MinnSpec
Reverend Matt’s Monster Science Theater – MSP Workshop Notes
Matt Kensen, the creator of Reverend Matt’s Monster Science, shared his experiences building the series from its origins in 2012 to its current state. The performance series Reverend Matt’s Monster Science meshes science and historical fact with humor to educate and entertain.
Workshop notes:
- The series contains informational and humor
- Weaves in science and history
- Adding comedy hooks people to listen to the non-fictional information
- The sword’s edge of using comedy nicks when people think everything being said is a joke
- He enjoys both the fact and the humor, and wouldn’t willing pick to drop either aspect of the series
- But the exploring the facts is a large part of what draws him to the content
- Development history
- Matt had been in theater for a number of years
- In 2012 contacted by someone involved with The Encyclopedia Show held at Kieran’s Irish Pub
- The show is a monthly verbal presentation of an encyclopedia entry
- The theme for August 2012 theme was mythological creatures
- Matt created The Mystery of the Griffin’s Ears, 8 minute talk
- For a number of years he presented monster facts and humor related to the show’s monthly topic
- Approached by Fearless Comedy Production’s 50 hour comedy marathon, Die Laughing
- Created his first long form 30 minute set
- Phoenix Theater used to have a late night monthly series
- Matt became a regular
- In the beginning of 2017, the Science Museum of Minnesota had a special exhibit about mythological creatures
- An acquaintance approached Matt about doing a 40 minute presentation
- Won the performer lottery and presented “What To Do In Case Of Dinosaur Attack” at the 2018 Minnesota Fringe Festival
- Only had a slight uptick in followers afterward
- The Fringe audience doesn’t follow artists outside of Fringe
- Now has a late night series at the Phoenix Theater devoted to Reverend Matt’s Monster Science
- Monstrous information
- The definition of monster he uses in regard to the series: a creature that does not currently exist.
- Four categories for the presentations
- Paleontology
- Cryptozoology – things people believe currently, big foot, loch ness
- Mythology
- Outright fictional
- Why do monsters cause fear?
- A portion of the fear derives from the survival instinct
- Claws and teeth can kill
- Some of the best terror is the terror of the unknown
- Monsters are quintessential outsiders
- Monster are about the outside
- Creatures made of other creatures is unnatural
- A portion of the fear derives from the survival instinct
- Read Joseph Nigg’s The Book of Fabulous Beasts for its compilation of western mythology.
- He wished the book covered eastern mythology too.
- Most of what he knows about physical structure is from studying paleontology
- There are two general levels of paleontology books
- This is a triceratops.
- This is the length of the tooth of <abc dinosaur> found at the <xyz dig>.
- The trick is to find books that balance between those two
- There are two general levels of paleontology books
- I asked questions about the issues with griffin flight he mentioned because dragons would have similar issue
- Two big problems are the attachment of muscles, and weight
- For muscle attachment he has a theory of a double rib cage to support the structure of the muscles for six limbs
- For the weight issue he talked about the pterasaur quetzalcoatlus
- 30 foot wing span, 400 lbs
- Hollow bones, optimized for flight
- A paleontologist did a study to determine if you could strap yourself the bottom of a quetzalcoatlus and it could still fly
- The study results determined it would still be capable of flight.
- Two big problems are the attachment of muscles, and weight
- Creating a presentation
- Pick a topic
- Generating initial ideas isn’t a problem
- The effort comes in creating something informational, entertaining, and approachable
- Generating initial ideas isn’t a problem
- Research to get supporting facts
- His research for the shows delved into eclectic areas of history, science, and politics based on the driving idea of a specific presentation
- Deadlines are necessary because it’s easy to procrastinate without a deadline
- He re-reads old scripts that have been successful in the past as a good luck talisman
- Pick a topic
- Evolving as an artist
- Find your audience
- Who enjoys your work?
- Find out what your place is in the world and do that thing
- Said humorously, what’s the difficulty in that?
