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mistressofmuses) wrote2025-02-12 09:41 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-02-12 09:41 pm
Never Say You Can't Survive: Chapters 18 - 21
Continuing my chapter-by-chapter reactions to Never Say You Can't Survive by Charlie Jane Anders.
Chapter 18 is about worldbuilding.
I tried very hard to put a lid on the cynicism when the book is talking about worldbuilding as an inspirational/aspirational thing, a glimpse of the world (or a world) as it should be. I think I was at least moderately successful! (I've been doing poorly with that in general, but am really trying not to be unrelentingly pessimistic.)
I think my favorite thing discussed was about needing to give the world you're building a sense of history. It shouldn't feel like it's just sprung into being around the characters as a setpiece or backdrop. I've certainly read stuff in the past that did give that vibe, like the rest of the world would collapse if the main characters wandered off. And I don't think I'd necessarily thought of it in those terms, but this is one of the things that sets some of my favorite works apart for me. Things that have a sense of history to them are super compelling and interesting, and leave me thinking about the world. (Not a sense that we're coming in mid-story, but the sense that there've always been stories and interesting events happening. This is basically always better than a world with an unexamined "things just happen this way because.")
She also mentions this applying to characters. Making side characters, even if they're one-offs in the story, feel rich enough that a reader imagines they have a life of their own, even when the protagonist isn't dealing with them, does a lot to make the story feel richer and more detailed.
I don't think this is something that I excel at, but it is something I can recognize in other works, when it comes to doing it very well or very poorly. That makes me hope I can figure out how to do it well in my own works!
Chapter 19 is about the "why" of what you're writing, and doing things with intentionality.
This chapter focuses on asking why. Why you're writing this story, why it matters to you, etc. (And a bit tied in with what: what is the story really about?)
It talks about the importance of examining those questions, and finding your answers. It will let you be more intentional with the choices you make, and the things you emphasize, once you know what themes are most central to the story.
I appreciated the note that if there's something coming up repeatedly, you could choose to try and alter the story to avoid the repetition... or you could lean into it as a motif within the work. I do really honestly like the idea of leaning in to the things that keep sort of rising to the surface within the work. I like to think that there's some reason for that to keep happening. (Though I mostly personally notice similar dynamics or situations coming up across different works, which is a bit different.)
Sure, there are times where the repetition isn't really thematic, but is maybe just an example of two scenes that play out too similarly, and that's likely the sort of thing you'd be better off changing... but again, it probably depends on why the similarities exist. (Maybe there's a reason for the scenes to parallel each other, for instance.)
This chapter did make me think of some of the books that I've read that feel like they have some of the strongest theming to them. (My two [well, five] that came to mind most readily were The Broken Earth trilogy and the Teixcalaan duology.) A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace in particular I remember really impressing me with just how many different ways certain themes came up. Language and identity, how different cultures accomplish science fiction ideas of immortality, as well as multiple variations on the idea of a "hive mind" in a science fiction context. I really enjoyed the way that so many different things were examined from multiple angles, and how strongly those themes connected for different characters in different ways. While it felt intentional, it didn't feel excessive so much as revealing in terms of the work and the world(s) it was built around. I can't say that this was because of Arkady Martine choosing to lean into subjects that arose this way, but it certainly feels like a reasonable example of leaning into something to make it a theme of the work.
I don't think that I often have such clear-cut or intentional themes, beyond things that are maybe a little broad or vague. (There's a lot of "finding people who accept you and value you, even if your place of origin did not," and some that are broadly about searching for an identity you craft for yourself. Some are maybe even vaguer, like "family is complicated" or "revenge.")
Sometimes I do just sort of start writing, and don't really do much early on to try and crystalize those central themes. Sometimes I am frustrated with how meandering the stories can seem as I'm pushing through initial drafts, and perhaps this is a part of why.
Chapter 20 is about weirdness.
My first reaction to the subject (writing weird, surreal, madcap, goofy sorts of stories as a form of comfort even more than writing them as pointed criticism) was "but... I don't like weirdness for the sake of weirdness all that much. I prefer things that feel grounded."
But thinking about it, that isn't really true. I do love weird stuff! I just also find a lot of weirdness that I don't care for. And as the chapter goes on, she does also talk about the importance of making sure that you have some form of grounding. The weirder the world, the more important it is that you have a really good (as in well-crafted) character who believes all the weirdness to sell it.
I really enjoyed reading The Ambergris trilogy a couple years ago, and it's a real weird setting! One of my favorite pieces of recent-ish media was Scavengers Reign and that is absolutely a great example of the weirdest imaginable setting and story, but with really interesting characters to make it feel believable as a bizarre exploration of an alien world. (She also talks about the differences in weirdness based on genre. A lot of genre fiction does lean on things that are "weird" by real-world standards, and I basically exclusively enjoy genre stuff.)
