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Writing Excuses 20.28: The Lens of Tradition

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-28-the-lens-of-tradition

Key points: Why are we writing the stories we write? What storytelling traditions do we come from? Newpaper comics, mass-market paperback science fiction books. Science fiction and fantasy. Theater, and a Southerner. An immigrant household, between cultures. Anime, comics, SFF! Philip K. Dick, Piers Anthony. What tools did you take from those traditions? I have struggled to shake the idea that published means good. Be aware of what you may have internalized from your traditions. Outside of books, what traditions do you draw on? Music. Science. Doctors, and the practice of medicine. Anime and the Internet. It's a challenge to identify our traditional influences. Understand where you're coming from.

[Season 20, Episode 28]

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 20, Episode 28]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Erin] The Lens of Tradition.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Erin] And this is an episode that I'm particularly excited about, because it makes us think about... We're in Why... Like, we're in the Why lens, like, why are we writing the stories that we write. And I think that, as much as all of us, I think, we're... Or, I don't know, speak for yourselves. But we're motivated to write by something we've read, a narrative we've experienced... I think a lot of times we forget, as we move on in our careers, to think about what traditions we came from. What are the storytelling traditions that we grew up with? What are the ways of telling stories that we then end up putting in stories of our own? So I'm kind of curious to actually maybe ask a little bit about like where do you think your sort of narrative traditions are? What do you think are the things that you're bringing with you, either as a writer or a reader?

[Howard] My narrative traditions are the newspaper comics and the mass-market paperback science fiction books. And I know those are kind of… Kind of more medium, rather than content, but that was where I was getting my content. And when you look at those mediums, and when you look at the crazy things I made, I think the influence of those traditions on me is pretty obvious.

[Mary Robinette] I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy. And so, for me, most of the stuff that I write is in a conversation with that in some way. But I also come out of theater, and I am a Southerner. And one of the things that I realized when I move around in the world is that there are storytelling… There are ways that we tell stories that I meet someone else who is not from one of those two cultures and the way we have conversation is different. So I'm aware that there is… There are narrative rhythms that are baked into the way I think that have to come out on the page. Even though they are… They are so… It is the water that my fishy self is swimming in. I… There… I'm unconscious of them.

[DongWon] And, for me, I think, literally growing up in an immigrant household, in between cultures, I think, I'm kind of a [polygraph] in terms of traditions. I pull from lots of different places. I mean, both in terms of Eastern narrative and Western narrative, but also, like, I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy, but my formal training is in literary fiction and literary theory. And my first job was in literary fiction and literary theory. I pull from lots of different traditions, whether that's anime or Western comics or SFF. And that can be Arthur Clarke and Ursula LeGuin sort of like in equal measure. Right? I love… Pulling little bits from, like, lots of different pools. And that sort of, like, how I sort of have assembled my taste over the years. And it served me well in my career, because as someone who works with lots of different types of creators, but, still, I think if you look at my list, if you look at what I do, there's kind of, like, an overall cluster. Right? You can sort of see how there is things that I'm interested in and I have a tough time saying it's this lineage or that lineage. There's clearly some high points in there, but… I love pulling from lots of different areas.

[Erin] Yeah. I feel like, for me… I was thinking about did I grow up reading? I did. I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy, and also comics. I was a really big comics person, especially when I was young. And… I try to think about… I'm trying to think about what it was that attracted me to the things that I was reading. I think I really loved Isaac Asimov's short stories when I was growing up. I loved the puzzle of them, the trying to figure out what the rules of the world were and then, like, the rules of robotics in like… There's a story collection, I, Robot, that is all just robot stories. And they all use the same three laws of robotics, but there's, like, so many stories you can make from them. And I love the idea that you could create a new world, and you only had to make a couple of rules, and there could be so many stories that, like, sprang out of those rules. And then I think about, like, my Philip K Dick phase, and, like, how, at one point in my life in high school, I read every book Philip K Dick ever wrote.

[DongWon] Same.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] What a weird time.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] What a… This is why you and I are weird now.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. That's way different than what happened to me, which was all Piers Anthony and, oh, my goodness [garbled]

[DongWon] [garbled]

[Erin] Piers Anthony?

[DongWon] Ah yeah.

[Mary Robinette] What happened to my brain?

[Howard] Y'all have made some choices. This is…

[DongWon] Well, I have made so many reading choices in my life…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You would not believe.

[Erin] But the funny thing about Piers Anthony is I actually credit/blame…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Piers Anthony for being the reason that I love the unreliable narrators.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Because there is the series of books that are the Incarnations…

[Mary Robinette] I love those.

[Howard] Incarnations of Immortality.

[Erin] Incarnations of Immortality, where there's, like, this one is war and this one is death and…

[DongWon] With a cool white car on the cover. Yeah.

[Erin] There is the incarnation of evil, who is the villain of the first five, I believe, books. And the sixth book is from the perspective of the evil incarnation. Where you could just see all the events from the previous books briefly as he's like, actually, I'm not that bad a guy…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] I was really trying to do fine, and then they thought I was evil and I didn't really mean it. And it was really interesting to me to think, wow, you can take the same story and look at it from two different points of view, and those two people will still think they're right, but it's about their perspective. And, like, I still think about that to this day, and, like, the thing that's cool about traditions is thinking about what are the tools, like, the tools, not rules, that you took from those traditions and are now sort of using?

[Howard] The tradition that I have struggled the most to shake, and it's taken probably three quarters of my life to shake, was the idea that if it got printed and put between covers and published to the market, it was good.

[Laughter]

[Howard] No, I'm serious.

[Mary Robinette] No, no, no. That was a laugh of recognition.

