More Adventures!

"They call me the bleeder..."-The Wallflowers, Bleeders

Alright, I realize I should probably have posted about this a little more in advance, but better late than never, right?

In about three hours I'm getting on a plane. That plane will take me to Houston. Then another plane will take me to Quito, Ecuador. Then I'll spend three weeks climbing mountains, dodging malaria in rainforests and sightseeing before a plane takes me back to the states, and then another set of planes takes me back to school.

Needless to say, the blog will be quiet for a few weeks. On January 19th, however, will begin the first of a series of posts about all the awesome things I found out in Ecuador. I'm particularly excited to have a chance to push my body to limits it's never gone to (climbing glaciers at 20,000ft ought to fit the bill), see what happens to it, and thus become much better able to write about what happens to my characters when they push their own bodies to the limit.

I should also get some sweeping vistas, meet interesting people, and learn a culture I know nothing about....so stay tuned! I'd highly suggest subscribing to the blog via the link on the sidebar if you're a subscriber type. If not, check back in mid-January, as I should have some pretty good stuff up.

Catch you on the flip side!

Maturation as a Writer

"Help me believe it's not the real me..."-Three Days Grace, Animal

Had an interesting moment as I spent all day yesterday in airports and on planes trying to get home for Christmas. I've never minded these days as much as a lot of other folks do, because I find there's plenty of downtime to get thinking and planning done for my writing, even if I rarely have success trying to write (those coach seats are just too small for my laptop).

So after my flight from Cleveland to Denver got off the ground last night, I settled back in my seat, turned on my Zen (MP3 player) and started thinking about some unresolved issues still plaguing my novel, as well as reviewing the direction I plan to take it when I begin rewriting it.

About an hour or so into this process I had an interesting realization: I was thinking in terms of theme, character development, and point of view. This was a surprise to me because for most my writing life, when I've set back to think about my books I've spent most of the time imagining plot elements, climactic scenes, epic battles, and the like.

I can't say for sure what this change implies for me as a writer, but I'd like to think it's that I've matured. I understand how books and stories are constructed in a much better way now than I have in the past, and I'm glad to see my thought processes reflecting that. It's not to say that I didn't dream up any epic scenes (I was rewriting the confrontation between my protagonist and antagonist in my head somewhere over Iowa and man, is it going to be ten thousand times better...) but I spent as much or more time planning how to set them up, how to make them climactic in many ways--the culmination of multiple stories that have been building since chapter one and the beginning of new ones that will lead into the next book--rather than just exciting, or the necessary endgame of the "What's going to happen?" question that the book begins with.

In short, my work over the past year has paid off, and I can now suggest it to others. Go study narrative (on your own terms, not in classes) and work in publishing! You won't regret it. :-)

The Craft Essay

"So lay down, the threat is real..."-Chevelle, The Red

I don't often write in praise of what my creative writing professors have had me do in school. In fact, this may be the first time one of their assignments has ever prompted to write in a positive way. Rest assured, my opinion on creative writing programs remains mixed at best.

But I have to admit that my poetry professor's assignment to write "craft essays" has proved surprisingly helpful. As I've gone back and revised the poetry I wrote for her this semester, I've had to write short essays about my revision process for each one. In and of themselves, they weren't that enlightening. I knew what I was doing as I did it.

As I go back and read over them now, however, they are helping me realize exactly what it is that I value in my poetry. A few phrases keep cropping up again and again: "concise argument," "short and sweet," "good narrative," etc.

These are all things that I would probably have said were part of my "aesthetic" anyway, but it's still somewhat of a happy surprise for me to see that I consistently and unconsciously search for them during my revision process.

I imagine the same idea would work with fiction, and though I haven't tried it, I intend to. When I go back to revise my novel this next semester, I will have three word documents open simultaneously. The first will be the list of changes I intend to make. The second will the chapter I'm working on itself, and the third will be a blank document ready for my thoughts as I revise.

I don't know what exactly this will gain me, but it can only help, and it might help you too.

Inspiration in Strange Places

"Da nanana dana dananana danananananana nananana dananana...."-Darude, Sandstorm

This was posted on the website of my World of Warcraft guild today. I have two things to say about it: first, I want to read that book. Second, it made me remember how it was that I got started writing.

Once upon a time, about two hundred years ago when I was in the first grade, I wrote a story. I'm not entirely clear on the details, but it involved a magic sword, a couple of good friends, and a trip to Uranus. That's right. Uranus. No, I don't think I was aware of how funny that was at the time.

The imaginations of children are pretty incredible things. As I get older, I find it difficult sometimes to let my imagination run wild the way it used to. In some ways that's good--the stories I write are much more logical. In others it's bad, as I'm sure I'm not as creative as I used to be.

Finding a balance between logic and whimsy is an important part of writing, especially writing fantasy, and it's worth taking the time to listen to a real child tell a story every once in awhile if you can just to remember that. If you can't, well, there are always links to funny flash videos on the internet that can simulate the experience for you.

Public Service Announcement

"They were all in love in God and they were drinking from a fountain that was pouring like an avalanche, coming down the mountain."-Butthole Surfers, Pepper

Alright, given the time of year it's time for me to make a public service announcement: Give books for Christmas this year.

Sure, it seems like a no-brainer for me to say that, but seriously, here are a few reasons it's a good idea:

1.) You'll be supporting an industry that's pretty much all-American, from stage one to the bookstore. Books are written, acquired, printed, stored, distributed, and sold in the U.S. When you buy a book, unless it's translated or brought over from the UK (damn you Rowling!), most of your money will be staying here. In our economy. Helping it get back on its feet.

2.) Hardcover books still say, "I care," or at least, "Here's something I think you should have around for awhile." Trade paperbacks give a similar effect. Cheap paperbacks say, "Here's something fun. Don't take it too seriously and pass it on when you're done." Either way, it's a good gift.

3.) Books encourage the dreamer and the storyteller in all of us--and I really mean this. There is no other form of entertainment that gives the reader such a large role in the creation of the story as it happens. Not movies, not videogames (they offer "interactivity" of a different kind), not TV. Only Dungeons and Dragons might have books beat for stimulating the imagination. If you want your kids, or anyone else, to be creative, spoonfeed them books with great characters and great stories. You won't be disappointed.

Okay, that's my spiel for the day. Now go buy some books. Everyone deserves pulp fiction in their stocking at Christmas.

Good News

"I will buy you a new life..."-Everclear, I Will Buy You a New Life

Good news! Publishing may be tightening its belt, but apparently it's not all doom and gloom. Thanksgiving weekend went well---perhaps a precursor for Christmas sales? Perhaps consumers have decided that $8 for a book that will give them at least a few days of enjoyment is a better buy than $20 for a DVD that they'll watch once for two hours?

Also, according to Kristin Nelson's blog publishers are still acquiring briskly. Sounds pretty good to me. Who knows? Maybe there will even only be this one round of layoffs and that'll be it. Not too bad of an escape, given the state of the economy. Either way, things are looking up. Expect less chicken little and more about writing next week.

Eeew

"Disaster's in the air!"-The Lion King, Can You Feel the Love Tonight? (film version)

Headline: Terrible things happen in publishing! Jobs lost! Houses restructured! Big names step down!

Upside: Only one house has announced it will be acquiring less (Houghton Mifflin) and they seem to be backing away from that stance. Companies are dropping big names and higher payroll numbers first. Shakeups may eventually inject new life into an industry that was getting a bit stodgy in some ways.

Downside: Scary time to be working in publishing. Time to keep your head low, not take risks, and hope to keep your job. They will probably come after the small names and smaller payroll numbers next. Less likely to find someone who'll go out on a limb for you. There will be fewer buyers for books and more competition for jobs.

Upshot: Who knows? Seems like there's going to be a lot of people with a great deal of publishing experience and pull jobless in the near future. I find it hard to believe that these people will remain out of work for too long. It wouldn't surprise me to see new small presses, agencies, or other publishing entities forming within the year. It also wouldn't surprise me if the elimination of some of the more high paying positions in the publishing hierarchy makes room for more people willing to work for a pittance.

Bad time to be looking for a job in publishing? Absolutely. But the industry will recover and as it does, there will be room for new blood. Bad time to be trying to get a book published? Probably. Maybe sit on it for a few months until things calm down. It'll keep.

I have yet to read a comprehensive rundown of what's going on in the industry. When I do, I'll pass it on and give my opinion. In the meantime, stay tuned to the blogs on my sidebar and Publisher's Weekly if you want to enjoy the fun. If not, I suggest hampsterdance as a sunny alternative.

The Future of Books?

"So I dub thee unforgiven..."-Metallica, Unforgiven

Alright, so I had an original blog post planned for today, but my sister sent me a link that I couldn't resist passing on to others. The NY Times online has a great article about the future of books. It focuses specifically on the agreement between Google, publishers, and the Author's Guild regarding Google's digitization and searchable index of every title it can get its hands on.

