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Season 21, episode 3.

This is writing excuses.

Deconstructing plots.

I'm Mary Robinette.

I'm Don Juan.

I'm Erin.

And we are going to be talking about the other big thread that we're going to be running through the whole year.

So deconstructing plots.

What does that even mean?

There's this thing that you'll see with food where this is a deconstructing plots. What does that even mean? There's this thing that you'll see with food where they're like, this is a deconstructed peanut butter sandwich where they get into like what the essence of things are.

So I've been thinking a lot about like what the salt, fat, acid heat of plot structure is.

And what we're going to be doing this year is we are going to be digging into a bunch of different plot structures, looking at why they work, and then looking at the individual components of things that go into story.

So, because, I mean, there are so many plot structures out there, but, you know, flashing back to our lower metaphors, they're just recipes.

So what are the underlying principles that they all have in common that lead us to things like the inciting incident or the dark night of the soul?

Like, what are those things?

I'm really excited for this season, and as soon as you pitched it, I was like very in on it. And I'm in on it

for a contrary reason because I don't really believe in plot structure. And so, you know,

I think there's a thing about doing this podcast and about teaching, which is whenever I'm asked

to teach a class or we're talking about the seasons, I love doing it about something I don't really understand, which is whenever I'm asked to teach a class or we're talking about the seasons, I love doing it

...