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2:00

Hey, listeners,

2:04

we want your input on Season 20, which I

2:06

have to be honest, does not sound like a real

2:08

number. What elements of the

2:10

craft do you want us to talk about? What

2:13

episode or core concept do you

2:15

use or reference or recommend the

2:17

most? Or what are you

2:19

just having trouble with? After 20

2:21

seasons, we've talked about a lot of things.

2:24

What element of writing do you wish we'd

2:26

revisit for a deeper dive on the podcast?

2:29

Send us all your ideas to

2:31

podcast at writing excuses.com. Season

2:34

19 Episode 19. This

2:40

is writing excuses. A

2:42

close reading on world building an overview and

2:44

why a memory called Empire. 15

2:47

minutes long because you're in a hurry. And

2:49

we're not that smart. I'm Mary Robinette. I'm

2:52

Don Juan. I'm Dan and I'm Howard. So

2:55

to kick off this second series that we're

2:57

doing of close readings, we are

2:59

going to be talking for the next few

3:01

episodes about world building, why it's important, how

3:04

it functions. And to dig

3:07

into that, we wanted to do

3:09

a close reading of Arkady Martine's

3:11

A Memory Called Empire. This

3:14

is a really wonderful novel. It

3:16

won the Hugo Award. And

3:18

I am very biased because as a literary

3:20

agent, I represent Arkady and I worked on

3:22

this book, so I know it pretty well.

3:26

And but to kick us off here, before

3:28

we dig into Memory Called Empire specifically, I

3:31

wanted to talk a little bit about the

3:33

concept of world building, what it is exactly,

3:36

what are the basic mechanics? Just we all

3:38

have a shared vocabulary heading into doing the

3:40

actual close reading. So

3:43

when we talk about world building, it's really easy to get

3:46

hung up and think that it is only

3:48

about the things that you invent. But

3:50

for me, it's also about not

3:53

just the spaces, but the relationships

3:56

between people and and

3:58

how all of these things interconnect. That

4:01

it is world building because you are thinking

4:04

about those connections and the connections are often

4:06

the things that are significantly more interesting than

4:08

any individual thing that you invent.

4:12

Well, and it's worth pointing out, I think, that

4:14

we tend to think of world building

4:17

as being a part of Spec-Fic exclusively,

4:20

but regardless of what you're writing. World

4:22

building is an important part of it. When I was writing

4:25

the John Cleaver books, a big part

4:27

of those books was figuring out how big is

4:29

the town he lives in? What

4:32

kind of people live there? What kind of

4:34

industries do they work in? Where

4:37

does he go to school? What is school like? What

4:40

is his family like? Who

4:42

are the other people that he's known? And

4:44

that helps give the town a lot of

4:46

texture and a lot of realism and a

4:49

lot of plausibility. And that

4:51

is absolutely a part of world building. Yeah,

4:53

what you don't show is as important as

4:56

what you put on screen because any

4:59

novel or any short story, whatever it is,

5:01

there's going to be way more details and

5:03

facets of this world than you can fit

5:05

into your book itself. So you don't have

5:07

to invent every aspect or if you're doing

5:10

contemporary realist, you don't have to show every

5:12

aspect. The way I think about world building,

5:14

and this kind of ties into what Mario

5:16

Abenette was saying is it's about establishing stakes

5:18

for your character because what parts of the

5:20

world you show are the

5:22

things that are important to the people

5:24

in your world. So what

5:27

the legal system is, what the physical infrastructure

5:29

is, what rich people value, what poor people

5:31

value, all those things are going to be

5:34

part of your world building. And

5:36

so as you're establishing what's important

5:38

to your characters, think

5:40

as much about rules and systems

5:42

as you do about physical material

5:44

spaces. You use the

5:47

word establishing, which always takes me

5:49

to establishing shot. As

5:51

you're doing your world building, as you're writing

5:55

languages, creating religions, doing geography, whatever else, at

5:57

some point, you're going to be able to

5:59

do that. point, the rubber will

6:01

meet the road and you have to write that

6:03

first scene. And that first

6:05

scene is your establishing shot where

6:08

you start giving people the

6:11

details they need to understand what's

6:13

happening here. If

6:15

you look at a helicopter shot of New

6:17

York City at the beginning of something,

6:20

you know that this is taking

6:22

place in New York City or a city. And

6:25

if you have a helicopter shot

6:27

zooming in over rolling fields of

6:29

grain, you know that it is

6:31

a completely different type of story.

