21.34: Knowing the Distance

0:00[SPEAKER_01]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. [SPEAKER_01]: If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patrion.com slash writing excuses. [SPEAKER_01]: Season 21, episode 34. [SPEAKER_01]: This is Writing Excuses. [SPEAKER_02]: Knowing the distance. [SPEAKER_01]: Tools not rules. [SPEAKER_01]: Four writers buy writers. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Mary Rubinette. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Dalong.

0:28[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Aaron and I'm Howard and I want to talk about the guy. [SPEAKER_03]: physical, meta-physical, distance between the thing that you are writing, the setting that you've created, the work that you're making, and the context, the environment of your reader. [SPEAKER_03]: The best example leaps to mind for me is, if you've grown up on the coasts, [SPEAKER_03]: If you know that your readers have grown up on the coasts, then you can freely drop the terms, worth, peer, jetty, key, doc, and they will know what you're talking about immediately.

1:11[SPEAKER_03]: You don't need to define it. [SPEAKER_03]: You don't need to describe it. [SPEAKER_03]: But most people may self-included. [SPEAKER_03]: Actually, I have to go to a dictionary to find out what those mean. [SPEAKER_03]: your readers understanding of this world and your understanding of this world is key to writing it correctly. [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of different things to be thinking about with this distance issue, so one of the things that you're essentially talking about is the question of whether you're writing for an inside audience or an outside audience.

1:52[SPEAKER_01]: This is something we run into a lot in science fiction and fantasy because we're dealing with invented worlds. [SPEAKER_01]: But it's also a matter of thinking about who your audience is. [SPEAKER_01]: And for me, I, because I've got this background in puppet theater, there's the difference between my audience, which was children, and the people who had to buy the show, which was adults. [SPEAKER_01]: So I had to be thinking about that, it has to play for this group, but it has to be accessible to this other group.

2:25[SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, there's also this other use of the word distance, which is part of how you're controlling this distance between the reader and the story, which is the narrator's distance from the story. [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you're narrating from an omniscient point of view, sometimes you are creating a deliberate distancing, sometimes it's tight third. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's basically getting into, you know, the why of it is, well, what's are you trying to tell?

2:59[SPEAKER_01]: And for whom is a lot of what we're talking about here. [SPEAKER_01]: some of the tools that I use when I'm doing that are thinking about the difference between filtering words. [SPEAKER_01]: If I want to create more distance, I'm going to use more filtering words. [SPEAKER_01]: If I want to tighten the distance, I use less filtering words. [SPEAKER_01]: That's an easy one. [SPEAKER_01]: But then when you're dealing with the outside or insider, it's also the [SPEAKER_03]: I love looking at distance in this way in terms of our senses.

3:36[SPEAKER_03]: Generally speaking, I can see it before I can hear it. [SPEAKER_03]: I can hear it before I can smell it. [SPEAKER_03]: I can smell it before I can touch it, and I can touch it before I can taste it. [SPEAKER_03]: And so the closer I want the reader to feel, they are to the setting, the closer senses I use, if a character can smell something, that to my mind draws the reader much closer to what's happening than if they happen to see something or hear something.

4:12[SPEAKER_02]: One general note I want to make at a meta level is as a literary trend or storytelling trend really over the past, I don't know, decades at this point. [SPEAKER_02]: We've seen a real collapsing of distance. [SPEAKER_02]: Distance, we, in general, the default storytelling mode is much closer in than it was. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, in mid-century, early 20th century, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, there's a lot of theories to why some people say social media sometimes, the way movies and video games are, but since like 70s realism rose and cinema we've seen, just like increasingly shorter and shorter distance, narratively from where the perspective of the narrative is to where the experience of the characters.

4:52[SPEAKER_02]: This is the rise of like first person perspective in so many novels, to the extent that sometimes there would even be push back on third person. [SPEAKER_02]: There was I think we're moving out of that moment a little bit, but for a second there was like a lot of pushback If you did third person, especially if it was third person present tense, there was like you would get real friction In reader feedback and it was very interesting to sort of see that clumps happen and you can still play with it But just something to keep in mind that there's a real expectation now of being very close to this perspective and experience of the characters [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think that two things you make me think start thinking about tense, which is interesting because I've heard people say that, you know, present tense is more distancing because you know you're not doing that like as the present tense character is like saying like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, you yourself the reader know that you are not.

5:44[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's different than the way that a lot of us tell stories to each other, which is in the past. [SPEAKER_00]: And so like it makes you more conscious of the fact that you are reading a story. [SPEAKER_00]: And so therefore oddly, creates more distance despite it feeling in the moment of the story like it's more present. [SPEAKER_00]: which is just like mind-blowing to me. [SPEAKER_00]: But also, I've been trying to make a box in my head.

