WEBVTT 00:00.572 --> 00:03.336 [SPEAKER_00]: What does it look like to build a writing life you can sustain? 00:03.977 --> 00:10.506 [SPEAKER_00]: To understand not only what stories you want to tell but who you are as a writer and how to keep putting your work out into the world. 00:11.408 --> 00:13.751 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what we'll be exploring at the 2027 writing excuses retreat. 00:15.814 --> 00:18.879 [SPEAKER_00]: June 10th through 16th in Indianapolis, Indiana. 00:19.640 --> 00:25.428 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll be partnering with Maurice Brottis and the Ray Bradbury Center around the theme of learning to love your work. 00:26.089 --> 00:29.995 [SPEAKER_00]: That theme will guide our classes, workshops, and breakout sessions throughout the week. 00:30.816 --> 00:37.325 [SPEAKER_00]: Learn from Instructor's Mary Robinette Koal, Maurice Brottis, and Jason Ocarman, with more instructors to be announced. 00:38.186 --> 00:43.493 [SPEAKER_00]: Early bird pricing is available now for a limited time, and we're also welcoming scholarship applications. 00:43.993 --> 00:48.900 [SPEAKER_00]: You can learn more at www.writingexcuses.com slash retreats. 00:50.388 --> 00:55.313 [SPEAKER_02]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. 00:55.913 --> 01:03.841 [SPEAKER_02]: If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patrion.com slash writing excuses. 01:05.262 --> 01:06.143 [SPEAKER_02]: Season 21, Episode 45. 01:10.067 --> 01:11.789 [SPEAKER_02]: This is writing excuses. 01:12.390 --> 01:13.711 [SPEAKER_02]: Mirror mirror on the plot. 01:14.192 --> 01:14.973 [SPEAKER_02]: Tools not rules. 01:15.634 --> 01:16.995 [SPEAKER_03]: Four writers by writers. 01:17.516 --> 01:18.397 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Mary Rabinet. 01:18.557 --> 01:19.038 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Don Juan. 01:19.198 --> 01:19.698 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Erin. 01:20.019 --> 01:20.479 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Howard. 01:21.142 --> 01:34.913 [SPEAKER_03]: and we have reached it the episode that we have sort of started talking about in a couple of our previous ones which is about symmetry and what happens when the end and the beginning of your book or story somewhat mirror each other. 01:35.374 --> 01:44.701 [SPEAKER_03]: Now I know we talked in previous episodes about how this is something that people like but I'm curious like why what is it about symmetry that you think really works for people? 01:45.542 --> 01:54.685 [SPEAKER_02]: So way back, the way we're hardwired, it is that symmetry represents health, visual symmetry. 01:55.905 --> 02:03.247 [SPEAKER_02]: But a lot of what is also happening on a cognitive level is that we respond to, oh, I recognize that thing. 02:04.447 --> 02:07.268 [SPEAKER_02]: And frequently what that does is it makes us feel smart. 02:08.008 --> 02:19.372 [SPEAKER_02]: But also when you think about traveling, when you begin to recognize landmarks, when you are returning home, it's like, ah, I'm in safe and familiar territory. 02:19.832 --> 02:27.975 [SPEAKER_02]: So some of those things can trigger in when you're reading, without you being like, ah, I feel safe now because often the end of a book isn't, 02:28.375 --> 02:28.936 [SPEAKER_02]: safe safe. 02:29.697 --> 02:39.727 [SPEAKER_02]: But you you have those I recognize the territory M and I know and and that can sometimes ramp up the sense of danger you're like oh I recognize we're coming up to this that's going to be bad. 02:52.748 --> 03:03.871 [SPEAKER_04]: if your book was a literal palandrome where the whole latter half of the book was the front half of the book written backwards, that would not do us any good. 03:04.431 --> 03:13.214 [SPEAKER_04]: There's a level of mirroring, a level of symmetry in what we're talking about that is conceptual rather than literal. 03:15.754 --> 03:23.598 [SPEAKER_04]: When I'm working on humor, one of the pieces of, I think of it as symmetry is the callback. 03:24.438 --> 03:27.080 [SPEAKER_04]: I referenced a thing that I mentioned earlier. 03:29.041 --> 03:30.761 [SPEAKER_04]: Is that inherently a mirroring? 