R.S. Benedict
0:00
Welcome to Rite Gud. The only podcast that helps you write good. I’m R.S. Benedict, The Most Dangerous Woman in speculative fiction. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of writing advice out there. That doesn’t help you write good. In fact, it helps you write pretty bad. And some of this advice is from professional published writers. here to join us once again for another episode about bad writing advice is Mattie Lewis.
Mattie Lewis
0:28
Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be back. One of my one of my favorite topics to get all heated about is bad writing advice.
R.S. Benedict
0:36
It’s incredible.
Mattie Lewis
0:38
I was I was real stoked. You’re like, Hey, do you want to talk about some more bad writing advice? Like, absolutely. Let’s go.
R.S. Benedict
0:44
R.S. Benedict
0:50
It’s it’s a little frustrating and worrying just because you see so many fledgling writers going into like writing forums and writing communities and asking for advice, and getting legitimately bad advice that makes the writing worse. And it’s like, oh, no, I yeah, this is the one thing we didn’t want to happen.
Mattie Lewis
1:09
Yeah. And sometimes it’s just like a case of the blind leading the blind, or it’s like someone who’s written two short stories, telling someone who’s written no short stories, how to write a story. And sometimes it’s a case of like, you know, it’s advice from professional writer, and it works for them in their particular, you know, their method with their genre with their aims. But that doesn’t mean it’s like a universal thing.
R.S. Benedict
1:35
Yeah. Where sometimes it’s one amateur unpublished writer telling another amateur unpublished writer. Here’s the advice that I got from a book like how to write kick ass stories that is written by someone whose only significant book is his book, How to Write kickass stories, and not his supposedly kickass stories.
Mattie Lewis
2:00
Yeah, that’s, uh, whenever anyone like talks about like, what crafts books do you recommend you recommend? I’m like, what I recommend you do is look for craft books, who are written by writers who you actually like and think are good. Yeah. Like you recognize their work. You like it, you think it’s good. That’s a good craft book for you. If you want to pick up a craft book, if it’s by some nobody, you don’t recognize who you like, or like, heaven foid, it’s by a screenwriter writing general writing advice. Unless you’re looking for screenwriting, do not take screenwriter advice.
R.S. Benedict
2:34
Yeah, don’t listen to those people. They’re fools. The book that I found the most helpful in terms of writing, it’s not written like an advice book. It’s more about analyzing. It’s a book by James Wood. He’s a British literary critic, and it’s called how fiction works. And it just lays out in immense depth in immense detail. Here’s how fiction works. Here’s how perspective works. Here’s what the conventional wisdom is. But here are a bunch of brilliant books that completely violate that conventional wisdom. You’re like, oh, shit, that’s right. Okay. Like, characters always have to be really multi dimensional and multi fascinated and deep. And he’s like, Well, a lot of Charles Dickens characters are kind of one note. And they’re still pretty fucking cool. So
Mattie Lewis
3:18
yeah, and I think that usually when someone says something positive about Dickens, like the first thing they’re gonna say, is like, Oh, his characters are so fun, or like, they’re so interesting, right? Even though they’re not the most nuanced or in depth or three dimensional, they tend to do one thing really hard. And it’s fun to read. People like it. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
3:39
yeah. Yeah. So why don’t we dive in? First, we’re going to start with a bit of a rather infamous bit of bad writing advice that ended up making the news indirectly, which is that writers don’t need to read. And in fact, it’s ablest to say that writers should read.
Mattie Lewis
4:02
Yeah, when I made this claim on Twitter, I think it’s maybe the most shit that I’ve ever gotten. And I have definitely said some things on Twitter that are like, objectively spicier and more inflammatory than Yeah, writers should read.
R.S. Benedict
4:17
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s bizarre. It’s really, really bizarre. And also writers should read the classics. Which Yeah, I think they should. I doesn’t. A lot of the times these things are classics because they’re good. And I know that what goes into determining what’s classic or not, is very political and very biased, but I can’t really think of works in the classics that don’t have some kind of merit, even if they’re books that I don’t particularly enjoy myself. I can understand why like The Scarlet Letter is assigned to students because even though I it’s not a book I particularly enjoyed I think it has what
Mattie Lewis
4:57
I Love Actually. Here is one of my favorites, but I still
R.S. Benedict
5:01
think it has a lot of merit and it’s worth reading and you can get something out of it even if it’s not like fun for you see, this
Mattie Lewis
5:08
is me like with a Great Gatsby, which I think you do like,
R.S. Benedict
5:11
I fucking love The Great Gatsby.
Mattie Lewis
5:13
I don’t particularly like The Great Gatsby, but I’m like, I understand why we read this. Like I get I get it. It’s just not my bag. I think maybe I’d like it better if I reread it like now than I did when I was, you know, junior in high school or whatever. Yeah, it’s
R.S. Benedict
5:28
way better around age 30.
Mattie Lewis
5:31
Yeah, so I’m, I’m about at the right age to reread it, I
R.S. Benedict
5:34
think, yeah, you were the perfect age. Like when I first read it in high school and like, whatever. And then I reread it around when I turned 30. And I’m like, Holy fucking shit. Oh, my God, it hits so well at that age.
Mattie Lewis
5:47
Yeah, I think the the complaint that people make about oh, well, like, you know, the Classics is overwhelmingly like, white straight guys. And that’s not untrue. Like that is true. But they’re the white straight guys who wrote well,
R.S. Benedict
6:00
and most of them weren’t straight.
Mattie Lewis
6:02
Yeah. And a lot of them weren’t.
R.S. Benedict
6:04
Those were at least by
Mattie Lewis
6:06
Yeah, at least like a little a little bit by curious maybe
R.S. Benedict
6:10
Lyman Melville really liked men.
Mattie Lewis
6:12
Yeah, he had a big ol crush on Nathaniel Hawthorne, speaking of The Scarlet Letter, like that’s like in his letters. And I’m like, Yeah, I guess maybe you could argue that, you know, the time was different. And people express their feelings about each other and like, different veiage that we would today I consider more romantic than it might have been back then. But like, I read some of those letters. I’m like, Oh, I don’t know. I think that might be stretching it a little bit. You know, I’m not gonna, you know, a definitive statement on the the sexual orientation of a dead man who I’ve never spoken to, and never will, but there’s room for uh, there’s room for some consideration some thoughts maybe?
R.S. Benedict
6:52
Oh, yeah. The letters he wrote. It wasn’t just like, Oh, I love you. I embrace you. It was like, I he compared the two of them to like, man and wife. or something. Yeah. And it’s like, it’s pretty well, okay. Yeah. And the fact that like Hawthorne, started ghosting him after he received the letter is a very strong indication.
Mattie Lewis
7:13
It’s telling, like, he
R.S. Benedict
7:15
just went like, Oh, shit. Oh, no. Oh, no. I don’t know how to respond to this. I don’t I don’t know how to friendzone people because it’s the 1800s in the friend zone hasn’t been invented yet. Yeah, I don’t know how to do this. Oh, shit. Shit.
Mattie Lewis
7:34
Yeah, so I think that that whole argument is like, do you need to read all the classics? No, do you need to read every classic? Not possible. No one’s got the time. Do you need to like all of them? No, but it helps to read some now and again, and kind of understand if nothing else understand, like the influence that they’ve had kind of the historical and cultural impact, because a lot of these books have had them. And like, it doesn’t even have to be like a classic Harold Bloom Western canon classic can just be like, yeah, it’s a classic of its genre or like, you know, it can be a classic of another region of the world. It can be, you know, a Chinese classic instead of an American or English classic. But there’s something to be learned from pretty much any book that we’ve kind of collectively decided, oh, like, we’re gonna still read this. A century plus after it was written.
