Pacing and Suspense in Big Fantasies with Sabaa Tahir - Heir

Marissa chats with Sabaa Tahir about the first book in her new YA fantasy duology, HEIR. Also discussed in this episode: Yosemite National Park, using the GMC (Goal, Motivation, Conflict) technique, how the final, typeset draft can be a place where momentum requires deeper revisions (much to publishers’ chagrin), adding unexpected twists midway through a book to surprise the reader, the power of self-bribery, using our world to influence world-building and so much more!

Yosemite National Park: https://www.nps.gov/yose/index.htm 

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Transcript

[00:10] Marissa: Hello and welcome to the Happy writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thanks so much for joining me. One thing making me happy this week is that we are celebrating the start of our fourth grade homeschool adventure with another road trip. We are going to be heading down the coast, seeing, oh gosh, the redwoods. We're going to spend some time in San Francisco and LA, tour some really cool mansions, probably drink some wine in Sonoma. I guess that's not technically school, but maybe they'll, like, learn something about fermentation. Anyway, I'm super excited. There's been a lot of travel this year, a lot going on. But whenever my husband and I kind of talk about are we still liking homeschooling? Do we still want to keep doing this? Our number one thing is like, we just want to take the girls and go on the road and show them as much as possible and see as much of the world as we can. So we are trying to live that rather than just say it over and over again. So I'm really looking forward to it. I am also going to be doing a couple of book signings during this trip, so if you happen to be near Santa Barbara or Portland, Oregon, you can check out the details on instagram and I hope to see you there. And I am so thrilled to be talking to today's guest. She is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling and Ember in the Ashes series, which has been translated into more than 35 languages, and the first book in the series was named one of time's 100 best young adult books of all time. Her follow up novel, all my rage, won the National Book Award for young people's literature, the Michael L. Prince Award, the Boston Globe Horn Book Award for fiction and poetry, and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Her newest novel, Heir, the first in a duology, comes out next week on October 1. Please welcome Saba Tahir.

[02:19] Sabaa: Hello, Marissa. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

[02:22] Marissa: I am so thrilled. It's been a long, long time. I don't think we've seen each other since COVID so I'm thrilled to be talking to you again.

[02:32] Sabaa: I am very happy to be talking to you and I'm excited for your road trip. I hope you get a chance to get a Yosemite. That's actually my favorite place in the world.

[02:39] Marissa: That is good to know. We've been kind of talking about trying to fit in some more of the national parks. So I'm going to write that down right at this minute. So I don't forget, because I know we're going to be passing, like, right by it.

[02:51] Sabaa: You will. And Yosemite in the fall is, or, you know, the beginning of the fall, late summer. It is truly an experience. Just one of the most beautiful, beautiful parks I've ever been to. I've been many times in the summer and the spring in the fall, but the fall is really special in Yosemite.

[03:10] Marissa: Okay. No, I love that tip. Do you hike, is it a great place to go hiking or what do you do? What's your favorite thing to do there?

[03:16] Sabaa: It is a great place to go hiking for young'uns. A wonderful place to do, like, a low impact hike to a place called Vernal Falls. That's like a really fun hike to do with little kids. And they see this enormous waterfall, which is great. It's also really nice to, like, just do these sort of flat trails across the valley floor. And then there's a road. It's the Tuolumne Meadows road. And it goes past this beautiful place called Tuolumne meadows, which is truly, like, to me, sort of travel. Probably the closest thing to heaven on earth that I have ever personally seen. Very difficult to describe. Pictures don't do it justice. It is just someplace you have to see for yourself.

[04:06] Marissa: You are the right person to be talking to. I'm so excited that you told me all this.

[04:10] Sabaa: Thank you. I love you, Sodie. I will talk about it all day.

[04:14] Marissa: Okay, well, I will let you know if we are able to make it. I will send you an email and be like, thank you. This is the best tip. This was the best thing ever.

[04:24] Sabaa: Oh, please do. I would be so happy.

[04:26] Marissa: I'm so excited for all of your success. And I know that you've been working it this last ten years. You've written just some amazing books, and I'm so happy to see that they've just gotten all of the recognition that they deserve. But let's move back in time. The first thing I want to know is your origin story as a writer. How did you get here?

[04:52] Sabaa: My origin story as a writer or my origin story as a villain?

[04:56] Marissa: One or the other.

