The Wakai Writer

Retiring

2011-12-19T14:11:00.002-07:00

Well, friends and blog-readers, it's time for something both exciting and a little bit sad. In honor of the submission of my first short stories since high school and what will be the beginning of my grown-up, professional writing career, I am retiring this blog. I do plan to leave it up in perpetuity, however, as there's a lot of good stuff on here that I don't want to forget.

I've come a long way since 2008. Been a lot of places, done a lot of things, and more importantly, I have improved vastly as a writer. This blog was the beginning of me taking myself seriously as an artist--an outpouring of the same change in philosophy that led me to study narrative, revamp my attitude towards college coursework, and eventually discover how and what I really wanted to write. For that, it will always have a warm place in my heart. I hope that you have enjoyed it as much as I have, and I hope that you will join me over at The Real Jeff Seymour, where I promise more of the same things I delivered here, and more frequently.

Arrivederci, my friends, and thank you.

Something beautiful for Thursday

2011-11-10T14:52:00.003-07:00

"Dadada dadada dada dadada dadada dada..." Murmuration - Nomad Soul

No words necessary. Enjoy.

The 'Click' Moment

2011-10-27T15:36:00.003-06:00

"Don't...don't you want me?" - Don't You Want Me - The Human League

So today I was reading the PW Daily e-mail from September 30th, because as a result of exciting things happening in my professional life, which hopefully I will able to share soon, I am almost a month behind on reading publishing trade news, and I refuse to just delete it and start over again, and I came across the following quote: "It’s such a distinct moment (for me, at least) that I can almost always pinpoint the moment—down to the page number—I felt it happen. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides: page 94. Michael Lewis's Boomerang, out on Monday: page 6 (yes, really). Touré’s Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness: page 32 (see our interview with Touré below). Péter Nádas’s Parallel Stories: still waiting."

The PW editor writing the article was discussing at what point he felt a book was really going to be a great one. What's most interesting for me is the point at which that happened in each book. Page 6. Page 32. Page 94. Page 6 an aspiring author might get from an agent or an editor, if their mechanics are sound. Page 32? Page 94? Not likely.

What to do with this information I'm not yet entirely sure. It seems to speak loudly in favor of not putting too much stock in the traditional publishing process, but traditional publishing has a lot more going for it than a lot of people think. As I exhaust my stock of friends and family readers for Soulwoven: Exodus, I'm discovering that there is, in fact, a point at which what I need is not so much people who can tell me "I don't like this," which I then translate into "This thing I was trying did not work for this person," but someone who can say "You're trying to do this, and it's not working. Here's why."

The only way I know to find such a person is the traditional submissions process, because it's the only time I'm aware of you can get a professional to read your entire manuscript without paying them for it ahead of time (sure, you pay them a lot afterwards, but by that time you should already have a pretty darn good idea of what exactly you're paying for, in the form of the "So, what direction do you see the book needing to move in?" conversation you ought to have before you sign anything).

Also, I've been writing short stories. I think they're turning out splendidly. They will be out on submission soon, which will likely mean the end of this blog and the inauguration of a new one. Sneak preview available at The Real Jeff Seymour. Check out that beard!

Storage Locker?

2011-09-16T18:56:00.005-06:00

"I'm not after fame and fortune, I'm after you." - Rise Against, From Heads Unworthy

I use this blog for a lot of things---advice, venting, taking the time to develop my own thoughts and commit them to fake paper---but more than anything else I I think I use it as a storage locker. A lot of the wisdom (and regardless of how it may serve you, for me that's exactly what it is: the lessons I have learned through experience) tucked away in various posts down the sidebar are things I have forgotten by the time I go back to read them, and I am always very, very glad that they're there.

Every so often, I find something created by someone else that's so wonderful that I think it needs to go in the locker even though I had nothing to do with it. It's a bit like clipping articles from a magazine and tucking them in a drawer to find years later.

This, a blog post by Tobias Buckell about dreams, rockets, and loving what you write for its own sake, and not for the good you think it will do the world or the satisfaction you think it will bring you or the financial independence you hope it might grant, is one of those things.

I hope you read it. I know that I'll be back to, though I have no idea when.

THE PASSIVE VOICE!

2011-08-14T22:16:00.005-06:00

"Every day I'm shufflin'..." LMFAO- Party Rock Anthem

Recently, after a two-year hiatus from the company of other writers, I swallowed my post-collegiate distrust and began attending a critique group. In many ways it has been a wonderful experience. As advertised, it turns out it is almost always useful to have more eyes on your work once you think it's ready for them, I have gotten some good advice, and the opportunity to play editor for others has been a valuable one.

That said, there are many in this critique group (and other critique groups across the internet and the planet) who are, I feel, overly disparaging of a.) the passive voice, and b.) the verb "to be" in general. So much so that I fell asleep on Friday constructing what I felt to be a spirited defense of the passive voice and the verb it uses so heavily. What little of it I remember two days later, I shall share now.

First I shall sum up conventional wisdom as it has been (ahem) explained to me:

Passive voice ("it has been explained," or more simply "The dead horse was beaten," is almost always inferior to active voice ("My professors explained it," or "My professors beat the dead horse"). It is somewhat tolerable when the entity performing the action is unknown ("A rock was thrown from the crowd") or in journalism ("Three suspects were arraigned today...") when the actor (the person doing the arraigning) is unimportant to the story.

There is some truth to this. Passive voice can make for weak, boring writing. It can be especially painful in academic writing, which is where most writers are first made to realize they're using it. But there are circumstances in which it can be not just tolerable, but preferable to active voice. We'll start with, "A rock was thrown from the crowd," and move into a hypothetical critique group battle royale:

"Bad!" cry those who despise passive voice in all situations. "Consider the following: 'A rock hurtled from the crowd,' 'Someone threw a rock from the crowd,' 'A rock from the crowd struck the wall just left of the President's head." Look at the detail! The action! The zing! The absence of the word 'was!'"

Let's start with the first example. "Hurtle" is a Big Word. It's unusual. It's eye-catching. It bears tension. "But wait!" cry my haters of passive voice, "Aren't those all good things? I want my writing to be all of that!" To which I reply that if something hurtles or erupts or volcanoes forth in every sentence in your paragraph/chapter/novel I as reader will very quickly lose any sense of what sort of motion is important and what is not, and probably throw something across the room.

"Someone threw a rock from the crowd," is slightly tougher to defend. It is very similar in most respects (meaning, length, tone, emphasis) to, "A rock was thrown from the crowd." A poet will notice that the sentences scan very differently (meaning that the accents on the words occur in a different pattern). Someone else might note that this affects the rhythm of the sentence as well as the sentences around it. I maintain that that in and of itself is reason to keep the passive version, especially given that little of importance is changed by making it active in this particular way.

And finally, "A rock from the crowd struck the wall just left of the President's head." This is my prime example of what can go wrong when a writer seeks to eliminate passive voice. It's a good sentence. There's detail. It's interesting. We can go in just about any direction from there. But consider the different sentences placed in the context of the following paragraph:

Tony shivered. The President looked pale and shaken on his balcony. Tony's ankle was swelling up and he knew he wouldn't be able to run far if things got ugly. A rock was thrown from the crowd. He needed a way out.

Versus:

Tony shivered. The President looked pale and shaken on his balcony. Tony's ankle was swelling up and he knew he wouldn't be able to run far if things got ugly. A rock from the crowd struck the wall just left of the President's head. Tony needed a way out.

In the active example we wind up having to redefine the subject of the paragraph again in its last sentence ("he" would be ambiguous). This paragraph is about Tony. It's not about the rock, or the crowd, or the President. There are things going on around Tony that are making him nervous. That's what's important. The only reason this paragraph exists at all is to let the reader know that. When we make "A rock was thrown from the crowd," active in this way our paragraph loses its focus.

