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PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Hello everybody, and welcome to this
week's storyboard brought you by Geek and Sundry and Powder
Milk Biscuits.
[LAUGHTER]
This week, we're going to be talking with our lovely guests
about character.
What makes us love characters?
What makes for a good character?
What makes for an empathetic character?
We're just going to see where it takes us.
And this week, we have the lovely and
talented Amber Benson.
AMBER BENSON: Hi.
I'm Amber Benson.
Is this where I introduce myself?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yes, go ahead.
AMBER BENSON: Oh.
My name is Amber Benson, as Pat pointed went out.
That's a good thing.
I'm also the girl with the most cake, at
least at this party.
I'm an actor and a writer, and director, and I don't dance as
well as I do those other things, so there's that.
I have a blog, amberbensonwrote
this.blogspot.com and I write a series of urban fantasy
novels called the Calliope Reaper-Jones novels, and a
middle-grade book called Among the Ghosts.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And we are also joined by the lovely and
talented Brad--
BRAD BEAULIEU: The one who cooks.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Give us your last name, too, because I was
in fear of mispronouncing it.
BRAD BEAULIEU: All right, I'm going to share with everybody
the trick so you can learn it and never forget.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: OK.
BRAD BEAULIEU: It's Beaulieu, so you say "bowl your *** off"
without the "*** off."
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Cool.
There we go.
BRAD BEAULIEU: So there you go.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: That's a great trick.
Paolo Bacigalupi, when I saw him for the first time, he
actually during his keynote speech, he sang his name and
made everyone do it, then I've never been able to forget it
ever since.
BRAD BEAULIEU: And how did it go?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: It was-- well, I don't remember the
tune, but I remember how to pronounce Bacigalupi, which
was a mystery to me before.
So yes, tell us how fabulous you are, Brad.
BRAD BEAULIEU: I am a writer of epic fantasy.
I do some short fiction as well, but I have an epic
fantasy series, a trilogy called The Lays of Anuskaya
from Nightshade Books, the first and second of which are
out now, the third of which is coming out next year.
And I'll put in a quick plug for a podcast that I run, of
which two out of the three guests on the show besides me
have been on, Pat and Mary.
And it's called Speculate.
It's at SpeculateSF.com.
And I have to say, Pat, I was all kind of proud of myself
that we were doing this cool podcast thing, and now I feel
totally out of my league with this whole Hangout thing.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Well you know, I feel totally out of my
league with this Hangout thing.
BRAD BEAULIEU: We're even, I guess.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: As evidenced by the fact that this Hangout
is actually happening today despite me, not because of me.
It's really happening because of the lovely folks at Geek
and Sundry and these three wonderful guests who have
agreed to do this, very much on the spur of the moment,
despite the fact that they have all returned from busy,
busy conferences where they were all weekend.
So Mary.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
Hello.
I'm Mary Robinette Kowal.
I won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2008.
Last year, I took home a Hugo award for a short story.
So I write short stories.
I love saying that sentence, by the way, I
just have to say.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Yay Mary.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I write short fiction and novels.
In short fiction, I'm kind of all over the map.
In novels, I write historical fantasy.
My first book was called Shades of Milk and Honey, and
we describe it as kind of like Jane Austen with magic.
And then I'm also a professional puppeteer.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: So you just threw that one out there like
a grenade, didn't you?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Because I'm going to talk about it,
and it may as well--
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: OK, that's OK.
That's foreshadowing.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And I'm your host, Pat Rothfuss, and let's
just jump right into it.
I think might be best to start by maybe talking about a few
of the characters we love the most, because I tried to think
of authors who I knew wrote good characters but then I
realized I wasn't getting anywhere.
Then I thought, well, what characters do I remember?
What characters do I love?
And that's how you remember it.
And sometimes, I remember the characters' names better than
the authors who wrote those books.
So who does everybody like?
Who do you remember from what you've read?
And we don't need to necessarily
keep this to books.
This is all character, all story, all night.
BRAD BEAULIEU: (SINGING) All night long.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: So who do you remember as these favorite
characters, these powerful characters, and what you think
the key is there that actually makes them so solid?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Well one of my--
BRAD BEAULIEU: I just--
You go, Mary.
Mary, go.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Well, one of my favorites is Vlad
Taltos from Steven Brust's series, Taltos.
He's an assassin and it's first person narrative, but
he's really complicated.
And because it's first person narrative, the way it's
written, you really to get deep
into his thought processes.
And it's interesting watching the way he
changes over the story.
And I think that's one of the things I personally really
like when I'm reading characters is watching them
change because of the things that they're going through.
AMBER BENSON: I keep thinking about Raskolnikov from Crime
and Punishment, and I think one of the reasons why I liked
that character so much is because I related to it.
It was so well-drawn, but there was a moment where he
talks about loving the mass of humanity but not liking people
individually, and I was like, oh, that registers.
I think when something is real and it comes from a real place
and it feels real to the character and from the author,
I think we as an audience relate to that.
I was like, oh, that's my problem.
I love the idea of humanity, but dealing with people on a
one-on-one basis sometimes can be so
overwhelming and hard to take.
You know what I mean?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Mm-hm.
Totally.
I've just come back from a convention.
Yes.
BRAD BEAULIEU: I'll mention a couple quickly, one from kind
of a classic, Lord of the Rings.
People kind of gravitate towards characters like Frodo
or Gandalf, but one of my favorite characters, and I was
reminded of it when I watched the movies not too long ago,
Boromir is probably the most interesting character to me
because he is the most conflicted.
I think when we start talking about characters, we quickly
get to complications, and that makes them deeper, more
interesting.
The other character I'll mention is from a TV series,
if we have any Sopranos fans out there, one of my favorite
characters is Chris Moltisanti, who goes through a
lot of changes.
He's caught between a young punk in the early part of that
series, and he grows into a captain, a made guy, and
meanwhile is caught between his love of writing movies and
gets caught up in drugs.
He's a fairly dark character that's also likable.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: That's one of the questions I've been
wondering about.
Do you have to like these characters?
I mean, it's easiest to have a great character that you like,
but I was trying to think of characters that I've read and
that I remember that I wouldn't necessarily want to
ever meet or be friends with, or that I might not even enjoy
them, but they were great characters at the same time.
And I have much harder time thinking of those.
It's easier to think of--
like for me, it's Cyrano de Bergerac is this amazing
character, and of course I'd like to be Cyrano's friend, or
of course I'd like to be Cyrano, right?
He's got so much going for him, and on top of that, he's
also conflicted and so he's more
interesting and more realistic.
But it's easier to have those--
well, actually I just came up with one, Marv from Sin City,
more the comic books than the movie, although the movie was
pretty good.
I mean, Marv in Sin City was like a real, full-blown bad
person, wired wrong in the head, a
sociopath, hurt people.
