that clear when someone’s been influenced. 

K: I should’ve asked her before we started recording this - and this is something we’ll get to in there - I couldn’t tell if my sister was accusing the author of laziness or unoriginality. 

R: Okay.

K: That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about today as we’re talking about influence. What is influence, how are writers influenced? How’s the best way to leverage and utilize that influence? And when does influence cross into the realm of the negative? When is it no longer praise worthy? When is it, for instance, lazy, contrived, unoriginal, or, in worst case scenario, bordering into plagiarism? 

R: Yeah, because that’s a tricky thing - if we always wrote a completely original story, you wouldn’t have something like Joseph Campbell’s The Hero's Journey. Because we wouldn’t have a set format that a story would take. So when somebody accuses a fantasy book of being “Star Wars with elves,” well, Star Wars was a Greek epic in space. 

K: Oh, I would’ve called it a Western.

R: Okay fine. [overlapping] I mean, people have called it a Western.

K: [overlapping] I mean, both work. Both work. [laughs]

R: Yeah, but I’m just saying, The Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell is, he’s studying the ancient literature, so that’s why I decided to say Greek. But if we could always write something that was completely original, there would be no way to study literature with comparisons and contrasts. There are always going to be parallels between stories written in a similar culture by people who are writing in a similar society. Like, a hundred years apart, you would not necessarily detect the influence of Harry Potter in the Grishaverse. But they’re not written a hundred years apart - it was maybe a decade, probably not.

K: I’d be curious to go back and try to time out when these books were being written, and when that coincides with the release of the latter half of the Harry Potter books. But anyways, real quick, I’m big into definitions, so let’s talk about definitions. Influence is the capacity of something - a person, a situation, a circumstance - to have an effect on another person, on the development of the situation, on the behavior of someone or something. Or, in some cases, even the effect itself. You’ll notice there that influence is kind of framed as both proactive and reactive. You can influence something, or you can be influenced. We’re talking today about being influenced. 

R: And we’re not talking about Instagram. 

K: [laughs] Oh, God. You know what’s funny? I went through this whole thing and I didn’t even think about the concept of influencers, and now I’m depressed.

R: Because you didn’t or because now you are?

K: [laughs] Because now I am.

R: Okay. I’m sorry. I take it back, I didn’t say anything. 

K: [laughs] So, writers don’t write in a void. It’s sort of a reverse Heisenberg principle, which is “whatever you study will also change.” Whatever you read changes you, or whatever you consume changes you. So, writers don’t write in a void. If you took a baby and raised them in a box with no interaction with the outside world whatsoever, well, to be honest I’m not sure they’d be capable of putting together an interesting story because they’ve had no influence. 

R: You know what’s funny, that’s why I don’t have kids. Because I thought about this kind of thing frequently in high school, like “what would happen if you raised a child in a padded room? And you never interacted with them, and they never saw another human?” So you’re welcome, world, that I have not raised any children. Those children are welcome because I did not abuse them in such a manner. 

K: [laughs] 

R: But it’s good to hear that someone else has had these thoughts. Although, Kaelyn and I did originally bond over the fact that we’re terrified of the idea of raising children. 

K: Pregnancy is just -

R: And pregnancy. It’s not for everybody. I recognize that for some people it’s a beautiful process, but for Kaelyn and for me, it is body horror. 

K: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there’s an entire nother skeleton in your skeleton. [laughs]

R: Yes. And it’s growing. [overlapping] It’s getting larger. 

K [overlapping]: It keeps getting bigger.

R: And if you’ve never seen an MRI of a baby’s skull, there’s a lot of teeth in there. 

K: Yeah, also they’re squishy.

R: Well, the MRI doesn’t necessarily show that. It just shows all those chompers, waiting. Waiting. 

K: Yeah. There’s a lot of extra teeth in there. 

R: Okay. [laughs] Where were we going?

K [overlapping]: So for our writing-

R [overlapping]: A child raised in a padded cell would probably write a different kind of story than somebody who’s been exposed to Harry Potter. 

K: Yeah, and if you take out every third word, it’s their plan to destroy the world with their laser beams. 

R: This reminds me of the book The Artist’s Way. I think it’s a month-long program designed to improve your creativity and I think maybe even to come up with… it’s like NaNoWriMo but it’s very classist and elitist. 

K: [laughs]

R: But the first thing it asks you to do is swear off all media for the month.

K: Okay.

R: And I put the book down right there.

K: [laughs]

R: Because I was like, that is literally impossible. I was in art school at the time, so I could not promise that I wasn’t going to have to look at media. And also, this was written in 1992, before anybody was logging onto the internet daily. 

K: Yeah, it was much easier to walk away from media for a month. 

R: And I was trying to read it, I think, in 1999 or 2000, and it was even easier, at that point, to walk away from media than it would be now. 

K: Yep.

R: But, yes, it’s called The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. And I imagine that Julia Cameron has a very nice life and is able to unplug from media whenever it is convenient for her to do so.

K: Well, in 1992 that meant “turn off the TV.”

R: Right, it meant “don’t pick up a newspaper” or, you know.

K: Yeah.

R: In 2016 they re-released a 25th anniversary edition, and I can’t imagine they did much to it, but it really probably needed a lot of re-examining to -

K: Yeah. It’s - 

R: - to even be relevant in 2016, I can’t even imagine. 

K: Now, was the purpose of this to do a detox of influence from your life?

R: Yes. That is exactly what it was, to avoid influence for the month and find out what you write, not what the world around you influences you to write. But I think in her case, she was treating world influence and media and current events as a negative. 

K: Mhm.

R: And I would argue that if you are responding to the world around you, then the politics of your creativity is going to be more relevant and more well-informed. And I think that’s a good thing. 

K: Well, yeah. And this is something that we can certainly talk about with influence - current influence versus longevity. You’ll see a lot of writers that go out of their way to not incorpo

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

We Make Books Ep. 71 Transcription

Kaelyn: Today we’re talking about villains and antagonists, and why they’re not actually the same thing, except in the cases that they are.

Rekka: Yes, exactly.

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: Perfect. I think that nails it. Sometimes they’re not the same thing, sometimes they are.

K: Yeah, and we’ll kinda get to this but, most villains are antagonists - most, not all. Not all antagonists are villains. And in fact you will likely, in any given story, have multiple antagonists, not all of whom are the villain. I went through and really dug up all of this stuff; shockingly, the word ‘hero’ is the one with the most definitions attached to it, and most different con -

R: We’re not talking about heroes today! We’re not!

K [overlapping]: Well we - but we have to, because we don’t get villains without heroes, and we don’t get antagonists without protagonists. Both villains and antagonists are defined and really only exist so that they can oppose or create conflict for the hero or protagonist. It kinda makes you wonder, if left to their own devices, maybe they’re just a mad scientist in a lab somewhere.

R: Maybe they’re the hero of their own story.

K: Yeah, and then suddenly someone shows up to fight them and now they’re the bad guy. [laughing]

R: “I was perfectly lawful and good until you showed up!”

K: Exactly, yes. The basic difference between a villain and an antagonist is that an antagonist is somebody who is there to contend or oppose the main character, typically the protagonist of the story. They’re there to create opposition. A villain is doing that, but they’re evil.

R: [laughs]

K [laughing]: What they’re doing is, the opposition that they’re creating is either causing harm, causing suffering, will destroy the human race. It could be something more on a micro scale, where they’ve kidnapped the daughter of the main character; maybe they’re trying to get their lemonade stand shut down so that they can sell lemonade that’s gonna turn people into lizard people. An antagonist at the surface is just somebody who’s doing things that’s causing problems for the protagonist. They don’t necessarily have to be evil.

R: They could just be a rival.

K: Yeah. Or any number of other things we’re gonna get to here, but. And in fact as I mentioned, as you’re reading a book, you’re frequently gonna come across antagonists that are not actually evil. There’s gonna be an antagonist who’s the villain who may be evil at some point, not always, but there will be people that are antagonists. I will use an example that we love to use: Gideon the Ninth. Harrow definitely serves as an antagonist to Gideon through the book. But Harrow is not evil.

