Episode 90: Transcript
Episode: 90: How to Use Research to Make Your Fiction Even More Irresistible
Transcription by Keffy
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about the meaning of science fiction and the entire universe, past, present and future, and our missing socks, and our cats, and just pretty much everything.
Annalee: [00:00:11] And some science.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:13] And some science. I'm Charlie Jane Anders, I'm the author of Victories Greater Than Death, a young adult space opera, and also the upcoming book, Never Say You Can't Survive, which is kind of what we're gonna be talking about in this episode.
Annalee: [00:00:25] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm the author of a recent book about archaeology called Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:33] In this episode, we're gonna be talking about writing, and we're going to talk about how to do research and how to make your stories more accurate. And you know, the details matter. The good news is, research can be super fun. You get to learn new things. You get to talk to people, and find out about experiences you've never had. Some people go out and shoot guns or ride horses for research. So, in this episode, we're going to talk about how to write a made up story, but keep it real. And in the second half, we'll be talking about my new book that I mentioned before, and how you can keep dreaming up fictional worlds, when the real world is kind of garbage. Let's go down the research hole.
[00:01:15] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.
Annalee: [00:01:40] Okay, so let's start with the basics. Why do we need to do research if we're just making up a fictional story?
Charlie Jane: [00:01:48] I think there's a bunch of answers to that and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, too. I think that suspension of disbelief is a big deal. And I always say that as a writer, you need to have a suspension of disbelief as you're writing. And then the reader needs to have a suspension of disbelief. And these little details can just throw you out of the story. They can make it harder for you to buy into the reality of the world in the story. The little tiny stuff can just kind of mess up that kind of trance that you want to go into when your reading, if you're like, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense. It just kind of screws things up for you. I mean, what do you think?
Annalee: [00:02:22] Yeah, I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking about how sometimes if I'm reading a piece of fiction, or even nonfiction, where somebody talks about Neanderthals, and they say, “That guy is such a Neanderthal,” and they mean someone who's stupid or primitive, I absolutely get thrown out of the story, because I've written a lot about the true history of who the Neanderthals actually were. And of course, they were human beings that like, lived at the same time as Homo saiens and were interbreeding with Homo sapiens, and were making art and culture.
[00:02:56] That’s just a weird knee jerk thing that I have. But I know we all have things like that. We all have things where there's a trigger word or a trigger topic where if someone gets it wrong, it just, it does what you're saying, it throws you out of the story, it prevents you from suspending your disbelief, because you're like, I just know that's wrong and it's bugging me. And that's, as a writer, the kind of thing that I really want to avoid with research is like, I always say to people, I'm interviewing, I just want this section of the book to not cause, say, geologists to smack their forehead and be like, oh, couldn't they have realized that this isn't how earthquakes work or whatever. So it's really, it's very, very important to keep the trance going.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:41] Yeah. And I think that that's a big deal as well, that, if you're writing science fiction, or if you're writing anything where science is a factor in any way, you have to get the science right, because, or to the best of your ability, because otherwise it's going to throw people out of the story. And it's going to make the story just less cool if the science is wrong, or inaccurate, or just kind of lazy and cruddy.
Annalee: [00:04:01] And it’s not just science, right? Like it's almost anything.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:04] Right.
Annalee: [00:04:05] Because it could be like, oh, but that's not how university meetings work right when you're… Or, I just started watching the show Mythic Quest, which is delightful. But the ways—
Charlie Jane: [00:04:17] Yeah, I’ve heard good things about it.
Annalee: [00:04:16] It’s fun. But the way that they portray the inner circle of the game designers is that there's a guy who's just the money guy, and he's in charge of literally everything in the game that's for sale. And it's sort of, it's just a simplification, but it kind of threw me out of the narrative, because I'm like, well, they would have had programmers who were programming the part of the game where people buy things. It’s not like a money guy drops in and like writes all that code on the site. So little things like that can actually kind of be a problem.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:50] Yeah. And you know, on the positive side, in terms of not just not throwing people out of the story, the more there's rich details and it kind of it feels kind of like you could actually go to a place and do a thing, the more immersive it is. I always think that sense of place is really important and the place where your story takes place should feel like a character in the story, which often requires a lot of research. And I always think about, the example I always use is like these Robert B. Parker mystery novels, the Spenser For Hire books, which all take place in Boston, a place where Robert B. Parker lived. And the little details of going through Boston Common and seeing the little duckling statues and all the places that Spenser goes in Boston, they feel like real places, because they are and because Robert B. Parker was hanging out there. And there's one novel he wrote early on where Spencer goes to London, and you can just tell that he had a guidebook. He had like, The Lonely Planet guide, or A-Zed, or whatever. And he was just like, this looks like a place in London, I'll just have him go here. And it just, it feels fake, it feels like you're not getting sucked in the way you normally would in those books because it's not his place.
