Prática de Shadowing: How darkness helps RF KUANG write fiction!? | BookCon 2026 - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo
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Hi, this is Asha Victoria Robinson coming to you from the pop spot here at BookCon
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and I am here with the woman who's broken everybody's heart and soul, Rebecca Kwong!
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How has your BookCon been treating you so far?
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It's been a lot of fun.
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Everyone's been nice and calm and respectful.
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Yeah, I mean it's a reader so they're all really sweet.
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Everything that you write is so profound and so deep and so well researched.
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When you're sitting down to write a new book, Are you intentionally destroying my soul as you start?
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I don't think about soul destroying
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so much as I think about what is the coolest thing I can be thinking about in any given moment.
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And all my books are just journeys down rabbit holes that I'm really obsessed about.
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So the last few weeks I've been telling everybody who will listen about the miscarriage of justice during the Tokyo War Trials.
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And then the writing process is figuring out which parts of those historical, factual nuggets would make for really good dramatization.
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I read a piece about like Alexander Dumas
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and how his whole strength was sifting through like all of this data
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and archival knowledge about the historical situation that he was in
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and finding the beating heart within it
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and that's what I tried to do with the periods and the events that I can't stop thinking about.
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I like the idea that it's you just cracking open your skull
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and being like this is what is my brain worm this is what I'm obsessed with right now.
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So Reddit calls you Grimdark's darkest daughter.
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Do you think this is an accurate nickname or do you think it's overblown?
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I think it was a good set of adjectives to describe the Poppy Word trilogy.
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I feel like Grimdark is actually a term that's kind of out of fashion now.
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I don't hear it as often.
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People were saying Grimdark to describe this very gritty, grim, like bleak genre of fantasy that was interested in,
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I think, like, pushing back against the valorization of war, the idea of noble heroes, and rather exploring anti-heroes and,
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like, gross bodily functions, and the fact that, like, your sword gets dirty and you get smelly after days on the road, and wars don't end cleanly,
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and sometimes you have to do terrible things to advance causes you care about.
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So I think it was a very interesting shift in fantasy, but I think a lot of fantasy has just moved in that direction.
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So Grim Dark is no longer so spectacular.
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But yeah, I think the Poppy War trilogy is squarely within that genre.
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It embodies that.
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Yeah.
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So last year you signed a four book deal with HarperCollins, including Taipei Story.
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Can you tease us anything about what some of those upcoming releases might look like?
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Yeah, so Taipei's story comes out in September and after that I'm working on a retelling of the Faust mythos
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that will be over five different chronologies across the 20th century that explores the intersections between art and politics and fascism.
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And I'm also working on another love story that involves aliens.
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Ooh, that is, uh, those are not words I thought that you would say to me, and I'm very, very intrigued by that.
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I thought I would ever say either, but I got really into UFOs and tales of alien abduction,
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and I thought that those intersect really in interesting ways with the tropes of the classic rom-com.
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Wow, I'm imagining you being like, I'm going to Marfa, I'm going to Area 51 to do all of this research for that love story.
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I believe in aliens.
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Do you really?
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Yeah.
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Aliens like little green men or just like a truly alien life form?
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Now we're going down this rabbit hole.
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Both.
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I just think that there are a lot of questions
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that haven't been answered and objects moving at speeds that can't be explained.
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Do you have a favorite fictional alien?
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E.T.
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Ooh, good one.
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Classic.
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We love it.
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So speaking of your research, and you said that all of your books are sort of like explorations of ideas that you personally are interested in.
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What is your workflow like day to day and how many cups of coffee do you drink?
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I actually, I'm very sensitive to caffeine.
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So if I have coffee it will be like one cup of iced coffee in the afternoon
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but otherwise I'm more of a tea person or I just start bouncing off the walls.
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What's your favorite type of tea?
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I am a tea agnostic.
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I love all kinds and it depends on the season.
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I think right now it's not something I've often brewed for myself but Lapsang Souchong.
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I've had it in really good cocktails and lattes because it adds that smokiness.
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I'm really into that but workflow wise I sit down in the morning with a cup of tea.
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And I actually do about an hour or so of research.
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I do my archival investigations at the same time as I'm doing my drafting.
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Otherwise, I will just procrastinate and only do the research.
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And then I just keep reading about gallery exhibitions of fascist art in 1930s Japan for the morning.
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And just get very embodied in one particular historical moment.
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And the moment you start reading through those monographs, ideas for scenes, just start populating your mind.
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And then I take note of everything that could become a story beat.
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And then I set that aside and then write it all up.
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And this is how the process goes for most of the first draft until I have to step back and realize, oh, I've done all this research and all this brainstorming, but I actually have to stitch it all together into a novel that makes sense.
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You're also a very prolific writer.
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I feel like you write so many pages so fast.
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When you are writing, are you sitting down and trying to hit a word count, trying to hit a page count, or just whatever comes organically?
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I've been at this long enough
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that I know what a comfortable word count limit is for
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me on any given day where I feel like I'm getting close enough to the deadline, but I'm also not rushing the work.
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And right now it's between 700 and 800 words, which is just three good paragraphs.