[Howard] Yeah. You look at anything and it has been published, therefore it's good. And if I could reach out through the paper cones, the speakers, the whatever and touch our listeners right now and say one thing while gently shaking them, it is, "That was wrong." There… You are allowed to judge things that have been published as bad, or as damaging, or as awful, or as whatever. Because I came away from… I… That tradition, what it gave me was, well, it's okay to write about women in the same way that perhaps piers Anthony did. But, no, that's not what I want to do. There's so many things that I had to unlearn as a result of coming from that tradition.

[DongWon] Well, this is… I got so excited when I saw this particular episode on the curriculum when it was pitched because this, I think, is such an important topic in such a rich and nuanced topic. Right? Because tradition is a thing that we have really positive valences about as a term, because we love our traditions. These are important to us, they give meaning to us, but also, we have a lot of frustration and tension with them, because that can be an old way of thinking. These can be very hidebound, they can be… Things that are traditional can be good and rich and historical, and can also be limiting and sources of pain for a lot of people who are trying to find new ways of being in the world, whether that's because you're queer or you come, like me, from an immigrant community, or whatever it happens to be. These things can be in real tension. And I think we see this a lot within the science fiction and fantasy community. All of us said, SFF is one of our traditions. That means something different to each one of us…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Though. Because you can say SFF and the number of different groups within that is so vast. And if you want to tell feel how intense those differences can be, walk into a science fiction convention and name any science fiction writer born before 1980 and see what happens. You will see fights start to break out…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] At whatever table you're at. And as people have very different opinions of all these different people. And what Howard is saying is absolutely right, that just because it was published and just because it's revered doesn't mean that you have to think it's good, you have to like it, or take anything away from it. Also, just because something is hated doesn't mean you have to throw all aspects of it out, which is a very complicated thing as well. But whether or not things were good or bad, they… We come from those places. And just because we come from a place that had bad things in it, doesn't mean that you don't build off of that and exist within that tradition.

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the… Let me talk about a really concrete example. One of the really pivotal books for me was Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin, which I loved. Still love. I've done a reread. It's still a thing I love. But I was talking with Ursula at one point, and she was talking about how she had made a mistake with that book. Because she'd always thought of herself as a feminist, and that she had written this book, and she had intended to shake things up. Her intent had been… We always see an old wizard. Well, what happens if the wizard is young? And her… Coming from a family with anthropologists and sociologists, she's like, it's… What if the character is brown? Because most of the people on the planet are. And what if it's an archipelago? So she'd done all of these things. And then, after the book was written and turned in and published, she realized that she had not given any of the female characters a name. And that was not on purpose. And… Except for one character. There's one female character who gets a name. And that she had not given most of them lines. And what she realized was that because she had grown up reading books written by men for men, she…

[Howard] About men.

[Mary Robinette] About men, that she had internalized that and also wrote a book that was by men for men… That was by a woman, but still for men. About men. And so, for me, one of the things that I realized is how many things I have internalized from science fiction and fantasy. Because the books that I was reading, it's like they're full of white savior complex, where it's the… Usually white outsider comes in and saves the native population of…

[DongWon] Yeah

[Mary Robinette] Some stand-in for… Um… And that I have internalized that without being conscious of it, in the same way that she had. And so one of the things that I try to do is ask questions about those choices. Now, but that is not… There's so many things that I have internalized that I am unaware of.

[DongWon] Well, I mean, I think that's one of the things about tradition is that… Not just to let it be the tradition on its own, and stand as a monolith, and to continue to pull other things into it as you go.

[Erin] Oh, actually, this is perfect, because I really want to talk about some of the things outside of books that form part of our tradition, but we're going to have to do that after our break.

[Erin] So, before the break, we started getting into… Because we were talking about, ho, as you know, like, how tradition can sort of… Can sometimes hold us back. Or can create well-worn paths that maybe we want to step out of, step off of. But something I was thinking about when I was thinking about my traditions before I got very excited about talking about Piers Anthony and Isaac Asimov…

[Laughter]

[Erin] Was that like… Was that, like, I actually think that the barbershop story is part of the way that I tell stories. Is, like, the way that oral story telling… The what had happened was story…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Is something that I grew up hearing people doing a lot of, like, really great storytelling. It's why I always dislike when people say that you should always show, not tell. Because I'm saying some people are great at telling a story. The telling of it is the experience. And I think some of that comes from the way that oral storytellers… They can't get you to do the thing, they actually just have to tell you what's happening, and that there's something great in that. So I'm wondering, like, outside of sort of books, especially given that publishing only was publishing certain stories for a long period of time, are there other places that we can draw and bring into our tradition that we might not think about typically.

[Howard] I'm gonna be… I'm just gonna go back to the well and say music. Because I love music, I listen to music, I pick music apart. I'm the guy you don't want sitting next to you when we're watching a movie at home and there might be something funky with the soundtrack, because I'll comment on it, and I'll rewind, and I'll talk about it. Because I love dissecting sound. And structure of musical pieces can be extremely analogous to structure of books. You've got a symphony in three movements. Well, that's a three act play. Right?

[Mary Robinette] I think one of the other… Yeah. All of that. Yes, but one of the other things that, like, immediately jumped to mind was science. The science in science fiction. I can always tell when someone has a background in science. And it's not about all of the jargon things, it is about the ethos that they bring to the story, the way the characters interact with themselves, with the other characters. Because scientists… Like, real scientist do not work in isolation. There's a team. And that… You can see that on the page in the way that they are approaching the science and the stories, that there is a different type of evolution, I think, to the way those stories unfold than there is for someone who is use to working solo.

[Howard] As somebody who has had to interact with a lot of doctors, because of long Covid, I have determined that there is a vast gulf between doctor and scientist. And it's uncomfortable. Because I come from the idea that we perform experiments, we look for things that are non-falsifiable, we look for a control group, so on and so forth. And in many cases, a doctor looks for, well, what's the most common cause of your symptoms? That. Okay, then that's what I'm going to treat. And out you go. And that's not the tradition of science, that's the tradition of… Practicing medicine…

[DongWon] American health insurance.