[00:05:56] So I feel like that sense of, you could really do this, you could really go there, is really important. And then on the other side, when you're dealing with a marginalized group, if you're dealing with people of color, or disabled people, or queer people, or other marginalized groups, if you get the details wrong, if you kind of rely on what you saw in some movie or something, you could actually hurt a lot of people. You could reproduce stereotypes and negative portrayals that actually cause real harm in the real world. So that's another reason why you have to do research.
[00:06:26] So Annalee, I know you do a lot of research in your fiction. When do you start doing research? At what point in the writing process do you begin doing research?
Annalee: [00:06:35] I was thinking a lot about this, when we started planning this episode, because I often feel guilty about how I do research, which is because I do research the whole time. Like before I start, I often do some—
Charlie Jane: [00:06:47] That’s terrible.
Annalee: [00:06:48] I know.
Charlie Jane: [00:06:49] That’s so terrible, Annalee.
Annalee: [00:06:51] I'm going to… I’m going to…
Charlie Jane: [00:06:52] How dare you do research the entire—
Annalee: [00:06:53] I’m going to the writer pit where they just, like…
Charlie Jane: [00:06:55] I don't even understand why you feel guilty, though.
Annalee: [00:06:57] Toss little bones to me and I cry.
Charlie Jane: [00:07:00] I mean, I’ve been in the writer pit. There's actually a really nice cafeteria in the writer pit—
Annalee: [00:07:04] Is there?
Charlie Jane: [00:07:04] And you can get curly fries.
Annalee: [00:07:05] Oh, curly fries.
Charlie Jane: [00:07:07] There's curly fries in writer pit. Don’t worry.
Annalee: [00:07:08] I like how we’re world-building the pit.
Charlie Jane: [00:07:10] We’re world-building the writer pit. But why do you feel guilty? I don't get it.
Annalee: [00:07:13] I think because I'm trained as a journalist. And as a journalist, of course, I want to do all my research first before I start writing, because you don't want to… As a journalist, you need to know all the facts and not be like, oh, I uncovered a fact three-quarters of the way through, woopsie. Or, if you, like Naomi Wolf, and it's like, oh, after the book was published, I discovered a key fact that invalidates my entire thesis about homosexuality in the 19th century. But whatever.
[00:07:41] My point is that as when I'm doing fiction, usually I start out by doing a chunk of research. In the case of the book that I just finished, which is about terraforming, I did a lot of talking to scientists about things like how do you build an atmosphere? What is plate tectonics and how does it work? If you were able to invent a machine that would produce atmosphere, what would it do? That kind of stuff.
Charlie Jane: [00:08:04] Awesome.
Annalee: [00:08:04] But then… it was super, super fun. And of course, the scientists who are willing to talk to you about that stuff are always the most fun, interesting people, because they're the ones who are willing to kind of go off the beaten, track and speculate. And then usually what happens is that about halfway through the book, I realize there's a bunch of stuff I don't know. And then I'll go and do a new set of interviews. And those are usually much more character focused than they are world focused, because I've usually kind of built the world, but I still need to understand characters. And so that might mean doing sensitivity interviews with people—
Charlie Jane: [00:08:40] Right.
Annalee: [00:08:40] —who can give me feedback on characters who are marginalized characters, or themes that come from marginalized communities.
[00:08:49] But also little cleanup stuff. Like, in the Terraformers, there's a river that's a really important part of the book. And about halfway through writing the book, I was like, I don't know shit about rivers. How do rivers work? So I called up an expert in rivers, and I was like, where do rivers come from?
Charlie Jane: [00:09:06] There's a faucet.
Annalee: [00:09:07] It turns out it's a super complicated question, and nobody really knows. So when do you start doing research?
Charlie Jane: [00:09:15] Like you, I do research throughout the process like I start before I start writing.
Annalee: [00:09:18] Oh, so you and I are in the writer’s pit together.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:21] But unlike you, I don't feel guilty for doing that.
Annalee: [00:09:23] Oh, so you’re not in the writer’s pit.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:24] I mean, they started to put me in the writers pit and I was like, you know what?
Annalee: [00:09:28] That’s why I had to eat—
Charlie Jane: [00:09:29] I’ll go down and have the curly fries and then I’m going to get out.
