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SWRT 358 | Writing Dialogue with JP Prince · Story Works Round Table | Conversations About Craft

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is the Story Works Round Table,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: conversations about craft for writers and readers curious about writers.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: This week I've been thinking about giving writers feedback.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Both as a teacher and mentor,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: but also because I'm preparing my novel journey writers
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: for their first workshopping experience together.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I really believe that the best writing advice you can get or give
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: a fellow writer does a few things.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: First of all,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: it puts the writer's vision front and center and As readers,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: as people in community with each other,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: critiquing each other's work,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: giving feedback,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: constructive criticism,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: if we lose sight of the writer's goal,
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: the writer's vision for that piece,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: then our feedback is no longer constructive,
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: or at least not as constructive as it is meant to be.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Too often I think writers can go off in their own imagination and start thinking
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: about possibilities for somebody else's characters or somebody else's work.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And really our job when we're doing it well is to look at the words on the page.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Identify the strengths and the weaknesses in what is in front of us
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: and really don't go beyond the scope.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Of that particular manuscript unless the writer invites you to.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: So important.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: All feedback should be backed by solid story craft.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, absolutely,
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: we want to respond as readers as well,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: and it's so valuable as a writer to hear somebody say,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: this is what I felt in this moment, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: But If you're starting to give advice,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: if you're edging a writer toward here's what you should do,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: or even if you soften it with a could do,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: make sure that behind that statement you're giving you can say,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: and here's why I think this might be an improvement or might be a better approach.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then See above.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you're addressing what's on the page and not going beyond the scope of that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Also, absolutely the best advice gives writers tools for making his or her own path forward.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: That is just some food for thought because it's what's on my mind this week.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're finding yourself in a critique group situation or working with
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: a writing partner, maybe things...
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: To keep in mind,
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: today's Story Works Round Table has nothing to do with writing communities
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: or critique groups.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about dialogue.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Kathryn and I sit down with writer J.P.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Prince to talk about bringing your characters' voices to life on the page today.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just words.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Words and some punctuation.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if you would like to go deeper into these craft topics with us,
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: then I'd love it if you follow us over to Substack,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: where we're going to be doing some new exciting things,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: like having roundtables with you,
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: our listeners,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: so that You can bring your ideas about craft and your questions to the conversation,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: and I would really love to see you there.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's at storyworksroundtable.substack.com.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And with that, here's this week's episode about dialogue.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a dedicated writer who is ready to grow,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got a novel you're meant to write,
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: if you've been looking for a place where craft,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: accountability,
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: mentorship, and author development come together, join me in the novel journey.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a year-long mentorship in novel writing with a small group of peers designed
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: to support your development as a writer while you draft your novel.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: The novel you are uniquely meant to write.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: The novel journey is for writers who crave a guided developmental process from idea
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: to finished novel while simultaneously becoming the kind of author who can sustain
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: a writing life well beyond one book.
• 5:06
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• 5:17
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• 5:23
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• 5:27
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• 5:35
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• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And now, enjoy this conversation at the Story Works Round Table.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to this week's Story Works Round Table.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Today, Kathryn and I are thrilled to be joined by J.P.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Prince to talk about dialogue and creating individual voices in ensemble narratives.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: J.P. is the author of The Mess,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Book one in a cyberpunk series that foresees the descent of the United States
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: as we know it
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: and the rise of a corporate government.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's already happening.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I missed it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Dang it.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dang it.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you have to write books fast, right?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't come true.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I know.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I've been in that spot myself.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Drawing on his fascination with history,
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: economics,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: and politics,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: J.P. has created a believable alternate future that's both terrifying and familiar.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: J.P. spent 15 years in corporate America,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: where he helped a lot of people make a bunch of money,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: mostly by cleaning up their messes.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, welcome, J.P. We're glad to have you.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: J.P.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about your background in screenwriting.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that'll help us set the stage for talking dialogue.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I, um, like most kids, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've been,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a very small school and they were so nice and they told me I was smart
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: so many times.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: then you get to college and you realize,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: oh no, um, Turns out, you know, you have to do quite a bit of work.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can't just be smart and show up into every room and be like, but I'm smart.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I really had a shock when I entered college and realized like, oh,
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: the world I came from was very small and wonderful and kind and caring,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: but very small.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it kind of set me on a path of exploring.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, you know, I had to drop out of my math class because I wasn't any good at that.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had to You know,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: couldn't pursue economics because it turns out that requires a lot of math.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, what can I do?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think I can write.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think I can write.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: They always liked my papers.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up taking, you know, I took a creative writing course and I enjoyed it.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I took a, you know, I found myself being better.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: At entertaining my professors with my writing than I was at sometimes remembering
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: the facts of what we actually discussed in class.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then an opportunity came up.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of those schools where you got so much credit for just doing other things, right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, we kind of want students to get some breadth.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw there was a screenwriting course, and I had no idea what screenwriting was.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I liked movies, but I'd never seen a screenplay, like ever.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like this course that met for three hours on a Thursday evening.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, right off the bat, Professor was wonderful.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right off the bat,
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: he gives you like a giant list of movies to watch and now go read the screenplays.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I had this unique experience.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was, I think the one that finally got me was the Chinatown screenplay.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen the movie because I wasn't very cultured and I'd never read the script.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I read the script and then I saw the movie and I said,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: uh, This is supposedly one of the greatest movies ever made.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Also, the script was better.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, realizing it is,
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought of a script as something that was an input to make
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: a different thing.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I have now read screenplays that are better than the movie or the show
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: that was made off of them.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And a part of the process of learning to screenwrite was figuring out how
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: to make dialogue and That sounds natural, which I think is, you know, tougher.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Some people just get it, I know, but it's something a lot of people struggle with.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we had these assignments where we would sit.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have to sit out on campus and like a creep,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: with a little notebook and just try to write down verbatim and
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: then sometimes like syntactically,
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: like, you know, phonetically write out an actual conversation people had.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that kind of gives you like an appreciation of like, oh, And I,
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: not to jump ahead,
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: but I had this moment where I was trying to write a novel with multiple perspectives
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: and I realized, oh no, all the characters sound like me.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't make any sense at all.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I did the right thing by trying to have a cast of diverse perspective
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: and backgrounds,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: but then I neglected to think about what words they would use and
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: when they wouldn't talk and when they would, you know, so...
