Working: A Master Class in Character Description

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4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, host Ronald Young Jr. talks to writer Emma Copley Eisenberg about her new novel Housemates, which features a burgeoning friendship between two artists who decide to road trip across Pennsylvania together. In the interview, Emma explains how her nonfiction writing and her interest in history influenced this new work of fiction. She also talks about her “feast or famine” approach to productivity, her desire to document her community, and her belief that physical descriptions of people are crucial to good fiction writing. After the interview, Ronald and co-host June Thomas ponder why the most difficult projects can be the most exciting. They also talk about how rare it is to see good depictions of fat people in fiction. In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Emma talks about a toxic mentor character in Housemates and why it’s so troubling when teachers of the arts abuse their positions of power. Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pets bring so much joy from those happy greetings at the door to the warm
0:05.2	cuddles on the sofa so give a little love back with dental life from Purina a
0:10.6	range of delicious chews made for dogs and tasty snacks for cats that help clean and support your pets teeth and gums.
0:18.5	Essential for their overall well-being and a happy healthy life they give you plenty of smiles so look after
0:25.8	theirs with dental life pick up dental life in the pet food aisle
0:29.9	AI might be the most important innovation ever. It's storming every industry with
0:34.8	literally billions being invested, so buckle up. The problem is that AI needs the
0:39.6	right data and a lot of speed and processing power.
0:42.6	So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control?
0:45.8	Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud,
0:48.7	Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI.
0:51.6	OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, and application development with AI embedded across it all.
0:58.0	And Oracle Sovereign Cloud helps you address your requirements for location, access and data residency.
1:03.2	OCI provides blazing fast speeds for AI's demanding workloads and in the cloud
1:08.1	when you pay by the minute, speed matters and of course nobody does data better than Oracle.
1:13.7	If you want OCI to help you do more and spend less like Uber, the Premier League and
1:18.3	Oracle Redball Racing, take a free test drive at oracle.com
1:21.6	com slash bandwidth. That's oracle.com slash bandwidth.
1:23.0	That's oracle.com slash bandwidth. fiction writing 101 is like you pick a unique detail of someone's appearance.
1:42.9	Like you don't describe the whole thing
1:44.3	and you definitely don't comment on like
1:46.0	if they're fat or thin or tall or whatever, you know,
	...

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