Annalee: [00:09:29] Only the small curly fries. Oh, okay. So you came down, tourist.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:33] I came down, had some curly fries, and then I came out again, because I was like, you know what? I don’t feel bad about this.
Annalee: [00:09:37] I think we’re both just hungry.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:39] We are. Now I really want curly fries.
[00:09:42] By the way, so, I will definitely start doing research usually before I start writing, depending on what the topic is, and depending on how much science or how much cultural stuff that I'm unfamiliar with, I need to embed in the story. I will definitely start doing research first, but I will also not know until I'm in the middle of writing the thing what I need to research. Oftentimes I'll be like, okay, well, I know that there's this and I know that I need to understand this before I can write a single word. Because otherwise, I'm just gonna be flailing around. But my philosophy in general is that I'm a lazy person. And I don't want to do work that I don't have to do. And so if it's like, well, I might or might not need to know about that, I'll wait until I know, I need to know about it.
[00:10:24] So, while I'm writing, I'll be in the middle of writing a first draft, and I'll be like, okay, I got to a part where they're going to a place where this happens. And I don't know anything about this. So I got to stop, find out about this thing that I don't know anything about, and then keep going. Also, oftentimes, it's the revision process. I'll have things where I've sketched something in and I'm like, well, they do this thing and this is how I think it probably happens. Or, there's a scientific thing and this is kind of what I think it is. And then afterwards, I will just go to scientists or experts, or other people and just be like, hey, I put this kind of half-assed thing in my book, can you make it help me make it like, three-quarters assed instead?
[00:11:04] And I love the thing that you know, when I was at your book event for Future of Another Timeline in LA, you had Sean Carroll there, the physicist who serves as an expert for movies and other productions. And he'd worked on the time travel in Avengers: Endgame. And he was talking about what he tells other physicists, which is when someone who's making a movie or writing a book, or whatever comes to you and says, this thing happens in the movie help me make it plausible. You don't respond oh, that could never happen. You treat it like evidence. You treat it like a piece of scientific evidence and you're like, what explanation can I come up with for this phenomena that has been observed in nature. And so, I love that.
[00:11:40] So I will just shamelessly go to scientists and say this completely cuckoo thing happens in my book, please help me to come up with a scientific explanation for it. But sometimes, like, for example, my story, “The Time Travel Club,” I had this theory about time travel. And before I wrote a single word, I spent hours and hours with Dr. Dave Goldberg, who used to write the astrophysicist column for Io9, coming up with like, a really fleshed out mechanism for that, which required me to do a ton of trigonometry. And that was before I knew who the characters were, or what the story was, or anything, I just needed to get that figured out first. So it really depends. But I will, you know, revision, even after the book is pretty much done, I'll go back and just be like, okay, I need to kick the tires on stuff a little bit more. It's all about just, I keep nudging it and making sure it makes sense.
Annalee: [00:12:29] Yeah, that's definitely my experience is that, you get more information, and then I've definitely had research completely change the way that I'm describing something in a book or completely change, actually, even like a plot detail, for example.
[00:12:46] So how do you do your research? We've been talking about kind of interviewing people and stuff like that, but what other stuff have you done to teach yourself about things that are going to be in your stories?
Charlie Jane: [00:12:55] It's a whole bunch of different stuff. It can include traveling to places, it can include learning about new cultures. For my YA trilogy, I learned a lot about life in Brazil. And I also have been talking to people about India, because one of my characters from is from India. And just getting that first person perspective on stuff that isn't my own experience is really important to do.
[00:13:20] And if you do support us on Patreon, in next week's audio extra, you can hear more about how I learned Portuguese and discovered more about Brazilian culture.
[00:13:28] You can do actual academic research, you can read papers, I read scientific papers sometimes. And then I'll talk to experts about them. I'll talk to scientists. It’s amazing. I used to be scared to like bug scientists about my silly stories, because I was like, they're so busy and my stories are so ridiculous. And I don't want to waste their time. But I found out that scientists are really happy to talk to science fiction authors—
Annalee: [00:13:53] Well, some scientists.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:56] Well, some. A lot. A surprising number of scientists are happy to just give you 15-20 minutes of their time. Partly because it's fun for them, because they get to kind of step away from like the rigors of their main job. But also because that 15 or 20 minutes that they spend with you talking through this thing, might save them hours down the line of telling people. No, that's not how it works. That book you read was wrong. Oh, it got made into a movie. I mean, obviously, that hasn't happened for me yet. But one day, it might and if I'm not careful, I could be spreading scientific misinformation far and wide for years to come and they can be spending hours having to debunk it and it's way more efficient for them.
[00:14:39] Yeah. So what do you do? Tell me more about what you do for research.