But you really--
by the end of the book you're kind of cheering him on and
you love him.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I think that's actually true for--
I mean, there are a lot of characters, particularly in
epic fantasy or in fantasy in general, that are not people
that you would ever want to spend time with.
I mean, Han Solo--
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: You know, love him, but he's a
liar, he's a cheat, he's a smuggler, self-serving,
totally self-serving.
So this is not somebody that you would want as your BFF,
but he's funny, and he's charismatic as all get-out.
And I think you can skate past a lot of things if you've got
those attributes.
What I was thinking about as you were talking about
characters that people don't like, the Stephen R. Donaldson
Thomas Covenant series.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I mean, Thomas Covenant--
yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: That's the bell ringer
example right there.
I remember I started reading that, and I got like 150 pages
in the book and I'm like, why am I doing this to myself?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And my mom had actually put a post-it in
the book because I borrowed it from her, and she's like,
pretty awful, huh?
And she goes, keep going, the story is worth it.
And I'm like, OK.
But you're right.
I mean, you have to think that the author specifically said,
I want to see if I could write a book about a guy that has no
redeeming social value.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Have you guys watched Dexter?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Hm.
AMBER BENSON: Those books, too, The
Dark Redeeming Dexter.
They're very right, very close to-- they stay very
close to the books.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Another one that jumps to mind, a more
recent example is Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns.
He has a young character, I think he's around 13 or so and
maybe younger, when an event happens, his mother is killed,
*** and killed, and then his father treats with the people
that did that to her and he becomes
essentially a sociopath.
And so like these other characters, he's not at all
sympathetic, but it's completely gripping reading
just the same.
AMBER BENSON: I'm a big fan of Jim Thompson, Population 1280,
the sheriff in that is totally--
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
AMBER BENSON: You know?
And then Ian Banks is great with those sort of antiheroes,
like the Wasp Factory, oh my god.
But you can't stop reading because you're so intrigued by
these crazy, sociopathic characters, and how their mind
works, it's so different from how mine works.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I think that's part of the key,
though, is getting a glimpse into someone else's mind.
I think that's part of--
when you decide that you're going to have the character
who's not sympathetic, you're paying a cost.
It is harder, I think, for the audience to engage, but part
of the reason they will engage is because it gives them an
insight into something that they
don't experience otherwise.
Since we're talking about sociopaths, Dan Wells's book,
I Am Not a Serial Killer.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
AMBER BENSON: Oh, I haven't read that.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh, it's fantastic.
It's really good.
Basically, a 15-year-old kid recognizes that he has all of
the markers for being a serial killer, and the only reason
he's not diagnosed as a sociopath is that you can't be
until you're an adult.
And so it's him wrestling with that, and he really nails-- he
spends a lot of time on research, so really nails
that, and it's fascinating because you get to
see his mind tick.
BRAD BEAULIEU: And George Martin does this over and over
again with his characters as well.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
BRAD BEAULIEU: You come across characters that you don't have
point of view with initially and you come to dislike them,
but then we totally turns the tables on you and shows them
what they're thinking, why they are like they are, and
you start to understand.
You may still not like what they do, but you do
sympathize with them.
AMBER BENSON: There's not a lot of female antihero
characters, though.
That's something that is interesting to me.
And maybe this is just me, but I feel like people are much
more willing to go on that journey with a male
protagonist or antihero than they are with a female.
If you think about it, there are not a lot of female
antiheroes, you know?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: That's true.
BRAD BEAULIEU: That movie Monster comes to mind.
AMBER BENSON: Yeah, based on a real thing.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
I can't think of any of the top of my head either.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I mean, I can think of people who are
dysfunctional, characters who are dysfunctional, but that's
not the same as an antihero.
And that may just be a reflection of real life
because it's harder for me, as a woman, to be aggressive and
straightforward without being seen as--
oh, I have to keep this clean, don't I?
BRAD BEAULIEU: Relatively.
AMBER BENSON: Rhymes with "witch."
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I think "***" is acceptable.
I think you can--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Well since you've gone there.
I should have just said--
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I will shoulder the burden for that
if we are off script with that word.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: But it is--
I mean, that may be a thing--
see, now I want to write a female antihero.
AMBER BENSON: I know.
It's very intriguing, right?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I call dibs on it real quick.
Copyright.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Sure, as soon as you
finish that next book.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Ouch.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Ow, ow.
But actually, I think it is true.
Part of it might be the fact that we do have a bit of a
paucity of female characters comparatively in fantasy in
general, although in urban fantasy, it's
the other way around.
And I think that maybe after urban fantasy spends enough
time having its foundation of standard heroes, then people
are going to start reacting to it and doing
variations on the theme.
But I do think you're right.
I think the other thing that might complicate the antihero
is if a woman is a mother, certain activities are really
profoundly unacceptable from a cultural viewpoint.
Like I know somebody--
actually, wasn't it in Joe Walton's novel, Among Others,
she read a version of The Tempest where
Prospero was a woman?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And she said, Prospero can't work as a
woman because a mother who does that to a child, it loses
all potential sympathy.
It's a deal breaker.
You can't come back from that.
And so a mother antihero, I think you'd have to overcome
so much cultural baggage for that person to not just be
horrifying or a charming serial killer or sociopath.
They'd be violating rules maybe way down in the lizard
brain area where we couldn't take that.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
What about Wicked?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Boy, that whole book was kind of just
like his character study, wasn't it?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
I mean, arguably, that's a female antihero.
AMBER BENSON: But he was sort of showing her, why she was
misunderstood.
It wasn't so much that he was re-instilling those, you know
what I mean?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah, but I feel like that's--
Yeah.
AMBER BENSON: It's heading in that direction for sure.
It's definitely the closest thing I can think of.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: So here's the thing.
Before we go too far down that road and we can't come back--
OK, I'm going to go a little farther down that road.
Is it a first-person point of view thing?
These characters who we like, they're either from drama like
a play, where people soliloquize their thoughts--
is that the proper pronunciation of that?
AMBER BENSON: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Or they're first person point of view
novels, or they're television.
So the reason Dexter works is that actor sells it.
He is charming.
And so he's got charisma out the ***, and so you see him
and you're charmed by him despite
the action he's taking.
But that's a physical thing that you're watching.
AMBER BENSON: Plus, there's back story, too.
They show flashbacks and voice over.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah, that's true.
You can't pin it all on the actor.
But is it all about knowing the internal process?
Can we think of characters who we love that we never see the
inside of their heads?
AMBER BENSON: That's tough.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I think that might be the deal breaker.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
I think you've got to--
it gets back to that old adage, everybody is the hero
of their own story.
You can have people who are cold blooded killers, like
pretty much anyone, like Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora.