R.S. Benedict
8:27
Yeah, you could read the pillow book, which was written by a Japanese lady of the court, which apparently is just kind of like gossip. A lot of it is just like a centuries old gossip and a woman being like, really Catty, which sounds pretty good.
Mattie Lewis
8:41
Yeah, it’s like, just just open your mind and it will only hurt for a minute and you’ll find something you like. I think if you try.
R.S. Benedict
8:50
There’s something out there. There’s
Mattie Lewis
8:51
something out there that the general like writers don’t need to read. Just generally, that’s the one that’s like super galling, because I’m like, my, like the you don’t need to read the classics argument. But like, there’s a little I don’t think the arguments for it are particularly good. But I do think there are arguments that can be made that it’s not as important. But like, you don’t need to read in general like, oh,
R.S. Benedict
9:18
yeah, the the argument that you don’t, the argument that you don’t need to read is partly that there are other ways to abso stories like films or TV shows, or video game let’s plays or summary is on Wikipedia, which just horrifies me, okay, when you’re reading, it’s not just to abso the information that is the plot. It’s about stuff like sentence craft is how you tell the story. And the types of stories and the way you tell them is different in like a short story or in a novel than it is in a movie or a video game. You convey information differently, you tell the story differently. There’s a different kind of story they tell. Like could if you if you read a novel structured like a video game, it would be kind of a shitty novel there’d be massive sections where the hero kind of runs back and forth. Getting objects
Mattie Lewis
10:12
can Yeah, I was gonna say can you imagine a fetch quests and a novel?
R.S. Benedict
10:16
Like imagine I love the Zelda games put a novel structured like a Zelda game would fucking suck shit. You’d have one guy alone, not interacting with characters except to occasionally hua hai.
Mattie Lewis
10:31
Not only alone, like, it doesn’t have any kind of like interior monologue. So it’s not even like, like, you can write a story that’s just one character by themselves. But you know, since you are writing in prose with words, you can get into what they’re thinking or feeling what they like it feeling either emotionally or physically. Like, you can actually get into that and you can’t, like, there’s no model for how to do that. If you’re watching video game let’s plays or TV shows.
R.S. Benedict
10:57
Yeah, it’s just not. And also, you can kind of see what happens when people learn to write quote, unquote, without reading, and if you peruse a Reddit community called our slash writing, so many of the questions or questions that could easily be answered if you just read some more books, like so many, so many writers going like, is it possible to have a book with like, more than one viewpoint character, like,
Mattie Lewis
11:26
this terrible thing is that is that is like the one that I see, like, repeated again and again and again. And it’s usually fantasy writers. And I’m like, have you read a fantasy book that came out in the past like 20 years, because like, I swear to God, a full third of them are multi POV because A Song of Ice and Fire was really popular.
R.S. Benedict
11:45
Yeah, it’s shocking. So many epic fantasy stories are written in multiple points of view.
Mattie Lewis
11:50
Like, it’s almost like if you’re looking for specifically epic fantasy, yeah, if you’re reading specifically epic fantasy, which is what half of these people say they want to write, like, so many of those books are written in like multiple viewpoints, not even new ones, either, if you want to, even if you like, want to go to like Tolkien, like, maybe it’s not as in as deep of a POV as a contemporary book would be. But like, he, like follows different characters at different points in the story. Like sometimes you’re with Frodo and Sam, and sometimes you’re with Aragorn, and sometimes you’re with different characters. So like, that’s been a thing. And it’s been a thing for a very long time. You do not have to have read a lot to know that that like, is within the realm of potential. And all know that this isn’t just us like misconstruing someone asking how to do it. Well, which is a valid question. Yeah, that’s a real question.
R.S. Benedict
12:44
That’s a good question.
Mattie Lewis
12:45
It can be done period. And, and to me, I, every time I see one of those I want to be answered, like no, but not like a general No, no, just for for use specifically. Like other people find, but but not you. If you had to ask this. You you aren’t, you’re not there you go and read a little bit. I do think some of the defensiveness about this is I think, a lot of especially new writers seem to think that inspiration or like getting ideas is the thing that matters is when and when you say you have to read if you want to write they’re like, but I can get ideas from anything. And that’s true, you can I have gotten ideas from occasionally from a movie or a game, I don’t tend to get many because I actually get most of my ideas from like, real life, like my own life, or like history, or science or something like that. That’s where I tend to get my ideas. But like, there’s not really an invalid place to get an idea. Wherever you find the idea if you can work with it. That’s wonderful. That’s awesome. But what media outside of the one you actually want to work in can’t do is show you how to work in the media that you’re wanting to do. So if I want to write a story, like, I need to read stories, if I want to write a screenplay, I need to watch TV, and movies and I need to actually probably read the screenplays of those things. They just work with they have different strengths and different weaknesses. And if you’re not aware of what those things are, you’re not going to be able to take advantage of the form is not going to be as good as it could be. You’re really really handicapping yourself if you don’t engage as a reader or viewer in the form that you actually want to work in.
R.S. Benedict
14:24
All right. All right. So you need to read he had to read there’s no way around it and if
Mattie Lewis
14:31
you really really frickin hate reading but really love watching movies. Maybe what you want to actually learn how to do is write for movies.
R.S. Benedict
14:39
Yeah. Or make movies like grab grab a cheap ass camera props,
Mattie Lewis
14:44
whatever. Yep. And I think too, I there’s a lot of a lot of people who like really would maybe like to do a comic that’s that’s really what they want to do, or they really want to make a show or a video game. But that seems like it It has a higher bar to entry than just, you know, writing a story, which, I mean, most, most people, anyone who has access to read it has access to a computer. So if you have access to a computer, you have access to a word processor. And even if you don’t have access to a computer with a word processor all the time, like a notebook, and some pencils is like, five bucks, like the dollar store. Like it’s very, very accessible. So I get that too. But like, you’re just going to be someone who’s like a frustrated, you know, frustrated trying to work in a medium you don’t actually like very much. And you would probably actually do better doing like a kind of janky like, you know, stick thing your comic or like shitty RPG Maker video game, you probably actually get more out of that than you would if you were trying to write a novel when you don’t like reading novels.
R.S. Benedict
15:51
Yeah, it is obviously harder to make a movie, or or make a video game than it is to write a story. But the tools are a lot more accessible to an average person than they used to be. There are free tools that will allow you to make a video game are extremely, very cheap tools that are that will allow you to make a little video game and there are communities of people who do this for hobbies who would love to help you out. And there are some studios and game developers who became professional after starting out doing this stuff. I’m pretty sure that people who do watch it I games started off doing like making these little point and click adventure games as a hobby on some kind of internet forum or something and they just didn’t
Mattie Lewis
16:39
guys who made that movie talk to me that just came out didn’t they start out with like a YouTube channel or something or something like
R.S. Benedict
16:45
that. And there’s like a lot of little amateur filmmaking YouTube channels that have gotten really well like Male Hornets, that was a couple of kids with the cheapest camera and like a really cheap mannequin in a really cheap suit. That managed to make something of it.