Annalee: [00:14:40] A lot of the same stuff that we've been talking about, certainly interviews. I've, for my journalism, of course, for the book that I just did, Four Lost Cities, I traveled all over the world visiting archaeological sites, and I dragged you along to some of them and if you want to know more about that, you can listen to the episode that we did about lost cities.
[00:14:59] When I was working on Future of Another Timeline, which is about a fictional punk band, I listened to a lot of punk rock from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:07] That have been hard.
Annalee: [00:15:08] Yeah, and I mean, it was… it was not at all hard, I had a whole playlist. But there were a lot of women-led punk bands that I didn't know about. And of course, that's what kind of my book is about, is how these groups that are led by women get forgotten or get written out of the timeline. And so I did a lot of just hunting around on YouTube for recordings of concerts from the ‘70s and ‘80s. And documentaries about punk from that era. So that was really fun.
[00:15:38] And then there's always just trying to experiment with things that actually happened in your book. For my book, The Terraformers, there's a lot of characters who are adult who are non-human animals. And I tried to spend some time with some of the non-human animals that are in the story. I mean, I have a cat who lives with me, so that's easy. But I did make an effort to try to like visit with some cows and see how cows look. I read a lot and watched a lot of YouTube videos about cow facial expressions. In our audio extra coming next week, I talk a little bit about moose, because there's a major moose character. So yeah, I think a lot of it is just getting out into the world and incorporating stuff that you are experiencing in the world, and you incorporate it into your writing in a tactile way. And it really builds stuff out.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:28] Yeah, and those sensory details really matter. Because, again, the thing about getting into a trance, and getting swept up in the story. A lot of it is you want to have something that feels like the texture of lived experience that’s not just facts. I hate it when I'm reading a piece of fiction that it's just like, I did all this research, and I am now going to vomit it onto the page for you. Cough-AnneRice-Cough.
Annalee: [00:16:50] Oh, yeah. Anne Rice at least did a little travel to Europe.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:54] No, but I mean, I've read some Anne Rice books, where it's like, here is all the research I did.
Annalee: [00:16:57] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:58] Here’s three pages of like—
Annalee: [00:16:59] You want it to feel sensory, not sort of like an info dump.
Charlie Jane: [00:17:03] Anne Rice wrote a Wikipedia page, basically.
Annalee: [00:17:05] Yeah, when I was working on Autonomous, my first novel, there's a section of that book that's set in Casablanca. And I only knew about Casablanca from movies and from tourism stuff online, which always emphasizes the old city. But this was set in the future. And so I was like, okay, I have to go to Casablanca, and see what all of the new development in the city looks like. And I'm so grateful that I did, because there was just a lot of stuff happening there that really nobody was talking about in the Western media, including massive luxury apartment complexes that were being built and whole areas of town that were being gentrified, that I wouldn't have known about if I hadn't gone there and just walked around.
Charlie Jane: [00:17:48] Yeah, it's so amazing that you got to do that, I'm actually really jealous that you were able to do that.
[00:17:52] And so let's talk about another aspect of research, which is, once you've got a final, more or less final version of the book, you still have to kick the tires. And one of the things that you do for research that I think is important to think of as a research thing is, you hire one or more sensitivity readers.
Annalee: [00:18:10] Yeah, that's right. And I think that it's really important for people to think about sensitivity reads as just a part of the research process. It's about contacting people who are part of groups that you're writing about, whether those are groups of scientists or groups of marginalized people, and you have to pay them because this is a job they're doing. They're not doing it because they're your pal.
Charlie Jane: [00:18:33] I think the ideal situation I've had with sensitivity readers is where they're my pal and I pay them. I don't think that those two things are mutually exclusive.
Annalee: [00:18:40] Yeah and I think it's important that it should be a professional relationship. And maybe not ask your friends to do it. I mean, sure, ask your friends if you want, but also—
Charlie Jane: [00:18:47] If they’re professional sensitivity readers.
Annalee: [00:18:49] Right, but also just showing it to one person from whatever group it is that you're writing about, doesn't necessarily give you the full picture.
Charlie Jane: [00:18:58] No.
Annalee: [00:18:58] And so I think it's nice to have someone who you know and trust but who maybe you don't have a personal relationship with who's like someone who you have a professional relationship with who won't feel like they're hurting your feelings if they're like, actually, no.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:12] Yeah, I mean, I think it's complicated, but I think there are people who are professional sensitivity readers. It is a job, it's a skill.