"But wait!" cry my haters, "You could..." and I don't care any more. I could spend a lot of time fiddling with this paragraph and changing it in all kinds of ways, but the only way to make the sentence, "A rock was thrown from the crowd," active is to make the rock an actor in the sentence. That's how you get rid of passive voice. It's the fix. And when you make the rock an actor you introduce three actors (yes, "looked" is a weak verb, but it still counts, and I picked a weak verb in that sentence for the same reasons I picked passive voice later) into a five-sentence paragraph that's meant to be about only one of them, and that's just too many.

It's here that many writers wind up damaging their own writing in an attempt to purge it of passive voice. Yes, passive voice is weak. Sometimes weakness is desirable. Not every sentence gets to be captain of the ship.

The other instance I wanted to talk about is when you're working deep inside a character's head (which, SPOILER, I contend you always are. Hemingway's nameless, formless narrators are as much characters in his novels as his actual characters are). People experience the world in words. Four different people watching the exact same footage of a rock being thrown from a crowd could turn out the four different sentences we go over above. It is imperative that a character who, seeing that footage, would say, "A rock was thrown from the crowd," be allowed to relate it to the reader that way through the narration, even if he or she isn't talking or thinking it directly. If we're in Tony's head, we ought to see the rock the way Tony does, and no matter how much the writers in some critique group might hate passive voice, I'd much rather experience the rock through Tony's words than theirs.

Vacation

2011-04-29T08:42:00.002-06:00

"Vacation all I ever wanted..." The Go-Gos, Vacation

I had an interesting moment the other day. I'm in Austria, visiting a friend of mine who has been teaching English here for the past two years, and as we were sitting around in his apartment (which we often do, being as it is cold and rainy here and mein deutsch ist nicht so gut) I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had gone more than about two days in a row without writing.

This realization occurred at the same time I was really, really struggling to move forward on Book Three of Soulwoven, and discovering that Book Two was going to require a lot more revision than I had hoped.

I wondered if the two were related.

So I have taken some time off. Damn near two weeks of it, actually. And I feel good. Very good. Some of the knots that seemed so undisentanglable seem looser. The difficulties of structure and plotting in Book Two that were daunting me no longer seem so daunting. I'm excited to get back to it. The other day I was in the midst of reading a chapter of Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind and had the sudden urge to put it down and go back to work on Soulwoven instead.

This is a good thing. I return to the United States on May 4. Shortly thereafter, I shall declare my vacation over and go back to work.

But I'm glad I took one. Really, I am.

Subtitles

2011-02-15T17:38:00.004-07:00

"Hang on to me and I'll hang onto you..." -Carbon Leaf, Deep Blue Sea

No, not the kind you're thinking of. They kind that come after a colon in a book title, preferably to help delineate the chunks a longer-than-one-book story has been broken into. Like Dragonlance: Dragons of Spring Dawning. Or Somethingvaguelyhauntingandprofound: A novel. Depending on your genre preferences.

Anyway, awhile ago (months, really. I should have posted this long before. Mea culpa.) I came up with working subtitles for the four parts of Soulwoven. I'll share them in a moment, but the interesting thing that came out of the subtitles is that they are helping me immensely in focusing the books. The more I tell of Soulwoven the more it tries to do what epic fantasy inevitably does---sprawl out and out and out, and the more picky I have to be about choosing which stories to tell and which to leave untold. The subtitles remind me of the themes I'm working with. They help me decide which episodes should begin and end the book-length chunks of the story I'm writing. This is not a development I predicted. I simply decided one day that if I wanted to maintain any sort of control over the titling of what would eventually be four or more books, I ought to make a real attempt to title them. The focus was just a happy side effect.

I share this in the hope that somewhere out there someone will read it and think "Aha! That's what I need!"

It may not be true. Or it may. But either way it's worth noodling.

And oh yes, the (working) subtitles are:
Soulwoven: Exodus
Soulwoven: Exile
Soulwoven: Redemption
Soulwoven: Brotherhood

I like 'em. Someday it will prove interesting to see if a marketing department does too. :-)

The One-Sentence Pitch

2010-11-13T14:14:00.003-07:00

"Shiny happy people holding hands..." -R.E.M., Shiny Happy People

I have a great breakthrough to report: I have finally, finally, finally nailed the one-sentence pitch for my story down. And I have some news to share regarding how I did it.

For years, the one-sentence pitch has been one of the things I struggled with most when describing Soulwoven. What is it really about? Like, really, really about? At its broadest, its most basic, in one sentence? For a long time I fiddled around trying to sum up the first book and wound up with very broad, very bland descriptions: "A group of characters has to save the world from necromancers trying to release a dragon."

And I looked at the sentence and thought, well, yes, that happens. But it's not really what the book is about, is it?

So after a writer's conference and my time working in publishing and my experience writing reader's reports I decided to try focusing on one character, and I wound up with this: "A 2o year-old swordsman fights to save the world even as he discovers that the power he has to do so comes from that which is destroying it in the first place."

Better! Serviceable, even. But that's a thick, meaty sentence. It's a little convoluted, hard to understand. You have to read it twice. If I were telling it to you out loud you might say, "Wait, what?"

Then I decided to treat all four books of the story as what they are: one story. I zoomed way out, and asked myself not what the first book of the story was about but what the whole story was about, and I came up with this: "The choices of three brothers shape the destiny of a world torn between loving and hating itself."

Mmm. Yummy. Vague but interesting. The kind of thing that sticks out as you read through the zillions of one-sentence synopses on Publisher's Marketplace every day.

And it came from zooming out. Way out. As far out as I could get. Because I was out that far, there's so much more packed into every part of the sentence: "What choices? Who are the brothers? What destiny? What world? Loving and hating itself? Explain!"

And questions lead to page-turn, and page-turn is what the craft of writing is all about.

Reading Out Loud

2010-11-07T14:37:00.003-07:00

"Ah-hoo! Werewolves of London," Warren Zevon- Werewolves of London

J.R.R. Tolkien read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy out loud to C.S. Lewis before it was published. I don't have a C.S. Lewis to read to, but one of the biggest revelations of my last year has been the utterly inimitable experience of reading my novel out loud to people, and what that means for my writing.

Put shortly: you really have to stand behind what you write when you read it to someone's face. The little voice in your head (which I've heard called the Inner Editor elsewhere on the blogosphere, and which, for the record, I am a fan of) that tells you when something is wrong gets a lot louder when your precious self-esteem is at stake. It's easy to tell yourself "Oh, that's okay, I'll come back and fix it later," when you're reading to yourself, even out loud. It's a lot harder to say that to a friend or a significant other. There have been a couple of chapters which I have had to stop reading and just say, "Okay, I thought this was ready for you, but it's not. Sorry. Can we try again tomorrow?" And that's a good thing.

You also get an amazing chance to gauge which parts of your story are interesting and which are boring. If you're reading to a room of people, you feel the atmosphere change. When it's good, they're on the edge of their seats, their eyes are wide, they're leaning forward, they get upset if you pause to fix a typo, and it feels great. When it's bad, they're looking around the room, checking their watches, yawning, fidgeting, and it doesn't really hurt so much as tell you, "Okay, this spot right here. This paragraph, this sentence, this word, is where I lost them," which is incredible. If you're only reading to an audience of one it's even easier (especially if that one is someone who'll snuggle up close to you while you read).

So once you're ready to edit your story, find people to read out loud to, no matter who they are. It's an invaluable tool that I think writers often skip nowadays in favor of the workshop approach, and that's a sad thing.

C'est Funissement

2010-10-10T21:36:00.003-06:00

"Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?" B.O.B. - Airplanes

Saw this linked today on Neil Gaiman's blog and laughed out loud so many times watching it I had to kick it back out again.

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And he's back!

2010-10-05T21:26:00.003-06:00

"We dance across til we drop, the bells keep time and never stop..." Carbon Leaf - Lake of Silver Bells

And here's to a brave new year...just before it ends. But taking some time off from the blog has been good for me. Simply put, I spent more time living and writing and less time talking about them, and that was good. But I have things to say again, so I thought I'd say them. In the meantime, an abridged review of things that have happened since last I wrote:

I bought a car for $700 and put 10,000km on it driving around New Zealand for four months. I worked for a fantastic (indie) bookshop, where I read everything from Sun Tzu to Robert Rankin to Geography textbooks. I finished Book One of Soulwoven, then decided I ought to wait until I finish all the books (three to four, I'm expecting at this point) before publishing any of them. I climbed some mountains, hiked some trails, took lots of pictures, got into great shape, got mushy again, returned to the U.S.A. (where I discovered it's a lot more difficult to live than in New Zealand), spent a summer in the woods writing and doing little else, returned to the town I went to college in to be with the one I love, discovered how to live on minimum wage, and watched helplessly from the sidelines as the publishing company I interned for hurtled off a cliff.

