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PATRICK ROTHFUSS: [HUMMING]
Oh.
[LAUGHING]
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: [LAUGHING]
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: It always catches me
singing right before.
Hello.
My name is Pat Rothfuss, and welcome to "Storyboard,"
brought you by Geek & Sundry.
Today we're doing something a little bit different.
I have my fabulous guest star, Mary Kowal.
And we're going to--
rather than have kind of a panel where we discuss a
topic, we're going to field Q&A from our general
readership.
And we have some questions we're going to deal with that
all kind of revolve around the issue of how
do you start writing?
How do you start your story?
How do you start your novel?
This is going to be a storyboard about the
beginnings of things.
But please do be aware that the focus of this one is us
answering your questions relating to this topic.
So don't be bashful if you'd like to add your particular
question to the queue.
You can throw it onto my blog or into the Geek & Sundry
chat, and our fabulous assistants over at Geek &
Sundry will make us aware of those questions and we'll do
our very best to fit them in.
So without any further rambling, I will let Mary
introduce herself.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So hello.
I am Mary Robinette Kowal.
I am a science fiction and fantasy author.
I write some novels--
historical fantasy--
so it's kind of like Jane Austen's magic.
And then I'm also a professional puppeteer, which
usually comes up at least once in conversation.
And I write short fiction and won the Hugo in
2011 for short story.
I just love that sentence.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Witness my sullen, bitter resentment.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: That's OK.
You have "The New York Times" best-selling thing going on.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Well, and I really envy the skill that you
have writing some of the short fiction.
You write really good short fiction over a bunch of
different topical error--
errors.
Areas.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh yes, that too.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And it's a skill that
I just don't possess.
I'm trying to develop it a little bit, but it's
unexplored territory for me.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I'm in the process right now,
actually, of expanding a novella back into a novel.
And what it's making me aware of is that there are different
sets of audience expectations.
And I think, actually, when you are starting off a new
project that one of the things to kind of be aware of is that
who you are writing for is going to shape the story, or
novel, or what have you.
And whether it's short form or long form that you kind of
need to make that decision fairly early on, or you're
going to come back and have to make some adjustments.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
I think that's a great thing to start off on--
and it's something that I would always bring up when I
was teaching freshman English--
is the first thing you need to know is your purpose.
And the second-- this is with, really, any piece of writing--
the first thing you need to know is your purpose, and once
you know that, then you can determine your audience.
And then you can determine your genre.
And then you can figure out how you're going to do things.
But if you don't really know what those three things are,
you might get lucky and have things work out, but more
likely than not, you will probably make bad decisions
just by pure accident because you don't realize-- and the
example I always use that really helps drive it home for
people in terms of thinking about audience.
It's not a writer-specific skill.
We're all very savvy in terms of storytelling
to different audiences.
And I always use the example, when I was teaching college
freshman, I would pick one of them, I'd say, so what did you
do this weekend?
And he goes, oh, you know.
I hung out with some friends.
And I go, OK.
You just told me that.
I'm your teacher.
I'm your audience.
I go, what did you really do this weekend?
What would you tell your friends?
And he's like, I got really drunk last night.
[LAUGHING]
And I go, yeah.
And so, what do you tell your mom?
And he goes, I got really drunk last night.
And I go, good, because you obviously have that
relationship with your mom and you know that
she can handle that.
I go, what do you tell your grandma?
And he goes, I studied really hard this weekend.
[LAUGHING]
And it's something that you don't stop to consider while
you're doing it, because we do it every day, every
minute of our lives.
You talk to your boss different than you talk to
your girlfriend and you talk to your co-workers.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: But because we don't have as much
experience doing it in text, if you don't actively stop to
consider who specifically you're writing to, you'll make
a ton of mistakes.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
I run into the same thing, actually, with puppetry, which
is really where I first became aware of it.
Because the bread and butter for puppeteers--
for an American puppeteer, I should say--
is the kindergarten through sixth grade audience.
And if you want to take one of those shows and go do
preschool, it will not fly because they have totally
different attention spans, different interests, different
everything.
And if I told "Little Red Riding Hood" for the K through
six crowd and then tried to take it into high school--
I mean, you can see that happening.
And the same thing is true--
if I wanted to retell "Little Red Riding Hood" for a science
fiction horror magazine, I could do the same story plot,
but it would be a completely different story.
So I'm right with you on the thinking about who your
audience is.
I also think that you can come at it from the other angle,
which is that I have an idea my head, and this is the idea
that I want to tell, what audience is going to be
receptive to that?
I think you can go at it that way, which is where you start
with a purpose and then go into that, versus figuring out
who the audience is and what story you
want to tell for them.
But you have to, at some point, make those decisions.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
And the order you come at those three with is--
sometimes people are like, I love steampunk.
And so they're going to start with genre.
And a lot of times, knowing what genre you're playing in,
that effectively determines your audience.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Although I think sometimes it will do
that in an unfortunate degree.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
I think what happens is when you start worrying about what
the audience expectation is more than what you are excited
and interested about.
Because for me, the person that I am telling the story
for, first and foremost, is myself.
If it's not interesting to me, there's no way I can make it
interesting to-- well, I mean, technically, I have the
technical chops.
I could technically make it interesting.
But it's going to be no fun, and, frankly, I don't think
it's going to be as interesting.
This is, again, using the puppetry thing as an example.
There's a saying in puppet theater that the first five to
ten years of a career of a new puppet theater you have to do
titles because no one knows who you are.
So you have to do "Pinocchio" and "Snow Queen" and that's
what people come to see.
And then later, you get to do the weird avant garde thing
you've always wanted to do.
And so when we were doing "Pinocchio," it's like there's
like 50 billion Pinocchios.