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And I feel like you can sit down and write three good paragraphs on any given day.
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But I've actually slowed down over my career because I used to think the more words, the faster, the better.
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And that good writing came from just fits of inspiration, like, you know, spurts and flows.
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But actually, since I started teaching creative writing, I've been teaching my students that if writing feels easy and fast and loose, it's because it's probably because it's lazy writing.
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It feels easy because you're using volunteer words for volunteer sentences.
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So, like, this is also my way of coping with the days where the writing feels slow and difficult.
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That's because you're thinking.
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Writer's block is you being very precise and controlled with the process.
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That's a good thing, and it results in better writing.
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So, I'm learning to be content with the slow writing days.
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I think that's beautiful that, like, writer's block is because you're processing something.
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That's so healthy, and I admire that so much.
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Yeah, you're working at your craft.
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That's work too.
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A lot of what you deal with, as you've sort of been alluding to even in your research, is dark or maybe not the brightest and happiest things.
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How are you seeking self-care?
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What are you doing to touch grass at the end of the day to sort of reset your creative slate?
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Well, over the past year I've been coming back to visual art.
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I used to do a lot of visual arts
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when I was a child and for a
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while I thought I wanted to be like a graphic novelist and illustrate comics and then I turned to prose instead.
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But because I am researching the artistic process in a bunch of different mediums for this next novel
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that is not writing fiction, I've been going to life drawing classes.
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I've been doodling in my free time.
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I'm trying to do a pen and ink sketch every day.
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And I'm not good, but it is a really nice way to scratch
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that creative itch and also do something that is not professionalized, that I don't have to show anybody, that has no standards.
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And I'm also learning to look at the world in different ways.
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I'm looking at you and I'm breaking you into shapes and lines and proportions.
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And yeah, I think that is really nice because it's still work
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and that I'm learning about a different artistic process and I'll use that vocabulary in the next project.
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But it's having an artistic hobby where you don't have deadlines or an editor or an agent.
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Yeah.
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And lastly, but not leastly, because here on The Pop First, we celebrate the best in TV, movies, comics and books.
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What are you geeking out about that you're not working on?
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So other than drawing, what are you doing just for fun?
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Well, I'm always running and reading a lot at the same time.
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I'm back to audiobooks while I run.
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And for a while I stopped because I was watching The Wire on the treadmill.
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Oh, my God.
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But now it's warm again and I can run outside.
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So I've been listening to classics.
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It's a really good because like you spend
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so many hours on the path that you can just churn through classics that way.
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So I just finished Middlemarch.
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Oh, my God. So good.
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It's amazing.
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And I did Kazuo Ishigo's The Unconsoles, which was a bit of a slog,
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but I'm really glad I did it in audio because then I appreciated the intricacies of the plot.
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Thank you so much for joining us here in the Pop Spot today.
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Thanks for having me.
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Contexto e Fundo
No vídeo, a escritora Rebecca Kuang participa de uma entrevista no BookCon, compartilhando insights sobre seu processo criativo, gêneros literários e projetos futuros. A conversa é informal, repleta de expressões coloquiais e perguntas espontâneas, o que a torna perfeita para quem quer praticar shadowing em inglês e melhorar a fluência na fala cotidiana.
Top 5 Frases para Comunicação Diária
- "It's been a lot of fun" – Uma forma natural de dizer que algo está sendo divertido.
- "I don't think about... so much as..." – Útil para comparar ideias, como "Não penso em... tanto quanto em...".
- "figuring out which parts..." – Expressão comum para falar de analisar e escolher partes de algo.
- "pushing back against" – Significa "se opor a" ou "questionar", útil em debates.
- "I got really into" – Uma maneira informal de dizer que se interessou muito por algo.
Guia Passo a Passo para Shadowing
Para dominar a pronúncia e a fluência com esse vídeo, siga estes passos: 1. Assista o vídeo uma vez para entender o contexto. 2. Repita frases curtas imediatamente após o falante, focando na entonação e no ritmo (isso é o shadow speech!). 3. Escolha 3 frases-chave (como as do top 5) e pratique até que elas saiam naturalmente. 4. Grave sua voz e compare com a do vídeo para ajustar nuances. 5. Faça isso diariamente por 10 minutos – você verá progressos rápidos na prática de conversação em inglês!
O diálogo tem um fluxo natural, perfeito para treinar a escuta e a resposta espontânea. Lembre: o shadowspeaks é sobre imitar não só as palavras, mas a emoção e a cadência. Comece hoje e sinta a diferença na sua confiança!
Gramática neste vídeo
As estruturas que o falante mais usa, com as palavras exatas do vídeo:
| Estrutura | No vídeo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — uma ação que começou antes e continua | I've been telling · I've been teaching · I've been coming |
| “Used to” used to + verbo — um hábito ou estado do passado que não é mais verdade | used to think · used to do |
| Present perfect have/has + particípio passado — uma ação passada que ainda importa agora | It's been · Everyone's been · has just moved |
| Voz passiva be + particípio passado — o foco está no que acontece, não em quem faz | been answered · is not professionalized |
O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.