These are criminals and they're pulling a heist, and
yet we are totally rooting for them to succeed.
Ocean's Eleven, although these are all guys again.
Thelma & Louise?
AMBER BENSON: You said it with the--
BRAD BEAULIEU: I jump to--
AMBER BENSON: Sorry.
You go, Brad.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Oh, I was just going to say, I was thinking
about Cersei Lannister a little bit.
It seems like Martin tried to paint her as a bit of an
antihero, but I'm actually not sure of his intention because
he's so good at it, and she didn't come
across that way to me.
She actually came across a bit touched and I think that's how
he wanted us to think of her, as a woman who's lost it a
little bit and is still, despite knowing her,
unsympathetic.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's think about the other.
I'm curious about the other side of this, because when I
was writing my stuff, I knew that if people didn't like the
character, the book couldn't succeed because it was going
to be the story of a person's life.
But that's kind of the extreme end of the spectrum where for
an autobiography, it's all about that character.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Right.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Just recently, I was on a panel and
I said something about, well, Stephen King does this great
thing where he's really good with character.
He'll introduce a character, you get stuff from their point
of view, and then they die.
But Stephen King can do that because he's a great writer
and he's great with point of view.
And somebody else stepped in and said, no actually, he
isn't good with that.
He's not great with point of view, it's other things that
are really selling that story.
But can we think of books that are good without really good
characters on the other end of the spectrum?
Because if we can bookend this issue, I think we learn
something about the role that they would play in these
stories, what sort of stories they work in.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Yeah.
I--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: [INAUDIBLE].
BRAD BEAULIEU: Go ahead.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: You go, Brad.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Well, I was going to mention
Ready Player One.
I think people like that book because of the gaming, geeky
goodness that it brings to the table, all the nostalgia that
you live through.
I don't think it was the greatest example of a
character novel I've ever read.
I liked the characters, but they weren't
particularly deep for me.
So that would be one example on my end.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
AMBER BENSON: There's something aspirational about
these kind of characters that we're talking about now, where
you can kind of place yourself-- especially in Ready
Player One, you can place yourself into the
protagonist's position.
And I see that a lot in urban fantasy too with these female
protagonists that are sort of--
in some ways, they're a little flat to me, and it's because
it's so easy to just stick yourself right in, like you
feel like you're them.
You know what I mean?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
I was thinking about Asimov, actually, as someone who
writes stories that are incredibly compelling but the
characters are fairly flat.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I've heard some people say that that's
part of the appeal of Twilight is it's very easy to project
onto that character, and that's what makes the story so
functional for a certain age group is you wear it like a
suit of clothes or a mask.
AMBER BENSON: You mean the moms?
The moms that read Twilight?
Less the teenagers and more the moms?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: You're thinking of 50
Shades of Gray there.
AMBER BENSON: I haven't read that yet.
It's on the list.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I think that that can go either way.
I mean, Brad and I both went to Orson Scott Card's
literary boot camp.
And one of the things that he does very deliberately is he
does not do any character description unless absolutely
forced to because he feels like that allows everyone to
build their own picture of the character and do that layering
of putting the character on like clothes.
The other end of that, though, is people who actually do
full-out character descriptions with the idea
that it makes the character more tangible.
And I'm not--
actually, this is something that I go back and forth on,
whether or not it's important to have a character that is
more fully described.
I would be interested in hearing what other people
think about-- where they land on the spectrum, either as
writers or readers.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I'll jump in very firmly on less is more.
Actually, I read something that Zelazny wrote ages ago,
and he said, I never use more than three details to describe
a character.
And I remember reading that and I'm like, wow, that makes
really good sense.
He picks three really good details and figures--
and his point was if you give a ton, then people are going
to pick and choose which ones they remember.
But if you three really good ones, they'll latch onto them.
And I've always kind of followed that rule of thumb.
I think he actually said, I do two, and then maybe I'll sneak
in a third later.
It really makes you make some hard choices.
And I do try to follow that rule, at least in terms of
physical description.
On the other end of the spectrum, I think of it as the
police sketch, where you get a whole page all about the
character, and he was six, four, and he weighed this
much, and the hair was like this, and what he was wearing.
And unless it's done really well, that's the point at
which I want to skim in a book.
I know I'm going to miss important
things, but I still--
I don't know what a Peter Pan collar is.
If you put that information in, I get lost.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Have you guys read-- help me out.
It's called Understanding Comics, I'm blanking on the--
was it Doug something?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: It was Scott McCloud.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Ah, Scott McCloud.
So what Mary said was interesting about Orson Scott
Card and not painting a lot.
In that book, Scott McCloud talks about comics and how
they are portrayed.
And how the art portrays a story along with the words.
And he talks about representational versus
presentational.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Hm, hm-hm.
BRAD BEAULIEU: I'm totally forgetting which is which at
this point because they sound so similar.
But at one end of the spectrum you have artwork
that is very detailed.
And at the other end of the spectrum, you have artwork
that is very generalized.
And the more generalized you make it, the more people can
relate to that particular drawing.
If it's a drawing of a boy or a girl or whatever, the more
generic or loosely defined it is the more relatable it is.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah, I think that's especially true
in terms of the physical description.
Because obviously the actions a person takes and the
motivation in their life are concrete in a story.
But if you leave the physical description very vague it's a
little easier, especially like in a first person narrative,
to slip behind that character's eyes and have a
little vicarious story experience there.
AMBER BENSON: There's something interesting.
I was just reading The Illustrated Man, you know the
Ray Bradbury [INAUDIBLE]
thing?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah, yeah.
AMBER BENSON: And he's so interesting the way he deals
with description.
Because so many times he flips it.
Where like you're reading a story about everybody that's
on Mars is African American and they're waiting for this
one white guy who's going to show up in this rocket ship.
And I think--
he does it not in that collection but another one I
think, he does it when he talks about this guy coming to
Mars and the Martians and the guy's African American.
And sometimes, you know, with description we tend to just
go, everybody's white.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
AMBER BENSON: Do you know what I mean?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
BRAD BEAULIEU: That's true.
AMBER BENSON: So sometimes it's nice if you're--
doesn't have to say, oh, I'm of Hispanic or I'm Chinese.
But there are ways to describe somebody so you know they're
coming from a different culture.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah, and this is the thing that
I've been thinking about, too.
Is that if you don't put any description in except when
they're different that your style--
AMBER BENSON: That's not good.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Right.
Because you're reestablishing white as the norm, which is
right out as--
and that's why I struggle with trying to decide--
in part--
I swear I will come up with a sentence that's actually a
full sentence here.
But that's part of why I'm struggling.
Because I just finished working on a novel which is
set in 1907 Nashville, Tennessee.
And my main character's an African American woman.