Annalee: [00:19:18] That’s right.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:19] The other thing I'd say is don't treat your sensitivity readers like human shields don't like use them… If people object afterwards to something in your book, don’t be like, well, so and so said it was okay. Or don't throw them under the bus or whatever.
Annalee: [00:19:29] Yeah, or don’t use it… even if you don't invoke their name, don't say like, but we showed it to a person and they said it was fine, you know. One of the little sayings that you often see in the foreword, or prologue of a book is someone will say, thank you so much to all these people who helped, all faults are my own.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:47] Right, right.
Annalee: [00:19:48] And I think that's the right attitude.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:49] Absolutely. And that goes for all research. Like, you do your best, you try to make it as real and grounded as possible, but you're gonna make mistakes and that's on you. It's just part of the game.
[00:20:01] So, finally we want our fiction to be grounded in reality, but what if the real world just stresses you out a lot and it's just too much to handle and you're like, I don't want all these realistic details in my fiction because it's just gonna stress me out because the real world is garbage.
Annalee: [00:20:18] Yeah, I think that's a huge question. It's almost like someone should write a book about it.
[00:20:23] So when we come back from the break, we're going to talk about Charlie Jane's book that's all about how to write when times are tough.
[00:20:29] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.
Annalee: [00:20:34] Today I want to tell you about another podcast you might love. Gender Reveal is a weekly show that tries to get a little bit closer to understanding what the heck gender really is. Each week, host Tuck Woodstock chats with a different trans artist, author, or activist about the role of gender plays in their work and their lives. Past guests include Torrey Peters, Gaby Dunn, Mauree Turner, and Sam Sanders.
[00:21:00] Tuck also answers listener advice questions and breaks down current events in the “this week in gender” segment. Find Gender Reveal, and reveal your own gender at genderpodcast.com or wherever you get this podcast.
[00:21:13] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.
Annalee: [00:21:17] Alright, so we're back. And Charlie Jane, tell us about this new book that's coming out this month from you.
Charlie Jane: [00:21:23] The book is called Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories. And I should acknowledge that Never Say You Can't Survive is the title of an incredible Curtis Mayfield album, which has been a real inspiration to me. And it was the title of a talk that I started giving back in 2017. And it just kind of stuck as the title of this book. But I want to shout out Curtis Mayfield for sure.
Annalee: [00:21:44] Yeah, no, it's important to always shout out your musical loves and inspirations.
Charlie Jane: [00:21:50] Yeah, for sure.
Annalee: [00:21:51] And, Curtis Mayfield rocks. So, here's the thing. A lot of people have been having a really hard time writing, especially during the pandemic, but also during the times of political tumult during the Trump Administration. Lots of people have been talking about the fact that like, yeah, I used to write 1000 words a day. And now I can only write 200, or whatever. Or if you're John Scalzi, he used to write I think, 5000 words a day. And then he could only write part of that, and I was just like, shut up, Scalzi.
[00:22:20] So the question is, I mean, all love to him. But that's just too much writing. So, how do you keep being playful and inventing stuff, and creating your own worlds when everything around you is literally on fire?
Charlie Jane: [00:22:33] Yeah, I mean, this is a thing I talk a lot about in the book. And I think it's really challenging. I think that it's easy to say, as I do in the book that you can comfort yourself, you can kind of build a protective cocoon around yourself by making up imaginary worlds. But it's really hard to do that when the real world is demanding your attention. And there's all this doom scrolling to do and all this terrible news and there’s a new outrage every 30 seconds. And it's just like, people you know and love are getting hurt by these messed up situations that are happening. It's really hard to pull away from that. And I think that you have to give yourself a little bit of a break and just kind of acknowledge that it's hard, first of all. And then also just kind of don't think of it as anything where you're putting pressure on yourself. Don't think of it as a thing where you have to write X, Y or Z. Don't force yourself to write the thing that you think you should be writing rather than, I think that if you just kind of clear a space and kind of let your imagination run free, there are going to be stories that you want to tell. And those stories might be kind of fun and playful and escapist and kind of taking you away from this terrible world. Or they might be confronting the terribleness head on, or they might be a little bit of both. They might be fun and escapist, but with a real world aspect to them.
[00:23:49] But I had so many conversations the last few years where people would be like, well, I'm supposed to be writing this dystopian vampire novel, but the only thing I want to write is a book about magical princesses at a dancing school who are eating cakes. And it's like, just write your magical princesses at a dancing school eating cakes book and find ways to kind of get away from the kind of constant torrent of bad news and stuff. Like, taking a walk or just climbing in bed with a blank notebook and leaving the internet behind. But find ways to kind of get some space away from it. And just really write the story that's living in your heart right now that you can get lost in.