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I did screenwriting, got great, you know, great, you know, reviews on the work I did.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, you know, the professor's favorite because I wrote good, you know, screenplay.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then I said, okay, great, we're not to go get a real job.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So then I did that.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then worked in environments that,
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: honestly,
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like having a sense of narrative and a sense of story is kind of like
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: a secret weapon when you work inside a large, complex organization.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then one day was like, man, I've always wanted to, I should just do it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I should just write the book I want to write.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then struggling with that after 10 years of not struggling a lot in,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: things were difficult in my jobs,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: but I Some of that came naturally to me and I was able to like build a career.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: you just kind of just get your butt handed to you when you try
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: to write something long form and had to go back.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, I got stuck in, you know, fast forward.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I now have a book coming out soon that's,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know, maybe 20, 30 percent screenplay and the rest traditional prose.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's literally because I got stuck.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: There were some scenes in the book I could not figure out how to write for the life of me.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: The only way I was able to get unstuck was to write them as scenes.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then initially, that was a crutch to be like, okay, I'll just write this out in final draft.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: That will tell me what happens and who said what,
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: and then I'll go back and I'll convert that so that it fits the book.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point, somebody was just like, or don't.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: like I read that,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know, Good screenwriting, even if you've never read a screenplay, you get it.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: You pick up, it sort of signals itself what's going on or how to read it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I actually had in the novel a how to read screenplay section
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: and all my editors were like, cut that.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to,
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: either people are going to,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: if people don't like screenplay,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: they're going to put your book down and that's fine.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: But for the people who like it, they're going to love it, so just keep it in there.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean,
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: the real answer is I ended up with a book that's part screenplay
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: because I couldn't figure out how to write some of the sections any other way.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: there's a lot there to talk about and unpack.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's exciting.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I have a bachelor's degree in theater, so I...
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I understand,
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: and I think everybody should read scripts,
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: whether play scripts or screenplays,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: to get a sense of dialogue and also to see some of those elements at work without
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: the rest of Of the narrative happening.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote in close.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what these were.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I had to like look them up after the fact,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: but I ended up settling on a close third or what I understand to be close third.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: So like individuals in each chapter,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: even though it's prose,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: they don't have knowledge beyond their perspective and what they know and
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: where they are, even though it is very much third person perspective.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: The screenplay was sort of a cheat code.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I often introduce chapters with just like a slug line and a scene description
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: and maybe one bit of dialogue.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And my first editor I worked with was like, oh, you're cheating.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what do you mean?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, that would have taken pages.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: The economy of information in a screenplay is really dense.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're able to communicate a lot in a short way.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: It still takes space because of how sparse screenplay is,
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: but in terms of word count,
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: it is kind of a cheat code because there's an intentional parsimony.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be really sparing with your words unless it's deliberately flowery dialogue.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's yeah.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like the typical screenplay is under 100 pages,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know, for your 90 minute, 90, we were always taught in a movie.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: We were always taught,
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know, when I was brought up, you know, one of the first books he gave us.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I also had like a bit of a cynic as a screenplay professor.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was teaching us, he had always done spec screenwriting.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he had like something that he'd gotten credit for a rewrite on,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: but he didn't have a ton of credits.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of what he'd gotten was he wrote one legitimately incredible screenplay that I still have.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was an incredible piece of art.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: But he also kept getting, it kept getting bought and ended up in turnaround.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so he kept getting paid to rewrite it.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so in addition to teaching, he kept making money from rewriting the script.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: But he was writing scripts on spec,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: which is way different than,
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: writing a script for a movie you're going to make or because you were hired as
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: the writer and you're having a weekly conversation,
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: daily conversation with the director, right?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you're writing on spec, it's like never call for music, never call for camera direction.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Don't overdescribe the character's Because you don't want to rule out anybody
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: who they might want to have play that character.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's got to be, it's 110 pages.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: On page 10 is the point of no return.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have the debate.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then you interact too.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you have the fun and game.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's all the save the cat.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, the sheet.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: and like,
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I actually, I got stuck about half of the novel and just reread Save the Cat.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I'm not making a movie.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And also, this will help.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Just to remind me of what a structure for a story is.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Film is very prescribed in terms of the structure and the beats.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: But, okay, let's talk about dialogue.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And dialogue in script writing first and then dialogue in novel writing.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sitting on campus with your notebook and trying
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: to write down conversations you were eavesdropping on.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I bet that was interesting.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was, you know, like,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: and I won't,
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: not to embarrass any humans living or dead,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: but like I, like I,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: the, if you actually sit down and listen to how somebody talks, it's inefficient.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's everything you're told not to put into writing.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's a lot of filler.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Even the best of us have a ton of filler in our—and I just did it now twice.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's, like—there's not pauses.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: People have to think.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when we write dialogue,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: we write as if—it's kind of like the criticism, I think fairly, that—