So we sat down and thought about the story that we wanted
to tell and totally retold it.
But we sat down and we're like, what are people going to
need to see in order to be happy that they saw
"Pinocchio"?
They need to see the fox and the cat.
They need to see the talking cricket.
They need to see Pinocchio's nose grow.
They need to see the great shark--
or the great whale, depending on the translation.
And so rather than doing straight up "Pinocchio," we
told from the point of view of Pinocchio as a young man
remembering his childhood, or puppethood, and then during
the course of that, you saw the great shark, the talking
cricket, but you saw it from the
retrospective of a young man.
And the audiences came out.
They were completely happy that they saw "Pinocchio," but
we told the story we wanted to see.
So essentially, we met the genre conventions, but then we
moved forward.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
And I think that's the key.
When you are thinking about genre, you should know what
people expect.
Where if you say, I want to do a Western
because I love Westerns.
And then you tell the heart-touching story of a
young woman in a relationship with her mother and how
they're coming to grips with the grandpa's Alzheimer's,
that's going to leave a lot of people really confused if
you're pitching it as a Western.
You need to know what the rules are, what has been done,
what's been done too much.
And then that doesn't say you have to follow all of the
rules, but you need to know when you are breaking the
rules so you can break them in the smartest way possible.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And know that there will be a cost to
breaking the rules.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah, or peril, at any rate.
Effectively, you have to behave like an intelligent
criminal, where there's some--
you can be a back alley thug, and you will go to jail and
your life will suck.
You want to engage in some really intelligent white
collar crime in your writing, where if you get caught, then
maybe you get a little slap on the wrist and you still get to
keep all the money.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And people are like, oh, I'm so
glad you stole that.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Right.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So we've got some questions coming in.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: We do.
I'm going to have to expand my window a little bit here.
Here we have one from David.
How do you create a character?
Do you make the character and then let them have things
happen or do you let things happen and then let that form
the character?
Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I would say kind of both, and it also,
for me, depends on what has pulled me to the story in
first place.
For me, I tend to write character-driven fiction.
I'm most interested in people and their relationships to
each other.
And for me--
again, this is my theater background--
action is reaction.
I learn about the character from the way they react to the
things that happen to them.
It is people's actions that say the most about them.
So for me, a lot of it is about the choices that the
characters make, and those choices define what the next
thing that happens is.
The simple thing is if there's a snake on the ground, do you
grab a forked stick and try to trap it or do you run away?
I'm in the run away camp, personally.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
I think there's always going to be a process of discovery
with your characters.
No matter how much work you do before you start writing,
you're always going to learn things about them until like
there's a scene with a snake on the ground and you haven't
figured out which way they're going to jump until they're in
that situation.
But a lot of it, I think does depend on--
it's kind of a chicken and egg thing, where we always start
out kind of with an idea of a character, and then they
always grow in the telling.
And for some people it's more on this end, some people it's
more on this end--
if you're discovery writer versus a planning writer, the
nature of the story, the length of the story.
Obviously there's just not much room for growth in a
short story, but in a novella, a character can actually
develop and change and grow.
[INAUDIBLE]
that I made didn't change so much from the
beginning of the story.
It's not like he took radical shifts in who he was, but he
developed unknown facets as the story went on.
Yeah.
We've got another one here that says--
and this is a great beginning question, and this is one of
the classic ones.
Do you usually figure out the character for your stories
first or the setting before you begin?
And I think some people go on about like, what is the phrase
that irritates me these days?
Setting as character.
Setting is character.
Setting is character.
It's been going around in these literary circles, and
people say that.
It strikes me as kind of wankery.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: If you're telling the story and the
landscape is a character, that's fine, but you kind of
getting fringy there.
Well, what I will say is that if you have a well-developed
concept of your setting, it does a lot of your character
building for you.
And if you write Regency--
if you really know Regency--
you know that if the person is landed gentry, then that fills
in a ton of the character right there.
If it's a woman in Regency, that also builds in--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: That builds in a ton.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: --a ton there, and then, again, you
become a little bit beholden to the time period, a little
bit beholden to the genre expectations, and then you
have to decide where are you going to push at those
boundaries to really--
yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
And I think, for me, sometimes I have started a story where I
am excited by this world concept, and then I have to
figure out what character is going to have an interesting
story within that world.
And sometimes I have a character idea that I'm
interested in and I need to figure out
what world they inhabit.
And I think that might be more what they're talking about
when they're asking about setting--
or at least that's what I took from the question.
And for me, what it always comes back to is which part
excites you the most?
And everybody writes differently, and every story
is going to evolve differently.
There is no single right way to do this.
So sometimes I do figure out my character.
I know if they have parents or grandparents.
But that very much develops inside an understanding of
where, at least generally, where they are living.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: When I go the other direction, it's
much harder for me when I start with world.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I probably do a little more world,
because I don't get to say Regency.
And then there's a lot given.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Even when I'm doing
short fiction or--
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Oh, really?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
I mean, I have a novella that is all alien.
This is one of the few, actually, where I started
world first.
I had an idea for a species that was basically--
do you know the honey ants?
They're creepy, creepy.
And very cool things.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: No, I don't know.
Are those the zombie ones?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: No.
They have ants that are called repletes.
And all the other ants feed them until their abdomens
become hugely bloated and they're the storage vessels
for the ant colony.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Oh my god.
I had no idea about that.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh, they're amazing.
And then in some cultures they're considered delicacies,
because it's this huge abdomen of honey, essentially.
And crunchy and delicious, I guess.
[INAUDIBLE].
But I wondered what a sentient species would be like if they
developed from that.
And just the idea and the ways wars would take place.
Because suddenly you have people who are both captive
and food source.
And I was totally fascinated by this.