- What you love may not be too weird for the world
- People are drawn to people doing what they obviously love
- Have an ambition more specific than being a writer
- His example is that he would like to have a show where he goes to locations and talks about the monsters from that location
- Loch Ness, etc.
- His example is that he would like to have a show where he goes to locations and talks about the monsters from that location
- Be self analytical
- He thinks about how comedy works
- Keep doing your thing
- Experience leads to improvements
- Even if you don’t feel like you are getting better, you can without perceiving it yourself
- Confidence increases as you do a thing more
- Building a reputation for your work helps
- In his case people laugh more because his reputation helps them
- Experience leads to improvements
- Get feedback
- Find your audience
- General tips
- Don’t devalue yourself
- Ask for money
- They aren’t going to be angry
- Originality is arranging and combining ideas in ways they haven’t been seen before
- Complete originality prohibits communication
- Art is self expression
- But expression doesn’t work unless there is communication
- Don’t emulate a single other artist
- Emulating a conglomeration of your influences is okay because that’s who you are
- Goes back to the point of originality combining things in a way that hasn’t been seen before
- Complete originality prohibits communication
- Impostor syndrome is a natural state for most of us
- Collaborate when you can
- If providing time for questions at the end, let people know at the beginning of the presentation
- Interviewing people is a skill set
- If you are going to interview someone, intentionally seek to learn the skill
- Reading your work to an audience isn’t necessary
- Reading is completely different animal from writing
- Don’t devalue yourself
Writing Diverse Characters – ESP Workshop
Notes from the MinnSpec ESP Writing Diverse Characters workshop led by Nishi Peters.
There is not a lot of diversity in science fiction and fantasy. The representation doesn’t match the world around us.
Not a lot of people have backgrounds of characters they create, so they create stereotypical characters.
Our responsibility as writers is to show people who have a different way of thinking.
Common themes, or lack of theme
- Disabilities are rarely portrayed.
- Heroes are pretty.
- Villains are ugly.
Consider when writing diverse characters, are they authentic?
- Merely changing the appearance isn’t enough.
- Make the character believable and not stereotyped.
As an example, when considering writing Indian people, learn about who they are as people. People from India, and people with Indian heritage raised in America have differing cultures. Even in India, a lot of variable cultures exist.
General Comments
- Portray the characters as human beings
- Do a lot of research on them
- Follow actor training by observing people in public.
- Read biographies.
- Talk to people.
- Begin with the rules, and how your character interacts in the rules.
- Common, shared experiences can be used as a basis for the character.
- No one is perfectly representative.
- After understanding the rules, consider how each person handles problems in their own way.
- People from the same background can have dissimilar perspectives and preferences
- Provide the sort of depth you would about any character.
- We can relate to each other through our differences without making it a big deal.
- What does your character notice first when they enter the scene? What they notice can provide a clue to their character.
- What if a character isn’t human and doesn’t have the same primary senses than us?
- If you are going to write a character that is different from yourself, don’t make the story about that difference.
- Characterization can be small nuances, how someone holds a fork or slouches
- Visualize the gestures and actions in the story
- Imagine acting out the gestures can help write them, and flesh them out.
Resources
- When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
- Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart
- writingtheother.com
- The Emotion Thesaurus
- Character Descriptions – ESP Workshop Notes
Monster Bits and Bobs – ESP Workshop Notes
The detail of your monster depends on several questions. As with any worldbuilding, there is a balance between building relevant story information, and getting too sucked into your world to write. Judiciously use bits and bobs from these notes.
- What part does the monster play in your story?
- How large of a part does the monster play in your story?
- Is it a character?
- Does it illustrate danger?
- Does it interact with your characters?
- Is this monster the only non-humanoid in the story, is the story full of monster?
- Is the monster in conflict with your characters?
- Does your monster have a solid shape?
- Is your monster a shapeshifter?
- What is the intelligence level of your monster?
- What does your monster consume? How?
- What does your monster create? How?
- What is the environment where your monster evolved?
- May not need to be hyper realistic, but shouldn’t conflict
- Sodium based monsters in a water world
- Is the monster out of its natural environment? What is the impact?