R: Right.

K: That’s a great example of a villain operating without the audience knowing that the protagonist is coming into direct conflict with them because, we don’t really find out who the villain of the story is until the very very end of it. Then we can look back and go like ‘Ah yes I see all of these things now.’ The villain in the story, and spoilers if you haven’t read Gideon the Ninth, but also if you listen to this podcast and you still haven’t read it -

R: You obviously are never going to read it at this point.

K [laughing]: Yeah. The villain turns out to be Dulcinia, who is impersonating another character - and I stayed away, when writing notes for this and getting into the philosophical of what is evil and what is not - for these purposes we’re gonna call her motives evil, in that she is trying to hunt down and destroy a lot of different people for her own reasons. The conflict that we come into there actually causes the antagonist and the protagonist in this, Gideon and Harrow, to sort of team up to oppose the actual villain, which by the way is a very common writing trope. Antagonists are a necessary component to any story even if they are not the source of central conflict.

R: Yeah, because - and I know you’re gonna lean into this example - but in Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy feels like he is central to everything in Harry’s life, even though most of the time he just shows up to spew some awful thing he’s overheard his parents say and then go away again.

K: Draco is a good example of an antagonist who goes through a lot of different forms. Draco in the first few books of the series, he kinda shows up to make some comments and then leaves. He’s not really doing much. Even in the second book when he’s talking about the Chamber of Secrets and the heir of Slytherin and he actually is sitting around going ‘God I wish there was a way for me to help him’ - well, okay, that’s what minions do. Small antagonists.

R: Most of the time everything that Draco Malfoy does or says is just to reinforce the fact that he’s a jerk.

K: Yeah, Draco just sorta pops up to remind all of us that there’s Voldemort out there and his followers are terrible, because we don’t see or interact directly with Voldemort for a lot of these books, so Draco’s there to kind of remind us that he’s out there. But then we finally get to book six, when Draco is given a very specific task to do: kill Dumbledore. And those listening at home, ‘okay well doesn’t that make him a villain?’ Well - does it? Because first of all he doesn’t really actually wanna do this, but he has to. Second, he doesn’t do it. At the end, he’s not the one who carries this out. So again, everything’s relative here. Because to Harry, he is just this thing that Harry feels he needs to track down and find out what’s happening. You could go so far as to argue that Harry is creating his own conflict here, because if he just left Draco alone and went about his life trying to find these Horcruxes, things would’ve gone a lot smoother.

R: [laughs]

K: Dumbledore keeps telling Harry, ‘Hey. I got the Draco situation under control, don’t worry about it.’ Not in so many words and maybe if he had, again, things would’ve gone differently -

R: You know what, communicating clearly is the antagonist of a plot.

K: Okay. So that’s interesting that you say that, because antagonists are not always people.

R: Mhm.

K: Antagonists can be certain external factors that the protagonist has to contend with. A good example of this is nature, in something like the movie Castaway. It’s not evil -

R [overlapping]: Okay. I was gonna say Deep Impact, like the meteor is not a villain, the meteor is an antagonist.

K: Yeah. Exactly. It’s not evil. The meteor or nature or something is not saying like, ‘Yes, I will destroy the world, and then also Tom Hanks.’ [chuckles]

R: If it can twirl its mustache, it might be a villain.

K: It’s just there, and it’s something that the characters have to contend with. It can also be something supernatural; the thing I thought of off the top of my head was The Nothing in NeverEnding Story. It’s operating unconsciously, if you will, in the sense that it doesn’t seem to have nefarious purposes. It’s just existing, and it’s just growing. The characters are opposing it, they’re trying to find a way to stop it, but it’s not evil in and of itself.

R: A hero trying to stop global warming is not fighting a villain. Unless -

K: Ah, there’s some villains in there.

R: Yeah never mind, I take all that back.

K: An antagonist can also be something like a society or an unjust system that the hero has to live and function in. The example that came to mind was Les Miserables. The main character, Jean Valjean, is sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread because his sister and her children were starving. And we as the audience are meant to understand here that, while Javert - I believe is the name of the officer - is doing his duty by arresting him because he did commit theft, we understand that it is the dire circumstances of his society and his country that caused him to do this. His whole struggle and story is not only trying to lift himself up and overcome this system, but trying to one, make good on people he had hurt and things he had done in the process of this, but two, help other people that are also stuck in this system by hopefully coming up with a way to better it in the long run. I won’t say overthrow it because he actively avoids that whole -

R [overlapping]: Right.

K: - part of the process in this story, but he is in his own way trying to get things to a better place.

R: Yeah.

K: I went throug

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Episode Transcript (by Rekka)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Kaelyn: I love MacGuffins.

R: Or weenies. I think we should start calling them "weenies" again.

K: Go back to the original name. Yeah, it's funny because like, I think MacGuffin has like a negative connotation around it and I love it as a plot device where it's just like, there's this thing. And everyone wants it. In some cases we don't even really know what it does. There's like oh, the suitcase from pulp fiction. That's a great MacGuffin.

R: That was going to be my example.

K: In one of the Mission: Impossible movies, the one with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, you know, they're trying to get this, this thing from this guy. And Phillip Seymour Hoffman is this like the most terrifying crime lord in the world. And he can't get this thing. We literally never find out what it does, why they need to keep it out of his hands so badly and, and have it for themselves. But yeah we kinda conceived of this episode is talking about MacGuffin versus plot devices. So, let's be clear. All MacGuffins are plot devices, not all plot devices are MacGuffins. So as I always like to do a, you know, a little bit of history here, MacGuffin the terms often chalked up as being coined by, Alfred Hitchcock and his friend and screenwriter, MacPhail, but it actually goes back quite a bit before that there was an actress in the 1920s named of Pearl White, which I can only assume as a stage name.

R: Her movies brought to you by Colgate.

K: I genuinely hope that's a stage name. But she was in a lot of spy movies or action movies where everyone was chasing after something. And she was in so many of them that she started calling the items in question "weenies" because it didn't matter. And the, it was almost getting a little formulaic in her movies that it could have been, you know, like a roll of film, a document, a, a key that opens a certain, you know, safe or something. It really didn't matter what they were. It was just, you know, these suspense action inspired movies, everyone trying to chase down the same object.

R: The reason that it doesn't matter is because no one actually ever really uses it. You just want to have it, right?

K: Yeah. Yeah. It's frequently MacGuffin-related plots are resolved by "the real treasure was the friends we made along the way," which is one of the more infuriating endings.

R: I like friends.

K: Friends are great. Yeah. But like, okay. So I was going to get to this, to this later and the thing that, like one of my favorite examples of a MacGuffin that becomes un-MacGuffinned and is National Treasure That film is very rare in that they actually find and maintain hold of the treasure in the end of it, think of like, you know, like the Goonies or Pirates of the Caribbean, like Treasure Planet, they all find the treasure, but they don't really actually get to keep any of it. National Treasure really upended that by, by letting those characters not only find it, but then we find out how much money they got for it.

R: And Disney's Atlantis. They did have the treasure at the end, too.

K: That's true.

R: They didn't tell anyone they had treasure. They just suddenly were all very wealthy.

K: Yes, it was very good. So yeah, MacGuffins are by definition, it's a functionally meaningless interchangeable object whose only purpose is to drive the plot. The function of a MacGuffin is that there are characters or multiple groups of characters that want it, and they're all competing or outwitting or racing to get this object.

R: The method by which it drives the plot. It creates the tension between different parties.

