13.31: Learning to Listen as a Writer
Writing Excuses
Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2018
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"Write what you know" gets misapplied a lot. In this episode we'll talk about how to know things by listening well. In particular, we're looking at writing interesting characters by listening to real people.
We also talk about the more formal act of interviewing people¹, and how to deal with the attendant complexities.
Liner Notes: Mary references her interviewing of rocket scientists and astronauts, which we just talked about last week. When this episode was recorded the JPL trip was still in our future, and was "will have been" extremely cool.
Comment Notes: The audio file wasn't correctly linked until Tuesday. The irony of the our "how to listen" episode having exactly zero "listen" buttons is not lost on anyone.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and engineered by Alex Jackson. Their fine work was obscured from public view by the careless hands of Howard Tayler.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This year my family will be having our 67th annual Christmas Eve dinner. |
| 0:04.8 | It's a menu passed down from my grandmother through my mom to me. |
| 0:08.8 | The entire family shows up. |
| 0:11.8 | I'm talking fourth cousins once removed and this is not an |
| 0:15.1 | exaggeration which means that during the lead up I don't have time to menu plan or |
| 0:20.0 | cook anything else. That's when I turn to prepared meals like Factor, America's |
| 0:26.0 | number one ready-to-eat meal delivery service. Factor can help you eat well for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with chef-prepared, dietition approved, ready-to-eat meals delivered straight to your door. |
| 0:37.0 | It allows me to save time and not eat garbage while tackling all my holiday to-do's. |
| 0:42.0 | So if you want to cross meal prepping... while tackling all my holiday to-do's. |
| 0:42.6 | So if you want to cross meal prepping off your list |
| 0:45.8 | this holiday season, consider factor. |
| 0:48.4 | You can skip the meal planning, grocery shopping, |
| 0:50.9 | shopping, shopping, prepping, and cleaning up, and get factors fresh never frozen meals delivered |
| 0:55.8 | to your door. |
| 0:56.8 | They're ready in just two minutes, which my dad says is the appropriate amount of time to cook |
| 1:01.4 | a meal. |
| 1:02.4 | He has no idea. The point is, all you have to do is heat and enjoy. |
| 1:07.0 | And if you're trying to squeeze writing into the holiday press, it might be useful to know that Factor isn't just for dinner. |
| 1:15.1 | Count on extra convenience any time of the day with an assortment of 55-plus add-ons to suit various |
| 1:20.8 | preferences and tastes. |
| 1:22.8 | So you can carve out some writing time in the morning by choosing quick breakfast items, |
| 1:27.2 | lunch to go, grab and go snacks, or ready to eat cold-pressed juices, shakes, and smoothies. |
... |
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