But it took me a couple of years before I came up with a
story that I could tell because I didn't know who the
character was that would inhabit that world and have a
compelling story.
And for me, it was really hard.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I hear you.
And the novella--
I keep calling it the novella.
It started as a novella and now it's this short novel.
Well, it's short for me.
It's like 80,000 words.
And I had the idea for the character.
I had the idea for the setting.
And I was excited to explore this piece of the world that
hasn't been shown off before, and I was excited to tell a
story around this sort of character that you don't see
very often.
But there is the third piece of that trifecta.
You have characters, setting, and story.
And story is more than just plot, in my opinion.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Plot is an element of story.
Plot is the science of story--
well, I would say plot is like chemistry, story is like
alchemy, where plot you can really map out and follow
rules and do the math on it's always going to be the same,
but story is a little bit slipperier than that.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: One thing I've heard said is plot
is what happens, story is how you tell it.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
And sometimes, some of the very best stories, if you pick
them apart and say what is the real plot, you're like--
boy.
There is no real plot.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: [LAUGHING]
Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: But I am struggling a little bit
because I was having a great time exploring this world, and
showing this character, and showing her learning from her
experiences, and writing from a female perspective, and
doing something third person.
I was really tinkering with things that
are new to my craft.
And then because I'm a better writer than I was five years
ago, I stopped and I went, what's the story?
Because that's how I started writing "The Name of the
Wind." It was just a guy who went around and interesting
things happened, which is perfectly appropriate for an
autobiography, which it was.
But it does not necessarily lend itself to story--
cohesive, gratifying,
psychologically nutritious story.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: What is your purpose?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
And all of these things are important, but--
what's the quote from the Bible?
Love, hope, and--
there's three things that are important.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Peace.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Love, hope, and peace, but the greatest of
these is love.
Except here, it's like setting, character, and story,
but the greatest of these is story.
And if you fail at story, you fail at everything.
And if you are good at story, much can be forgiven.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Maybe we should move to a different
question here.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
Let's see.
How do you get started on a story?
This is Ivory Doom.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Ivory Doom.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: That's great.
Where do you start?
Is the best to know the ending or work your
way toward an ending?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: This is going to be the true but
unsatisfying answer.
And you'll hear us say the same things
again and again here.
Please don't get frustrated with these things we repeat.
We repeat them because they are true and important, not
because it's like a nervous like verbal tic for us.
It's that some people, once they know the whole story,
it's boring to them and they will never write it.
I have a friend who was working on it, taking notes,
and figuring out where the story was going to go, and
then he figured out and it was this cool story.
And we talked about it over dinner and over
lunch and for months.
But now that he knows everything, he has no desire
to actually do it because how his brain works, the joy is in
the discovery.
And that drove him to outline.
And so in his particular situation, he should have
gotten started right from the beginning, probably drafting,
not outlining, and let that desire to discover drive his
drafting process.
But for other people, other things motivate them, and so
they have to get started in a different way.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
And I'm an outliner, most of the time.
Sometimes I'm a discovery writer.
For me, when I'm coming up with a story idea, I start by
asking myself questions and I start by doing a little bit of
brainstorming.
Sometimes what I'll do is I'll write down what I call my core
story idea, and sometimes that's something--
frequently they wind up sounding like movie pitches.
Jane Austen with magic.
What happens when the police AI is stolen and they must
solve her own theft?
Things like that.
But it's basically the gee *** idea.
It's the thing I'm excited about.
And I jot that down to remind myself when I lose my way
later when it was that I was excited about.
And so for me, when I sit down to get started, I try to just
make notes for myself.
And I do my thinking on paper or on the screen.
But I write it down rather than just
thinking it in my head.
Because I find that when I think in my head, I will tend
to get into these circular patterns.
And I'll have a really cool idea, and I will forget it.
And if I write it down--
even if it doesn't make any sense to anyone besides me--
at least I will have some reference so that when the
moment hits of, ah, that, that is the thing I want to do, I
can find it again.
And usually once I hit the ah ha, that one, then I will
switch over.
And sometimes I'll just start drafting, and sometimes I will
outline, it depends.
I actually have a post on my website right now where I show
you how I start a story.
It shows the story cord and my synopsis.
My outline process is kind of strange.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Well, you know, that's really helpful.
Because if you're starting out as a writer or if you're
trying to figure these things out in your craft,
there is no right way.
And you want there to be a right way.
I want there to be a right way.
If Neil Gaiman could just write on a Post-it for me and
say, here's the secret, Pat.
Here's how you write these compelling stories.
And, oh, great.
Now I can write fast.
Well, no.
It's like, I'm not Neil Gaiman.
I am not Brandon Sanderson.
I'm not Jim Butcher.
We all have these different processes, and that's why it
all comes out different.
That said, if you find out how somebody does it, somebody
who, obviously, is a success, and you want to give their way
a try, that's perfectly legit.
Because it obviously works for at least one person, and maybe
it works for you.
Maybe your brain is wired that way.
And even if your brain isn't wired that way, maybe you'll
try a bunch of their process.
Tim Powers does a bunch of his on note cards.
And he'll lay his out, apparently, like all across
his living room floor.
And I didn't do that, but when I finally tried it, it helped
me unkink the beginning of Book Two.
And if I'd tried that six months earlier, it would have
saved me six months.
And maybe I'll answer a question
that hasn't been asked.
How do you fix it when you're kinked up?
Because that happened with me with Book
Two something fierce.
I had the beginning of Book Two, and I had to reintroduce
the characters a little bit, reintroducing the concepts,
reintroduce some of the plot lines, as well as introduce
the new plot lines and everything new that was going
to happen in the story in the University.
And so I would try to put them together, and I'd write, and
I'd rearrange the scenes, and then I'd be like, OK.