Mattie Lewis
17:03
And honestly, even like, even like, if you have like an iPhone, like the camera on an iPhone is actually pretty darn good. Now it’s not going to be you know, a professional like several $1,000 studio camera, but like, you can make something pretty decent if you if you you know if you put your mind to it and are like resourceful there there options. And that can be just like a stepping stone that you need to move on to bigger things. But if you actually want to write and you think, yeah, like the short story or a novel, or a series of novels like prose fiction, that’s the way for me to tell my story. That’s what I actually want to do. You’ve got to read. The other thing that just kind of bothers me too about this attitudes like, Okay, if you’re not going to give other writers the time of day, you’re not going to read their work, you’re not going to like you don’t care about the media, and particularly, why should anyone care what you have to write? Like, why should I as someone who reads and someone who writes, why should I care about your writing, if you wouldn’t ever care about mine, or any of my peers or any anyone who ever in history of the world has written a book or a story?
R.S. Benedict
18:12
Yeah, we could we could rail against this for hours. But if you’re listening to this podcast, you already know you
Mattie Lewis
18:19
already know. And I’ll know that I have never seen a writer who was successful by any metric of success, you know, financially, critically cold classic status. I have never seen a single writer be like, Yeah, you don’t need to read. Not once. But I’ve seen a lot of successful writers, like one of their top advice is almost always going to be you need to read. Yeah, yeah. I will say I do occasionally see people get kind of stupid in the other direction where there’ll be like, Oh, if you haven’t read 500 books in your genre that were written in the past 10 years, you don’t even have any business starting to think about writing a book. And I was like, that’s stupid to like, you don’t need to be like weirdly, like quantitative about it. Like, have you read? Do you like to read? Do you generally understand how stories work? Because you’ve read? You’re good? Like, I don’t think you need to be the type of person who’s read like, I read 100 books a year like it’s fine if you only read, you know, a handful, but you gotta read.
R.S. Benedict
19:22
Yeah, yeah. So let’s see. Let’s look at some other little little bits of advice. Here’s something that someone suggested on blue sky that I when I asked a question, what’s the worst bit of writing advice you’ve ever gotten? Everything that happens in a story should be the direct result of the main character’s actions.
Mattie Lewis
19:43
Yeah, that was that was mine that I got one time. Oh, that was you. God tells me Yeah. That’s
R.S. Benedict
19:51
everything that happens in a story. Yeah. Is your character a god? Is your character literally your way? You If it rains, is that your character’s actions causing that?
Mattie Lewis
20:04
Well, yeah, we’ve established I believe in my other guest appearances that I’m like a horrible masochist. And I really like to just like throw pearls before Reddit swine, just every now and again for funsies. Partly because every now and again, you actually do get a poster who like knows what they’re talking about? And every now and again, there’s, like, you know, a nugget of decent, you know, decent feedback and like a day illusion, like stupid shit. My short story, the darkened drowning Sea, which is very pointedly about how sometimes really, really terrible things can happen. And it is like, it is not your fault. You could not have known you could not have prevented it. That’s very pointedly what it’s about. And I had a guy be like, I don’t like this story, because like nothing that happened to the character was a direct result of what he did. Like yeah, that’s that’s just life. And when I said I was like, Yeah, that was on purpose. I got this very sneering like, oh, well, that sounds a bit literary for me response. And I’m like, oh, like, oh, first off using literary is like a slur is like that already tells you what your mindset is. And it’s not a good one. Again, that’s one where it’s like, I feel like you would know that this was not like a truism if you actually like read, like regularly and didn’t just play video games were Yeah, pretty much everything you do in a video game is because you did it. You made it happen.
R.S. Benedict
21:26
Playing Baba is you and going like this will teach me how to be a great author. Baba is me.
Mattie Lewis
21:34
Oh, that was one of the most like, What the fuck are you talking about Jessie? bits of advice that I’d ever I’d ever received. And I would have been like, I’d been like, I disagree. But whatever. If it had been framed as like, personal preference, you know, I prefer when the character is more active.
R.S. Benedict
21:57
Or maybe if it’s like this kind of story needs a more active hero or something like if you’re doing adventure story, you kind of need an active hero.
Mattie Lewis
22:06
Yeah, Indiana Jones would not be super interesting if you know stuff just kind of happened around Indiana Jones like he’s kind of got electric stuff does just kind of happen around Indiana. About exam still doing
R.S. Benedict
22:17
things too. He’s still he’s still taking some actions.
Mattie Lewis
22:21
And maybe a Lara Croft Tomb Raider with a with Angelina Jolie is a better film example of like an action story where the heroine makes stuff happen. But yeah, like, yes. For some stories. Yeah, if I’m reading action adventure, you probably don’t want to react to protagonist. But yeah, this was framed as like, No, this is a truism about every single type of story. And if you’re not doing it, it’s wrong. That’s super weird. Not to my subjective tastes. I don’t like it, which is fine. That’s valid. You can you can like or not like what you please. But framing it is like a universal was It was fascinating.
R.S. Benedict
23:00
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see, here’s a quick one. You have to write in order, or the end result won’t be cohesive.
Mattie Lewis
23:08
That’s what editing is for. Yeah. Just sitting post sometimes.
R.S. Benedict
23:13
No. I don’t really have much of a rebuttal to that. Besides, no, you don’t.
Mattie Lewis
23:19
I will say personally, when I’m writing short fiction, I actually do prefer to write linearly, I start at point B, or Jesus, I started a point A, geez, I’m contradicting myself here. I start at the beginning, and I just write till I get to the end. That’s how I personally prefer to write for short fiction. I’m working on a novel right now. I right Slow as hell I know, if I do that, I will never finish the damn thing. So I’m writing out of order. Because if if I got an iron hot, I’m striking it. I’m not going to wait until I get there. Because I don’t want to sit there kind of like about something for like, a million years. I feel like like if you actually believe you have to write an order. Every single writer has to write in order to have a cohesive story. I feel like the only way you can believe this is if you just don’t believe in editing or revising. It’s super weird. That’s a very weird one. But I have seen it. Yeah. And it’s another one where I think it’s like that maybe how some writers work that if they write out of order, it’s a mess, and they hate it. And it’s just like, not fun. Doesn’t work out as well as they’d like. That’s probably true for some writers. I’m sure of it. But I know it’s not universal. Okay, that’s not advice.
R.S. Benedict
24:34
So here’s one again from blue sky. If you can’t remember it without writing it down, then it probably isn’t worth remembering anyway, which is like, Who on earth has that kind of flawless memory unless you’ve reached operating Phaeton status? Like you are not going to have a perfect memory?
Mattie Lewis
24:56
And well, this is actually ableist this actually is April. azana Yeah, a little people actually do have like memory issues or brain fog. And they might actually have to write something down. But even like just people who don’t have that kind of issue, like, as far as I know, I have no diagnosable memory problem. But I still gotta write shit down sometimes.
R.S. Benedict
25:18
Yeah. And I think they’re thinking in terms of ideas to like, well, if you have a good idea, you don’t need to write it down. Well, it’s not always good ideas, either. Sometimes the things we think of aren’t the big idea, but like, a little observation, or a cool little turn of phrase, or some kind of interesting little detail that you’d like to use in a character using a description. And that’s really hard to hang on to. That’s super hard to remember.
Mattie Lewis
25:45
Yeah, I definitely. I would say like, if I have like an idea idea, like big picture premise that is any good, I’m probably going to remember it. But you know, just like a little phrase or a sentence even or a title, something like that. Very well could slipped my mind if I if I don’t write it down. Or it could be something that I forget. And then remember again, like four years later, when I’ve already published the story that it was for. That is a very weird and bad writing advice. Such
R.S. Benedict
26:14
a bizarre bit of advice. It makes zero sense legitimately ablest? Yeah, yeah, that is legitimately a list. The next thing we’re going to bring up, I guess, more discourse is more questionable about ableism. And that is the debate over, you need to write every day versus it is ablest to tell me to write every day? Like, I think when people say you need to write every day, I don’t think they’re generally being literal. Like, oh, if you’re in a coma, and you’re not writing, you’re not a real writer.
