Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard The MICE quotient is a tool for categorizing story elements—Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event—and we've talked about it quite a bit in the past. When a listener asked how we might use the MICE quotient to create, inform, manage, and otherwise help us "do" conflict in our stories, we were excited to start recording, and a bit bewildered that we'd somehow not already done this episode. Credits: This episode was recorded by Joseph Meacham, and mastered by Alex Jackson