K: Yes, exactly. Or it could be, you know, something like a treasure hunt where, you know, the MacGuffin is the treasure. So we know what its function is. It's going to make somebody rich, but it really is just there as an object to be desired. One of the fun things I learned while doing, you know, putting some notes together, researching this is it's generally accepted that one of the first MacGuffin in commonly accepted MacGuffin and literature was the holy grail, which is very common plot device for Arthurian legend. And then, you know, later tales where this is also treasure. Yes. It had religious significance, but therefore making it a worthwhile pursuit for these holy and sanctified nights. But yeah, it was functionally a MacGuffin because once you get the holy grail, what do you do with it? Well, it depends. If you're in an Indiana Jones movie or not, I know. The Arthurian knights were not not planning to make themselves immortal by that. They were planning to just get it and put it somewhere to look at it and go, it's the holy grail. Yay. So MacGuffins, like I said, it's got a negative connotation around it, I believe. And I do think that is that's very unfair. It's often treated like, well, it's just something that they had to put in there to get the characters, to act, to do something. And it's like, well, yeah, but that's a book.

R: Yeah. You need a plot.

K: That's how plot devices work. I think where MacGuffins get a bad rep so to speak is because they're meaningless and interchangeable. There are a lot of books, movies, TV shows where the MacGuffin is interchangeable. How many, you know, heist films have you watched where it's like, we need to get this thing in order to, you know, make this next step. And then it turns out that it's like, oh no, wait, things have changed. We need get this other thing. It doesn't have to be the same MacGuffin through the course of the story. They can change based on, you know, how the plot's moving or circumstances or the needs or wants of the characters. As I mentioned before, all MacGuffin are plot devices, not all plot devices are a MacGuffin. So that was kind of, you know, we wanted to talk a little bit about what a MacGuffin is and what it isn't thereby, what is a plot device and what its function is.

K: Plot devices are basically a technique and narrative use to move the plot forward. It can be anything from, you know, characters and their actions to objects, to gifts of mysterious origins that we're not quite sure about. Now. It can be relationship, plot devices cover a lot of different things. One of them is MacGuffin. So, you know, saying like, well saying this object, it's just a plot device. Well, it might not be just a plot device. It might be a MacGuffin, but plot devices can be other things. Chekov's gun is of course a plot device. The Chekov's gun rule is if you're going to have a gun on the stage in the first act of a play, somebody needs to fire it in the third act of a play because otherwise it's just, you know, a decoration at that point. I don't like that.

R: I don't think it's just that it's a decoration it's that your audience is going to wonder about it and that you don't want to distract or disappoint.

K: If there's a play going on and there's a gun hanging on the wall and it's set in a hunting lodge that seems fairly normal.

R: But for example, if I see somebody in a movie, pick a rifle out of their nightstand and tuck it into their belt, I know that, you know, something's going to escalate.

K: Yeah, exactly. Or at least we're, we should be reading into that. Character is planning for there to be some kind of a conflict or a scenario in which they may need to defend themselves. Right. But let's talk a little bit about pot devices. As I mentioned, they're things that are intended to move the plot along. There's an endless list of things that are plot devices. And as I said, these can be anything from relationships. Like a love triangle is a frequently as plot device. Definitely one of my least favorites. First of all, they're very rarely actually triangles. They're more like two lines converging on a single point in order for there to be a triangle, all three people involved need to be having—

R: So is the object of the other two's interest a MacGuffin?

K: Could be, I've talked endlessly about what a ridiculous character Bella from Twilight is. And I mean, she's, she's borderline a MacGuffin. Like really, you know what, God, that's a really good thought experiment. I'm going to have to like find some kind of a summary now and go, go through this and see if like Bella is actually a MacGuffin.

R: If the character themself doesn't have any agency, like the damsel in distress that you don't even see until you storm the castle in the third act.

K: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we'll get to things that can be MacGuffin that you might not think would be a MacGuffin. So one

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

Glitter + Ashes edited by dave ring

Silk & Steel edited by Janine A. Southard 

Grace's Links:

Website

ArtStation portfolio

Twitter

Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

R: Today we are talking to Grace Fong about book art. Now we’ve had someone on in the past to talk about cover art and art-directing a commissioned cover. However, I think Colin would forgive me for saying that you do not want Colin to do the artwork.

Kaelyn: He would, yes.

R: Yes. [laughing] Would you like to introduce yourself?

Grace: Hi, I’m Grace! My pronouns are she/her, I work on the narrative design team over at Wizards of the Coast for Magic: The Gathering. I am also a sometimes-writer, and for the past five years I’ve been doing illustration work for various speculative fiction magazines, such as Strange Horizons, and some anthologies like Silk & Steel and Glitter + Ashes.

K: Rekka this is our first like, real artist.

R: It is difficult to get an artist on a podcast. I have tried -

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: - for this podcast and the previous one and it is a tricky business. So Grace, you live up to your name in showing up.

G [laughing]: We don’t like talking to people, we just like sitting at our computers.

R: I completely understand, but doesn’t mean I’m gonna give up trying, so. We’ve finally done it.

K: Awesome. So I have been involved in some cover art not as the primary person but as the editor, where I have to look at it and go ‘yeah okay that kinda tracks with what’s happening here.’ We have talked a lot on this podcast before about what to expect out of your cover art, and how involved the writers are going to be in it, and the answer is typically not very, at all. So, when you’re doing this, who is it that you’re primarily working with?

G: When I do work for magazines and books I’m usually working with the editor of the publication, so for the anthology it’s usually an anthology editor, or for a short fiction magazine it is usually the art director of the magazine or the editor of the magazine.

K: Can you walk us through the process of how you get started on this? They’re obviously not coming to you with a blank slate, they’re coming to you with a series of stories that may or may not have a theme. How do you get started working with this editor?

G: It really varies, depending on the type of publication. So for anthologies, because they cover a lot of different narrative ground, usually we try to come up with an image that encapsulates the theme of the anthology. Like for Silk & Steel, I was doing one of the promotional postcards for them. We knew we were doing femme-femme, high fantasy, sword-and-scorcery kind of stuff. So I knew that those characters would have to be reflective of the book’s content. Sometimes editors will give me a particular story that they aim to showcase for the publication, in which case I’ll usually read the story if it’s under 6,000 words, and try and come up with a composition that fits it the best that I possibly can. This is how I work with Strange Horizons.

K: At what point do you usually come into the process? Are you typically involved right from the get go, or do they kind of wait until they have most of the story material?

G: Usually when editors are doing their selections, they will wait until they have the written content first, because the written content is gonna dictate which artist they’re gonna go to, to look for. Whose style best captures the feeling of their product? It’s actually similar to traditional publication as well. The art directors at major publishing houses usually have a manuscript or summary for new debut authors whose manuscripts are already completed, and then they find an artist based off the existing manuscript. Some covers are completed beforehand, if the publishing house knows the author, knows the brand of that author and knows the kind of proposal or piece they are in the middle of working.

K: You’re gonna be sitting down with the editor, they’re gonna give you a story that they particularly wanna feature, they’re gonna give you an overall feeling or theme or - how much creative license do you get?

R: I wanna interrupt because you just skipped like a really huge part: the creative brief.

K: Yes.

R: So what you just said, they’re gonna give you a mood, they’re gonna give you a theme or whatever, this is a whole step. Don’t smooth it over like that. And this is something that actually Grace’s got a little bit of a reputation for her knowledge on. So Grace I know you in, I believe it’s November, are doing the Clarion workshop about creating a brief for a cover artist, right?

G: Yes.

R: So let’s give this the spotlight it deserves! [laughing]

G [overlapping]: Okay.

K: Yeah, I’ve written a couple, I shouldn’t have skipped over that, so apologies.

G: I mean it’s a specialized skill not everyone has to do them, so yeah.

R: Well I definitely want to highlight it a bit, ‘cause you helped me with one -

G [laughing]: That’s true!

R: What goes into the creative brief? Kaelyn named a couple of things, and this sort of forms the silhouette around which Kaelyn’s question pivots, which is how much creative control do you get as an artist? So what’s in the brief that you consider sacred, and what’s in the gaps that you get to play with?

G: So, that -

K: Well first, and I’m sorry to cut you off - I’m sorry - can we say what - [laughing]

R [overlapping]: I’m gonna interrupt you back!

K: That’s fair, that’s fair. Can we kind of say what a creative brief is?