[00:24:34] Because that's really the point of what I'm talking about in the book is that if you can do that, you can get lost in your story that you're making up and you can kind of create your own fictional world where you control everything, you kind of make the rules, you're kind of able to frame the story in the way that makes sense to you and that makes you feel safe and like you're able to kind of talk about stuff.
[00:24:55] And you can start working on hearing your characters voices in your head because once your characters feel like living, breathing people who have their own stuff going on, then it gets much easier. Then it’s not just about like, I have to create this thing and I don't even know where to start and everything is bad. You have these fictional people who are living in your head, who are maybe kind of bouncing up and down when you're thinking about other stuff. And you’re like, oh, I just thought of something that this character could do and you just start getting swept up in their story and their adventures.
[00:25:26] The other thing I talk a lot about in the book is, allow yourself to abandon projects. Allow yourself to… in general, don't punish yourself, first off. But especially if you start writing a thing, and it's not clicking, and you're like, well, I have to try and write something else. Don't be like, I failed to write this thing. Be like, okay, well, I tried that. It didn't work out. I'm gonna try something else. There's like a million story ideas. And there's a million things that could be writing. I'm just gonna write the thing that I'm having fun writing right now and that could be a different thing on different days. Or just write fanfic. Write fanfic, write something goofy and silly that you only show to two of your friends. Just write whatever is going to make you feel happy and safe in this terrible, terrible time.
Annalee: [00:26:06] Yeah, I love what you were saying about giving yourself permission to abandon a writing project, or it isn't even abandoning, give yourself permission to write what you want to write and what you feel like writing. And if that means setting aside something that you're working on and turning towards something totally different, you're still writing and you're still exercising that muscle, and you're probably unconsciously thinking about the other thing that you've kind of put on a back burner. And I feel like, we have all these really negative ways of talking about that stuff, right? Like, abandoning, putting it on the back burner, setting it aside. It's, like, all of these are your stories. You're working on all of them. Some of them, you're gonna work on really slowly, some of you're gonna work on really fast. It's just how storytelling works. Not every story comes out exactly the way that you're hoping.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:56] Yeah, and there's actually a metaphor I use in the book that's like, basically, think of it as going on a lot of first dates. You go on a first date, maybe you have a nice time, maybe you're just like, I can't wait to get away from this person. Maybe it's like, oh, that was a nice first date but I don't want there to be a second date. There’s a million story ideas out there, just keep swiping left until you find the right one that you want to swipe right on.
Annalee: [00:27:18] Exactly. Yeah, I always think of it as scientific experiments where it's like, do might do a thousand of them before you have the right catalyzing reaction.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:26] For sure.
Annalee: [00:27:29] So getting back to what we were talking about in the first half about research, I want to come back to that question that we asked about how you incorporate real world research and real world ideas into a story that you're kind of writing in order to escape the badness of what we're calling reality currently.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:48] Yeah, I think part of what happens when things are really, really, really bad as they have been for, I think a lot of us, increasingly over the last few years, is that you get kind of tunnel vision a little bit. Everything shrinks down, until you can only see this terrible thing that's happening. You can only see the pandemic or the abuses that are occurring in our government, or, the everything. And part of what's good about doing research and about learning stuff and discovering stuff about the world and finding ways to incorporate it in your fiction is that you can remind yourself that the world is big and full of just bizarre, wonderful, just completely bonkers stuff. That, it's hard to even believe some of it exists. And there's sea anemones, and there's cakes, and there's weird sports that you've never even heard of, and there's games and everything.
Annalee: [00:28:45] There's like a million YouTube videos of moose swimming.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:49] Yeah, you can just watch moose swimming. And there's, we live in a world that has truffles in it. In this world.
Annalee: [00:28:54] Yeah, there's chocolate truffles and there's like O.G. truffles, the kind that they put on your pasta for like a billion dollars.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:01] Yeah, and so you know, and like we talked about in the first half of the episode when you do get these details and when you do kind of get a sense of like, okay, if I was living in 1920s Paris, what fancy drinks would I be drinking and what dances would I be doing and what cute outfits would I be wearing a 1920s Paris. You can lose yourself in that fantasy more effectively. You can get more kind of immersed in your 1920s Paris dancing the whatever. I don’t know, did they do the Charleston? I actually don't know, I have to go do some research.
