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GEICO! excuses has been brought

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1:13

Writing Excuses.

1:15

The Reaction

1:17

of Who. I'm Mary

1:20

Robinette. I'm Howard.

1:22

I'm Dong 1. And I'm

1:25

Dan. And I'm Dan.

1:27

And I'm sure many

1:29

of you writers out

1:32

there are saying, Howard,

1:34

it's supposed to

1:36

be the reaction

1:38

of whom. But

1:40

if you've been following along

1:42

with us, you know that

1:45

right now we're in our fourth

1:47

episode, where we're talking about

1:49

the lens of who, the lens

1:51

of the character, how we are

1:53

approaching our writing through

1:56

a specific lens, and in

1:58

this episode, we're... finishing

2:00

that up by talking about the

2:02

fact that really reaction is

2:05

everything. There's a saying in

2:07

theater acting is reacting where there's

2:09

something that happens on stage and

2:11

then you react to it and

2:13

the actions that you take during

2:15

that reaction let the audience know

2:18

what your character is thinking and

2:20

feeling because on stage you don't

2:22

get to go inside their head.

2:24

As writers, we do get to

2:26

let the reader inside their head,

2:29

but often there's a mismatch between

2:31

what's going on inside their head

2:33

and the actions that they are taking.

2:35

Or if you're not showing enough

2:37

reaction, things will fall really, really

2:39

flat, right? There's a video essay I

2:41

really love by Tony Jew who does

2:43

every frame of painting about martial arts

2:45

movies. And one of the things that

2:47

he shows is that in a lot

2:49

of great martial arts movies, what you'll

2:51

see... is you see the actual blow land

2:54

three different times. You see the first strike,

2:56

you see it usually like a slow

2:58

mow zoom in of the strike, and

3:00

then you see the reaction of the

3:02

person who got hit, and it's that

3:04

reaction that sells the impact, right? Because

3:06

these are some performers, they're not actually

3:09

hitting each other, they're hitting each other

3:11

very lightly. And so when I see

3:13

an emotional beat not land, when I

3:15

see an action scene not land, it's

3:17

because we don't see and feel the

3:19

reaction. So I'm always telling people it's

3:21

okay to slow down. People think that

3:23

to get through an action scene, it's

3:25

got to stay fast to keep things

3:28

moving really, really well, and we're

3:30

missing the reaction, and that's why

3:32

things start to fall flat or

3:34

not have the impact you want.

3:36

Yeah, since we're on the subject

3:39

of martial arts, one of the things

3:41

that I love about martial arts fight

3:43

scenes, and I saw this as well

3:45

in a YouTube video that I can't.

3:47

Remember which one it was. I

3:50

can't give my sources as well as

3:52

Dong one can. Sebel was talking

3:54

about the importance of familiarity

3:56

and resonance in a fight

3:58

scene. The idea... that I

4:00

as a person have never been

4:02

through a pain of glass, I've

4:05

never broken through one, whereas I

4:07

have bumped my head on something,

4:09

I have knocked against a wall,

4:11

that sort of thing, and so

4:13

you'll watch, you know, Jackie Chan,

4:15

for example, and you'll see him

4:17

crash through a bunch of pains

4:19

of glass, like in the big...

4:22

the one I'm thinking of is

4:24

the big fight scene in the

4:26

Lego store. He goes through several

4:28

panes of glass and then crashes

4:30

into a cabinet. He goes through

4:32

another pane of glass and then

4:34

bounces off of a wall. And

4:37

what that does is it gives

4:39

us a reaction. It gives the

4:41

audience a reaction they're familiar with.

4:43

So that right at the end,

4:45

that last bit of it, we

4:47

go ooh, because we know what

4:49

that feels like. And that lets

4:51

the audience react with the character.

4:55

And that was so weird that now

4:58

nobody has any follow-up to it. This

5:00

was the reaction of, the reaction of

5:02

me looking to Mary Robinette and thinking,

5:04

oh, you have a response. And Mary

5:06

Robinette looking to me and saying, oh,

5:08

that look on your face suggests that

5:11

you're about to say something. Both of

5:13

us were wrong. I was just trying

5:15

not to make this whole episode about

5:17

martial arts movies because Dan and I

5:19

could talk for an hour on this

5:21

topic. I mean, I'm okay with that.