Phew. That's not even everything. But I'm writing well these days, somewhere around halfway through Book Two of Soulwoven, meaning somewhere around halfway through the whole story, and that's exciting, especially since I only finished Book One about six months ago. And that's a good thing. So here's to more writing, and hopefully some more blogging to go with it. :-)

Phew...

2009-11-07T22:01:00.003-07:00

"I got hurt feelings, I got hurt feelings..."-Flight of the Conchords, Hurt Feelings

Sometimes life gets so busy it's hard to write, let alone write about writing. Recent thoughts:

1.) Knee pain is no fun, and devilishly hard to find a way to turn into lemonade by working into my writing.

2.) Small things, like chocolate wafers that dissolve in your mouth after you suck cocoa through them, are amazing.

3.) One should never assume that one's camera batteries are fully charged before leaving on a hike.

4.) It can be difficult to write an episode that corresponds too closely to events in your own life too close to the events in question. Sometimes chapters need to simply be flagged "come back later."

It's Sunday in New Zealand and Saturday at home. This still amazes me. Work continues apace on Soulwoven, and all is well.

MARTIIIIIIIN!!

2009-11-02T16:32:00.003-07:00

"Somewhere between Jesus and Huey P. Newton," The Flobots, The Rhythm Section

I had two great goals in coming down to New Zealand. Well, scratch that, I had many great goals when coming down to New Zealand, but two of them were to read more and write more. Unfortunately, the first very quickly got in the way of the second. I made the mistake of continuing George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire straight off when I got down here, only to realize that it quickly became very difficult to write in my own voice when I was exposing myself to his for two or three hours every day.

I suppose this was a rather predictable predicament, but it didn't make it any easier on me. I had to shelf my writing for a few days while I finished up the book, which was extraordinarily frustrating to me. That said, now that I have finished it, I was able to come back to my writing feeling very refreshed, and reminded of a few things that Martin's writing has taught me in the past about structure and world-building. So cheers to that.

You, out there in internet-land--do you also have trouble sticking to your own voice when reading an author with a very strong voice of their own? Do you even bother reading at all while you're engaged in a longer project? Tell me. I want to learn.

New Zealand?

2009-10-29T17:26:00.004-06:00

"Love on the rocks with a twist of desperation,"- Eve 6, There's a Face

I suppose I should come clean. I'm in New Zealand, embarking upon a 6 month adventure of migrant labour and summer-during-winter before returning to Colorado in the spring to hopefully begin my career in publishing in earnest. It's the sort of adventure a lot of people dream about but never actually live. A co-worker of mine who is also a writer got all excited when I told him about the trip and started talking about Kerouac's On the Road. I've never read On the Road. It's on 'the list' to be sure, but I haven't gotten around to it.

To be honest, this adventure isn't about my writing, it's about me. And therefore it's also somewhat about my writing, as everything that effects me inevitably effects my writing. Case-in-point: with all this unemployed free time I'm enjoying at the moment, I've had plenty of time to write. I just haven't been able to (more on this in a later post...MARTIIIINNN!!!).

And that's all right, I think. I've come a very strange period in my writing process where I don't feel the need to press through too quickly. I'm moving slowly through the revision of Soulwoven, but moving with deliberation and doing it right. I recently spent two weeks writing two chapters only to realize that, in the end, they need to be cut. They're great character development, but the plot does not move in them. At all...not a single sentence, not a single word related to the broader, overarching drive behind the story. They're just characters talking in a coffee shop, although instead of a coffee shop it's the prow of a beaten and battered clipper sailing through the icy north seas of their world. And in the end, characters just talking isn't what Soulwoven is about. So I'll keep the chapters I've written on-hand, maybe to include in a 'director's cut' of the novel someday, or offer for free on my website for those who are interested, but in the end they have to go.

Strange, to spend so long writing something only to cut it, but there was a feeling of "Ahhh, THAT'S what I need to do," that came over me when I made the decision to axe those chapters. And more and more I've come to associate that feeling with the best of my writing. Wonder if it's the same for the rest of you.

Reading Bad Books

2009-09-06T13:50:00.002-06:00

"I'm something's broke, I wanna put a little fixin' on it..." - Pearl Jam, The Fixer

So we all know that reading good books is a great way to learn how to write, yeah? I've talked before about how reading George Martin's Game of Thrones gave me the last piece I needed to tell my story the way I wanted to (and when Soulwoven comes out, I bet it'll be fairly easy to see just what that was). Beyond that, it's common knowledge that the monkey-see monkey-do (or rather, monkey-approximate-in-a-way-that-works-for-you) approach to writing works extremely well.

But the monkey-see-monkey-stay-the-hell-away-from approach works very well too.

I've had the opportunity over the past week or so to read a book that, well, isn't as well-written as some others I've read. Part of the learning experience for me has been in figuring out why it was published and popular anyway (about 100 pages in I hit upon it--a marvelous back-to-back plot twist/complication gambit that tossed out the cliches and replaced them with deeper, darker, more likable character traits). The other part has been in recognizing places where the writing really just fails. Unnecessary sentences, explanations of what characters are thinking that aren't needed, etc. etc. And lo and behold, when I go back to my own writing I find the same thing sticking out like sore thumbs all over the place.

Believe it or not, this is a good thing. These are easy edits to make. And since I'm already bumping up perilously close to the 110-125,000 word limit (it's a soft limit, but a limit nonetheless) for debut fantasy, every sentence I can cut out feels like a gift these days.

So go read some bad books. I mean really, find the worst book you can find and read it with an editorial eye. Chances are, when you go back to your own writing you'll find things that need to go. And that's a good thing.

Now here's something everyone can enjoy!

2009-08-31T21:01:00.005-06:00

"Eyehole deep in muddy waters..."-Tool, The Pot

Sent to me by one of my workshop-mates last night. Sheer brilliance, really. It's called "The adolescent villain flow-chart."

Sort of what it's all about, eh?

Workshops

2009-08-10T21:34:00.003-06:00

"What can I say, what can I do? Send your apologies to me." - Dropping Daylight, Apologies

So for a long time I've been on the fence about the efficacy of workshops. Specifically, it's difficult in a university setting to get a group of like-minded people together. You wind up thrown together with whoever is interested in "Creative Writing"--not necessarily in writing a novel, a fantasy, literary fiction, mystery, sci-fi, short stories, whatever your particular interest may be. And thus it can be difficult to get good, consistent feedback from people who are focused on the same things you are.

But when you do get good feedback it can be incredible, and one just has to look at the most successful writers to see that they often come in groups. Writing in a vacuum, in short, is the long way to getting good. A little help from some like-minded folks can go a long way.

So one of my resolutions upon graduating college was to put together a group of like-minded writers and see where it took me. This impromptu group had its first meeting last night, and it was really everything I hoped it would be---even though there were only two of us and I lost all my notes through some technical difficulties. Even when I wasn't getting great advice, I was given an opportunity to discuss out loud why I was writing the way I was, what I was trying to do in a given chapter, paragraph, sentence, etc...and saying that out loud to someone who not only understands what you're talking about but can offer advice is a really invaluable experience.

So yeah, I think workshops can be a great tool--so long as you own them and not the other way around, if that makes any sense. And it's worth the time and effort to put your own together. Just a few thoughts.

Injuries and Fantasy

2009-07-25T19:22:00.003-06:00

"You know there's nowhere else I wanted to be, than be there when you needed me. I'm sorry too, but don't give up on me. And just remember that while you were asleep I got a little bit closer to you..." -The Wallflowers, Closer to You

So we all know that characters get injured in fantasy. It's almost a requirement, right? You can't face danger without coming away scarred from it somehow. Sometimes injuries heal practically without effect (Luke's hand in Star Wars), sometimes the effect is delayed (Frodo in Lord of the Rings), and sometimes injuries are permanent and crippling (Bran in Game of Thrones).

