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[SPEAKER_02]: Season 21, episode 5.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is Writing Excuses.
[SPEAKER_01]: The same, but different.
[SPEAKER_02]: tools, not rules, four writers, five writers.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Mary Robinette.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Darren.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Erin.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this week, we're going to talk about one of a topic that I'm deeply fascinated by and I think one of the trickier things to figure out.
[SPEAKER_01]: when you're talking about genre writing, when you're talking about series writing in particular, but I think it's really true of the entire publishing process, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is how do you write something that feels original, but still accomplishes
[SPEAKER_01]: Meeting the reader's expectations and that can be down to meeting the same genre expectations That can be down to writing a sequel that feels In conversation with the original, but is it's own thing and is unique right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean again, we are creatures of pattern recognition, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We want certain beats.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want a certain feeling from our romance or fantasy or science fiction or mystery or thrillers, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like
[SPEAKER_01]: there's this idea fiction being tropey or formulaic, but those tropes and formulas are the building blocks of genre storytelling.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you look at differentiating the story that you're writing from the things that came before?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that there's two ways to think about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: One is with sequels and one is with genre.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna start with sequel first.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I, when I wrote shades of milk and honey, it's basically Jane Austen with Magic.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is more or less a straight up regency romance.
[SPEAKER_02]: In romance, the structure is that you write the first book, and there's a very specific romantic structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you write the second book, the structure is the same, but the different comes from a different cast.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's, you know, the, the sister of the heroine and the boyfriend's BFF.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now follow both.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't want to do that so what I did for my same but different was I changed my structure but I kept my cast and what I see when I see people moving into sequels is that a lot of times they are keeping the same cast, the sequels that feel flat is that a lot of times it's the same cast and they're facing the same kind of problem so it's the same in the same and they aren't bringing anything new to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think one of the things that you can think about when you are moving into a sequel is keeping the same as this is the heart and the core of the story and those are the things that you keep the same because I also see the other problem which is that someone moves into a sequel and they go the different and the different and it's so far away from the original that people people go back to that sequel because they
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's no reason for them to go back to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think looking at what is your intention keep those things the same?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then what are the places you want to surprise or bring something new?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I was thinking about because I haven't written novel sequels like where I've encountered this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kept thinking about my time when I was writing for Zombies Run, which is interesting, because it's the same cast of people, and it's the same action.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are zombies, and you're running from them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one bird is a game with one action, run.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so something that we would find is
[SPEAKER_00]: Early on the instinct would be to throw a lot of new things to try to make each thing different like there's more zombies and they're on fire and you're in space not really but like and they're all happening and it turns out that a lot of times one difference makes a
[SPEAKER_00]: huge difference because people were like, oh, I understood how they got through everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they've really figured out how to run from these zombies, but now the zombies are on fire, which is bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like this one difference accelerates the tension in part because you're like, they can't repeat what has already happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how are they gonna get out of the situation this time?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you don't have to change everything and like throw all the you know toys into the bin You can just have this one thing that they can focus on and that actually adds a lot
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, you know, going to sort of mice quotient, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You have all these different components that make up a story from Amelia to, you know, the characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think choosing one or two of those, you know, I mean, you can do the thing where you're, you're, you're, you're, me keeping mostly the same, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're doing like romance, you're really keeping a lot of things or a similar, or you're doing like procedural, mystery, then a lot of it is staying the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, for,
[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of genre storytelling, especially using the very popular phrase these days, stand alone with series potential.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to want to be able to carry things through, but if you wrote the first book as a true standalone, now it's like, okay, how do we do book two, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so figuring out what you want to carry over from book one, whether that is purely the setting, have new characters or pick-up side characters, or you have the same cast in you're putting
[SPEAKER_01]: I think those are the things that you need to start thinking about of like, wait, what are the things I want to be fixed points as I'm looking forward to telling this new story?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, with the with the lady astronaut books, I've got Elma has anxiety and so, but you know, and we go into space and all of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so in book one, we don't fix her anxiety, but she has
[SPEAKER_02]: but in the second book the thing that I change isn't oh now she has a new problem it's she still has anxiety but it's a different trigger this time which is often the way that things happen in real life you you're like ah no I have a handle on this oh wait in circumstances are different there's a lot of times just changing the context whether it's setting your zombies on fire or or sending someone to Mars it's enough to to to shake things for the character
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you think about like a lot of science fiction that like at least I grew up on Star Trek it's very procedural like it is the same but different like episode after episode after episode in the series where it is the same cast and theoretically the same like they're still part of the federation they're still trying to like
[SPEAKER_00]: seek out new worlds, but it's what's on this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does this alien do that we didn't expect?