6:33

And just understanding that principle can

6:35

help you set up that first scene so

6:37

that your world building works. And

6:40

also along those lines that that

6:42

establishing shot does not need to be

6:44

a wide shot. That often

6:46

zooming in on a single

6:49

telling detail is going

6:51

to tell you a lot about the world

6:54

more so than the rolling fields

6:56

of grain. So one

6:59

of the mistakes that I will sometimes see people make

7:01

with world building when they are doing it in spec-fic

7:04

is the feeling that they need to do that

7:06

wide shot. And while there are

7:09

times that you need to do it, and it's something

7:11

that we'll see with Arkady's work,

7:13

there are also places where just

7:16

starting very, very tight in

7:19

is going to serve you

7:21

better. And that decision

7:23

is based less on world building and

7:25

what you want to convey about it and more about

7:28

the tone of the book. Are

7:30

you doing something that's very intimate? Are you doing

7:32

something that's really sprawling? When we start looking at

7:34

Arkady's, it's

7:37

a huge empire that

7:39

we're being introduced to. So

7:42

it is both a wide

7:44

shot and I think a more detailed shot,

7:46

which is a lot of fun.

7:49

And part of why this is so fun to talk

7:52

about in speculative fiction is that when you're doing contemporary

7:54

realist, You have a lot of shorthand,

7:56

right? As Howard has mentioned, if you have a wide

7:58

shot, a helicopter shot of New York City, You

8:00

establish a lot of role but you don't

8:02

need to explain to your audience when you

8:05

are inventing a new culture. So as we

8:07

get into American Empire when you're like approaching

8:09

this massive planet city there's so much you

8:11

need to establish and explained. So sometimes in

8:14

that case it when you do debate White

8:16

on his My Robin as talking about. He.

8:18

Can be very. Overwhelming the not

8:20

give you very much information as zeroing in

8:23

on a very specific thing often as a

8:25

way to get to more information faster because

8:27

if he tried to tell them everything at

8:29

once the brains in a sit down and

8:31

that's when we start talking about one o'clock

8:34

and co dumps. Yeah, this is making me

8:36

think of the beginning of Fellowship of the

8:38

Ring, where. There's a

8:40

ton of world. The incredibly expensive

8:42

world his famous for his world

8:44

building. And. Yet the first

8:47

several chapters and are introduction are

8:49

establishing shot is all just the

8:51

shire. It's a

8:53

peaceful little village with you

8:55

know, just a bunch of

8:57

idyllic seat been people eating

8:59

happy meals together are not

9:01

actual happy meal. Spend a

9:03

messenger, have less about it.

9:05

Ah, and that doesn't tell

9:07

us what the world is

9:09

like. But it is vital

9:12

world building because it tells us

9:14

what the characters are leaving behind.

9:16

Yeah, and it establishes. Like you

9:18

said, the steaks. This is what

9:20

we're protecting wins idea here and

9:23

go out into the rest of

9:25

the very complex world. A.

9:27

Common mistake that I'd ah,

9:30

I've made myself with regard

9:32

to delivering your world building

9:34

to the. To. The Reader.

9:37

Is. Delivering it the way. The.

9:40

Late nineties, early two thousand

9:42

and movie trailers did in

9:45

a world in a world

9:47

guy. Sees. The guy who

9:49

picks is the world building in

9:51

sixteen seconds. So. That.

9:54

You know, the pits for the novel. Okay,

9:56

he is not a guy who opens your

9:58

story. Having. a story that

10:01

opens with some

10:03

text telling me where we are.

10:05

And then the first scene contextually

10:08

gives me 80% of that information. You

10:10

know what? We didn't need that text.