But, without fail, these injuries are catastrophic. A hand is cut off, a hobbit is stabbed by a ringwraith, a young boy is thrown from a tower. Chronic, nagging injuries don't get the same sort of page time.

My questions is, why not? Sure, there's something to be said for the fact that main characters are meant to be special, often in some way a fantastic representation of the reader, and most readers don't like to dwell on the fact that their knees hurt when they go mountain climbing, or they get tennis elbow if they swing a tennis racket, let alone a sword, or they get shin splints from running too much.

But given the verisimilitude that many works of fantasy shoot for, it seems that chronic injuries should pop up a little more often, if not with the same focus that catastrophic injuries often have. The only work I can think of that does it is Dragonlance, and then only with Flint's heart and arthritis---the younger characters are all fit as a fiddle, despite the fact that chronic injuries can start in the teens. (Go visit your local high school training room if you don't believe me).

Just some food for thought.

Drastic Changes

2009-07-20T21:37:00.004-06:00

"I feel fine with the sun in my eyes, the wind in my hair, we're falling out of this sky..."-The Wallflowers, When You're On Top

At what point in your manuscript process do you stop making drastic changes? Hopefully, I think, that point is never. Despite having worked on Soulwoven in various iterations for more than eight years, I'm still making huge changes to it in its latest draft. Specifically, I'm evaluating eliminating a point-of-view character. Or rather, not eliminating him, but eliminating his point-of-view.

You see, I discovered through the process of workshopping the first portion of the book that he was boring. And I mean discovered--not was told. I was told, to be certain, but not believing everything you're told is an essential component of workshopping. As I went back and re-read, however, I discovered that this time my friends were right. He was boring.

I kept writing anyway, even though I wasn't quite sure how to fix him. I just filed it away under "to be completed later" and kept on moving through the story. There was enough work to be done in other areas that leaving him a little boring for the moment was alright.

Eventually, I fixed him. His character changed significantly--became more withdrawn, more serious, less troubled. He's much more interesting now---a little mysterious to the others, a little above them, and most importantly practical even to the point of heartlessness.

In short, he's a lot better. Unfortunately, the changes I've made to him will mean completely re-writing and possibly scrapping two chapters from his point-of-view early in the novel that I thought were particularly well done. Specifically, going too deep into his motivations, his demons, and his backstory too early will absolutely destroy the mystery that serves him so well, and I'm not sure I can do these two chapters through his eyes without doing that.

And the reason I'm writing this is because one of the things that has been hardest for me in the past is being willing to let go of great scenes and chapters I've written when they don't serve the story any more, and trusting in my ability to write new ones to take their place, and it's very, very, essentially, important to do.

Besides, as long as you hold on to your old drafts there's nothing to lose. You do hang on to your old drafts, right? ;-p

Publishers Lunch

2009-07-13T19:54:00.004-06:00

"Now dance, f***er dance, man he never had a chance..."-The Offspring, You're Gonna Go Far, Kid

Alright. Publishers Lunch is something I've seen plugged and plugged and advertised over and over again on agent blogs. For years, I never took the time to check it out, because I surmised it wouldn't have much to do with me as a writer.

And for the most part, I think that's true. I finally signed up for it a few weeks ago, and discovered that it doesn't have much if anything about writing, and blogs like Nathan Bransford's and Kristin Nelson's (linked on the sidebar) do an excellent job of summarizing and analyzing its more important articles.

BUT...(there's always a but, isn't there?) for anyone looking to get into the publishing industry, I think it's priceless (and coming in at the low, low, price of free, that's pretty good value). Not only does it provide a list of interesting things happening all across the world in the publishing industry (which gives you something to talk about with potential employers), but its job board is second to none. I mean seriously. The major job sites have nothing in terms of publishing jobs, but every week one or two new, legit, non-scam entry-level positions come straight to my inbox. That's pretty incredible.

AND...we all know by now my stance on writers working in the publishing industry for a stint, even if it's just in an entry-level or internship position. To sum up: invaluable.

So don't be like me and wait four or five years to check it out. Go sign up now. Trust me, it's worth it.

If It's Advertised on Facebook...

2009-07-05T14:50:00.003-06:00

"You'll always be the next in line..."- Meese, Next in Line

...it's probably not real. Saw an ad on facebook today for a literary agency, requesting writers to submit to it, and thought "Yeah. Sure. Let's go check out this scam and see what their angle is."

Seems their angle is viruses and spyware, judging by the many warnings that popped up from Avast! as soon as I clicked on the link. Lucky my computer wears protection. So yeah, writer beware. Real literary agencies and publishing companies don't need to solicit submissions. They get more than they can handle just by having a website that's searchable by google.

And never trust anything you see in a sidebar ad on facebook, either...although that ad to become a professional bassist in two weeks looks pretty tempting---damn! More viruses!

A Few Brief Thoughts...

2009-06-29T22:52:00.006-06:00

"I remember black skies, the lightning all around me..."- Linkin Park, New Divide

on cross-genre pollination. I've been climbing a lot of tall mountains lately. It started in Ecuador with some 19,000 ft. peaks, and now that I'm in Colorado again, surrounded by oodles of gorgeous 14,000+ ft. mountains, I've found myself inexorably drawn to them.

I'm also living with like-minded folks, and, well, it's led me to begin pilfering their libraries. I began with Into Thin Air, last week. Say what you will about Jon Krakauer as a journalist, or about the ethics of writing a book like he did, about what he did (for those who don't know, one day on Everest during which a lot of poor decisions were made that led to the deaths of a number of people), but as a writer it was fascinating to read.

One thing Krakauer does better than most is break down the decision processes of people under stress, in crisis. I know a thing or two about the subject--I've been trained for it as a trip guide myself, and gone through exercises that forced me to make decisions regarding the lives of others, and I've chosen poorly in them. I've also made decisions in the field that had strong reprecussions on the safety of those I was responsible for.

Which brings me to Chapter 18 of Soulwoven, in which some characters in a very difficult situation are forced to make some rather difficult decisions. I don't know if it was serendipity that brought me Into Thin Air as I was working on this section of the novel, but it did work out well for me, both in showing me how one writer had done the decision thing well and in bringing to the surface all of the other knowledge I had about decisions made under duress at the time I needed it most.

So yeah, pollination is the right word for this cross-genre stuff, I think, because it's sure as hell helped pieces of my experience leap-frog from the place they usually live into the place where I write.

Letters

2009-06-24T20:13:00.003-06:00

"She said there ain't no rest for the wicked..."- Ain't No Rest for the Wicked, Cage the Elephant

I've begun reading a book titled The Letters of Tolkien which is, well, exactly what it sounds like. I discovered the book in a library while manipulating my college educators into letting me write a term paper on magic in The Hobbit, when I used several of Tolkien's letters as sources for my analysis. Excited by the find, I talked about it to my parents and they bought me a copy for Christmas that year. Then came London and a whole lot of life and the book went unread, until now.

What I find most interesting about the letters so far is that Tolkien's skill as a writer and, especially, a storyteller, shines through so well in them. I haven't yet reached far into his life, and most of the letters themselves are excerpts from his time at Oxford or serving during World War One. The information in them is often esoteric, not directly linked to Middle-Earth at all, and generally not what I picked up the book to read.

And yet I read on anyway, swept up by Tolkien's prose, even when it's misspelled or the editors couldn't decipher his handwriting, and his ability to create scenes and tell stories.

Since graduating college, I've exchanged a number of e-mails with friends and professors of mine whom I'm not likely to see for a long time, and whom I would absolutely have lost touch with without this concerted effort to stay a part of each other's lives. And I have discovered that though I sometimes procrastinate writing my lengthy replies to them, their messages are often the highlight of my day when they come.