03:30.941 --> 03:35.624 [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, but it works for us because on the cognitive level, 03:36.404 --> 03:47.195 [SPEAKER_04]: a callback refers to something or makes reference to a thing that you knew and and builds on it and that's easier than introducing a new thing in order to say what you want to say. 03:48.080 --> 03:49.921 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm kind of going back to what Mary Robin, I was saying. 03:50.001 --> 03:55.184 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of pattern recognition is how what human brains are good at. 03:55.244 --> 03:59.386 [SPEAKER_01]: Human cognitions really wire to find patterns, observe them, and comment on them. 03:59.706 --> 04:05.949 [SPEAKER_01]: So part of what you can do with the symmetry with the mirroring is it becomes a little bit of a spot the difference game, right? 04:06.290 --> 04:09.091 [SPEAKER_01]: Your character starts at end point A does a bunch of stuff. 04:09.151 --> 04:12.413 [SPEAKER_01]: Kind of comes back to something that resembles where they started. 04:13.013 --> 04:15.834 [SPEAKER_01]: But they've gone through turning, they're different, they're changed. 04:15.934 --> 04:24.058 [SPEAKER_01]: And so that parallax, that difference between the two things can highlight what was important about that journey was important about that change. 04:24.138 --> 04:27.139 [SPEAKER_01]: And let you really draw focus on those images. 04:27.439 --> 04:32.902 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that juxtaposition is exactly one of the powerful tools of the symmetry. 04:33.822 --> 04:36.083 [SPEAKER_02]: It's, it is that pattern recognition. 04:36.743 --> 04:40.685 [SPEAKER_02]: And, and one of the things that I find is that you can, you can leverage that, 04:41.775 --> 04:59.534 [SPEAKER_02]: At the beginning and end of the book, but you can also leverage it sometimes in the middle of the book, as well, where you're coming up on a climax point and the character is having one set of thoughts and as you leave the climax, the character is having a different symmetrical or a mirror image of that set of thoughts often they're confronted with the same thing. 05:01.176 --> 05:18.567 [SPEAKER_02]: You will also see this when like another use of it is after the death of someone before there's like a catchphrase or something that they love very much and then you see it again but within the absence of that person you view it in a totally different way it highlights their absence. 05:19.498 --> 05:34.448 [SPEAKER_03]: understands feels like there's a lot of different like I think about places a lot a lot of stories a lot of movies especially I think in like have someone return to the place that set them on their journey and they're like oh this place like I have grown into the way that I experience this place 05:34.968 --> 05:49.091 [SPEAKER_03]: is different but it's interesting thing about like you said like dialogue like how can dialogue repetition feel like symmetrical because it's on one side or another and I'm kind of curious like what makes it feel like symmetry versus repetition. 05:49.111 --> 05:49.751 [SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what I mean? 05:49.811 --> 06:04.535 [SPEAKER_03]: Is it that it it's far enough away from each other or that it bookends an important moment you know as opposed to being a recurring there's like a difference between a recurring bit and a callback and I'm curious like what like what do you think actually makes those differences happen 06:05.656 --> 06:11.079 [SPEAKER_02]: Like, let me give you an example, a stupid example of a symmetrical thing. 06:11.139 --> 06:13.521 [SPEAKER_02]: Hickory degree doc, the mouse ran up the clock. 06:14.001 --> 06:18.124 [SPEAKER_02]: The clock struck one, the mouse ran down, Hickory degree doc. 06:18.144 --> 06:26.870 [SPEAKER_02]: It is completely symmetrical, but one of the things that that one does is it implies that this is something that has happened before and will continue to happen again. 06:26.890 --> 06:26.950 [SPEAKER_02]: And 06:29.473 --> 06:37.941 [SPEAKER_02]: For me, when I'm thinking about repetition, I'm thinking about there's a difference between accidental repetition and intentional repetition. 