It's a short read, a very interesting perspective, and a source of optimism in the face of what seems like a fairly pessimistic situation. I'm not entirely sure I agree with the article's author, however. Personally, I can imagine my hypothetical kids bringing a Kindle on vacation with them instead of two or three books. On the other hand while children's books may become a tough sell, I can also imagine reading paper books becoming a sign of maturity--like drinking wine. The market may change, and will probably shrink, but I doubt it will ever disappear entirely.

And besides---even if publishing moves completely to e-books, someone still has to vet and market the untold billions of e-books out there, someone has to negotiate the contracts, and someone has to produce the e-books themselves. There will always be a publishing industry, and if it looks different 20 years from now, well, what industry won't? And what industry looked the same 20 years ago? That's just life.

WoW Lessons Pt. 2

"What we are is the sum of a thousand lies, what we know is hardly nothing at all..."-Rise Against, The Strength to Go On

I was thinking more about the storytelling that's being done in the World of Warcraft expansion, and I realized that there's another interesting facet to what they're doing. Basically--everyone's character is doing the same quests. On the surface, it should be very difficult for players to buy that their character is special at all, because they know that every other character is getting the exact same storyline played out for them. This may be why quests until this expansion pack were fairly bland--it's easy for you to believe that everyone has to kill x amount of wolves so Farmer Brown's cows can survive. It's more difficult to believe that the greatest villain the world has ever seen is taking a personal interest in every single adventurer that comes close to his lair.

And yet it works.

I think that's a testament to the oft-maligned imaginations of videogame players, many of whom, by the way, are adults. Somehow, we've all managed to either suspend our disbelief or construct a narrative in which our character is one of maybe a few thousand very special people, which is still pretty cool. It's a surprising phenomenon, and one I'd like to get some more information on. Maybe I'll e-mail the people over at the Daedalus Project and see if I can get them to do a survey on it.

More WoW Lessons

"She said I don't hate you boy, I just want to save you while there's still something left to save..."-Rise Against, Savior

Alright, so as you may or may not know, the expansion pack to World of Warcraft launched last Thursday. If you were wondering where I've been all week--now you know.

One of the more interesting (and enjoyable) things I've found about the new expansion is that it's much, much more story based than the last. One of the things that makes Blizzard as a company so strong is that they have some of the greatest IP (intellectual property) around. Their universes are very well-developed and full of great characters and wonderful narratives.

These have been largely absent from World of Warcraft until now. Perhaps the developers were focused on gameplay, or perhaps they just didn't know how to implement storytelling in a MMORPG, but they seem to have gotten a much better handle on it with this latest expansion (and, to be fair, with some of the final free content updates in the last expansion as well).

To be blunt, I've found that they're following some of my recently discovered keys to drawing someone into a story--they're making your character seem as if he or she is special, "chosen" somehow. Most of this is done with flavor text--the things the NPCs (non-player characters---the characters played by the game) say to you. They tell you they've heard of your exploits in Outland (the landmass you spent most of your time in during the last expansion) and have been awaiting a hero like you to help them out of a jam, or, in one case, the arch-villain of the expansion pack shows up out of nowhere and pins your character down, inspecting you to see if you're fit to serve him, then letting you go and telling his cronies that you're not ripe yet...you'll be plucked later.

It's very refreshing in an MMO, and I'm thrilled to see it for a couple of reasons: one, it means more great stories experienced by more people, which is what I'm all about, and two, maybe, just maybe, it will mean videogame companies employing more writers---and steady, paying jobs for writers are always a good thing.

Limitations of Fantasy

"We were fated to pretend..."-MGMT, Time to Pretend

Alright, so I post often about all the great things that fantasy stories are uniquely suited to do. As a writer of fantasy, I feel like it's my duty to defend my genre, especially since I've seen it slammed over and over again by more literary-minded folks.

But it's worth taking the time to recognize the limitations of the genre as well, and as I was reading The Golden Compass last week, I came across one: fantasy narratives are forced to spend a great deal of time describing the worlds they take place in.

I've been over some of the ways this particular facet of fantasy can be useful. It's great for telling stories that revolve around discovery and growth, because the most natural way of describing a world is for one or more characters to learn about it as the narrative progresses. But it has limitations as well--one of which is that there are really only so many ways to squeeze in world-building details.

Inevitably, you're going to wind up using some of the same tricks that other authors have before you. And if your reader has read enough fantasy, they'll start to recognize some of them. That's never a good thing, even if most readers will forgive you (I mean, if they've read enough to recognize the tricks, they must love the genre) and may be one reason why some people I speak to think of fantasy as full of cliches. Read the wrong three novels in a row and you may get the same trick three times in a row--an unfortunate coincidence that might turn you off of fantasy for life.

So! In recognition of this deadly danger, I intend to compile a list of different ways of revealing world-building information, as well as different twists that can be put on it. Help from the peanut gallery is encouraged.

Walking Among Giants

"For God and Country..."-The Smashing Pumpkins, For God and Country

Alright, apologies for promising to post yesterday and then failing to. In my defense, however, I didn't have any free time from 9AM until 9PM, at which point I had an hour before my next obligation and then bedtime. At any rate, here's the post I promised for yesterday:

I was acutely aware on election night of witnessing an important moment in history. There have been two other experiences in my life during which I've felt that way. The first were the Columbine shootings, which happened in a town in my county when I was in the sixth grade. The second was 9/11.

Needless to say, I felt a little more upbeat Tuesday night, so that was one key difference between the experiences, but the other was that my experience of the event was centered around two people. When I watched both McCain's concession speech and Obama's victory speech, I felt for the first time in my life as if I was standing in the presence of giants.

I'm not going to go into whether that was justified or not. My point is that that feeling is an important one for a writer to experience and remember, especially if he or she writes SF/F.

Not every character in a great story can be a giant, and even most giants don't start out that way. One of the viewpoints I have always found most interesting and productive in fantasy is that of the character who is not the hero--the brother of the hero, the childhood friend of the hero. Flick to Shea Ohmsford, Sam to Frodo, Mat and Perrin to Rand al'Thor.

This is because in real life there are very few heroes, very few giants. I think for most of us it's easier and more useful to imagine what we would do with ourselves in the presence of giants than what we would do if we were giants ourselves--it just seems a more realistic scenario.

Something to keep in mind as we head into the next four years--measure your reactions to life as it unfolds around you, and realize which role you're playing in the drama of life. It will give your writing the taste of reality and make it that much better.

Election Day

"Oh, why'd you have to go away from home, me love?"-Sean Kingston, Me Love

Just a reminder to go vote today. I think Election Day should be like Christmas. We should all get up and vote, then spend the rest of the day eating turkey or something and waiting for the election results to come in.

I mean, come on--as readers and writers of sci-fi/fantasy, we know ten thousand different worlds that could exist without the democratic process and personally, I wouldn't want to live in any of them.

In other news, original post coming tomorrow! Yaaay!

Oh for a School Like This One...

"I am Tarzan from jungle, you can be my friend..."-Toy Box, Tarzan and Jane

And he's stealing second!

Okay, apologies for stealing two blog posts in a row. Really, I promise to start being more creative soon. Hopefully.

But Nathan Bradsford just posted a blog post that almost made me cry with its message. In it, he lays out how he would create an MFA program. He also happens to hit just about every major problem I have with the way I've been taught Creative Writing and make me yearn for a school that actually taught how to write, instead of how to create art.

*sigh* Maybe someday. In the meantime I maintain that the best education available is through a) reading and b) working in/around publishing. The rest is talent and dedication, and you don't get either of those from a school.

More on Fantasy vs. Literary Fiction

"Rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama any way you feel..."-Old Crow Medicine Show, Wagon Wheel

Alright, it's Friday, I'm exhausted, and I'm thus cheating on my blog post today. The folks over at Tor.com posted a great one about fantasy versus magical realism, and it wanders all over the sticky question of what exactly constitutes a genre and whether they matter or not.

In the honor of the character whose costume I'll be wearing tonight (and bonus points for guessing his name), lemme sum up: genres matter more to critics than to readers, because critics need a set of criteria by which to judge whether something is good. Different novels in different genres have different goals, and since whether they are good or not depends upon whether they achieve those goals, the critic must lump every work into a genre in order to figure out what its goals are.

The reader doesn't have to do the same, and is oftentimes most attracted to things which defy the genre constrictions laid out by critics. Writers can write whatever the hell they want, as they're the ones who actually decide what they want to accomplish with their work.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a nap to take and a six-fingered man to find.

Happy Halloween!

The Golden Compass and the Childlike Voice

"G-l-a-m-o-r-ous, yeah..."-Fergie, Glamorous

I've finally had some extra time this week to read more of The Golden Compass (by Philip Pullman, for those who don't know) and as I continue through the book I'm struck more and more by Lyra's narrative voice. The thing I find coolest about the book is how it deals with a very adult situation completely through the point of view of a child, but I've also noticed how it can pull off some pretty iffy narration simply because it comes through Lyra's voice.

