Ted 0:01:
(voiceover) Hey, it’s Ted. Just a quick note off the top.

You may have noticed I don’t swear on this show. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I do swear in my real life, and my guest today is the host of a fabulous writing podcast that has a word in its title you can’t say on broadcast television. But rather than bleep it out or try to awkwardly talk around it, we just say it. I think all of us here can handle that. That being said, listener discretion is advised.

Wow, can I just say that at the start of every show now? It's super satisfying. (end voiceover)

Ted 0:37:
Welcome to Working Drafts. I'm your host, Ted Fox. And if you have found this show, it's a podcast dedicated to the craft, the process of writing. We focus on what my guests are currently working on and what they're navigating on the page to bring those stories to life. And I'm so thrilled today to be joined by Bianca Marais. Bianca, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Bianca 0:59:
Ted, thank you so much for having me. This is such a different way of doing things. Because as an author, I'm used to talking about a book a year and a half to two years after I wrote it. And this fresh hell is very recent in my mind. (Ted laughs) So this is gonna be fun.

Ted 1:17:
I'm glad you feel that--one, I was trying to do something different with this show. And two, I have definitely had that experience when I have interviewed authors on other podcasts where I've, I remember I had Marilynne Robinson on a podcast I used to do. And I asked her a question about, I think it was about Gilead. And she was like, I haven't thought about that book in so long, and you're asking me to respond to something on a page whatever. So yes, it is a different perspective. So.

Bianca 1:44:
Yeah.

Ted 1:46:
Bianca is the author of the bestselling The Witches of Moonshyne Manor as well as the beloved Hum If You Don't Know the Words and If You Want to Make God Laugh. She taught at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, where she was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award for creative writing in 2021. She is the co-host of the popular and super helpful writing podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which is aimed at helping emerging writers become published. Can't recommend that highly enough, if that describes you.

And her forthcoming novel, titled A Most Peculiar Tale, Indeed, will be published early in 2025. And if you've listened to the show, and as Bianca just alluded to, that's kind of what we're talking about today, is this work she's in progress on. So what can you tell us at this point about A Most Peculiar Tale, Indeed?

Bianca 2:36
Yeah, so I had to hand it in to my publisher about two weeks ago, so it's really fresh in my mind. Having said that, even though it is now with my editor, I am still, you know, I've still got the tools out and I'm tinkering away and still trying to fix it. And this book was a hell of a beast to tame. I swear it felt like wrestling with an octopus at times. (Ted laughs) And you know, this was my fourth book and I've done an Audible Original in between, a short story, and every time I'm foolish enough to believe that it's going to keep getting easier. But it really doesn't and probably because I make my life so much harder because I keep changing genres. I cannot appear to go, oh, this is my genre, you know, I'll just do something well. And then I'm like, oh, maybe I'll try this one. So, you know, if anyone listens to my podcast, I am a notorious pantser. I don't like plotting. I don't like outlining, right?

Ted 3:42:
You won't believe how many times this kind--I've been doing the show less than a year, and the number of times the pantser-versus-plotter conversation has come up. (laughs)

Bianca 3:51:
It is all the time. Because you've got to pick one. There's people who are like, we're plantsers. I'm like, no.

Ted 3:57:
I should say my agent has described me as a plantser. So ... (laughs)

Bianca Marais 4:02:
It's like Switzerland. I'm like pick a side, man. (Ted laughs) So, you know, I interview so many authors and these excellent ones are plotters, and they outline everything, and they know exactly where they're going before they begin. And that fascinates me because I don't want to know where I'm going when I begin. I want this to be like a journey on a boat through heavy fog.

I want to be in the fog, and I want to look at my GPS and know that there is something waiting for me beyond the fog. There are blue skies, there's a destination, but I don't want to see that upfront when I set out. I want to be in the fog, and then I will figure my way through it. But this book that I've just finished working on is a closed-room murder mystery.

Ted 4:51:
Okay.

Bianca 4:52:
So how the hell do you "pants" a closed-room murder mystery?

Ted 4:58:
(laughing) That's a very good point.

Bianca 4:59:
Right, you don't know who's gonna be murdered, you don't know why, you don't know by whom, you don't know what their motive is when you begin writing, but you're just like, okay, well, let's start writing, let's see where this goes.