And I realized that that default assumption would be
flipped to some degree.
But also I wound up describing everybody's race when they
walked into the scene because I couldn't rely on my audience
to make the assumption.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah, I did a satirical article for a
newspaper once where I just wrote a regular article and
then I just made a point of explaining that everyone in
there was white.
You know?
I was just-- you know, so and so, a Caucasian male.
You know?
And when you do that you're like, boy this
seems really weird.
But I know some people have a problem doing it
on the other side.
And this is a character I was actually going to bring up on
the far end of the spectrum in terms of like relatable,
tangible, lovable characters in an otherwise
like amazing story.
Shadow in American Gods.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh, yeah.
AMBER BENSON: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: You know, Shadow is almost a
non-character.
And Gaiman is so good at what he does it has to be
deliberate.
And it's even mentioned in the story.
Like, somebody mentions his old girlfriend comes in and
says, it's almost like you were never a real person.
Sometimes I would come into a room and you'd be sitting in
the dark not doing anything, not even watching TV.
You know?
And he was just sort of like a moving pane of glass through
which you experience the story.
And are we completely lagged out here?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: No, no.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: OK, I can see you move now.
But--
AMBER BENSON: You're just so, like, compelling.
We're just-- yeah.
BRAD BEAULIEU: We're rapt.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: We're fixated on the screen.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: The other part of it, though, is that
Shadow is black.
AMBER BENSON: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And it's only--
I get one point-- because what happens is every time he comes
into a room people go boy you're a big one.
And that's it.
Except I think in one place his skin is described as like
coffee colored.
And like that is it in a 350,000 word book.
And it was interesting finding that in
the second read through.
And I'm like, wow, should this have been
something I've known?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Hm-hm.
AMBER BENSON: Hm-hm.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: But there's so much I
don't know about Shadow.
That character was really in a lot of ways unimportant to the
story itself.
Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I actually remember a moment in
one of the Heinlein books, it might have been the Cat Who
Walks Through Walls.
But Lazarus Long had his foot cut off and a new one put on
from a donor.
And I remember it saying that it looked like he had on a
white sock.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Oh, yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And there is nothing anywhere else
in the book that indicates that his skin is anything
other than Caucasian.
AMBER BENSON: Hm-hm.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And I remember hitting that and it
kicked me out of the story.
And I think that's something that you can do deliberately
to challenge reader's assumptions.
But I also think that you wind up paying a
cost when you do that.
And you have to decide whether or not that's something you
want to do.
And I think that's the case with any description, that if
you introduce a detail later-- like you were saying, Pat--
that if it's something that the audience has imagined
something else that you wind up running into trouble.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
BRAD BEAULIEU: I'm curious to know--
but you're just talking about instead of race, sex.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Hm-hm.
BRAD BEAULIEU: From the two women folk on this here cast,
what is the default sex for the
character that your reading?
Because I've read a lot of kind of newer writers that
write stories in first person.
And they don't mention a name right away.
And so you're not totally clear what the sex is.
That's usually a very easily fixable thing or maybe
something that you're consciously doing.
But, of course, while I'm reading I'm picturing a guy.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
BRAD BEAULIEU: What do you guys do?
What is the default?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: A guy.
I default to the sex of the author unless the voice is
really good.
And then usually male.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Right.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And then there's the question of, is
there a female voice?
Is there a male voice?
I--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Well--
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: But I do know exactly what you mean.
Where some people have a distinctive voice and it
paints the whole character, including the sex, social
class, and all of this.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: But it does happen to me, especially in a
lot of short stories first person, I read them and I'm
like, whoop.
Oh, wrong.
I'm in the wrong sex.
AMBER BENSON: Hm-hm.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
BRAD BEAULIEU: And through pages of a short story I
almost got to put it down.
I'll come back in a week and try it again.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the things I do when I'm teaching is--
because I feel like a lot of description can actually be
handled through point of view.
The details that a character notices vary wildly depending
on who the character is.
And so I'll ask the students to just describe a room.
And then I'll ask them to go back and describe exactly the
same room as like a fireman, or a teacher, or a janitor, or
something like that.
But that I do not want them at any point
to say I am a fireman.
That it's just by the details that you notice.
Because the fireman comes in and notices fire exits.
He notices where the windows are.
He notices that they probably used flame
retardant on the curtains.
And you know that this man is probably a fireman.
Someone else comes in and spots the--
the trash can hasn't been emptied.
There are spots on the floor.
And he would probably use Windex more frequently.
And you're like--
BRAD BEAULIEU: Right, that's good.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And spit balls.
Spit balls everywhere.
But I feel like that's one way to deal with character
description with either first person or third person.
Because that way you can get away with giving the internal
state of the character who is observing as well as telling
something about the character that is
being observed in puppetry.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: There we go.
We've been waiting for it.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Focus indicates thought.
AMBER BENSON: Yay.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I told you.
Focus indicates thought.
What your character's looking at is what your character's
thinking about.
AMBER BENSON: Lee Child is really good at that first
person, you know, thing.
With this character, the Jack Reacher stuff, I mean they're
like crack to me.
I read those books in like two seconds.
And they're just like drugs or candy.
But he's really good about-- because he has such a specific
character with such a specific history the way
he sees things is--
he walked in a room and he sees things in a very specific
way because of his very-- you know, from him
background and stuff.
And that terseness of how he writes that character is so
interesting to me.
I don't think it would work for--
I get in arguments with my mom about this.
Because my mom is a budding novelist.
And she's like, I love Lee Child.
I love how terse he is.
[INAUDIBLE]
I want to write like that.
And I'm like, yeah but it won't work for like a cozy
romance or a cozy mystery.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Right.
AMBER BENSON: You know what I mean?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah, completely.
Because it's the language that a person uses is so--
AMBER BENSON: Specific to them.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes, exactly.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: The--
can you still hear me?
AMBER BENSON: Yes.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: You [INAUDIBLE].
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I'm taking off the earbuds here to free
up the speakers.
One thing I do want to mention quickly, you brought up
Heinlein in his book I Will Fear No Evil.
I hear that he was deliberately obscure on the
subject of race.
And that was told, I'm pretty sure, from a
first person viewpoint.
It was from the viewpoint of a man who ended up
in a woman's body.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh, yeah yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And apparently he had a picture of
two beautiful women by his computer.
And one of them was black and one of them was white.
And he would use both of them as kind of a reference.
But deliberately did not mention race all the way
through it.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Hm-hm.
AMBER BENSON: Interesting.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And so just to touch on that.
Also we have kind of a strange opportunity here because I am
traveling right now.
We have the potential for a guest speaker or someone who
might be able to make a comment or two on the nature
of explaining character.
We actually have Terry Brooks here.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh!
Ah.
[LAUGHTER]
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I'm going to give up my chair here.