This has to happen before this, this, now, low tension,
high tension, funny, dramatic, action, and fear.
Oh, no.
No.
No.
But this doesn't make sense now.
And then I'd move it.
I'd move it and the whole house of cards would collapse.
And I did this for a year--
writing and rewriting and trying to figure it out,
because I've always done it on the screen.
I've always done it organically.
I put it together, and I'd rearrange it, and then I'd
read the book, and I'd look through the manuscript and
circle something, and say this, earlier.
And it worked.
But it wasn't working this time.
And here's my analogy.
My mom used to have a dog--
name was Scamp.
And they'd play with it in the backyard.
And he loved to play fetch.
They'd take a tennis ball, and they'd throw it, and he'd go
and get it and bring it back.
Then they'd take two tennis balls and they'd
throw both of them.
And because he was a smart dog, rather than run, bring it
back, and run, and bring it back, he would same time.
He'd run, pick up one tennis ball, then he'd go and get the
other tennis ball, and he'd bring them both back, which is
smart for a dog.
And it saved him time.
But then you could take three tennis balls.
And so they'd throw one, they throw one, they throw one.
And he'd run and get it, and he'd put it in his mouth, and
he'd go to the second.
He'd put it in his mouth-- a big long snout.
He could put two tennis balls in there.
He'd get to the third tennis ball, and he'd go, boomp.
Oh.
I can't get another tennis ball in my mouth.
My mouth is full.
I need to put one of these balls down so I can pick up
this tennis ball.
They he'd pick up the tennis ball and go, hey, tennis ball.
And bonk, oh.
I need to get this out of my mouth so I can pick up this
tennis ball.
He'd put down one of the tennis balls and he'd pick up
the other tennis ball and go, hey.
Tennis ball.
And apparently he would do this until you
took one of them away.
Ultimately, he was a smart dog, but his capacity was two
tennis balls.
And whatever my capacity was in terms of handling this
story in my brain, I was juggling
too many tennis balls.
And so I would get it all sorted out except for one or
two things, and then I'd go, oh, oh, tennis ball.
I've got to move this earlier.
And then I'd rewrite it and do, wait.
Wait.
This doesn't work.
Now, oh.
Tennis ball.
And I'd rewrite the whole thing again.
And so what writing it down on note cards did--
I finally tried this thing that Tim Powers had suggested
to me like seven years earlier, before I was even
working on Book Two.
And I wrote down each scene on a note card, and I color-coded
them for each different plot arc, and put them all on the
table, and I went, right.
OK.
So here's the plot arc, here's the plot arc,
here's the plot arc.
Well, it's done.
That was it.
And I'm like, are you kidding me?
I spent like six months beating my head bloody, and
all I needed to do--
I needed some external memory.
I needed two more tennis balls worth of note card that I
couldn't hold in my head.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And highlighters.
Never forget the power of highlighters.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I don't like to admit to that.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
But It's true.
Frequently just shaking it up will change everything.
And it may have been the note cards, it may have been just
doing a different process.
I write on the computer, but when I'm really stuck, I will
sometimes switch over to one of these manual suckers just
because it changes the rhythms.
Sometimes I will go longhand for a scene if I'm stuck.
Sometimes I will sit down and just start
asking myself questions.
It depends on why I'm stuck, and a lot of times that is the
biggest thing when you get stuck, is learning to identify
why you're stuck.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
I think you're right.
That's a huge part of the craft.
That's like if your car breaks, it's not enough to
know how to fix a car.
You need to know what is broken.
That's the first step.
And I'm ashamed for using a car analogy.
I know nothing about cars.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Well, and it's also that, ugh, I'm
having trouble getting this car up the hill.
What is wrong with the car?
The answer is you're on a sheet of ice.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Right.
That's exactly it.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Which is why sometimes you have to get
out of the car.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: That's a great analogy.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I made that up myself.
And I also know nothing about cars.
We don't actually even own one, ironically.
But it is true that a lot of what you will be dealing with
as a new writer is banging your head against the wall,
because you just are still learning how to identify the
parts of the car.
What I find when I hit writer's block--
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Oh.
We're going to talk about that.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah, well, yes, we are.
Is that it's usually because I've taken a
wrong turn in the story.
And that if I pay attention to a lot of my physical cues and
how I feel when I'm sitting down to write or avoiding
sitting down to write, it will tell me kind of the area that
I need to look at for what has gone wrong.
If I find when I sit down that I am suddenly overwhelmingly
drowsy, probably what I'm writing is dull, and I need to
pull it out.
Nancy Kress says that--
and Nancy Kress is a discovery writer--
and she says that when she gets blocked, she goes back to
the last place that she was excited about the story, and
starts writing again from there.
If I find myself walking up to the computer and then suddenly
I'm in the other room straightening the silverware,
that means I'm avoiding whatever scene it is, and that
usually means it's a difficult scene and that I just need to
suck it up and sit down and write it.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Which is a great generic piece of advice.
If I was going to give five generic pieces of advice that
everyone would have on note cards-- every aspiring writer
would have them on note cards right next to the computer--
and if you like, why isn't this working, and they would
flip through those five?
One of them would be suck it up and write it.
And the other one would be very closely related.
It would be sit your *** down in front of the
computer and write.
And I give those pieces of advice not to be belligerent,
but because they are the lessons which I, myself, have
to constantly relearn.
Here's number three.
Nobody is going to write the book other than you.
And again, I went through cycles where I remember
thinking, gah.
And I'd go and I'd talk to the creative writing professor who
I loved, Larry Watson at my university, who's so smart,
and who's a great teacher.
And I'd go and I'd say, I'm worried about this,
and this, and this.
And we'd talk and whatever.
And I'd leave and I'm like, that doesn't help me at all.
