Rationally Writing

Daystar and Alexander talk about the various pitfalls, contradictions, and complications in writing heroes or villains who commit political violence... or don't, as the case may be.Hosted by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Daystar Eld⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alexander Wales⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Daystar and Alex invite Max back on the podcast to talk about his new novel, ⁠Red Heart⁠, a modern sci-fi thriller that follows an American spy sent to a Chinese AI lab to investigate how far ahead their capabilities are compared to the US.Max works at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and has been thinking about the state of AI Safety for over a decade now. He's also written the Crystal Society trilogy, which we discussed in episode 66. ⁠https://maxharms.com/redheart⁠Co-hosted by ⁠⁠Alexander Wales⁠⁠With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, ⁠⁠G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Daystar and Alex invite Max back on the podcast to talk about his new novel, ⁠Red Heart⁠, a modern sci-fi thriller that follows an American spy sent to a Chinese AI lab to investigate how far ahead their capabilities are compared to the US.Max works at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and the trilogy is an imagining of what Artificial General Intelligence might be like, written from the perspective of one of the AI's subagents. ⁠https://maxharms.com/redheart⁠Co-hosted by ⁠⁠Alexander Wales⁠⁠With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, ⁠⁠G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Daystar and Alexander hang out with Duncan Sabien (TK17) at LessOnline, and invite him back on the show to chat about his views on the Magic the Gathering Color Wheel this time, as well as some other stuff⁠. Duncan is the writer of Animorphs: The Reckoning, as well as a variety of other great essays on culture, epistemology, and more.Co-hosted by ⁠⁠Alexander Wales⁠⁠With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, ⁠⁠G.A.T.O Must Be Respected⁠

Daystar and Alexander hang out with Max Harms at LessOnline, and invite him to record an episode on his books Crystal Society, Crystal Mentality, and Crystal Eternity. Max works at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and the trilogy is an imagining of what Artificial General Intelligence might be like, written from the perspective of one of the AI's subagents.His newest book, Red Heart, will be out November 3rd and is available for pre-order. https://maxharms.com/redheartCo-hosted by ⁠Alexander Wales⁠With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, ⁠G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Daystar and Alexander talk about AI in writing, both for creating fiction and its impact on writing fiction set in the modern world. Hosted by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Daystar Eld⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠Alexander Wales⁠⁠⁠⁠. With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, ⁠⁠⁠⁠G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Daystar and Alexander record in front of a live audience at LessOnline to talk about Utopian Fiction; what it is, why it's so rare, and what it says about us as individuals and societies. Hosted by ⁠⁠⁠Daystar Eld⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Alexander Wales⁠⁠⁠. With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, ⁠⁠⁠G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Short episode where Daystar and Alexander speak with Velorien, one of the writers of Marked for Death⁠, to discuss the impact of reader feedback in serial fiction. Hosted by ⁠⁠Daystar Eld⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Alexander Wales⁠⁠. With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, ⁠⁠G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Daystar and Alexander discuss the role of money and class in fiction, and how it can affect, or fail to affect, their decisions and interactions. Hosted by ⁠Daystar Eld⁠ and ⁠Alexander Wales⁠ With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, ⁠G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Alex and I attended a writing retreat with some other authors in the rationality community, and while there decided to host an impromptu episode on subverting expectations, joined (primarily) by our Nebula nominated friend, Jamie Wahls. All I had to record with was my laptop, so apologies for the sound quality! Co-hosted by Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected Links: http://jamiewahls.com/

Today we're joined once again by Duncan Sabien, aka TK17, to discuss his incredible rationalfic, Animorphs: The Reckoning. It was recorded shortly after the story finished and includes questions on not just his writing process, but the various decisions that went into changes made from canon, so spoilers ahead! Co-hosted by Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected Links: Duncan's "How the MTG Color Wheel Explains Humanity" Animorphs: The Reckoning AMA Duncan's Previous Guest Appearance

Today we discuss Alexander's original serial fiction, Worth the Candle, and the various decisions and aspects of the story that came up throughout the writing process. Co-hosted by Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Daystar and Alexander discuss gender in fiction, and how it cultural gender norms or deviances can inform not just character personalities but can be an interesting part of world building. Co-hosted by Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Daystar and Alexander discuss using different species or "races" in fiction, and how it informs characters and is addressed by different types of stories. Co-hosted by Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected

Daystar and Alexander discuss race in fiction, or rather, species, and how it informs characters and is addressed by different types of stories. Co-hosted by Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected Timestamps 03:38 Race as a Social Construct 14:20 Approaches to Race in Fiction 22:30 Black Superman 32:55 How Race Informs Character 48:01 Literal Racism 56:48 Research

Daystar and Alexander discuss politics as a plot device, and and political fiction as a genre. Co-hosted by Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected Timestamps: 00:35 What is a political plot? 8:58 Main types of political plot structures 24:00 Political 5 Man Band 37:05 Challenges Links: Rules for Rulers

Daystar and Alexander discuss irrational or non-rational fiction.  Co-hosted by Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected Timestamps 00:35 "Rational" vs "Irrational" 10:04 How do you distinguish? 18:50 Conversations around the difference 33:05 Audience Mindset 48:18 Writing non-rational fiction