[Howard] Yeah, American health insurance.

[DongWon] Yeah. For me, I mean, I think, the outside influences that I would point to the most is, one is anime, for sure, but it's also kind of connected to another thing, which is just the Internet generally. I think, age wise, I'm basically part of the first generation that grew up on the Internet. My uncle worked for IBM, so we had a computer from an early age, and so I was, I don't know, I don't know exactly how old, but by the time I was in middle school, I had the Internet. And I spent my entire childhood on that, tying up the phone line in the house, being in chat rooms that I wouldn't… Shouldn't have been in, looking at…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Bulletin boards I shouldn't have been on, talking to people that I shouldn't have been talking to. Right? Like, nothing bad happened, but, like, I also just grew up with a certain kind of exposure to the world and to a certain kind of chaotic energy that especially early Internet just had. It was a very, very special time of deep creativity, deep chaos, and deep just interaction with the world in a way that it had never really interacted before. And so all of that, I think, deeply informs my interest now. Whether that's an interest in like weird corners of things, knowing a lot about a little bit about a lot of subjects, or even just like a deep investment in what's just going on over there or what's happening in that community.

[Erin] Yeah. I love that you said anime, especially because I can sometimes tell when somebody who has a lot of anime ex… In their tradition, like, rights something, because anime characters will stop and tell you exactly what's happening, how they're feeling, what's going on. They'll name the move before they do it. Which is less the way that we write, like, current American prose. There's actually interesting that I'm like maybe we should be doing more of that, like, maybe that's… It's a popular tradition for a reason.

[Howard?] It's not wrong.

[DongWon] It popped into my head, when you were talking about barbershop tradition, because it is also a tradition where you do a lot of telling in addition to the showing. Right? In a Shonen anime fight that goes across seven episodes, they're telling you every God damned internal thought that they had over the course of their entire life in between throwing one punch. So…

[Erin] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But I… This is a great example, I think. Because I got in a story once, back when I was slushing things, and it was clear that the person had seen anime, but they didn't understand the tradition of it. Because what they did was they described everybody's hair…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And eyes. And they were just like… You could see that they were describing anime characters. But there was none of the anime dynamics. It was not… Like, none of that was happening on the page. But, oh my goodness, those locks were like…

[Erin] Locking. Whew.

[Howard] Hopping and locking.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] I think that one of the biggest challenges for any of us is to identify our traditional influences. In terms of metaphor, you've got somebody who's fully clothed, maybe a little hot, a little bit sweaty, and you've got somebody who's just also fully clothed, but has just stepped out of the swimming pool. And there is a nice cool breeze blowing by. One of these people is shivering and thinks it's very cold. Because all of that water on them is evaporating at once. The weather is very cold. And the other person's like, naw, this feels wonderful. This is perfect. The experience we have is hugely dependent on where we just came from and what we've been associating ourselves with. And if you don't recognize that you are sopping wet, and that's why you are experiencing this as freezing, you lose the ability to work with the new place that you've arrived at.

[DongWon] Yeah. I talk a lot about how one of the most important things you can do as an artist is to develop taste. Right? You have to develop taste to understand what it is you're trying to accomplish, what you're interested in doing. And tradition's a huge component of that. Where you came from is the baseline of where your taste starts. And then, what you add to that, and how you evolve that over time, is how you grow as a person. Right? If I had stayed only in the taste of what I was reading when I was 13, which was a lot of Hieinlein, I think my tastes now would be very different. If I hadn't then discovered anime and the Internet and Faulkner and whatever else. Right? Like, adding all these other things helped me evolve my tastes into something more deliberate. And so when you're thinking about tradition, I kind of cheated and said my tradition is actually combining a lot of traditions. But I encourage, kind of everybody to do that. Just because you came from one place don't forget your roots. Those roots really, really matter. That is the core of what your taste is. But you can layer onto that. You can actively seek out… Hey, I've been stuck in this rut. I wish I was writing stories more from the perspective of women. Right? So if you're LeGuin writing Earthsea, suddenly you look up and realize, oh, no, I did the thing I didn't mean to do. How do you fix that? You start pursuing other types of fiction, you start reading other things, engaging with other things. And that lets you make the thing that you wanted to make.

[Erin] Yeah. Because I think if you have… Like, it's the… I know we've used this analogy, like, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And I think sometimes what happens if you can get… If you get really baked into one particular tradition, it may not have the tools to tell the story you're trying to tell. Something that I sometimes find is that if you are used to movies… Like, not even just any particular genre, but visual medium is the only… All of your traditions are visual media, then sometimes when you write stories, you describe what is happening, sort of like describing the locks, but there's no emotion, because when you are watching something, it is the actors who are providing that emotional thing, and we don't notice it as much. So we maybe don't capture it in our brains, and then in our narratives. If you are used to games, sometimes folks who come from a game tradition will have a lot of interesting things going on, but no through line. It's the thing that you're not noticing around you. It is, again, like the thing you're not knowing what those traditions are. So, totally agree that, like, having more traditions helps. And it also means that sometimes you'll recognize that somebody's coming from a tradition that doesn't fit. Because sometimes if somebody doesn't like a story of yours, doesn't like a narrative of yours, it's because it doesn't fit into their understanding of what a story is, based on their own traditions. And it doesn't mean that that story is good or bad, or that their traditions are good or bad, but just that you're coming from a different place. And understanding where you're coming from, I think, makes you both a better writer and a better reader.

[Erin] Which brings us to the homework. Which is to make a list of five narratives of any type. This could be a story, a game, a movie, a barbershop tale, your favorite ghost story, that form part of your storytelling tradition. Write them down. Look at them. Then think, how is your current work influenced by the list, and is there any one of them that you would like to bring even more to bear on the story that you're currently working on.