[04:57] Sabaa: Same thing according to my readers. But I will say that I started, started as a little baby storyteller when I was quite young. My mother would tell me stories about jinn and efforts and a lot of these sort of myths and legends from the islamic world. And that kind of got my mind thinking. And then I would tell her stories back. So we'd go on these long walks together, and I would just tell her these long, unending stories. And then as I got older, books became a sanctuary for me. I grew up in a very small, isolated town, and I did feel like an outcast there. There were times I had good friends. There were times I was very lonely. So books really became the most reliable friend I've had. And after I spent years reading, it, just sort of naturally, that enjoyment coupled with the love of storytelling, and I started writing. However, I did not really think of myself as somebody who could become a writer like that. I didn't associate humans with books. I feel like they are like Athena, and they just sort of popped into the world fully formed. So it took, you know, going to, I was always writing, but it took going to college, you know, becoming an editor for the Washington Post, like a copy editor, and then really writing in my spare time for me to realize that writing is something that I wanted to do on a more long term basis. So that ultimately took me into my mid to late twenties, and my first book came out when I was in my early thirties. Okay, that's the short version, so I'm.

[06:45] Marissa: Going to ask to make it a slightly longer version. So once you started, once you were like, okay, I really want to do this. How many manuscripts did you go through? How many books did you query? Did you have a lot of, you know, submission and rejection, or was a number in the ashes? Like, did it get picked up really fast? How did that process go?

[07:04] Sabaa: That process was convoluted. And I started by writing the book that became all my rage. Actually, this was in the early two thousands. I called it, you know, my motel book or my anger book. And it was really about growing up at this motel. And it was a fiction story. It was, you know, each chapter was going to be a story from one of the rooms, and they were all going to connect. And it was meant to be kind of an adult literary novel. And I just struggled to write it because I don't think I had the distance necessary as, like, a 20, you know, whatever, 23, 24 year old. And I was really struggling with it. And I remember calling my mom and saying, I'm having such a hard time with this book. And she said, well, why don't you write something else? You know, why don't you write fantasy? You've always loved fantasy. And my response to her was, mom, I can't write fantasy. No one will take me seriously, which is exactly what, you know, a foolish 20, whatever young twenties person might say. And she's like, well, no one's going to take you seriously if you never finish a book, which was, you know, a classic asian mom roast. So then I thought, okay, you know, maybe I'll try to write a fantasy. But it wasn't until I started working at the Post and I was a night editor. I read a lot of stories. Like, late at night, I was at work till 130 in the morning, many nights. It wasn't until I worked there and I started reading about all these terrible things happening in the world. So anything from child soldiers to extra judicial jailings to genocide, I talk on social media a lot about the sudanese civil war that's going on because I first learned about the troubles in Sudan in 2004 when the sudanese genocide began. And so these things really haunted me, and I decided to sort of take that frustration at the state of the world and put it into a book in which, you know, I felt like we couldn't fight back in our world. And I wanted to write a book where people could fight back. And that's really where Ember in the Ashes was born. That was in 2007. It took me six years to write the book. I had two cross country moves, two children, an ill mom. You know, many, many things happened during those six years. But one of the other things that happened was after, you know, you asked about drafts. I don't know how many drafts it was, actually, Marissa. It must have been over 40. But I wrote so many drafts of a number in the ashes every time. It wasn't quite what I wanted it to be. But in 20, in 2013, I finally. I remember sending it to a woman who ultimately became my mentor. Her name is Kathy Yardley. She's amazing. And she said, you know, she had read an early version in 2012 as kind of like an editor, you know, just. Just someone who I had hired to look at it to tell me, hey, you know, I'm really struggling with this. What do I do? And she had sort of talked me through the issues with the book, and then I had to go back and fix those issues. And I remember resending it to her in that summer of 2013 and her saying, if this doesn't get picked up, I'll eat my keyboard. And I. I know. I know exactly where I was. I was in San Francisco. I was in Union Square. I was walking through a uniqlo when I got that email. And I remember, like, I. And I think writers will understand this if you've been working on something for many, many years and you haven't gotten much feedback on it. I remember, like, I sat down because I couldn't stand. I was so relieved that there was something there because I trusted her. You know, I was like, she knows what she's talking about. So shortly after that, I went through a sort of, you know, classic agent getting process and ended up, you know, finding the right fit. And then after that, Amber sold rather quickly over, over a weekend, actually, my agent sent it to Penguin Random House, to Razorbill, to the publisher at the time at raise your razor bill. His name was Bentley. And I guess a lot of folks at Penguin read it over that weekend and they acquired it the next week.