06:38.782 --> 06:47.950 [SPEAKER_02]: Again, looking at the way we are hardwired, repetition repeated sound doesn't happen in nature unless it carries information. 06:48.951 --> 06:51.093 [SPEAKER_02]: Footfalls, dripping water. 06:51.653 --> 06:54.396 [SPEAKER_02]: Those are important things to know about, and once you've identified the 06:55.977 --> 06:58.458 [SPEAKER_02]: If it's important and it's something you need, you will follow it. 06:59.018 --> 07:00.719 [SPEAKER_02]: And if it's not important, you tune it out. 07:01.279 --> 07:07.121 [SPEAKER_02]: And so when you're writing accidental repetitions, we'll often point you at something that's not important. 07:08.121 --> 07:17.264 [SPEAKER_02]: And intentional repetitions, which is what symmetry can be, will point you at something important, and draw your attention to it because 07:17.744 --> 07:19.890 [SPEAKER_02]: you're like, here's a pattern, pay attention to the pattern. 07:20.812 --> 07:25.845 [SPEAKER_02]: Ray Bradbury uses this to great effect in a number of different works. 07:27.004 --> 07:34.168 [SPEAKER_01]: One thing I'm thinking about when it comes to repetition for symmetry is that symmetry is more about structure rather than line level, right? 07:34.188 --> 07:42.792 [SPEAKER_01]: Like repetition can be like a repeated image or repeated trope, like motif or something like that, that is woven throughout, but a symmetry implies a structure. 07:42.852 --> 07:47.995 [SPEAKER_01]: That there is something that beginning in the end and then there are things also happening in the middle that kind of mirror each other. 07:48.055 --> 07:50.936 [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have to be that explicit, but I think, 07:52.137 --> 07:57.043 [SPEAKER_01]: one of the great examples of this is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which is an entirely symmetrical novel. 07:57.303 --> 08:08.376 [SPEAKER_01]: And as you move through the book, you move into different stories that once you reach the halfway point, you'll start climbing your way back out of those nested stories back to the original frame story. 08:09.036 --> 08:15.401 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you use symmetry in really explicit ways, one thing you can do with that is set reader expectations. 08:15.501 --> 08:21.426 [SPEAKER_01]: Because of that pattern matching, if you show that you are doing symmetrical things, people will begin to anticipate that. 08:21.746 --> 08:25.149 [SPEAKER_01]: And then that gives you a tool to play with reader expectation. 08:25.449 --> 08:31.194 [SPEAKER_01]: To either surprise them or satisfy them or frustrate them in different moments when you need to. 08:32.052 --> 08:52.620 [SPEAKER_03]: What you said about Cloud Atlas really made me think that part of it is that you said you move into different stories and I always think that one way that I think of symmetry occurring is when something repeats, but there is a break, so there's like one scene or place where you see where the first instance of something happens and then there's a break in which nothing happens. 08:52.640 --> 08:56.502 [SPEAKER_03]: Like in repetition, it keeps going like by nature, but then 08:56.982 --> 09:22.327 [SPEAKER_03]: you pull out like that thing is gone and then you bring it back just long enough that it's like oh we still remember it you know it still feels resonant but it's not like okay this is the 18th time I've heard this so that like that pause to give you a chance to like breathe without that element is sort of what makes the symmetry, what makes the recognition like the clever oh this thing again oh I'm almost home you know you don't recognize things 09:25.308 --> 09:32.509 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and often it's very the context in which the symmetry is presented is also often very different. 09:32.929 --> 09:41.171 [SPEAKER_02]: So back to the future, which is again a movie from last century, is beautifully, beautifully symmetrical in a lot of ways. 09:42.091 --> 09:52.313 [SPEAKER_02]: Two examples of this in which you are viewing, viewing the same thing at similar points in the book, but in the movie and wildly different ways. 09:53.033 --> 10:00.414 [SPEAKER_02]: In the first moment is when Marty and Doc are testing the delorean and the terrorist arrive. 