BRAD BEAULIEU: [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY BROOKS: OK.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And--
TERRY BROOKS: I'm not Patrick Rothfuss.
[LAUGHTER]
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: We should turn that off.
TERRY BROOKS: Not even close.
AMBER BENSON: We need a new lower third for him.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And this would be maybe a nice segue
into the end of the show.
Where we could talk a little bit about tips for doing it.
How can you--
AMBER BENSON: Whoa.
TERRY BROOKS: Not that.
[LAUGHTER]
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Interesting [INAUDIBLE] characters.
Like tips and tricks that work well in books.
Mary mentioned how the voice or what a person recognizes
reveals so much about a character.
I think that's absolutely true.
And I don't see that used as well as it could be.
What else do people think?
Good tricks.
TERRY BROOKS: I'll say something really quick.
I was listening to the discussion a few minutes ago
about detail and characteristics of your
characters in the book in order to identify what their
like and represent them.
But I'm sort of of the camp that sometimes this less is
more thing plays out in another way.
And that's that you allow--
you want to not do too much with any character because you
want to allow your reader to meet you half way.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Hm-hm.
TERRY BROOKS: That means that you let your reader have the
opportunity to form a vision of what this character looks
like, acts like, behaves like beyond what
you do in your work.
What you set out for them.
You give them that couple things to work with and let
them form the character.
And then they're more of a participant rather than just a
somebody watching from the sidelines.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
It's like the crying rule in live theater, which is that if
you bring your character right up to the edge of crying but
don't actually go there the audience will almost always
cry for you.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Wow.
Or at least in children's theater.
TERRY BROOKS: [INAUDIBLE].
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: We can use that as a
tagline to market this.
[LAUGHTER]
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Mary Robinette Kowal teaches us
about puppetry and how to make children cry.
[LAUGHTER]
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: We had what we called the pee factor
when we went into schools.
That was a whole different thing.
BRAD BEAULIEU: The pee factor?
Excuse me?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: How scary a show is, you can count
it by how many small puddles there are in the gymnasium.
AMBER BENSON: Oh, no!
[LAUGHTER]
BRAD BEAULIEU: Wow.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Which is not actually a
helpful writing tip.
So let's get back to those.
BRAD BEAULIEU: I'll mention a couple of quick things.
One is a mistake that I made through my
first couple of novels.
And that is first impressions.
We all want to make our characters complex.
They want to be deep.
They want to have different interests.
But I wanted initially to have my characters be sort of the
every man or the every woman.
And to do that I wanted to show them as a bit weak so
that they could grow into the role that they were about to
take on in this story.
But if you show weakness first that's a really huge mistake.
You have to be really careful with that stuff.
Because those things last.
Just like in life, they last for a long time.
It's really hard to undo that first impression
once it's been set.
And the other thing I'll mention quickly is Pat and I
have talked about this at some panels Gen Con.
Falling into the character.
Once you have your character set that's one thing.
But portraying it on the page is another.
And it's really difficult, at least it is for me, to truly
fall into the character.
It's like method acting in a way.
And when you find those moments where you can actually
fall into the character and really become
them, those are golden.
Those are really, well, I won't say rare.
But you should take advantage of them and try to recreate
that however you can.
Get yourself in that same mindset.
And I think that's when some of the magic comes out in
those first drafts.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: In the subject of first impressions,
I think about that a lot if I read a newer writer's
manuscript or story.
A lot of times you get a ton of description.
And maybe we walk with him through a part of his day.
And they're setting a scene and they're doing things.
And I know why they're making those choices.
But ultimately we don't really know a character until we see
them to do something.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And that first thing a character does
is really the first impression.
Doesn't matter how much you describe them.
When they make a choice, when they make an active choice,
that is the first impression.
And so that action should count.
And that doesn't mean they kill a dragon on page three.
That just means some sort of active engaged discussion
reveals so much about character.
You don't want to blow that opportunity.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
I completely agree.
I think the first impressions thing is great.
One of the things that we use to talk about when I was doing
the theater stuff heavily was action is reaction.
That the way you respond to the things around you
illuminates character.
And the choices that the character decides to make.
Amber, you actually probably have spent more time doing
this kind of character stuff.
Because I mean when I'm talking about character stuff
I'm like, hi.
[LAUGHTER]
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And although there can be deep
character stuff, I'm constrained to a certain
degree by what piece of fur I picked up.
AMBER BENSON: There's things you ask as an actor coming in
to take a character on after an author has given it life.
You take it to another level.
And you always want to know why.
Why is the character there?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
AMBER BENSON: What does a character want from a scene?
What is a character looking for from the other people that
they're interacting with?
I think that applies when you're writing a
character as well.
You have to know what the character wants.
Why are they in this situation?
How do they react to things?
And it's the same principle.
You know?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
AMBER BENSON: Whether it's a puppet or a human being.
You know?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
AMBER BENSON: Because look at puppets, look
at Kermit the frog.
He makes me feel things that--
there are a lot of actors out there that do not make me feel
those things.
It's not easy being green.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: No.
So true.
But at least--
it is the stereotype, what's my motivation?
But it's so true.
AMBER BENSON: Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: When I run into a problem when I'm
writing it's almost always that I had forgotten what my
character's motivation, what their reason
for being there is.
AMBER BENSON: Agreed.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I think that's great.
A lot of times people talk about the iceberg.
Like, for your world you don't want to explain all your
world, you want to show 10%.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Right.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And the rest you just know
and you leave out.
And everybody accepts that as true about world building.
But I think people forget that it should also
be true about character.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: You should know all these things about
the character.
Not so you can put them in, but so you can leave them out.
Tim Powers once said, you need to know when this guy last
washed his shirt.
TERRY BROOKS: No you don't.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: No, no.
[LAUGHTER]
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: No, yeah.
Yeah, John Scalzi says that he answers questions for his
characters in the world two questions deep.
So he's like, well you know, why is he cranky this morning?
Because he didn't eat breakfast.
Well, why didn't he eat breakfast?
Because he was running late.
Well, why was he running late?
I don't know!
AMBER BENSON: But think of it this way.
Any actor should know what a character is about.
I always like to say you should know where they were
before the scene started and where they're going after.
You as the author should know all this.
You don't have to put it in the book.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
AMBER BENSON: You know what I mean?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh, I know that so much.
Thank you.
Thank you for saying it that loud.
BRAD BEAULIEU: The other thing that--
I've been giving some talks the last couple years a bit to
do with world building.
It's actually more about characters and plot.
But I think world building is a sometimes forgotten part of
character building.
The characters are not the cultures that they come from,
but they're born of it.
And if they don't completely define the characters they can
at least define some of the opposition, some of the
tension that these characters have to face either internally
or externally.