[11:09] Marissa: I love that because there's actually a lot of parallels to my story where, like, my agent sent Cinder out on a Friday and we had an offer on Monday, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone else with that same story. And so I'm like, you and I are such kindreds.

[11:25] Sabaa: Yeah. And it's. It's very. It's so fast. A little overwhelming.

[11:29] Marissa: Yeah, it's so overwhelming because you're, I don't know about you, but, like, I was so emotionally prepared for rejection. And just like, I'm like, it takes months. It can take years. Like, I might have to go write another book. This one might not sell. And then for it to happen like that, I mean, it's just like a whirlwind.

[11:48] Sabaa: Yeah, no, that's. It's exactly the perfect description was a whirlwind. I was like, this is crazy. Yeah.

[11:55] Marissa: Okay, so ember in the ashes sells, and then you write this very beautiful, very intense, lengthy four book series. Then we have Almay rage, which, of course, goes on to be the national book award winner. And now here we are, and you are returning to the world of an ember in the ashes with your new novel, air. Would you please tell listeners what is air about?

[12:24] Sabaa: Sure, of course. Would you want. Do you want the short pitch or do you want the long pitch?

[12:28] Marissa: I want whichever pitch you want to tell.

[12:31] Sabaa: Okay. All right. I will do the long pitch. It's good practice because I'm going to be going on tour in a few weeks, so I need to be able to do this. So air is a young adult fantasy. It does take place in the same world as an ember in the ashes. But you don't have to read an ember in the ashes to enjoy air. It is an independent story, and it is about an orphan an outcast and a prince. Eyes is the orphan. She's sort of scraping by in the gutters of her country's capital, and she's really fixed on vengeance for this very old crime. But she miscalculates that. She's trying to carry out that vengeance, and she ends up in a prison. And at that point, she has to decide whether she's going to be ruled by despair or whether she's going to determine to get out and to still get that vengeance that she wants so badly. Then we have the character of Sirisha. She is the outcast. She's the down in her left tracker. She picks up a job that really should be very simple, but it turns out to be far more complicated than she was anticipating, and it might end up costing her her heart, both romantically and literally. And then the last character we follow is a character named Quill, and he is a crown prince. He is, in fact, the crown prince of the empire. So if you have read an ember in the ashes, you met him as a baby, and he doesn't want to rule this empire. He is, like, not interested in the job. But when an enemy sort of threatens the survival of his people, he has to decide whether he really wants to rise above his inheritance and whether he can be the heir that his people need. So let's throw in some otherworldly monsters, some mayhem, some kissing, and this murderer who kind of wants to kill all three of these people. And you have the gist of of air.

[14:10] Marissa: Okay, so this is, as you mentioned, it's kind of a follow up to an ember in the ashes, but also very much its own kind of standalone story. At what point did you know that you were going to be writing this? Was it developing as you were finishing up the first series? Or, like, when did this story start to speak to you?

[14:32] Sabaa: The idea for air first came to me in 2020. I was wrapping up writing a sky beyond the storm, which is the last book in the Ember series. And in sky, I mean, this is a spoiler for if you haven't read the Ember in the ashes, you know, whatever, stop now. But it has been many years, so hopefully you have read it if you've wanted to. But in Skye, a young woman named Helene becomes empress and her baby nephew. His name in the book is Zacharias, is her heir to. And I kept thinking about this Aaron, like, wondering what his life is going to be like and what he's going to be going through. And I put a lot of thought into sort of the way the adults in the book viewed this baby. And now I was finding myself curious about the baby himself and what he would be like when he grew up. I felt there was an interesting story there, but I wanted to write it in a way that didn't require my readers to reread or even know much about the Ember series. And I wanted to write something that felt a little different from the Ember series. I wanted it to be a little bit, I wanted to have those serious themes that I kind of pull into all my work but also have a little bit more lightness and spice and romance to it, too.

[15:44] Marissa: Well, there's certainly some spice and romance, which everyone knows I appreciate. That's my favorite thing. What, for your fans of the original series, what can they look forward to seeing in this book? What do you think your fans are just going to be super, super excited about?

