Original subtitles

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N. K. JEMISIN: The most useful thing

that any artist can do to make themselves

a better artist is to simply be open to the world around them.

Experience as much as you can in every opportunity that you can.

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What I've kind of learned about art from my father

or from other artists that I kind of grew up around

is that it is on the artist to experience as many things

as they can so that they can accurately render the world.

The artist's job is to speak truth, sometimes to power,

sometimes just to reality.

But your job is to speak the truth about the world

as you see it.

Now, obviously, you're a human being.

You're going to filter things through your own perception.

That's unavoidable.

But you-- you want to speak that truth honestly otherwise.

You want to try and make sure that you're not

letting stereotypes or shorthand thinking interfere

with your ability to--

to absorb the world.

That is your job as an artist is to perceive and--

and interpret.

Research in worldbuilding is probably my favorite part.

So I'm going to try really hard not to get, like, super giddy

and excited when I talk about it.

But I'm probably going to do that anyway.

Research is the thing that you're

going to do to try and make sure that your fiction is

as plausible and accurate as you can make it.

If it's set in a real-world-- real-world place,

then you should try and visit that place.

If it's based on realistic people or real-world people,

you either need to read some books about this people

or research their history or both, or talk to them.

But if it involves travel, it's--

that's when it gets fun.

You can first and foremost consider research

to be part of the cost of doing business as a writer.

You can deduct it from your taxes,

or you can deduct part of a family vacation from your taxes

if you are doing research as part of that vacation.

You can do a whole trip that's nothing but research

and then deduct the whole thing.

You need to talk to your accountant about that,

but you can.

It can be helpful in terms of--

of detail and sort of place setting

for you to have a conversation with a subject matter expert

before you've started writing or in the early stages of writing.

It can help you sort of rule out lines of exploration or paths

that your story might have gone down that really

aren't realistic or won't work.

But the crucial piece, the place where you absolutely

have to incorporate subject matter experts,

is after the book is finished but before publication.

So what I usually do is I'll finish a first draft

or sometimes the second draft.

My-- my raw draft I call the zeroth draft.

That's the one with lots of brackets and holes

in it, lots of misspellings.

It's terrible.

No one can see that but me.

[LAUGHS] The first draft is the one that's actually

legible for other people.

So in a lot of cases, I will then reach out to experts

that I've either found, or I'll ask around

until I can find more, and then I will ask them

if I can engage them as a sensitivity reader or a subject

matter expert.

For example, for my latest book, "The City We Became,"

I wanted to visit the city of San Paulo

because the city of Sao Paulo is actually

a character in the novel.

But for various reasons, I couldn't travel at that time.

I had a friend, though, who was Brazilian

and who was from Sao Paulo, and I was just kind of like,

can I just run this past you?

And I offered to pay her because that was her expertise that she

was willing to share with me.

And you know, so we first negotiated

how much it would cost for me to have her read this entire novel

and give her opinion on whether I had accurately captured

the character of Sao Paulo.

And actually, she threw in not just a critique

but a plate of brigadeiro, which is a delicious sweet that I

absolutely loved.

And she knew this.

But anyhow-- but we negotiated it first,

and then she actually read the whole book for me

and gave me some notes.

Something as simple as the fact that there's

a reputation for Sao Paulo people, Paulistanos,

that they are very hard working and that they--

they're very business oriented, I had no idea about that.

That's not something you can get from a travel guide.

So you have to talk to somebody who's been there

if you can't go there yourself.

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All artists period learn from every single experience

that they can.

If you have the opportunity to travel,

if you are privileged enough to be able to actually do so,

then every single experience you ever have

will feed into your writing, whether you

intend for it to or not.

For "The Broken Earth Trilogy," I

wanted to learn more about seismology

in general and volcanoes and ash and things like that

in particular.

I had watched videos of Mount St. Helens eruption

during my research phase.

And there are a lot of home videos

from that period of people, you know,

kind of grainy on-- on old cameras but still accurate,

of how dark the sky got and when the ash was falling

and what ash fall looked like.

So I could kind of see the visuals of it.

But I needed to touch ash, and I needed to smell ash.

And I needed to kind of do more to immerse myself

in that setting.

So I went to the Big Island in Hawaii,

which is composed of four different volcanoes.

The whole island chain sits or was

produced by a giant hot spot that that part of the crust

has moved over.

So I'd researched it, and I knew a lot about it.

But I hadn't actually seen and touched it.

So I went there, and I spent four days there.

Because at the time, I had a day job and not

a lot of vacation time.

And I visited all four volcanoes during that time.

I did a helicopter tour at one point of Puu Oo.

I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

The helicopter operator decided to bring the helicopter

to hover directly over the volcano because I was nauseated

and was about to throw up.

And he was like, if you're going to throw up,

throw up into the volcano.

And I'm like, this is the worst.

Why do I have such terrible luck with tour guides?

But anyway, it was fun once I got back on the ground.