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a particular director, why am I not thinking of him?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Sorkin.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And his dialogue,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: it's just like everybody is a fully quotey quit machine and they've always got
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: the perfect thing to say and it's lightning fast and there's no hesitation.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Gilmore Girls is the other one where it's like just bam, bam, bam, bam.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like this tennis match of dialogue that is very fun to listen to
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: but has nothing to do with how people actually communicate.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Depends on what you're going for, right?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are you going for like a very packed, you know?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: So right off the bat, like I decided, I think there's six perspective characters.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: They get various weights, but there are six perspective characters in the book.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: One of them started at 17, got aged down to 15.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to use certain words,
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: and he's going to use certain fillers, and he's going to react in certain ways.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: If he's going to have a personality that's distinct from his other characters,
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: that should impact his word choice, like lexicon.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: It should impact when he speaks and when he doesn't.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: It should also impact who he speaks to and how.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I also had to go back and cut a lot of the profanity because it's not that
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: a 15-year-old will not use profanity.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Of course a 15-year-old will use profanity.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: But around whom?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because they know they're not supposed to.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I rewrote it and then in recording the audio for it because I narrated the book as well.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Franklin,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: the character,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: he can totally curse as long as it's clear that he knows he's not supposed
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: to be doing it.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's a way that you say a bad word,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: use profanity, that makes it clear that you're not confident.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: A 15-year-old is not going to curse confidently, especially in mixed company.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Versus the 30-something hotshot sales guy.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: I actually have him as a fundraiser for a non-profit.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to say whatever he wants because he's used to getting murdered, right?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just he he's very confident and his confidence means he can actually say whatever he wants.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's also like a retired executive.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: She's going to say whatever she wants.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I would never tell somebody like if you can envision the scene and you can hear
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: the dialogue, write it.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, plan to have a pass on your dialogue specifically for characterization.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually had my manuscript here and I had notes up here and
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: the notes were Franklin won't curse.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: If he does curse, he'll use the softer curse words.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: He will only say the F word if he's really, really, really mad.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he'll do it on purpose because he knows he's not supposed to.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like Callum is like a stoic soldier type.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: He will only speak when necessary.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's choosing his words very, very carefully.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: thinking about,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: in reality,
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: it might be true that I'm,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: in my 30s and somebody in their 20s speaks just like me or somebody
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: in their 40s speaks just like me.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: But for the sake of having characters that people can keep distinct,
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: I also think it saves you a ton of dialogue attribution.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: If it's obvious who is speaking by the words they're using,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: you don't have to attribute all the dialogue.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can just have very clean, you know, uh, My mom was like a beta reader on the book.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: She read through it and she's like, I don't like all the he said, she said.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, you mean, like, hearsay?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Are you talking about, like, rumor?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, literally, comma, he said, comma, she said.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: She just didn't want, she didn't like seeing so much attribution.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think those of us that are more used to audiobooks,
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are really thrown off by the correct level of dialogue attribution.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not used to having to have it.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Also, you can always tell when somebody wrote the book without the audiobook in mind.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because they'll be like, the right level attribution for the print.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it's maddening to hear it in the audio.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's repetitive.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing a voice.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know who you are right now.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, okay,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: as an aside,
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: and then I want to go back to some of the stuff you've been saying here.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think a skilled voice actor,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: someone who does audiobooks,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: would know to drop a bunch of attributions because of that voice acting,
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: because of the performance.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if an author is reading a text and you maybe aren't so skilled,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: especially at,
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Shifting your voice to suit a character,
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: then you could fall back on relying on those to your detriment.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: it's like,
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: and I wonder,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: actually,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know any professional,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: I probably think I know a couple, I feel like I need to ask the question.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know some that do nonfiction,
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: but for those who do fiction,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: where there's a lot of dialogue,
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: or should be,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: how much,
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: maybe you guys know,
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: it's like,
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: how much leeway do you get in terms of what you do or don't read off the page?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because I can imagine it's like, well,
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: you've been hired to read the book and you're probably doing that
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: at home doing punch and roll.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're probably not there with the author or with an engineer or producer.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just kind of you.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: The really expensive, the big productions, those are done with a team.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: But most audiobook narration I think is just me at desk.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Delivering audio files.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have a recent episode with Wendy Wessel,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: who is an
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: audiobook narrator,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: and we
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: dig into this with her and ask her about the voice acting and
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: the performative aspect.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm getting paid for this
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: setup, by the way.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, did you refer people back to a previous episode?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'll get the kickback from Wendy.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there we go.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: If only it works that way.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I do recommend you give that a listen.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: I totally will.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think you'll enjoy it because we talk about this kind of stuff.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I had a bit of a...