I think this is something that my generation misses. It is so easy for us to pick up a cell phone and call someone or to hold conversations instantly with a dozen people at once over the internet, that we miss the anticipation of waiting for a letter to come, lose a sense of the concentration and sheer amount of time it takes to craft a missive for someone else. I have gained a sense of this with the e-mail dialogues I hold now, but I also remember writing love letters to girlfriends as a kid sequestered away in the Adirondacks for summers at a time, beyond the reach of telephones or the internet.

There is a certain amount of respect and humility that comes in taking the time to hand-write a personal letter. It says, "I am willing to dedicate this amount of precious time to you, during which I will not do anything else." I'm not sure if that is always respected by my generation as much as it should be. I know that I, at least, have been guilty of underestimating it in the past. Perhaps if I had taken the time to write letters during one long-distance relationship I had that wound up failing spectacularly, rather than relying on cell phones and instant messages, things would have turned out differently.

So in the future I shall write more letters, and furthermore I am resolved, once I am famous enough that people want to write me (ha!), to take the time to answer every hand-written letter that arrives to me in kind, even if it is not convenient, and to always be available for a rational discussion of just about anything with an interested party via mail. I would encourage others, writers or no, to do the same.

...and he's back!

2009-06-20T11:49:00.004-06:00

"She wants to touch me (whoa-oh), she wants to love me (whoa-oh)" - Don't Trust Me, 3OH!3

Hey! I'm back! And in the meantime, Blogger has added a "monetize" button at the top of my blog posting screen. How interesting---it's now easier than ever for me to sell out and make money off of the few people who read this by slapping ads on the blog, you say? Bollocks, I say back.

Anyhoo, college is done, and real life is just starting to gear up. Sad to report no luck so far on finding work in publishing (there isn't much in Denver, so it's sort of a waiting game), but I did find work. Which means I can pay my bills, and write on the weekends. And start blogging again, I s'pose.

Today's topic: life and living, and how it relates to writing.

Having now passed beyond school and into the world of the 40 hour workweek (which, it seems, is more like a 45 hour workweek, given the nine-hour shifts broken up by a one hour lunch, and a 50 hour workweek if you count the time I spend commuting...), the time I have for writing has been significantly shifted. I'm so exhausted when I get home from work most days that I just don't have time for it, and it gets shunted to the weekends.

But the weekends are also when I get to spend the greatest deal of time living. And life breeds art. Last weekend I climbed two 14,000ft peaks. And aside from the raw material that sort of experience gives one to work with, getting out and living life is sort of like a shot of caffeine for the brain. I write better the more richly I live.

So now it's all crammed together, the writing and the living inhabiting a 48 hour space every week when I don't need to show up to work. I'm not sure how tenable the arrangement will be, but I intend to strive to make it work. After all, one thing I've realized is that the best writers tend to be interesting people who do interesting things (read Neil Gaiman's blog sometime if you don't believe me), and that sounds pretty good to me on many levels.

Getting Quiet...

2009-04-01T17:35:00.003-06:00

"You will remember the night you were struck by the sight of 10,000 fists in the air..."-Disturbed, 10,000 Fists

So you may have noticed I've grown quiet recently. Like, very quiet. Hardly/not posting at all. There's a reason for that, and it's that my free time has dwindled to next to nothing as I wrap up work on my thesis and try to find a job.

On the downside, things probably won't get louder for another couple of months, until it all gets hashed out. On the upside, once they do I should have lots to talk about---especially if my job-seeking pans out. So better things are coming. I haven't hung up my pen or abandoned the blog, but I don't have time to maintain it right now. Here's hoping I'll see you all on the flip side. :-)

Site Update!

2009-03-07T11:49:00.003-07:00

"It's in the blood, I met my love before I was born."-AFI, Love Like Winter

Spent some time today updating the website! Some of the blogs I used to read I no longer read, I've found some other interesting book-related websites, and I've updated all the various sections of must-read or interesting posts on the sidebar. Enjoy!

One year!

2009-03-03T12:51:00.004-07:00

"How much longer will I try before I realize I'm desperate in the situation that I'm in again..."-Eve 6, How Much Longer

It's been a year since I started the blog! Hard to believe, for me at least. A year ago I was crammed in a tiny room in London hammering away at writing the backstory for my novel. A year later I'm crammed in a tiny room in New York hammering away at writing the novel itself. A lot's changed, huh?

But of course I kid. In the meantime I've lived through some incredible things, found some amazing stuff to include in my writing, worked two internships in publishing, and learned more than I ever expected to about how to write. Most of it I've shared on the blog, which, by the way, had 1,259 hits from 968 visitors, with 162 returning visitors. Also much more than I expected. I guess even my advice has a place here in vast desert that is the internet. ;-)

Here are a few of my favorites from the 126 posts from the last year:

First Post
Fort Minor Leads Us All to Publishing Gold
Fantasy Worlds
Take a Deep Breath...
Career Building Can Be Fun
Arrogance
Why Every Aspiring Writer Should Work in Publishing
Writing Fantasy
Staying Human
Quick-Dry Characters
Whether 'Tis Nobler...
Sometimes the Pudding Just Sucks
Why Writing Can't Be Taught
The Rules I've Just Made Up
Delta Philosophy
More on Fantasy vs. Literary Fiction
Oh for a School Like This One...
WoW Lessons Pt. 2
Maturation as a Writer

Hope you've had as much fun as I have, and that you'll stick around for the next year. Should be an interesting one. No more college, hopefully work in publishing, the completion and subsequent revision of my novel, and more are all on the horizon.

See you there.

Why We Do This

2009-02-19T12:34:00.003-07:00

"So just how far down d'you wanna go? Or we could talk it out over a cuppa joe, and you could look deep into my eyes like I was a supermodel"-The Refreshments, Banditos

Alright, a brief sidetrack this week away from point of view, because I watched the Banff film festival last night, and in-between thrills it made me remember why it is that I write, and more specifically why I write what I write.

Quite simply, it boils down to this: Art moves people.

Last night I saw it in the form of documentary film--I saw people doing incredible things, like backflipping off of cables into thousand foot vertical caves and climbing hundreds of meters off the ground without ropes. I also got to hear them explaining why it is they do what they do, and it moved me.

The feeling you get when you experience someone else doing something incredible, the shiver that runs down your spine, the way you can empathize with them, is an inextricable and extremely important part of what makes us human. And whether you get that feeling from reading about an elf's desperate last stand or a drug addict's against-the-odds recovery doesn't matter to me.

What matters is that you feel it, and that's why I write.

Point of View pt. 1 (the basics)

2009-02-11T14:19:00.004-07:00

"Thanks for the memories, even if they weren't so great."--Fall Out Boy, Thnks fr th Mmrs

Today I've been inspired by some of the revising I've been doing to talk about point of view. One of the most basic tools of the author is point of view (who is telling your story--literally, the point of view it's from). You have a few basic options that anyone who's ever taken a creative writing class is familiar with: first person (I), third person limited (He), or if you're crazy, second person (You). Each of these has advantages and disadvantages.

In first person, the narration comes entirely from the point of view of one character. This method means that every sentence, every word, develops character. From the tone and voice of the narrative you learn how the narrating character speaks and tells stories. From its content you learn what they find important to relate. Hopefully at some point you learn why they want to tell the story they're telling. The list goes on. At no point can you escape from the character's head, so every little detail gives a subtle touch-up to their character.

Unfortunately, it's extremely hard to pull off and takes a lot of practice. To make a character sound convincing in the first person while telling an interesting story at the same time is not an easy task, and not every story can be told from first person anyway. In the first person, every fact is suspect, and sometimes you don't want that.

When that's the case, you'll most likely want a third person limited point of view. The third person limited point of view is told in the third person, with the narrator having access to the thoughts of one character. For instance, "Her eye was twitching. He could see she was nervous." is a third person limited point of view passage. We have access to "his" thoughts (in the second sentence), but not hers. In the first sentence, we have an objective fact. He does not think her eye is twitching--it is. (Compare this to "Her eye was twitching in nervousness"--a third person p.o.v. sentence from "her" point of view).

