19.18: How to Build Fictional Economies
Writing Excuses
Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sometimes we know the action and themes of your story, but you don’t know how to build an economy that supports those. Well today, we explain just how to do that! What are some questions you can ask yourself about the worth of certain goods and services in the world you’re building? What would a post-scarcity world look like and ask of your characters and how would it shape their wants? We loved recording this episode, it brought up so many interesting questions for us, and we hope it does the same for you!
Thing of the Week:
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Homework:
Come up with three catch phrases that someone who grew up in your economy would know. For example the difference between “There ain't no such thing as a free lunch” vs. “See it, fix it.”
A Reminder!
That starting next week (May 12th!), we'll be focusing on Worldbuilding and reading A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. If you’re going to buy this book, we have this bookshop link available for you to do so! (If not, go support your local library!) https://bookshop.org/lists/close-readings-season-19
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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar, Mary Robinette Kowal, and DongWon Song. 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 is the place where Black is the main character, where we dive into something new like the latest season of them, The Scare, and the award-winning American fiction. |
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| 0:45.0 | Hey listeners, we want your input on season 20, |
| 0:48.0 | which I have to be honest does not sound like a real number. |
| 0:51.0 | What elements of the craft do you want us to talk about? What episode |
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| 1:02.0 | with? After 20 seasons we've talked about a lot. What element of writing do you wish we'd |
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| 1:17.0 | Season 19 episode 18. |
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