And so if you can spend a lot of time in your world, the
cultures, the religions, the customs, on and on, the
expectations that you have from your family, of yourself,
that can advise character.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Hm-hm.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: You were going to say?
TERRY BROOKS: I was just going to say that one of the things
that sets books apart from other forms of world building
or character representation in other formats is that you have
interior monologue.
AMBER BENSON: Yeah.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
TERRY BROOKS: Tells us about characters is what's going on
in their heads.
And sometimes it's false but sometimes it's real.
And their reactions to things and what lives in their head
and is bugging them or what drives their motivations and
so on comes through in their interior monologue.
And I use that a lot to define the characters I write that I
write about.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
And I love that when it's done to a good purpose.
I've seen sometimes, it's unfortunate, you get
duplication of effort.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Where somebody thinks about why
they're going to do something and then they do it.
Whereas I would like to see somebody have their interior
monologue and then do something else.
Or just watch them do the thing and then I'll draw my
own conclusions.
Because you don't want to waste the time doing both.
TERRY BROOKS: It's all about structure.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
It's--
I am actually going to pull out a puppet for this.
AMBER BENSON: Yay.
[LAUGHTER]
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So we say focus indicates thought.
So what your puppet is looking at is what
it's thinking about.
Breathe indicates emotion.
So how your puppet feels goes through, you know, [SIGH].
So I can show you that the puppet is
sad just by the action.
[SIGH]
But if I then go, [SIGH]
I'm sad.
It's like, oh please.
[LAUGHTER]
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And the things that make bad
children's theater make bad books, too.
AMBER BENSON: But something that's interesting to me is
the difference between literary
fiction and genre fiction.
I feel like a lot of times literary fiction, it's all
internal monologue.
Unless action and more like, why--
you know, you look at The Stranger by Camus, and it's
all why this person did this.
And we're meditating on why this character did this rather
than being the present of watching them do this.
And I think in some ways there has to be that balance between
writing and action oriented thing.
Not shoot 'em up, *** *** action but a story that's in
the present or the past, that's moving.
And more of a character study of a person.
And that interior monologue is so important for the more
literary fiction.
And I want to understand why someone is doing
what they're doing.
It's very appealing to me as a reader.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
Well, how about on the other end of the spectrum.
We've talked about some of the good tips and tricks.
Let's briefly, before we throw it open to questions from the
audience, maybe just one from each of us things that you see
people do in books and it really gets to you most of the
time, where it's one of your peeves.
A character thing that you really think people
should cut back on.
AMBER BENSON: Terry's got a good one.
I can see it.
I can see it--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I'm like--
Yeah, go Terry.
TERRY BROOKS: I don't like--
I've probably done this, and I'm going to
screw myself here.
But I don't like it when a physical description of the
character is overdone, and I see it done all the time.
I don't really need to know all this stuff about the
character, because I don't care what they look like, I'd
rather form that impression myself rather than listening
to long descriptions about hair color, and eye color, and
shape of face, and on and on and on.
If they've got a problem, I want to know about that, if
they limp, or if they're favoring something, if there's
something about the way they move, that's more
interesting to me.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: The thing that drives me crazy is
when they have an internal, deep flashback about
motivation in the middle of a giant, freaking action scene.
They're running down the road with an axe, and the smell of
the blood reminded him of his mother's apple pies when he
was a small child back in--
I'm just like, no!
AMBER BENSON: I might have done that.
I apologize.
That might have happened.
I apologize.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I wasn't going to say [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY BROOKS: Never slow the action.
Never slow the momentum.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Yeah.
I hate it when there is repetition in thought
and word and deed.
Sometimes young authors, new authors, forget about or don't
yet know about subtext.
They feel like they have to kind of pound things into you
to make you understand, where about a third of what they
actually put on the page would do just fine.
Kind of related to what you just said, Mary, with doing
one thing and saying another, but internalizing stuff like
that is also just too much.
AMBER BENSON: I'll tell you what's important for
description is when you've about to have sex with
somebody in a book, I want to know what they look like
before I have sex with them.
That's basically the only time when I want to--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I didn't think about
the fact that that's--
sorry.
AMBER BENSON: No, no.
I'm just laughing at myself.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: No, I'm like, that's why in the
romance genre, description is so much more heavily
favored, I'll bet.
AMBER BENSON: Yep.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Huh.
AMBER BENSON: I want to know what his pecs look like.
I know I can look at the cover, but I want more
description.
I want to know what his male parts look like, or their
female parts.
You know what I mean?
I want to know how big the *** are, right?
If I'm going to have sex with her, I want to know.
That's when description is important.
TERRY BROOKS: What are you writing next?
52 shades of what?
BRAD BEAULIEU: [INAUDIBLE], of course.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Oh.
You know, we could sell that.
So maybe let's--
do we have some questions from the audience here?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes, we do.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Questions up above.
That said, showing the fact that he is
not that good using--
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So as a child, what book was most
influential to you before the age of 16, from Andrew Seely.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Hm.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Actually, I'm
going to jump on that.
That would actually be Louisa May Alcott's The
Old Fashioned Girl.
She manages to slip in a lot of very useful life lessons
without actually moralizing.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: You know, this is a weird character
example but Aslan.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Oh, yeah, yeah.
AMBER BENSON: Oh Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I mean, you never see Aslan's thoughts.
He's the Gandalf.
He does not explain himself deliberately, but like right
now, I can feel what his mane feels like, because that's
[INAUDIBLE] the Penzey kids-- was that their last name?
They would kind of go in and they would smell, and I can
smell what Aslan smells like.
And I don't know--
part of that is probably the books, and part of it is the
fact that those were my very first chapter books.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: But I think that is a great example of how
a little description and a little very good dialogue--
that lasts forever.
That's lasted 30 years for me.
AMBER BENSON: I know Andrew McSeely.
He's a friend of mine.
He totally salted the question.
Hi, Andrew.
I'm trying to think.
You know, I read a lot of fantasy as a kid and I got
super into Diana Wynne Jones, the Chrestomanci books, and
the Christopher Chant books, or whatever, and I think about
those characters a lot.
I think about how science and the multiverse--
[INAUDIBLE] a multiverse theory.
You know what I mean?
And I was eight or nine.
And the same with The Lion, the Witch, and the Lordrobe.
[LAUGHS]
with those books as well.
There's something magical about imagination and fantasy
and science and all that stuff.
That was so potent to me as a child.
Those characters were learning.
What's her name?
Madeleine L'Engle also--
these characters were like me, and they were learning these
amazing things.
And that was really important to me, and I think that's why
I like fantasy so much.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I wanted to be Charles Wallace.
AMBER BENSON: Oh my God, I know.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I know.
I associated with Meg so much, except for the part where she
was good with math.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: How about you, Brad?