Third person limited point of view is a very useful point of view to work from, and most novels are written in successive third person limited p.o.v. chapters (especially in sci-fi/fantasy). The difficulty in this p.o.v. lies chiefly around navigating which thoughts belong to which characters and keeping a consistent point of view throughout a section. How easy would it be to write "He looked like her dead uncle. He could see she was nervous. She felt uncomfortable."--whose point of view is this? It's unclear. Either of them could have access to the knowledge that he looked like her dead uncle. The second sentence could either be a report of him observing her or of her observing him. The third could either be her reporting her emotions or him analyzing his observation in the second sentence.

Second person point of view is told in the second person, but implies a narrative character anyway. "You open the door and step through. You're free." is a second person point of view passage. It involves the reader directly in the story, and since the reader knows that they didn't actually have anything to do with it, it tends to lead itself to "What if?" scenarios. What's interesting about it is the development of the invisible narrator. Who is it that is claiming I walk through this door? Why do they think that there is freedom on the other side? Why are they commanding me, anyway?

Obviously, there's some fertile ground to work with there, but second-person point of view is rare and off-putting to readers. I've never encountered it outside of literary fiction, and even there it's unusual.

Those are the basics, as I see them. Point of view is infinitely complicated, and there are professors who make their living studying and writing huge, convoluted papers on it and writers who make their living stretching its boundaries, but for a start, this will do. In my next post I'll cover some more advanced techniques to consider when using it--the ones I've been playing with that prompted this post in the first place.

Workshopping a Novel

2009-02-04T20:02:00.003-07:00

"We ran like vampires from a thousand burning suns, but even then we should have stayed." -Rise Against, Audience of One

I've gotten a lot of advice on workshopping a novel before, mostly as I submitted portions of my novel for workshops. They usually ran like this, "It's difficult," "It's not always a good idea," etc. etc. etc.

The rationale runs like this: first, your workshop group won't read the entire novel. Thus they won't be able to comment on whether or not the things you're setting up in the beginning work in the end. You will always be able to say, "Oh, I'll explain that in chapter 23," and there's not much they can say in return. Second, you may become discouraged by the feedback you get from your workshop and give up on the project entirely.

After my experience in workshop today, I can say that neither of those fears are very well founded. In workshopping my own novel, I ran into the first problem. There are questions being asked by some of my workshopmates that will be resolved later, and some things that are striking them as odd are meant to strike them as odd, because they're setting up later revelations.

As of now, I don't have a ton of useful feedback on those issues. But they will be workshopping more of the novel, and as they do, I'll begin to see whether these things are working or not. By coming to the workshop of each new chunk with a list of the questions they had that should have been resolved in that chunk, I should be able to tick off what is and isn't working---it just won't all happen in one workshop.

I also got a lot of useful information out of just today's workshop, about what was working in my beginning (Most of the things I had focused on---booyah) and some of the things that weren't (surprising things, like some comments that my antagonists weren't pure evil enough for people).

Either way, I think that as long as I continue to move forward in the novel and don't worry about implementing any changes they've suggested until I can work out whether or not they're warranted, the experience should only be positive.

As far as the second fear goes, I have to admit I was worried about that going into today--not for myself, but for another writer, whose work I had barely been able to get through, and had had trouble not tearing apart.

That writer's work had a lot of fans in the workshop. Whether these people read completely different than me, are interested in different things, or are simply willing to let the author get away with more than I am (my main problems were grammatical), I don't know, but it certainly wasn't the awkward, quiet, "Umm...maybe try this?" affair it would have been if there were fourteen of me critiquing it.

So don't be afraid to workshop your longer work---just remember to move forward, and only come back to the feedback on your beginning once you've finished your end.

Shifting the Narrative

2009-02-02T15:25:00.004-07:00

"Who needs sleep?"- Barenaked Ladies, Who Needs Sleep?

Apparently, writing a novel is exhausting. Someone should have reminded me. Upside: Four chapters of my novel cranked through in the past two weeks. Two of them get workshopped on Wednesday, which should be an interesting and blogworthy experience. Downside: Zero blog posts cranked out in the past two weeks. A thousand apologies, honored reader, for my slackness.

That said, in honor of Heroes, which I hope to catch up on shortly, before the new season leaves me completely and utterly left behind, I'm going to talk today about something I call shifting the narrative.

Shifting the narrative is, in short, taking characters and settings both you and your readers are already familiar with and changing the type of story that they're participating in. Serialized stories often do this, because it's a good way to keep a series going without it getting too stale. Heroes has a pretty good handle on it.

In Season One, Heroes was, fittingly, a hero fantasy. It was a story about people discovering they could do things they were unaware of, coming to terms with that, and then using those abilities to save the world. Season Two was a travesty, except for Hiro's story (a coming of age, face-your-illusions narrative), so I'm going to ignore it and pretend it never happened. Season Three was a family drama, in which sons were forced to choose between their parents (neither of whom was a particularly lovable character, which was one of the season's better points). Season Four we'll see about it, but it sure looks like the family drama story has been abandoned.

What Heroes has done particularly well is flowed from one narrative into the next, without it becoming too obvious that that's what it's doing. When Peter comes back from the future to kill his brother at the beginning of Season Three, you have no idea that it's setting off a family narrative (though in retrospect, it seems like that should be obvious). It doesn't begin with the father versus mother dilemma, it works its way into it in an interesting way.

It's an interesting technique to keep in mind, and for writers who dream of writing novels in series, it's an important one to remember. There are ten million different types of stories out there, and if you try to stick with just one you'll get boring fast. Figuring out how to change between them, how to position your characters so that as one narrative ends they're already at the beginning of a different one, is the great trick in writing sequels.

I'm baaack!

2009-01-21T15:28:00.003-07:00

"I wish I may, I wish I might..."- Breaking Benjamin, Wish I May

Well, I survived Ecuador! One could even say I did better than that. I climbed both Cayambe and Cotopaxi, and let me tell you, it's a pretty amazing experience to see a mountain jutting up above the clouds as your plane is leaving a country and think "I stood there, right there, less than a week ago."

More importantly, I got the experience I was looking for. I spent eleven hours climbing a glacier more than three miles in the air. I know what it feels like to be exhausted beyond belief, with a pack that feels heavier every second, and keep your feet moving anyway. I slept in a mud hut and played with villagers who have lived their entire lives within a few hours of one place. I saw a mountain range so beautiful it outdoes even the Rockies. I ate fried guinea pig, ants out of a cracked open tree branch...the list goes on.

And now I find myself embarking upon the biggest revision to my novel I have attempted. I apologize for posting a few days later than my predicted January 19th, but getting the schedule of my last semester in college figured out has been more difficult than expected.

Luckily, all this excitement means I have a lot to write about, from the difficulties of focusing during group travel to the uses of exotic beauty in fantasy to knowing your audience to yet more of the shortcomings of creative writing programs.

Stay tuned. It's going to be a fun few months.

More Adventures!

2008-12-27T00:21:00.003-07:00

"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

2008-12-20T12:13:00.005-07:00

"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

2008-12-15T15:45:00.003-07:00

"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

2008-12-11T12:04:00.002-07:00

"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

2008-12-09T12:41:00.002-07:00

"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

2008-12-05T12:38:00.002-07:00

"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

2008-12-03T23:04:00.005-07:00

"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?

2008-12-01T17:27:00.003-07:00

"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

2008-11-24T11:19:00.005-07:00

"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

2008-11-19T11:43:00.004-07:00

"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

2008-11-10T18:28:00.005-07:00

"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

2008-11-06T13:43:00.005-07:00

"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

2008-11-04T16:11:00.004-07:00

"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...

2008-11-03T22:15:00.003-07:00

"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

2008-10-31T15:42:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-10-29T11:12:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-10-28T09:05:00.004-06:00

"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

2008-10-27T10:19:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-10-22T11:32:00.003-06:00

"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

2008-10-21T11:27:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-10-17T15:39:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-10-13T15:46:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-10-09T15:14:00.004-06:00

"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

2008-10-07T16:11:00.003-06:00

"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!

2008-10-06T14:47:00.003-06:00

"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!