5:24

So here's the thing that I was

5:26

thinking earlier about the, you know, the

5:28

showing the reaction multiple times, that when

5:30

you're dealing with that reaction on the

5:32

page, you're dealing with where does the

5:35

character feel it in their body? What

5:37

are the thoughts that go through their

5:39

head? And then what is the action

5:41

that they take as a result of

5:43

those things? And how does it link

5:45

to the things we've already been talking

5:48

about, which is like motivation in their

5:50

goals? How do those things tie together?

5:52

who received terrible shocking news and all

5:54

you get is a line of dialogue

5:56

from them and like how how does

5:59

how does that sit with them. Where

6:01

is that? Where do they feel

6:03

that? And that's part of that

6:05

that's slowing down and letting us

6:07

feel it. It's not that your

6:09

character needs to have a reaction

6:12

every single time, but it is

6:14

a way of disambiguating

6:16

what their response is. Sometimes

6:19

it's very clear what's going

6:21

on. You don't need to put all

6:23

of those things in, but sometimes you

6:25

really need to slow it down so

6:27

that we can, that we... We can

6:29

link to it like when you let

6:32

us know how we feel it in

6:34

our body a lot of readers Will

6:36

also map that to their own body

6:38

if they tighten the shoulders? Unconsciously you

6:40

can you'll tighten your own shoulders Reaction

6:42

is such an important one to

6:45

focus on because like you're saying

6:47

It is one of the first things

6:49

that we leave out when we start

6:51

to write too quickly. When we think

6:53

to ourselves, well, I know how this

6:56

person feels about what just happened The

6:58

audience is going to pick it up

7:00

as well. I don't have to make

7:02

stated explicitly. It is one of the

7:05

first things that disappears. Yeah. And I

7:07

will go through when I'm doing my

7:09

revision and I will look for places

7:11

where I need to layer that back

7:14

in, where I have gone too fast

7:16

and I've left it out. So, you

7:18

know, if you're thinking, oh my goodness,

7:21

there's so many things to think about

7:23

when I'm writing, remember that you can

7:25

layer that in later. But it is

7:28

absolutely true. that the character will have

7:30

a very cinematic reaction that is completely

7:32

at odds with their goals, with their

7:34

motivation, with the things that they're

7:37

afraid of. The classic one is,

7:39

you know, two people, like someone

7:41

wants to get back together with

7:43

someone else, and they go into

7:45

a room and they yell at them. And

7:47

I'm like, how do you think that's

7:49

actually in a work? Like, that's not

7:52

how that, or are all of the stalkers,

7:54

like, like, out there, you know. Like yeah,

7:56

I want to I want to convince this

7:58

person that I'm loving and to Get

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the angeles special at McDonald's now. Let's

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10:25

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10:27

participate in restaurants for a limited time.

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to say, a-hoi, or land-ho and

10:37

not feel weird about it. So

10:39

here's another perk. Geico's boat insurance

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10:48

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so much value that you'll want

10:53

to say, shiver me timbers! And

10:55

not feel weird about that either.

10:57

Get more with GEICO! when

14:01

I introduce a villain, when I introduce a

14:03

scenario in NPC, I cannot

14:05

predict how my player

14:07

is gonna react. I might accidentally

14:10

describe the bartender as being like 2

14:12

% too hot, and now our session

14:14

is derailed, and now we're just in

14:16

this tavern for the rest of the

14:18

next two hours. Installing air conditioning. Installing

14:21

air conditioning, of course. Yes, because anyways,

14:23

we're... It's compelling. And sometimes, you know,

14:25

your villain just isn't gonna have the

14:27

impact that you want, and you need

14:29

to find another angle, right? You

14:32

can't predict sometimes how your character

14:34

will react, and you need to

14:36

listen to what their response is in the

14:38

moment, rather than what you need their response

14:40

to be to move the plot forward. And

14:42

sometimes that means either you need to change

14:44

the dial on what the inciting incident is,

14:46

or you need to let your

14:49

plot shift to follow the character's response.