Annalee: [00:29:31] Yeah, I don't know about Paris. But yeah, I think in the States, probably, they would have done that.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:36] So you can lose yourself more in the in that fantasy of being in this other time and place. And that can help you to escape from the present day. So I think that not all of learning about the real world has to be just like, oh, gosh, I'm now confronting the horribleness of our present moment and the people who are for some reason in charge. It can be about like losing yourself in another time and place and reminding yourself that there have been bad times but there have also been good times in the past. And there have been… everything is always a mixture of both. You shouldn't feel guilty about trying to kind of escape into another time or place, or into a place in your imagination. The more you can kind of find a pocket of reality that's kind of your own little private domain, the more you can engage with the real world without feeling overwhelmed.
Annalee: [00:30:27] Yeah, for sure. I do that a lot with science reporting, where, when politics get overwhelming, I’m like, there's somebody over here who spent 20 years studying an ant colony. And that's what they did for 20 years. And that is so peaceful and wonderful. And they've learned so much. And it's so awesome, just to think about somebody spending all summer long, kneeling over an ant colony and watching wild ants do their thing.
Charlie Jane: [00:30:55] That is awesome. That is really inspiring.
Annalee: [00:30:56] Okay, so I have a question that might or might not be motivated by a personal interest. But how do you just motivate yourself to start writing when all you want to do is doom scroll, and not even want to do but you're just constantly doom scrolling. How do you just make that jump and be like, okay, I'm going to start writing now? How do I do that?
Charlie Jane: [00:31:17] I mean, real talk, last year, 2020, was a really hard time for me to keep writing. And actually, part of what was good about these essays that I was doing, which are now going to be a book is that I had to do one of them a week. So that was a deadline. And so it's always nice to have deadlines for things like that. So it's just like, I gotta get another essay done. And I spent a lot of time on each of them. And but the thing is, it's a mixture. For me, at least, it's a mixture of kind of putting limits on my internet use in various ways. And actually, I installed an extension on my browser that like blocks Twitter. It makes me so I can't go to Twitter, at certain times of day. And Facebook, and some other sites are also blocked. So it's just like, nope, you're not looking at those things anymore. And just putting limits on my internet use was really helpful.
[00:32:00] Also finding ways to go outside and make that part of my writing process. I did some writing by using my phone and just talking into my phone and turning it into speech to text. And that was actually a way of doing it.
Annalee: [00:32:16] Interesting.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:16] I think, in general, a lot of how you can motivate yourself to write and make writing possible when there's just so much noise in the world is to kind of set aside times and places and rituals that are around writing. And I know some people were like, I'm gonna just start getting up an hour early and do a bunch of writing before everybody else in my household wakes up. And I'm just gonna have, first thing in the morning is my writing time. And I've done that before. But also having just like, okay, I'm gonna sit here, I'm gonna listen to this music. I’m going to, I don’t know, light a candle. I'm gonna drink this kind of tea, just anything that makes it kind of feel like a special thing, that you're carving out time. And that becomes a habit. And there's habits built around it.
[00:33:04] And so like, during the pandemic, I couldn't do my usual habit, which was going to a coffee shop and sitting in a coffee shop writing, because all the coffee shops were closed. So instead, I was like, okay, I'm going to write at my desk, but then also at night, and somebody may or may not have made fun of me for this, but at night, I'm gonna get in my bed, like in my pajamas with a blank notebook and a pen and a glass of whiskey, and sit in bed, sipping whiskey, and scribbling in a blank notebook. And I'll just do a different writing project with that. And that'll enable me to kind of multitask.
Annalee: [00:33:32] I was only making fun of you, because the usual image of getting in bed is like, I got in bed with some steaming tea, and you're like, I got in bed with my whiskey.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:42] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:33:44] It’s like, just go for it girl.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:45] I mean, you know, I’ve only spilled whiskey in bed once, okay. But it's actually not as bad spilling whiskey as—
Annalee: [00:33:50] Wait, was that on my side of the bed?
Charlie Jane: [00:33:52] No, it was. It was, no.
Annalee: [00:33:55] I don’t mind. I don’t mind sleeping in your whiskey puddles.
Charlie Jane: [00:34:00] It was… yeah. Anyway, but the point is.
Annalee: [00:34:03] The point is, yeah. I love that. I think having, yeah, rituals.
Charlie Jane: [00:34:03] The point is that building a wall around writing and finding… You know, I used to have a really hard time motivating myself to write. I used to be like, well, I'm just gonna play another three hours of video games, and then maybe I’ll write after that. And part of part of how I got over that was having practices that kind of made writing a part of my day, that was clearly kind of demarcated and defined. And over time, it just became more of a habit. And I think that, like anything else, once you're in the habit of doing it, then you just keep doing it.
[00:34:37] But I think also, I hate this advice that you should write every day because that's one size fits all advice that really doesn't work for a lot of people.