[16:02] Sabaa: I think a lot of my old readers have original readers. They have, they have, they have favorites, right? They love Elias or they love Helene or they love Laia, and they're going to get to see all three of these characters. And I think that's, you know, I think they'll really enjoy seeing how these characters have developed as adults, what has stayed with them, what have they let go, you know, their friendship and how they deal with the young people of their world, because now they're the grownups, you know, and they're not sort of the young revolutionaries anymore. So how do they view the people who are young revolutionaries in their world? That was a really fascinating thing to explore, and I think my readers will like it. I hope you. I hope you will.

[16:49] Marissa: I can't imagine how anybody wouldn't. It's a really fun book. It's, for me, when it comes to fantasy, I've really been craving fantasy books that you're getting the big world building, you're getting the complex characters, you're getting the epic quest and the magic and all of these hallmarks of fantasy literature, but also with some humor in it, like you mentioned, some lightness. And this book, it has all of that, which I really enjoyed. And, yeah, it's just a really fun read.

[17:24] Sabaa: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

[17:26] Marissa: Quick, for being so huge.

[17:28] Sabaa: Yeah, it is a big, fat book. And I think one of. One of the things that I feel like I was trying to do with it, let's make it not feel as big as it really is, you know?

[17:39] Marissa: So let's talk about pacing because it, I mean, I don't know, we're 500 pages. I'm gonna guess.

[17:46] Sabaa: Yeah, I think so. 4480, something that's almost faster.

[17:49] Marissa: But again, it didn't read like a 500 page book. Like, there was always action moving along, jumping between the three points of view. Like, everyone always had something interesting going on. So every time we returned to a character, I was excited, like, oh, yeah, I remember what they're doing. What are they going to do next? So for you, just talk a little bit about your approach to pacing and keeping up the suspense throughout.

[18:15] Sabaa: I write my genre books, so I didn't do this with all my rage, which was actually very tricky. But with my genre books, I use something. It's very tried and true. It's called GMC goal motivation and conflict. And basically, I decide what the goal motivation and conflict is for each character, for their whole arc. So for their whole book. And then I. I break that down chapter by chapter into how they're moving toward their goal and what their motivation is and where they are in that journey and what their conflict is in each chapter. So each chapter has that broken down. And then I tend to end with something sometimes high key, but sometimes low key, disastrous, whether it's emotional, whether it's physical danger, something that makes us feel like our character is not safe and we don't have resolution, you know, something that allows us to ask more questions, you know, as we're going along in the read. And that is. That is the system that I use to kind of keep my pacing going. I also do believe in the concept of rising stakes. So one of my favorite things to do is, you know, do something pretty awful early on and then try to try to outthink myself and be like, what can I do that's worse? Like, later in the book, right? Like, it seems really terrible at the beginning, and it's like, oh, my gosh, like, how could it get any worse than this? But then it really is about ratcheting up that tension and being like, oh, no, no, it could get so much worse. And I think that allows me to then explore a lot of the themes that are important to me and that I want to see in my books, which are themes like, what do you do when you're stuck at the crossroads between hope and despair? How do you encourage your friends? What is the place of romance when you're in a difficult world and life situation? What is the place of friendship in those situations? Where does faith play a role? Where does belief play a role? Where does the love of country or the love of countrymen play a role? You know, putting, like, having those stakes kind of going up and having that tension being ratcheted up actually allows me to kind of look at those things in their most extreme circumstances, which I find to be very fascinating. As a writer, I enjoy that. So for whatever reason, I think readers, as readers, also enjoy reading that. So we kind of, it's like the perfect fit.

[20:55] Marissa: Oh, absolutely. So I'm really curious because you mentioned that with your first book, there was a whole lot of drafts, tons of revision, and I imagine the book changed quite significantly from the initial plan to what finally got published. Now, multiple books into your career, are you finding your process is so similar? Do you still do go through a lot of revisions, a lot of changes, a lot of the things you're talking about raising the stakes and exploring these different emotional aspects in the story, are those things that you're trying to work through as you draft, or does a lot of it come more into play later in revisions?