2008-10-03T17:35:00.004-06:00

"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

2008-09-29T19:17:00.005-06:00

"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

2008-09-28T08:31:00.003-06:00

"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

2008-09-23T14:26:00.005-06:00

"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

2008-09-22T21:12:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-09-18T12:51:00.003-06:00

"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

2008-09-16T20:11:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-09-15T10:08:00.003-06:00

"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

2008-09-10T10:32:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-09-09T10:39:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-09-03T09:51:00.002-06:00

"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

2008-09-01T16:12:00.004-06:00

"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

2008-08-27T11:18:00.006-06:00

"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!

2008-08-26T15:30:00.003-06:00

"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!

2008-08-25T08:04:00.003-06:00

"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

2008-08-14T22:15:00.003-06:00

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

2008-08-12T20:54:00.003-06:00

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?

2008-08-11T09:00:00.002-06:00

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

2008-08-07T16:38:00.002-06:00

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

2008-08-06T21:07:00.003-06:00

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?

2008-08-05T13:25:00.002-06:00

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

2008-07-31T18:13:00.006-06:00

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

2008-07-29T07:29:00.005-06:00

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.

2008-07-25T20:50:00.003-06:00

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

2008-07-23T20:16:00.003-06:00

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

2008-07-21T20:59:00.007-06:00

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

2008-07-18T15:03:00.006-06:00

*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

2008-07-16T17:12:00.002-06:00

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.

Whether 'Tis Nobler...

2008-07-14T14:33:00.002-06:00

To stick to your guts and create art that nobody that cares about now but might make a huge difference later or keep your aesthetics elastic but the impact you want your art to make on others fixed. That is the question.

...and boy, is it a doozy. Briefly, I'll explain the merits of both positions as I see them, and then which one I support.

First: Sticking to your guts.
The upside is that, obviously, you never know what people are going to need ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now. Maybe the art that you create doesn't mean anything to anyone but you now, but it could still change the life of someone you've never met. Don't you owe it to that hypothetical person not to change your art? Don't you owe it to yourself not to change your art?

It's a very romantic position, to me. It assumes that what you create will outlast you, and that what you create does have the power to move people, it just has to find the right people. And there are plenty of examples of people whose work didn't mean anything to anyone until their death. Just ask the guy who wrote A Confederacy of Dunces.

Second: Adapting your art to reach people now
Big upside here is that it's a much more manageable process, and you can measure whether you're doing it well or not. You also have the option of choosing your audience, of saying "I want this group of people to realize this" and then figuring out how to do it. Your work is also much more likely to reach future generations, since if you're successful it will be produced and reproduced in spades, and is thus much more likely to wind up in the hands of someone ten, twenty, a hundred years down the road.

It's a more practical position, I think, and a more selfless position. You're not saying, "I know what art is," you're saying, "I want to help people in this way, and this is how I can do it." Of course, there's also the downside of knowing if you've failed. If your art doesn't reach its target audience, you may die knowing that, and that would suck.

Personally, I go with the second position. It just seems like there's a lower probability of self-aggrandizement and losing touch with reality, with what you really mean to do. If you tell yourself "This thing will be great someday, I know it" for long enough, you may wind up lying to yourself just to keep the dream alive. And while that's alright for you, it doesn't do much for anyone else, and it certainly doesn't do anything for your art.

Just my personal opinion.

Fort Minor Leads Us All to Publishing Gold

2008-07-10T19:33:00.005-06:00

Alright, I fully admit that I'm cheating tonight---but I'm exhausted on account of mosquitoes, early waking, and a long drive, so I feel fairly justified in posting a link to Nathan Bransford's blog.

Nathan talks, in part, about how difficult it is to discern what makes a book good and what doesn't. This past week on vacation I got asked by a lot of people, when they learned that I'm working in publishing and looking to write professionally as well, what it is that makes a good book, and quickly learned that what they meant was "What makes a successful book?"

And I told them more or less what I think Nathan is saying: "Nobody knows."

Now don't get me wrong, I have a massive, gargantuan list of what makes a BAD book, and I know a good book has few to none of those things, but I still don't know what really makes a great book, or a successful book. And neither does anybody else, or someone would have cornered the publishing industry.

If I were to try to break it down, however, I'd say that what makes a successful book is best described by a Fort Minor song: "10% luck, 15% skill, 20% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain, and 100% reason to remember the name".

So let's go through those various things in order of what an author or publisher has control of.

1.) 20% concentrated power of will
-Obvious. It takes a lot of work on the part of both an author and a publisher to make a book successful. Without that work it just won't happen. The key word here may be "concentrated"--for both author and publisher, the more focus and attention the book gets, the more likely it is to succeed.

2.) 50% pain
-Also obvious, and ties neatly in with #1. There will be painful moments. For the author it may be rewrites after they realize their first, second, third, or "final" draft sucked. For the publisher it may be convincing the marketing team that yes, the book is publishable and yes, it is worth the budget they're asking for, and yes, yes, yes, into infinity. Publishing is a group effort, and getting other people onboard isn't always painless.

3.) 15% skill
-I put this one down at #3 because it's only partially controllable. Obviously skill matters, in both author and publisher, and skill can be honed, developed, controlled. But some people are just born with skills that others aren't, and that can't be controlled. So while specifically honing your skills is still very important, it's not as important (imho) as working on #1 and #2 (which, incidentally, will lead to you honing your skills ;-p)

4.) 5% pleasure
-Mike Shinoda may have been hyperbolizing a little when he said producing his song was only 5% pleasure...I sure hope so. I personally find my writing to be more like 10 or 15% pleasure, at least. But then again maybe that's my problem. At any rate, it's important to take pleasure in your work. After all, if you don't enjoy it, you won't be able to focus, get through the pain, or hone your skills for very long. Not to mention you won't enjoy life while you're at it.

5.) 10% luck
-Obviously the least controllable. But NOT the least important. In terms of being a runaway success, I'd actually say it's the MOST important. Sometimes a book hits at just the right time. Sometimes it hits at just the wrong time. The production period for a book is long enough that what may have been positioned perfectly at the time it was written might be old hat by the time it's published. There's just no way of accurately predicting these things. Trying to predict markets in general is what keeps stock analysts working 80 hour weeks and up late into the night (trust me, I'm rooming with one). And publishing is not immune to that unpredictability.

6.) 100% reason to remember the name
-This one really comes AFTER you're successful, and you can't control it at all. For a lot of authors it comes after their deaths. I had another discussion this week about art and whether 'tis nobler to create art that you think will reach people now or create art that may reach people after you die, and I'll talk about that later (maybe tomorrow, maybe next week). But either way--whether people will remember your name or your book's name is completely out of your control (despite being maddeningly important to long-term success), so try not to worry about it.

So what does all this mean? Work hard, I guess, but realize your limitations. There are plenty of things beyond your control that will effect how successful your writing is. Everyone has their own reasons for writing, and I'm not going to knock yours if it's reaching the bestseller list...but you need to realize that you can do everything right and still not get there and be okay with that before you go in, or else you may wind up very unhappy.

The Rules Apply Until...?

2008-07-02T16:32:00.003-06:00

*First a quick aside, I'm going on vacation for a week tomorrow. I may or may not come back with any new insights and wisdom, but I will come back rested and with clean air in my lungs...and God knows I could use that.*

One of my bosses today came to me with a submission that said "I have purposefully ignored your submission guidelines..." or something along those lines. She likes to bring these things to me and share how ludicrous they are, and every time a part of me laughs, a part of me wants to cry, and a part of me is horribly embarrassed because I, too, once made mistakes like that.

So that got me thinking, at what point do the rules stop applying to you?

...trick question. They never stop applying to you. They simply change based on who you are. And if you don't know which category of rules you fall into, it's safe to assume it's not the "I can ignore submission guidelines" category. In fact, go with the safest bet and follow them all, because that's actually your category.

Besides which, why on earth would you want someone who doesn't publish books like yours to publish your book? They won't have the experience, marketing connections, or infrastructure in place necessary to make it the best it can be.