G: Oh yeah, sure. So essentially when you are starting to work with an artist, an artist does not have the time to read an entire manuscript of 400+ pages. Their pricing is usually based off of the time that they’re gonna spend creating your artwork. So you need to provide them with what is known as a creative brief, or art brief. And these are small documents that are very instructional, no more than like a page or two long, that explains the kind of image and feel that you are going for, for this assignment. The assumption is that you would have done your research and sent this brief to an artist that you think would do a good job for the publication that you’re sourcing art for. So you’re not gonna go to someone who does only black and white work if you want to sell your book with a big, bright, neon, 80s kind of cover.

G: ‘Brief’ is kind of the keyword here. You’re essentially writing instructions for an artist. Don’t try to lead them in using prose writing, tell them what they’re gonna be drawing. It’s a bit like a recipe list. So if it’s a story about vampires and you want your vampire main character on the cover, you would specify that that’s what you’re looking for. Or, let’s say you’re trying to sell more literary up-market fiction, which doesn’t use as many figurative images. Then you would maybe make an explanation about like ‘oh this book is about a woman’s time when she was living as a child in Philadelphia.’ In which case you would sometimes kind of refine that into a visual or item metaphor that you would ask the artist to render in a specific way that captures the mood and feel of the book, and leverages the imagery that’s common to that market, so that it can reach the correct audience.

K: Gotcha. Okay. So then you’re gonna get this brief, and presumably dig into it. Do you ever receive a section of text, if there’s a scene in particular that they’d like illustrated?

G: Specific scene commissions tend not to be used for covers, because they’re not very good at selling a publication. Scene work tends to be done for interior illustration. So these the the images that go along in the story; you look at these images as you are reading these scenes. But for the front cover you’re trying to provide one image that sells the entire mood of the story to a particular audience. So in general you want to avoid using specific scenes, unless that scene comes in very early, because you don’t wanna spoil the ending of the book. You only have one picture to play with for a cover, meanwhile with interior

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Transcript (by Rekka)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Rekka: So today's episode is, uh, from a listener request, but I put it in the same batch of listener requests where I didn't write down the names to credit people. So you know who you are. Thank you for the idea.

Kaelyn: If you were this listener, get us on Twitter and yell at us.

Rekka: We'll add it in the show notes posthumously. Well, hopefully not posthumously.

Kaelyn: I was gonna say, "What?!"

Rekka: Posthumous to the episode.

Kaelyn: All right.

Rekka: So today we are talking about writing body language.

Kaelyn: This is, I think one of the harder things to do.

Rekka: How to be hyper-aware of where you put your hands.

Kaelyn: I have, while editing books, actually acted it out and recorded myself.

Rekka: Okay. So you have mentioned on the podcast before that you act these out, but you never mentioned that there was footage.

Kaelyn: Oh, it's gone. Don't worry. No, it doesn't, it doesn't exist.

Rekka: It's never really gone, Kaelyn.

Kaelyn: You will not see it, um. Figuring out, you know, body language without slowing down the pace of, you know, the story or the dialogue is, is difficult. So, um, I'd recorded these and then kind of gone like, okay, well, what am I doing here? Does that match up with what I'm reading? So, yeah, it's, it's hard. It's I think one of the more challenging things to do.

Rekka: I don't always think about it that way. So the reason that my characters will scratch their neck or, you know, look around the room or, um, fiddle with pages on their desk is frequently because I want to avoid using a dialogue tag because I had too many or, um, or that she said, or whatever messes with the rhythm of my, of my paragraph. So for me, I use body language as a way to use the name of the character that is saying the words without saying "character said."

Kaelyn: Yeah. So let's, uh, let's backtrack here a little bit. Why you write body language and how it's useful. So obviously the why is because we kind of need to know what the characters are doing.

Rekka: Yep. That's helpful.

Kaelyn: Everyone isn't standing perfectly rod straight in a room, staring at each other and taking turns to talk. Body language is very helpful for conveying things that are happening with the characters without actually having to say what's happening. Cultures around the world... There are certain ways that people act there are certain things that they do that convey an emotion or a feeling, even just the situation that they're in. Something like a character wringing their hands is going to convey nervousness or maybe trying to piece their thoughts together. Body language is a non-verbal form of communication that you're giving the reader. You're trying to explain what they're thinking or what they're feeling without having to actually do it. This is a very "show me, don't tell me" tool for writing.

Rekka: And that is how I find it most useful. Not because I'm worried about choreographing the perfect movements of my character across the room, but because it helps break up the inner kinda monologues, it helps break up the exposition. It helps break up the dialogue. It's like, this is the thing that's happening here in this moment. As you say, grounds the reader where if I'm trying to choreograph something, it's going to be very, it's like might be a whole paragraph of the character's movement versus it's like just a sentence and then moving on.

Kaelyn: Yeah, exactly. So, um, what did, what do they say? Something like about half of human communication is nonverbal.

Rekka: They say that. Yeah.

Kaelyn: Um, granted in the age of the internet that may have, that may have changed a bit.

Rekka: Yeah. Half of human communication is now text-based more

Kaelyn: Than that. Probably body language, as Rekka said, um, it adds depth to dialogue. It does it doesn't make it. So you have a wall of Kaelyn said, let's look over there. Sure said Rekka, I'll follow you. Instead it's Rekka gave a thumbs up and followed after her. It also is very helpful to show characters' emotions. Somebody who is relaxed and having a good time with their friends is going to have very different body language than somebody who is getting ready to, you know, go fight a dragon. For the record. Nobody fight dragons. Dragons are meant to be pet and given snacks.

Rekka: Admired.

Kaelyn: Yeah, exactly. But that's where it can certainly get a little hard, I think is trying to figure out how the balance is between describing a character's body language and their actions and what they're doing versus keeping the pace of the story. There is no good answer to this.

Kaelyn: This is something that you're only going to come up with through trial and error. And to be clear, I'm not talking about blocking. Blocking is very different from body language. If you're writing a fight scene and there's a lot of stuff going on all at once and you have to figure out, you know, who's where and how far apart they are from each other. And who's, you know, been stabbed and is lying on the ground. And are they in a position where someone's going to trip over them? That's not body language. That's.

Rekka: action.

Kaelyn: Yeah. Action.

Rekka: I like to think of it as body language adds the context to the dialogue. It communicates what the character's reactions are to things or how they're trying to use their words to manipulate a situation.

Kaelyn: Yeah. And conversely, um, body language can be a giveaway, you know, especially if you have like a first person limited POV in your book and you write that, you know, somebody that the audience is already feelin' a little iffy about has like a sadistic smirk on their face. Well, that's a good, you know, give away that they're probably up to no good. So that's another thing about body language is it's also the perception of whoever the POV is at that point.

Rekka: Yeah. And how close you are to that POV character determines a lot of how much they notice. So for example, if you have a character that you want to be fooled by someone else for half the book, then they need to notice that they have a very charming lopsided smile, as opposed to a sadistic smirk.

Kaelyn: Yes. This is another thing that you can use with unreliable narrators. Everything is open to the interpretation of the POV character. Are they wringing their hands because their nervous or are they wringing their hands because soon their laser will destroy Metropolis? Body language... So, not only to help add richness and depth to the scenes, it can also be used to manipulate and move a story in a certain direction. To make the reader think what you want them to think. Because even though all of this is nonverbal communication and we as humans are, you know, just in our daily lives are pretty good at perceiving that sometimes we're not always great at perceiving it, or sometimes we want to take it exactly the wrong way, because we've already made up our minds about something it's helping to sort of build a character and round them out a bit. Something that I really enjoy about body language is when you see a character doing the same thing over and over again, to the point where they don't, the author doesn't need to explain that's something they do when they're nervous or that's something they do when they're planning. It kind of helps your reader latch onto that character and make them feel like they know them.

Rekka: Yeah. Or they sort of know what's going on anyway. Like, oh, you're doing that thing again that you always do when you lie.