Ted 5:11
Right. So I mean, you're definitely speaking my language with all of this here and things that, one, I think that is a--I would imagine that is a very challenging genre to try to tackle, very cool when it is done well. And the first thing I wanted to ask you, and this came up a little bit, I think it was when you were talking to Laurie Frankel, actually, about how you approach editing. Editing yourself. I'm not talking about once you've handed it off to an editor and you get notes back and that back and forth. I'm talking about before that because I was, when I was listening to the two of you, it was interesting to me because I was like, Oh, I don't think I do it the way either of the two of them do. And you initially have that moment where you're like, Oh, I must be wrong. And you remind yourself, no, you, as a writer, you have to figure out what works the right way for you to get it done. But I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about, you're going through, you're writing your chapters, you get to an end of a chapter, you get to an end of a section, how are you approaching editing the book, you as the author, before you're sharing it with your editor?

Bianca 6:14:
Yeah, I do it very differently, and it is important for every writer to know there is no right way, there is no wrong way, it is just what works for you. And what has always worked for me is I need to know that my first act, as my foundation, is as strong as it can possibly be. I feel like I cannot build on that if it's rickety, and I cannot keep going if that feels unstable. And I start to actually get panic attacks. Let's say I get to act two, and I change something that is gonna affect act one. You know, there's tons of writers out there who say, oh, just keep writing and then you can come back and fix it. No, that's when I wake up at 2 a.m. freaking the hell out (both laugh), and I'm like, oh, I need to fix that one thing. So as soon as that happens, if something changes, I go back again, and I revise, and I put in that little plot point, or I take it out, or I move characters around. And in the early months, I will work on, say, the first 10 to 15 chapters multiple times so that they're as polished as I can have them and then I feel, okay this is strong, I'm going to build on it. And even then I'll then get to chapter 30 and go, oh man there's something I forgot, I've got to come back again, and I've got to move that around. Even now after the book has gone into the publisher I'm still fiddling with chapter four that I'm really not 100% happy with.

Ted 7:36:
Yeah.

Bianca 7:36:
And this is after reviewing it multiple times. So, you know, that's the way I kind of circle my building and make sure that it's as strong as it can be. But yeah, Laurie had a different way of doing it and tons of other authors I've interviewed are like, no, you write it from start to finish and then you come back and you worry about those things. What's your process that you said it was so different?

Ted 7:58:
You know, I don't think it's--I'm getting the sense of like, I really am an amalgam of a lot ... (laughs) If I'm a plantser, I would say, I, you know, writing humor or books that are meant to, I certainly don't think the same reader is going to laugh or laugh out loud at something every few pages, but I feel like there should be something there that someone somewhere is going to find funny enough to do that. And so much of that comes down to the sentence level and the word choice and how--the economy of words and how I've chosen to express the idea that what I do is I finish a chapter. I go back and copyedit that chapter immediately and keep almost building chapter by chapter. I do do what you said, though, of I have like, it's like an itch in my brain if I know something is now wrong earlier in the book. It's like, I have to go fix it now, and it might be as simple as, oh, that detail I put in that sentence doesn't work anymore because of what I've done here and I can't say, oh yeah, I'll just finish it and go back and do it. That doesn't, especially something at the beginning, like you're talking about.

Bianca 9:12:
Yeah, and you know for me with this book, humor, I was having to take out humor.

Ted 9:19:
Mmm.

Bianca 9:19:
Because I love, you know, my last book, I really got to lean into the humor. And this book as well, I mean, this book is, so it's the closed-room murder mystery, but it's with magical people, it is Knives Out meets Succession. We have a whole bunch of puzzles interspersed through the book so that the reader can solve them at the same time as our hero. Or if they're like, to hell with that, I don't like puzzles, they could just turn to the back each time and just get the damn answer and then come back and keep reading. (Ted laughs)

But, you know, in the beginning it was much funnier. And that's what I was leaning into. And then I got halfway through and the feedback I was getting from my agent and, you know, a reader who critiques my work, whose feedback I really love, they were going, lean into the kind of creepy vibes, lean into the spooky feels. And often a joke would land, and then it just completely unravels all the tension you've built up because now people are laughing and they're not taking it seriously. So it's that as well, you know, it's figuring out the balance of tension versus humor. What is this book wanting to be as opposed to what did you set out to make this book? Because I think it's very important to allow a book to become what it wants to be. Let the characters tell you who they are, and let them flex and let the book become, you know, what it wants to be as opposed to keep panel beating it into what you think it should be when it, you know, making it submit to your will.