10:01.115 --> 10:07.596 [SPEAKER_02]: And then when you get to the end of the film, the same that there's this, you see that moment again. 10:08.496 --> 10:12.597 [SPEAKER_02]: Where Marty is in a different standing at a different spot and he sees the whole thing play out. 10:13.017 --> 10:19.378 [SPEAKER_02]: When you look at where that is placed in the film, it is the same distance from the end then the first scene is from the beginning. 10:20.499 --> 10:34.189 [SPEAKER_02]: And then the other one is the photo that Marty has of his family and again you see it at the same distance from the beginning that you see it from the end when it's he shows it the second time and the second time he is disappearing from that image. 10:36.311 --> 10:52.525 [SPEAKER_02]: It creates these lines of tension that are popping periodically, and the longer they've been stretched, the more tension that releases when you hit it again, you're like, oh, know that. 10:53.518 --> 11:08.418 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and that's the kind of tool that a really, really clever cinematographer filmmaker deploys in editing bay with time codes to do a thing that 11:09.880 --> 11:19.543 [SPEAKER_04]: You're not going to notice the spacing of these scenes, the way we've assembled it, but subconsciously, it's going to make the movie better. 11:20.063 --> 11:24.164 [SPEAKER_04]: And a lot of the symmetrical tools that we employ are going to be the same way. 11:25.025 --> 11:26.925 [SPEAKER_04]: The reader won't twig to them consciously. 11:27.446 --> 11:29.926 [SPEAKER_04]: They will twig to them unconsciously. 11:30.506 --> 11:34.748 [SPEAKER_04]: And might think that it is something completely different that makes them love 11:35.428 --> 11:39.630 [SPEAKER_04]: the beautiful structure of your beginning, your middle, and your ending. 11:41.770 --> 11:52.835 [SPEAKER_04]: I was thinking earlier about Chekhov's gun and the joke that I like to tell that, you know, the whole, you know, if you're going to put a gun on the mantle, you need an act one, you need to fire an act three, Chekhov was a playwright. 11:53.535 --> 11:58.757 [SPEAKER_04]: This was, this was a note to the prop masters, don't waste money on the gun unless my place is going to use it. 11:59.537 --> 12:13.314 [SPEAKER_04]: Um, which is a funny way to think of it, but then I got the thinking about film sets and stage sets and the amount of effort that goes into constructing or renting or whatever one of the, you want to reuse it. 12:14.235 --> 12:16.518 [SPEAKER_04]: You don't want to just deploy that set one time. 12:18.280 --> 12:27.772 [SPEAKER_04]: And so for budgetary reasons, we often see symmetry to this effect in movies and in stage plays. 12:28.493 --> 12:33.599 [SPEAKER_04]: And the same sort of thing will happen, you know, if you spend a lot of time in the beginning of your story, 12:34.120 --> 12:57.819 [SPEAKER_04]: describing a setting for us, the colors of the trees and the shapes of the fruit and whatever when we come back to it at the end of the book, hey, you know what, you've already done all the heavy lifting, you can just say, yeah, it's that one place with the red, the red trees and the star fruits and we're on board and you've killed two birds with one stone, you've created a 13:02.099 --> 13:03.200 [SPEAKER_03]: You know what else has symmetry? 13:03.681 --> 13:04.522 [SPEAKER_03]: This podcast. 13:05.123 --> 13:14.617 [SPEAKER_03]: We are going to take a break and when we come back we're going to see the exact same things But slightly differently So slightly differently. 13:14.797 --> 13:16.639 [SPEAKER_02]: I want to say some of the same things we've been saying 13:19.000 --> 13:29.133 [SPEAKER_02]: one of the things that you can think about with this idea of symmetry is that you can actually think about what is the middle of the story about. 