That voice is a very cute, folksy British accent. She speaks with the simplicity of a child, and Pullman pulls out (ha!) the very cutest of British turns of phrase when she's at her most simple. The combination of those two things allows me, at least, to forgive him even when the prose isn't exactly written stellarly (if that's not a word, it should be. Let it be so!), because on one level the form echoes the content (childlike narrator begets childlike prose), and on another I get so distracted by the British that I'm willing to gloss over my occasional disbelief of the actions of some characters.

I don't want to imply that writing in a childlike voice is easy, but it might be something to try if your readers are having trouble forgiving you your mistakes. A cheap cop-out on one level, perhaps, but I prefer to think of it as another tool for the beginning writer to play with.

Pilfered Marketing Post

"I'm not a coward I've just never been tested---I'd like to think that if I was I'd pass."
-The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Impression That I Get

So agent/super-blogger Nathan Bradsford had a bunch of great guest posts on his blog last week, and I'm going to link to one of them because it was just that good. It's a post about marketing/pr written by an author who also runs a book marketing firm. Given that, you have to take her words with a grain of salt, but the statistics she has are very interesting, and her opinion reinforces mine (that advance money is better spent when invested in the success of your book than on a new washer/dryer unit) so I felt obligated to link her.

...in other news, I got my novel approved as my creative writing thesis yesterday. Should be in for a very productive semester this spring. Hazah!

The Rules I've Just Made Up

"Show me what it's like to dream in black and white..."-Breaking Benjamin, Unknown Soldier

So as I sat in my chemistry lecture today learning about bits and pieces of atomic theory and whatnot and basically learning all the strange idiosyncrasies of the way our world works it got me thinking about magical systems and the way fantasy worlds work.

The conclusion I eventually came to is that the decisions you make can be as arbitrary as you like, as long as their consequences are thought out and followed to their conclusions. The example I drew from chemistry is the way in which the random motion of electrons eventually leads to the polarization of molecules and the alignment of certain substances in electric and magnetic fields. In short, order forms out of chaos. Cool stuff, and certainly the fodder of magic and science fiction. Yet scientists buy into it because the mechanisms that explain it (which I won't try to go into here) are very logical and step-by-step.

Fantasy readers, at least the ones who care about the worlds behind the stories (which is a lot of them, I think), function the same way, so take heed: if you can get a scientist to buy it, you can get a reader to buy it.

And now, for the fun portion of the program, we consider how the above revelation reminded me of this lego re-enactment of a sketch by the inimitable Eddie Izzard:



You can thank me for finding a way to post an Eddie Izzard video later. In the meantime, I intend to gather together all the characters living in my world, explain how magic works to them, and say, "Those are the rules that I've just made up--and I'm backing them up with this delete key..."

Delta Philosophy

"Warm yourself by the fire son, and the morning will come soon..."
-Rise Against, Prayer of the Refugee

Apologies for the blog title, but I'm a.) studying for a chemistry exam and b.) feeling a bit whimsical today.

Anyways, I feel a bit obligated to square with you guys on a recent change in my philosophy re: writing. When I began this blog it was with the intent of using it to further my career as a writer, to help build a platform that would be make me more attractive to potential agents. This was at a time in my life when my writing was literally dominating who I was. Every choice I made was made with the goal of getting published in mind.

Over time, I found I was unable to maintain that pace. It slowly but surely drove all the fun and sense of accomplishment out of writing for me. There was no time to ponder how much better I was getting, and given the amount of work I was putting it it felt like an inevitability that I was going to succeed sooner or later--not because what I was writing was any good, but simply because I was going about it in a very calculated and determined manner.

So I've given up on working like a madman and have decided to work at a more sustainable pace--one which I enjoy. What this will mean for my career I'll find out later. I think it will simply postpone its start, as I'll have to frontload a lot of the work that needs to be done before beginning the publishing process (I'm considering, for instance, finishing my entire fantasy trilogy before submitting the first for publishing in order to avoid having to rush through writing the second and the third to get them out on time), but we'll see.

In the meantime, stories of fantasy remain one of my greatest interests and every day brings me closer to a career in the book industry, so I can promise that the blog should stay relevant and interesting, but I felt the need to square with you the reader about where I stand now as a writer.

More Fruits of Research

"Just live your life (hey)"--T.I. Feat. Rhianna, Live Your Life

Alright, first off, apologies for my epic fail on promising to post the most interesting lines I've written each Monday. I finished up writing some more background for my world last week, but I realized that it wouldn't have meant anything to anyone who didn't have some familiarity with Guedin already. I still like the idea of posting some of my writing each week to give you guys an idea of what I'm working on, but I'm not entirely sure how to implement it yet. I'll keep working on it though.

That said, I present on my summer research on Friday! Yay! Or gulp. Whichever you prefer. Either way, it means I'm going through my data more thoroughly than I have yet, and I've discovered a lovely little trick:

Don't name your main character until we know something about him/her.

In all three texts I looked at, the main character was described first (one way or another, even in the anime and videogame), and named later. Upon realizing this, I looked back at my own writing, and realized it was pretty applicable there. Observe the first sentence of my novel (slated to be rewritten anyway, but you'll still get the point of it):

"In the ancient human metropolis of Eldan City, Litnig Jinn was dreaming."

Now, rewritten:

"In the ancient human metropolis of Eldan City, a young man was dreaming."

Which would you rather read?

Booyakasha!

Stories

"Throw your diamonds in the sky if you feel my vibe..."
Kanye West, Diamonds from Sierra Leone

I just finished watching Blood Diamond, so you'll have to forgive me while I get on my soapbox for a moment. Not about what you might expect, about Africa and all the horrors that take place there while the western world sits idle, this blog isn't the place for that, but about stories...where we find them, and what we do with them.

Watching that movie made me realize two things. The first was just how many worlds there are within the world we live in, how many stories there are that take place every day in places we have never imagined, under rules we don't understand, and just how moving those stories can be. It made me realize, as a writer, that despite my best efforts I am still very confined in the stories I tell and the source materials I draw from. Whoever said that every story has already been written is a liar--there are permutations of permutations we have never imagined, but it's on us to remember to look for them in places we too often forget about.

The other thing that movie did a great job of for me was putting me as the viewer in a situation that was utterly alien to me and making me realize that it was far from far-fetched.

I think that lends a great deal of validity to what we do in "imaginative literature" (as I've heard sci-fi/fantasy called before). There's a theory of writing that says you should write what you know, describe your own world as clearly as possible so that others can get a glimpse of it. I think there's a great deal to be said for that, but as much or more to be said for writing stories that make readers realize their world is not the only one possible, and invite them to ask what they would do if the rules of their world suddenly changed--how they might act in a new one where the rules were completely different.

Not a great deal that's earth-shattering in either of these realizations, I suppose, but they're things I hadn't considered in awhile, at least, and I thought they were worth sharing.

Last Week's Best Lines

"You're hot then you're cold, you're yes then you're no..."
-Katy Perry, Hot N Cold

Ok, so I know I promised to do this on Friday, but a.) I was incredibly busy Friday, and b.) I like the idea of doing it on Mondays better anyway, because it gives me the weekend to write something if I haven't already.

So without further ado, the most interesting lines I wrote last week. They're a haiku--which you'll probably see a lot of, especially until I finish the background work on my novel and start revising the thing itself:

Your hairtie sits still,
white on the white of my fridge
while the trees turn gold.

Hope it's enjoyable, 'cuz, y'know, it's fall, and the trees are turning.

Book Trailers

"Is it too much to ask for the things to work out this time?"
--Blink 182, Lemmings

I've been seeing some book trailers making the rounds on various blogs lately, and I have to say I'm a bit underwhelmed. They're good, but not nearly what they could be. They tend to essentially be slideshows--pretty, evocative pictures in the background with music for atmosphere and rhetorical questions posed by text that "explodes" towards the screen (I'm not sure what exactly the effect is called, but it's everywhere).

They're not that bad, and a couple of them have even made me interested, but they're lacking one very important thing: voices. I understand the difficulties involved in getting good voiceover talent, let alone recording it, but I think that voices are key to building excitement. When you hear someone else talking about the end of the world, it's just a bit more real than if you see a picture of it with some text explaining it.

Something I'll be playing around with whenever I become involved with book trailers, either as a publishing professional or an author, and something I think that authors (whom I believe are the ones commissioning these trailers, to their credit) should keep in mind.

Switch-Hitting

"Oh hot damn, this is my jam..."--Flo-Rida, This Is My Jam

Gave a presentation this week on a poet named Chris Abani who also writes prose. And when I say "also writes" I mean "started out writing" and "writes concurrently with poetry" as well. He was a great find for me, because I got to talk about character development and plot arcs in a poetry class (yay!), and also because it opened my eyes to a dichotomy you often find in creative writing circles that isn't necessarily true.