[SPEAKER_00]: How are our expectations of how we can handle this shifted?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we like see a lot of that and have you know experience a lot of that as watchers as as people who are who are engaged science fiction, but then sometimes when it's written, it's like freaks people out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you can just have the people really love your characters, like fan fiction will tell you, if people love your characters, they will watch them open and alternative universe coffee shop together because they just really want to be in a place with these people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and sometimes it's important to realize that you can't wander pretty far afoot, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm thinking about two classic examples of 80 science fiction movies, which is Terminator and Terminator 2, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is just a complete inversion of the first story, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: the same structure in a lot of ways, seeing beats in a lot of ways, but instead of the terminated being the villain of one, now is the hero, and two, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of Linda Hamilton's character being the victim in the first movie, she becomes this incredible badass action hero, and two.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, okay, what if we just flip depending on its head, but told the same story, how does that change, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Which makes it a really fun, easy to grok, thought experiment, as you're looking at it being like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I get what this is right away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, this feels like a terminator movie has the same tone and has the same vibe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another example is the jump from Alien to Aliens, which is a complete genre shift.
[SPEAKER_01]: It goes from horror science fiction to action science fiction.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second movie, wildly different tone, wildly different vibe, same aesthetics though, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's using the same visual elements.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so quite scary.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still like horror elements to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the difference between there is one alien in this picking us off one by one to, oh my God, there are thousands of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, but we have a whole military unit with us completely different tone, but again, same but different.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think talking about the tone also brings up a thing that you can do when you're looking at a sequel and I'm thinking of the Gideon, the ninth, and a hero.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hero, there's a big tone shift when you go from one book to the other because we switch POV characters because of a bunch of other things.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there are also so many grounding questions that are carried over from the first book that you are still engaged with it,
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of different in that one, but the big kind of question of sort of who am I and how I do I define myself and pushing against systems that want to keep me in a specific place like that's very consistent from the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or, you know, looking at a memory called Empire Jumping to a desolation called piece, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We read memory called Empire a little while ago on this podcast, but the second book takes the same characters or many of the same characters, the ones who make it through the first book.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they put them on the bridge of a starship trying to figure out how to communicate with some very different aliens.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really different problem in setting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in the first one, we're an epic fantasy succession kind of story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in the second one, we're in this Star Trek, how to meet alien story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But because of the same characters and the tone and the questions are the same, they are still questions about connection and communication and language.
[SPEAKER_01]: In a way that the first one is, it feels of a piece, even though they are radically different from each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, okay, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, I want to talk about something zooming out a little bit in sort of the more macro scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do I keep this feeling the same?
[SPEAKER_01]: While not just doing a direct sequel.
[SPEAKER_01]: okay welcome back um we're gonna keep talking about the same but slightly different now do we get to talk about genre now we get to talk about genre now excited i want to take my genre but i also want to talk about your career plan mm-hmm how to still feel like you as a writer but let's say my genre first so in in terms of genre you know i think a lot
[SPEAKER_01]: many, many years ago writing excuses before I joined the podcast, did a season that I think about all the time that I find so useful, which is the idea of elemental genres.
[SPEAKER_01]: You sort of have your window dressing genre, which is sort of, are their ray guns and spaceships or their dragons and swords in this, then you have your elemental genre, which is, is this fundamentally a mystery, is this fundamentally romance, is this story about wonder and discovery, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when I think about same but different, I think the things that need to feel the same are the window dressing things kind of carry through, but then the things that you get to play with more are the elemental genre of things, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You can set a mystery inside your cyberpunk setting, but the cyberpunk setting needs to hit certain aesthetic beats and hit certain elements to feel of the same.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things that I talk about a lot, or think about is that there's, I think, aesthetically driven genres and structure driven genres.
[SPEAKER_02]: So aesthetic ones are things like science fiction, fantasy, historical western, that there's a, there's a look and a feel in a vibe.