Daystar and Alexander discuss horror in fiction, and the unique challenges and opportunities that come with rational horror. Co-hosted by Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected Timestamps 0:37 What Do You Find Scary in Fiction? 7:42 Rational Horror 22:50 Horror vs Thriller 31:00 Strengths of Prose Horror Links Hereditary It Follows Dr. Who S4E11 - Midnight Cordyceps Ginny Weasley and The Sealed Intelligence  Antimemetics In the Mouth of Madness John Dies at the End

Daystar and Alexander discuss dropped threads and side plots in stories, what tends to lead to them and how to manage them as you go. Timestamps 2:34 Serial Fiction 9:32 What Ends Up on the Page 14:55 Side Plots 17:10 Serials 21:25 Why Threads Get Dropped 27:30 Story Shifts 37:30 Our Dropped Threads 44:28 Bonus Dropped Threads

Daystar and Alexander discuss character flaws; what makes for good ones, how to avoid Mary Sues, and why some flaws show up so often compared to others. Timestamps 0:35 Flaws As Conflict Generators 5:53 Mary Sues 15:23 Brought Low 23:14 Most Common Flaws 36:02 Rarest Flaws Twig by Wildbow The Erogamer by Groon the Walker

Daystar and Alexander discuss the reasons authors abandon stories before they're finished, whether they want to or not. Hosted by Daystar Eld and Alexander Wales With thanks to Tim Yarbrough for the Intro/Outro music, G.A.T.O Must Be Respected Time Stamps 1:26 Abandonment vs Hiatus 6:16 Different reasons for Abandoning 17:10 Alex's List 25:55 Managing Burnout 39:37 Other Authors 48:21 Author Trust

Daystar and Alexander discuss Ideological Turing Tests; what they are, why they're important in fiction, and how to try to pass them as best you can. Timestamps: 0:34 Turing Tests 6:15 Avoiding Caricatures Isn't Enough 10:14 Passing ITT 25:48 Frames 37:53 Personal Challenges 47:11 Presentation

Daystar and Alexander discuss romance in fiction, particularly in finding meaningful romantic conflicts as either the major plot, or as a subplot in a broader story. Timestamps: 7:21 Body Language and Chemistry 14:00 Source of Romantic conflict 21:43 Troubled vs Doomed 30:20 Extreme Romantic Contexts 36:29 Compatibility 43:06 Conflict from Change 50:38 New and Ongoing Conflicts

Daystar and Alexander discuss the value and pitfalls of using time skips, long and short. Timestamps: 1:13 The Two Axes 11:51 Rules for Timeskips 25:27 Relationships 42:13 Extremely Long Timeskips

Bonus bit of conversation from Episode 46.

Daystar and Alexander discuss the common necessities of research for writing fiction. 0:30 A Stable of Experts 12:49 Inspirational Research 19:15 Spot Research

Daystar and Alexander are joined by professional game writer Kuiper to discuss writing as a skill, or rather a set of skills, and the ways people can improve them. Timestamps: 1:19 Writing as a skill 21:03 What improves writing? 24:20 Don't grow attached to your ideas 32:45 Skilling up one at a time 45:36 Sticking with or abandoning 50:25 Other ways to improve writing.

Special guest Erratic Errata joins Daystar and Alexander to discuss more aspects of world building, particularly in his serial A Practical Guide to Evil. 1:04 Planet of Hats 11:31 Societal Axioms 19:30 Reconstructing Tropes 25:56 Playing with Narrative 35:06 Worldbuilding Differences 43:38 Free Will and Deities 49:39 Video game inspiration 55:15 A Practical Guide to Evil Q&A

Daystar and Alexander discuss reader feedback, and taking criticism constructively. Timestamps: 2:02 Paretto's Principle 6:30 Trends and Spikes 19:50 Typos vs Style 26:56 Continuity 29:30 Actionable 37:49 Deep Criticism 45:50 Spoilery feedback

Special guest CthulhuRaeJepsen joins the podcast to discuss pseudonyms, and his story Worth the Candle. Timestamps: 2:19 Writing Under Pseudonym 7:52 Worth the Candle 17:07 Spoiler Talk up to Ch. 84

Daystar and Alexander discuss worldbuilding, and why considering second-order effects is so important to making it rational, and can help in finding or fleshing out good plots. 2:50 Battle School concept 6:46 Inadequate Equilibria As Story Elements 22:55 Shadows of the Limelight 28:22 Consequence of the Consequence 37:20 Aesop Exacerbation 41:14 Confronting Civilizational Inadequacy

Daystar and Alexander review the movie The Prestige, and explore what made it such a well constructed, perhaps even rational, work of fiction. Timestamps 2:24 Summary + Was it Rational? 16:30 Foreshadowing 21:34 Clashing Ideologies 25:22 Noticing Confusion 30:25 Magic and Storytelling 45:40 Repeat Viewings