6:05[SPEAKER_00]: And in that box, it's sort of thinking about outsider and insider, and then close and far. [SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder if part of the reason that we are seeing more [SPEAKER_00]: Like less distance between, you know, we're right on top of the narrator is because we are open to more outsider perspectives in our fiction. [SPEAKER_00]: And when someone is telling you their story, you don't feel like you needed to be your story. [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you're telling your experience of doing writing excuses, I was a podcast, I'm not going to disagree with you because it's your story.

6:38[SPEAKER_00]: But in a much more like, if you're doing third person omniscient, you're telling me how everyone is feeling in the moment, which can feel alienating if you're not part of the group, or you don't share that perspective as a reader. [SPEAKER_03]: This raises a question that that I'm going to post to all of you. [SPEAKER_03]: How do you decide? [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I believe that it's better to consciously decide than to just, you know, accidentally have done it, although the vast majority of the things I've created, I have accidentally done stuff.

7:12[SPEAKER_03]: We have a bunch of stuff feeling matters, right? [SPEAKER_03]: How do you decide the distance that you want to have, the distance that you want to place between the reader and the narrative, between the narrator and the setting, between the characters and the environment? [SPEAKER_03]: How do you make that decision? [SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting because, you know, for me, this decision happens at game system level, right, because it's layers of abstraction, right?

7:39[SPEAKER_02]: Something like Dungeons and Dragons is modeling very in a very detailed way. [SPEAKER_02]: How it's like a physics engine for the world, here's how things move through space, here's how characters move through space, here's how they interact with each other. [SPEAKER_02]: Versus, something like blades in the dark, which is very abstracted, where you're making cinematic moves. [SPEAKER_02]: The dice rule represents a series of things that's, here's how this fight went.

8:00[SPEAKER_02]: and you can describe a set of things versus I swing my sword once, I swing it a second time, I'm a swing in a third time, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So there's different layers of abstraction there, and there are genre implications in that as well. [SPEAKER_02]: Not necessarily in terms of fantasy science fiction, but in terms of, are we do something really cinematic and, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: broad in that way and abstract in that way, or are we doing something that's like very in the details, native gritty, where we really want to think about the mechanics of this world, right?

8:27[SPEAKER_02]: And those are two different slightly different genre questions in terms of how much abstraction are we using. [SPEAKER_02]: And in games, that is sort of that close far-ness. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that with that there's kind of also the question of, do you want the character, the reader to think about this or do you want them to feel it? [SPEAKER_01]: And often we want them to do both. [SPEAKER_01]: I will sometimes use this kind of distancing as a tool within a story that is not particularly distanced if a character is going through shock or something like that.

9:03[SPEAKER_01]: There's a novel that just came out when you are listening to this as we are recording it is not out yet. [SPEAKER_01]: But it will have come out in June. [SPEAKER_01]: It's called Sublimation by Isabel Kim. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's fascinating because she is creating deliberate distance in three different ways. [SPEAKER_01]: The first is that parts of the story are told in second person, and the premise is that when you cross a boundary, a border that you instance, that there is a person who stays behind in a person who goes, and that these are actual physical people.

9:45[SPEAKER_01]: And, and so then you can reintegrate later, and so she uses you, she has two different UPUVs for the different halves of this person who later integrates. [SPEAKER_01]: And it is a deliberate distance because she is thinking about this is how this other meat did. [SPEAKER_03]: I want to have read this book now. [SPEAKER_01]: This is a fantastic book, but then when they integrate, we switch to third person. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a different kind of distancing and disorientation because there's an immediacy to it.

10:20[SPEAKER_01]: But it's always the... [SPEAKER_01]: rose did this so young did this it's it's this back and forth between which half of this reintegrated person did this thing which you could only do by going into this third it's not ammunition but it's it's showing that the the contrast and then there's this third distancing thing which is that in the middle like there will be a scene and then in the middle of the scene we suddenly go to this kind of academic text about like [SPEAKER_01]: how instant seeing happens in Odysseus.

10:51[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's in this version of our world, it's always happened. [SPEAKER_01]: It is just a fascinating, really good use of how you can create this narrative distance, contrasted with places where we get very close to the characters. [SPEAKER_01]: It's phenomenal. [SPEAKER_01]: You should... [SPEAKER_01]: This book's so cool. [SPEAKER_02]: I've been trying to read it ever since I heard about it. [SPEAKER_01]: And as we record this, I will say, I have not finished it.

11:15[SPEAKER_01]: I'm about halfway through. [SPEAKER_01]: And I have been recommending it to everyone, like basically since chapter two. [SPEAKER_03]: All right. [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to take quick break. [SPEAKER_03]: And then I'm going to come back and quote no rocks. [SPEAKER_03]: Mel Brooks and Boy, I sure hope I've got quote, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Famously said that humor is you falling into an open manhole. [SPEAKER_03]: Tragedy is I have a hang nail.