Mattie Lewis
26:49
It’s like, oh, you had like, you know, massive food poisoning coming out both ends, but you didn’t get your sentences down today, like, Damn, you’re not a real writer. No, everyone has days where it’s just not gonna happen, for one reason or another, you’re not feeling well. You know, it’s your spouse’s birthday, you’re on vacation, works been hell, whatever everyone has things like that. I think what they do mean, or what they should say is you need to write regularly, then that can look different for everybody that can look different for people at different, you know, phases of their life, there are times where, you know, writing regular li for me is yeah, I write like, five out of seven days a week for a little bit. And sometimes writing regularly for me is, I only write one or two days a week, but you do have to make a habit of it.
R.S. Benedict
27:39
And that’s really it, you just have to do it consistently. That’s all there is to hit. Like, you just gotta fucking do it.
Mattie Lewis
27:47
Yeah. At a certain point, like, like, I know I am, I don’t have like the most writing stamina, I will say, I know that about myself. So I adjust my expectations of what I’m going to do accordingly. I don’t expect to churn out a 500 page novel in a year, that is not a realistic expectation for me and how I write, and the amount of time that I can or want to dedicate to it. I’d like to write a short story in three months, I can do that. That’s reasonable for me.
R.S. Benedict
28:18
Yeah. Now let’s talk a little bit about head hopping. And I am actually going to give us the case for head hopping. A lot of kind of beginner writing forums and beginner reading guides tell you not to do what they call head hopping. And that’s where you’re hopping from one character’s head to the next, you’re shifting perspective from one character’s internal thoughts to another characters without a break in the novel. So if you’ve been going for a close third person limited point of view thus far, and then you switch halfway through, and then you don’t do it again, it can be a little sloppy or jarring. But if you had hopped throughout the book, then I think you’re being consistent and it’s fine. And I don’t know if it counts in a third person omniscient book. But third person omniscient. books tend to head hop all the time they go from one character
Mattie Lewis
29:05
counts. That’s just that’s just kind of this. That’s just the format basically, like that’s like the point a third person omniscient.
R.S. Benedict
29:13
Yeah, it’s something that occurred to me when I was reading Clive Barker’s the hellhound, or the hellbound hearts. It hops between the characters perspectives within the same page, same section, same scene, same paragraph, sometimes without a break. And it works. It seems to sort of hop from one character to the next to another during an interaction and then it stays with the other character. It’s almost like the cameras following one character, and then it goes and follows the other and
Mattie Lewis
29:40
I actually recently read the hellbound heart for the first time, it’s not confusing, like it’s easy to follow. Yeah. Clive Barker knows what he’s doing. So many, especially beginner writers get like that, that, you know, head hopping thing becomes like such a bugbear for them is because they’re they’re used to really only Reading third person limited POV or first person POV. They’re not used to reading omniscient. Because it’s not that common anymore. So especially so if you’re like 17 on Reddit, there is a good chance you’ve never asked, especially if you didn’t do your high school assigned reading either. There’s a very good chance you like, never actually read a third person omniscient book. So you actually don’t know how it works. But so I understand why, like, especially younger beginner writers are like, so like, thrown off by it. Because it’s, it’s not a common thing anymore. But it can work. It can work great. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
30:36
I think it’s another
Mattie Lewis
30:37
deft hand. Like, I will say, like, it’s not something I would probably personally try. I don’t think I have quite the I’m not gonna say like, I’m not a good enough writer to do it. Because I am at the point where I’m like, I’m not going to be that humble. But it’s not a skill that I have worked to develop to a point where I would feel comfortable just like doing it without a lot of practice first. But you can absolutely do it.
R.S. Benedict
31:02
Yeah, I think it’s one of those pieces of advice we give to beginner writers where we’re leading them wrong, where we tell them just in across the board, don’t do this, rather than this is possible, but it’s a little tough,
Mattie Lewis
31:17
or it’ll be framed like never do this, instead of like, Hey, I noticed you’re going for a third person limited or hey, I noticed you’re writing in first person, when you’re doing that you don’t want to do this because it breaks the POV that’s valid, you know, if someone’s given you a short story, and the entire thing has been in third person limited or first person, but there’s two lines that are like, obviously from the POV of a different character. That’s a mistake. If it’s consistent, and it makes sense. That’s not a mistake. That’s an artistic choice. And it’s uh, you know, it’s got a place, it’s got a purpose. Sometimes you may not like it, but like sometimes it really slaps
R.S. Benedict
31:58
Yeah. Now, here’s a bit of writing advice. And we’re not going to say exactly who it came from. But
Mattie Lewis
32:06
the most I’ve seen more than one person say this. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
32:09
the most important part of every paragraph should be moved to the end. Which is bizarre. No, no, no. Wouldn’t that make your paragraph structure really repetitive?
Mattie Lewis
32:25
I’m just wondering. So I can see in a nonfiction how probably a nonfiction or like something more journalistic, there might be an actual identifiable, like, this is the most important part of the paragraph. But if I’m writing a story, like, how do I tell, like what the single most important line and which is the most important sentence in my paragraph, this is actually like a really funny one. Because I remember when I was in undergrad, I had a short story I’d written for, like an independent study with with one of my professors. And his comment on it was that I wrote it like I structured it like an essay, because I’ve been so used to writing essays where like, I was leading with something that was like, obviously, like, the, the most important and then everything else was like following. And he was like, You need to not do that. And I, you know, kind of restructured my paragraphs, so I wasn’t doing that. And it was a much better story that way.
R.S. Benedict
33:23
Yeah, it’s such a strange bit of advice that doesn’t really make any sense to me move the most important part of every paragraph to the end. I kind of think that if you’re looking at one sentence of the paragraph and saying, This is the important sentence, the other sentences aren’t important. The other sentences really need to be there.
Mattie Lewis
33:46
Yeah. It kind of reminds me of when you know how when you’re learning to write like an essay, like a persuasive essay, or an informative essay in like, Middle School in high school, they tell you to have your topic sentence for each paragraph. And then, you know, after that sentence, you elaborate on it. It seems like almost the reverse of that. And it I don’t know, I don’t I don’t know where this would come from, but I’ve seen it more than once. I don’t get it.
R.S. Benedict
34:13
It is very strange. But we’re gonna tell you don’t do this. Don’t. Don’t fucking do this. All right.
Mattie Lewis
34:22
In fact, I might even go so far as to suggest you don’t even think about what the most important sentence in a paragraph of prose fiction is. You do need to think about like, where it makes sense to have paragraph breaks. Yeah. Or if you’re trying to have a like a twist or a shock or something, you probably want to put that at the beginning or the end. But I don’t think this works. I don’t like this at all. Maybe maybe for nonfiction maybe for something journalistic not for fiction.
R.S. Benedict
34:50
Yeah. All right. So this was a bit of advice that went semi viral on Twitter, apparently from someone named Alyssa mateesah Ik I’m probably mispronouncing At a book editor, and she was saying this about writing in close third person point of view, writing internal thoughts in third person while most of the manuscript will be written in third person. The POV character’s inner dialogue should be in italics and written in first person. That’s how they would realistically speak to themselves in their head. No, no, Alyssa.
Mattie Lewis
35:23
This is like such a weird one to me, because I’m like, okay, that’s one way you can do it. I’ve seen it done that way.
R.S. Benedict
35:28
Yeah, but to say this is the only way to do it is bizarre. There are so many other ways.