And then I'd talk to my friends and I'd
say, what do you think?
And they'd give me their opinions.
That doesn't help at all.
And sometimes it would go on for like a month.
And eventually I would get so angry and frustrated as
everyone else's uselessness, where I'd be like, fine.
I'll just write it myself.
And then I'm like, oh.
Oh, duh.
Yeah.
I've really got to write this myself, don't I?
Yeah.
I'm the only one writing this.
Yeah.
I guess I've just got to sit my ***
down and do this myself.
But we're getting on a bit, so I'll restrain my rambling
tendencies and we'll try to hit a few of
these sharp and hard.
I've been told that you should write every day.
Let's just deal with that one first.
Should you write every day?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: It depends on what kind
of writer you are.
And all of our answers are going to be this, by the way.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Really?
Do you really think that some people should only write like,
twice a week?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Eric Flint is a
binge and purge writer.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Really?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
He will sit down and he will not write for months, and then
sit down and crank out a novel--
basically locks himself in a room and cranks out a novel,
writing around the clock for a month.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Damn.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
And he writes historicals.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Wow.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
He is hardcore.
But he basically says that he goes in and vanishes, and his
family knows it's what's going on, and they make
sure he gets food.
But he just completely disappears into the story,
puts it all down in one single massive session, essentially,
broken only by physical needs.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And that, actually--
it's nice for me to hear that.
When I really get into it, I will very happily write for
10, or 12, or 14 hours a day, but I've always viewed that as
vaguely unhealthy.
And I'm not saying that it isn't just based on that one
example, but I will say this.
In terms of writing every day, it will keep
you looser as a writer.
Think about you're doing something on your computer.
If you have a really hefty program, you've got to load
into active memory.
You click on it, and if you have a memory like mine, then
you're going to get the hour glass for a while until the
really nice Photoshop finally loads into memory.
Then you can use it.
But you don't want to shut down Photoshop and reopen it
five times a day because it's going to waste a lot of time
and energy.
Writing a little bit every day keeps everything
fresh in your head.
It creates also the expectation that you should
write every day.
It's like exercise.
It's exercise for your brain.
And should you exercise for one month every year or for
one hour every day?
For some people, maybe one way.
But I think for most people--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
For me, I am very much a--
here's the funny thing.
I should write every day.
I do better when I do.
I'm happier when I do.
I get more done.
I'm more productive kind of across the board.
But I'm a procrastinator by nature.
So although I should write every day, unless I have some
sort of external challenge, like a deadline, there are so
many shiny things that I'm interested in that I will
frequently do something else.
And it's not always goofing off.
It's like, instead of writing today, I am going to design
this brochure, or a build this puppet, or clean my kitchen.
Often I use what I call structured procrastination to
run my life.
So for me, write every day is my goal.
And I have this crazy tracking spreadsheet thing.
Actually--
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Can you show it to us?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: That just occurred to me, and I
could show it to you.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yep.
Bring that up, and I will--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: You talk while I bring this up.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Since we're being honest here, I'm the
exact same way.
It's like, this is a great example of do as I say, not as
I do, where, when I write every day, I write more, I
write better, I feel better, I feel healthier, I feel more
energetic--
just like exercise.
Do I manage to do it every day?
Well, when things are great, yes.
When things are busy, obviously I don't.
And there are so many shiny things in the world and I've
got a delightful--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So many shiny things.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
I've got a delightful young son who just thinks I'm the
coolest thing ever, and I want to take advantage of that
while it's still true.
Do I?
No.
Do I wish I did?
Yes.
And actually, that's one of my--
I'm not one for New Year's resolutions, but anything that
will trick me into proper behavior, I try
to make use of it.
So I'm thinking this year I'm going to try, even if it's
only half an hour, I'm going to get half an hour in-- not
just writing, because I write all the time, but writing
productively forward motion.
Not just world building, not just a little bit of revision,
but drafting something that needs to move forward.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: You want to see my crazy spreadsheet?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I do.
I so want to see this.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: OK.
Here is my crazy spreadsheet.
So this was for "Nanorhino." Now, green, over here, I'm
aiming for 2,000 words a day.
That means I actually hit it.
You can tell the days that I had other things going on.
I did not, by the way, actually write
27,000 words in a day.
That was plugging in how many I had before "Nano" started.
I had a lot of travel during this.
And you can see the days I was traveling, because I often got
no word count.
But there are other days where I got word counts, it tells me
the day I'm supposed to finish, my goals, the change
in pace, yeah.
It's a craziness.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Seeing this is great because, would you
say that creating this spreadsheet makes you a little
more honest and keeps you writing more consistently?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
It works for me for novels.
It does not work for me for short stories, because I've
tried that, which is frustrating.
The thing that I've found that works really well is a website
called 750words.com.
And basically you go and you're supposed
to write 750 words.
And when you've finished, it gives you this whole analytic
thing of how many words you wrote, where your distraction
points were, the words you overuse.
And then you get badges for successfully-
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Badges?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Badges.
Exactly.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I'm there.
I'm going to do it now.
Level up--
I'm going to level up!
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Exactly.
Yeah.
And they have challenges, so you can take the one-month
pledge that you're going to do 750 words a day for a month.
And if you fail, you go on the wall of shame.
And you can schedule to take time off if you're going to be
away from the computer.
But, it's basically, you have to say, OK, I'm not going to
write these days.
Or I'm going to be away.
You take responsibility for the days that you're
going to take off.
And there's a set in time for when you have to return.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Wow.
And I think that's great, because really, again, you
have to figure out what works for you.
Maybe it's note cards, maybe it's an outline.
And if you are a procrastinator--
and all of us are to a certain degree.
Some people are way on this end of the spectrum.