Daystar and Alexander discuss children in fiction, including what makes them realistic and why reactions to them can vary so widely. Timestamps 0:31 Advantages of child protagonists 4:43 "Children don't act like that." 16:00 Keeping smart/mature children children 20:37 Evergreen methods 26:40 Predictive Processing and "Wonder" 34:33 In Pokemon: ToOS

Daystar and Alexander discuss the unique aspects of the various mediums of prose fiction, and how new technologies introduce new opportunities and challenges. Timestamps 5:03 Technological limitations 11:01 Conventions 16:45 New Media 19:27 Music 24:45 Subjectivity 31:45 Mediumception

Daystar and Alexander discuss how to plan out and navigate different power dynamics to keep your stories engaging. Time Stamps 0:42 Power in Fiction 3:46 World vs Protagonist vs Antagonist 11:14 New Dimsensions vs Power Creep 14:34 Rationalist Fiction 22:25 Power Differential on a Different Axis 32:55 Powers as Part of Identities 37:01 Protagonist vs Antagonist 47:58 Power in Romance stories

Daystar and Alexander explore brainstorming, and how trope lists, patterns, and symmetry can be used to come up with new takes on old ideas.

Daystar and Alexander explore how to "break the story" when outlining its plot and character arcs. Time Stamps: 00:49 What is Breaking the Story? 5:12 Example 13:38 Character Arcs 28:40 Plot and Endings

Daystar and Alexander review Alex's latest NaNoWriMo book, The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk. Time Stamps: 1:12 Magic Systems 9:18 The Twist 15:53 Spirit Magic 20:47 Potential Sequel 25:17 Plot Threads 28:33 Villain 31:49 The Prophecy

Daystar and Alexander review some of each other's writing, starting with Pokemon: The Origin of Species 3:30 Planning the story 8:36 Present Tense 10:15 Viewpoints 16:39 Goals/Defeats 23:41 Cycles 28:24 Interludes 34:55 Criticisms

Daystar and Alexander are joined by special guest Duncan Sabien (TK17) to discuss multiple perspectives in fiction, including common pitfalls and benefits. 1:30 Archetypes vs Whole Characters 5:34 Choosing Who Gets what Scene 14:45 Shifting Focus and Disorientation 25:06 Different Character Dialogue 35:30 Differentiating Characters

Daystar and Alexander discuss action scenes and how to ensure they're engaging and meaningful. Timestamps: 1:23 Action Scenes in Different Mediums 5:38 What Makes a Good Action Scene 11:22 Avoiding Repetition 17:01 Rational Action Scenes 20:07 Pacing and Flow

Daystar and Alexander discuss literary fiction, its values and failure modes, and its similarities and differences from rational fiction. 01:20 What Qualifies as Literary Fiction? 15:06 Pretentiousness 25: 03 Literary Fiction and Rational Fiction 35:50 Writing Literary Fiction 45:43 Recommendations

Daystar and Alexander discusses the value of new settings opposed to using an established one, and the idea of others using their own stories and ideas. 01:24 Taking Ideas vs Fanfic 7:17 Stealing Mechanics 11:33 The value of something new 19:36 Taking our ideas 27:09 Guardian

Daystar and Alexander discuss creative appropriation, aka "stealing," and the philosophy and benefits behind it. 01:03 How to not be original 11:10 Adding something new 16:01 Stealing details 22:10 The argument against copywrite 28:38 Artistic distinction for using

Daystar and Alexander explore the differences between good description and bad description, and analyze examples of descriptions from novels. Timestamps: 01:16 Why is description important? 8:53 What is good description? 14:40 When to put the description? 22:12 Alexander's notable examples 30:00 Daystar's notable examples Advertisement: This month, the podcast is being sponsored by Scrivener! It's a great program to help better organize writing projects, from novels to research papers and more. They're offering a 30 day free trial, and if you like it enough to buy it, you can support the show by using the promo code RATIONALLY during the month of March. Hope you find it useful!

Daystar and Alexander explore the differences between GMing a tabletop RPG and writing a story. 01:04 Gaming creds 05:10 Starting a story vs an RPG. 15:50 Railroading 28:36 Players as Characters 35:23 Exposition 37:51 Source Books

Daystar and Alexander explore what makes endings satisfying, effective, or just annoying. 2:41 What makes endings satisfying? 15:23 Alternate endings 18:38 Bad endings 25:56 Ambiguity in endings 32:07 Downer endings 37:58 Endings we've enjoyed

Daystar and Alexander discuss the beginnings of stories, and what goes into an effective or boring start. Time Stamps: 0:35 What's in a Beginning? 5:00 Two Types of Prologues 9:15 The Third Type of Prologue 17:16 So what, if it works? 20:01 How to make the beginning engaging 30:08 Beginnings We've Enjoyed 35:10 Setting Tone

This week, Daystar and Alexander do their first review by comparing the various rationalities and irrationalities of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rogue One, along with general things they liked and disliked about the movies.

Alexander and Daystar discuss Bottom Up Storytelling, bring up common pitfalls to avoid, and explore some homespun examples. Timestamps 00:35 Top Down vs Bottom Up 08:24 Natural Stories in Premises 11:06 Pitfalls in Bottom Up 24:20 Homespun Examples