10:12

We didn't need that. I say

10:15

we didn't. Maybe we did need

10:17

the prologue of your novel. But

10:19

consider if your

10:21

prologue is in a world, go

10:24

ahead and just start with chapter one. Well, this is

10:26

where I love the balance of show and tell,

10:29

right? Because we hear the

10:31

advice all the time, show, don't tell. But when

10:33

you're communicating world building, there's so much information to

10:35

get across that sometimes you do just want to

10:37

come out and say the thing. You do just

10:40

want to explain it. And I

10:42

think a lot of our favorite examples are ones that

10:44

don't do that because that is more memorable to

10:47

find an effective way of showing it without

10:49

explaining. But also sometimes slowing

10:51

down and just explaining, hey,

10:54

these this is how this world works. This

10:56

is how this legal system works. You will

10:58

have to do that, especially in speculative fiction,

11:00

because there's too much to explain to let

11:02

your audience infer it. When I find myself

11:04

getting super confused by world building when I'm

11:07

looking at, you know, submissions, it

11:09

is almost always because they have tried to

11:11

adhere too closely to just showing me. And

11:13

then I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I

11:15

don't understand because this can mean eight different

11:17

things. So finding that balance point

11:19

is the trick, especially early in your book.

11:21

I find that I break my

11:23

world building kind of into

11:26

two categories, decorative

11:28

and structural. So

11:31

the structural things are the things that are driving the

11:33

story. Like

11:36

when we get into a memory called Empire, one of

11:38

the things that's in there is something called a cloud

11:40

hook. And and arcadie just like

11:42

drops us into it. We just like does

11:44

not really explain it, except

11:47

in pieces, like gives it to us

11:49

as the character interacts with it. And

11:52

the reason that it's worth taking the time

11:54

to have the character and just interact with it and

11:56

and spend that time with it is that later,

11:58

the cloud becomes this really

12:01

important thing. But there's other pieces that

12:03

happen in the story, like there are

12:05

these little hummingbird-like things.

12:07

We don't need to know where those come from

12:09

or anything like that, those are purely decorative. And

12:13

that, for me, that I will

12:15

see people put in

12:17

a decorative thing that they're super excited about and

12:20

then people don't understand it and they try

12:22

to explain it and it's not important.

12:26

One of the things that I always try to do in

12:28

my books is put in

12:30

enough of these decorative elements that

12:34

the reader is never sure until

12:36

it matters which elements are

12:38

load-bearing and which elements are decorative. This

12:41

is one of the things I love about

12:43

the movie, My Cousin Vinny, because it has

12:45

such wonderful world-building as you take these outsiders

12:48

into this small southern town and they

12:51

encounter the mud and they encounter grits

12:53

which they've never seen before. And all

12:55

of these little aspects of small-town life

12:57

that just blow their minds and

13:00

then about half of them become

13:02

vital to winning the case at

13:04

the end. Grits doesn't

13:07

sound like it would be a load-bearing element

13:09

and it absolutely is. And it's just- If

13:11

you make them thick enough. Yeah, I was

13:14

gonna say. So yeah,

13:16

it's that ability to,

13:19

I mean, it's not quite red herring, but it's

13:21

just as you are explaining

13:23

the world and where your story

13:25

takes place, the

13:29

reader has that thrill of not knowing

13:31

which elements are vital to the plot and

13:34

which elements are fun and which are both.

13:36

And this goes back to talking about how

13:39

contemporary fiction can be a stretch in the

13:41

imagination because for three out of the

13:43

four people here on this recording today grew up in

13:45

grits-eating countries. So the idea that someone wouldn't know what

13:47

they are completely baffling to me when

13:49

I watched this was a child,

13:52

but on that note, let's take a break for

13:54

a few minutes and when we come back, we'll start

13:56

digging into a memory called Empire. Hey,

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t-r-y-l-i-f-e-m-d.com. Okay,