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

sunnymodffa posting in

fail_fandomanon

Perhaps it's Revenge of the Fisherman's Wife's Husband, but the revenge isn't going the way he planned.

Headcanon: Octopus was stuck in a fishing net. Guy used knife to free Octopus. As a thank you Octopus is sucking guy off. Everyone is happy.

... and that's how to be an octopus about this.

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sunnymodffa posting in

fail_fandomanon

"If you can't baffle them with Balrogs, dazzle them with disco," thinks Sauron: "Tonight the Super Trouper eyeball's gonna find you." Alas for him, the disco ball is on the other podium this time. ABBA walks the ring across Shire, Rohan, and Gondor; splits the party at a late stage; and the two hoBBits take it the rest of the way until, in a epic dénouement, they cast the ring into the fires of Merano.

All the fail_fandomanon Rules and Information (and Ban Requests): https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/1076.html. The short version: no embeds, don't out people's real names, don't be that much of an asshole, body fluids are off topic, Mods reserve the right to freeze, screen, and delete the fuck out of stuff. FFA discussion covers a wide variety of topics and has a very flexible view of 'fandom' that includes politics, current events, and cooking techniques. FFA is a Choose NOT to Warn experience. Meme away.

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sunnymodffa posting in

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Don't judge a mineral by its cleavage planes.

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US Politics standalone post #5 is now CLOSED.This was the last dedicated post, and US Politics will remain banned indefinitely on all other posts. This change won't affect content that's currently allowed on main meme.

sunnymodffa posting in

fail_fandomanon

a
... with a flared base. And it's made of silicon."

"Where from?" said Arthur, "Ann Summers was destroyed by the Vogons."

"Doesn't matter."

Nonnie skimmed [Ford Prefect's explanation of the universe's origins] and thought he was explaining buttplugs.

All the fail_fandomanon Rules and Information (and Ban Requests): https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/1076.html. The short version: no embeds, don't out people's real names, don't be that much of an asshole, body fluids are off topic, Mods reserve the right to freeze, screen, and delete the fuck out of stuff. FFA discussion covers a wide variety of topics and has a very flexible view of 'fandom' that includes politics, current events, and cooking techniques. FFA is a Choose NOT to Warn experience. Meme away.

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Personal Issues, Off Topic Conversation, Religion, & Everything Else post (PP #31)
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podfic_bingo_mod posting in

podfic_bingo

With the End of June - The 2024-2025 Podfic Bingo Challenge is closed (having allowed extra time for those that wanted to post their completed cards)!

We hope you had fun with the challenges and creating your podfics. We are so proud of all the podfics that have been created.

Thank you everyone who participated this year!

Reply with your bingo cards below and we will gift your reward - drop us a link to the podfic of your choice and your card(s)!

Winners:
Per Bingo- one cover art made by the mods for podfics of your choice (2 bingos = 2 cover art)

Per Blackout- one compiled podbook (m4b) of your podfic/podfic series using existing cover art or a new cover art created by the mods. (2 blackouts = 2 podbooks w/ existing or new cover art)

No Bingo/at least one square- Let us know if you want us to shout you out on Twitter for participating!

As always, thank you for participating in the Podfic Bingo - We hope you enjoyed what you created and were able to increase your podfic repertoire and collection.

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fic_in_a_box_mod posting in

ficinabox

Hello friends! Below is the schedule for FIAB 2025, which will run Late July-November instead of August-November.

Schedule changes, in brief:

We've added in extra time for mod admin tasks such as tagset clean up and request checking.
We've given you a full 2 week sign up period
We've added a couple days of extra time to the creation period.

This extra time will help us utilize our helpers better because we won't have such tight scheduling! It will also allow for the possibility that the swaps puzzle will take longer than in previous years – we don't want to punish swappers with less creation time if it takes us longer than usual to get swaps out, so just building a little extra time into the creation period seemed best.

The rest of this post will cover:

Updates to several specific medium tags and medium rules.
A slight change to the way OCs can be nominated.

Discord server reminder! Fic In A Box is a complex exchange even for exchange veterans, so we thought that if we were going to invite a bunch of new people to the exchange we should provide a space where they can ask lots of questions throughout the process. This server is open to everyone (we won't kick you out if you've been doing FIAB for years already) but its purpose is to help people participate in the exchange, so it will probably be most useful/enjoyable if you're kinda confused about the exchange. Like FIAB itself, the server is an 18+ Choose Not To Warn space.

Join the FIAB Newbie Discord! (link)

2025 Schedule:

July 24th-August 2: Nominations Pre-Gaming (participants can load tags from last year’s tagset into this tagset)
August 3-12: Nominations
August 13-16: Nominations Cleanup
August 17-August 31: Signups
August 20: Swap requests open
September 6: Assignments Out By This Date
September 7: Swap requests close
October 19: Assignments Due
November 9: Last Day To Submit Makeup Assignments
November 15: Work Reveals
November 29: Creator Reveals

All deadlines are at 11:59 PM EDT except for those in November, which will happen at 11:59 PM EST

New In 2025

Mediums Rules Updates

Art Ruleset

We'll be adjusting the language for the ruleset to make it clear that if multiple characters are requested they must all be visibly within the artwork.

We will also be adding "Papercraft" (creating an image using layered paper cut into the necessary shapes) as a style to the ruleset. This will be a possible style for any art tag that doesn't specify another style (such as "Drawn") and can be requested specifically by nominating the desired art tags with at "Papercraft - " prefix.

Multimedia Works

We'll be adding more guidance for the requirements if combining two different requested medium tags into a multimedia work in the Posting Guidelines.

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Printable Sticker Page Layout

We are changing the rules for stickers to clarify a medium-checking issue we had last year. New rules will set a minimum number of stickers per sheet (five unique stickers per sheet), for an equivalent of 2k per sticker sheet.