Ted 10:47:
I mean, I think that's a really valuable thing to think about and a valuable piece of advice and something that I don't--I mean, I started out, the first thing I ever had published was literally a joke book based off a Twitter feed. And then I went through, I really tried with narrative nonfiction and it just didn't--I ran into author platform things and things like that before I got to fiction. And I didn't really realize until I got to fiction and started working with characters when people would say something like, just like what you said. I said, oh, how does that work? How would a character that you've created actually talk to you and you would know where to go as a result? But it's 100% true that if you are developing these people the way you want to or you should be, you do get to a point where it's almost like--I'm typing, but I'm thinking it's like you almost start to move the pen and your hand's like, no, that's not what they would say there. Or that's not how they would react. And to me, that's one of the most exciting parts about it.

So I definitely agree with you that--there is value to planning to some degree, but there is that kind of magic that comes from just inhabiting those characters and seeing what they're going to do and letting them direct you where you go, which is what you were talking about at the beginning with kind of trying to find that way through the fog and not always knowing what's on the other side all the time.

Bianca Marais 12:06:
Yeah, and you know with this book, when I started, all I knew was who gets killed. I didn't know why they got killed. I didn't know, you know, who the suspects were or what was happening. And I was writing what I considered a secondary character, and this secondary character was acting shifty. (Ted laughs) They were doing some weird stuff. And I was like, oh there's something sketchy happening here. What is this person hiding, right? And then I started looking at it and looking at them more closely and unpacking it and suddenly they became a much bigger character. And had I sat down and gone, okay this is the plot, this is who did it, I never would have hit upon the storyline that I did because when you write in the way that I do you get to a certain point and you go, okay this has just happened, now you need to explain that. Why did that happen? In order for that to make sense, what is the character's motivation? What is the backstory? How did we get you and why did they do that? And then you've got to sit and go, okay, well, let me figure that out. And that kind of helps me develop plot in a very organic way, as opposed to, here are the obstacles I'm making my characters jump through and they will get to the end in this way. You know, they're creating their own problems, and I'm kind of trying to be there to help write them out of them.

Ted 13:23:
Right. So you mentioned moving around between different genres with your books. What has been the thing--like we said, you're two weeks removed from handing in this initial version of the book--what has been the thing or things most occupying your mind just in terms of being a writing challenge? Is it something we've already talked about or has there been another element to taking on this project, something you've had to wrestle with in a way that maybe you haven't had to do before?

Bianca 13:54:
Yeah, you know, I've had to write multiple POVs before. So in the Witches of Moonshyne Manor, it was an ensemble cast. I think I had about seven or eight POVs in that. So I've done a lot of POVs before in the third person. But this one, I think I had almost 10 POVs.

Ted 14:13:
Wow.

Bianca 14:14:
This one, and it's harder with this because you're trying to plant red herrings. You're trying to hide certain things. You want--when the answers come for them to feel inevitable. So that the reader goes, I should have spotted that on page 16, I should have made a note of that. But not so obvious that when it happens, they're like, I can see that coming from 50 pages away. So it's really balancing what you reveal, what you hold back. And as well, backstory. In all of my other books, I've managed to do backstory either as a dual timeline kind of narrative. So in the Witches of Moonshyne Manor, once we got to the middle of the novel, I went back in time and I think I did about 10 chapters that were taking place 33 years ago to give you that kind of backstory. And in other books, I've just done flashbacks. With this book, that fell flat, but I needed you to know the backstory. So I sat and noodled with it. And finally, I came up with choose-your-own-adventure chapters for all the backstory.

Ted 15:17:
Mmm.

Bianca 15:18:
So that the reader gets to go, okay, this is what I would have done in this instance, this is what I would have done. But then again, because they choose one option or the other, you've got to make sure that you're planting enough clues in each of the options, because if they're the kind of weirdo who's not gonna read both options, then they're gonna miss out on information. And I'm just really counting on the fact that human beings, being as they are, like, okay, I'm gonna pick option A, but I'm gonna go back and see what I missed with option B.