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had a bit of a benefit.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, another insane thing, number one, I did is had my first novel be multiple perspectives.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's hard.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you're writing your first novel, do what you feel in your heart.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Also, if you're ambivalent, just pick a character
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: or two.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like that.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Second, you know,
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I included screenplay,
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: which is like, well, OK,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: now I got to kind of explain it every time I onboard a new,
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know, I had wonderful editors.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: My audio is fantastic, but I have to explain it to all these people.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why did I do it and when did I do it and when does it show up?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: What's the logic to it?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: The third insane thing I did, big swing, is I decided to narrate my own book.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: I had done voiceover before,
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: but like three-minute commercial or like,
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know, 30-second spot, explainer video, right?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing like a book.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that was an incredibly fun experience.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: I loved the experience so much.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I went into that,
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: and I worked with an engineer,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: and he was there with me, so I didn't have to do the punch and roll.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing I am paying this human being who's very skilled and they should be paid
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: for their time,
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is possible that everything we do for the next,
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally five days to get through all the recording is unusable.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, hopefully we would know sooner.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it is also possible that we get through this and we're like, nope, nope, nope.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because my favorite narrators have lots of range.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: You forget that you're listening to a single narrator.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: They just have a ton of range and their voices are very,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know, they're very embodied in And the voices are mainly distinct.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: They can do some accents.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not that narrator.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: But then I remembered like, oh, well,
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I just need to do enough of a different voice that the listener understands
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: who it is that's speaking.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be a virtuoso performance of accent work.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go back to the craft of writing dialogue and developing voice on the page.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think That distinction you were making between what we hear people saying, right,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: real-life conversations,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: what we get in a screenplay versus what we get in a novel is worth exploring.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you look at a screenplay, The dialogue, as you were saying, is punchy.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's like that tennis match.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone is, you know, quick and they can whip out the quips left and right.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is sharp and smart and funny.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And there is such a time constraint on that art form, right?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Media film comes with the time constraint.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was recently vegging out one evening and I I clicked on an old episode of Grey's Anatomy.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Just kind of, you know, having a little brain candy there.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I was noticing how often these characters are sitting together
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: and one is talking about,
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: like Christine is talking about her problems with Burke and Meredith is talking
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: about her problems with Derek.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And neither one of them ever addresses the other's Or even what they're saying,
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: it's like toddlers in parallel play,
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: and they'll be sitting with their backs to a wall, not even looking at each other.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they just kind of have this tennis match of dialogue.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, that is so efficient.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: The audience is getting what the characters are thinking and feeling,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: what they're mulling over in their mind about this relationship problem
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: and all this drama in their lives.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: But there's none of that, oh, you poor thing, let me be a good friend.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what if you try this?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Have you thought about that?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's no actual exchange happening,
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: and we have to infer the depth of their friendship from the fact
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: that they're side-by-side speaking their problems aloud instead
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: of actually communicating.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that, I've never seen it in a novel.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe someone's doing it today.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: But broadly speaking,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: you wouldn't see it in a novel because interiority is what distinguishes novel
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: from scripts.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's the ability to enter the point of view of the character.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know,
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: interiority is the,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: first of all, I think that the parallel play analogy is so great.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, I went on a walk with a good friend of mine.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've known each other forever.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a shorthand because we've known each other for a long time.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: The kind of person you could not see for a year and then you pick up where you left off.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a very close friend.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there is an aspect of our conversations about dumb business stuff,
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: things I'm trying to do, things he's trying to do.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: That is a little bit of parallel play because actually we are hanging out,
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: but he was talking about what's going on with him and I was talking
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: about what's going on with me.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: In a way, we both got caught up and got to commiserate with each other.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know how many follow-up questions I asked about his situation or
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: that he asked about mine.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was a conversation, but a conversation does not have to be logical.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: A conversation is also like, it's not just an exchange of information.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is also a bit of play acting.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's also like cathartic to have a conversation sometimes.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll have conversations with my mom where it's clear like, oh, you wanted to talk.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: You actually didn't have anything you needed.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just sometimes you want to talk.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm that way too.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like sometimes I just want to talk.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to talk to someone.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I am almost looking for a topic, right?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that communicates something.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think people load up their dialogue with almost too much.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: They try to cover too much ground in dialogue.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Something I love about screenplay is...