11:39[SPEAKER_03]: I love this in this context because it talks directly to proximity to the events. [SPEAKER_03]: It's easier for me to laugh at it if it is distant, even if it's a disaster. [SPEAKER_03]: if it is close to me. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's one of the tools that I think I unconsciously use when I am shifting between humor and horror in some of the darker things that I've written. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that using familiarity or can really be one of the ways that you can bring a reader in close.

12:17[SPEAKER_01]: There's a thing that Jackie Chan does when he's, someone gets thrown through a plate of glass window and none of us know what that feels like, but he can make it understandable by then having the character stumble back and hit their head on the shelf which we all understand. [SPEAKER_01]: So often when you've got this insider versus outside or one of the ways that you can invite people [SPEAKER_01]: is including things in there that are things that probably everyone has experienced mixed in with all of the things that are unusual and unfamiliar.

12:49[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you can use distance in that way for such impact as well, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So if you think about like a Marvel movie, there's an incredible amount of violence happening on the screen. [SPEAKER_02]: of all different types versus a horror movie, which is usually one person experiencing violence rather than hundreds of people experiencing violence, but because you're so close into it and this thing of familiarity, you're using it tool familiarity, we're often there being attacked with household objects.

13:14[SPEAKER_02]: rather than a laser gun that doesn't exist in reality, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Even if that laser gun incinerates 50 people, it's not as impactful as one man with a hammer, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And I think you see that this rural intensity comes from familiarity and when you get close to the subject because you want that feeling to be relatable to you. [SPEAKER_02]: It's why home invasion fiction works. [SPEAKER_02]: It's why like certain types of horror are so unsettling to us.

13:41[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think like getting back to what you're trying to accomplish with the distance. [SPEAKER_00]: Basically think about the concept of killable bodies, which is the idea that like in large war scenes and large like fantasy fight scenes, there's often a group of people who are basically considered to be like, [SPEAKER_00]: you know, no one cares if you like gotten rid of the entire the registers like you got rid you blew up the entire ship whatever like yeah oh well like I mean it's sad but nobody really stops to like think about those people and there's like a a trope among like GMs in TTRPGs that like after your party goes and like kills the horn of whatever's you know you find the sad like art from the kid of like the head goblin that's like [SPEAKER_00]: Daddy, have a great day at work, which makes it feel like that like all of a sudden narrow that distance.

14:35[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually a horrible trick because you as the GM set your characters up to do the murder and then made them feel bad about it. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you feel bad about the thing I told you to do, which is an interesting thing, but I think that talks about how there are reasons for distance. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're not telling a story in which you want to pause and think about how bad it is for the people on the USS Redshirt that they blew up, you really want to talk about the broader war that's happening or how it's affecting the characters on the ship that you are writing.

15:15[SPEAKER_00]: tell the kind of distance more thinking version of the story, the strategy of war or conflict as opposed to the impact the emotional part. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's a great example of classic fantasy fiction that plays with scale at this, in this way, and plays with distance in this way, which is the Lord of the Rings, where you have two signs of the story. [SPEAKER_02]: One is grand epic battles where thousands of people are dying on screen constantly.

15:42[SPEAKER_02]: And then the other side of the story is two people walking through the wilderness for a long time, having an incredibly bad time of it. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think one, the story of Frodo and Sam and Smeagull is so close into this tight interpersonal drama. [SPEAKER_02]: And then the other is all the broad sweeping things that are happening that add weight to their individual journey. [SPEAKER_02]: And so the relative distances in these two stories of here is Erdogan, the heir to the throne, [SPEAKER_02]: versus here's these two simple people that are incredibly relatable to our own lives and experiences, trying to do a thing that is in a story that's too big for them, right?

16:23[SPEAKER_02]: And using the contrast of that scale, I think Tolkien ends up sort of inventing an entire genre of fiction in that friction there, right, in that space there. [SPEAKER_03]: Gandalf between the two groups saying, all right, well, [SPEAKER_03]: We gotta do this big thing. [SPEAKER_03]: I hope Fredo's having a nice hike. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And what we're talking about here, I think as we're talking, I'm like, ah, this is just in many ways another way to control reader focus.

16:48[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: And also, it's another way to control pace. [SPEAKER_02]: Yep. [SPEAKER_02]: We are that it's all about focus and pace. [SPEAKER_01]: We are, do you know? [SPEAKER_01]: Where do I want you to look and how long do I want you to look at it? [SPEAKER_01]: Is that all structure is? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Please. [SPEAKER_03]: So we in the last 10 seasons. [SPEAKER_03]: She's over. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I'll just send us to homework in the last couple minutes before we have to homework.

17:12[SPEAKER_03]: What are some tricks in your toolbox for changing the distance quickly? [SPEAKER_02]: I think, I mean, we may have already covered all of them. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, tense and perspective are some of the easiest ones, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, the Israel came is doing such interesting things with it as you're describing. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, moving deliberately from POV, you know, in terms of first person, second person, third person, you know, we saw this in the fifth season as well.