[21:38] Sabaa: I think both. So I do like to work through the basics of what I'm trying to write as I draft. So I do really want a sense of, like, what do I want my themes to be here? You know, what do I want to pull through? What threads do I want to pull through the whole book? What are things that I can probably leave behind? Maybe I don't need them. I do try to write a little faster these days. I would say all my rage was a 15 year journey. But the actual editing, drafting process, once I had done all, and I wouldn't even call it pre writing, just all these early drafts of the book, the later draft took a few years, like three ish years, right? So with air, I mean, I started working on air in 2020. It's coming out in 2024. So really, it's like, about, like, I'd say three and a half to four year journey and then the sequel I have been thinking about since and working on since early last year. And, you know, now we're coming up to the two year mark, and I'm still not quite there. You know, it's like I wrote something like 1213 thousand words and realized I was going down, you know, barking up the wrong tree. It's like going down the wrong lane. I don't know, whatever metaphor you want to use. And it was just, it was the wrong, the wrong journey. And so I have to stop. I have to step back. I have to rethink. So a lot of it is before I ever even draft that I'm doing all this, like, rethinking and planning and drafting. And I of outlining and then when I actually draft, what's going to happen is I will write a first draft and it will be awful, and then I will rewrite it, and I will. That will be the thing that I send to my editor. And then, you know, she's going to say, I don't know if this is working, and we'll go back and forth. So I would say now I probably have probably four major drafts before I get to what you know, of course. But what our readers hopefully know is called the copy editing phase, where, you know, the text of the book is pretty much locked. You can change things. I actually change things all the way up to my final, final pass because I'm a monster and I like to make things difficult. But most of the plot points are solid at that point. Generally, you're not adding scenes, and I have added scenes after copy edits. I actually did that with air. But generally you're trying to give a book that's mostly done. Yeah, I'd say four drafts.

[23:59] Marissa: Yeah, I know. I also am the sort that will be adding and changing things up into page proofs, which I know your publisher really doesn't want you to do. But I'm always like, but this is my last chance. Like, if I don't. Yes. I don't get to do it ever. And the pressure of that, I can't, not if there's something I know could be better, I can't not do it.

[24:20] Sabaa: I agree. And I also think that we get a certain amount of momentum when you're doing that many drafts that close together. Right. So you're getting close to your book. You've maybe done your, you've done your first developmental edit. If you're me, you've probably done two developmental edits with your editor. Then you get to line edits where you're going line by line through the book, and then very shortly after that, you're doing copy edits. So there's this sense of momentum. You know these characters really well. You know every word of your book really well, and you start to see the holes and the gaps and the mistakes. And that's where I actually think the most effective editing can happen between, like, line edits and what's called. I'm saying what's called, even though I know you know this for your, for your listeners, but you know what's called first pass pages, right. Which is sort of when the text is locked into a design, it is no longer in a Microsoft word document. It is an adobe, you know, usually like Adobe document a PDF or something, and it is locked. And that is actually, that's where for me, a lot of, oh, you know, I need a more romantic moment here. Oh, let me pull back on this part over here. Let me change the language here. That's often where so much of the magic happens for me.

[25:30] Marissa: I agree. And there's something about seeing it no longer in that word doc, but actually seeing it typeset designed. You know, you've got the chapter headings, you've got the pretty little, like, doodads that separate sections, and suddenly it's like you're not reading your manuscript that you've been toiling over for years. You're reading a book, and it just makes you think about the language in a different way.

[25:55] Sabaa: Exactly. Perfectly stated. And I said it better myself.

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Marissa: all right, so as we've talked about, your books tend to be long. They are these big, you know, very fleshed out worlds, very complicated plots, lots of words, lots of pages. How do you stay motivated to keep going, particularly through the murky middle, which the longer the book is, the longer the middle is like, what do you do?

[28:12] Sabaa: I always put something unexpected in the middle of my books because I don't like the murky middle. And one of the best pieces of advice I got was from my mentor, and it was offer up a piece of information in the middle of your book, but also give your hero a big drawback. You know, something like a big punch, something to kind of knock him on the floor and between the two of those things and then adding, like, a little bit of a stress point right before the midpoint and a little bit of a stress point right after the midpoint. That soggy middle is kind of lifted into something that really starts to become more of a freight train. So now we're really going. We're hopefully getting into, like, speed mode on this book where now you want your reader to just be, like, tearing through those pages, like, oh, my gosh, I have to know what happens next. That is actually what motivates me. I try to make. I do plan out my plot points ahead of time, and I try to make plot points that I'm super excited to write, you know, like something that I'm, you know, whether it's, you know, in air. For instance, there was a plot point where I knew that there was going to be this huge revelation, and I could not wait to write that plot point. I was so excited about it. When I finally got to that day, I was, like, jumping up and down. I was like, yes, I finally get to write this. So I do think it's about being excited about your story and not falling into the kind of classic sort of structure that people sometimes espouse of, like, oh, it must be this three act structure, or it must be, you know, this save the cat method, or it might, you know, whatever, you know, whatever method people use. I actually like to do something kind of weird at that midpoint and have, like, you know, a big revelation or a big emotional moment or something that feels like it should almost be at the end of the book. That kind of just turns everything on its head. That is what makes the middle really fun to me, and that's how I keep motivated through the middle. And then just chocolate, man, I bribe myself. I'm a shameless self briber. Oh, my gosh.

