19.12: A Close Reading on Voice - Red's Perspective - Muscular Prose
Writing Excuses
Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2024
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, we are doing a very close read of Red's opening narration and how Red’s voice communicates both character and world in an effective and efficient way. We read several sections aloud and dive into what each sensory detail is doing. Also Mary Robinette talks about what she thinks is the most effective way to draw your readers attention to something.
Thing of the Week: Planet Crafter
Homework: Take a sentence from your work in progress and rewrite it to adjust the age of the character to make them a child. Do it again to make them from a different region. And again to give them a different profession.
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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. |
| 0:05.6 | If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit |
| 0:08.9 | www.patreon.com slash writing excuses. |
| 0:15.0 | Season 19, episode 12. |
| 0:20.0 | This is writing excuses. |
| 0:22.0 | A close reading on voice, |
| 0:24.0 | Reds perspective, muscular prose. |
| 0:26.0 | 15 minutes long. |
| 0:27.0 | Because you're in a hurry. |
| 0:28.0 | And we're not that smart. |
| 0:30.0 | I'm Mary Robinette. |
| 0:32.0 | I'm Don Juan. I'm Erin. I'm Mary Robinette I'm Don Juan I'm Aaron I'm Howard. We're going to be talking about muscular |
| 0:36.4 | prose which is one of my favorite things. One of the things that I want us to start with is actually listening to the first three paragraphs of Time War. |
| 0:50.5 | And the reason we're going to dive into this is that they are doing so much heavy lifting in |
| 0:56.1 | communicating both character and world through the language and choices that they're making here. |
| 1:02.8 | So, when red winds, she stands alone. |
| 1:08.3 | Blood slicks her hair. |
| 1:10.7 | She breathes out steam in the last night of this dying world. |
| 1:15.0 | That was fun, she thinks. But the thought sowers in the framing. |
| 1:20.0 | It was clean at least. Climb up times threads into the past and make sure no one survives this battle to muddle the futures her agencies arranged |
| 1:30.6 | The futures in which her agency rules, in which red herself is possible. |
| 1:36.2 | She's come to not this strand of history and sear it until it melts. |
... |
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