Said dichotomy is the "fiction/poetry" dichotomy. For instance, creative writing classes at my school are divided into "Fiction" or "Poetry", and one must take so many of both types before one can graduate with one's slightly useful degree and hope to parlay it into a job doing more than flipping burgers.

But since when was poetry inherently not fictive? Was the person writing these definitions unaware of the countless lying poets throughout literary history? Sure, there's plenty of personal poetry, but I think Shakespeare and Homer count as well, just to name a few.

So, interesting thought for this Tuesday afternoon--why not switch-hit? Why not write poetry with plot arcs and developed characters? You might just learn something, and at the very least you ought to get some very different sounding poetry. It's something I intend to give a shot--just as soon as I've written the history for my damned Duennin...and the Tinkers...and the Necromantic Isle...

Oh well, maybe you should try it first and let me know how it goes, but I'll get to it someday, I swear!

And in other news, I've decided to start posting the most interesting three lines I've written in any given week on Fridays---be they poetry, prose, or even essay (though don't worry, that's an unlikely event). Stay tuned!

Quote of the Week!

"When I arrive, I'll bring the fire..."-Kevin Rudolf, Let It Rock

Quote of the week this week comes from the Tor.com blog: "One of the things that reliably distinguishes it from other genres is that in SF the world is a character. In fiction generally, characters have to change during the story...SF is the literature of changing the world."

Booyah! I think this is pretty spot on, and an easy aspect of Sci-Fi/Fantasy to ignore, especially when writing. SF/F worlds are characters, at least ideally. They have internal struggles, they generally have something to say about what is taking place upon them, and they shape the narrative moreso than perhaps anything else. That's worth remembering, and it's important to develop the world in tandem with the characters in it and the story you want to tell. None can really exist independently of the others, and to try to get there is asking for trouble.

But I really took to this quote because of its last sentence, which is what I think lends SF/F its value in the world. Changing the world really is one of the few unifying themes that runs through almost all the SF/F I've read. Even when characters fail to change the world, or don't think to try to change the world, there's usually an implicit criticism of the world in which the characters are living that leads the reader to question why that world is the way it is. And in my eyes, that sort of behavior should always be encouraged. If an SF/F story does nothing other than give someone practice in questioning the way a world works, it has performed a valuable social service.

Omg Zombies!

"I'm in love with a girl who loves me better, fell for the woman just when I met her..."--Gavin DeGraw, In Love with a Girl

First of all, apologies for not posting more often this week. It's been a bit hectic for me, and what time I've had I spent writing (yay! Take that, elvish history!) rather than writing about writing. I hope you can forgive me.

But I also spent a good deal of time this week participating in a campus-wide game called Humans versus Zombies. It's more or less what it sounds like--people sign up to play, one of them is chosen to be a zombie, and when that or any future zombie tags a human the human becomes a zombie. Humans get to defend themselves with nerf guns and balled up socks (which stun the zombies for 15 minutes at a time) and zombies starve if they go 48 hours without "feeding" on a human. The game ends when there are either no humans or zombies left.

My time as a human was embarrassingly short-lived thanks to being friends with the wrong sort of people (darn zombies), so I didn't get the "running, hiding, and fighting for my life" experience I was hoping for, but I did have a great experience as a zombie that I think will work its way into my writing.

I was leaving a classroom building the day after being tagged and spotted a small freshman girl wearing the telltale armband of a human. I saw her, she saw me, and we both froze. She brandished her nerf gun, and I shifted my weight uneasily from foot to foot, judging the distance between us and wondering if I could get her before she got me. I could dodge one shot, maybe...but could my feet make up the gap before she got off a second? I wasn't sure.

Then I looked behind me and noticed two other zombies. No words were necessary. Our eyes met, and when I looked back hers were as big as dinner plates. A split-second later, she turned and ran.

At that point, it was all over, and all National Geographic. Three fairly big, fast, athletic guys chasing after one small, terrified girl. It was like wolves on the trail of a rabbit, and it was a bizarre experience. The funny thing was, if she had stood her ground she still probably could have fought the three of us off--especially if she'd had some socks to throw in addition to her nerf gun (which I learned today that she did).

It was an interesting lesson in that I saw for myself that people under stress don't always make the decisions that will give them the best chance for survival and the consequences of that fact--and I saw it from the perspective of the predator. I knew, the second she turned, that it was over. My villains in the future will have a much better idea of when it's all over themselves.

Moral of the story? Play silly games. You never know what you'll learn...

Muahahaha!

First-person in High Fantasy

"You know I looked around at the faces I know, I fell in love with the people in the front row." --Hilltop Hoods, The Nosebleed Section

I love it when I have things pre-determined to blog about at the beginning of a day...it just makes it so much easier to post when the time comes.

So right! The first-person p.o.v. in high fantasy. Like I posted yesterday, Buried in the Slush Pile contends that it doesn't work very well, because so much world-building has to happen in a high fantasy narrative, and it doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense for a person to discuss how the world they live in works inside their own head (or to a reader from their own world).

She goes through some limited situations in which it does work for other types of fantasy, but none of them fit my definition of high fantasy (slightly different from hers--I need more than just a completely secondary world. I need magic, pre-modern technology, and non-human sentient races). I agree with her, but only for worlds that haven't been previously established.

If you were to read the first book that takes place in a world from a first-person point of view, it would be very difficult to grasp what's going on. But in a world that's well established, the first-person could work admirably. It would produce a very different sort of high fantasy story, and one that I might hesitate to call high fantasy at all, but in a world that is so well-known to its readers that its rules don't need to be established, the first-person might work admirably, though it would necessarily limit its audience to those already familiar with its world.

...now why you'd want to write a first-person high fantasy narrative is another question entirely. One of the things that sets high fantasy apart and makes it so wonderful is its tendency towards a diverse cast of characters, with different archetypes for different people to identify with, and you would lose that in a first person narrative.

But I don't think it's quite so unreasonable a proposition as she contends.

Tidbits from the Blogosphere

"Get out of my dreams, get into my car." --Billy Ocean, Get Out of my Dreams

Buried in the Slush Pile has done a couple of posts on fantasy recently--one about the difficulties of using first-person narration in it (which I don't always buy--more on that tomorrow), and I thought I'd link to them. Unfortunately I can't seem to link to specific posts on that blog, but they're #2 and #3 respectively as of this post, though sadly that will change. Oh well, you can always search for the key term "high fantasy" there and find them.

Sometimes the Pudding Just Sucks

"I got soul but I'm not a soldier..."
-The Killers, All These Things I've Done

So I watched the season premiere of Heroes last night, and while I eventually got into it (I love what they've done with Sylar, and the transformation of Nathan is interesting as well, as is whatever is going on with Claire), it took a long time to get off the ground.

Most notably, the first five minutes were among the worst five minutes of TV I've ever watched. I mean seriously, the acting, the dialogue, the scenery, the whole shebang, made Sci-Fi original movies look like The Godfather.

Which got me thinking about how entirely unfair it is that once a show (author, book series, director...plug-in whatever noun you want here) has achieved enough success it gets an automatic pass on being good at the beginning. If an unknown show had started off that badly I would have gone back to watching Monday Night Football. I almost did that anyway.

Same applies to publishing, and it's a damn shame. Especially when people get credit that, in my eyes, is entirely undeserved. In my poetry class yesterday a student began his discussion of a book of poetry we were reading with the statement, "I just want to say that even though it seems really dense and doesn't make much sense sometimes, he knows what he's doing. I mean, he's got degrees from Duke and Harvard, so he knows what he's up to."

The sad reality is that this is how a lot of people think. A PhD from Duke in history and an MFA from Harvard in creative writing don't make you a good poet. They don't even necessarily prove you're smart, in my eyes. The proof is in the pudding, but sometimes people change their tastes in order to like pudding they think should be good rather than just saying "This pudding sucks."

I don't know what the solution is, but it's a damn shame.

Soundtracks

"Put me to sleep, evil angel..."-Breaking Benjamin, Evil Angel

Quote today in honor of Crisis Core...and now on to soundtracks and how they build characters!

I'm sure this kind of thing gets studied in a much more thorough and legitimate way in most film schools, but I'm going to share my opinions on it anyway, because it's something that often slips past me when I'm watching a movie or playing through a videogame.

When they're present, soundtracks build characters and soundtracks develop scenes. Sometimes, as much or more significantly than the action taking place. Think about it, would Jack Sparrow be as adventurous without the thunderous trumpets following his one-liners as he leaps into action? Would the love story in Titanic be as tragic without that blasted flute track in the background? Would Jurassic Park be as awe-inspiring without the cymbal crashes and trumpets? (damn those trumpets...they're everywhere)

So. How do we use this information?

...I have some ideas, but quite frankly I'm not going to share them until I see someone else do them first (and I'm confident someone will, because all my other "great" ideas have been turning up piece by piece over the last year. Internet book trailers? Yeah, I thought I was pretty clever with my plans for that. Rats! Foiled again!) on the off chance that no one else will think of them until I can use them for myself. Sorry, but rest assured that once I find someone else duplicating my ideas I'll share them.