Mattie Lewis
35:35
Yeah, you can summarize what they’re saying without what they’re thinking about. You can just write it not even in italics. And it’ll be like, you know, if you have a sentence you’re like, Did I leave the door open? Like, you can italicized that? And then we’ll know that they’re thinking but I don’t know. It’s weird to make that like, this is the only way to do it. And I think framing it as like a realism thing is like, I don’t know about you, but when I’m thinking I’m not thinking in italics.
R.S. Benedict
36:03
I’m not thinking in complete sentences talking to myself. All the time, either. No, when I’m worried that I left the door unlocked. I don’t think Did I leave the door unlocked in my head in a complete sentence? It’s more like Oh, fuck, Door. Door. Door, you know?
Mattie Lewis
36:26
Yeah, I’m not gonna lie. I sometimes think to myself if I’m thinking in like complete sentences at all. I sometimes think to myself in second person.
R.S. Benedict
36:36
Did you leave the door unlocked?
Mattie Lewis
36:38
I literally do. I’m not kidding. Not all the time. But like, or what
R.S. Benedict
36:42
if I want to be fancy? And I’m thinking in the royal we did we leave the door unlocked.
Mattie Lewis
36:50
Yeah, I know. We’re getting a little silly and like in the weeds with this, but it really is like a bizarre thing to make so prescriptive.
R.S. Benedict
36:59
It’s, it’s odd. It’s very odd to say this is the only way you can
Mattie Lewis
37:03
like I’ve seen done multiple times, and I don’t think I’ve ever had I don’t think I’ve ever been like, Damn, what was this dummy thinking not writing this thought in first person and italicized. This asshole really wrote. Bill wondered where his wife was when he got home and her car wasn’t there. Damn,
R.S. Benedict
37:22
yeah. Yeah. Okay, so another one that we can talk about very briefly and just quickly, dismiss. Avoid using the word said in dialogue tags because it’s boring. Use a spicier word. No, fuck you. This ends up sounding really goofy. We all remember the bit from I’m sorry, but Harry Potter where somebody highlighted the phrase, Ron ejaculated loudly. That’s what happens when you don’t use said you ejaculate loudly when you’re not supposed to.
Mattie Lewis
37:53
Yeah, this is one of those things where I like I see people who are just like so hard line on either way. And I’m just like, damn, like, if you’re having to think this much about what dialogue tagging you’re doing. So you don’t get repetitive. You’re probably tagging more than you need to.
R.S. Benedict
38:11
I’m also going to point out if the dialogue tags are spicier than the dialogue that they’re tagging the new fucked up.
Mattie Lewis
38:20
Yeah, I will say for me personally, I usually stick to said or asked. Unless it’s a case where the character like the volume of their voice has suddenly changed. And like, I want to indicate that and I might, you know, they might shout or whisper. I’m writing a romance, but I fucking refuse to have my hero growl. That’s goofy.
R.S. Benedict
38:41
I hate I hate when people growl and books. I hate growling. No, you didn’t. You didn’t growl. Unless you’re a werewolf. You didn’t growl. If you’re a werewolf, you can grab growl as a treat if you’re aware, well, I can do it if you’re around. If you’re if you’re a werewolf, you can grow. That’s it?
Mattie Lewis
38:59
Yeah, I’m of the opinion that when people say said and asked are invisible, they really kind of are. I don’t know why that is. I guess it’s just become such a convention that it’s there. So we know who is saying the thing. But how they say it doesn’t always matter as much. But I also I’m also not going to be a hard liner, like total hard ass and be like, if you ever use a word other than said, You’re dead to me. Yeah. But a lot of the people who are like, No, you got to use different words you can’t just keep doing said are people who are tagging every single utterance, even when it’s like the context or surrounding that utterance makes it perfectly clear what character who is talking like you don’t need to tag at all.
R.S. Benedict
39:42
I think a lot of it too is trying to judge up some really kind of dull dialogue. Yeah, trying to make it clear that oh, this is an argument or this is this this is a that no, if it’s not self evident in the dialogue, what it’s doing or that it’s something that we should be interested in, then Trying to bandaid on an exciting dialogue tag is not gonna work real well. What’s in the parenthesis is what’s important what outside of the parenthesis is mostly functional?
Mattie Lewis
40:12
Yeah. I think my thing that I see with taggings a lot really is just people who are like, doing it way, way, way too much. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, yes, that actually does become like it’s invisible if you use it sparingly, but it does become repetitive and annoying if every time a character says something you tag it with, they said,
R.S. Benedict
40:34
Yeah,
Mattie Lewis
40:36
I’ve seen this even with when it’s like a conversation with two characters. And it is at no point unclear which character is speaking, but every single utterance is tagged. And I’m like, why are you doing this?
R.S. Benedict
40:48
That and ideally, you want your different characters to have different voices that come across. So if you’re writing really carefully, and admittedly, I’m guilty of this, and I have trouble with doing this, if I pluck out a line of dialogue, if you’ve really made these vivid, unique characters, it should be the reader should be able to say, oh, that that’s so and so said that to me. It’s that guy. Because that’s how he talks. That’s, that’s such a so and so alignment. Okay, like a homer line would be different from a merge line.
Mattie Lewis
41:19
Yeah. And I get it that like, man, dialogue is hard as hell. It’s like, Yeah, some people have just like this natural ear for it, and like their dialogue just sounds great. And maybe, maybe that’s just my perception, because I never saw their shitty dialogue that they wrote five years ago. Which I think is probably more often the case, then someone just like, you know, decides I’m going to start writing and their dialogue is just automatically pretty good. Yeah, but it’s tricky. I know a lot of writers who struggle with dialogue, I would say, up until maybe like last year, I wouldn’t have said I was very good with dialogue, I still don’t think I’m great. If you asked me to rank myself perception of what I’m best at in writing. Dialogue is not in the top three, probably not getting the top five. But it just takes work. You got to work at it.
R.S. Benedict
42:11
So the idea that protagonists have to be likable, or relatable, or moral or logical. I see a lot more I see a lot of people getting angry that this character acted in a way that was irrational. They sort of want more competence porn, because that is the modern equivalent of being a good virtuous Christian, I think is being a rational, self interested actor. I don’t care as long as they’re interesting. I don’t care as long as they’re interesting. likeable, often means bland. relatable often means exactly like me, the very boring reader. I don’t Yeah, I love horrible little guys. Yeah, horrible, gross little. So much of the joy of reading HP Lovecraft is that you were reading from the perspective of just a horrible little man, just a weird little freak man. Who’s terrible at fucking slaps.
Mattie Lewis
43:02
Yeah, the problems I have with likeable is you constrain yourself to like, a much more limited type of character? Who’s likable, right? Like, I’m likeable to some people, but there’s definitely some people they’re like, Man, this pitch fucking sucks. I can’t stand her at all. So you can’t really you can’t really make a universally likable character. So it’s like a fool’s errand to try because everyone has different things that they like, did oh, relatable, you can’t make a universally relatable character. Because every one relates to different things. And different experiences. Logical and moral? I don’t know. Well, one. This is like a realism thing. People don’t always act morally, or logically, especially logically, who would the advice that I would personally give for characters is that the character should be interesting. And I don’t care if that’s super well rounded, multifaceted, interesting, or they do one thing really, really hard. Interesting. There’s, you know, lots of ways to be interesting, and that the character is believable within the framework you’ve set up of the story. If I’m reading like, a high fantasy story, a character that’s believable, and that story is very different than if I’m reading a contemporary literary fiction story. I buy Conan, in in Conan,
R.S. Benedict
44:34
a relatable character for any of us. I’m very, I relate very strongly to Conan the Baarian. I don’t know what you’re talking about. We have so much in common we love to hear the lamentations of our enemies, women.