Medium Opt-In: Audio - Fanmix
Medium Opt-In: Audio - FST (Fan Soundtrack)

These tags will be merged into the tag "Medium Opt-In: Audio - Fanmix/FST (Fan Soundtrack)"

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Cross Stitch Pattern

We will be updating the rules for this medium to clarify that you can't auto-generate a cross stitch pattern from pre-existing art.

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Web-based choice-based IF not hosted on AO3
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Twine
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Ink
Medium Opt-In: Writing - Interactive Fiction - AO3 style Choose Your Own Adventure
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Visual Novel

We will be restructuring all of these tags into the following four tags:

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - AO3-style Choose Your Own Adventure
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Choice-Based IF Not Hosted On AO3
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Illustrated AO3-style Choose Your Own Adventure
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Illustrated Choice-Based IF Not Hosted On AO3

Length Opt-In: Drabble
Length Opt-In: Double Drabble
Length Opt-In: Triple Drabble

These are being changed to the following:

Length Opt-In: Drabble (100 Words Exactly)
Length Opt-In: Double Drabble (200 Words Exactly)
Length Opt-In: Triple Drabble (300 Words Exactly)

Length Opt-In: Drabble Series

We are removing this tag because it caused some confusion last year. If you'd like to request drabble series please mention it in your optional details. Drabble series of over 1000 words are opt out (similar to other fic formats such as 5+1 things), and for drabble series of under 1000 words you may opt-in within your optional details while requesting a drabble tag.

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Craftwork

These tags will be adjusted to have an equivalent of 2k.

Medium Opt-In: Instructions - Recipe book
Medium Opt-In: Instructions - Cocktail Recipes

For clarity these will be singularized into:

Medium Opt-In: Instructions - Recipe
Medium Opt-In: Instructions - Cocktail Recipe

In addition it will be clarified in the rules that recipes are required to be the original creations of the poster.

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Sheet Music - Arrangement of Music From Canon
Medium Opt-In: Audio - Arrangement/Cover Music
Medium Opt-In: Audio - Song Parody
Medium Opt-In: Audio - Commentary Track
Medium Opt-In: Audio - Commentary Track - MST3K Style

It's been brought to our attention that someone received a warning from AO3 for posting an arrangement of sheet music from a canon song. The last thing we want to do is risk anyone getting a copyright related warning from AO3 due to a medium in this exchange, so since all of the above tags involve copyrighted music or audio in some way, we're removing them from the tagset.

Nominations Rules Updates

Original Character(s) nominations will not be accepted. This is because "Original Character(s)" is meant to mean either Original Character (singular) or Original Characters (plural) but we've seen some evidence that people who want just one or the other are selecting this phrasing simply because it's common in canonicals.

Tentatively, we will try out simply editing these nominations to be singular if they come up on the AO3 interface, but if that's too burdensome we will reject like all other incorrect tags.

Click here to view tag examples!

Elmo & Original Character(s) (Sesame Street)
Big Bird/Original Character(s) (Sesame Street)
Solo: Original Character(s) (Sesame Street)

Not allowed per this new rule.

Elmo & Original Character (Sesame Street)
Big Bird/Original Character (Sesame Street)
Solo: Original Character (Sesame Street)

Allowed! These tags will get you a work with one OC, plus other listed characters if there are any.

Elmo & Original Characters (Sesame Street)
Big Bird/Original Characters (Sesame Street)
Solo: Original Characters (Sesame Street)

Allowed! These tags are phrased as plural, but per our other nominations rules "Original Characters" counts as an ambiguous group so requests with this phrasing could be filled with 1 OC or 2+ OCs.

Note that you can't limit the number of OCs if you pick a tag like "Big Bird/Original Characters (Sesame Street)" so if you're really only interested in a threesome but not a foursome, you should instead nominate like…

Elmo & Original Character & Original Character (Sesame Street)
Big Bird/Original Character/Original Character (Sesame Street)

Allowed! These tags need to be filled with as many OCs as are listed in the tag. Per other nominations rules, you can list up to 6 characters in a relationship tag.

If Big Bird and five other characters isn't a big enough orgy/polycule for you, you can A) list the last character as the plural "Original Characters" to leave yourself open to more than 5 OCs, or B) use your optional details to opt into more OCs at your creator's discretion. (We suggest you do this in the AO3 optional details box so it's easy for us to find, rather than buried in a letter.)

sunnymodffa posting in

fail_fandomanon

With leathery skin and eyes predatory...

Jawlene, Jawlene, Jawlene, Jawlene
I'm beggin' of you please don't eat my hand
Jawlene, Jawlene, Jawlene, Jawlene
Please don't eat it like a slice of ham... 🎶

All the fail_fandomanon Rules and Information (and Ban Requests): https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/1076.html. The short version: no embeds, don't out people's real names, don't be that much of an asshole, body fluids are off topic, Mods reserve the right to freeze, screen, and delete the fuck out of stuff. FFA discussion covers a wide variety of topics and has a very flexible view of 'fandom' that includes politics, current events, and cooking techniques. FFA is a Choose NOT to Warn experience. Meme away.

Other posts on meme:

Personal Issues, Off Topic Conversation, Religion, & Everything Else post (PP #31)
Fic and WIP Post
Book Clubs, Watchalongs, & Readalongs
Prompt & fill fests: for FFA Post #1000, FFA's 10th anniversary, FFA Post #1500, & FFA Post #2000

Search

Unofficial FFA archive & search: Dememe.info Username/password pairs are nonnie/pony, nonny/seal, or ayrt/velociraptor
If you have a DW account, you can use DW's content search. Don't forget to tick the box to search in comments. You can also use FFA Rocks.

Related communities and additional resources

New unofficial FFA wiki (archive: ffawiki_backup)
New unofficial FFA Writers Tips & Recs wiki
Unofficial Fyeah FFA tumblr
Unofficial FFA recs list
Unofficial FFA Discord Chat
DW Blocker link & tips and now New! 2024 Updated DW Blocker Guide
How to link to another account on DW or other sites. If you don't want to create a clickable link, type a backslash (\) before the @.