And what does this information mean for the future of books?

Well, if you ask me, combine e-books with the undeniable power of soundtracks and you have a pretty obvious answer to that question. Sometime in the next ten years I think we'll see the first e-book that comes with a soundtrack. The technology will have to change to support it, but it will. I'm willing to bet it will start out as an option to store and play music on your e-reader, evolve into a way to control the song you're listening to as you read, move on to soundtracks embedded into the e-book files themselves that repeat tracks while you're on one page a la old videogames, eventually some clever person will find a way to track exactly what point your eyes are at on the page and cue the music that way, and before you know it e-books will be a collaborative creative process involving large budgets, composers, and symphony orchestras.

...and they'll provide something you won't be able to get from a paper copy. Whether and how it'll catch on, I can't predict, but I'm willing to bet large we'll see it happen.

Prequels

"I will try to find my place, in the diary of Jane..."-Breaking Benjamin, Diary of Jane

So. As we speak I have just finished ditching a lecture in order to finish playing through Crisis Core (relax kids, I'm dropping the class anyway). And aside from obligatory zomgwtfamazing fanboy comments I could be making, I realized something very interesting about the way Tetsuya Nomura and crew handled the making of the game.

For those who don't know, it's a prequel to Final Fantasy VII---one of the most popular and beloved RPGs of all time. It's a bit like Star Wars, except for RPGs. It revolutionized the genre and some people are very, very, obsessively dedicated to it. So Nomura et al had to handle it very carefully to avoid stepping on people's toes.

In my opinion, they did a marvelous job of it, in no small part because they left out most of what had occurred in the original game.

For those unfamiliar with FFVII, one of its themes is memory, so there are a lot of flashbacks regarding the protagonist. A significant portion of Crisis Core takes place during the same timeframe as those flashback scenes, and the main protagonist from FFVII actually has one of the bigger minor roles in Crisis Core. So there was significant potential to rehash a lot of the flashback scenes from FFVII.

I was actually looking forward to these, as those scenes and that particular subplot of the game are some of my favorite parts of it. I was surprised, therefore, when Crisis Core left most of those scenes out. Its narrative simply skipped over them---I knew they were there, I knew what happened, but as they weren't important to the narrative of Crisis Core itself, they didn't wind up in the game. At first I was a bit disappointed, but after some reflection I think it was a brilliant move.

It made Crisis Core much more of its own game, and kept the focus on its main character, rather than FFVII's. Rather than the game just being an excuse to relive some of my favorite moments from FFVII, it was a whole new story that didn't really plug into the FFVII story (not in the way I expected, anyway) until its last scene.

I will be remembering this someday, when I write my own prequels, and I think it's good advice for anyone else who plans to as well.

...more tomorrow on another lesson I learned from the game, the use of soundtracks to build characters, and how I think that can be used now in writing, and how I think it will start to be used in the next 10 years or so.

Exciting Times

"Rain rain, go away, come again another day. All the world is waiting for the sun." --Breaking Benjamin, Rain

Alright, well, the greatest upside to being finished with that oh-so-disappointing World of Warcraft story is that I'm back to working on my novel. Yay!

I spent a considerable amount of time last night I should have spent studying instead going back to look over the list of changes I have written up for my next revision and I have to say I'm freakin' excited. I came up with a great concept over the summer that will really set my novel apart from the rest of the stuff out there, and I absolutely can't wait to implement it, despite the fact that it's going to be a boatload of work.

My novel is beginning to look like a novel, and not just like a story. Which is good, I think. I love stories, and I'm a firm believer that it's stories that sell and stories that touch lives and stories that matter, but it makes me happy to think that there will be something to the story I'm telling that stretches beyond the story itself. Hurray!

Moral of the story---it is a good idea to make big lists of changes and then wait to implement them, because you may be freakin' psyched to do it.

Frustration

"Still my guitar gently weeps..."
--The Beatles, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Alright, I know I already posted about this once, but the situation has now deteriorated to the point of making me quite exasperated, so I'm posting again.

This summer the World of Warcraft website began accepting submissions for the online publication of WoW based short stories. This seemed like a great opportunity to me, especially as I had a pretty good idea of what I might want to do with one, so I jumped on it and started writing.

Now, after a whole summer spent working on this short story (not exclusively or intensively mind you, but still a lot of time put in) I'm having to scrap it completely because the submission directions were unclear.

I posted previously that rather than a 7500 word short story they wanted a 7500 character one. That was a mistake on my part, and rather frustrating overall, but I managed to break my story up into four parts that worked pretty coherently and I felt like the submission still would have been good.

Then this weekend I finally went to submit it and discovered that for some reason, the 7500 character limit was also wrong. They're only accepting submissions of up to 3000 characters.

After struggling with their online submission system for awhile trying to figure out why it wasn't working as advertised, I finally gave up. Splitting my story up into 3000 character chunks would mean it would be in 8 parts, and frankly, it's just not that divisible.

If anyone's curious, this blog post is over 2200 characters. I'm pretty sure that 3000 characters is not a short story, it's a short-short story. Boo to Blizzard and their confusing guidelines.

The moral of the story, I guess, is to be careful about submitting to unknown markets, even if they seem like they should be well-managed. Even large corporate entities may fall pretty flat when venturing into unknown territory, and you should be aware of that.

Personally, I like the story I wrote and I'm happy I wrote it. I may try to find another venue to share it on (there are plenty of WoW sites that accept fanfic) because I think it's pretty good, so it's not as if my work was wasted.

But I'm still frustrated as hell.

%*!(*@ Blizzard....

Writing Every Day

"But that day's not today..."-Missing Time, Here We Are

So I'm sure you've all heard that you should write every day if you want to be a writer. I sign on to that philosophy whole-heartedly. I've only managed to do it once, for a summer, but I progressed more as a writer during that summer than I think I ever have in one short period like that.

The trouble, of course, is finding time to do it. When you work from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep (oh college, let me count the ways I love thee...), when do you find time to write?

The solution came to me today as I was reading some poetry and pondering whether to put it down and pick up my PSP for a few minutes to play another level of Crisis Core.

First some background on the game---the way it's designed, you can do optional sidequests that take literally between 3-5 minutes to get through. This is great for someone like me, who needs to take brief breaks from studying every once in awhile and do something a little more enjoyable. I can spend a little bit of time playing, and then get back to work, and overall I'm much more happy and productive.

So how does this apply to finding time to write?

Find ways to write that only take 3-5 minutes. For me, I think that's poetry. I can scramble off a short poem in 10-15 minutes. It might not be any good, and it probably won't have anything to do with whatever fiction project I'm working on at the time, but for that 10-15 minutes my mind will at least be engaged in writing.

For you it might be something else---vignettes, a scene, character sketches, whatever it is that both moves you and doesn't take much time, but I'm willing to bet there's something, and finding and taking advantage of it can only help you in the end.

Race in Fantasy

"Some live for the bill, some kill for the bill (girrrrl)..."-Wyclef Jean, Sweetest Girl

Alright, continuing with the theme of how taking classes completely outside the average creative writing curriculum can influence your writing in incredible ways, a discussion of race in fantasy.

I've been taking a class this semester about the origins of race as we know it in society today, and aside from completely turning upside-down my own thoughts on race (and helping me to finally eliminate some issues I've had with race since I first started encountering it), it's really gotten me thinking about how race is treated in fantasy.

Most notably, it's treated as a given. In most fantasy worlds, whatever equivalent there is to God created the different races as different races, and never the twain shall meet. There are half-breeds, but races never get more mixed than that. You never see, for instance, an invidual of mixed dwarvish-human-elvish-gnomish ancestry...the sort of genetic mixing that would happen in any world in which the races were races and not different species.

So most fantasy worlds treat races as species, but still use the term race, and incorporate all the racial tensions and hatreds that have accompanied that term in the real world. My question is, "why?" For all the sun-shiny stories out there in fantasy about interracial marriages and overcoming prejudices and hatreds, the prejudices and hatreds overcome are never really intrinsic to the worlds they're supposed to come from. They're just imported from ours.

I'd love to read a work of fantasy in which racial mixing was treated realistically and one of the major themes of the story. In fact, I'd love to write it. Dibs.

Why Writing Can't Be Taught

"I st-st-stuttered when you asked me what I'm thinkin' bout." -Miley Cyrus, See You Again

So. Why writing can't be taught. There are a couple steps to this one. The first is understanding that there is inherently a gulf between teaching and learning. What someone teaches you may not have anything to do with what you learn. For instance, someone may teach you that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. Hopefully what you'll learn is that they know very little about astronomy.

That's an extreme example, but it applies to everything you learn. There will always be a subtle difference between what someone attempts to teach you and what you actually learn from them, whether it's the mechanism by which hydrogen and oxygen bond to form water or what the madwoman in the attic really means in Jane Eyre.