Ted 15:47:
(laughing) That's right. And then I'm going to pick whichever one I liked better as a result.

Bianca 15:52:
Exactly, whichever one worked out better for the character, that's the one I'm going to say I picked.

Ted 15:56:
Of course that was the one I wanted.

Bianca 15:58:
Yeah, you know, so it's really difficult. And with all my other books, I've written from a place of rage. I write about the things that really enrage me about the world. With this book, I didn't do this. I went into it saying, I want to have a lot of fun. I want to entertain. But also I want to challenge people to think more. I feel like we as a society in general lost our critical thinking skills. If something can't be narrowed down to a meme or three second reel, people aren't able to really weigh up information and reach their own conclusions. And so with this book, I even took really big philosophical questions and try to work them into the choose your own adventure chapters, like Philippa Foot's trolley problem.

Ted 16:49:
Mm-hmm.

Bianca 16:50:
You know, if there is the trolley on the tracks and it's going to divert, and it's either going to kill three people without your intervention or it's going to kill one person with your intervention, but with your intervention, you are now complicit in their death. Whereas if you didn't get involved they would have died and you aren't responsible. So, you know, I was wanting to really challenge people to--I wanted the book to be thought-provoking besides being a lot of fun, and that was a big challenge.

Ted 17:17:
Yeah, I can imagine. Certainly not to the level of philosophical discourse, but I really identify with trying to find those ways to work things--and I think you and Laurie talked about this actually, as well--like working in, I think it was James Thurber described humorists as angry head, warm hearts. And that comes out a lot where things that are either bothering me about the world or, I mean, my first book, elementary school parent board, there was a lot in there about voting rights. And I was kind of like, if I can do this as a parallel in a way that doesn't seem preachy and is non-threatening, but can I challenge people if they're sitting here thinking about this to think like, oh, it is kind of messed up that in elections for national offices, we don't make it easy for people to vote. That's kind of strange. So I (laughs)--I totally get where you're coming from on that in terms of you're trying to tell a story, you're trying to engage the reader, you're trying to engage them with what's happening on the page in that story. But while I have your attention here, it's almost like, can I make this worthwhile on another level? That's not only going to be good for you, but it's you, the reader, but satisfying for me is the person creating it.

Bianca Marais 18:37:
Yeah, 100%. I want people to walk away, feel entertained, feel like they got their money's worth, but I also want, with every book I write, I want them to be challenged in some way. I want them to question themselves in terms of their life philosophy, in terms of their prejudices, in terms of their assumptions about the world. And I think that's an amazing thing about writers and writing is that we can do this, we can entertain and we can challenge at the same time and like you say do it in a way that isn't preaching but also-- you know, these puzzles were head scratchers to do. Oh my word. Because I'm wanting to appeal to as many different kinds of thinking as possible. You know, some people are really good mathematically, some people are really good at word puzzles, some people are good at kind of deductive reasoning.

And so I wanted to put in something there, a bit of something for everyone that would challenge them, that wouldn't just appeal to one kind of brain and one way of thinking. And I also wanted to give people clues along the way if they got stuck. But now here's the thing, Ted, we're getting to the point now where paper is super expensive and publishers are wanting to publish shorter books. And the more pages you put in the book, the harder it is for them. So I'm like, well, how can I do this without adding more pages at the back? And then I came up with this idea to make the book interactive so that the reader can email the main character for clues as they go along.

Ted 20:10:
Ooh. Ooh, I love it.

Bianca 20:11:
And she then emails them back. So you get an email from the main character saying, you know, dear intrepid puzzle solver, here is a clue for this. Good luck with the rest of it. So it was really kind of brainstorming ways to think outside the box here. And that works really well for the book, but please, Ted, do not ask me what the hell we're going to do for the audio book. (Ted laughs) Because I have no idea how we are going to have an audio book that is so dependent on visual clues. We either gonna have to take all of those puzzles out and have it just be a normal story in the audio book, or I'm gonna have to come up with a way to redo all those puzzles in a way that the reader can listen to them. And I'm like, that's a not a today kind of problem (laughs). So I'll worry about that when I get there.