Mattie Lewis
44:51
I bet you know what you like lifting. I bet Conan likes lifting.
R.S. Benedict
44:54
I bet he lifts really good. I bet he lifts so hard. He lifts way harder than me though. uh he’s got much better form.
Mattie Lewis
45:04
Yeah.
R.S. Benedict
45:05
Oh my gosh. Conan never skips leg day. Never.
Mattie Lewis
45:09
I think trying too hard to make likable and relatable particularly like these things. It’s like if you try to make a character too much like this, it’s like, you know the thing we’re like, if you try to please everybody, you won’t really please anybody.
R.S. Benedict
45:22
Yeah, I hatefully virtuous characters. To be honest, I find it boring. I’m like, Who’s this little goody two shoes? Do you think you’re better than me? You’re not fuck you. I don’t like him.
Mattie Lewis
45:34
It doesn’t even necessarily have to be like a like, Oh, here’s the thing you do that’s like, actively in a hostile and shitty but even like a character who’s has flaws that like, oh, no, they’re not really harmful, but like, they’re definitely not great. Even something like that, like a character who’s like a little too passive or a little too self effacing can be like, sometimes that can be interesting, too. But if you give me someone who’s always right, always nice. Always makes the right call. I don’t care. I don’t know her. Fuck that bitch. I hate that bitch. You
R.S. Benedict
46:04
think she’s better than me? Fuck you. I don’t like her.
Mattie Lewis
46:07
And I will note that the likability and relatability that hammer seems to get swung harder at female characters. Yeah, I’ve noticed. Like we can we can accept a male character who’s just like a loathsome little worm a lot easier than a female character. And personally, I support fictional women’s rights and wrongs.
R.S. Benedict
46:26
Yeah, or just a total weirdo. I again, convenience store woman. I hope that very few of you relate to her that much. But God would have character. Incredible character, the fact that she’s that bit where her sister is over and they’re talking and her sister just asked basically, why can’t you just be normal and starts crying and Keiko just quietly eats the dented pudding cup that she got from the convenience store where she works just eating a dented pudding cup because she didn’t want to eat one of the good pudding cups because she loves the store too much. And the store needs the good pudding cups to sell. Oh my god. incredible moment.
Mattie Lewis
47:09
That’s like a perfect example of what I’m talking about where like I want a character that’s interesting and a character that’s believable in the setting. She’s
R.S. Benedict
47:15
so fucking weird. She’s
Mattie Lewis
47:17
weird, but she’s not weird in a way that clashes with the setting or the story. I believe that someone like Keiko exists.
R.S. Benedict
47:25
Absolutely Keiko rocks as a character. She’s terrifying as a person I
Mattie Lewis
47:30
do not think I would want to be friends with Keiko
R.S. Benedict
47:33
you couldn’t be you’re not a convenience store.
Mattie Lewis
47:35
I’m not a convenient Yeah, that’s true.
R.S. Benedict
47:39
Only if you’re a Slurpee machine can you really be friends with Keiko?
Mattie Lewis
47:43
That is the thing I don’t get the people evaluating fictional characters like they would evaluate people they want to be friends with.
R.S. Benedict
47:51
Yeah. Keiko cannot have human friends. She can’t. She’s literally not capable of it. No. Which is what rules about her? She’s terrible. It CLDR rain convenience store woman is so cool. Best book. It is so good. So good luck in love that book. Okay, so we did a whole episode on this one. So we’re not going to spend time on it. But readers slash characters deserve a happy ending and you need to make people feel good. No, suck a dick. That’s my answer. Yeah. And it for the other answer. Read a listen to one of our old episodes called the bitter medicine of unhappy endings. Because, no, no, you don’t. You don’t gotta
Mattie Lewis
48:35
You don’t got to if you want to. That’s cool. Yeah, you know, if you feel like I’ve got to, I want to tell a story that ends happily go for it and go with God. There’s no reason you have to,
R.S. Benedict
48:46
um, like Nine Inch Nails. We’re here to have a bad time. Yeah, synthesizer. Okay. So moving on. Something that a lot of fantasy writers aspiring fantasy writers believe is that you need a magic system if you have magic in your books. And no, no, this is Brandon Sandersons fault.
Mattie Lewis
49:06
He’s He’s Oh, yeah, it’s 100% His teaches
R.S. Benedict
49:10
people that they need it and you really don’t. Magic systems came about because of role playing games because you need a way to calculate up the damage that happens when you fire magic Mrs. OLED an orc or something? Yeah.
Mattie Lewis
49:23
And when you’re playing a game, like, you want to have a system so it’s fair. Yeah. Someone can’t just be like, I slam my poem into the ground and columns of fire come up and everyone dies.
R.S. Benedict
49:34
Yeah, but magic and folklore doesn’t really work that way. It works in a way that’s a lot more symbolic and emotional. And it doesn’t work so much in a magic system. magic system is kind of making computer programming. Yeah, magic and you’re doing it’s not science. It’s magic fucker.
Mattie Lewis
49:53
Yeah, I refer to it as engineer logic, but I think that’s really selling engineer short. It’s really more like IT guy lodge ik Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
50:03
so So Maddie you have a story in which you witnessed our slash writing it was our
Mattie Lewis
50:09
slash fantasy writers slash fantasy not a place of honor
R.S. Benedict
50:14
actually talk and aspiring writer out of a good idea. So tell us about that I
Mattie Lewis
50:19
will never forget this like like I will go to my deathbed thinking about this poor writer who got like totally shit on by our slash fantasy writers. So it was this writer who was asking for feedback on this idea for a magic not system but magic in their story. And it was a necromancy type magic and the ritual involved taking a corpse and anointing the body and Wolf’s blood in the eyes and ravens blood.
R.S. Benedict
50:47
Hell yeah.
Mattie Lewis
50:48
It was like, and I was like, This is so cool. It makes like, does it make sense on a scientific level? Not at fucking all. Does it make sense on a symbolic level? Yeah, like a wolf. Like that’s a strong and vital animal. So you put that on the body and like, kind of imbue it with that energy. And a raven? Like that’s a smart animal. That’s an animal that’s far sighted. You put it on the eyes. Okay, that totally makes sense. Not in like a fucking dork computer touch your way. But in like a, I am like a Viking Berzerker. And this is what I’m doing to raise my fallen comrades sort of way. Which, like, that was so cool. And all of these fucking nerds on Reddit are just like, that doesn’t make any sense. Do I wouldn’t do that. You need a system, you need to explain it better. I think I was the only person who posted in the comments me like, No, this actually fucking slaps all of these people are wrong. They’re Philistines. Don’t listen to them. You do your fucking like black metal ritual, please. Yeah. Yeah, that was literally the only good idea for a portrayal of magic I have ever seen come off of our slash fantasy writers. And these dorks all shut it down. And this is why my firm belief is that Goths need to write fantasy and nerds need to not
R.S. Benedict
52:04
Yeah, definitely. All right. So moving on. Here’s another very bad idea, which is to let a robot determine your vividness score of your manuscript.