What I will sometimes do after an experience is

that I'll go back, and I'll write about it, you know.

I tried to put myself into it as much as possible.

But I-- I do kind of believe--

and this is a personal thing.

I'm not necessarily recommending it.

But I believe that the true value of those kinds

of experiences is their ephemerality,

is the fact that you've--

you know, you've never done anything like it before.

You probably won't do anything like it again.

You're there in the moment.

The photos aren't going to--

to help it carry along with you.

The experience itself will.

I will never forget what that volcano smelled like.

And I will never forget getting close enough

to poke some lava with a stick and seeing

how viscous it was and sort of feeling

the texture and the heat from it.

Those are the experiences that I was there to capture.

And memory is best for that to me.

You might want to look into organizations

that can help fund any travel that you want to do

and front the upfront cost of it,

for example, The Speculative Literature Foundation,

where I won a travel grant which allowed me to go

to Canyon de Chelly in Arizona.

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The most useful thing that any artist

can do to make themselves a better artist

is to simply be open to the world around them.

Try not to make assumptions.

Try not to form hypotheses or presuppositions about anything

that you're encountering.

When you meet another person, try

not to make any kind of judgments about them

based on how they look or act or whatever.

Try to just simply talk to them, and get

to know them, and genuinely listen to them.

If you are traveling into any space,

even in your own neighborhood, walk around at some point.

And try and look at your neighborhood the way

that a total stranger would.

I mean, you-- and just sort of pay attention to what you see.

An actually really fascinating thing that I've--

I've tried to do is talk to kids.

Kids have a sort of weird, unique way

of perceiving the world.

They notice things that the rest of us

have just kind of learned to tune out, you know.

They're constantly sort of looking down.

And they see that little roly-poly that you missed.

Or they notice that really symmetrical leaf

that you just kind of ignored.

And so if you kind of pay attention

to what kids are paying attention to,

and ask them about it, what is it

that drew your attention about this--

this spider web or this strange thing

that you noticed and have them explain it to you, [LAUGHS] you

know, you're going to get a lot of sort of weird conversations.

But on the other hand, it will help you sort of

reset your willingness to--

to absorb information.

You will start to see a little better what they see,

hopefully.

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You do have to remember that because you're not

writing a textbook, you can't go overboard with the research.

You have to do something to kind of keep yourself from--

from either spending too much time on it

or getting too immersed in it and bogging yourself down

in research as opposed to writing.

So what I like to do is put a time limit on it.

There's a phase when I'm working on a new book

where I will just simply devote a month or two to nothing

but research.

And during that time, I'll talk to professionals,

experts in the field.

I'll talk to sensitivity readers if I need to get some advance

information.

I will travel.

I like to travel in February.

February is a great time to travel just in general

because it tends to be off season for a lot of vacation

spots.

So you can get pretty good deals on hotels and air travel

and thing like--

things like that.

But you-- you immerse yourself in that research

for a limited period of time, and then at the end of it,

you're done.

You stop-- stop researching.

Start writing.

And even if you still don't know everything you need to know,

you put it in brackets as you're writing,

and then you go back and research it again later

after the manuscript is done.

Because otherwise, research can become kind of a time sink.

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There are times when it's necessary to fudge reality,

basically.

For example, with "The City We Became,"

set in real-life, modern-day New York, a place where I live,

a place where I have many friends that I

have to answer to if I decide to mangle the city [LAUGHS]

or change something that they don't agree with.

But at the same time, this is a fantasy novel.

And it's not going to be our New York.

And I have to kind of grapple with that.

Well, at one point in this story,

the Williamsburg Bridge gets destroyed.

And I have to continue to-- to write as if the Williamsburg

Bridge is destroyed even though it

is in every other way the New York that I know and love.

But you know, that's what's necessary for the sake

of the story.

Readers understand.

As long as it's clear that you're doing it

for story purposes, as long as it's clear that you don't legit

believe that the Williamsburg Bridge does not exist,

then they're willing to suspend disbelief.

There are going to be times when you may not

have the means to do research in person in depth.

And you know, that may be a matter of not having resources.

It may be a matter of you not being able to get access.

For example, with "The City We Became," there's

a really critical scene that takes place

in Old City Hall Station, which is underneath the existing City

Hall Station.

And there are tours of that old station

that you can undertake if you go through, I think,

the Transportation Museum.

And for various reasons, I was not

able to get one of these tours.

And this is a pivotal scene.

I needed to know, like, just the blocking of where

the characters would be standing,

how far away was the platform from the wall,

and things like that.

And you're just going to have to fudge it.

That's where being an artist also comes in.

You got to use your imagination.

And you're going to get some things wrong.

You have to own and accept the fact that as an artist,

you will sometimes get things wrong.

That is unavoidable, and that is also

part of your learning process.

If you get something wrong that is offensive to people,

then apologize, and move on.

Apologize.

Say that you're going to do better.

Actually do better, and then grow from there.

And then do better next time.