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Screenplay was my opportunity to tell you, the reader or listener, what to think.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I can say it's terrifying.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can say, you know, it's overwhelming.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: I can actually, because in screenplay, I'm cheating, right?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm technically giving instructions to a crew that includes a director and actors, right?
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm giving instructions to people who are going to make a film,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: even though I'm not doing that in this,
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can say exactly what it is and what you should think about it.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can't be flowery with it,
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: but there's just an efficiency to describing a scene in screenplay
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: that I think is way harder to pull off, believably, especially in Close Third.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because in Close Third, I have to be inhabiting a perspective.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had...
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's,
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: let's see, one, two, three,
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: three characters inhabited,
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: prospective characters,
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: who get thrown into danger quickly, a la screenwriting, right?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, it's page 10, something better happen.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like it is, they get thrown into danger very quickly.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, and from that point forward, they're always in a little bit of danger.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: It ebbs and flows and there's tension and release, but they're always in danger.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them's 15,
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: and one of them is kind of panicking, and one of them is very mission-focused.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: They can't have a lot of deep thoughts about the world that they live in,
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: which was pretty limiting when you're writing sci-fi.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because in sci-fi,
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I need to describe...
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: What I always hate is when a character who lives in a world describes
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: the world around them with wide-eyed wonder.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you live here.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: You actually wouldn't notice nor describe any of these things
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: because you've been here for years,
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: which is why there's so many stories where the main character is a newcomer
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: because they're then an audience surrogate to describe how bizarre.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I reread some of the C.S.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis sci-fi and it's like, you know, sorry, sorry.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I reread some of the C.S.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis sci-fi books and It's always like,
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: and the mountains were gigantic and green and the water was purple.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: it's like all like this wide eyed wonder that you can only get
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: because very literally the main character has never been there.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: the I had to literally have a everybody,
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know, they say every author has like a author stand in their novels.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's always a character who's like the most like you or thinks
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: the most like you in the book.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: I had a character who starts the book literally working for the villain.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I get to see the villain be villainous because there's this person working for them.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: But otherwise,
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: this guy,
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: the character,
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: is an attorney who's very well compensated and is very good at what he does.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: So he gets to spend a great deal of time thinking about the world around him.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: So even though the novel has interiority,
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: I could not give real interiority that like served the world building unless I had
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: a character who had the leisure to think big thoughts.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: A character who's fleeing from people chasing them is not going to be like,
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: and that reminds me about the economic system that we're in.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like it doesn't make any sense.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense that that's the thoughts they would be having.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: But somebody who's on their commute is From their shitty boss back to
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: where they live so they can just get home and listen to music.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, they can have those thoughts.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting point,
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: about the portal fantasy idea that you need somebody who enters a world to see it
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: with fresh eyes versus characters who actually live there and the use
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: of interiority.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Kathryn, my brain just ticked.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I want to go back a little tiny bit.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: We were talking about having conversations with people,
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: and just like having those like moments where you're like,
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: we're having a conversation,
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: but it's not directly addressing problems and we're both just kind of venting.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: This conversation has had a really cool kind of thread where it's like observe
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: the world around you,
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: see how things actually get talked about,
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: and then take the best of that into your novels, right?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: So you can have characters who...
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's beautiful.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, you are trying to communicate a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're hoping that some of what you think and feel and believe is received by
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: the reader and that they agree with some of it or at least they're challenged by it.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: You also want to be true, or at least I did it, you want to be true to your characters.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: I sometimes feel like, I don't think I did right by that character.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: They had so much to offer, but they only had a small part of it.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Want
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: to keep up with my latest thoughts on writing, life, and the writing life?
• 37:02
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• 37:05
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• 37:07
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• 37:10
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• 37:13
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• 37:18
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• 37:23
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• 37:27
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• 37:32
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• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think another thing that is...