Maybe it's more that I do enjoy weirdness played straight... not so much the stuff that's intended to be particularly silly. I'm willing to call this a me problem, but an awful lot of things that are billed as being funny/goofy/silly weirdness annoy me far more than entertain me, much less comfort me. (And I feel like such a tool every time I say that. There are things I think are funny and that I like!)
Then again, there are still always exceptions. I was a pseudo-goth teen in the early 00s; Invader Zim is embedded in my hindbrain, and that's basically the epitome of lolrandom humor, so.
(This isn't really completely related, but it made me think of this and I wrote it out, so here it is. One of my least favorite parts of multiple stories I otherwise would have enjoyed far more is the quirky comic-relief side character. The work as a whole often isn't supposed to be super "weird" in the way this chapter is talking about, but these characters seem to be intended as a sort of splash or flare of weirdness/silliness/quirkiness, and I hate them so much.
Whether that's the funny best friend destined to star in the sequel, or the ~hilariously feisty~ elderly family member of the protagonist, or the quirky animal pet/sidekick, they invariably feel like nails on a chalkboard to me, and I loathe it when they show up. Not just any best friend or family member or pet, which are all perfectly fine characters to include... just the ones that specifically exist to fill this niche.)
Sort of rambly, and maybe not engaging completely with the subject at hand exactly. Though I see the point about the real world sometimes being too absurd for satire to even work. Sometimes the only thing to do is get weirder.
Chapter 21 is about the importance of representation without appropriation.
This is always a super thorny topic, and the chapter basically falls in the same place I see most advice fall (while acknowledging that it's also a subject that is always changing to some degree, and has to be reexamined constantly because there aren't super simple clear cut answers at all!)
The main distinction is representing characters that are realistically diverse and portrayed as three-dimensional and interesting, while taking into account all the things that would make them who they are as POC, or trans, or a religious minority, etc., while not appropriating those experiences as someone who doesn't actually experience those identities.
Basically, authors should be careful not to tell stories that aren't theirs to tell. Writing about What It Is To Be an identity that you do not share is probably not something you should try to do, and is appropriating those stories from the people who actually experience them. That there have been an awful lot of white/cis/straight/etc. authors who try to (and succeed, as far as they get published and read and sometimes praised) is evident... and there's the valid point that those works become the "comfortable" option for an audience that wants to feel like they're engaging with diverse works... while actually leaving out diverse voices.
It doesn't bring up one thing that I sometimes see sort of dovetailing with this subject, and that is how much a given author needs to be "out" about their own identity in order to have "permission" to write a certain subject. Now, since this book is aimed AT the writer, it's not necessarily quite so applicable... Internally, the writer in question (the audience of this book) does know (probably) their own identity well enough to judge what they personally experience vs. what they do not and to make the correct decision about a given story subject.
(With the caveat that sometimes you don't know things about yourself all along. So, so many people I know, self included, went through a period of "I don't know, I just really connect with queer characters. Don't know why; I'm obviously straight and cis [even if cis wasn't a term I knew at the time]. I just really identify with characters who aren't..." [Though I also have the strangely strong memory of being in 7th grade and thinking to myself "Yeah, pretty sure I'm bi. I don't want to deal with that right now though, so I won't" and then proceeding to not really acknowledge it for several more years beyond reading a lot of m/m and f/f books, and later fanfic, while feeling very compelled and mildly guilty.])
But back to identity, while yes, I do think that authors should be mindful about whether the story they're telling is a story they're equipped to tell... it can get really ugly when other people decide to weigh in on whether they agree. There are so many authors who've been pressured to out themselves as some flavor of queer, because an audience attacked them for writing queer stories when it was assumed they themselves were straight/cis. Authors who may or may not want to be open about their racial, ethnic, or religious identities, or their medical conditions, or their personal histories of trauma, or anything else, but end up being pushed to in order to have "permission" to write about something that is a part of their own lives. (Isabel Fall and that whole situation is probably the worst in recent history, but it feels like it happens a lot, just not always with that level of vitriol and toxicity. Becky Albertalli comes to mind as well.)
And on the other side of the coin, you get people who try to fake being part of a marginalized group in order to give themselves clout or assumed authenticity or impact how an audience sees their work. And that behavior is to some degree incentivized (though it does not absolve the people who do this) by the idea that certain stories can only be told by certain people.
It's part of why this issue is so thorny. But all in all, yes, agreed, and good things to keep in mind.
And that concludes part 4!
I'm going to take a wee break from the book for about a week; I'm going out of town with my mom and Taylor for a long weekend, and so don't plan to be reading/writing up thoughts for four days or so. But it also feels silly to pause for those four days when I'd be only a chapter or two away from finishing the book. So I'll save the last five chapters of part 5 for next week.