17:37[SPEAKER_02]: The way, uh, uh, Norge Emerson and K. Jamison plays with, um, that, [SPEAKER_02]: the narrator perspective, I think, really shifts closeness and far. [SPEAKER_02]: And when you suddenly realize the narration is much closer than you thought it was, it's a really startling shift, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And you can, I totally lost my train about, I'm sorry. [SPEAKER_01]: Look at that, you can, I was following you and I, I was, I was on board that train.

18:09[SPEAKER_01]: because the thing that they're doing is they are creating a sense of immediacy by having the character interact. [SPEAKER_01]: It's the thing that Howard was talking about about the senses. [SPEAKER_01]: When you don't realize who that narrator is in the fifth season, [SPEAKER_01]: it's because they are not interacting with the scene, they are reporting on stuff, there is a distance there and as soon as they interact with the scene directly, that's when you're like when everything snaps in very close.

18:40[SPEAKER_01]: So when people talk about this character feels very distant, a lot of times it's because there's no physical sensations. [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it is because we don't have any [SPEAKER_01]: which means we don't know what they're planning, which means we are separated from them. [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's because they aren't taking any actions. [SPEAKER_01]: They are static. [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's this distance. [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes they just, in the, one of the failure modes, they are all over the map.

19:16[SPEAKER_01]: They aren't focused on anything in particular. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think if you're thinking about those, those kind of sort of four areas that, you know, what are we focusing on? [SPEAKER_01]: What actions are we taking? [SPEAKER_01]: I always go back to this thing that Aaron said, I think last season about identity as a verb, you know, how, how are we interacting there? [SPEAKER_01]: What sensations, you know, what are the thoughts?

19:39[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the things I think that can really bring you in close. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, one example that comes to mind as you talk about that in terms of the difference between being close and with sensation and things like that versus, you know, more out in the world and think of severance, right where the outies are experiencing the entire world, they have their whole life history that have all this context. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you get that transition moment of that incredible dolly zoom into that has just like crushing collapsing effect where now you're in the inny's perspective of the world which they don't know anything all they have is the immediacy of their experience in this inside life right and so you're so much closer to the any characters than you are the outer characters which is why in a lot of ways their emotional journey is the core of the show [SPEAKER_02]: Even though we are also deeply invested in what's going on outside, but the the experience of the inies is really the heart of it And we sort of see it at the end of the last season in the exciting ways and what you talked about with the dolly shot Which I've never seen one second of severance was sounds awesome It's an incredible show you

20:44[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm doing. [SPEAKER_00]: Bye, guys. [SPEAKER_00]: No, but before I go, uh, the dolly shot, the thing that I like about it is that I think tracking an object and tracking physical space is a great way to bridge distance. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's because Howard of something you said, which is that like how site I can't remember how far out that was is at the furthest out or then see here. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so seeing is like one of the fur things we can see the fur this and so a lot of times you you'll see like an object and arrow fly The bouncing basketball you see the whole basketball game like in a movie and then you follow the basketball as it rolls against one particular person's shoe [SPEAKER_00]: And now you're in that person's perspective and in terms of books actually one of the ones that I think about is like the earlier Books in wheel of time because wheel of time starts every book with like the wheel turns and like I'm sure this is not what actually happens a tumble weed like [SPEAKER_00]: It comes across the world and it tumbles past this guy and it tumbles past that guy.

21:41[SPEAKER_00]: And they usually, there's these small scenes that are meant to show how the larger stakes of the entire world impact people we will only see for this one scene or just like trying to take their wheat to the next town as the world falls apart around them. [SPEAKER_00]: And I love that because it uses an object as a way to connect us. [SPEAKER_00]: So anything you can use physically is a great way to do it. [SPEAKER_03]: just incredibly obvious.

22:12[SPEAKER_03]: The reason that we have all the songs and all the food in Rivendell is so that we can get in close to the Lord of the Rings because it's a really big story. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I have homework. [SPEAKER_03]: I have homework for you, y'all this is going to be fun. [SPEAKER_03]: We talked a little bit about, you know, Marvel movies, about action scenes. [SPEAKER_03]: I want you to write an action scene that feels like an action scene where the heroes [SPEAKER_03]: And now, I want you to rewrite it with a perspective shift and a distance shift.

22:56[SPEAKER_03]: So it is a horror scene about the enemies of our heroes being so miserably dispatched. [SPEAKER_01]: This has been writing excuses. [SPEAKER_01]: You're out of excuses. [SPEAKER_01]: Now go right. [SPEAKER_01]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. [SPEAKER_01]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal, Dong Wan Song, Erin Roberts and Howard Taylor. [SPEAKER_01]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds.

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