There's the Douglas Adams's--
god bless him, but he's probably pushing this end,
where they had to lock him in a hotel room, quite literally,
with somebody on the door to make him finish
one of those books.
And then on the other end, honestly the people I would
probably say like Sanderson and Butcher, who they do it,
and do it, and do it, and do it.
And I would love to know if they have any of these little
things that really help keep them honest with themselves.
I will say when I was working on the book way back-- this
has to be '97, '98--
I decided to keep track of how many words
I wrote on my calendar.
And I said, I'm going to be responsible for
x words every day.
And it was actually increased file size.
I needed to write 4k.
The file needed to get 4k bigger every day.
And that's back when I was writing in WordStar--
which I did all the way to the year 2000, by the way.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh my--
wow.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I still am a huge WordStar proponent.
WordStar is an awesome word processor.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: You know--
bless your heart.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Don't you badmouth WordStar.
Three quarters of the trilogy was written in WordStar.
But I started writing it on my calendar, and I
instantly fell behind.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh, insteresting.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I didn't get my 4k in.
I didn't get my 4k in.
But I would try to keep up.
And all semester, I was trying to catch up, because I'd have
a good day and I'd write 8k, and so I caught up with a day.
And at the end of the semester, I'm like, god.
I'm still two weeks behind.
But in that semester, I had written four times more than
the previous semester because it was
something to keep me honest.
It was a little goad.
And is it a silly thing?
Should it be absolutely inconsequential?
Yes.
It's stupid.
But we do things for stupid reasons.
We are not entirely rational creatures, and we are not
entirely engaged in a rational process.
So figure out what your little goads will be, and use them to
motivate yourself.
OK.
A few more--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
And while he's reading, don't be afraid to change the goad
when it stops working.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Absolutely.
Do you consider it more important to use chapter one
as a reader hook or as a set up chapter to
introduce the world?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: These are not mutually exclusive
things, and yes, you should do both, or you can do both.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: You should, and can, hopefully and get me
a good, interesting character.
I don't think in terms of hook.
I think in terms of engaging reader curiosity.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Hook is a plot term, and I suck at plot.
For me, a mystery about the world--
like giving a little bit of the world,
and letting it tease--
that's how I think.
Or a little bit about a character and
letting that tease.
I'd rather have about five or six of those in a chapter than
like a big crude plot hook.
Who done it?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Agreed.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Oh, and here's the, how do you go
about placing guns on the mantle?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Ah, yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Could you accurately
describe Chekhov's gun?
Because I don't think I've ever officially read what he
really said.
I've just had it all second-hand or third-hard.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: The way I learned it is that if there
is a gun on the mantle in the first act, it must
go off in the third.
But I think someone recently said that if
there's a smoking gun--
but that might have been a change.
Basically, the idea is that if you bring something into the
story that seems like it is a thing of importance, it is not
fair to the readers to place it in a position of prominence
and then not use it.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: You go.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I've heard both versions.
I've heard if you're going to shoot someone in the third
act, you better show the gun on the mantle
in the first act.
And then I've heard the reverse of it, which was what
you said, where if it is a prominent thing, then you owe
it to your reader, your audience not to *** them
around, effectively--
not to unfairly create that expectation.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Here is what he actually said.
"One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if one is
not thinking of firing it."
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: That actually is much less
directive than everything I've ever heard described as
Chekhov's gun.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Well, that just says, unless you are
thinking of firing it.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
And I think the important thing there is loaded gun.
That if the audience knows the gun is loaded, that implies
that action is going to take place later, and that,
therefore, you need to deal with the consequences of the
gun being loaded, whether it is someone emptying the gun,
or someone thinking about firing it or not.
But it's basically, the gun on the mantle is--
the question that he's asking is slightly different, though,
which I think is where you were about to go.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
Well, and thank you so much for looking that up, because I
think that really clarifies.
Because everyone goes, oh, Chekov's gun, Chekov's gun.
But that real quotation, I think, is a much better thing
than everything I've ever heard from somebody saying,
you have to use it in the third act or you have to put
it in the first act.
Where I think you could either read that as you need to deal
with the consequences of the promise of action.
You should not unfairly promise
your audience something.
But, more importantly--
and I see this a lot--
you should not use cheap mechanisms to add tension to
your story.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And that, I think, I can back 100%.
If you bring out that loaded gun and you put it down on the
table, to have that hook--
it's like, oh no, a loaded gun.
If you're doing that just to raise the tension in a scene
early on in the story, that is unfair.
It's heavy handed.
It's bad storytelling and it betrays the unspoken contract
between writer and reader.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
And it derails the story also.
There's another example from stages.
There's a famous story about an actress who was pissed off
at another actress and sabotaged the scene by setting
her wine glass down on the edge of the table.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: That's a great--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So the only thing the audience was
watching the entire time was the wine glass, to see whether
or not it was going to fall.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: That is great.
That's a great story.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
And that's when you bring in artificial tension.
The audience, your readers, are looking at that rather
than the story you are actually telling.
And it is more compelling to them even though it has no
consequences.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
However, that's also a great example of how such a small
thing can add tension to a story.
So if you can use that craft honestly to add tension to
your true story, what your truly doing,
that's all you need.
Goblin army?
No.
No, no, no.
You don't need it.
Yes, a goblin army can be fun.
Do you need the white orc that Thorn has to
fight at the end of--
no.
Because that's ***.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: No, how do you feel, really?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Sorry, I cussed.
Hey, I almost made it through the whole
show and didn't cuss.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: But when asking about placing guns on
the mantle and do you do any of this in the first draft or
does it happen when you're working backwards--
that's actually a foreshadowing question.
And I do it both ways.
Sometimes I will put something down and then get into a place
later and go, oh, you know what?