[30:18] Marissa: The real answer comes out.

[30:20] Sabaa: The real answer comes out. Like, it's. I mean, I will tell myself, like, if you finish this chapter, you get chocolate. You get to go walk to your favorite coffee shop and buy an e, Claire. Like, whatever, you know, whatever works. And so I do believe that bribery is also very important.

[30:37] Marissa: I agree. Now, I think bribery is a totally legitimate, like, method writing method yes.

[30:45] Sabaa: Agree.

[30:46] Marissa: Of course we're not gonna spoil anything, but I have to say, the revelation at the middle of this book, so good. I mean, I had absolutely no idea. And I was, like, turning through pages like, wait, wait, wait. Did I read that right? Like, hold on, what just happened? Brilliant. Do you. So obviously, you knew. You knew what that was going to happen. Do your surprises or your plot twists, are they ever a surprise to you, or do you pretty much know everything big that's going to happen?

[31:15] Sabaa: I pretty much know everything big that's going to happen. But what I will usually do is when I know, okay, I want to plot twist. I will, like, think up something like, it has to follow the character. It has to follow the nature of the character. So I won't just think, okay, I'm going to throw this plot twist in just for the sake of a plot twist. It has to work with who the character is and what they're going through and their timing. And so I will. A lot of times I know that something is going to happen, but I don't necessarily know what all the time. And I'll have a general idea of, like, okay, I want it to be like this type of plot twist, and then I'll come up with something. And I almost never use the first idea. Usually I will go back and I will rethink of it, and I will rethink it. And it's like the 9th or 15th idea that I have where I'm like, oh, that's good. That's unexpected. The first thing that pops into my head is everyone that I want to do because I feel like that's also going to be the first thing that pops in the reader's head. Now, of course, you and I are very fortunate. We have extremely smart readers. A lot of times they can predict what's going to happen. One of my readers favorite things to do is be like, I totally called this, but I didn't call this right. And it actually makes me happy because it means that, you know, they know my work, but I can still surprise them. And that's kind of nice, you know? So I do try to take a long time to come up with those twists because I want to make sure the reader has that feeling of, whoa. Oh, my gosh. Like, you know, this just went totally direction I didn't expect. That's the fun part.

[32:49] Marissa: I love that. Now, those emails are some of my favorite, one of my favorite emails I ever got from a reader was like, she was talking about this one of my books and she was like, I was so disappointed because I called every single twist, and I was like, oh, Marissa's lost it. And then on page whatever, you totally threw me for a loop. And I was like, yes, no, you.

[33:14] Sabaa: Definitely have not lost it. And, I mean, look, there's so many ways to tell a story, right? There's so many, like, so many twists that have, quote, been done, and then, you know, you just have to kind of go on to that thinking. But I have not done that twist. These characters have not gone through that twist. My story that I have written, that I have put my soul into, that has not. That has not happened yet for these characters. So let's see.

[33:45] Marissa: Yeah.

[33:46] Sabaa: Now let's see if it works.

[33:47] Marissa: You're right. We can kind of tie ourselves into knots trying to always one up, you know, every piece of literature that's already been done. Like, it's. Don't over complicate it so much for yourself. You know, it's the execution and. Yeah. Writing the story that you want to write that you're really excited for, if we're constantly trying to pressure ourselves to come up with the most unique thing in the world, like, you'll. You'll never write anything.

[34:15] Sabaa: Yeah, I agree. I think you really have to think. You have to tie your uniqueness to the story as a whole and to your characters and to their journeys and not to plot devices. You know, that's not where the. That's not where the good stuff is. Right. It's really in these characters you're building and how they would respond to something. You know, you can write a generic character, and then if you put in an amazing plot twist, it doesn't matter because your character is not. We're not with this character. We don't really care about them. And then you can write a really fascinating, you know, quirky, lovable or not lovable either way. Right. But memorable character and give them a plot twist that, you know, we've maybe seen in film or we've seen in this show or we've seen in this book or, you know, doesn't even have to be in the same genre. It can be in a totally different genre. And because that character is so special and so different, we're rolling with it. We're like, that was great. Right. Because it's the character and it's the originality of the story as sort of a whole that actually makes that plot twist special and makes that plot twist work.