So, there is a difference between teaching and learning. Everyone still with me? Good.

In some disciplines, the goal is to bridge this difference. Since 2+2 will always equal 4, the goal is to make sure that when someone teaches that 2+2=4, everyone learns that 2+2=4 (and that hopefully they learn why as well).

With writing, this doesn't work. There are no facts to be memorized, no simple truths, nothing that can be taught. You must learn how to write, and in order to do that what you really need to do is be able to look at your own writing and see its shortcomings, then be able to keep your eyes open enough to find solutions to them in the world around you.

Unfortunately, a class focused on that wouldn't sell textbooks. It might not even sell books of poetry and literary fiction. And what do professors of creative writing write? Textbooks, books of poetry, and literary fiction. And we all know that professors need to sell books in order to keep their positions (not to mention pay their bills).

What's the solution? I don't know. There are economic realities involved here that I'm not really equipped to deal with, but I do know that most creative writing courses I've taken have been a big steaming pile of bad (aside from workshops, anyway, so long as the workshop isn't really an hour-long critique from the professor with a few comments from other students scattered in for good measure) and I certainly wouldn't count on them to improve your writing until the way they're taught is changed.

Selecting Classes

"Just 'cause she dances go-go, that don't make her a ho, no..."-Wyclef Jean, Perfect Gentleman

Alright, admittedly this post is only of interest to anyone in college and looking to improve their writing---but as that's probably a majority of the people reading this, I'm going to post it anyway.

When it comes to writing in college and selecting classes I have two major pieces of advice.

1.) Don't put too much emphasis on creative writing classes and workshops. They can be of great help, or they can be the most frustrating experiences ever, and it will be difficult to tell ahead of time which they'll be. By all means take them, but be aware going in that they may be awful, and realize that there may be other classes out there that will improve your writing more. Writing can't be taught, it can be only be learned, and classes that purport to teach it to you may actually not be the best place to learn it.

2.) Take a wide breadth of courses. This matters especially for those of you writing fantasy or sci-fi, but I really think it applies to everyone. There is nothing you don't need to know as an author. Everything from art history to chemistry to sociology to economics can be used in your writing---but only if you know it. So learn as much as you can. Aim to be a jack of all trades rather than master one. How to work this in with a major of some kind is up to you, but that's my advice.

More later this week on why writing can't be taught and why people who think it can probably shouldn't be teaching it.

Writer's Market and GLA

"Radio, play my favorite song..."
-The Smashing Pumpkins, I of the Mourning

I'm taking the day off blogging, more or less, in an attempt to try and get through as much of my remaining summer research as possible.

...but I did find this interesting post at the Guide to Literary Agents blog that describes a bit of how that book and Writer's Market are put together. If you're not familiar with these books, they're great tools when you're looking for representation or a place to sell a short story. I've spent hours in front of various copies of them with a highlighter picking out where I was going to submit to.

Anyway, long story short it's interesting to get a glimpse of how they put those books together...and I'm becoming more and more convinced of the wisdom of subscribing to their online database when the time comes for me to start submitting again.

Updated!

"Dear Lord, you just took so many of my people and I'm wondering why..."- The Game, My Life

Updated the sidebar links in the blog today, so go check out some of the new highlights if you're interested, and definitely go check out Tor.com, which is an awesome fantasy blog I picked up this summer that's run by Tor.

In other news, I'm finally submitting my WoW fanfic story today...in four parts, because it's too long, and I ran into an interesting moment.

The story isn't perfect. It's not the best thing I've ever written, and it's not earth-shattering. But it's not bad, either, and I really don't see the potential for it to get much better. I told the story I had to tell, and it's time to cut my losses on it and move on.

This is interesting for me because it's something I haven't done a lot of with my writing. My novel, as I've said, has been rewritten a bunch of times, and fiddled with even more often than that. I refuse to abandon it because I love it too much, and I know that the story is solid, even if my execution isn't always there.

I'm not entirely sure where I was going with this, but I guess my point is that it's worth taking the time to evaluate which of your writing projects really matter to you, and which are okay to leave imperfect.

Writing again, Yay!

"I like girls, they like me." -Gym Class Heroes, Cookie Jar

Ok, back from the woods and in front of my computer again, with no loss or gain of life as my boss always orders on these trips. Hazah!

And now I'm settling back into school, and that means it's almost time to start writing again. Yay!

I don't know if I've posted about this before, but I basically put my novel on the shelf for the summer while I was working in publishing and doing my summer research---collecting ideas and working on other projects as I prepare for what will hopefully be its last rewrite.

And now it's almost time for the rewrite to begin! Yay! In celebration of that, I'll share a tip or two on my writing process when it comes to something like this.

1.) I make a big list of ideas and changes I'd like to make to the novel (and, if necessary, the later books in the story arc as well) sorted by book and chapter. I do this because there's no way in hell I'd remember everything if I didn't write it down.

2.) I go through and make any small changes on that list, like switching vocabulary around.

3.) I go through chapter by chapter and make the rest of the changes, editing and fiddling as I go. This is often a circular process, as I tend to make changes in Chapter 12 that must be set up in Chapter 7 and eliminate something I had previously hinted at in Chapter 3, so it takes awhile. I can bang through a few chapters a day if I'm really cruising, but I shoot for one a day.

4.) I go back through and read the book from beginning to end, making sure continuity works and I'm happy with everything.

5.) I sit on the manuscript for awhile, maybe go write a short story or get some neglected schoolwork done.

6.) I print the whole thing off and sit down with a red pen to make changes. Hopefully there are no major ones to be made. If there are, I go back to step 3.

7.) I implement the changes and start sending copies of the novel to all the people I've met recently who are like "Wow, you wrote a novel? Can I read it?" in the hopes of getting at least some useful feedback from one or two of them.

8.) Unless I get serious negative feedback, I start submitting.

Sound like a lot of work? It is. Sound time-consuming? It is. But I love it anyway, because I love the stories I tell and I want them to be as great as they can be.

Apologies in Advance

Quote of the Day: "It's like I've waited my whole life for this one night. It's gonna be me, you and the dance floor."
Chris Brown- Forever

...but I won't be posting for the next week or so. I'm leading a wilderness pre-orientation trip for freshmen at my college and therefore will be a.) incredibly busy and b.) away from the internets.

So in the meantime, feel free to peruse the links in the right-hand sidebar for some of my favorite old posts and some other blogs that I personally find to be both enlightening and entertaining.

See you in a week!

Synopses Part Deux

Quote of the Day: "There's a face I know too well, I see it every time I look in the mirror." -Eve 6, There's a Face

Okay, time for Synopses Part Deux: Length.

Lesson #2: Keep it short. Really, really, ridiculously short.

I'm sure you've heard this before. Any google search for "How to write a novel synopsis" will give you this advice. What I hadn't realized before this summer is the reason for it: at some point, someone will probably have to write what's called a "Reader's Report" for your book. And on that reader's report will be a place for them to write a synopsis.

And that space will be less than one single-spaced page long.

Yeah, I know. Ouch, right? Try having to do it at work. I spent longer writing the synopses for some submissions (the good ones, that had a lot going on) than I did reading the submissions themselves. It's a learned skill. Here's the rub: if you can learn it, you will make it easier for a person who wants to recommend your book for publishing to do so, because rather than having to take their own time and write a synopsis for your book, they will be able to start with yours as a base. Win.

Hopefully that's convinced you of the why behind condensing your masterpiece into a teeny, tiny, barebones ghost of its former self. Here are some tips on how to do it--the ones that helped me as I was struggling to learn the skill at work.

1.) Each chapter should be condensed into 2-3 sentences. A micro-paragraph, if you will. You will only be able to do this if you're focusing on one character and plot arc, so like I've said before, pick one and stick with it. The others will still be in your novel, and your reader will still fall in love with them. They will get mentioned elsewhere in the reader's report as a reason for why you should be published. Your work on them will not be in vain.

2.) Focus on salient plot details, and forget the setup. Did Swashbuckling George shoot his best friend in the back for betraying him? Write that. Do not feel the need to add that he found his best friend in the back of a dingy inn in the pirate town of Deadmanschestdale. The first part is what matters to the plot. The second bit is unnecessary, and while it's only a few extra words, and they help to set the scene and give a hint of what your writing is like, over time they add up and bloat your synopsis.

3.) Focus on tone more than direct quotes or excerpts, which also have a bloating tendency. Is the chapter funny? Make its micro-paragraph funny. Is it serious? Make it serious. Is it suspenseful? Make it suspenseful. The tools you have learned as an author can be put to use here, but you need to do it judiciously.

Hopefully this stuff is helpful. There's a lot to be learned about writing a good synopsis, and as I write more of them, I'll post more little tips and tricks that I've learned. You can be sure to expect a rehash when I write the one for my own book. :-)

Where Was This Five Years Ago?