I can use that thing that I thought was just
set dressing earlier.
And sometimes I will paint my reader into a corner
and be like, ugh.
Darn it.
They could totally get out of this corner if
there were a ladder.
All right.
There's a ladder in this corner.
And then do a square bracket to remind myself,
plant ladder earlier.
And then I go back and figure out where--
later, after I've written the scene.
I'll go back.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I do the exact same thing.
I use the square bracket.
For me, it's not just foreshadowing, but usually
even like a piece of world building or something, where I
say, oh, yeah, this will be important.
And I just square bracket, I go, add this backwards.
And then when I'm doing my revision, I'm like, oh yeah.
That will fit in very easily.
I can just seed a tiny bit of it into a bit of dialogue.
I know exactly where that will go.
And see, that is where writing every day really helps you,
because your whole story is fresh in your head, and you
can think, boy, where can I put this ladder?
But just two weeks ago, you were writing the scene four
chapters ago.
As opposed to if it was four months ago, it was a year ago,
then you're really going to have to work on getting that
into your head.
Here we have somebody talking about Chekhov's gun.
It's like "Twilight." Let's not talk for a long time about
a vampire fight at the final book and never have a giant
vampire fight.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
Thank you.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: "Chekhov's Vampire."
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: "Chekhov's Vampire" would have
been a whole heck of a lot more interesting.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
Here's another question about foreshadowing where they said,
how do you balance not being too overt and obvious and not
being too coy?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Ah.
I have some good tricks for that.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Oh, cool.
I will give just my general piece of advice,
which is beta readers.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I use my best judgment, and then I
encourage people to write in the margins of my betas.
And sometimes they'll get in there, and they're like, yes,
they knew it.
And then I knew that I was good--
maybe a little too heavy-handed.
And then, after they've read the whole thing, I said, did
you catch this here?
Was this too much?
But I never ask them before, because that
prejudices their reading.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Right.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I let them read it, and then I say, did
you know this was coming?
Was this too surprising?
I do an active interrogation of my betas.
So what are your tricks?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So I have two tricks.
One is that people, when they are reading-- or anything--
tend to pay attention to the stuff at the beginning and the
stuff at the end.
The stuff in the middle, they sort of skim over.
So if I need to plant a gun--
I actually have an actual gun on the mantle in the first act
of "Shades of Milk and Honey."
And it, indeed, goes off in the third act.
And when I introduce it, I describe the painting on the
wall, the drapery, the bookshelves, the gun on the
mantle, the table, the billiards balls.
And putting it in the middle guarantees that people will
read it, but there's no significance attached to it.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Right.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Because it's
clearly just set dressing.
So that's one thing, is that you can diminish it by not
having the characters pay any attention to it.
The other trick is to have it exist for a different reason.
So if I know that later my characters are going to need a
ladder, then I can have an earlier scene in which they
are painting the room, and the ladder is just one of the many
things that they need to paint the room.
So that when they're breaking into the house later, the fact
that they know where a ladder is, or that it's there it all,
is no big deal, because it's been used for something else.
That's actually a good rule of thumb for world building in
general, that any piece of technology that you introduce,
to try to use it in two different ways.
And then the other trick--
and I picked this up from Diana Rowland, who is a
fantastic writer.
And allow me to name drop and highly recommend her book,
which came out the day before yesterday, which is "The Touch
of the Demon," which is I think book three or four in
the series.
But she used to be a cop.
And she writes these fantastic procedural *** mysteries.
And the thing that she recommended was to not put
your clue and your information in the same scene--
don't make them happen at the same time.
But not in the same scene, but don't make them
happen at the same time.
So if my clue, if the piece of foreshadowing, if the
important thing, is that--
shoot.
Now I'm trying to come up with some famous mystery and
failing completely.
[LAUGHING]
But if my clue is that there is a pear on the table--
what is the sound?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Is that coming through yours or are
the air raid sirens going off here in Stevens Point?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Air raid sirens are going off there,
because I don't hear them here.
Do you want to check your--
will someone come and tell you if that's important?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I'm wondering what would be
raiding central Wisconsin right now, very suddenly.
Talk about foreshadowing.
If I suddenly am logged off, we'll know something
interesting is happening.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Something, yes.
This is the glass that is sitting on the edge of the--
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
I should start every episode of "Storyboards" like that.
It's like, do you hear--
I don't have much time.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah, and then static.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So if the important thing, if the
clue is that there's a pear on the table, then I don't have
my character come in and say, well, we have these pears on
the table that are kept there because the housekeeper likes
to keep pears on the table.
And then later it turns out to be important that the
housekeeper likes to keep pears on the table.
That's a clue and the information at the same time.
So you don't do that.
You separate them.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: For me, this actually relates to--
somebody asked a question here on my blog that said, Pat, you
tend to imply a lot of things that make your books good for
second and third read throughs.
Then they say, how do you gauge it?
How do you know when you're saying just enough to lead
someone down a path of thought without having neon road signs
to guide them?
And this is sort of like saying, how do you know when
you're giving someone too hard of a back rub?
It's like, I can't just tell you how to do it.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: You gave the advice earlier--
beta readers.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Beta readers.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: It's the same way you tell with a back
rub, is you get feedback from your audience.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Right.
And I will say in terms of seeding subtle information, I
always like to think my readers are smart, my readers
can figure things out for themselves--
I don't need to spoon-feed them.
And my philosophy is I'm going to say it once, and if you
aren't paying attention and you don't catch it, that's
your fault.
Because I don't want to say it three times and have you be
bored and start to skim my book.
I've read a lot of books where things are just
repeated again and again.
I'm like, yes, I get the plot, but you told me last chapter.
And somebody just said something, and then they
thought it, the same thing to themselves.
