How to Write Absurdly Well — Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky came on the show to talk about how he writes fantasy and science fiction. He won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for his book, Children of Time, and has written more than 60 books and novellas. He spends his life thinking about how to make believable worlds and how to build characters that have weight to them. My favorite thing is how he writes a fight scene, how he thinks through the pacing and all the action. If you want to write imaginative stories filled with wonder and fantasy, you're going to like this episode. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:35 How to plan a novel 00:02:37 Linear vs flexible outline 00:04:09 Don't plan endings 00:05:32 Worldbuilding 00:07:07 What makes a good idea 00:08:09 Why dragons? 00:09:17 Other idea ingredients 00:10:44 Making worlds feel real 00:11:39 Stages of writing a book 00:14:07 Characters 00:17:29 Cities vs travel settings 00:20:02 Visualizing a world 00:21:19 Writing believable characters 00:25:09 How sci-fi breaks down 00:27:17 Research 00:29:50 Why scientific plausibility matters 00:33:46 Fantasy vs science fiction 00:36:38 Why magic has a price 00:42:04 What makes a good fight scene 00:46:37 The role of fight scenes 00:50:15 Avoiding writing ruts 00:57:37 Dreams 00:59:07 Improving your writing 01:01:05 Making readers feel 01:03:07 What makes a good ending About the host Hey! I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible. Follow me Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... YouTube:    / @davidperellchannel   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSbo... X: https://x.com/david_perell