Kaelyn: Having other characters in the story recognize the repeat body language of different characters also is, I think, a good way to sort of build the story and build the characters. So actually writing it: you know, how do you, how do you know when you need to, you know, throw some body language in there? Rekka, I know you like to defer to that rather than using—

Rekka: Dialogue tags. Yeah. I would rather have somebody grind their jaw. I'm hyper-aware of how will the sound read out loud, whether in a reading or as a narrated audio book. And the repetition of dialogue tags is something that kind of catches my ear a lot. So it's, it's something that I've got a bug about. So I will always try to use a descriptive action by the character who's speaking instead. And also I find it helps kind of move that scene's plot along as well. Now maybe "he said" would be two words, whereas, you know,

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

• Unfettered Hexes Kickstarter
• Infomocracy Redbubble Shop
• dave-ring.com
• neonhemlock.com
• neonapothecary.com
• dave is @slickhop on Twitter and Instagram
• Neon Hemlock Press is @neonhemlock on Twitter and Instagram
• VOIDMERCH
• Neon Hemlock's Threadless shop
• Riddle’s Tea Shoppe
• Hailey Piper
• Glitter + Ashes anthology
• Matthew Spencer, illustrator
• This is How We Lose the Time War
• Tracy Townsend
• Dancing Star Press

Transcript (by TK)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

R: Let’s see what happens if you drape the oracle cloth over top.

dave: I have a thousand of those.

R [laughing]: Yeah.

Kaelyn: Speaking of SWAG.

d: Does that help?

R: Exhale.

d: [wheezing]

R: Yes.

K: Yes!

R: It’s not just good for laying your cards out on.

K: [laughing]

d [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: Okay! I’m gonna have to leave this in.

d: [laughing]

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: dave, why don’t you introduce yourself to start, and then we’ll get going?

d: My name’s dave ring, I’m a writer and editor of speculative fiction. I’m also the managing editor and publisher over at Neon Hemlock Press. Which comes with a bevy of other, like graphic design layout, and -

K: [laughing]

d: - products, placements, whatever else I’ve come up with lately!

K: Many, many other hats in different shapes and sizes.

R: So the reason I wanted to have dave on the podcast was because it occurred to me that something that comes up pretty frequently, especially around conference season when we’re meeting in person and around book launches as well, is that authors wanna know like ‘do I need a bookmark? How do I do a bookmark? What else can I do?’

K: ‘Do I need swag?’

R: Yeah, so swag. Swag - Kaelyn, I’m just gonna cut in to your definition and say that swag is an acronym for Stuff We All Get. So -

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: To that point, this is not going to be all free swag.

K: Yes.

R: Swag implies that it is free, that you’ll pick it up as you visit the author’s signing table, or that you’ll get it in the mail for preordering, or some little bonus bit like that. The person that we are speaking to today has taken book tie-in items and - what would you wanna call it? I don’t wanna say paraphernalia, but I love that word, so there. You’ve taken it to a whole new level. And a lot of it has to do with Kickstarter, would you blame Kickstarter for this?

d: Maybe some of it. And I like paraphernalia, the word that I am often drawn to is ‘ephemera,’ but I like both. Depending on the particular object, maybe one is more appropriate than the other. But I blame Kickstarter for a lot of things in terms -

R [overlapping]: [laughing]

d: - of connecting with a lot of the people who are buying the books that Neon Hemlock’s been putting out.

R: So it’s hard to say ‘blame’ in that sense.

d: To [unintelligible] - blame.

K: [laughing]

d: Yeah. But some of that’s been driven from that, and some of it’s been driven from just sort of nerdish excitement over different things. And then because I’m the one in charge, no one says no to me, so -

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

d: I just keep having ideas and doing the thing!

K: Let’s talk about some of the different kinds of swag, of paraphernalia, of - oh I just lost the word now - ephemera! I didn’t really know that book swag was a thing until I started going to conferences. Like obviously I’ve been to book signings and things, and there’s like bookmarks and maybe a pencil or something that they give out.

K: But then I’d get to these conferences and I was like ‘wow there’s a lot of stuff that authors are handing out, or publishers’ - like everything from those bookmarks, pins - enamel pins are a big thing. I’ve seen people that showed up with special printed editions of the book that they only had like 10 of them and they were just handing them out at the conferences and that was it. If you didn’t get them there, you were never gonna get this. It’s interesting that this is something that comes around books, because you think well the thing you get out of this is the book. Why does the book have accessories that come with it as well? But I think you kinda hit the nail on the head, this nerdy-dorkiness of like ‘I love this so much I want to be able to have it with me at all times, not just on my Kindle.’

d: Book lovers are already in this spot where you can - maybe you’ve read the book on your Kindle, but you want to have the physical book as well. So there’s already that feeling that people have, and then sometimes it sort of extends to further things. Like I remember Dancing Star has made a lot of beaded earrings that match the covers of their books and some other popular speculative books. Of course you don’t need to wear a particular pair of earrings in order to enjoy a book, but there is something sort of satisfying about -

R: When you really enjoy the book, and then suddenly you need the earrings.

d: [chuckling]

K: Look at anything from TV shows to movies to video games, like there’s all sorts of things that we wear and little accoutrements that we have that’s sort of like a signal nod-and-wink to somebody else that’s like, ‘ah yes, I also like that thing.’ I was wearing a pair of my Sailor Moon socks recently at a house party and I’d taken my shoes off, and somebody was like ‘is that Sailor Mercury on your socks?’ I was like ‘it is, yes. Yes.’

R: And that’s how you know your people.

K: Exactly. Yeah but it is this thing of like, that’s one of the - it’s a signal, it’s a secret language of how we identify each other.

R: And this is speaking from more like the fan side of why you would want to display these things, in whatever way they are meant to be displayed, whether they’re earrings or whether they’re a pin, whether they’re a sticker, a patch, something. I know that when I first started thinking of swag, I was thinking of things I have to give away for free, that are going to keep me in mind in a potential reader who isn’t ready to pick up the book or not in a position where they can buy the book.

R: Like I meet someone in a coffee shop and we’re waiting for our coffee and we end up talking and somehow it comes up that I’m a science fiction writer and they wanna know about it. If I carry bookmarks in my purse, it’s a book-related item, and it can have the sales copy on the back of the bookmark, or a blurb from another author promoting the book. And then you have some of the cover art on the other side and the title and my name, and therefore they have everything they need to find me later. And, if nothing else, they’ve got a bookmark that maybe they’ll hang on to, ‘cause the art’s cool, and then later they find it and they go ‘oh yeah,’ and it’s kind of like putting my branding in front of them multiple times. Every time they come across it, it might be one step closer to them buying the book.

R: So that’s one thought I had and why I chose bookmarks, ‘cause 1) they’re relatively cheap, paper is or at least was a relatively cheap material, and so if your swag is made of paper it’s n

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

The Dancing Plague of 1518

MICE quotient

The House of Untold Stories 

storyenginedeck.com/demo

deckofworlds.com

Peter on Twitter and everywhere

Transcript (by TK)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Kaelyn: We’re talking about tropes today, which is something that I think a lot of people hear spoken about in a negative context: falling back on using too many tropes, or stories following really common tropes.

Rekka: And we don’t appreciate that kind of shaming.

K [laughs]: No, we certainly do not trope sh--see this is gonna be a problem because I was doing research for this and the word ‘trope’ is difficult to say over and over again.

R: Trope, trope, trope, trope, trope.

K: It’s, what do they call that, when a word becomes a sound? Semantic satiation.

R: Yes.

K: Yes. The word ‘trope’ has become more of a sound to me and it’s sort of lost meaning [laughing] at times but--So quick definitions, there’s the actual word ‘trope’ comes from Greek, because of course it does, it all does--

R: You mean it isn’t a contraction of tightrope?

K: It should be, that would be so much better.