I'm like, don't repeat yourself.
So given the choice between saying too much and saying not
enough, I'm always going to lean back a little bit from
you because it's an overall philosophy in my art that my
thought is if I withhold a little, you're going to lean
forward a little.
And as soon as I've got you to lean forward a
little, then I've won.
Then I've got your interest and I can continue
to bring you in.
And if you do that properly, all of your book engages
reader curiosity, not just the plot, not just the character.
Everything becomes the potential for mystery.
Everything has the potential of being delightful.
It's just like the real world, where there are secrets
everywhere for people clever enough and careful enough to
actually walk around with their eyes open.
That's my personal philosophy.
It takes a *** ton of time--
I won't lie to you there--
to seed in all the tiny little things.
Sometimes I feel like I'm painting one of those--
what are those paintings where it's all just dots?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Pointillism.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
So you've been looking through here.
We're at a little bit over our hour, but is there any other
question you've had your eye on that you wanted to take a
crack at, Mary?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Well, one just came up that is
probably good to pick up, which is how do you find beta
readers, since we keep mentioning them.
There's a couple of different ways you can go about it.
The first thing to know is that a beta reader does not
need to be a writer.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Absolutely.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And frequently they're more useful
if they're not.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Absolutely.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Because a writer--
particularly newer writers.
More experienced writers have been through it and so they
understand, but there's frequently an urge to tell you
how they would write it, which is not actually helpful.
I use the Orson Scott Card approach, which is the wise
reader beta reader version.
And that's that I get in touch with people that have
expressed an interest in reading it.
Sometimes it's just someone who's like, you're writing?
I'd like to read that.
And this is before I had a blog or anything.
I would come up on a friend, and they
would express an interest.
And I would tell them that I wanted four things from them.
I wanted their reader reactions.
I wanted to hear about things that bored them, things that
confused them, things they did not believe.
And I just wanted them to tell me the points
that those were happening.
And then I wanted them to quote the things that they
thought were cool so I did not accidentally fix them.
Because I've done that, too.
And then any stream of consciousness stuff that they
have, like any moments where they're like, oh my god, are
they going to--
anything like that.
What I did not want them to say was, this sentence is very
awkward, or I think that you need to add this thing here.
Because that is giving me the cure, and all I need them to
do is tell me the symptoms that they're experiencing.
Frequently what will happen is you'll get someone who says, I
wanted to know more about this.
And why are the ships not falling from
the sky, the airships?
And the captain of the airship was really interesting, and I
wanted to know more about-- and you're like, the captain
of the airship is really not important to this.
So if I follow their instructions that you need to
add more about the captain of the airship, that is not going
to serve the story.
The answer usually is to just cut the captain of the airship
because he's too interesting.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Absolutely.
Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So getting them to tell you what
their reader experience is, and then you, as the writer,
can figure out how to address those things.
How do you go about it?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I just want to reinforce what you just
said there, although I've never quantified it like that.
I hand out the manuscript.
I give people a red pen and a letter that pretty much says,
the more you write on this, the happier I'll be.
And because I've read a lot of critical feedback over the
years, I interpret pretty easily.
I don't give them the four things, but I love the stream
of consciousness.
If they say, I laughed here, I'm like, great.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
Likewise.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Or if they make a little joke.
Or if they're like, wow.
Or they do a sad face.
Then I know what they're feeling as they go through.
Similarly, as they're going through, if they say, the
airship captain is really amazing and I want to know his
life story, then I know that, effectively, I might have
accidentally put a gun on the table.
And then if two beta readers say that, and they go, wow,
the airship captain's awesome.
Then I know that either I've had a little bit of a windfall
and people are curious, so maybe he's worth expanding.
Or if he's a one-off character, I
want to know two things.
I want to know what made that happen, so I can make it
happen in the future.
And two, I need to know maybe how to put him back into the
background so that he doesn't act like the wine glass, so
that he doesn't draw interest from the genuine elements that
I need people to be curious about.
How do I find beta readers?
It's different for me now.
And now, I have to actually be careful of beta readers,
because I'm really secretive about my books.
But back in the day, I can't emphasize enough how good is
to find beta readers who aren't authors, because,
again, authors will usually jump to, here's
what you should do.
But you should decide what to do.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And I do want to say as we're talking
about this that I also think that it is important to get
feedback from writers too, but it is a different
conversation.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: It is very, yeah.
And I'm not saying that writer
feedback is not good feedback--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
And it's useful.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: It's useful, but it's a
whole different thing.
I could probably do a whole "Storyboard" on interpreting
critiques, or interpreting feedback, working with an
editor versus a writer beta versus a reader beta.
But, yeah.
I don't think in terms of the wise reader.
I love every kind of reader.
I want a dumb reader.
I want a lazy reader.
Because hopefully my book will be able to be read by somebody
lazy, somebody who's tired and on a business trip.
And so if you're reading this feedback and somebody's like,
I'm bored as hell, don't go, you just don't get it.
The truth is they were bored, and if you want that kind of
reader to be not bored, you've got to fix it.
And that's your job.
Or you have to say, that reader, I am cutting away from
my audience, which is fine to do.
But if you do that 100 times, then you're writing it for you
and your mom.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
Which gets us back to where we started, which is one of the
first places you need to start is figuring out who your
audience is.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Look at that-- how circular we are.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: You managed to bring us closure and
everything.
I love you more every day.
So, and that is.
That will be a perfect place to end.
There's so much more to say, there's so many more questions
we could answer, but we'll have to leave those to a later
episode of "Storyboard."
I would like to thank everyone for watching.
I'd like to thank Geek & Sundry and all of its
multifarious, multi-talented people for making this
possible, and, of course, the lovely and talented Mary Kowal
for joining me today and helping me
answer these questions.