What early book?
BRAD BEAULIEU: Yeah, it would have to be an oldie but a
goodie, it's The Hobbit and eventually
The Lord of the Rings.
I remember going into a new school back in
third grade, I switched.
And I met a new friend, Jim Volte, I even remember his
name, and he had read it, and he kind of tipped me to it.
And before that, I had not been a huge reader.
I remember reading the Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew
mysteries and things, but The Hobbit just opened my eyes.
I loved that, I loved the depth and
breadth of that world.
And it's actually been hard for me since then.
It made such an impression that I have trouble wanting to
read other things besides fantasy.
Once I start them, I do enjoy science fiction, horror once
in awhile, but my true love is fantasy.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: How about you, Terry?
An early book that had a really memorable character in
it, or characters that really stuck to you?
TERRY BROOKS: You mean, besides The
Naked and the Dead?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I don't know that one.
TERRY BROOKS: I'm slightly older than you
are, so I'll just--
you know, I was reading all science fiction also in the
early days, but I think the Oz books made the biggest
impression on me when I was [INAUDIBLE].
There wasn't much fantasy out there, not popular fantasy,
anyway, so the Oz books were the books I remember the best.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: We've got a question that says, how does
the use of unreliable narrator impact character building?
I might twist that a little bit and just say, have any of
you used this or seen it used real well,
the unreliable narrator?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
Liar by Justine Larbalestier is a brilliant use of the
unreliable narrator.
And it's a YA novel, and the character is
a compulsive liar.
And you know that, but you don't know which pieces are
real and which pieces aren't, and she makes really
excellent use of it.
AMBER BENSON: I love her.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: And Amber, didn't you
mention Population 12--
AMBER BENSON: Yeah, Jim Thompson.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
I don't consider that an unreliable narrator--
AMBER BENSON: No, not in the same way.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: But what that character thinks about in
this first person report, it evolves very naturally where
at some point you're like, oh, I've made a bunch of
assumptions because his thoughts have been focusing on
the matters at hand and then there's a little clue dropped,
and a little clue dropped, and eventually you're like, whoa,
I thought I was talking to somebody else.
And that's a really-- if you haven't read that book and
you're interested in first person point of view, you have
to read it.
AMBER BENSON: There's another one called The Egyptologist.
Do you guys remember this?
That's another total unreliable narrator.
You think you're on one journey, and then you realize,
oh, something's not right here.
Sorry if I spoiled it.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Yeah, The Sixth Sense jumps to mind.
AMBER BENSON: Yeah, totally.
BRAD BEAULIEU: I think they can be more challenging to
write, but what Terry was saying earlier about the
reader coming halfway, meeting you halfway, this is one of
those things that gives the reader a chance to be smart,
and the more chances you give them to be smart, the more
they enjoy the travel in your story.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
I read a *** mystery once which I will not name because
it would be a complete spoiler, which was written in
first person and the narrator was the murderer.
And there were, in fact, enough clues dropped all the
way through that you should have gotten it.
But he was busily trying to "solve the ***," which was
actually him trying to cover it up.
AMBER BENSON: Yeah, that's great.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: So maybe one more question here.
I see we have--
and this is a good one to maybe just throw out some
quick piece of advice before we wrap up.
Somebody asks--
Hunter asks--
how far into a character's thoughts should you go without
risking losing the reader's attention, whereas if you hold
back too much, the character might seem kind of shallow.
I think that's a huge question because I know I've been bored
by internal monologue.
That's always the classic criticism of literary fiction
is I always think of it as a guy staring out into the rain
thinking about [INAUDIBLE], and drinking tea, and that's
the whole novel.
That's unfair, but that's what I think about when I think
about too much internal monologue.
How does everyone decide where to draw the line?
BRAD BEAULIEU: Well I think for me, it's somewhat similar
to exposition in that the trick for me is to make the
reader want to have those internalizations
before you give them.
So you set up little mini-mysteries that makes you
wonder why this character is doing what they're doing, and
then you can dole those things out and the reader is actually
interested instead of bored.
TERRY BROOKS: Brad, maybe it's a case of having the character
do something first, behave in a particular way, and then you
get into what the motivation is for the behavior so you
have something to play off of.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Right.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah, something to kick in the
reader's curiosity that you then satisfy, makes
[INAUDIBLE].
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Sorry, I'm getting a-- a storm is
kicking up, so I actually have to go close my door.
I'm going to--
AMBER BENSON: Oz is coming!
It's the great and powerful Oz coming to Mary's house!
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: So I'm explaining my motivation
before I do the action.
BRAD BEAULIEU: You should have done the action first, Mary.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: It's actually just a reference to a
book that you should check out.
It's A Wind in the Door, right?
AMBER BENSON: Another L'Engle classic.
I try and make it funny sometimes when I'm doing
interior monologue.
Sometimes that makes things a little more palatable, things
that you feel like you need to get across sometimes in
exposition or in interior monologue, if you make it
funny or you find humor in it, sometimes it's
a little more palatable.
I don't know.
BRAD BEAULIEU: I'm totally jealous of people that can
pull off humor.
I'm just terrible at it.
That's tough.
AMBER BENSON: I may not actually be pulling it off, so
I don't know, but I'm trying.
I like to think if I can make them laugh-- (SINGING) make
'em laugh--
they'll go with me anywhere, right?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: The way I handle it is to do as little
internal monologue as possible and try to use my other tools
to let people know what my reader is thinking.
So getting back to the focus indicates thought thing.
There's a big difference between "the man walked into
the room and there was a blonde sitting in a chair,"
and "the man walked into the room and in the chair was a
blonde." Even that small a tweak can make a difference in
perception.
But when I get into breath or rhythm, which is how long you
focus on something, which explains emotion, then it's
like, "the man walked into the room, there was a blonde
sitting in the chair.
She had long legs and hair that curled down to the base
of her spine." Very different from, "the man
walked into the room.
There was a blonde sitting in a chair.
The chair was a fine bent hardwood with an embroidered
needle, probably from the early 1800s."
And I don't actually have to tell you what his thought
process is, that he's an antique dealer or anything
like that, because I'm using my description and the rest of
the tools that I have.
And I don't have to get into internal motivation until I
need to explain an action that is ambiguous.
And that's where I start to bring in my internal
motivation, when it's something that there could be
multiple reasons and I want to make sure that the reason that
the audience gets is the one that I want them to get.
Otherwise, I'm quite content to let them fill
it in on their own.
BRAD BEAULIEU: So Mary, are you saying that you save those
moments until they're most important?
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
Using my man and the blonde in the chair, if I add in an
action, "the man walked into the room, there was a blonde
sitting in a chair.
He *** her out of the chair." So I've given you an
action and then I--
AMBER BENSON: Glad that's all he did to her.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: And I've picked a
specific verb for her.
