MRK Lecture

I feel like it is a fairly common trait among writers that we are not overly interested in math. I was pretty good at math in school, but I never developed an interest for it, and I have lived the majority of my adult life completely content having little math in my life.

Then Mary Robinette Kowal happened.

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Lady Astronaut novels and…is basically the best at what she does. She’s won many major awards for her work, with her novel Calculating Stars winning a Hugo, a Locus, and a Nebula all in the same year! She’s ridiculously talented and amazingly dedicated to the craft. She is also incredibly generous and shares her writing know-how with the world.

This year, I watched Kowal’s BYU guest lecture on short story writing, and during that lecture she introduced me to two writing tools based in mathematics: the MICE Quotient and the Story Length Equation.

I’m not going to go into a lengthy explanation of either because 1) Kowal explains it much better in her lecture, so go watch that instead, and 2) she also made these very helpful infographics publicly available, so feast your eyes on those.

Instead, I want to express how very important it is that writers understand these two concepts, if not use them for their writing, because it changed the way I look at my stories for the better.

Let’s start with the MICE Quotient. MICE stands for Milieu, Inquiry, Character, and Event—the four elements that drive a story. As a writer, I am often asked what’s your story about? Then, like a lot of writers, my brain goes mysteriously blank, and my working vocabulary suddenly descends to the level of a kindergarten dropout.

Understanding the different MICE story elements helped me understand my own stories so I could explain them to myself and others. For example, my short story Death and Cecil Copperpot is driven by Inquiry and Character. Therefore, I can tell people a quick summary such as: At the moment of his death, Cecil Copperpot is unhappy with how he lived his life and desperately asks Death to tell him what could have been if he’d made different choices.

More than just understanding your story, the MICE Quotient helps you structure your story. This is where the math comes in. Kowal instructs writers to treat the MICE elements in their story like nesting code in html, meaning you close out MICE story elements in the inverse order that you opened them. Back to Death and Cecil Copperpot: I open with Cecil being unhappy (Character) and then introduce his questions for Death (Inquiry). Therefore, the story closes with the questions getting answered (Inquiry) and Cecil accepting himself/life (Character).

<C> <I> / <I> <C>

I should note that I wrote Death and Cecil Copperpot long before I ever knew of the MICE Quotient. That’s how applicable it is. Most writers are probably doing it in some form already without even knowing it. Why do you need to know it? Because this will make your plotting so much stronger right on the front end, leading to less issues during drafting and editing. Or, if you are a discovery style writer, then this makes the back end work more logical and streamlined.

But writing isn’t all about creating fun plots and angsty characters. The nitty gritty of writing comes down to numbers, and one of the most important numbers is the length of your story.

I tend to be an overwriter and have often found my stories are too long for magazine requirements. This is incredibly frustrating because it means editing my story so much that it basically becomes a completely different story or having to find a new home for a story written for a very specific magazine aesthetic.

With Kowal’s Story Length Equation, if I have a magazine I want to submit to and a set word count limitation, then I can calculate how long my story idea will end up being before my first draft.

For example, right now I have an idea for a flash story. As per the equation instructions, I have determined I have two characters, one setting, and one major plot thread from MICE. So, I calculate:

L= (((2+1)750)*1)/1.5

L= 1,500 words

This is valuable information for me because flash markets vary greatly in word count requirements and are very strict. If I want to send this story somewhere that caps out at 1,000 words, I know I have to do some tweaking to it since right now the idea is set up to take 1,500 words. Or, at the very least, I can now go into my first draft with a greater idea of how much editing I’ll need to do later.

The point of both the MICE Quotient and the Story Length Equation is to get yourself better acquainted with your own work. Whether you do this on the front end or the back end of drafting, follow the structures religiously or loosely, or use it for every stage of the process or just one—I highly recommend writers give both of these techniques a go in whatever form works best for them. I can certainly attest they have bettered my writing, and if my experience isn’t enough to convince you…a Hugo, a Locus, and a Nebula! I think it’s safe to say Kowal clearly knows her stuff.

So why not spark a small interest for math in order to fan the flames of your writing.

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Learn more about Mary Robinette Kowal HERE and support her on Patreon

Watch Kowal’s BYU guest lecture on short story writing HERE

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