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: As an author,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: you have control over that, again,
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: I learned from screenwriting is I get to choose when the audience enters the scene.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Mm hmm.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the scene might begin halfway through a conversation.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I I remember having a.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: A.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're trying to, like,
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: get to that part of the end of the novel, like,
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: if it's a reasonably action-filled novel,
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: and so you kind of want things to accelerate,
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: it's like, I want to feel like it's getting away from me, you know, towards the end.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Starting in the middle of a conversation, or at the end of one, is often better.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't need to know how the conversation started.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to start with you getting to the park to eat lunch.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can start like five minutes before you get in an argument and you storm off.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've got an outline up here for the second book,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: and a lot of it is more like, what do we need to learn?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's actually a bit, it's like a puzzle, right?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, well,
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: in this chapter,
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have to remind the reader of this because it's been a while since I mentioned it,
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm worried that if I only say something once,
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: I might as well have not said it at all.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: I need to hit upon a major theme or plot point because we're going to lose it unless I do.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I need to learn that this person is angry.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: I need this person to become angry at this,
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know, character A needs to become furious at character B.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because that will make it so later character B is less.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have a will-they-won't-they-help character A because
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: the last time we saw them they were in a big argument.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like you end up having to pack a lot.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's something I learned in screenwriting,
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: which is if your scene is doing one thing, it's doing no things.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like every scene is carrying a burden to accomplish a lot of goals.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh...
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Unless you're writing the Great American Novel and it's going to be Cisterna.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Unless it is going to be that kind of a titan of a work,
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: most novels, even my first novel is 127,000 words.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I view that as kind of like, I love it.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's done.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's locked.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: I almost view that as like, the next one will be 90.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's like, I think...
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: I like shorter books.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love, don't get me wrong, I love the Stormlight Archive.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: But Stormlight Archive also reminds me of watching Dragon Ball Z as a kid.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, every 30 minute episode, nothing happens.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, I want the plot to move, you know.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's, you know...
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think in our era,
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: there's great film out right now,
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: but the really high budget TV shows are what I think have figured that out
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: because there are like,
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was a big Stranger Things fan,
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: still a big Stranger Things fan,
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: but they have so many threads that you start to see their scenes get very tight
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: because every single scene has a lot of goals to accomplish and they have to move
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: a bunch of balls down the field like all the time.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's that, I mean, it's like being able to look at a, I can do it with TV.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: I still can't really do it very well with fiction.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Fiction, I just get engrossed and I'm just off and racing.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: But being able to look back and say, oh, I know why that happened.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: That piece of dialogue that seemed very unrelated or extraneous to the conversation,
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: they had to have that because otherwise I wasn't going to believe this thing
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: that happened later.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's the other thing.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because dialogue is so flexible,
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: on my rewrites,
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: if I'm looking for places to put things, like,
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: oh gosh, I have to set that up or else it's going to seem to come out of nowhere.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Dialogue is often where you put it.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think you can hide things in dialogue that you can't hide
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: in just like prose or interior thought.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost easier to shove something into a piece of dialogue as a...
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like a throwaway comment.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: A throwaway because I do,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: on page 150 cannot be the first time we've heard about that MacGuffin or that group
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: or that person or that reality, right?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have to have heard about it earlier.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about balancing efficiency.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: We have extreme efficiency in film with And we have extreme naturalism in
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: that eavesdropping experiment where people have all the fillers and all
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: the brain hiccups and all the stuff that happens.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then you were just talking about plot and dramatic tension and having tight scenes.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as novelists, we want to create that perfect balance of all of those things.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: We want the tight scenes and the dramatic tension.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: We want more naturalism than in film,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: less in real life,
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: and we want the voice of the characters,
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: which I think we were talking about quite a bit at the beginning
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: of this conversation.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: So when you were writing not the screenplay part of your book,
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: but the narrative parts of your book,
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: and you've got characters and scenes in dialogue with action,
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: what are some of the things you were thinking about to create that balance?
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, action was really, there's a lot of action in the book.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of the main characters is essentially a retired soldier,
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: and there's a bit of a deus ex bacchana.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: The younger character has the older character as a protector,
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: and that protector literally fights.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's an ex-soldier kind of thing.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I was having to describe something I don't know anything about,
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: which is hand-to-hand combat or the tactics of escorting somebody safely through
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: a city.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Those are very action-packed,
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: and you want those to feel
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: tense and driving while also realizing that
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: if you're anything like me,
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: whether it's print or audio, people don't get every word.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: People don't really read.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: They skim.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: which is why dialogue attribution can be like,
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know, like it's why you can have a lot of dialogue.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Our brains can figure out what parts are necessary.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I find I read every word and I'm really in it.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, especially if I like the book, I find myself moving too fast.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: You have to like go back and,
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you know, most people don't listen to audio on 1X, right?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: They listen on 1.1 or 1.2.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I'm one X and I read every word and I want to be immersed in a story.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I just got to like, I'm not saying it's good.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's the, you know, I...
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: I like John Scalzi's novels, and I've read several of his novels, and I like his audiobook.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: Will Wheaton narrates his audiobooks, and I really like Will Wheaton as a narrator.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so something John Scalzi talks about a lot is like, no,
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: I write because I love it and because I have stories to tell,
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: but I know that I'm writing for an audience, and I'm also writing to entertain them.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I think about,
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: when I do an audiobook,
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: my actual largest concern about my audiobook is that I read too fast.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've noticed that 1x actually feels a little slow to me.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like people might have to take mine and if you normally listen on 1x,
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: you might have to take mine down to 0.9 or something.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: I might have read too fast.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Just lack of experience in narrating, you know.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the...