21:10

so I would love to start talking about

21:12

the text itself and why we chose this

21:14

particular book. In

21:17

some ways, it's a little obvious because

21:19

it is right in the name. It

21:21

is about empire. And when

21:23

we think about big science fiction world building,

21:27

we tend to think about space empires. We tend to

21:29

think in fantasy about books like Lord of the Rings

21:31

that have really rich, complex settings. I

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get it. Okay, so

21:48

I would love to start talking about the

21:51

text itself and why we chose this particular

21:53

book. So let me move tomedia

21:55

and Facebook. We're

21:58

talking about space energy. about

22:00

empire. And when we think

22:02

about big science fiction world building, we tend to

22:04

think about space empires, we tend to think in

22:07

fantasy about books like Lord of the Rings that

22:09

have really rich, complex settings. I

22:12

find the way that Arcady, the

22:15

author Arcady Martin approaches world

22:17

building in this particular book to

22:19

be really fascinating and nuanced and

22:21

complex. But what

22:23

about you guys? I mean, what did you feel about when

22:26

this book was proposed, why we decided to settle on this

22:28

one for the close reading? I was

22:30

so excited that we chose this book.

22:33

I read it, I have right here with me

22:35

my original arc that I read before

22:39

it came out. And it

22:41

blew my mind. This is one of the

22:43

best science fiction books I think I've ever read.

22:45

And most of that stems from the

22:48

incredible work that she's done with the

22:50

culture. So much of

22:52

science fiction is world building

22:55

a new technology or world building a

22:57

new alien or a

22:59

new environment. And

23:01

most of the work here is a

23:03

culture and the story is in large

23:05

part about getting to know what

23:08

this culture is like and how

23:10

their names work and how poetry

23:13

is vital to the things that they

23:15

do. And it's

23:17

just such a rich book

23:19

because of that. And

23:21

talk about surprising load bearing elements

23:24

is where they get a science

23:26

fiction novel that has load bearing

23:28

poetry recital that radically alter

23:30

the direction of the plot. It's

23:32

also unusual to get something with

23:34

such an epic scope that

23:37

has a single

23:39

POV. We

23:41

I mean, that yes, there are other

23:43

POVs for interludes and for chapter bumps.

23:46

But the story

23:48

is being told through the

23:51

perspective of one character. And

23:53

I think that's part of why the

23:56

world building is so accessible

23:58

and so effective. We

24:00

have a stranger comes

24:02

to town really is the

24:05

well not somebody goes on a trip It's

24:07

the story structure here. We are seeing a

24:09

new place Through the eyes

24:11

of someone to whom this place is new

24:14

but she has loved it

24:16

from afar and has studied it and

24:19

is now immersed in it and every

24:23

paragraph Every

24:25

paragraph gives us tidbits about this

24:27

struck about this place

24:30

So for me the thing that is interesting

24:32

and exciting is that it is not a

24:34

single world That every

24:37

paragraph gets illuminates two

24:39

worlds at the same time Because

24:42

our main character Mahit comes

24:44

from a cell which

24:46

is a space station It's

24:49

it is an unplanated world

24:53

and Has come to this planet

24:55

that is part of this Empire this massive

24:58

Empire and and so

25:01

all of Everything that she

25:04

sees is seen through

25:06

the the lens of someone who grew up

25:08

not on a planet and Also

25:11

has had this deep deep love for this

25:13

culture, but has never been a direct participant

25:15

of it Interacting with people who

25:17

are you know who have grown up in

25:19

it? And so there's all of this really?

25:23

wonderful like

25:26

very muscular writing that

25:28

is happening where we're using all

25:30

of the tools the That

25:34

are possibly at our disposal she's

25:36

using interactions with the environment. She's

25:38

using point of view. She's using

25:41

Conversations she's using every tool Epistolary

25:45

things every tool to convey all of

25:47

this rich information but had to create

25:50

It's like

25:52

there's two worlds that we are getting

25:54

illuminations of and then there's hints of

25:56

other places and other cultures and even

25:58

within the world that we're in,

26:00

there's multiple cultures for both.