R: [laughs]

K: A literary trope is using figurative language, like words, phrases, images, for artistic effect. So there’s a bunch of different kinds of tropes that fall under literary tropes. Things like metaphors, irony, allegory, oxymorons; those are all considered tropes. Hyperbole is another good example of that, really over-exaggerating. The way this came about was, apparently, because it is Greek and it’s from Greek theatre, of course, ‘to alter, to direct, to change, to turn’--all of these translations kinda line up with that, but they’re considered an important element of classical rhetoric. Especially in Greek theatre where it was very dialogue-heavy, and so you had to sort of use all of these words and everything to paint a picture to explain to the audience what was going on. All of that said, we’re not really here to talk about literary tropes today. They’re an important story-telling device, though, and they’re something that is considered, I would say, necessary to higher literature and writing and if you’re panicking going ‘oh my God, I don’t know all of this stuff’--well the thing is you’re probably doing this anyway and not realizing.

R: A lot of writers don’t come from writing backgrounds and don’t know the terms for the thing, don’t stress too much about it.

K: We’re talking today primarily about story tropes. I think a lot of times you’re gonna encounter this in a negative light. It’s a frequent criticism I feel like that’s leveraged especially against fiction, especially against fantasy and science fiction books and writing; in some areas of fiction it’s actually celebrated.

R: Right.

K: You pick which trope you’re gonna write.

R: You cannot proceed without mentioning the other half of that, which is that some people are like ‘Okay, I pick my books based on the tropes I wanna read about.’

K: Yes.

R: Like, ‘Where’s my time travel?’

K [laughs]: Yeah. We wanted to talk about why that is. We wanted to talk about what story tropes are, and why they’re not necessarily as bad and, in our humble opinions--

R: Not so humble.

K: --not so humble opinions, as everyone thinks they are. So, definition: what is a story trope? It’s a commonly used plot or character device, essentially. A story trope is something that shows up in literature and stories over and over again, to the point that it may actually be a subgenre within a broader genre.

R: That’s not to say it is an entire plot of a book that shows up over and over again, like the Hero’s Journey is not necessarily a trope.

K: No.

R: The smaller pieces of plot or character might be the trope. Like the farmboy would be a trope.

K: Yeah, the farmboy is a trope. The surprise hero is a trope.

R: Prophesied one.

K: Yeah, the prophesied one; time-travel to go back and reset the future, that could be a trope. The noble outlaw--

R [overlapping]: Right.

K: --is a good trope, the secret relative, the-- All of these elements and story parts that are things you just see all the time in books. So if you’re going ‘well, I like those’--

R: Right.

K: Like yeah, of course you do!

R [overlapping]: Yeah.

K [laughing]: That’s why they’re popular! That’s why these keep coming up. Anything from like, a secret legacy or an unknown lost child, unfound powers that suddenly appear at just the right time, or anyone being secretly special for some reason.

R [overlapping]: [giggles]

K: But these are part of what make stories fun. They’re not the larger plot, they’re the elements that make up the characters and the plot.

R: And you can use them like spice in a recipe--

K [overlapping]: [laughs]

R: --to come up with something that is entirely your own but tastes familiar and pleasing.

K: Yeah. Now obviously, different genres are going to have different tropes that you see recurring in there. So before we get into why tropes are good, let’s talk a little bit about why they’re frequently seen as a negative.

R: I have feelings about this.

K: Okay.

R: I think they’re frequently seen as a negative because if you come to lean too heavily on tropes, they can make your story feel either derivative or predictable.

K: I was gonna say contrived, yeah, but same.

R: Don’t you ever say that about one of my stories, Kaelyn.

K: I would never say that about one of your stories. If you’re leaning too heavily on tropes, if you’re just pulling things that you know are popular or cool things you read in other books that you went like ‘oh wow that’s awesome, I wanna write something like that,’ you’re almost not writing a story. You’re putting together a sequence of events and characters that you liked from other things.

R: Is that fanfiction, is that what you’re implying?

K: Ohhh, oh, there’s a--God, I’m not ready to wade into that question! [laughs]

R: But we should touch on the fact that tropes are major fanfiction fuel. Sometimes that’s the entire point of the piece, is that ‘take this trope and apply it to this IP that I love.’

K: Yeah.

R: In that case, that can be the goal. To be, not that contrived but obviously, specifically derivative--not in the negative sense of the term, but like you’re writing fanfiction, it is derivative of this IP, and you’re applying this trope to it because you just think that would be fun. So people can have fun with it.

K: Absolutely.

R: And not for the right reasons, but it might feed into this impression that tropes are derivative or contrived.

K: I think also it goes to storytelling abilities. If your entire book is just laden with secret Targaryens and lost bloodlines and magic powers nobody knew about, chosen ones and prophecies and it’s just the entire story is that, it’s probably not a great story, because it doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of room in there for character development and arcs and intricate and original plots.

R: Having said that…

K: Or, wait, other direction: it may be way too complicated. Because that’s a lot of stuff to juggle.

R: Well there’s that, yeah. Having said that, I don’t think you could say that there is a restrained amount of troping in something like Gideon the Ninth.

K: No. No, absolutely not.

R: So it can be done.

K: Here’s the thing. That story is set in such an original setting with such original characters, in original worldbuilding and magic system if you will, that I think it more than makes up for all of that. That’s just my opinion, ‘cause you know Rekka and I can’t get through an episode without referencing Gideon the Ninth and using that as an example of--

R [overlapping]: I think there’s one or two.

K: [laughing]

R: But specifically when you talk about things that a

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

The Dancing Plague of 1518

MICE quotient

The House of Untold Stories 

storyenginedeck.com/demo

deckofworlds.com

Peter on Twitter and everywhere

Transcript (by Rekka, uncaught mistakes by Temi)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka:

This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Rekka:

Peter, I'm going to have you introduce yourself—because I completely failed to have you pronounce your name for me before we started recording—and tell us how you came to stories.

Peter:

Yeah. so my name is Peter Chiykowski, or at least that's how I say it. And I write, I illustrate I do some graphic design. I've designed some creative tools for writers and artists and storytellers. And I do create content for tabletop RPGs. And I write songs as well—Um mostly like comedy styled songs. But I do, I do a bunch of things creatively. And I would say that story has been a very big link between them. And definitely one of my passion areas is looking at how different creative disciplines and different like creative techniques and skillsets can combine to create story in different ways or to tell stories in different ways. Or even if like you're not doing something multimedia and you're only working in your one medium, how learning from other mediums gives you more tools for telling stories.

Peter:

And I always find that really exciting. But yeah, I think like my, before I was writing anything as a kid, I loved role-playing games. I remember there was this sort of very improvised six-sided die-based game that my friends and I would play in at recess in like grade three that was, there were no rules written down. I don't think it was based on anything, but I do think that we, one of our dads had played D&D and had somehow rubbed off the concept of like rolling dice to tell a story and telling a story collectively. And there was no table top because we were not at a table. We were like out on the playground at recess, but we would like bowl these dice across the entire playground and then run and see what the number was and the story would evolve from there.

Peter:

And it was all kinds of silly fantasy adventure stuff. That's the first time that I remember like really getting hooked into telling the story and getting excited about collaborative storytelling. And then it's all been downhill from there. Once, once, once tabletop roleplay gets its hooks into you you, you get, yeah, you look for any avenue to tell stories. So I've done everything from like poetry to short fiction. I've written campaigns for tabletop RPGs, like Ember Wind. I wrote a bunch of poems for a video game. That's now unintended switch called Fracter. We were trying to tell story, but also give clues for solving puzzles in this like existential platform or game, called Fracter. And I've just kind of loved playing in the story space and finding different ways to tell stories. Yeah, and that's kind of the weird mixed bag of experiences that I, I come to story with, but it's such a, such a passion area for me.

Rekka:

It does seem like you're absolutely perfect for the topic that we're going to talk about today. You're the perfect person to put this together, and that is the Story Engine, which is almost a role-playing game, almost a multiplayer game.

Kaelyn:

I was trying to describe this to somebody recently and I couldn't. So maybe you can.

Rekka:

Yeah, well, let's, you're the perfect person because you've probably seen all the marketing. If you didn't create it all yourself for the Story Engine, what is it? And how did you conceive of it? Like, did it come out of a need or did it come out of a like 10 minute space of time where you weren't actually doing something else? Cause it sounds like you're as busy as we are.