Meme rules do not require spoiler cuts. But here are two ways to make them:

HTML-5 (recommended)
<details> <summary>spoiler title</summary> Some spoilery content. </details>	Demo: spoiler title Some spoilery content.

Alternative for inline spoiler-cuts - details here
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These topics are banned:

'Which topics belong on main meme'
the game Hogwarts Legacy
discussion about current events in Israel and Palestine

Only one clearly named top-level thread for each of the following topics:

Disruptive and Provocative Opinions (DAPO)
sexual abuse and rape culture
UK Politics
Russia's invasion of Ukraine and related current events

Discussion of UK politics related sexual abuse and rape culture should go into one properly labeled subthread.

Discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK needs to go to the thread about that country. If it's personal, it still belongs on the PP. Any attempt at wank will be frozen.

mbarker posting in

wetranscripts

Writing Excuses 20.27: The Lens of Why

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-27-the-lens-of-why

Key Points: The lens of why? Authorial intent. Why did you write this book? Theme and meaning? Meaning is what the reader brings to the book. Approach them as questions. Theme is what the author puts into a book, meaning is what the reader gets out of a book. What am I trying to say with this book? Theme and meaning and authorial intent are just a coffee coaster. Help? A story or story structure is a pitcher, that you can put anything in that you want. The reader brings their vessel, a cup, which you fill from that pitcher. A story asks a question, while a polemic answers it. Theme as a series of questions? Moments of discovery of what my theme is? Rewriting can be a joy.

[Season 20, Episode 27]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Howard] The Lens of Why.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mark] And I'm Mark.

[Howard] We are joined by our special guest Mark Ashiro here on Navigator of the Seas...

[Mary Robinette] You will have already been listening to Mark on some of our earlier episodes at the beginning of the year. Because we time-travel. We haven't recorded those yet, so we don't know what we've talked about.

[Howard] We're quite sure they're awesome.

[Mary Robinette] Brilliant. They are brilliant.

[Mark] I'm going to tank those ones on purpose now.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Mark, will you take a moment and tell us about yourself?

[Mark] Of course. I am primarily a young adult and middle grade author. I have seven published books, many more to come. I'm also very lucky in that I am a multi-genre author and I get to genre hop. So I like taking deep dives into genre structure, all things nerdy.

[Howard] Outstanding. Well, let's talk for a moment about the lens of why. This is a category we're using to describe tone and frame, authorial intent. Theme and meaning. All kind of wrapped up under the question of why did you write this book? Why did you write this book? And I want to begin by focusing a little bit on just theme and meaning, because I always struggle with these. So I'm going to ask the question to my fellow hosts. How do you differentiate between theme and meaning?

[Mary Robinette] I… This is my own personal take. And I think about both of those as things that are not necessarily for me. So, theme, for me, is something that people who are writing essays or reviews are about, that it's big, sweeping arcs of stuff. Meaning, for me, is what the reader brings to it. There's stuff about the book that means stuff to me, but it's often a personal thing that never surfaces for the reader. So I tend to, when I'm going into this, approach them as questions. What is the question that I'm asking? And I think that that is essentially what people are talking about with theme. That… Like, I will… The novel that I'm working on right now, the question that I'm asking is how many times can you lie to someone you love? That's not… It's not my intention to answer that question. My intention is to explore it. And I think that's what people are talking about when they talk about theme. But, for me, theme… Like you, Howard, is an amorphous thing that someone… Because I also see people like, ah, yes, thematically, they've used the color blue throughout this. I'm like, or they liked it.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] It was on sale.

[Howard] Okay. I'm going to… I need to one trick pony this. My one trick is metaphors. Theme is how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie pop. And meaning is the owl doesn't care about the question, the owl is just going to bite the Tootsie pop. Meaning doesn't answer the question, necessarily. Meaning provides an answer in a different way, and theme asks the question without necessarily providing an answer.

[Mary Robinette] I think in another way you've demonstrated my thinking here, which is, with your metaphor, you've used a metaphor that kids these days won't get. And so you've got a meaning that is important and meaningful to you, but they're going to bring a completely different meaning to it when they read it. What are you thinking, Mark?

[Mark] So, my way into thinking about this is very similar to yours, is when I'm starting a project, it almost immediately always has a meaning to me. This is the reason why I want to write this, this is what I think is interesting. I don't often know the theme until much, much later. Because the theme will then diverge very much from the meaning that I intended or the meaning that I had for it. I think it's also interesting, as someone who is writing kid lit and is constantly interacting with readers, how often the readers, these kids will go on long five-minute tangents to me about what this book is about or what this story's about. And I'm just sitting there, nodding my head, like, that's totally what I intended. And seeing the way that someone can read something and find 20,000 different things you never intended, you never thought of. And so, for me, that's meaning. That's where meaning is. It is also fun, though, when you have these experiences where someone does see the theme that you have written in there, that is intentional. But, yeah, they don't always match up. I think it is fun, though, I will say, when the two, your meaning and the theme, matchup, and someone catches it. Those are the [garbled], that beautiful trifecta moments you have.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] At breakfast today, Kate McKean said… I asked the question…

[Mark] Yeah.

[Howard] She's going to be on some episodes with us this year.

[Mary Robinette] She will have already been on episodes.

[Howard] She will have already been on episodes…

[Laughter]

[Howard] With us this year.

[Mark] Time travel!

[Howard] Sorry, I keep forgetting to use the future has been tense.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] She said, oh, yeah, theme is what the author puts into the book, meaning is what the reader gets out of the book. Which is also a convenient definition. Dan, you were going to say something?