13:30.114 --> 13:37.604 [SPEAKER_02]: We spend the bulk of the novel in the middle, and so there's a book called Right Your Of Novel from the Middle by James Scott that bell. 13:37.944 --> 13:44.366 [SPEAKER_02]: and he talks about something that he calls the mirror moment, which is often not like the climax, but actually the thing that happens right in the middle of the book. 13:44.466 --> 14:03.150 [SPEAKER_02]: And I have found that when I'm working with students that if I do what I call a beginning middle-end check and read the first page, the middle page and the last page that often that middle page will let you know it will encapsulate a lot of the tones and themes of the book. 14:04.010 --> 14:08.635 [SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes you get to that middle page and you're like, what is happening here? 14:08.675 --> 14:11.317 [SPEAKER_02]: Because this seems completely unrelated to everything else. 14:11.818 --> 14:21.066 [SPEAKER_02]: But if you think about the middle of the book, and you think about the rest of the book is supporting that middle, since we spend so much time, then you can think, okay, where does my story begin? 14:21.166 --> 14:21.827 [SPEAKER_02]: Where does it end? 14:21.867 --> 14:23.969 [SPEAKER_02]: What is the symmetry that surrounds this middle? 14:25.519 --> 14:27.460 [SPEAKER_03]: That seems a very architect way. 14:27.480 --> 14:36.146 [SPEAKER_03]: I was thinking about how can both architects, people who plot and plan from the beginning and gardeners who cast seeds and see where the story grows. 14:36.626 --> 14:38.268 [SPEAKER_03]: How can they both approach symmetry? 14:38.608 --> 14:44.412 [SPEAKER_03]: Seems like if you know what your middle is and you're going, I think this scene should have it. 14:44.452 --> 14:52.257 [SPEAKER_03]: But I'm curious, if you're not someone who's plotting an advance, how do you work symmetry into your story if you didn't think you were going to do it from the very beginning? 14:54.358 --> 15:00.142 [SPEAKER_02]: One is what I call the wandering and revision path and the other is what do I have on the table. 15:01.063 --> 15:18.235 [SPEAKER_02]: So the wandering and revision path is if you think about a time that you've and this may be a me thing we have we have woods around my parents house and so sometimes you walk into the woods and you just go into the woods and there's not a path and you wander around and you define new things but eventually you find the path. 15:19.075 --> 15:21.997 [SPEAKER_02]: And once you're on the path, that path has a beginning and an end. 15:22.897 --> 15:28.980 [SPEAKER_02]: And so you can then follow the path, and you can reverse engineer your way back to the trailhead. 15:29.741 --> 15:33.103 [SPEAKER_02]: So you can wander until you figure out, oh, this is the path that I'm on. 15:33.663 --> 15:41.767 [SPEAKER_02]: Now I can retrace my steps, and instead of wandering back through the woods, I can retrace my steps, and then in revision have that symmetry. 15:43.028 --> 16:09.858 [SPEAKER_02]: The other is what are the ingredients that I have on the table, which is that you write and you find your way and then you are like, oh, I need to start wrapping this up, let me look back at the beginning and this is, you've heard me talk about when we were talking about the three quarter mark that I will often reread at the beginning of my novel and what I'm looking for among other things are those, those ingredients, those things that are already on the table that I didn't really intend to be and like, 16:10.778 --> 16:23.388 [SPEAKER_02]: big and pivotal and intentional, like, ah, look what I'm doing with this fascinating thing, but because I know how symmetry works, I can bring something back and re-contextualize it. 16:24.569 --> 16:32.896 [SPEAKER_02]: In one of the books, for instance, I have characters who have this big fight about money, and it's triggered by an argument over a bar of soap. 16:34.671 --> 16:51.496 [SPEAKER_02]: And then later in the book, there is a moment where they're having another kind of emotional thing, and she's like, it might help if you wash your face, I have some soap, and it reads totally differently, and it causes, like, they also have a different relationship to it at that point. 16:51.916 --> 16:56.257 [SPEAKER_02]: That was not something I planned, but it was like what ingredients do I have on the table? 