Learning your story deeply is a journey worth taking. This episode discusses the value of getting to know your story like your favorite song.
Tea and Tales
S1:E3 Can You Do It Without Singing?
I have my volleyball team ready to go. Are you ready for our first information session? Oh my goodness gracious. No, I did not bring my gloss. Here's my exam pad. Take notes! Take notes! Alrighty, let's do this! [Music] Hello everyone and welcome back to T and Tails. We are riders. I'm now and this is Saint Laurent. We want to give a thank you to all those who have been listening and sharing our podcast this week especially Kendra Cook for all of your kind words and Edie Uber for your great support. Today is "Can You Do It Without Singing?" I mean that might be very hard for me because I do sing on a constant basis. Yes, you are our musician in the group. Well I think the challenge today would be to see if I cannot sing. Maybe that would be the challenge. And my challenge is to see if I can get you to sing. Ooh! Challenge accepted! Why do we say "Can We Do It Without Singing?" Sometimes we know things so well. We don't have to repeat it in the same order. We don't have to sing that song to remember the lyrics anymore. We just know the lyrics and you can just out them out. This is my favorite example. My favorite example of a well-known song that I can do without singing that I think most people can. That's right. Z-Y-X-W-V-U-T-S-R-Q-P-O-N-M-L-K-J-I-H-G-F-E-D-C-B-A. Bless you. Shoo, okay, shoo, shoo. Are you just trying to show off? Is that what you're trying to do? Because I feel I have to say up a periodic table just to, you know, or say what the true value of Pi is to compete with you now. Thank you very much, Sarah. Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome. Oh, you know that song, don't you? Don't you know that song? That's... No. I know, like, the backwards one. I've heard, like, the alphabet song, like, sing some forwards. So today we're talking about knowing your story, knowing your information, just like if you know something well enough, you can say the ABCs forwards. We learn it singing, but can you say without singing, do you know well enough to say it backwards? Can you jump into the middle? That's interesting you say that because we don't really learn our alphabet through singing. We just kind of learn it saying it. Welcome. Welcome to being African. Oh yeah, the South African-African Afrikaans. We do learn it differently. We do. We do, yes. But also, like, when you're little, you start with how it sounds, how it later sounds. So you'd be like, oh, but, d-e-f-f-f. And then you learn all B-S-A-D-A-E-F-E-R-E-E-C-O. So then you kind of learn the alphabet like that. But we didn't have like a song specifically for that. Any kind of song that I do know is like one from Kari Gokie's Encompe, which would be like, she was like, what is it? [SINGING] So think about it with that one, but... But you can say those words without having to sing the song. You'd know it well enough that you could just do it. You could just do it. You just bumped into the middle just now, I feel like. Which is so important for an author and a writer to know your story backwards and forwards. Absolutely. My favorite story about this is when I dealt with my first editor on my very first novel. He read the first 30 pages and then we sat down for feedback. And the first thing he said was, I need you to go look at chapter two. Jimiately got me excited. Oh, we're going to skip all the way to chapter two. That sounds great. I wasn't done for the last day. It was misleading, by the way. But he went to chapter two and he said, we need to talk about this one sentence. Looking closer at that sentence, I realized it was a plot hole. That's not a plot hole. Plot holes are what you hit in the road and break a tire. A plot hole is when a reader is going along and hit a hole in your story and break a tire. You don't want that to happen. Oh, wow. It's crazy that you say one sentence made you realize that. One sentence that one sentence changed eight chapters. No, right? Right. That is wrong. But it scared me until I realized I'm in this story. Is that one sentence is there? How many other sentences do I have in my entire novel? And if it's only in chapter two, where did I mess up again? But I knew the story backward and forward, which allowed me to take that spot in chapter two and be like, oh, I need to shift this in chapter one. So I shift this in chapter two. So that this in chapter five will shift and this in chapter seven will shift and then flip these two chapters altogether, because that makes more sense. I didn't have to go and read the manuscript to find all those spaces. I could sit back, contemplate it, make a game plan, and then go in and attack it. I actually found myself in exactly the same situation because I'm currently part of the beta group reading. It would meet up like every three weeks through Zoom. We would go 5,000 words at a time. They would be like, okay, but you need to change this because this and this and this. And I'm like, oh, they're cool. So I changed this. And then when I continue with my next novels, I'm like, oh, but I kind of changed this. And it's like third and second chapters. So this doesn't apply anymore. It's fantastic in the same because you're like, this does make my novel read stronger and it does make my characters more empathetic and you understand them better. You know your story. Trust that you know your story. Just keep going until you do because eventually you're going to know chapter by chapter, action by action, what's going on. And when a beta reader or an editor gives you that feedback, you're going to know right where to jump in. It's like, can you do without singing? Do we want to? Not really, but is it important? Because you do need to know your novel back to front, front to back, up and down, lift and ride. To be able to, when you come in situations where you have plot holes, when you come into situations where your beta readers feel your characters aren't deep enough, then you need to be able to support your reasoning for why you were doing it. And that is knowing it without singing it. And you should be able to go back to the reasoning for why you did a certain thing or how you did