[Dan] I just thought… I'm really fascinated by this conversation, because I think I'm the opposite of you, Mark, entirely. I think about theme a lot. Theme, to me, is what is this about. What am I putting into it? I can't think of meaning… I can't think of a book I've written where I know what it means. Like, that is a completely foreign concept to me. What does this book mean? I don't know. Whereas the theme, what is this about, what am I trying to say with it, that's something that I do think about very consciously.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think about… I think this is why I liked the umbrella term of the why. It's like…

[Mark] Right.

[Mary Robinette] The why of the book. Why is this important to me? Why is this a book I want to tell? Why is this a journey that my characters want to go on? Because theme does have so many different meanings for so many different people.

[Howard] There's… We have in a couple of weeks an episode about specifically authorial intent, and, for me, the Venn diagram of theme and meaning and authorial intent… Boy, depending on what angle I'm looking at it, it's just a coffee coaster. It's just one circle, they all fit in the same thing. And so I struggle a lot with these definitions. Help? Help me.

[Dan] We all thought you were going somewhere with that.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I am going somewhere. I am asking you a question.

[Mark] We thought you were providing us with guidance, and then you're like, I need the guidance.

[Mary Robinette] So this is something that… A metaphor that I use when I'm talking about a structure… Structure, but also the relationship with the audience. And I probably talked about this in an episode at some point, but… Hello, we're going to revisit. That when you're thinking about a story, a story structure, that it's a pitcher, that's a container. It contains whatever it is that you want to tell. Pitchers come in a bunch of different shapes and you can put anything in them you want. You can put gazpacho for reasons. You can put a Pinot Noir, you can put apple cider. You can put anything into that pitcher you want. Depending on the genre you're in, the pitchers may have different shapes. You may decide to become a glassblowers and make your own. That's the story as you intend it. When the reader comes to you, each reader brings their own vessel. And when you're looking at the vessel, a Pinot Noir glass is designed to shape the way you're experiencing Pinot Noir so it hits your palate in a specific way, brings out all of these bouquets and things. So if I have a Pinot Noir in my pitcher, and I pour it into your Pinot Noir glass, you are experiencing the story as I intended it. You're getting my theme and meaning. But if you come to me with a red solo cup, you're still going to enjoy that. If I've got hot apple cider, and you come to me with a ceramic mug, perfect! We got a good match there. If you come to me with that Riedel glass, which was so good for the Pinot Noir… It's likely to shatter from the hot apple cider. Which is not my intention. And so, for me, when I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about who in my writing for? But I'm also not… Like, I can't also think about, oh, I have to think about every possible vessel that may come to me. So, when I'm thinking about that meaning, like, for me, the meaning is the way the reader experiences the story. That's… And sometimes, as Mark was talking about, they do line up perfectly. So this is why I have found that if I think about the what question am I asking, why am I telling this, who am I telling it for, that those give me measurable things for myself that I can use to make decisions. I can measure against the is this going to make so-and-so laugh? Then that's… Yes. And that was… That's my intention. That's my… The meaning for this moment. Great. Then I can measure against that. If I want this… If I want a laugh here and it's not going to make them laugh… Other people may also laugh at that point, but also, sometimes, you put in, like, an in-joke that is for one very specific cup.

[Mark] I want to jump in here, because now you just triggered sort of a memory that might help with differentiating between theme and meaning. So my first book, Anger Is a Gift, I wrote… a secondary character is a trans-racial adoptee, like myself. If you're listening and unfamiliar with that term, it is someone who is adopted out of their ethnic and racial culture and into another one. It usually describes kids of color who are adopted by white people. So I have a white adopted mom and a Japanese Hawaiian adopted father. And so I wanted a dynamic I have almost never seen in fiction. Because usually adoption narratives are just… There's an adoption, it's usually not transracial, you might see foster care, orphans, or whatnot. But that specific experience is so specific, you don't see it. So I wrote this character who's dealing with being Latino who is adopted into a white family and the privilege that comes with that. That's my theme. The themes of privilege and how this person who is a person of color is in a very white society… Not only that, but in the neighborhood she lives in, and then how she interacts with her friends who are from a poorer neighborhood. That's my theme. What I'm talking about, what's the authorial intent. The second day this book was out, I was at a book event with Jason Reynolds in DC, and a man came up to me and said, "I read this whole book last night and I loved it. But I need you to know, like…" It was an older white gentleman and he's like, me and my husband adopted this young black girl, and I think I need to, like, talk to her, because I don't think I've raised her right. And I'm like holding this book open and I'm like, who do I make it out to? Like…

[Laughter]

[Mark] That man got the theme, but it had a different meaning. Because… And I love that you're talking about [garbled]

[Howard] And it had a very powerful meaning.

[Mark] Very powerful meaning, but, also, I was like, that's not it. I do… This is not for you. I was not writing for you, but that is a thing where the liquid I'm pouring out went into… I won't say the wrong cup, because I don't…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Mark] Want to make that judgment call…

[Mary Robinette] No, no.

[Mark] But a cup that shattered. And it was fascinating to me, because I'm like, I love that you did get the theme of this child's parents did not treat them well… Whoa, that is not the meaning I intended at all. Sorry if you happen to be listening and had an existential crisis for the last six years, but…

[Chuckles]

[Mark] But that's interesting because it's someone who understands the theme, but the meaning was still different for them.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] But if that individual came away from your book and what they came away with first and foremost was I need to have a conversation with my adoptive daughter…

[Mark] Yeah.

[Howard] About transracial adoption and parenting. I don't see parents having conversations with their children as a bad thing.

[Mark] Oh, yeah. No.

[Howard] That's… I would not say that cup shattered. I think that someone got meaning from it that you didn't expect, and had a very powerful experience that you didn't intend, but that was probably a net good.