- May not need to be hyper realistic, but shouldn’t conflict
- Do they use magic?
- Are they magic?
- Do they use technology?
- Do they contain technology?
- Do they move?
- How do they travel?
- Basic needs, food, shelter, reproduction
- Can use occasional made up words to draw attention to a creature part, too many make illustrating context difficult
Your monster can have none, one, or more of each some features.
- Exterior
- Feathers
- Mucous
- Hide
- Shell
- Carapace
- Scales
- Slime
- Gills
- Hair
- Exoskeleton
- Distinguishing characteristics (for individuals)
- Blemishes
- Pustules
- Scars
- Tattoos
- Missing bits
- Differences in symmetry and coloration
- Sensory
- What senses do they have? How do they use them?
- Eye
- Eye Stalk
- Tentacle
- Pseudopod
- Nose
- Ears
- Mouth
- What is the use of the monster’s mouth?
- Beak
- Tentacle (when the base of the tentacles is within the mouth)
- Lips
- Teeth
- Suckers
- Tongue
- Mandible
- Fangs
- Limbs
- Arm
- Leg
- Wings
- Trunk
- Tentacle
- Forelimbs
- Can be prehensile
- Paw
- Pincers
- Hand
- Hoof
- Extremities
- Fingers
- Toes
- Claws
- Talons
- Hook
- Fishhook
- Stinger
- Can be used to deliver secretions
- Protrusions
- Horn
- Bone
- Tusks
- Antler
- Spikes
- Tail Spikes
- Fin
- Secretions
- Potentially stored in a sac, or created in a gland
- Mucous
- Acid
- Poison
- Silk
- Spittle
- Oil
- Ink
- Slime
- Musk
- Any material
- Emissions
- Thoughts
- Sound
- Spores
- Heat
- Smoke
- Cold
- Dust
- Emotions
- emanating the monsters emotions
- supplanting your emotions
- Anything gaseous or lacking substantial form
- Other
- Face
- Head
- Tail
- Trunk
- Recommended book: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
Related: Character Descriptions – ESP Oct
Build a World in 1.5 Hours – MSP Workshop Notes
Led by Abra Staffin-Wiebe
There are a lot of different approaches. The amount of building and the time it occurs at depends on the type of story an author is writing.
- Stories in the current world don’t need much worldbuilding
- Alternate history stories require a lot research
Two common approaches
- Build the world after writing the story
- Sometimes there are questions that you don’t know you need the answer to until after you have written
- Usually requires revisions to the story
- Pre-construct the world before writing
- Deep pre-construction delays writing
- It may also box you into a corner if the story goes in a direction contrary to the rules of the world
- High danger of infodump
- Building as you are walking down the road is usually faster
- You don’t have to wait to write
- A con is that you can can miss opportunities
- Often has a fair amount of post world building and revision
The rest of the session consisted of a targeted exercise calling out high level points to consider, then drilling down a specific path based on choices made by the group.
The general plot for this exercise followed this path: comfort to rags to riches. This type of quest won’t cover much ground. Quests usually cover a lot of distance
- Inhabitants
- Human
- Human+/Humanoid
- Cyborgs
- Androids
- Distant descendants
- Chimera
- Drug enhanced
- Inhuman
- Aliens
- Dragons
- Octopi
- World type
- Earth
- Earth+
- Like but not
- Very different
- Weather
- What is their common dramatic weather? tornados, hurricanes
- Useful for plots that extend over a long period of time.
- Do seasons exist?
- Using seasonal transitions as story transitions can advance the plot and tell you something about the world without infodump.
- What is their common dramatic weather? tornados, hurricanes
- Genre
- SF
- Fantasy
- Horror
Magic and Technology are distinguishing elements of speculative fiction. Both have similar to answer.
- What is the type?
- Magic type
- Technology level
- Preindustrial
- Industrial Revolution
- Modern
- Future
- What are the limits?
- What are the practical limits?
- What is and what isn’t possible?
- What are the legal limits?
- What are the limits that technology cant provide?
- How long do people live?