16:57.478 --> 17:13.295 [SPEAKER_04]: I think the dichotomy between gardening your book and scattering seeds, the hardcore outlining versus discovery writing. 17:15.389 --> 17:19.492 [SPEAKER_04]: We talk about it a lot, and oh my goodness, can of worms. 17:20.333 --> 17:32.061 [SPEAKER_04]: For me, I discover you wrote more as an early writer than I do now, outlined as an early writer, less than I do now. 17:32.682 --> 17:41.628 [SPEAKER_04]: That to me does not mean that as you grow as a writer, you become more outlining what it means is that when I begin writing 17:42.989 --> 17:52.252 [SPEAKER_04]: I already have a sense of these symmetrical structures and I start putting things into the story that I know are going to look good in the mirror. 17:54.472 --> 17:58.653 [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just reflexive. 17:58.993 --> 18:11.697 [SPEAKER_04]: So can discovery writers use symmetry absolutely and the more you write, the more you're going to find that you use it either accidentally or deliberately and well, the more you write, the better you get at it. 18:12.215 --> 18:17.178 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, the thing as we've hit a few times, you know, symmetry is a fundamental pattern that our brains like. 18:17.558 --> 18:23.822 [SPEAKER_01]: And so as a result, it becomes both the easiest structure to execute in a very sophisticated structure to execute. 18:24.022 --> 18:28.565 [SPEAKER_01]: But when you're starting out, I would encourage you to lean on symmetry. 18:28.985 --> 18:35.970 [SPEAKER_01]: Don't try to do things that are very complex structurally until you feel like you have a really strong handle on what it is you're trying to accomplish because 18:36.750 --> 18:41.437 [SPEAKER_01]: your brain and your readers brains both are going to want that structure and symmetry. 18:41.537 --> 18:42.819 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's easy to lean into that. 18:43.460 --> 18:49.208 [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we've talked about doing it formally in a not-line process or discovery in a gardening way. 18:49.569 --> 18:51.472 [SPEAKER_01]: The nice thing is it works in either case. 18:51.652 --> 19:10.837 [SPEAKER_01]: because you can lean on your own desire for symmetry as a writer, as an instinctive level, which is sort of what Howard was talking about doing in early stages, as a discovery writer, or you can deliberately plan and plot it out and look for those moments in a really explicit way as you're outlining as you're putting your story structure together. 19:11.257 --> 19:13.818 [SPEAKER_01]: But what's nice about this, it's a little bit of a hack. 19:14.178 --> 19:26.410 [SPEAKER_01]: both for you as the writer and for readers because it'll satisfy them in ways that you might be struggling to reach for with more complex structures that you don't have your like both hands around yet. 19:27.450 --> 19:29.472 [SPEAKER_02]: And it doesn't have to be perfect. 19:29.512 --> 19:33.275 [SPEAKER_02]: Like I also want to reassure you that if you don't have symmetry, it's okay. 19:33.355 --> 19:34.576 [SPEAKER_02]: So let me give you an example. 19:35.517 --> 19:48.628 [SPEAKER_02]: My second novel, I worked extremely hard to have this symmetrical, this opening line, and then this callback where there's a rephrasing and repetition of the opening line. 19:49.268 --> 19:55.914 [SPEAKER_02]: And when the hard cover came out for reasons that remain unclear to me, the first line was missing from the novel. 19:56.778 --> 19:57.719 [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, good time. 19:57.939 --> 19:58.660 [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, time. 19:58.720 --> 20:00.542 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 20:00.562 --> 20:00.902 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 20:01.022 --> 20:01.723 [SPEAKER_02]: It was a whole thing. 20:03.825 --> 20:04.606 [SPEAKER_02]: And the book was fine. 20:05.547 --> 20:06.267 [SPEAKER_02]: The book was fine. 20:07.108 --> 20:09.270 [SPEAKER_02]: There wasn't a problem because that symmetry was missing. 20:09.771 --> 20:13.534 [SPEAKER_02]: So if you don't have it, don't feel like you are failing. 