101: Buggins' Turn – The Homogenizing Effect of Trade Literature

This week we got real nerdy about trade literature. How do systems like Save the Cat! flatten style and novelty? Can fiction escape corporate buzzwords? How does something like a sentence diagram become weirdly emotional? We also talked about how “Buggins’ turn” (the idea that everyone gets a go, deserved or not) shows up in workplace fiction—and life.Around the 30 minute mark we read first-draft stories for Buggins’ Turn, which featured unlikely promotions, crumbling hierarchies, and some very unfortunate shifts in the break room.Buggins' turn. The principle of awarding promo- tion by rotation rather than on individual merit. Buggins is a supposedly common surname, but there were only two in the 1980 London tele- phone directory. The name itself is familiar in another context from 'Grandma Buggins', a tiresome old lady played by Mabel Constan- duros in a radio series that ran from 1925 to the late 1940s.Like this weeks episode and wish you could read as well as listen? Subscribe to our Substack for a summary of our opening discussion, a story from the episode, and a writing prompt!  Be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do. Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.