"He *** her out of the chair" is different than, "he
lifted her out of the chair," versus, "he pulled her out of
the chair." But still, there's some ambiguity
about why he did that.
And if I insert my internal innovation there, "the man
walked into the room, there was a blonde
sitting in a chair.
He hadn't seen her since California.
My God, she looked good.
He pulled her out of the chair." Versus, "the man
walked into the room, there was a blonde
sitting in the chair.
Couldn't she see that it was broken?
He yanked her out of the chair." And that's where I
will slip in the internal motivation.
I will try to keep it as compressed as possible, just
enough that the audience understands what's happening.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Right.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I cheat a little bit.
And actually, I've never thought of it in terms of
puppetry, for obvious reasons.
But I try to write the [INAUDIBLE] on the internal
monologue, whereas instead I do a lot with
characters' body language.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: So in their dialogue, I'll have somebody
lean forward, or I'll have them sigh, or I'll have them
roll their eyes.
I actually have to constantly go in and weed
out all of my nodding.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yes.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Me too.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Nodding and looking.
BRAD BEAULIEU: Yeah.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: But that can really communicate a lot of
the internal thought process.
And then again, I pick my moment for when I need it.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah.
The other place that I use it is decision moments, where the
character is on the cusp of making a decision.
And I think that that's something that the audience
likes to see, when they're conflicted and why they make
that choice.
So I will sometimes go into it there.
But if I've done my job leading up to that, I usually
don't need to do a whole bunch of it.
AMBER BENSON: I went back, though.
I was thinking that question about describing people, and
you know who's really good at leaving things open ended is
Paul Auster.
He gives them all color names, and you never quite know what
anything is.
You just get the why, less of the who and the what, and more
of the why things happen, which I find really
intriguing.
Sorry.
I just was thinking about that awhile ago and I forgot to
mention it.
Sorry.
You can end this now.
Sorry, Pat.
I [INAUDIBLE] preposition.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: With my own stuff, I always worry about
rambling on, and although this is a great panel, try to keep
it a little bit towards an hour because I always want to
leave them wanting a little more.
Last comment.
Oh, and books with great characters, or authors who
write great characters, to leave our viewers with some
recommendations.
Terry?
Can you think of anyone that does it particularly, if not
irritatingly, well?
AMBER BENSON: Is that me?
TERRY BROOKS: The writer that comes to mind at the moment,
who I've been reading for a while and I like a great deal,
is a writer named Jess Walter.
And he has nothing to do with fantasy, but he writes stories
that are particularly engaging about strange things.
He wrote a book called The Zero, which is essentially
about 9/11, but it's about a lot of other things too.
And it's mostly about a character who has lost his
memory because of the events of 9/11, and he's reliving it
in snippets.
So the whole book is written in snippets that
suddenly end abruptly.
And that, maybe, is the best character I've ever seen.
And he gets away with this, and you really want to know
more about this person, and it does all of the things that I
want to see happen with a character.
It leaves me wanting to know more, it leaves me imagining
some of the things that aren't there.
It creates a [INAUDIBLE]
or anything.
They're silent.
They're stunned.
AMBER BENSON: Sorry.
There was like a motorcycle going by.
That was me.
I apologize.
It got really loud there for a second.
Did you guys hear it?
I hope you didn't hear it.
Sorry.
BRAD BEAULIEU: No, no.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: No, no.
I turned to look back at my bookshelf, trying to think--
I could list so many, but Guy Gavriel Kay, I keep going back
to his books.
And I feel like one of the things that he does is his
characters have more than one reason for doing things.
And I think that's very true to life, so I find his
characters very compelling.
And then going back in time, Jane Austen.
She's kind of brilliant at it.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: To go even further back in time, I'll
pick Chaucer.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Really, as a character guy?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Well, think about the prologue.
Chaucer, think of the Miller.
He had a mouth like a great furnace.
There was not a door that he could not "hayve" apart.
Heave off, or break by running at it with his head.
His beard was flat as a spade and it was
red as a sow's bristle.
I'm like, I know that guy.
And Chaucer rhymed while he did that description, too.
Each of those descriptions is almost like a study in how to
describe a character.
And you need some footnotes sometimes to unpack it given
the time difference, but if I ever get to teach just a
creative writing class or just a character development class,
we're looking at the prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
It's so tight and so condensed, it's like lightning
when it hits you.
AMBER BENSON: I will have to go back and look at that.
BRAD BEAULIEU: I'll mention a couple quickly.
I mentioned Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns earlier.
I'll also mention Ian Tregillis's Bitter Seeds.
It's part of the Milkweed triptych, and this is kind of
a George Martin's Wild Cards series meets World War II and
the aftermath that follows.
There's some really great characters, including a young
girl named Gretel who can see the most probable future, and
she's kind of creepy in her motivations.
And the other one is a relative newcomer, Rob Ziegler
wrote a book called Seed.
And it has several main point of view characters, but the
one I associated with the most was Brood.
This is a green apocalypse novel set in the American
Southwest, and it's a real vicious story about Brood
trying to get back to what he considers home, essentially.
Very well done characters.
AMBER BENSON: I guess I have to go to some of the Southern
writers, like Harper Lee, and then you go to Steinbeck.
The Grapes of Wrath, some of the character description and
just the essence of who these characters
are, it's so beautiful.
There's a lot of stuff going on, and
sometimes it gets a bit--
East of Eden is another great one, where you get these
characters, they're real, breathing, human beings
[INAUDIBLE].
Even though Steinbeck's not a Southern--
I said "Southern" first, so Harper Lee, but then
Steinbeck, obviously, West Coast.
And Tennessee Williams is another one.
These living, breathing creatures that I just get
really excited about because you feel connected to them.
You know people that are these people, and you see their
pettiness and their humanness and how two things that are so
disparate can exist in one human being.
You know what I mean?
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Yeah.
AMBER BENSON: Faulkner is great like that also.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: Eudora Welty wrote a story about an old
woman walking into town.
I wish I could remember the title of it, but it's a story
where it's just about an old woman walking into town, which
is hard for an old woman to do.
It's miles and miles.
And it's absolutely riveting, and it's as much about her as
the journey, and it's just such a great example of why
you do not need a dragon or a goblin army to make fantasy
interesting.
I mean, I'm not saying that dragons aren't
interesting, too.
You might as well get both if you can get it,
dragon and the character.
So we could go on forever but there does have to be an end.
I can't thank you all enough, again, for doing this.
I can't thank Terry enough, even though I
sprang that on you.
I'm so sorry to do that on the spur of the moment.
TERRY BROOKS: It's OK.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS: But [INAUDIBLE] to have you.
And this is Pat Rothfuss with this Story Board saying, see
you next month.