[Mark] Yeah, I agree. I agree with that.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I also don't think that sometimes a cup shattering is always a bad thing, because sometimes you need a different cup.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] The thing that I was thinking about was a conversation that I had with Elizabeth Bear years ago. It was, like, one of those conversations where you're sitting around at a convention, and someone drops a… Just a one sentence thing that blows your mind for the rest of time. And she said that a story was something that ask a question, and a polemic was something that answered it. And so, when you were talking about the questions that you are asking, how does she relate to the people that she knows, how does this impact… Those are all questions.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And what you're showing is one way in which it might be experienced. But I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say you're also showing multiple ways, multiple answers to that. And that is, I think, where you… For me, the thing… Thinking about theme in that way, as a series of questions as opposed to a series of answers, is that it allows space for the reader. And I think any time you can allow space for the reader to come into the story, any time you can invite them in, that you do have the potential for a more powerful meaning.

[Howard] And on the subject of space for the reader, our advertisers don't actually read this, but we're going to give them some space.

[Howard] I have an experience I want to share about when I thought… When… I look at it now and think back at it. And I think that learning my theme, learning my meaning, caused me to change what I was writing. Early Schlock Mercenary, I did not realize… This is going to sound a little silly, I know… I did not realize that I was writing social satire. Once I realized I was writing social satire, a lot of lights came on, and now I had, as a writer, I had a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning. I knew what certain themes were going to be. My question for you, my fellow hosts, have you ever had a similar moment of discovery, where you realized, oh, wait. This is what this means. This is what my theme is. And you changed your course?

[Mary Robinette] Mark, I just watched you nod all the way through that, so [garbled]

[Mark] [garbled] And I love this too, especially because, it was for a book that was contemporary, and the theme could only manifest as speculative fiction.

[Mary Robinette] Ah

[Mark] So, my most recent YA book, into the Light, is a secret speculative fiction book, where the speculative fiction twist does not happen until like 325 pages in, when you realize you've been reading speculative fiction the whole time. Which, by the way, actually has made people very angry when they read it…

[Chuckles]

[Mark] Because it's so [garbled unlike]

[Howard] Dan has no experience with this.

[Laughter]

[Mark] Yes. And I'm sure you can speak to (one) it is a very creative… Creatively satisfying thing to do, but I even knew when I realized what the theme of this book was actually going to be, that it was going to be an unnerving and upsetting experience for the reader, because you thought I was leading you into one story, and your very much not being led into that story. And people… I do get why people go into a book and expect one genre and you don't get that. But I had written multiple drafts, I'd figured out structure. But I was having this problem with the two main characters where I was very frustrated because they sounded a little too similar. And what was it about the two of them that made them different enough to warrant this being a book? I had my meaning before I started the book. I had my meaning before I even started outlining it or brainstorming. I knew what the theme was before I started drafting. So I felt very secure in what I was about to do. But when I was actually writing these two narrators, something wasn't right. They felt disjointed, they felt angular. I was like, they're not clashing in ways that are interesting, their clashing in a way that's just upsetting. Why can't I get them to be what I want them to be? It was in a conversation that I was having that I… On the phone with my editor, where I said something very similar, like, they cannot be what I want them to be, and I was like, oh! That's actually the theme. The theme is of this whole…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Mark] Kind of why I was struggling with this is it is a book about religious repression and rejection, it's about two kids who are tricked into conversion therapy. And they go through very different experiences with it. And the theme that I was struggling to vocalize is, for some people in this world, you'll never be good enough.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Mark] And I just was sitting there and I'm like, I'm doing it now, I'm saying they're not good enough and they aren't fitting the mold that I want them to. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's it! And I mean, unfortunately, you have that moment where I was on the phone with my editor, Miriam Weinberg at Tor, where she's like, you're going to have to rewrite the whole thing, aren't you? And I'm like, yeah…

[Chuckles]

[Mark] This is the third rewrite, and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to have to, but I know what it is, in the way I figured out how to… Without spoiling it, was it required something extremely bombastic and very, very speculative fiction. But… And I'm curious to hear, too, for people who have had this, that moment of, like, oh, this is right, this is it. I'm exactly where I need to be.

[Howard] I shared with a student yesterday morning… We were talking about the necessity for rewrites, and I said, yeah, I got bad news for you. If you love having written, finding that you need to rewrite the whole thing is terrible. But, if you actually love to write, the opportunity to make this discovery and go back and rewrite it can be a joy.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] Because now you get to do it again.

[Mark] With… At least for me, this sort of, like, infectious certainty.

[Howard] You get to do it better.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Mark] Where you've [sussed?] out as you are making decisions, and then you get to make even more because you feel good about the decision you made.

[Dan] I've talked about this a little bit before, but I've had this experience with three of the John Cleaver books. Four, five, and then, in between them, a novella called Next of Kin. Which I think of as my basically Alzheimer's trauma books…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Because they were about memory. The kind of basic premise of the John Cleaver series is that there are monsters who lack something and they steal it from us. And I wanted to have one who didn't have his own memories and so he had to take ours. And does that by… Does that in order to survive. And realized very quickly once I started writing that, that I was trauma dumping my grandfather's Alzheimer's experience all over the readers, and I… Then had that moment of, well, I need to go back and make this a little more palatable and a little more acceptable, but also, wow, I didn't realize that that's what this book was about, and it absolutely, that's what this book is about. That's what all three of those books are about, is me trying to work through my own history with loss of memory and the impermanence that this creates in your life and the other people around you. And having that experience halfway through really changed how I saw what those books were and what their theme was.

[Howard] All right. Well, if we have answered for you the question about what theme and meaning are, and how they are different from each other, please let me know, because I still am not confident in that. But I'm okay with not being confident in it. I feel like this is a place where the definitions we each come up with are going to function as the lens of why.

[Howard] And I have a homework for you which should be fun. Take a popular book to film or book to TV adaptation and ask yourself if the film changed the meaning or changed the theme of the book. And then, ask yourself in what ways it did it.

[Howard] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

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