[SPEAKER_02]: Set dressing, costumes.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then structure driven ones are things like romance, history, heist thriller that there's certain beats that you have to hit in order to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the nice thing is that you can often get your same but different by layering those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious though, that all makes sense to me, but how do you know what readers or should you care or readers are responding to?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say you have a cyberpunk mystery, but everyone's like, wow, cyberpunk cool, but I was really into this cyberpunk detective and the actual unraveling of the mystery.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, if you make your next book, cyberpunk romance, this people might be like, oh, yeah, that was fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, I was really hoping for more on the mystery side, less on the cyberpunk side.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think one thing that's really important is, we're talking about aesthetic versus structural genres.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do want to flag though that even though it is aesthetic and we're talking about it as set dressing, the aesthetic often has a question embedded in it that's really important, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So talking about cyberpunk specifically, it is about a certain set of questions and issues.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think when cyberpunk doesn't feel like cyberpunk, it is just like hackers and flashy stuff, but there's no question about like,
[SPEAKER_01]: what is individual, you know, how do we operate within an oppressively capitalistic society, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think like one of the primary elements of Hamburg punk is the punk part of it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we DIY ourselves under, you know, corporate oligarchy, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a really important thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think if you carry through that question from one to the other, it'll feel connected, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is Blade Runner 249, or interested in really different or have incredibly different story structures.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is sort of like the first one being more of a detective mystery and the second being more
[SPEAKER_01]: of this like more sprawling story about revolution and inheritance, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But they both feel like blade-runner stories because not just the aesthetics carry through, but the question carries through of what makes a person a person.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that that is absolutely true.
[SPEAKER_02]: And also, I think that, you know, you're thinking about the question, but then there's also the thing you're asking is that
[SPEAKER_02]: that may be the thing that the creator is interested in is this question.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the reader has may come for something else.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for me, this goes to a metaphor that I've talked about before, which is the idea of decorating the house.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, Amal Elmotara talks about writing as an act of hospitality.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that when you're thinking about this same but different, which pieces do you keep, you're thinking about, you know, when you move from one house to another, there's some things you keep and there's some things you don't keep, but it's ultimately still your house.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I did shades of milk and honey and did the next book, which was a secretly, a military
[SPEAKER_02]: disguised as a Regency Romance.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did lose readers because there were readers who wanted who wanted the same that they wanted was the structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I lost readers, but that was a and I knew I would.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a choice I made on purpose because I as much as I love Romance,
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't want to be trapped in writing regency romances.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that you can do that, but you just have to be conscious of it and decide why you're making the change and who you want to invite into the house.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what house you want to live in?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think this goes into the second half of the question I had, which is, as a writer, when you're thinking about your career, when you're planning out what book it's next, if you're not writing a series, or even necessarily writing in the same genre, how do you make sure your next book still feels like a project from you, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what is an Aaron Robert's story, and then what also feels like one?
[SPEAKER_01]: When you think about what your next story is, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I think about it with novels.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do not think about it with struck fiction, with Stuart fiction, that is the place where I deliberately enjoyfully playing all of it a map.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, yes and no.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think it's just like part of the story is a reflection of who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you think about same but different, we ourselves are often the same and always different.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of the struggles when the world is moving at a,
[SPEAKER_00]: pace will say and things are happening is you're changing a lot and you're trying to figure out who you are and what's going on that also changes your writing and I think for me feeling beholden to a past version of myself feels like trapping myself in a relationship I didn't want to or locking myself in the house and refusing to move even though the neighborhoods on fire and so I think it is even though
[SPEAKER_00]: who knows what the consequences of that, maybe it's better to do something that I feel is a reflection of the thing I'm trying to say and maybe I'm the only one who likes it then writing something that I think other people will want but I'm not happy with and I feel uncomfortable in the space.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not being hospitable to myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, one thing I look at when considering taking on a client is what is their project, right, is the way I think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I say in project, I mean, not just what is this book, but what is the big question they're tackling, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they writing about, you know, liberty and authority?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they writing about family inheritance, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they writing about, you know, morality?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all the, or are they interrogating capitalism, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like,
[SPEAKER_01]: And I see that in a way that sounds very high-fluteen, but sometimes like, you know, like, I have this question of Chuck Tingle too, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Chuck Tingle is writing about how to be queer in a world, how to find joy in a world where things are really difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these are big Semantic questions told in a way that is often very lay-hearted and accessible.