Annalee: [00:34:43] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:34:43] But I feel like the more I can kind of keep the story in the front of my mind by any means by going back and rereading it, by just talking about it with you or by just finding ways to kind of keep thinking about these characters and this story. It's like those characters are kind of in the back of my mind. It's like, oh, I wonder what this character is up to? Oh, I just thought of a cool thing that this character could do. And even when you're not writing, you're kind of, processing it in some corner of your brain, and the characters are still kind of carrying on living their lives. And something you wrote yesterday is kind of bubbling up and you're like, oh, but I could add a thing, or this is what could happen next.
[00:35:21]And also, a thing that I kind of talked about in the book is that sometimes it's good to just leave yourself little clues at the end of a writing session. One hack that I suggested is when you get done the end of a writing day, maybe before you step away, write down five things that could happen next, in descending order of likelihood. So it's like, you know, this is the thing that's most likely to happen next. But here's four other things that could happen next that are kind of more off the wall. And when you come back the next day, you're like, oh, maybe I'll try having this happen. And just kind of keep it bubbling up and keep it loose and fun. So that you’re just like, oh, yeah. Let’s try this.
Annalee: [00:36:00] Yeah, a lot of writing involves not writing.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:04] It really is. Oh my gosh.
Annalee: [00:36:05] A lot of is like thinking and mulling stuff.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:09] It’s so true.
Annalee: [00:36:09] And I think that that's another thing to keep in mind in terms of not punishing yourself. Just because you're sitting around obsessively thinking about your work, but not writing it, doesn't mean you're not doing the work.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:19] Oh my gosh.
Annalee: [00:36:20] You're actually doing the work. And so that's really, you can spend a day never touching your keyboard, never writing in your notebook, and still come up with a great idea, so.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:30] Yeah, and that's the thing. That's another thing I talk about in the book is that we talked in the first half of the episode about how you want to kind of have a trance, where you're kind of losing yourself in the story. And you're kind of becoming immersed in this other world. And that's true for the writer as well as the reader. And I’ll have a writing session, where I just kind of stare into space and kind of just noodle and kind of just free associate in my mind. And that's sometimes more valuable than putting down a thousand crappy words. And my cat wishes, it's to be known that stopping and playing with your cat for like, 15 minutes in the middle of a writing session is also an important part of writing.
Annalee: [00:37:07] It is an important part of the writing process.
Charlie Jane: [00:37:09] He would be very upset if I didn’t mention that. He'd be like, oh, excuse me. He actually will come up to me while I'm writing and just put his paw on my leg and be like, it's time for you to take a break. I'm telling you as your friend, you got to take a break and dangle the dangly toy because, polite request.
Annalee: [00:37:26] Yeah, I think that's a good place for us to end is remembering how all of our non-human companions are actually really important contributors to the creative process.
Charlie Jane: [00:37:35] When you’re thinking about cow facial expressions also think about your cat and the facial expressions your cat will be making when you dangle the toy.
Annalee: [00:37:43] That's right. All right. Well, thanks for telling us about your book. And when's it coming out?
Charlie Jane: [00:37:47] August 17th, and it's available wherever they don't just throw books out the window and hit people in the head. Any place where they actually sell books, you can get it.
Annalee: [00:37:57] All right. And if they throw it out the window and hit you on the head, feel free to keep it, I guess.
Charlie Jane: [00:38:00] Yeah, and oh, and I recorded the audio book here at Women's Audio Mission. It's the first time I've ever done an audio book. So if you like listening to me talk on this podcast. You might also like listening to me talk in an audio book.
Annalee: [00:38:13] I think that's probably pretty certain.
Charlie Jane: [00:38:17] Maybe.
Annalee: [00:38:17] Yeah. All right.
[00:38:17] OOAC theme music plays in the background. Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.
Charlie Jane: [00:38:17] Anyway, thank you so much for listening. This has been Our Opinions Are Correct and we'll be back two weeks from now with another episode. But in the meantime, there are things that you can do while you're anxiously waiting for those two weeks. You could support us on Patreon at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect, where, in a week's time, we'll have a special audio extra to tide you over. We'll also be posting other content on there. And you can also follow us on Twitter at @OOACpod, and on Facebook at Our Opinions Are Correct.
[00:38:49] And we want to send a special shout out and thanks to our incredible brilliant heroic producer Veronica Simonetti and to Women's Audio Mission for letting us record here. And, finally, to Chris Palmer, for our wonderful music. And thanks again to you for listening. We'll be back in two weeks.
Together: [00:39:07] Bye!