14:51

Yeah, sometimes I will make a list

14:53

of possible responses that my character will

14:55

have. And I think about what is

14:57

the goal, what are they trying to

14:59

achieve, what do I need them to

15:01

achieve? And I list out things that

15:03

could possibly get us there. The other

15:05

piece to that, to both of your

15:07

points, is that often when we're

15:10

thinking about our main character, we are

15:12

forgetting how the people around them

15:14

are reacting to the actions that they

15:16

are taking. This is

15:18

the solution to the passive character. So

15:20

many times there's a passive protagonist, right? The

15:22

reluctant hero, you need people

15:24

reacting to the situation that aren't

15:26

that character because if they're not reacting

15:29

and taking action, it's absolutely

15:31

maddening for the audience and your story

15:33

is not gonna move forward. So you need

15:35

to surround them with people who are

15:37

having the big reaction to move

15:39

things forward in that way. When

15:41

we began with

15:43

this lens on

15:46

character, I

15:48

talked about, or

15:50

I invited us to use

15:52

our own experiences as tools. And

15:54

I wanna lean into that

15:56

again now, because I find in

15:58

my own life, they're... lots of

16:01

times when something painful

16:03

or unexpected or surprising

16:05

happens and I act quote out

16:08

of character unquote I

16:10

discover something about myself that

16:12

usually I don't like you

16:14

know boy I'm not the

16:16

I'm not the sort of

16:19

person who says unkind things

16:21

to someone else just because

16:23

I've lost my temper what

16:25

what's wrong what happened here

16:28

and so the tool is Look at

16:30

your own reactions. Are there times

16:32

when you've reacted to

16:34

something and you've learned

16:36

something about yourself, whether

16:38

it was pleasant or

16:41

unpleasant? And I'm putting that

16:43

forward to our panelists, as

16:45

perhaps our hosts, perhaps as

16:47

a question. So I think that

16:50

this is a great example, and

16:52

it ties back into things that

16:55

Dan and Dong Wan were talking

16:57

about before is the... is that

16:59

thing where your character does do

17:02

something that is out of character.

17:04

And you, but when they

17:06

do that, they still have

17:08

to have a reaction to

17:10

it. So if they snap

17:12

at someone and then that's

17:15

the external reaction that they've

17:17

done, but the internal reaction

17:19

is, oh, I just said that, is there

17:21

a way I can fix it? You know,

17:24

that is a thing that can allow

17:26

you to have both. There's

17:28

this great one of my

17:30

favorite celebrity interviews Nathan

17:33

Philian is talking about being

17:35

on soaps and how there

17:37

The he was young actor

17:40

on soaps and one of

17:42

the veterans said at the end

17:44

of the scene. They're gonna push

17:47

the camera in on your face

17:49

and You've got no no

17:51

script You've you can't go

17:54

anywhere. You can't so You have

17:56

three. For heaven's sake, don't move.

17:58

Right. So you have three. reactions.

18:01

Did I leave the gas on?

18:03

I did leave the gas on.

18:05

I turned the gas off. And

18:08

I can now see

18:10

Nathan Philian making

18:12

each of those three

18:14

faces. Yeah. And once

18:16

you start seeing that, it's

18:18

like you see a lot of

18:20

actors who have those reactions. But

18:22

the thing about it is what

18:24

he's talking about is letting the

18:26

reader know how they are supposed

18:28

to react to what has happened.

18:30

And so I find that sometimes

18:32

at the end of a scene,

18:34

at the end of a chapter,

18:36

that I will look at it

18:38

and go, okay, did they leave

18:40

the gas on or did they

18:42

turn it off? And think about

18:44

how my character is feeling, but

18:46

specifically how I want my reader to

18:49

be feeling, what reaction I want

18:51

them to be having as well.

18:53

punch landing is show it tell us how

18:55

they're gonna feel show us how they're

18:57

feeling tell us how they felt you know

18:59

what I mean and sometimes you need that

19:01

structure to a scene and that can be

19:04

as that can happen all in one sentence

19:06

right you can do it real quick you

19:08

do it real slow and all those things

19:10

are really useful but letting us understand

19:12

the reaction and giving us

19:15

time to process what the reaction is

19:17

hugely important yeah as we've as

19:19

we've talked about it Throughout this

19:21

season as we talk about

19:23

tools we describe them as lenses

19:26

and we describe them as

19:28

lenses because The things that

19:30

you are putting on the page

19:32

Are the things that are informing

19:35

the reader about what they are

19:37

supposed to be thinking what they're

19:40

supposed to be feeling and

19:42

reaction is Is a critical

19:44

critical lens? Are we ready

19:46

for homework? Yeah, so what I

19:48

want you to do is I

19:50

want you to look at one

19:52

of your character's reactions and flip

19:54

it. So if they take an

19:56

action that escalates a situation, how would

19:59

that scene play? if they de -escalate

20:01

it. Can you still get to

20:03

the the get to that you want? that

20:05

you want? So a look at those

20:07

reactions and play around with them. around

20:09

with them. This has has been Writing excuses. Surprise!

20:11

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20:13

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