20:13.995 --> 20:16.617 [SPEAKER_02]: But it is an extremely useful tool. 20:18.359 --> 20:24.602 [SPEAKER_02]: One of the, in another book, and this is an example of lines that are not perfectly symmetrical. 20:25.202 --> 20:30.025 [SPEAKER_02]: The opening line of relentless moon is how many places do you call home. 20:30.505 --> 20:33.087 [SPEAKER_02]: The closing line is, hey sweet boy, I'm home. 20:33.787 --> 20:42.780 [SPEAKER_02]: The only thing that I'm repeating in that is the word home, but you still get a sense of the arc and that call back to, this is something she's been trying to find the entire time. 20:42.800 --> 20:49.590 [SPEAKER_04]: I want to come back to something that Erin asked earlier, you know, what's the difference between a callback and a running gag? 20:50.391 --> 21:01.664 [SPEAKER_04]: And for me, a callback, whether it's comedic or dramatic, often works best when it is part of something else. 21:01.905 --> 21:06.009 [SPEAKER_04]: And the something else that I love having it be a part of is a tri-fail cycle. 21:06.650 --> 21:25.359 [SPEAKER_04]: And the callback can be I failed in the same way trying something new or the callback can be I tried to do the thing again and failed in a new way, it's not necessarily a running get I mean you could have that be a running gag, you know if it happens four times in the book. 21:25.899 --> 21:32.828 [SPEAKER_04]: and the failures always escalate in the same way and the trying always goes sideways in the same sure. 21:32.848 --> 21:40.817 [SPEAKER_04]: That starts to feel like a running gag, but inherently that structure for me is about taking the tri-fail cycle. 21:41.718 --> 21:50.321 [SPEAKER_04]: and making it feel like a set of reflections of itself that remain familiar throughout the book. 21:50.341 --> 22:00.345 [SPEAKER_02]: You just made me think of something Howard, which is another thing about why symmetry works so well, and it's based on the difference between a callback and a running gag. 22:00.705 --> 22:04.647 [SPEAKER_02]: A running gag is something that you use because it was funny once it's going to be funny again. 22:05.607 --> 22:10.552 [SPEAKER_02]: And a callback is a, hey, audience, you're smart. 22:10.652 --> 22:12.634 [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to draw the connection between these two things. 22:13.134 --> 22:27.347 [SPEAKER_02]: And so these are ways of making space for the reader to join you in telling the story because in a callback or one of these symmetrical things, you're asking the reader to do some of the work. 22:28.508 --> 22:33.711 [SPEAKER_02]: and you're creating a space for them to do that so that they can draw their own inferences. 22:33.751 --> 22:39.255 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think any time you can make space for the audience that deepens their connection to the story. 22:40.497 --> 23:08.797 [SPEAKER_03]: This has been such an interesting conversation to listen to because I am pretty sure I do use symmetry but never intentionally and so it's something to think about like in my in my own work it's just not I think I'm just a less structurally minded person in a lot of ways and so I might do it instinctively but not on purpose so one more question because I just want to know more which is when are there times when breaking symmetry and not having symmetry is the way to go and like what is that actually accomplished for the reader or for the writer? 23:09.390 --> 23:11.331 [SPEAKER_04]: That's a great way to tell a joke. 23:12.231 --> 23:12.412 [SPEAKER_03]: Yep. 23:12.772 --> 23:14.132 [SPEAKER_04]: We have read it. 23:14.152 --> 23:14.733 [SPEAKER_04]: Or a horror. 23:14.833 --> 23:24.918 [SPEAKER_04]: If you are expecting one thing because of symmetric structures, and we deliver you something else, you are going to laugh, you are going to scream, you are going to try. 23:24.938 --> 23:32.061 [SPEAKER_04]: You are going to react because you were on a path, and you knew where the ending was, and that is not where we arrived. 23:32.542 --> 23:35.123 [SPEAKER_01]: So breaking symmetry, I love doing that. 23:35.403 --> 23:39.145 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's really useful tool just to disrupt your reader in one way or another. 