26:04

So that's why I was excited by it. For me,

26:06

one of the scenes that best calls that out is

26:09

the cafe bomb because someone sets

26:12

off a bomb. We're

26:16

gonna dig in this very deeply in a couple episodes.

26:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But

26:20

the idea that on

26:22

a planet, someone can protest

26:25

by blowing things up, but on

26:27

a space station, that would kill

26:29

everybody. It would never occur to

26:31

anyone to protest by setting off

26:33

an explosion because that would destroy

26:36

the world. Well, she has a

26:38

whole speech actually where somebody did

26:40

do that and the consequences for

26:42

that were so extreme, right? They

26:44

immediately, basically spaced everyone involved and

26:47

cut them off from their Amago

26:49

line. So they essentially just erased

26:52

them from society in a radical way.

26:54

And the difference in scale of response versus

26:56

what you can do on a space station

26:59

versus what can happen on a planet is

27:01

one of those fascinating little things. And

27:03

so, yeah, yeah, so it calls up

27:05

her perspective of I come from this

27:07

place, I'm now in this new place.

27:10

If this thing happened in the old place,

27:13

it'd be completely different. It's such a

27:15

novel of contrast and the way Arkady

27:18

uses that parallax of perspective to give

27:20

you perspective on the whole universe, right?

27:22

Because 99.9% of the book takes

27:25

place in one location, in

27:28

one city, really between two offices

27:30

primarily. You know, it mostly just,

27:34

the range of spaces in the book is

27:37

very limited. But when you think about the

27:39

book, when your memory of it is so

27:41

expansive of the sense- Your memory of empire.

27:43

Your memory of empire is a sense of

27:46

multiple worlds, of massive systems, of huge space

27:48

wars. But the action of the book is

27:50

very constrained and very limited. Yeah,

27:53

I was gonna

27:55

say that, on one

27:57

hand, this idea of the outsider-

28:00

coming in is just

28:02

my cousin Vinnie again. That's

28:04

such a helpful trick and a wonderful

28:06

little tool to explain one culture is

28:09

explain it through the eyes of an

28:11

outsider, but it is rare to see

28:14

the opposite done. Like if

28:16

my cousin Vinnie told us as

28:18

much about Brooklyn as

28:20

it does about little southern

28:23

town, then that would be closer

28:25

to what we're talking about here. The

28:27

differences between them is

28:30

kind of the whole story. And

28:33

I love in particular how

28:36

torn she is about this. You get this

28:40

sense that she doesn't want

28:42

to love takes Kalamly culture

28:45

as much as she does. That

28:47

they are imperialist, that they are

28:49

colonialist, that they are kind of

28:52

absorbing and warping all of the

28:54

other cultures and that everyone who

28:56

encounters them loses a little bit

28:58

of themselves. But at the same

29:00

time, she just really loves

29:02

it. It's this kind

29:05

of otaku visiting Japan sense almost

29:07

that she's like, I'm so

29:09

excited. I'm finally here. I've watched all of these

29:11

movies about this. Yeah. With

29:13

the difference that Japan is

29:15

not actively colonized. Yeah. It

29:17

was a Chinese otaku visiting

29:20

Japan in 1940. Well, and

29:22

this is why this book is so significant

29:24

to me personally. The term we usually use

29:26

for what you're talking about is audience surrogate.

29:29

You have somebody who stands in for the

29:31

audience arriving at the place and we see

29:33

it through their eyes. So there's an excuse

29:35

to explain all of the things

29:37

about how this works. So this is Kitty Pride

29:39

arriving at Xavier's mansion. And then we get to

29:41

see, oh, these are what all the X-Men are.

29:44

But in this case, Arcanine pulled an

29:46

incredible trick in my view, where

29:48

the subjectivity of the audience surrogate

29:50

becomes very important, because they are

29:53

not just a

29:55

visitor. They are someone who is resisting assimilation,

29:58

resisting empire. by

30:00

the place that they are visiting. What

30:02

does it mean to love the empire

30:04

that is destroying your culture? I'm

30:07

Korean American. My family

30:09

is from Korea.