Taking a break from synopses today (don't worry though, there's more to come) because as I was doing my daily blog-reading, I ran across this over at Tor.com.

To sum up, it's a story about a camp for high school kids dedicated completely to world-building, where they got advice from published authors and even a videogame designer. In short, people who build worlds for a living.

There was advice in that little article that I hadn't heard before, even after all my years of trying to learn how to build worlds from as many sources as possible. And that was just in the article. I can't even imagine the head start those kids are going to have on writing sci-fi/fantasy.

Absolutely amazing opportunity for them, and one I wish had been around when I was their age. I went to the Iowa Young Writer's Studio, and that in and of itself was a great experience, but it wasn't focused on sci-fi/fantasy, though my professor there did a much better job of advising me on writing it than any of my highly touted professors since have, and I would loved to have had a more specialized experience.

Really cool stuff out there.

The Importance of Synopses

Quote of the Day: "I'm a lucky man, with fire in my hands..."
--The Verve, Lucky Man

This post kicks off what I think will wind up being a few posts about synopses, as I've had all summer to read them and write them as part of my job, and I've learned quite a bit.

Lesson #1: Focus on who and what the story is really about.

Your synopsis needs to be about the same character and plot your book is about. If it's not, the person reading your submission will quickly become confused and frustrated by one or the other. If they take the route of reading the synopsis first, they will wonder why the first pages of your book are dedicated to a character or characters who aren't really its main focus. If they read the book first, they will be confused about why your synopsis has nothing to do with the characters that they have become interested in (hopefully) while reading your sample pages.

This is one of those "Can't help you but can hurt you" kind of things. Your synopsis and your book are supposed to be about the same thing. Doing this right merely satisfies the requirements of a synopsis, it doesn't earn you any extra points with the person reading your submission, but doing it wrong can really hurt you. And as an incidental, your book should kick off with the main character and main plot. It may be tempting to kick it off with a subplot or secondary character, but trust me, it's more confusing than cool or unique. I've tried it, I've seen it tried, and it just doesn't work. If you want to make that experiment, feel free, but don't expect much success.

I understand that it can be hard to get down who your story is really about. I mean, part of what makes it good is all the different stories inside it, right? All the different character arcs and interesting subplots? Shouldn't those go in the synopsis too?

And what I've learned over the course of the summer is that the answer is no.

Get the reader interested in one story, one plot, because that's what you have time to do. The others will come out when they read the manuscript. Trust me. Don't feel like you have to cram everything that's good about your novel into your synopsis. When the person evaluating it finds extra good stuff in the manuscript it works in your favor. When they get confused by your synopsis it doesn't.

The Line Between Fantasy and YA

Quote of the Day: "Into the pastures of our minds goes my nearly beloved and I."
--The Wallflowers, Nearly Beloved

So many things to blog about today! But not to worry, I'm saving most of them up to be released in a user-friendly, easily digestible format rather than cramming them all down your throat.

We'll start with another thing I learned at Tor yesterday, when I finally had the chance to ask an Editorial Assistant who deals with fantasy about where the line between Fantasy and YA Fantasy is drawn. Her answer?

"Good question."

Initially she suggested theme, but in the course of our discussion we discovered that since a great deal of fantasy deals with the quest of a hero, which typically involve a lot of steps that are very YA in theme (Youngish person discovers something new about themselves, has to learn how to use it, deal with the changes it brings about in their life, and eventually triumph either because of it or in spite of it. Sounds like puberty, eh?), and some YA fantasy deals with very dark, "adult" themes, theme doesn't really work as a criterion.

So finally she hit upon complexity, and I agreed entirely. YA fantasy tends to be simpler than adult fantasy. The worlds are less detailed (or at least tend to spread the detail out over multiple books rather than hitting it all at once), and the novels are shorter and tend to focus more on one particular plot, or two or three, rather than some of the sweeping, sixteen-characters-with-their-own-plot, full-of-intrigue epics you'll find without the YA designation.

Personally, I don't see this is as a value judgment. Lack of complexity does not make something inherently worse. See the music of Nirvana versus the music of Mozart. Both are incredible. One is more complex, but there are things that Nirvana's simplicity can accomplish that Mozart, for all his orchestra and musical brilliance, can't. Sometimes a more single-minded focus can reveal nuances of one particular plotline or story that would get lost in the more complex machinations of another book.

Either way, I'd love to hear opinions on this one. Complexity as the barrier between YA and adult fantasy---sound about right?

Slush Like Fine Wine?

Quote of the Day: "Bee-bop-bop-ba-da-bo!"
--Scatman John, Scat Man

Today I had the absolutely incredible, mind-blowing opportunity to tour Tor, my own personal Holy Grail when it comes to the publishing industry. I learned a boatload, met some wonderful people, and had a very enlightening lunch with an editor and three editorial assistants. I'm still processing all I've learned, so expect more of the gems of wisdom they dropped on me as the week continues.

But for today we'll start with an interesting fact the editor told me, and an amazing term that as far as I'm aware Tor has coined themselves: they "age" their slush.

Apparently they're good enough at staying on top of slush that they could have very short turnaround times if they so chose--but in the past when they've gone for that approach authors have refused to believe that their submissions were actually read and re-submitted, leading to a lot of wasted time and postage overall. So now they "age" their slush in piles based upon when it was submitted, and it was generally agreed upon that the best vintage is about 3 months.

I was amazed because the situation made perfect sense (I can easily imagine jilted authors assuming that their submission must have simply been rejected summarily, because it's so good that if anyone read it they would love it), despite its utter absurdity. Only in publishing, friends, only in publishing...

So moral of the story, if your submission got rejected, it got rejected. Don't resubmit or you'll ruin the short response times for the rest of us!

...also Tor is awesome and I got more free books than I know what to do with.

Staying Human

Quote of the Day: "I'll make a beast out of myself, get rid of all the pain of being a man."
--Avenged Sevenfold, Bat Country
(Best. Title. Ever. Expect forthcoming story by that name. Seriously. I don't know what it will be about, but it will be awesome.)

*Note: Apologies for not posting yesterday, my computer started spitting errors about memory not being referenced at bla bla broken broken and I spent all night fixing it. Bah. Humbug.

I was originally going to put up a different quote from that song, but the one above just fits better with the theme of the blog today.

I sent out probably 100 rejection letters today. No joke. It was an interesting process because it became completely automated at some point. I scanned the offending query letter for pertinent details like name and address, completed the rejection letter, and put it in an ever-growing stack of "To-be-sent".

Usually when I send these things out I take the time to read a bit of the query letter. I'm genuinely interested in who this person is, what they wrote, how they structured their letter, and why they didn't make the cut. See my previous blog post about the manuscript from the wrong genre for proof.

But when I'm pumping through zillions of rejections all at once there just isn't time for that sort of thing, and it's easy to forget that this pile of paper in front of me represents someone's months and years of hard work, maybe even their lifelong dreams and ambitions.

It was a sobering realization, because I'd hate to think that at some point I'll forget what it's like to dream about getting published, either through working in publishing or by simply not trying to get published myself for too long. Maybe it's as important for publishers to moonlight as struggling authors as it is for struggling authors to moonlight as publishers. Something to discuss with the industry after I've succeeded at both, I suppose ;-p.

At any rate, I decided that someday, when I have a real job, I'll print out a little poster that says something along the lines of "Remember you are crushing dreams" and pin it to the wall of my cubicle. It should be a cheering reminder on bad days of the absurd power I wield, and a sobering reminder on good days that my rejection might be the worst thing somebody is going to get in the mail for a very long time.

Oops

Quote of the Day: "Shake shake, shake shake-a shake it."
--Metro Station, Shake It

Just a quick post today, about paying attention to guidelines. As some of you may know I've been working on a World of Warcraft themed short story for a contest they're running. Unfortunately, I made a very big, very rookie mistake. I didn't read the instructions correctly.

They have a length restriction for submissions...makes sense, right? Otherwise who knows what sort of massive stories people would send them. It says 3000-7000 characters. So I, used to having my length restrictions come in words, assumed it said words. Just skipped right over that "characters" part, and wrote a solid story of about 4100 words. Then when I went to submit it it wouldn't fit in the little online box they have, and I discovered my mistake.

If anyone is curious, my story is 22000 characters. Oops.

That's not a cuttable amount of material. I thought briefly about going through and axing just about everything in there except for the one brief initial scene it was built around, but then I realized I'd have a crappy story. And a crappy story is just as likely to get published as one three times as long as it's supposed to be.

So I've settled on breaking it into parts and submitting them separately (the European website says this is okay, and the U.S. one is mum about it, so hey...maybe they'll still read it) in the spirit of my mantra: "Write good fiction and the rest will come."

The moral of the story is read instructions carefully, especially when dealing with a market you're not used to, because you never know when someone will do something crazy like put their length limits in characters instead of words.

Send it to the right place...please.