Ted 21:01:
I love that idea, though, of the, it's one of those cases where the limitation ended up giving rise to something creatively that you wouldn't have gotten to otherwise, but what a cool wrinkle to have with that, that the person reading it is then interacting with the character that they're reading in the book.

Bianca 21:21:
Yeah, I thought that was really fun, but then you do again have to think about the limitations. What happens if someone is flying or they don't have, you know, internet access or their cell phone with them? And then it's like, okay, well, you're just not going to get the clue. And I'm sorry for you. You're going to have to figure it out. But yeah, you know, so with each solution and each kind of new interesting way of doing things, you come up with challenges like, how are we going to deal with that in the audio book? How are we going to deal with that in the ebook? And I'm just really lucky that my publisher was open to this idea and they said, look, we'll come up with a way of handling that. We're not going to allow that to be a deal-breaker upfront. Because I was nervous that it would be a deal-breaker upfront. And I'm just really lucky that I have an awesome editor, Nicole Brebner at Mira, who was like, let's figure it out as we go along.

Ted 22:12:
Yeah, that's great. I wanted to go back a little bit to what you talked about with all these different POVs, point of views, that you're writing. And I wonder when you are--maybe I already have a sense of the answer to this, because you said you were a pantser. But when you're thinking about these different characters and you're wanting to make sure that you're doing the alternating POV, that they have different voices, that they're still advancing the story and telling the story, but it isn't just a different name on the page for that. Like I actually feel like I'm hearing a different person telling it. How do you approach doing that? Are you trying to kind of outline some broad character sketch for each? Or are you just kind of seeing where the story takes each of them and reacting to that as you go?

Bianca 23:04:
Yeah, that was another interesting conversation that Laurie and I had, was how much closer you can get to a character in third person-close than what you can get in first person. Because we always think first person is as close as we can get to a character. But Laurie and I both agree that we think third person-close is the way to do it. But how I do this is I view writing as I know a lot of actors view acting. So when I sit down and I write from that particular point of view, I become that character. It's like I settle into their body and everything I see is through their eyes looking out at the world. I'm not from the outside looking down at that character. I'm in them looking out. And so I inhabit, you know, whatever their feelings are, whether they sadistic, whether they're fun, whether they're whimsical, whether they're, you know, angry.

That's what I inhabit and that informs the language, it informs what they look at, what they pay attention to. So for example, in the book, I've got some very superficial, fashion-obsessed, beauty-obsessed characters. And when they, when it's from their POV, they notice how somebody looks, they really care how somebody's dressed. They really care about people's weight and their hair and their makeup and how they present themselves. In other characters who don't care about these kinds of things, they will barely describe what another character looks like because what's important to them is the character's mind or whatever else is the kind of thing that fascinates them. And I think that's so important when we write from multiple POVs is we've always got to say, you know, what would this character notice? What do they care about? What are the stakes for them? What drives them? What motivates them? What would they not even notice? And to take care that it's a camera lens that you keep positioning. And when you, each particular character, zoom in on the things that that character would naturally care about.

Ted 25:09
Mm-hmm. It's one of the things. I mean, I'm not making any recommendation or anything that no one's heard of at this point. But it was the thing that really took me aback in a good way when I read Daisy Jones and the Six. And I thought, what a bold choice to do a novel as an oral history. But the fact that for 400, 500 pages, however long it was, I felt like I was tracking different people telling, like, because even on that micro level within chapters of, OK, this person said two sentences, and now it's a paragraph, and now it's a page. That has always boggled my mind just as a feat of writing to think, wow, okay, you really come to know your characters well, if you can shift on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis.

Bianca Marais 25:59:
Listen, I'm gonna be honest. I think I'm the only person in the world that did not love Daisy Jones and the Six. (laughs) But only the book. So I've been told I should listen to the audiobook. I've been told that the audiobook is an incredible experience, and I really enjoyed the TV show or the series. But when it came to the actual book, I was just like, this is not for me. And I had the same problem with Women Talking by Miriam Toews, who's one of my favorite authors. And I mean I love Taylor Jenkins Reid. Evelyn, what's it? Evelyn, not Evelyn Jones. Oh, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

Ted 26:38:
Evelyn Hugo, yup.