Peter:

Yeah. Yeah. I definitely wear too many creative hats and I jump from project to project, but Story Engine was something that was definitely, it was definitely filling a need that I had. I write a lot of micro fiction. Like one of my more consistent projects I've worked on is called the shortest story and it's basically, I call them postcard stories. They're stories that fit on postcards. And I actually format them in like a, as like a four by six style postcard, but it's text over an image. And it's meant to be like a little pocket universe that you, you read something from, or like a, a story that's almost an alternate life or a path you never took in your own life. That's that your you get to read. So I called them like post "postcards from alternate worlds" or "postcards from impossible worlds" is kind of like the tagline for that project. And what I was finding, I used to write longer fiction. I used to write poetry and longer fiction and submit to journals. And when I was really getting into the grind of like trying to become a creative full-time and I was working a full-time job, and then also trying to do comics on the side and publishing there was just like, I, it was so hard to maintain enough energy and to find inspiration. And there was so much pressure on the rare pockets of creative time that I would find that I'd often block myself out from creating by feeling like I'd have to optimize this hour and a half I have before work. There's so much pressure cause like maybe I won't have time for another week and I would freak myself out by, by putting that pressure on it.

Peter:

And it took a lot of joy out of the creative process. And I found that I was having less and less time to create longer projects as a result, like even long short fiction, like anything longer than a thousand words. So I started creating micro fiction. And this was amazing for me because it meant that I could like pick up a project or pick something up and put it down an hour and a half later and feel like I've created something that stands on its own. That's like a contained creative ecosystem. And that I feel good about it and I can share that with people. And what I found is that I was getting a lot of the ideas from, for stories, from a combination of looking up like publicly available free-for-use photography.

Peter:

So I would, I would see an image and the image would start something in my head. And then sometimes it wouldn't be the image. It would be like, I'd have a sense of a conflict coming in as a story seed in my head that like, oh, I want to have a story about somebody who has to choose between like a friend and like a dream that matters to them. And that would be kind of the story seed or it would sometimes cement like the idea of a particular character. Like I'd love to do a story from the perspective of like an entomologist, like suddenly all of an entomologist in my head. So I was paying attention to what was inspiring a lot of these stories seeds in where a lot of the stories were coming from and trying to think like, well, how can I create a tool that would help other people find stories, seeds, or build their own stories, seeds from the parts that speak to them?

Peter:

And that's when I started playing with the idea of a story prompting deck and, you know, it's not the first story prompting deck. There's, there's many of these tools out there and people create them in different ways. But I wanted to create something that was really open-ended because I find that with a lot of writing prompts, they're really interesting, but sometimes the prompt is so closed as a system, but it doesn't really give you room to create your own idea. It's just kind of there to see, like, what's your take on this? And that's great, but it's hard to generate a lot

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

Premee Mohamed's website

@premeesaurus on Twitter

Premee on Curious Fictions

Beneath the Rising (Book One of Two!no!Three!)

A Broken Darkness (Book Two of Two!no!Three!)

The Void Ascendant (Book Three of Two????)

These Lifeless Things – 5 Feb 21, Solaris Books (Satellites)

The Annual Migration of Clouds – 28 Sept 21, ECW Press

And What Can We Offer You Tonight – July 21, Neon Hemlock Press 

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin

Transcript for this episode (by @Betty_Bett_)

Rekka: In episode 58, Kaelyn and I talked about writing book two in a series of three or more. In Episode 59, we capped that conversation off by talking about book two in a duology. And what more do you need to know because that's it. Well, that's the only kind of book two you would write, of course. So, also of course, we are here today with Premee Mohamed, and we are going to talk about writing book three in a duology. So, Premee, you are here because you are now the new expert on this. [laughs]

Premee: I think I would like to become an expert on this. It fell on me like a meteorite.

Rekka: So, why don't we start by having you introduce yourself and talk about books one and two in this duology?

Premee: Let's talk about that. Sure. So yeah, I'm Premee Mohamed. I'm based in Edmonton, Alberta, which is in Canada. And I'm a scientist, and I write short stories and novellas and novels. My debut novel came out in 2020, that was called Beneath the Rising. My second came out this March and was called A Broken Darkness. And I also have three other books out this year. In February, there was These Lifeless Things which was a novella that came out with Rebellion's new novella imprint which is called Satellites. And in July, we're looking at And What Can We Offer You Tonight from Neon Hemlock Press, another novella. And in September, ECW Press is publishing The Annual Migration of Clouds which is a cli-fi novella. So I'm excited about all that.

Kaelyn: So you've been busy?

Premee: I have been busy. It also sounds like I'm a lot busier than I am, but Clouds was written in 2019 and just got published this year. And Lifeless was written in 2017 and had a home, and then it was kicked out of its home and went wandering around for a little while, and then got rehomed. So it's not like everything's been written and published immediately. Publishing is like transit, like sometimes four buses show up at once. [laughing]

Rekka: Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it.

Premee: Yeah, the first book, I wrote actually when I was an undergrad, my first degree. So when I was writing it, I was actually sort of a peer with Nick the narrator. So it starts when he's about 18. And I was about 18 when I started it. And I finished it the year I graduated, and I was 20. And I set it aside because that's what I did with everything I wrote because writing was—is—still my hobby. If I played golf with my friends, I wouldn't go out and tell everybody to come watch me play golf or pay me to play golf or try to get into the PGA or whatever. It was just something I did because I like to do it. And it was a good number of years before there was any evidence at all that I might be good enough to make money off my hobby. So when that became clear, I started trying to publish short stories. And then my friends were nudging me or bugging me, "We know that you've got a trunk full of books. Why don't you try to publish some of them, you could make more money than a short story?" And I was like, "More money than a short story, you say?" Well, everyone has their price—mine is low. So I dug Beneath the Rising out of the trunk and gave it a light polish. And for something that was written when I was 20, it wasn't terrible, I thought. And it was also done; most of my stuff was not done. It just went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and never finished. And it just lost the plot. And this one had the words “The End” at the end. And I was like, "Congratulations, you have been chosen."

Kaelyn: That definitely makes a huge selling point for the book. This one is done. The other ones are in various states of actualization; this one is finished. [laughing]

Premee: Yes, I'm sorry book, you didn't get picked because of your merit. [laughing] You got picked on other grounds. But I thought maybe if an agent likes this, I could interest the agent in something else, something that was good. So I queried with that because it was done. And yeah, got literary representation and got a book deal. And what happened was—so this is why I'm in this situation now—I wrote it as a standalone because I wrote everything as a standalone. I never wrote sequels to anything, especially because nothing ever ended. But I had never written anything that came after a thing. I didn't know how you did it. I'd read a lot of sequels, because fantasy and sci-fi is lousy with series. And I thought it was very nice that other people could do that. And my agent was like, "Well, publishers really like series. So, why don't we pitch this as a trilogy?" I was like, "You know what my dude, you know the business, so pitch it however you want." So, written as a standalone, pitched as a trilogy, the publisher bought two books. So I was like, "Okay, well, that's manageable. I can write one more book. And I know the deadline for that book." So after the first book came out, I wrote and handed in the second book. And a couple of months before the second book was published, so when it had—and this is crucial—when it was already done all edits and was galloping down the road to publication, my editor emailed me and was like, "Sup. So let's talk about a third book." And I sat there like, "Let's talk about a third, sorry, let's talk about a third book? The time to talk about a third book was when the second book was in edits! Because you bought two books, and I wrote you two books. And the ending of the second book is an ending that makes the third book a little tricky along certain axes.”

Kaelyn: Were you shocked by this call?

Premee: I was genuinely shocked.

Kaelyn: Okay.

Premee: It was an email and it was cc'd to my agent. The agent found out at the same time that I did. It didn't come with a contract or anything. It was just a friendly, "Hey, what's up? So, third book, huh? Pretty excited?" I was like, "What third book?" I think this was a case where it's like he was having a conversation in his head and also I was talking along in his head, but we didn't actually have the conversation.