Quote of the Day: "My angel wings are bruised and destroyed."
--The Smashing Pumpkins, Today

I had a bit of a sad moment this week. A manuscript came through that looked quite interesting, interesting enough that I wanted to read it at any rate, but was just not something the company I'm working for publishes.

It was a memoir (possibly fictionalized, the cover letter was pretty tough to decipher) of a mixed-race woman's experience growing up in Tennessee in the early part of the 20th century. Sounds cool, right? Well, judging by the few pages I skimmed, it was. She had a great voice and it seemed like it'd be great.

But sadly, I had work to do, so I just sent along the "Sorry, we don't take this genre" formulaic rejection letter and went about my day. Had I not written a note reminding myself to blog about it, I would have completely forgotten about the manuscript by the end of the day.

I'm think I've said this before, and I'm sure others have said it, but I'll say it again: you don't want your manuscript going to place that doesn't publish or represent its genre. Even if this was pulitzer-prize winning literature, my house simply doesn't have the setup necessary to publicize and do a good job publishing memoir. If we were to take a manuscript like that, it would essentially be condemning it to wallow in the dirt for x number of years before someone important finally read it by accident and it blew up---probably long after the deaths of anyone involved.

And why would you want to do that to your book?

Letting the Reader Create the Character

Quote of the Day: "Wait, wait, tell me we're all gonna be okay. Would you be better if they took this city away?" --The Crash Moderns, Where'd All the Scene Girls Go?

I think I've blogged before about how I think that part of creating good characters is leaving room for the reader to develop them in their minds, so that every reader's character is different (this, in my opinion, is why movies made from books never work out as well as the books---the character on screen never exactly matches the character in anyone's head). This goes double for minor characters--the little ones like I talked about on Monday, that don't have huge roles but can nonetheless be very memorable.

Today at work I ran into a manuscript that had really great minor characters. Part of this was that they were just likable. They seemed like nice people and had cool little quirks, a la Monday's post. But another part of what made them so good is that their characterization essentially consisted of some dialogue and the nicknames given to them by the protagonist, who couldn't speak their language and thus didn't know their real names. Aside from that, the reader was left to generate their own character.

It just struck me as a stroke of genius (and I could have squeezed the word "strike" into that sentence I would've had the trifecta! Damn!), because I'd never seen it attempted before, let alone pulled off so well. Oh, and on top of that, the way the nicknames were applied also told volumes about the character doing the nicknaming. Brilliant! I think that's another thing to keep in mind when creating characters. Obviously not everyone can pull this trick in their story itself, or it wouldn't work...but it's worth knowing what your characters nicknames would be, if a sassy time traveler happened to come back and nickname them. It's like distilling a character down into its one-word essence. Wonderful little trick. Some from my novel, for the benefit of those who've read it:

Len- Dreadlilocks
Leramis- Mr. Serious
Dil- Sunshine

etc. etc. etc.

Enjoy!

Quick-dry Characters

Quote of the Day: "Don't hold me up now, I can stand my own ground. I don't need your help now, please don't hold me down."
- Rise Against, Prayer of the Refugee

So I talked a little bit in my last post about adding shallow layers of character development that can nonetheless really make a reader grab onto a character quickly, and I want to talk a little more about it today.

It's something I've been noticing as I've read my eight million books this summer, both at work and for my research. Most romance characters tend to be, um, pretty stock. But every once in awhile I catch one who has something different. It can be totally arbitrary, shallow, and unimportant, but it's enough to get me interested and make me interested in the character until he or she develops enough for me to really start caring. Sort of like an appetizer, if you will.

Some examples from work:
A romance heroine who nicknames all the Scotsmen who abduct her when she travels back in time (Yes, you read correctly. Time-travel romance is a hot seller, baby!).
A horror villain that dresses in a trenchcoat and fedora and has no face.

They were just different enough to grab me and keep me reading until I really got hooked on the deeper aspects of the characters in their respective stories--and those things are quick, easy, one-off bits of character development.

But the writers of the Dragonlance series, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, are really the king and queen of this. And what's most key is that they do it with minor characters, so that you're not just loving the main characters, but every once in awhile you get someone totally new and awesome and unexpected, like free ice cream with your meal at a restaurant. Some examples from them:

An irascible wizard who can't remember his own name.
A dirty little dwarf that speaks like a child and falls in love with a different wizard.
A dragon so old his teeth have all fallen out.

The last two of these are minor characters, they only get a few pages and don't have much an impact on the story, but they nonetheless help draw you in and get you excited about what you're reading, and I wouldn't be surprised if they wound up being some people's favorite characters. I call this sort of characterization "quick-dry", because it's fast and simple, but oh so incredible when it's done right.

It's something I'm still struggling to figure out how to work into my own writing. I can see two ways of going about it: one is to add in more one-off characters with cool quirks to them, but that's not something I really want to do, and the other is to add little quirks to my main characters that make them initially intriguing. I've been going through and giving them hobbies, recently, and hoping that I can work those into the story in a cool enough way that they'll grab people.

Not sure how long it will take me to get this working, but I've recognized it as an incredibly powerful tool, so I thought I'd share it.

Science and Fantasy

*New Blog Feature! Since I've been drowning in good music this summer, I'm going to start putting quotes from whatever song I happen to be gorging myself on at the top of my blog posts. We'll see if it sticks, but I'm hoping it will be a good addition. :-)*

Quote of the day: "We live on front porches and swing life away, we get by just fine here on minimum wage. If love is a labor I'll slave 'til the end. I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand." -Rise Against, Swing Life Away

This is something that has been dawning slowly on me this summer, as I read through a few different fantasy novels and ponder what makes them good.

One thing I've realized is that while science isn't the focus of fantasy the way it is in science fiction (especially hard science fiction), leaving it out of a fantasy world is being inexcusably negligent as an author. It can add so much to a world.

I first got an inkling of this while finally getting started on The Golden Compass, which isn't high fantasy, but still---the pseudo-science it mixes in with its magic is just very cool. So that got me thinking about science and fantasy, and I realized there are some very cool instances of it in more fantastic works (Final Fantasy Tactics, actually, is what sprang to mind), and that it would fit much better in my world than I had imagined.

I had sort of left science out of my world completely, but as I got thinking about it and adding more layers of depth to my characters (though depth is an interesting word to use, because the layers I'm thinking of adding are fairly shallow--easy, interesting bits of characterization that readers will be quick to pick up on and say, 'Hmm...' about. More on this in a later post), I realized that it would make perfect sense for my main character to be a tinker of sorts---someone who enjoys looking behind the scenes and seeing how gadgets work, because a big part of him is analyzing the world around him, and the one sort of naturally lends itself to the other.

And that meant adding science into my world, which meant addressing the question of exactly how far along technologically they were. I had sort of just gone with the stock fantasy thing---knights and armor, wood and stone, etc. etc., but I realized as I contemplated it that that was very limiting. There was no reason behind it, it had just been an easy choice as I started to build my world.

Damn those initial easy choices. Someday I'll write down a list of all the ones I made and had to go back and revisit later, for the benefit of anyone else who's going about building a world of their own.

Pet Peeves

Today it's time for me to share one of my personal pet peeves/common mistakes in writing that I hate. And yes, I call it a mistake, regardless of its grammatical gray-area status, because it makes me cringe.

Said pet peeve is the use of the words 'this', 'these', and 'now' in a past tense narrative. These words are all, as far as I'm concerned, present tense pronouns. "This was", "These were" or "Now he had to" just sounds wrong, unless you're making a narrative aside. Those are grammatical constructions we use all the time in verbal storytelling, but they just don't work on the page.

I'm writing about this because I spent all weekend reading the Dragonlance Chronicles for my research project, and they are guilty of doing this in freakin' spades. Then I got to work today and found, in the midst of a manuscript that made me cringe for many other reasons, someone that at least used 'that' and 'those' and never said 'now', and I literally breathed a sigh of relief when I realized I wouldn't have to deal with that for the next 3 hours as I plowed through it.

Here is an example from Dragons of Winter Night that will, hopefully, illustrate my point to the world.

And so, "like the other scum," as Raistlin observed, the companions floated along upon the tides of war and were deposited in Flotsam. Here they hoped to find a ship that would take them on the long treacherous journey around the northern parts of Ansalon to Sancrist--or wherever--

Compare that to:

And so, "like the other scum," as Raistlin observed, the companions floated along upon the tides of war and were deposited in Flotsam. There they hoped to find a ship that would take them on the long treacherous journey around the northern parts of Ansalon to Sancrist--or wherever--

Hopefully you can see for yourselves what I'm talking about. The addition of one little letter makes a HUGE difference in the flow of the text. I couldn't find an example of 'now', but I still have one book left to go and I'm sure they'll use it. I'll rip the sentence when it does, but for now, just trust me that it's a superfluous word and cutting it out will yield a 100% increase in the quality of your manuscript.

...in other news, I apologize for any double 'r's...my 'r' key is apparently broken, making me sound like a pirate from time to time.