[35:26] Marissa: No, I agree with that 100%. Okay. I know we're coming up on the end. But I have to talk to you about world building because you are a master at world building. It is so.

[35:38] Sabaa: Oh, thank you.

[35:40] Marissa: It is so believable. I mean, it just feels like every detail is authentic. It feels like these are places that you could travel to. The magic, the cultures, the politics. How much are you, how much do you think about world building before you start? Versus how much kind of, do you figure out as you go? Do you make maps for yourself? Do you, do you draw inspiration from the real world? What are some of your techniques?

[36:12] Sabaa: I do make maps. That is usually the first thing I do. So I love making maps. It's my favorite. Usually they're very ugly, but I do like them. Maps really help me get a sense of the world. And then I actually base, even though I'm world building, I base a lot of what's happening in my fantasy world on what's happening in the real world. So a lot of the politics, a lot of the international relations and connections are really reflections of our world. I thought about there is an aerial bombing campaign in air. And I was writing this book in 2020-2021-2022-2023 and it was mostly done by the beginning of 2022. But the place that bombing campaign came from was from much earlier. It was from when the United States was bombing northwest Pakistan. My family is from Pakistan. My parents were born there. And I would read in international media about these bombings and a lot of innocent people being killed, and there was no news about it in the US. And I started thinking about it a lot. So it's like, that's something that I had, and I didn't. I knew I couldn't use it in ember. I kind of just stuck it to the side and thought, okay, at some point, I'm going to use that sort of, that kind of that terror campaign. I'm going to use that in a book. And, you know, we look at the world now, and we're seeing the same thing in other places. Right? And so it, it's one of those things where it's like, I don't have to actually do that much work with the world building because I just have to draw in our world. But the work that I do do is iterative. So I'll put in a very broad kind of sense of what a people are, what a world is, and then I will go on the next draft, and I will make it more detailed and then more detailed in the next and the next and the next until it's something where it's like, you really feel like you're immersed in that world now.

[38:07] Marissa: I love that you talk about, like, going through multiple drafts and constantly fleshing out that world a little bit more. A little bit more. Because I think a lot of writers, we try to hold it all in our heads at the beginning, but you just can't. Right. It's too much. And so I know for me, like you say, I'll have a general idea of what, you know, this country is like, this culture, you know, whatever. But I don't know what holidays they celebrate. I don't know what foods they eat. Like, those are the things that are going to slowly trickle in as I'm revising and editing the book.

[38:50] Sabaa: Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly how I feel.

[38:54] Marissa: Yeah.

[38:54] Sabaa: Again, kindred spirits.

[38:57] Marissa: Honestly, no, your process is very similar. Like, I'm like, even though I really loved, I was also taking notes while you've been talking this entire time. And I'm like, GMC, got it. End with a disaster in every chapter. Got it. Like, I'm picking up.

[39:12] Sabaa: I think you kind of do that naturally. Like, I mean, just in your books. I remember reading a cinder and really feeling like I couldn't. This is years ago, right. And really feeling like I couldn't put it down, but I didn't know why. Right. Like, I was not at that phase, like, analyzing books. I was just enjoying them, right. I was just reading them and enjoying them. And I remember with that series, you know, just kind of being like, gosh, like, I really feel like I can't put this down. And I don't know. I don't. I don't know how to, like, stop reading. It's late, you know, it's late at night, and I really need to get up in the morning. I remember that really clearly. And then even with, like, gilded, right? Like, it had that sort of propulsion. It had that sense of movement. So, I mean, you. You don't need to take notes, friend. You got it.

[40:03] Marissa: Well, thank you. I do appreciate that. It is one of those things where I feel like a lot of us, we're always trying to get better. We're always trying to develop the craft, always trying to learn and take in new ideas. And how can I apply this to the next book or to the thing that I'm writing on? Because once you stop learning, then things to me would feel like everything would just get so stagnant. But you make a great point that a lot of it really is instinctual. I mean, we are story people. We are book lovers. These are things that have kind of just infiltrated our brain since childhood. So even though, like, I'm constantly trying to see what can I learn from other writers? What can I learn from other books? It's important to keep in mind that, like, we do know how to tell a story, and a lot of it is just kind of already there in. Simmering in the background of our. Of our consciousness.