it. Or be like, okay, yes, I didn't do that and I can see why it's a problem. And then work on that. A lot of times people come to me and they're like, why did you do this? Hey, I know my story, it is because and they're like, okay, fine, you can keep it. Yet I find it so funny though that I'm able to recollect something that happens like 20 chapters later or happened like seven chapters before. Yet for some more other reason, my characters, I change, I color changes. And I'm like, we started with blue. Now we have green. How did that happen? It does happen. And the funny thing is we have tools to help us with that as well. Because sometimes a story has so much detail, you can't remember it all. You're so in the plot that there's details you forget. So we use tools. We use tools like our World Bible in fantasy. We call it our World Bible because it's thick. You have to remember what you named all those random cities. They're now going to pass through three books later. You have like a whole book, like a book that you, that is, that's nice that you have a name for it. I call mine, sticking out on a wall because that's what I do. Remember, eye color is blue. 100% he drinks his coffee black. There you go, exactly. It's okay to sing. Yeah. Can you do it without it? But it is okay to sing. It is okay to be like, oh yeah, it's this. It is small things, it's big things. And it's things that are not even in the novel. So the last episode, we put a teaser into this. You got to know the iceberg, the things that never make it into that novel. They only see that top of the iceberg. Whatever's sticking up over the water. That's what your reader sees. That's what they experience. They don't know what you know, but they know you didn't put it in the novel. They didn't know why they know it, but they know they know it. We have to know those back stories. So when he's reacting to similar situations, I know why he's reacting that way and he stays consistent. 100%. And especially because one of the novels that I wrote is about a baker. And I like baking, but I'm not a very successful baker. Let's put it like that. And so then, of course, you need to go and research what these careers are and what people do in their specific careers, what the pressure is like being in that career. And it's sometimes when you have to look at my history, you're like, what? Why are you looking up? I don't know, like a traffic cop. And I'm like, I mean, do you really want to know? You don't. But we literally like- You need to know all those little details because if you decide that you want to make your character, I don't know, engineer, then you need to know what it is like being an engineer. What degree you need to have personality, you need to have what kind of working relationship you need to have with people. And I think that's also things people sometimes don't understand and they're gross because they're like, no, you just right. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Even if you are the type of writer who does sit down and just write like me and you discover your characters, when you're done, you still have to go back and record all of that and have reasons for it and have a good character arc and character basis. I don't start that way, but by the end, I definitely have more information than ever made it onto the page. Well, can I just say how magical it is? If you really think about the Sarah, you are literally creating a person who doesn't exist. I think it's so magical actually, because it's like, I don't know. And then I like each of my characters in their own special way, because I don't know if you feel the same way, but for me, I feel every character I write has a little part of me in it. And so to be able to see them bloom is literally like watching your own babies, like growing up. And I'm just like, that is always so special for me. So special. You protect your babies. Right. So my message to readers is, if you hit a detail that you wish you knew more about, and probably is more to know about that detail, chill your guava writer figured it out. Oh, your guava. Yes. It's probably there later, or it's in some anthology somewhere that comes out 10 years later, but the information is there and just the fact that you can feel it and that you understand it. That's what our story is supposed to be about. It's what we're supposed to do is make you imagine and to feel engrossed, giving you just enough of the details that you can relate, but not so much. That we're holding your hand. Right. Very true. Creating a story is a journey into a deep relationship with your manuscript. Right. So whether you plan before you write or you write before you plan, remember these tools. Remember to learn your story forward and backward to learn the deep details and to use your notes when you need to so that this story goes from that rickety beginning draft into something. Absolutely beautiful. Something you want to present to the world. 100%. And we do want to keep our episodes short and sweet. And we are so thankful for each and everyone of you that listened to us who are keep on listening to us and who have joined our community. And we always encourage you to write notes, leave notes and share your experiences. Because one, it might be something that we haven't thought of and we can talk about on this podcast and two, it is just a wonderful way for us as writers and readers and literary people to connect with each other and teach each other and learn from each other. So if you like what we're doing here and we really hope you do, you can go and follow us on Instagram @tintailspodcast, you can go to Facebook and follow us there on tintails podcast or you can go to x slash Twitter. And you can follow us there on podcast tea tales. And we would love to hear from you more and please go to that apple purple icon and go like our podcast and comment on there if you want to say that I have a unicorn in my novel who is purple. I would love to know that and that is super fantastic because the chances are Sarah also has a unicorn in her fantasy novel. So please go do that so that we can have our podcast go up the charts and you will be able to hear more from us. All of your ideas absolutely enrich this tea entails community. See you next time. Bye. [MUSIC]