Kaelyn: Look, we're all guilty of that. I frequently do that with my co-workers and friends.

Rekka: It wasn't because it was pitched as a trilogy, and he thought there was a third book planned that you just had? Was that maybe...?

Premee: I think that was the case because otherwise, I am 99% sure that he would have asked me to change the ending of the second book.

Rekka: Right. So he was like, "Hey, Premee knows where this is going."

Premee: Yeah, I don't know. Again, there were some doors shut at the end of the second book. I genuinely think if, during edits, he had been like, "Hey, let's make this a trilogy." He would have said something, to me, during the editing process because we went back and forth twice or whatever for developmental edits and then for the copy edit and line edit. And also we talked on Twitter and stuff all the time. The third book really seemed to just fall out of a clear blue sky. And while I was delighted to have the offer, I didn't really have a third book planned. So I had about a week to basically come up with a plot and then send that back to my editor, with my agent’s blessing because he was like, "You don't have to do this if you don't want, genuinely." So we negotiated out a contract with that and for another unrelated book. So I worked out some kind of a plot, I wrote some kind of synopsis, I just barfed it all out into the page and cleaned it up a little bit and sent it back so that my editor could take it to acquisitions. And came back and was like, "Yeah, here's your new deadline, have fun." I was like "Have fun? Okey dokey."

Kaelyn: That's a lot to unpack there. It sounds like when you wrote all of this and by the way, just for people who are listening, if you haven't read these yet, we are not going to be

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

A Ship With No Parrot by R J Theodore (MetaStellar)

Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Kaelyn: We’re talking today about writing with a friend. Hopefully a friend. If not a friend, then a partner.

Rekka: Hopefully a friend for longer than it takes to write the project.

K: Hopefully a friend after you’re done. [laughing]

R: Yes, before and after. Hey, even after is probably more important than before. Let’s be clear that you don’t wanna destroy a relationship, but you can make a new friend.

K: Yes, absolutely. Let’s talk first about, why would you do this?

R: [giggles]

K: Why would you want to - and, okay so maybe a little context first. I will admit I have never worked on a project that a single story had been written or contributed to by two different people.

R: As an editor, you mean?

K: Yes.

R: Ok.

K: So why would you do this? It seems like a difficult thing to do. And for context, Rekka has done this a couple times. So Rekka, why would you do this?

R: Because writing is lonely, and the idea that someone else will work on a project with you is just like the biggest longest most creative sleepover ever.

K: Okay!

R: It’s a good reason.

K: That is certainly a good reason, writing is lonely. I think a lot of writers, their editor when they get one is the first time they’re really having somebody to collaborate with, and to talk to.

R: To go back and forth.

K: Yeah, but the editor is not writing the book.

R: I know! Which is unfair, honestly.

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: I wanna know who I talk to about this.

K: Yeah but you know what you’re right, writing is a lonely process. There’s a lot of time spent sitting by yourself just having to think.

R: And having feelings.

K: Yeah. If you’re writing with someone, you get to share those with someone else.

R: And shout about things.

K: Absolutely. Shouting is a necessary component to that 100% —

R: It’s actually kinda how it gets started, there’s a lot of enthusiastic shouting about an idea.

K: [laughing]

R: But you know what stinks? Is that you still have to write alone.

K: Well and that’s exactly what I was gonna ask you. So okay, let’s go through this. You’ve decided I’m tired of being alone here, I want to also inflict this upon somebody else. So what do you do?

R: [deep sigh] How do you find someone else to inflict things upon? So the first person that I sat down to write a project with was a friend, and we said like hey we should try this out! And we were both writers to begin with, writing in fairly different genres but still genre fiction. And we decided we were going to do a project and we said hey, it will be this, like we outlined it together. We - or we didn’t so much outline it together but we concepted it out together.

K: Okay.

R: And then we each created a POV character as part of that concept. And then we wrote our chapters back and forth, so that the tone, the voice, for that POV character is consistent.

K: Mhm.

R: And so that you can have a character that’s slightly unreliable, just because like you couldn’t catch all the continuity errors, that you and your partner -

K [overlapping]: Mhm. Yup.

R: - created. It also lets you kind of reshuffle the scenes if you need to later, uh move things around a little bit easier, extract things if you need to without losing too many threads. But my other experience in doing it we did not, we had one POV. So, it doesn’t have to be done that way.

K: Tell us about the time you wrote one POV.

R: I sort of went through my text file that I keep on my phone that’s just like the little random lines and concepts, phrases that occur to me. And so the writing partner latched onto one and said, “That’s interesting, let’s work with that.” And then that was it, we just kind of went. I wrote something and sent it to him, and then I think we gave a week or two weeks max for each turnaround, so that one person wasn’t waiting on the other forever. So it kinda bounced back and forth, and it would twist a little, like I’d get back and reread what the new words were and I’d be like oh okay, that’s where that’s going now.

K: [chuckles]

R: So it felt a little bit like improv, where somebody tosses you something, and y - the guide for improv is don’t say “no,” say “yes, and...” So I think I had more of that spirit in the second project than I did in the first time attempting it, where um. As a kid I used to play with my friends and we’d get the toys all out and I’d immediately have a plot. And my friends would never adhere to it -

K [overlapping]: [chuckles]

R: Because of course they didn’t know it. They would have whatever toy they were holding do a thing and I’d be like “No no no not that, have it do this.” So I can’t imagine I was much fun to play with. Nor was it probably much fun to try and write with me on the project where I didn’t have the spirit of “yes, and...” I had more like “mmm. That’s interesting, how’s that gonna fit back into where I’m taking this?”

K: Well and that’s a very good point, is I think if you’re going to write with somebody it has to be a genuinely collaborative effort, rather than someone coming in with a story and having someone else tell it.

R: Yeah and like I said, both times it was starting from a concept that, it wasn’t like, “Oh I wanna write this book, do you wanna write it with me?”

K: Mhm.

R: So it was two people coming together each time saying “let’s work together on a thing, what should we work on, do you have any ideas, yeah sure how ‘bout this concept, okay that’s interesting what can we do with that? And then how do you wanna do this? Like okay I’ll write some and then you write some and then I’ll write some and then you write some.

K: So like just examples off the top of my head, did you read This Is How You Lose the Time War?

R: Yes.

K: Yeah, so that was, so that’s a novella actually written by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. And I remember going like huh, I’m curious to see how they did this, and I went back and I think I read an interview or something with them, and sure enough what they did was they outlined a plot, and then they took turns writing the letters in it, and -

R: But not only that, interesting point that maybe you want to cut me off and say we’ll get to that in a second -

K: No, no prob. [laughing]

R: But they wrote it at the same table, part of it at least.

K: Yes. If you haven’t read This Is How You Lose the Time War, read it, it’s very good and it’s a quick read.

R: It won awards for a reason.

K: I - yeah, it won a lot of awards. [chuckles] But the entire story is told through letters being sent back and forth between Agent Red and Agent Blue, both of whom work for separate agencies that go back in time and change things to make history fit what they want it to be. So I remember reading in this that sometimes they were, like they were writing the letters and then mailing them to each other essentially, and letting the other person correspond and reply, it was almost a bit of role-playing. But yes they did write some of it sitting across from each other. But then another good example that’s the opposite: Good Omens was written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett and they both -

R [overlapping]: [laughing] I was thinking of The Omen, and I’m like, I didn’t know - wait what?!

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: They wrote that? Okay, I’ve caught up, continue.

K: Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett, one of them wrote a lot of the main story, and then the other one fleshed out a lot of it. There’s a main plot that but there’s a lot of other stuff going on, and there’s a lot of ancillary characters that turn out to be important to the plot but they never really gave a clear answer if it was like an assignment list so to speak, if there was like a breakdown of who was doing what. It sounds like they are just very good friends who were both very talented writers and were able to do this. I do see a lot of times when there’s two autho