Chapter 18 is about worldbuilding.
On worldbuilding:
I tried very hard to put a lid on the cynicism when the book is talking about worldbuilding as an inspirational/aspirational thing, a glimpse of the world (or a world) as it should be. I think I was at least moderately successful! (I've been doing poorly with that in general, but am really trying not to be unrelentingly pessimistic.)
I think my favorite thing discussed was about needing to give the world you're building a sense of history. It shouldn't feel like it's just sprung into being around the characters as a setpiece or backdrop. I've certainly read stuff in the past that did give that vibe, like the rest of the world would collapse if the main characters wandered off. And I don't think I'd necessarily thought of it in those terms, but this is one of the things that sets some of my favorite works apart for me. Things that have a sense of history to them are super compelling and interesting, and leave me thinking about the world. (Not a sense that we're coming in mid-story, but the sense that there've always been stories and interesting events happening. This is basically always better than a world with an unexamined "things just happen this way because.")
She also mentions this applying to characters. Making side characters, even if they're one-offs in the story, feel rich enough that a reader imagines they have a life of their own, even when the protagonist isn't dealing with them, does a lot to make the story feel richer and more detailed.
I don't think this is something that I excel at, but it is something I can recognize in other works, when it comes to doing it very well or very poorly. That makes me hope I can figure out how to do it well in my own works!
Chapter 19 is about the "why" of what you're writing, and doing things with intentionality.
On intentionality:
This chapter focuses on asking why. Why you're writing this story, why it matters to you, etc. (And a bit tied in with what: what is the story really about?)
It talks about the importance of examining those questions, and finding your answers. It will let you be more intentional with the choices you make, and the things you emphasize, once you know what themes are most central to the story.
I appreciated the note that if there's something coming up repeatedly, you could choose to try and alter the story to avoid the repetition... or you could lean into it as a motif within the work. I do really honestly like the idea of leaning in to the things that keep sort of rising to the surface within the work. I like to think that there's some reason for that to keep happening. (Though I mostly personally notice similar dynamics or situations coming up across different works, which is a bit different.)
Sure, there are times where the repetition isn't really thematic, but is maybe just an example of two scenes that play out too similarly, and that's likely the sort of thing you'd be better off changing... but again, it probably depends on why the similarities exist. (Maybe there's a reason for the scenes to parallel each other, for instance.)
This chapter did make me think of some of the books that I've read that feel like they have some of the strongest theming to them. (My two [well, five] that came to mind most readily were The Broken Earth trilogy and the Teixcalaan duology.) A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace in particular I remember really impressing me with just how many different ways certain themes came up. Language and identity, how different cultures accomplish science fiction ideas of immortality, as well as multiple variations on the idea of a "hive mind" in a science fiction context. I really enjoyed the way that so many different things were examined from multiple angles, and how strongly those themes connected for different characters in different ways. While it felt intentional, it didn't feel excessive so much as revealing in terms of the work and the world(s) it was built around. I can't say that this was because of Arkady Martine choosing to lean into subjects that arose this way, but it certainly feels like a reasonable example of leaning into something to make it a theme of the work.
I don't think that I often have such clear-cut or intentional themes, beyond things that are maybe a little broad or vague. (There's a lot of "finding people who accept you and value you, even if your place of origin did not," and some that are broadly about searching for an identity you craft for yourself. Some are maybe even vaguer, like "family is complicated" or "revenge.")
Sometimes I do just sort of start writing, and don't really do much early on to try and crystalize those central themes. Sometimes I am frustrated with how meandering the stories can seem as I'm pushing through initial drafts, and perhaps this is a part of why.
Chapter 20 is about weirdness.
On weirdness:
My first reaction to the subject (writing weird, surreal, madcap, goofy sorts of stories as a form of comfort even more than writing them as pointed criticism) was "but... I don't like weirdness for the sake of weirdness all that much. I prefer things that feel grounded."
But thinking about it, that isn't really true. I do love weird stuff! I just also find a lot of weirdness that I don't care for. And as the chapter goes on, she does also talk about the importance of making sure that you have some form of grounding. The weirder the world, the more important it is that you have a really good (as in well-crafted) character who believes all the weirdness to sell it.
I really enjoyed reading The Ambergris trilogy a couple years ago, and it's a real weird setting! One of my favorite pieces of recent-ish media was Scavengers Reign and that is absolutely a great example of the weirdest imaginable setting and story, but with really interesting characters to make it feel believable as a bizarre exploration of an alien world. (She also talks about the differences in weirdness based on genre. A lot of genre fiction does lean on things that are "weird" by real-world standards, and I basically exclusively enjoy genre stuff.)