[SPEAKER_01]: But everyone I think is interrogating a question in their fiction in one way or another, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: whether they know it or not, whether they're aware of it or not, if there's not a question I ask them, then I need them to answer, but this is a question for me of, can I see it, and can I figure out how to support that question, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think to some extent that connectivity is really important from one book to the next book, I was being able to feel like they're still talking about the same stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I've also noticed something in, you know, I'm, I'm new to doing creative works on my own, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I've worked a long time supporting writers, but I've done been doing a thing recently in preparation for not coming project where I've iterated on a bunch of games really quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Original settings, different groups, different, you know, themes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I keep,
[SPEAKER_01]: finding myself tripping over like, ah, crap, I did the same thing again, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I put doppelgangers in this story again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I put, you know, twins in the story again, or whatever it is, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a few repeated tropes I have.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you spot the things and resist the things that are too saney, saney from story to story and keep it feeling fresh?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or do you not worry about it at all?
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't worry about it often when I'm drafting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are some things I do on purpose.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like with my books, one of the things that you know is that you're going to get a committed family people, whether it's a couple or friends
[SPEAKER_02]: that there's a strong relationship that is not threatened.
[SPEAKER_02]: You will usually know that you're going to get some pretty costumes.
[SPEAKER_02]: The thing that I notice is that I have a, and I think this is, I have a really strong tendency
[SPEAKER_02]: to injure my character's hands and arms and I suspect that that is because as a puppeteer that is the thing I am most afraid of and so so that's the part of the body and most likely to damage and so I will catch myself doing that sometimes and pull it back and other times I'm just like no that's actually the appropriate part of their body to injure and we're just
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just gonna do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just gonna do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it's like it's When I when I look at it, I think Okay, why do I need to change this and do I need to change it like the number of times that someone actually is going to
[SPEAKER_02]: binge all of my material back to back and then write a thesis going uh she has broken five arms and the like it's it's unlikely to happen a lot of times the patterns that we see in our own work are because we are living it with our own work
[SPEAKER_02]: Not because other people see it and then other people will see patterns that we have no idea are there like someone just pointed out that I've got Three different books One of which isn't out yet That are essentially about that have this through line of the cost of celebrity
[SPEAKER_02]: And interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, Oh, yeah, Elma doesn't want it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Has it forced on her.
[SPEAKER_02]: Tesla in Spareman.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's that was a conscious theme of that book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the new one.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, look, I've done that again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Accidentally.
[SPEAKER_00]: just something that I think is really exciting to do is to use the way you write as a way to push yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So something that I found in is that at some point I actually did have two stories where I was like, wow, these stories are very different, different settings, but I was like, seems like I'm running a lot of stories about a person who realizes their place in the world is worse than they thought it was and lashes out as a result.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, something or someone or in some way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was like, well, that's cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens after you lash out?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what happens?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's a short story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it ends there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's like a lot of implication about what that might mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm like, what happens after an act of violence or anger?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what does the community, what are we left with?
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do we deal with the aftermath?
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the work that I'm working on now is about what do we owe to each other, and what do we do as in the aftermath of an act that is not a good one, but it's still one that you have to live with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, who knows, maybe at some point I'll get sick of those and be like, then what happens when you want to do restorative justice with you, and so it actually becomes like this larger story of how do we deal with life?
[SPEAKER_00]: As I have different things that I am interested in and part of the reason that I push myself was I was like I'm sick of writing the same story, but also it was partly like maybe I do need to interrogate a little bit A harder thing for me to write, but it's something that I'm still interested in writing
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's exactly the key for writing the same but different is to honor the fact that you are not the same person and to always be like, what is that?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean science fiction and fantasy in particular is really the story about like what if.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's one of the main things that drives us.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I think doing that with your own work, it's like, well, what if I try something different?
[SPEAKER_02]: What if I push this, even if it's not a theme or a question, what if I push this area of craft?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, all of those things are ways to have the same but different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you are the same person writing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I think we're gonna leave it there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you guys so much for talking this through with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've a little bit of homework for the audience.
[SPEAKER_01]: This one is less of a writing exercise and more of a critical one.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I would love you to do is to take two works from the same franchise either a drug sequel or just two things in a series could be a TV show, could be a movie, could be a book.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, I want you to take note of, did you like the ways in which they handed the sequel, and did it feel the same or in but different?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I want you to do a detailed analysis of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really write down component by component, what carried over, what didn't carry over, did it feel good to you that this thing changed, did it feel good to you that this thing stayed, did it feel really static, did it feel dynamic, did it ask new questions?
[SPEAKER_01]: And take note of that and think about that and as you plan out your next work,
[SPEAKER_02]: This has been writing excuses.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're out of excuses.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now go right.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Your hosts for this episode were a Mary Robinette Koal, Dom on Song, and Aaron Roberts.
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