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: I feel, you know, it's an age-old debate.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's especially happening in Netflix and, like, shows made for streaming now.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: People are complaining because shows are, like, hitting you over the head with the plot hammer.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, isn't that when they found the body?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: it's like, it is,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: they're kind of hitting you over the head with stuff that's obvious because there's
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: a new kind of watching where you're also looking at your phone.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's like, oh...
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's two ways to go with this.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: I either have to say I acknowledge that I will have to repeat certain key pieces
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: of information because odds are one of the times I put it in the book,
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: the reader will have missed it.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or there is, hey, don't dumb down your writing.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the people will, they'll figure it out.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like trust your listener to be smart.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Trust your reader to be smart and to understand it.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a really hard balance.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: One other thing I did wrong.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that beta readers usually meant like a handful.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I had like 20 beta readers.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: I later learned the problem with that is then you get 20 sets of feedback
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: and that's too much at that stage of writing.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: But some of the things I was listening for is I would like have people describe
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: to me why they thought a character did something because I would then interview them
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: at the end of the,
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: when they read it,
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: buy them a coffee and be like, hey, thank you for reading my book.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm so curious, you know, what do you remember?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: I used to be a market researcher.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you start with the open and like,
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: what do you remember?
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, sometimes they remember specific characters.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, did you have a favorite character?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, yeah, I loved so-and-so.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, why do you think... Or I'll say, they're like, oh, Castiel was so hateable.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: I hated that guy.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, yeah.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, in the scene where he... And I'll just see if they can remember something from it.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not that people have to remember the details of books for them to have enjoyed them.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's more...
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know...
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: There is one thing I deliberately left as a mystery,
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: and success for me is if there are no other mysteries.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: If a reader walks away and is like,
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: oh yeah, I never understood why he was even working for that guy.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, I did explain it.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, either, but it's a long book.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think,
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think at the very least,
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't expect my reader to be,
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: or my listener To be 100% attentive and to catch every word.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: I should give them a couple chances at each key piece of information and at least
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: a couple of chances at picking up on personality.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: I also think I've been toying with how do I describe the novel because
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: if somebody picks up the novel because they heard me talk about it
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: because they read the blurb on the back or something,
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: they got something other than they opened up the book I started reading.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: They got some, you'd love this book, it's whatever, you know?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: The framing is really important because,
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you guys have experienced this,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: like, I don't know how to describe my book.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: Every writer struggles with that.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: I know what happens in it, but how to get that down to a log?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the parallel in a screenplay is the logline.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the fail state of a logline.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Die Hard, but in space.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like you never want to use...
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody else's work to describe your work.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: what I have started saying is like, oh,
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: the book is set after the fall of the U.S.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: government in a world dominated by corporations,
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: and this is the story of the first people to fight back.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is true.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it would be a great frame for someone to then encounter the story with.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: But they're probably going to get many chapters in and be like, hmm.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're mostly running.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't seem like they're fighting.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's tough to describe what your book is about because
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: the characters don't know what the book is about.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're in it.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is true.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're doing close third,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: the characters,
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: it's the,
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: there is a moment,
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: where one of the characters just says the exact theme that I had written up
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: on my wall.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, they say the theme out loud.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: Which is, I think, common in movies, too.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: at some point,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: the guide,
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: the wise sage,
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: whoever is the guide for the hero, like,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: they're going to just say what the lesson is that the hero is supposed to learn,
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: but the hero is not going to learn it until the end.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: You
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: know, like,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: but I don't, it's, it's,
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: rambling on about this, like, it's hard to know what your reader is going to catch.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: I know we kind of have to start wrapping this conversation,
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: so I think there was a really cool moment there where you talk about that balance
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_02: of character and creating this voice and this personality and mixing it
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: with dialogue and plot and making sure that there's that balance so that
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: the reader does feel They feel grounded.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: They feel like they're getting the information that they need to get in the moments
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: that they need to get it.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that you do have this way of bringing it back around,
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_02: whether that's in the interiority of the character or in the dialogue or in
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: the narrative, so that we can...
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's where novels...