Mattie Lewis
52:17
This one’s a recent one, and it got a little discourtesy, a little
R.S. Benedict
52:21
bit of backstory here. Recently, some tech dorks created a product called prose craft, which is supposedly to help authors by analyzing the quality of their work, but a ton of writers got really fucking mad. Because they found out their books were used to train this AI tool and put into a database without their permission. It was they considered it copyright infringement. And most writers really don’t want AI writing tools to exist. So it’s like, Hey, you’re taking our work without our permission and using it to train this like scab bot thing. And aside from that, aside from the moral and ethical and copyright issues, the product created these weird janky results like this book is 96% vivid. The fuck does that mean? How do you quantify vivid percentage bonus? How is that helpful? I guess the eventual goal was to let writers stick their own books in there to analyze the vividness percentage, but the way it determined vividness was so aitrary and weird. And it came down to a word list that assigned vividness scores to individual words, and one of the developers actually posted a selection of this list of selection of the vividness lexicon on his blog, and a Medium post. It’s a Benji Smith, and I’m looking at it and it’s really there’s some very strange years choices like forest the word forest gets a 1.8 vividness score, but the word wintry gets a 9.9
Mattie Lewis
53:46
I’m looking at this and there’s almost like no rhyme or reason, it seems almost completely aitrary gets
R.S. Benedict
53:53
6.9 puts vanilla gets 7.3 Underpants gets 7.3 But petticoats gets 8.1. I don’t, I don’t understand.
Mattie Lewis
54:05
Yeah, nipples gets 5.5 of belly button and gets 9.4. So maybe we just know where this guy’s fetishes. But
R.S. Benedict
54:13
charcoal gets 6.0 But cyan gets 9.5 and Azure gets 7.4.
Mattie Lewis
54:23
I don’t get it. Like I don’t understand how you quantify the vividness of an individual word, because depending on the context, you’re using the word in it can change like
R.S. Benedict
54:34
a lot here and on top of the stem brain worms. I feel like this would also push you to make your writing too wordy, too veose. I gotta pick a more vivid word. Well, maybe maybe maybe that’s not the word you need.
Mattie Lewis
54:48
The only thing that’s sort of consistent is like simple colors like red is a 2.3. Blue is a 2.7 I don’t know how you decide objectively that red and like red is less vivid than blue.
R.S. Benedict
55:00
Les Brown is even more vivid. 3.0 Okay,
Mattie Lewis
55:04
yeah, I could see it if it was like, the most basic like, okay, like, yeah, like Scarlet is probably more vivid than red in most contexts, but it’s not always the most accurate. And then when you get like out further, it’s like, okay, so Scarlet, we can probably agree is more vivid than red most of the time, but is it more or less vivid than crimson? What about vermillion? Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
55:26
those aren’t interchangeable. Those are.
Mattie Lewis
55:28
Those are also different colors. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
55:29
those don’t describe the exact same shade of red either. So you can’t just pick the most vivid one.
Mattie Lewis
55:34
Yeah, I would not call something vermilion. That’s crimson. They’re not the same. Yeah, this strikes me as like someone who doesn’t actually know how a thesaurus works. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
55:44
like regurgitated is 9.2. Well, why is regurgitated that high? Because it’s sort of a almost a scientific or medical word in the right context. Maybe pewter up chucked might work better, depending on how the tone you’re going. If you’re going for a humorous tone up Chuck might work a lot better than regurgitated and regurgitated might be a little too formal or stodgy.
Mattie Lewis
56:08
Yeah. Again, I think the context really matters too, because there’s some contexts where if you’re describing this, like really intense like action scene or something, and someone gets cut, and you just say that the blood is very red, the understatement almost makes it more vivid. I don’t know. It’s like such a worthless tool. The other thing, in fact, it’s like almost the opposite of a tool, because I think it’ll make your work
R.S. Benedict
56:34
worse, you’re really, you’re I think it would make your prose a lot more purple.
Mattie Lewis
56:38
Yeah. And I think the other thing about this, this, this particular tool, one of the other things, it seems really fixated on adves. Like what percentage of your book was adves? In general, which of those was at like Li adves in which were like non li adves, and I’m like, Why do you give this much of a shit about adves? I
R.S. Benedict
57:00
guess because adves are bad. adves are bad is and that’s it. And it also had a percentage for the passive voice which passive voice is also bad actually know
Mattie Lewis
57:10
what passive voice watch sees it was reading anything that used was as passive voice. And that’s not always the case. Anyways, like Bob was tired is not a passive voice sentence.
R.S. Benedict
57:23
It’s just bizarre and and bad and unethical and all around. And I believe they took it down because enough writers got mad at him.
Mattie Lewis
57:30
Yeah. And rightly so honestly. Like, even. Maybe this is just me being like bitchy or catty. Even if I didn’t have issues with AI and data scraping and copyright and the like dubious ethics of it. People are trying to argue that it’s fair use. And I don’t understand that really, honestly, well enough to make a call there. But even if all of that was not an issue, the product created was so janky I would be offended just by that.
R.S. Benedict
57:57
Yeah, it’s bad. So so don’t let a robot decide if your books good. No, no,
Mattie Lewis
58:05
it can’t. It’s not a real reader. It’s not a person. It can’t really meaningfully Analyze. A robot can’t do art. Yeah.
R.S. Benedict
58:12
So moving on to another robotic thing. Let’s talk about the Mice Quotient. A good number of professional sci fi fantasy, published writers, including Brandon Sanderson, English
Mattie Lewis
58:26
writers to not just like some randoms you’ve never heard ramen at
R.S. Benedict
58:30
Cobo and a couple of Hugo nominees are winners believe in something called the Mice Quotient. So the Mice Quotient supposedly helps you determine how many words long a story is supposed to be mice is an acronym stories have four elements Millia, which is setting idea, character and events. So that’s M I C, E. Now to determine what a story’s length should be, they give you an actual equation, L equals in parenthesis C plus S times 750 times m, and all that over divided by 1.5. So that means the length of your story should equal the number of characters plus the number of stages or scenic locations, and you add up the number of characters and the number of stages or scenic locations, multiply it by 750. Multiply that by the number of mice threads or story threads, sorta. And divide all of that by 1.5. And that’s the number of words Your story should
Mattie Lewis
59:38
now I gotta be honest, like when I looked at that equation, Fortunate Son started playing in my head. I didn’t become a writer because I’m good at math. If I was good at math, I will be making like shitloads of money or I
R.S. Benedict
59:51
was watching the video the presentation in which she demonstrates this. She’s using the cadence of like a youth pastor. I just kept Thinking of Kelvin gemstone, trying to explain smart busters to a bunch of unsuspecting children while Keith moons for him over in a corner. It just it was very upsetting to me to watch this video and I apologize if I’m leaving out some of the nuances because I couldn’t get through all of it because I felt like I was having a stroke, I get that it’s important to get a story to be the right length. I see a lot of inexperienced writers trying to cover too much in a story that’s a little too short for it. Yeah, I
Mattie Lewis
1:00:33
think that’s the one I see most commonly for really new writers is they’ll be like, here’s my first chapter and it’s like a ton of shit happening, but it’s like, maybe 1000 words.
R.S. Benedict
1:00:44
Yeah, it’s just too dense or something or this story is too big
Mattie Lewis
1:00:48
things explained or nothing’s detailed enough.