[40:55] Sabaa: Absolutely. Yeah. And I do think a lot of times, you know, this is about faith in yourself. I always, you know, I think about. I think about when I was writing all my rage a lot because it was such an unusual, weird, kind of a long term sort of experience. Right. And one of the things that I realized was that, you know, and I've said this in, like, talks and interviews before, but, like, the heart of creation is really belief. Right. So even if it's just a secret between, like, you and the universe, you. You have to believe that what you're creating is worthy of creation. Right. Like, you have to believe that the thing you're putting into the world is meant to be in the world. And there's, like, a certain, like, almost, um. Like, arrogance, um, to that. That I think writers have to have, even if it's very deep. Deep, deep, deep, deep down. Right. And I do think that that's also, like, a big part of storytelling and of world building. You're assuming that the person you're reading, you know, that you're writing to, you know, whoever they are, that they're, at the very least, gonna try to come with you. Right. At the very least, they're gonna try to come with you. And those are the readers you want. You don't want the readers who aren't gonna give you a shot, because that's. Those aren't your people. Yeah. This is why so often you see that the third or fourth or fifth book of a writer gets better reviews from readers, not necessarily from. From the world as a whole, but from. From readers. The reviews are better because they've slowly been honing their reader base through every book. They've been finding the people who like how they write and who, like how they tell stories and who have faith in the way that. That those stories come into being. And so I do think that that's also a big part of it, is having the faith, like, okay, I'm going to find my readers. They need this story. I'm going to find them. And that, to me, is probably a good place to end. The serious part of this discussion is, if you are a writer and if you're out there. And if you're trying to make your way saying, believe in yourself is the cheesiest thing in the world. So I'm just going to rephrase it and say, remember that the heart of a good story is belief in it.

[43:27] Marissa: I love that. I love that so much. That could be, like, on a motivational poster.

[43:32] Sabaa: Oh, yeah, put it on a motivational poster. I love it.

[43:36] Marissa: All right. Are you ready for the bonus round?

[43:39] Sabaa: I am. Well, I don't know if I am.

[43:41] Marissa: But it's not scary, I promise. I don't even know why I still call it that. It's really just things you've answered before.

[43:48] Sabaa: All right.

[43:49] Marissa: What book makes you happy?

[43:50] Sabaa: There is a book called this is how you lose the Time War by amal mother and Max Gladstone. And I could never write a book like that, and that's why it makes me happy. It is weird and filled with metaphor and very romantic, but also futuristic. And it's just the, just the imagination required to create that book just seemed like a lot, and it was just a joy to read. And it's still a book that I love. Just, like, picking it up, like, walking past it on my bookshelf and picking it up and just like, flipping to a random page and being like, oh, that was so good. So that's a book that makes me happy.

[44:36] Marissa: What are you working on next?

[44:38] Sabaa: I am working on the sequel to air right now. I will be doing that about an hour and a half after I get off the phone with you.

[44:46] Marissa: Yay. We're excited.

[44:49] Sabaa: Yay.

[44:50] Marissa: Lastly, where can people find you?

[44:53] Sabaa: You can find me on Instagram. You can find me on Facebook, which is also just my name, Sabatahir. And you can find me on TikTok. Though I'm not on TikTok as often, I really do feel like TikTok is more for readers, but that's just Sabata here, author. Where you will not find me is x or threads. I do have an account on both of those places, but I do not post. So if you see me there, you're not really seeing me. You're just seeing a placeholder so that nobody steals my name.

[45:29] Marissa: Awesome. It has been such a joy to talk to you today.

[45:33] Sabaa: It has been wonderful to talk to you, Marissa. Thank you so much.

[45:36] Marissa: Readers definitely check out air. It comes out next week on October 1, but you could pre order it today. Of course, we encourage you to support your, your local indie bookstore if you can. If you don't have a local indie, you can also check out our affiliate store@bookshop.org. shop Marissa Meyer we are going to be on break for the next couple of weeks due to the aforementioned road trip, but when we get back, I am going to be talking. Let's see our next episode. It's either going to be with Harry Connor about their Regency romance graphic novel I shall never fall in love, or Amanda M. Helender about her YA fantasy divine mortals. They are both coming up on the podcast. I'm just not sure who's coming first because the schedule's been moving around lately. Anyway, please leave us a review and follow us on Instagram at Happy Writer podcast. And don't forget to check out our merchandise on etsy. Until next time, stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today, I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.