- What sicknesses can they heal?
- What are the practical limits?
- What are the costs?
- Resource costs
- Personal costs
- Moral costs
- What is the source
- Where does it come from?
- How is it produced?
- Who controls it?
- How is it distributed?
- Equal distribution doesn’t make for interesting stories
- Golden Compass
- Bladerunner
- Mad Max Fury Road
Questions about the main character
- What is society’s influence on our main character
- influencers
- legal arbiters
- Consider methods of rise and fall
- Marriage
- Wealth
- Reputation
- Loss of reputation as a means of fall means people in charge control the resources
- Politics
- Documentation/Identity Theft
- Inheritance
- Land crabs
- Legal
- Military
- Recognition
- Ceremonial
- Religious power
- Natural disasters
- Radioactive spiders
- Family structure
- Poly
- Nuclear
- Multi-generational
- Matrilineal
- Patriarchal
- Creche
- Single parent
- Communal
- Clones
- Mono-cloning everything is a clone of one
- Radioactive spiders
One or two sociological differences from our lives interest readers
- Ethical
- Stealing
- Lies
- Taboos
- Treatment of dead
- Treatment of children
- Treatment of elders
- Gender/sex
- Family hierarchy and marriage
- Marriage
- No Marriage
- Pair bonding
- War
- How do they wage war?
- How do they make peace?
- Property ownership
As you write, there are opportunities to add world building
- When someone meets first time
- Greeting rituals
- Family interactions
- What does the family expect?
- What would disappointment?
- Where are the rivalries in the family?
- Readers want to see family support as well as family conflict
- Makes characters more relatable
- Makes the fall harder
- Meal times, manners
- Food
- Customs
- Who eats first?
- Fights
- Rules of honor
- No rules
- What happens when someone breaks the world?
- Clothing
- Multiple types of materials indicate wide trade
- Colors, reasons for colors
- Cost
- What is expensive?
- What is cheap?
- Why do people wear clothes?
- Protection
- Modesty
- Status
- Ceremonies
- If short plot, no need
- If long plot, fun to add, shows passage of time
- Provides a way to bring people together who might not otherwise interact
- Religion
- Cultural beliefs held with fervor
- Don’t have to involve a god
A re-plot point will occur after the worldbuilding decisions relevant to your story are made.
Resources mentioned
Character Descriptions – ESP Workshop Notes
Notes from the MinnSpec ESP Character Descriptions workshop led by Steve Vetter.
- Why do you want to describe a character?
- Recognize what is important
- Eye color would not be important in a fight
- Eye color would be important looking into eyes
- Recognize what is important
- Capture their characteristics, not their physical appearance
- How they move
- Posture
- Smell
- Adornments
- Makeup
- Other markings
- Jewelry
- Something of your own devising
- Some physical characteristics
- Physique
- Skin – lots of characteristics beyond color
- Consistency
- Texture
- Scars
- Teeth
- Create a list of your characters outside of the story. Options for the list:
- Description
- Their role in the story
- Their back story
- How much to describe characters?
- None to a lot
- Depends on author style and story
- Not all characters need to be described
- Recommended no more than three sentences
- The amount of description should be proportional to their importance in the story.
- For characters without description
- The reader could put their own characteristics on the character, especially if its the hero.
- Some in the group said they wouldn’t
- Depends on character values and experiences
- The reader could put their own characteristics on the character, especially if its the hero.
- None to a lot
- When to describe
- As soon as possible
- Character description shouldn’t be a surprise
- The reader imagines what they look like, and then describing late breaks the promise that the reader was allowed to imagine the characters
- You can weave parts of the description throughout the story
- As soon as possible
- General comments
- Character descriptions shouldn’t be a check list
- Common trope, looking in a mirror
- Use more precise instead of generic words
- Proposed: secondary characters can be more bizarre so they are more memorable
- The plot exists to show the characters.
- That’s another meeting!
- Research and talk to people who are like your characters if they are not like you.
- Be observant and watch people see how they interact and move.
- Use the enneagram chart
Sloane Talest 