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: Shine.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: we have that opportunity to take that moment of interiority,
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: to grow that depth of character,
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: to have a conversation,
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: and then also to have this action on the page that is drowning in narrative
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: and programming.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I'm in my position to give advice,
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: but if I was going to try to give advice,
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: like, oh, hey, if you really want to write a six-perspective character novel, don't.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if you really want to,
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: something I did that I think paid big dividends is I made a list of the characters
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: in a spreadsheet,
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: basically, like a list of the characters who were going to have perspectives.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Characters that we're just going to hear from them are going to do stuff.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're fine.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Have fun with those.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the characters we're going to live with, Write them down.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Those are your rows.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: The columns are,
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: for me, the metanationals are the major corporations that became quasi-governmental.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're the dominant thing of the day more than government.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, my characters are going to have an opinion about that because they live in that world.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: Metanationals.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically about the evil guy who's in charge of the city.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, specifically about the underground organization that they may or may not have heard of.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think you get one ergo,
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: you get one nuance,
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: and you get like,
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: if it's a fancy word, I don't think you get to use it a lot as a writer.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: There should be like a normal distribution of words.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: You're talking about in dialogue, though, like certain characters would have.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're like us.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: They overuse words.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know,
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: authors,
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: every author has like,
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know I said indubitably that many times,
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: but the but characters should also have that because characters are people by
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: and large or they have personality.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of writing down what your characters think about the dominant themes,
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: movements, events in your story, quote them on it.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: You'll probably never use that quote because they're never going to be asked
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: a question that directly.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think about the metanational corporations?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I do have quotes for those characters that never made the book.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: And like, let them hold forth on a topic.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you don't want to overuse filler in dialogue,
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: but I think it's unnatural for no character to ever say um or ah.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is interesting.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't see filler words in dialogue in novels.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: Just like you strip so much of what makes for natural conversation from film,
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: there is still an artifice to dialogue in novels and filler words.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and they always say, you know, it's a great way to edit is to read your work out loud.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: I agree, I really struggle with it.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to read your work out loud.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you are recording it to be the audiobook,
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: it is the most valuable editor I've ever not paid for because my dialogue got
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: so much better because if I tripped over it delivering it,
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: it's probably awkward to say.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's awkward to say, they probably wouldn't have said it.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I heard Carrie Fisher in an interview say
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: one of the issues with Star Wars was
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: that there were really amazing, wonderful lines, but they were not...
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: Natural to say.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that made her films so likable,
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: so strong,
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: was that she writes or wrote really good dialogue,
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: very natural, the way people sound.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: Don't make tongue twisters for your characters.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, certainly not if you're going to have to read them later.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the real key.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and then with that characterization,
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: if you do have a character who's erudite and that would be natural and
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: the character would speak in that manner,
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: your character is not going to trip over it.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember when the Coen brothers...
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: The commenter's answer was yes,
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: absolutely,
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: that the novel is not just a Western,
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: it's also historical fiction,
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: and this girl would have been raised in a religious family,
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: in a rural community,
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: in an era when you learn to read by reading the Bible,
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: and that was a major part of her life.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so her dialogue, what would be natural for her, Was this person felt accurately depicted?
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's lexicon, right?
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never thought of it this way until you described it,
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: but where did this character get their words?
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: A character who gets their words from the King James Bible is going to lean on that
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: A character who gets their words in a dystopian cyberpunk street gang,
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: if that's what they were raised around, they're going to have that slang.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: But if a character got their words through an elite education and became a lawyer,
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: that's going to slip in.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's just going to be how they communicate because they have facility
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: with complex concepts that are difficult to explain.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: to go back to my recent Brain Candy on Netflix,
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: watching Grey's Anatomy a little bit,
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: Burke, Preston Burke, the cardiothoracic surgeon, he is very upright.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's very...
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well-spoken and he's often got his spine straight up and his chin kind of, right?
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a little bit of a barrier there and that is his characterization
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: and it's very natural for him to present that way.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: But when you see him playing jazz,
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: his body language completely transforms and that's when he relaxes and is himself
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: and is in his private space and there's Yeah.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: Perform on the chop.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: What is their vocabulary?
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: What is their body language versus when they're at home with their partner or their dog, right?
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: Contextual identity, right?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: We bring different versions of ourselves to different relationships in different environments.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: you never want to confuse a reader and then make them go,
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: wait, who's talking right now?
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or, wait, I thought that was so-and-so.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: But, man,
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: if you can avoid that hang-up,
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Presenting characters who behave differently like we all do
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: in different relationships in different contexts,
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: like what a richer experience of that character and that character's dialogue
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: if it really does depend on who they're talking to.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this has been fun.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: We are glad you could join us.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: Where can listeners find you and your book?
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you can find me at jpprince.com.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: J as in John, P as in Paul, jpprince.com.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm actually hoping that the audiobook will be available by
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: the time folks are listening to this.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: If that's not the case,
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: there's a little form on the site and you can put in your name and email
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: and I'll make sure you're the first to know.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: It will be me actually emailing you.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to be on a list.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: that's the best place to find out about the book or to get the book
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: if it's available, jpprince.com.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: If you're serious about your craft and ready to take your writing to the next level,
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: check out Word Essential.
• 1:02:49
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• 1:02:51
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• 1:02:53
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• 1:02:59
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• 1:03:03
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• 1:03:07
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• 1:03:11
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• 1:03:18
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• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: head to wordessential.com and let's talk
• 1:03:27
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• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to the Story Works Round Table.