23:39.225 --> 23:47.770 [SPEAKER_01]: That can, like I would say, before an emotional reaction, it can be to subtly unsettle them, or create a feeling of ambiguity, a lack of closure, right? 23:48.170 --> 23:55.415 [SPEAKER_01]: So, if at the end of your book, you want them to leave with an unsettled sense of things not being fully wrapped up because 23:56.355 --> 24:03.102 [SPEAKER_01]: a character didn't get to where you want them to get to or because you want to leave things open and in for the next book or something along those lines you can do that. 24:03.362 --> 24:10.328 [SPEAKER_01]: Now advanced technique, pissing off your readers, challenging thing to do, but you know when you're writing fiction, sometimes that is what you want to accomplish. 24:10.348 --> 24:20.298 [SPEAKER_01]: You're trying to accomplish giving someone an unsettled sense of a character or a scenario and you can use symmetry to set up the desire for closure and then take it away. 24:21.359 --> 24:25.903 [SPEAKER_02]: And also, this is a tool that you can use within a single scene or chapter. 24:25.923 --> 24:28.225 [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't have to be on the macro level. 24:28.265 --> 24:40.015 [SPEAKER_02]: It can also be something that you do, like if on the simplest thing, if two people walk into a room, and only one person walks out, that is no longer symmetrical, you know, not purely. 24:40.456 --> 24:47.222 [SPEAKER_02]: Or if two people walk into a room, and then they walk out, and then next scene, two people walk in, they walk out, and then next scene, two people walk in, and they do not walk out. 24:47.962 --> 24:55.927 [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's breaking up the symmetry that symmetry symmetrical pattern that you've set up, and it's like, oh, they don't get out safely, but I thought they would. 24:55.947 --> 24:57.268 [SPEAKER_03]: Wow. 24:58.249 --> 24:59.810 [SPEAKER_03]: Now I'm scared to walk into a room with you. 25:01.151 --> 25:01.511 [SPEAKER_03]: It's fine. 25:02.131 --> 25:02.912 [SPEAKER_03]: It's all mine, Aaron. 25:02.932 --> 25:06.074 [SPEAKER_04]: That's the thing that you should have learned years ago. 25:06.094 --> 25:06.394 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 25:06.954 --> 25:13.758 [SPEAKER_03]: That's my homework, but since you all are far away from us, your homework is to, I love the thought of what's on the table. 25:13.838 --> 25:15.940 [SPEAKER_03]: So, I'm going to challenge you to do two different things. 25:16.480 --> 25:24.722 [SPEAKER_03]: One is to go back to the beginning of a piece or just before a climactic scene, one or the other, and look at what you have on the table. 25:25.022 --> 25:26.343 [SPEAKER_03]: What are the interesting images? 25:26.423 --> 25:28.463 [SPEAKER_03]: What are the lines of dialogue? 25:28.483 --> 25:29.384 [SPEAKER_03]: What are the places? 25:29.724 --> 25:32.625 [SPEAKER_03]: And then look to whatever the symmetrical opposite would be. 25:32.645 --> 25:40.967 [SPEAKER_03]: So if you're at the beginning, look at the end, if you're at one side of a climax, look at the other side, and see if there are things from that that you can actually take and put in the scene. 25:41.707 --> 25:54.237 [SPEAKER_03]: and slash or you can do the opposite, which is to look at the end and look at if there are things that you have put on the table in the end of the story or after a climax and if you want to go back and see those at the beginning. 25:54.497 --> 25:57.520 [SPEAKER_03]: So come at it from either way, whichever one works best for you. 25:58.581 --> 26:00.222 [SPEAKER_02]: This has been writing excuses. 26:00.682 --> 26:01.803 [SPEAKER_02]: You're out of excuses. 26:02.304 --> 26:03.685 [SPEAKER_02]: Now this is writing excuses. 26:06.499 --> 26:10.162 [SPEAKER_02]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. 26:10.722 --> 26:16.466 [SPEAKER_02]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal, Dong Wan Song, Erin Roberts, and Howard Taylor. 26:17.007 --> 26:23.031 [SPEAKER_02]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds. 26:23.632 --> 26:25.954 [SPEAKER_02]: For more information, visit writing excuses.com.