Bianca 26:40:
Yes. Like that book was one of my absolute favorites. So these are authors whose works, other works I have loved, but these particular books I haven't been able to access as novels, because I was just like, I think it would be better as a film.

Ted 26:53:
My father-in-law swears by Daisy Jones and the Six as an audiobook. So it might be, if you liked the TV show, it might be worth listening to however much of it and being like, OK, maybe this does this a little bit differently for me.

As we're wrapping up here, one thing, you mentioned this at the beginning, this is kind of a pep talk I have to give myself at times, I suspect that you do, and that I would want anyone listening to this to hear. Can you talk a little bit about--I find myself, I just finished my second novel and going--with the same imprint--going from novel one to novel two, there was something in my head for a lot of that writing process of thinking, well, you did this once, so you should be better at it now and you should be able to anticipate, well, if you do this, the editor is going to say this, so just go ahead. And you can get into this state where it can almost be the sense of paralysis with your writing because you're trying to, you know, this 3D chess thing you're doing with the person reading it and thinking, wow, I should really know this now. So how is that experience for you finishing your fourth book? You mentioned that earlier thinking, OK, I should be pretty good at this now. How do you manage that process of sitting down and knowing on the one hand, I've published these books and I know what I'm doing, and on the other hand, I'm doing this complete, tt's like starting from scratch all over again.

Bianca 28:17:
Yeah, you know what? I give myself permission to say that each book is going to teach me how to write it. I don't have children myself, but there are a lot of children in my life through friends and family. And I've heard time and again from parents that each child teaches you how to parent it. What works with one child doesn't work with another child. And it's the same for me with books. So each book is singular. It's going to have things that I've never anticipated in any of my other books. And quite honestly, I love the struggle of it. I don't ever want to be the kind of author who sits down and has got it so under control that it just, that it doesn't feel like a struggle. Cause for me, the wrestling the octopus is where the fun is, right? And if I sit down and the octopus is tame and I don't have to wrestle with anything, I think that takes a lot of the fun out of it.

So I think we need to stop putting so much pressure on ourselves to get things right. As one of the co-hosts on our podcast, Cece, she's a literary agent and she will say over and over again that we are not aiming for efficiency or expediency as writers. That is not the goal of writing. We are trying to create, we are trying to challenge the world and ourselves, and if we put too much pressure on ourselves to be like, well, you should know this by now and you should be better at this by now, it just makes it that much harder. And it allows the critic in the drafting room. And I cannot write with somebody sort of wagging their finger at me, going, you should know better. You shouldn't be doing that. So, you know, for myself and for all writers, I just say, doesn't matter where you are in the process, allow yourself to have fun with it, allow yourself to experiment, push the boundaries, do things you haven't done before.

And you know, if you suck at it and you mess it up (laughs), well, oops, you learn from that. Backtrack, do it better the next time. But yeah, just, you know, just don't be quite so hard on yourself.

Ted 30:24:
I think that's great advice. I don't know if it's true for all writers, but I think we as a profession tend to attract people who tend to be hard on themselves. (laughs) So it's a very good thing to bear in mind. And I love the image of wrestling the octopus, because if you at some level don't love the struggle of doing this, as I always say to people, then there are better ways to make a living or try to make a living, because it is definitely not a straight path to getting from point A to point whatever. There's a lot of twists and turns along the way. So I love that advice.

Bianca 30:57:
Yeah. And also, you know what? This job means that we invite criticism. The minute the book is out of our hands, we're gonna have professional critics reading it. We're gonna have readers posting on Goodreads how our book is the worst thing they've ever read in their lives (Ted laughs), and they demand their money back. So we get a lot of criticism. So why would we join in with that chorus and be the one criticizing ourselves as well? Like, let's be our cheerleader, and then you know when the book goes out let everybody else be its critic but don't let us be the critics as well.

Ted 31:29
I love that. Bianca Marais, thank you so much for--you talk about on your show being a good literary citizen. And you responding to my unsolicited email and saying you would talk to me was a prime example of that. So I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.

Bianca 31:44
And I appreciate you having me on the show, Ted, and for everything you do as well for writers. Thank you.

Ted 31:50:
(voiceover) Thanks for listening. New episodes of Working Drafts come out on the 15h of the month. For more, visit my website, thetedfox.com.