Lauren Beukes will do anything to avoid writing. In spite of her best efforts, however, her literary credits continue to find their way into the world (which is a very good thing indeed). She’s a journalist, a writer of animated TV series, producer of documentaries, author of novels (non-fiction, fiction, and graphic), a shark swimmer, and Queen of Cape Town. With such a broad canvas splashed with such startling and remarkable works, you KNOW the 20(ish) minutes I and Ryan Stevenson have with her is not only a pure delight, but also brimming with writerly goodness. (and you can also check out Lauren’s Workshop Episode)

PROMO: “Hapax” by K. T. Bryski



Showcase Episode: 20 Minutes with Lauren Beukes

[caution: mature language – listener discretion is advised]

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Episode Breakdown

01:25 – Lauren’s Spectacular Intro

06:25 – What, in your opinion, feeds creativity in a culture or society… and what feeds yours?

06:55 – Being interested in the world… I think curiosity feeds creativity more than anything else

07:00 – Conflict CAN feed it… if you look at the fiction in South Africa, there IS a political social aspect to it

07:35 – SciFi in general is often interested in those themes, but in South Africa its very much in your face

08:05 – I write about stuff that really pisses me off

08:15 – I also use my writing to get at things I don’t understand

08:20 – In Zoo City, I wanted to get at this passion and anger and fear of crime and try to find an element of humanity there

08:45 – It was a way of me exploring why I have problems reconciling and why South Africa is able to reconcile more easily with the atrocities that happened during the Apartheid regime

09:55 – A lot of that comes from my journalistic background… getting into something and try and figure it out

10:55 – Science Fiction (and genre fiction in general) allows us short-circuit issue fatigue with the “crazy big idea” which re-invents that issue in a new and interesting way

12:10 – When you start outlining your stories, are you aware of the issue you’re going to speak to right off the bat or do they present themselves as you work through the process

13:15 – Most of it is subconscious… if I wanted a soap box, I have other venues for that sort of thing

13:35 – First and foremost, it’s about telling a really great story that will hopefully surprise and delight people

13:55 – I have an idea for a great story and, because of who I am, then all this stuff I’m interested in and angry about kind of leaks through

14:40 – How do you evolve your characters?

15:10 – I don’t think story versus character is a real argument

15:30 – You need both… you need a great character doing interesting things or experiencing interesting things which then change and shape them

15:40 – They always kind of start together

16:00 – E. L. Doctorow said “writing is like taking a road trip at night”. For me, you know the major landmarks but in between its pitch black and you have to figure it out

16:35 – The books never come out exactly the way I intended them, but I always know my beginnings and I always know my endings

17:00 – What’s amazing to me is when you surprise yourself

17:05 – In that instant between your brain firing and the signal passing to your fingertips… and it shifts

17:15 – That, to me, is the magic of writing

17:55 – “Hapax” by K. T. Bryski

19:00 – What are the differences between writing a novel and a comic book

19:35 – Writing for comics has been a tough learning curve

19:40 – I really love dialog… I could write a whole book with nothing but dialog

19:55 – You just can’t do that in a comic book. You have two sentences and you have to make those sentences count

20:00 – Working in kids animation helped with a 14 minute episode means you don’t have time to mess around

20:45 – What’s really messed me up with comics has been what you can do with panel layout

21:10 – Often I send the script to the artist, Inaki Miranda, and we workshop that together

22:20 – I was more heavy on description in the beginning as we were still feeling each other out

22:25 – By the end of issue six, I trust him completely and we understand each other

22:40 – What is amazing about working in comics and film is collaboration, allowing someone else to take your idea and run with them

22:50 – There’s nothing more astonishing than other minds

23:10 – Have you ever worked in a collaborative writing environment and what did it reveal to you about your own writing?

23:50 – Every time I worked for an animated TV show I have

24:15 – We had a competition for “Moxyland” inviting people to write a story in that world

24:20 – I asked the three winning writers to contribute to Zoo City (three chapters are written by other people)

25:25 – What’s amazing about working in a workshop or shared world environment is what other people come up with

25:45 – Do you ever find – in a collaborative environment – that you have a knee-jerk reaction to defend an idea?