Maybe it's more that I do enjoy weirdness played straight... not so much the stuff that's intended to be particularly silly. I'm willing to call this a me problem, but an awful lot of things that are billed as being funny/goofy/silly weirdness annoy me far more than entertain me, much less comfort me. (And I feel like such a tool every time I say that. There are things I think are funny and that I like!)
Then again, there are still always exceptions. I was a pseudo-goth teen in the early 00s; Invader Zim is embedded in my hindbrain, and that's basically the epitome of lolrandom humor, so.
(This isn't really completely related, but it made me think of this and I wrote it out, so here it is. One of my least favorite parts of multiple stories I otherwise would have enjoyed far more is the quirky comic-relief side character. The work as a whole often isn't supposed to be super "weird" in the way this chapter is talking about, but these characters seem to be intended as a sort of splash or flare of weirdness/silliness/quirkiness, and I hate them so much.
Whether that's the funny best friend destined to star in the sequel, or the ~hilariously feisty~ elderly family member of the protagonist, or the quirky animal pet/sidekick, they invariably feel like nails on a chalkboard to me, and I loathe it when they show up. Not just any best friend or family member or pet, which are all perfectly fine characters to include... just the ones that specifically exist to fill this niche.)
Sort of rambly, and maybe not engaging completely with the subject at hand exactly. Though I see the point about the real world sometimes being too absurd for satire to even work. Sometimes the only thing to do is get weirder.
Chapter 21 is about the importance of representation without appropriation.
On appropriation and representation:
This is always a super thorny topic, and the chapter basically falls in the same place I see most advice fall (while acknowledging that it's also a subject that is always changing to some degree, and has to be reexamined constantly because there aren't super simple clear cut answers at all!)
The main distinction is representing characters that are realistically diverse and portrayed as three-dimensional and interesting, while taking into account all the things that would make them who they are as POC, or trans, or a religious minority, etc., while not appropriating those experiences as someone who doesn't actually experience those identities.
Basically, authors should be careful not to tell stories that aren't theirs to tell. Writing about What It Is To Be an identity that you do not share is probably not something you should try to do, and is appropriating those stories from the people who actually experience them. That there have been an awful lot of white/cis/straight/etc. authors who try to (and succeed, as far as they get published and read and sometimes praised) is evident... and there's the valid point that those works become the "comfortable" option for an audience that wants to feel like they're engaging with diverse works... while actually leaving out diverse voices.
It doesn't bring up one thing that I sometimes see sort of dovetailing with this subject, and that is how much a given author needs to be "out" about their own identity in order to have "permission" to write a certain subject. Now, since this book is aimed AT the writer, it's not necessarily quite so applicable... Internally, the writer in question (the audience of this book) does know (probably) their own identity well enough to judge what they personally experience vs. what they do not and to make the correct decision about a given story subject.
(With the caveat that sometimes you don't know things about yourself all along. So, so many people I know, self included, went through a period of "I don't know, I just really connect with queer characters. Don't know why; I'm obviously straight and cis [even if cis wasn't a term I knew at the time]. I just really identify with characters who aren't..." [Though I also have the strangely strong memory of being in 7th grade and thinking to myself "Yeah, pretty sure I'm bi. I don't want to deal with that right now though, so I won't" and then proceeding to not really acknowledge it for several more years beyond reading a lot of m/m and f/f books, and later fanfic, while feeling very compelled and mildly guilty.])
But back to identity, while yes, I do think that authors should be mindful about whether the story they're telling is a story they're equipped to tell... it can get really ugly when other people decide to weigh in on whether they agree. There are so many authors who've been pressured to out themselves as some flavor of queer, because an audience attacked them for writing queer stories when it was assumed they themselves were straight/cis. Authors who may or may not want to be open about their racial, ethnic, or religious identities, or their medical conditions, or their personal histories of trauma, or anything else, but end up being pushed to in order to have "permission" to write about something that is a part of their own lives. (Isabel Fall and that whole situation is probably the worst in recent history, but it feels like it happens a lot, just not always with that level of vitriol and toxicity. Becky Albertalli comes to mind as well.)
And on the other side of the coin, you get people who try to fake being part of a marginalized group in order to give themselves clout or assumed authenticity or impact how an audience sees their work. And that behavior is to some degree incentivized (though it does not absolve the people who do this) by the idea that certain stories can only be told by certain people.
It's part of why this issue is so thorny. But all in all, yes, agreed, and good things to keep in mind.
And that concludes part 4!
I'm going to take a wee break from the book for about a week; I'm going out of town with my mom and Taylor for a long weekend, and so don't plan to be reading/writing up thoughts for four days or so. But it also feels silly to pause for those four days when I'd be only a chapter or two away from finishing the book. So I'll save the last five chapters of part 5 for next week.
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Yuuuup, this is something you've seen me gripe about in my book reviews.
Have a great long weekend!