R.S. Benedict
1:00:51
And I get that so I get the idea of trying to get a ballpark figure but I think it’s better to play by ear than to have this equation because I’m thinking of some stories that absolutely bang and then violate this. Surely Jackson’s The Lottery has a shitload of characters and it’s not a long story. It is a short s story. I guess there’s a who will move the number of locations is really small, fuck you. And I just got a lot of ideas. I don’t know how many ideas you’d have for my I
Mattie Lewis
1:01:20
don’t really necessarily how you would even quantify that in some stories. How many ideas I have
R.S. Benedict
1:01:26
another idea let me add an additional 750 words. I don’t know Mrs. Dalloway, I think would violate this in the other direction. I mean, what are the events? Not many Zelle away but some fucking flowers by yourself. So Mrs. Dalloway should only be approximately 750 words. Septimus jumps out a window, so you get another 750 words. Yeah, boy. But I mean that that novel is incredible. It’s one of the greatest novels of the century. The screw fly solution. On the other hand, it has a really, really short number of words, by this equation, it tells the entire story of the apocalypse. And there’s a shitload of characters and a bunch of things happen and a bunch of stuff goes on, but it sketches it so deftly. And it’s so tight that it tells the story of a gender apocalypse, with a bunch of different characters going on over a good period of time, in short story form, and it’s incredible how effective it is, how tight it is, and it just throws in at the very end. Oh, yeah, some fucking aliens show up and you get like, two sentences on that it does not give 750 words to the aliens. It’s just like, bam, right at the end. Here’s some Goddamnit you’re like, What the fuck? And it rocked. You know, I
Mattie Lewis
1:02:45
if I was the type of person who like, you know, could actually stomach doing complex math for more than, you know, like two seconds. I would love to take like a whole bunch of really, really like noted banger stories and see how many of them violate this whole quotient because I am willing to bet and more of them do than don’t. When we were talking about that in the discord someone’s someone said, and I thought this was a much better alternative. I prefer my homegrown content quotient character on savoriness naughtiness terror. Those are the fundamental building blocks of any good. Yes. Oh, yeah. You know what? That’s right.
R.S. Benedict
1:03:28
God damn right. Okay, so maybe we can briefly touch on this a bit of weird advice is that you’re a pantser, or you’re a plotter. And I hate the term pantser. So cutesy, but basically, the idea is that writers all fall into one of these two categories. One is a plotter, which is somebody who carefully plans the plot structure of their story in advance, or you’re a pantser, which means you fly by the seat of your pants and make it up as you go along. And I really don’t like this. I don’t like the way we hyper categorize ourselves. And the work we do, I think, rigidly categorizing yourself is kind of dumb. There are some stories I plotted carefully. And others I’ve kind of improvised as I went along. Generally, if a story is longer, I feel the need to structure it out and outline it a little more carefully so that I don’t get totally lost. And I think that’s pretty reasonable. But but my shorter stories, some of them, I’ve kind of winged it, or played it by ear. Yeah,
Mattie Lewis
1:04:26
some people seem to think it was like, oh, once I figure out if I’m a pantser, or a plotter, I’m going to have everything figured out. Every story is just going to fall into place. And it’s going to be super easy. And it’s like, I don’t think so. Because I know, I tend to like just like, make shit up as I go. Like a lot of the times I’ll have like an image in my head and be like, this has got to be like either the beginning or the ending. And if it’s the beginning, I’m just like, this is the image I’m starting with it. Let’s see what flows naturally from here. Conversely, a lot of times I’ll get an idea for like a scene or an image. That’s gotta be like a climactic moment. I’m gonna be like I gotta write until I get here. That tends to be how I do it. But yeah, if I’m working on something longer, I usually I may not have like a super formal outline, but I’ll have like, maybe little notes to myself, like, I want to include this scene, this scene, this scene, different people will work in depth better in different ways. Like it could be even project by project, different stages of your life, different length of work, I don’t think it’s helpful. Like, if you decide that like, I’m a pantser. And if I, if I do any kind of planning at all, I just can’t write and then decide, I’ve really only written short stories, but I think I’m going to be a novelist. And then you try to transition to writing a novel. And you don’t plan anything at all, you don’t even make notes of like, what kind of scenes you think you’re going to include, you might find that that’s like really, really hard, and you might get discouraged. But having like such a rigid self categorization is not helpful. It’s helpful to kind of know yourself and know your general tendencies and how you prefer to work. Like I know myself, personally, if I write a really detailed outline, I don’t really feel like writing it as much, because I feel like I’ve already told the story to myself. But I know I’m like, yeah, maybe I don’t want to do like a super detailed outline. But if I do general plot points, or like ideas and have some notes, that’s helpful, I don’t think very many people are like, fully one are fully the other. And if they try to work to any extent in the other direction, it’s going to totally fuck them up. I don’t think that’s true. Yeah, maybe for like one in a million people. But I think most people are probably going to be somewhere in the middle. And it could vary by project,
R.S. Benedict
1:06:36
it strikes me as being part of this tendency to view ourselves as a type and not a person. There’s this great essay from the outline from a few years ago, rest in peace, the outline called Raising a person in a culture full of types. And it’s about how people at this young age sort of decide that I’m a type or I’m a category and that this determines who I am and what I am. And this determines everybody and what they are and how they are. And it’s this really rigid sense of how you identify yourself and how you categorize others that can really kind of fuck you up.
Mattie Lewis
1:07:10
Yes, these bitches that think I’m an INFP means anything I am,
R.S. Benedict
1:07:14
I’m an INTJ, or whatever it is.
Mattie Lewis
1:07:18
I actually, I am an INFJ. Well, I’m an INFJ. Now carrying to the tests that I’ve taken, but it doesn’t matter that much. It really doesn’t. The fact that it can change if you take it on a different day should tell you everything you need.
R.S. Benedict
1:07:35
Yeah, I think it’s just a symptom of that kind of pervasive mindset. And I don’t think it’s good for you as a person. And in general, I don’t think it’s good for your writing either. So try and get on No,
Mattie Lewis
1:07:47
I know. It’s tempting, because like, I have this temptation if you give me a Buzzfeed quiz, that’s going to tell me what kind of potato I am. I’m going to take that fucking quiz. But also you you you can’t you got to take it with a grain of salt. It’s not that serious. It’s not that deed.
R.S. Benedict
1:08:02
Yeah, all right. So we’ve been talking for a little bit over an hour let’s wind down Maddie, what do you have to plug
Mattie Lewis
1:08:09
so I haven’t pitched up IO store. It’s devils dooell, all one word.h.io I’ve got five short stories on their, their moods, all kinds of variations on dark fantasy horror of various length ones flash fiction, the rest are, you know, neatly in the short story realm and I also just recently started a substack it’s it’s kind of quiet so far, but I got plans for it. And that one, it is also a devil’s dooell that substack.com and I going to be posting about writing and books and eventually have decided I’m going to do a little segment I’m calling Faustian bargain bin because dedicated right gooders who are in the discord almost certainly know that I love a good deal with the devil story. And I’m going to talk about those clips kind of informally. What what I think about different ones what I like what I don’t like, it’ll mostly be what I like because I I’m not going to say I become indiscriminate, and we’ll read any trash that has this type of thing in it. But if you’ve got to deal with the devil in your story, you’re getting like if I was a star rating type of person, which I’m not, but if I was, you’re getting like an extra half star just for that. So I’ll be talking about that as well. At some point. That’s pretty much what I got going on right now.
R.S. Benedict
1:09:30
Yeah, okay. Well, thanks for coming on.
Mattie Lewis
1:09:32
Thanks for having me. Always fun to bitch about bad writing advice. And I see so much of it because I am a misery tourist and I’m on Reddit more than I should be.
R.S. Benedict
1:09:43
Being on Reddit at all is generally being on Reddit more than you should be.
Mattie Lewis
1:09:48
Yeah. Um, there’s a couple like really niche subreddits that are actually like pretty good and useful. But once you get into the big ones, it’s just woof
R.S. Benedict
1:09:58
Yeah, anyway, Thanks for coming on and thank you all for listening if you like what you heard please head to patreon.com/ritegud and subscribe until next time keep writing good