Believe me, I understand the seductiveness of the "But it's so great that they'll love it, and then since it'll be their only project like it and something brand new they'll love it even more and work harder on it and I'll be their big breakout success and fame, riches, and women/men will ensue!"

It's a wonderful fantasy, but it should stay that way. The reality is that if a publisher decides to launch a new line, or publish a new genre, or expand in a different direction, their submission guidelines will reflect that, because they'll want to launch with more than just one book. They want to build their brand so that when people see their logo on a book they know what they're getting. And they don't want to surprise those readers, even in a good way. "Oh, that looks interesting but I'm looking for a romance" doesn't pay the bills. "Oooh, there's another fabio lookalike!" does.

I would say that's sad but true, but I'm not even so sure it's sad. Trust me, if your book is good enough it will get picked up by a publisher who publishes things like it. If all of those publishers turn you down, it's time to go back and rewrite or move on to the next project. Trying to force your book out into the world if it's not commercially viable is just committing career suicide. Even if you love it and can't make it any better, just put it aside and write something new. After you're a rich, famous, successful author, you'll have publishers asking you for any piece of prose you can dredge out of your files for them, and then after you die they'll keep asking your estate for the same. If you need a fantasy, focus on that one, because that does happen...just rarely.

Characters---Dungeons and Dragons Style

2008-06-30T20:01:00.003-06:00

I've now moved on to the Dragonlance phase of my research, and one of the more interesting things about Dragonlance is that it was originally conceived as a D&D adventure and only later turned into a series of novels. It's not something I ever would have picked up on without knowing it ahead of time (kind of like the bible stories in C.S. Lewis), but knowing that you can definitely see the influence.

So that got me thinking about the D&D character creation process, and how it actually works fairly well as a template for creating fictive characters in general. I've never actually played D&D, but I have played a lot of videogames based on its system, and I once read part of a rulebook. So my description of the D&D process may not be completely accurate, but that doesn't make it any less useful for creating characters in fiction.

That disclaimer aside, here we go:

In D&D, you begin the character creation process by choosing a number of different attributes about your character. What race they are, what age they are, where they come from, what their job is, how strong they are, how smart they are, how fast they are, etc.

That gives you a basic sketch of your character. You know a few of the external things about them, which can help you figure out some of the internal things as well.

You then go on to pick some cool skills and talents for them---what makes this character special, what makes them different from the others around them, what makes your big dumb warrior different than your friend's---is he really good with two-handed swords? Does he fight with two weapons at once? Is he a sword and shield type? Does have a good eye for traps? Can he pick locks? Can he use a bow? Does he swim well? The list goes on and on...and on and on, but you get the idea.

So now you know what your character can do. In terms of the game, he's pretty much done at this point, at least until he starts leveling up (I think ;-p). But in terms of being a character, you're just starting. Now that you know all the cool stuff he can do, you get to go back and figure out why he can do it, which eventually leads you into who he is as a person. Why did he choose to fight with two-handed swords instead of a sword and shield? Why can't he swim---is he afraid of water? Did he have a traumatic childhood experience in a river? Why did he choose to be a warrior---or did someone else choose for him?

You get the idea. I don't imagine that that many people struggle with creating characters---it's a big part of what makes writing fun, but taking this approach can help you flesh out characters you've already created, and it doesn't just work for fantasy. Let's take the crime genre (which I've been working with a lot this summer). You can do the same thing. What kind of cop is this person? Why? What are their specialties? Are they big? Small? Smart? Dumb? Addicted to donuts? Coffee? Can they swim? Why? etc. etc. etc.

Just an interesting thing that occurred to me as I was seeing some of the D&D emerge in Dragonlance today. I may try to play a game or two when I get back to college in the fall---just so I can really go through the process of creating the characters, the storylines, etc. I'm a big proponent of the theory that learning different ways of creating and telling stories can only help you as a writer...even if those ways are a little outside the normal writing curriculum. ;-p

Fonts

2008-06-26T21:27:00.002-06:00

Not much to say tonight, it's late and I'm pretty tired---I've had a lot to do at work this week, which is great, but leaves me pretty wiped out at night.

But I did notice something today as I was wading through hordes of contest entries, and I thought it was worth sharing.

I have an uncontrollable negative reaction to certain fonts. I think they're Courier and Arial, but I can't be completely sure. They're just harder to read for me, and I think they look somewhat unprofessional, probably because they're a far cry from the fonts used in bound and printed books.

The point here isn't that they're bad fonts, but that font choice can actually matter. As much as I can make an effort to recognize and ignore my gut reaction, it's still there---it's a distraction from the writing, and it's harder work for me to read and evaluate. And as I've said before, that's never a good thing when with every submission I'm looking for a reason to reject it (it may sound harsh, but there are enough submissions in which I can't find a reason that it makes a good M.O.).

So if an agent or publisher has guidelines up about which font to submit in, follow them, even if you personally hate their chosen font. You can always switch back to the one you love again after you've signed a contract. ;-p

Query Letter, Redux:

2008-06-24T11:41:00.000-06:00

Some of you may remember a previous post of mine in which I discussed how work on my query letter was going swimmingly.

You'll be pleased to know that I've pretty much scrapped that query letter entirely, based on one solid principle imparted to me from one of my bosses at work, and my ever-growing experience reading the query letters of others (have I mentioned yet how working in publishing is the best thing an author could ever do for himself?).

Said principle is a sales principle, and it goes a little something like this: "Once they say yes, stop talking."

The corollary to this principle is as follows, "The only other thing they can say is no, and that's not what you want."

Now, this applies to query letters in the following ways:

1.) Keep it short. They will be sold on your writing, not your pitch. The only purpose it serves is to get them to turn the page, and hopefully make them a little excited about what they'll find.

2.) Don't try to summarize your whole novel, or even the main plot arc, in your letter. All it really needs is the hook. That'll be enough to pique their interest, and from there on it's all about what you've written.

3.) You're at a distinct advantage if their guidelines ask for sample chapters with the query letter, because they can just turn the page and start reading, rather than having to respond to you and ask for more. You can use this to your advantage, especially if you're new or bad at writing query letters, by targeting places that ask for sample chapters.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'll leave you with this other piece of interesting information: books are published in increments of 16 pages (including back-ads, etc.) because of how they're printed. Crazy, huh?

Writing Fantasy

2008-06-23T10:52:00.002-06:00

So Moonrat over at Editorial Ass is having a month of guest blogs where people write about their favorite books and why they impacted them so much. I was allegedly on the slate for June 19th, but seeing as my post still isn't up yet, I may drop her an e-mail this week and see what happened. ;-p

Regardless, today's guest blog really struck a chord with me, and I'd suggest you all go check it out. It's from a woman who writes "speculative fiction"--a fancy word for sci-fi and fantasy, and in it she discusses briefly what she thinks makes the genre so great.

Suffice to say, I feel the same way. In the face of intense criticism, some overt and some more insidious, of my chosen genre from most of my professors and classmates, I have maintained that fantasy is important because it can change people's lives.

My evidence for this, had, until today, been based entirely on my own life, and the way I created my identity by cobbling together bits of pieces of the heroes I most admired and identified with as a kid. The writer on Moonrat's blog today hinted that she did something similar.

So hooray! I'm right, and everyone else is wrong, and maybe, just maybe, my writing will help a struggling kid someday. That's something worth working for.

Things Learned From Videogames: Balance Pt. 2

2008-06-20T16:27:00.002-06:00

Yesterday we established that books need to be balanced, much like videogames. A book that is too hard risks losing readers, as does a book that is too easy. You want to hit a sweet spot right in the middle---complex enough to get people thinking, but not so dense that they can't get at what you're saying.

How to do that, of course, is one of the keys to writing well, and there are many different approaches. One that I've learned from videogames is to introduce concepts one at a time, give people time to get used to them, and then move on to introduce a new one.

In videogames this tends to work with skills or moves--different tricks you use to beat the computer (and later, in some games, other players). As you level up you unlock new abilities that each have their own learning curve. In a perfectly balanced game, you get a new ability just as you start to get tired of the last one, so you're always adjusting your strategy, always thinking on your feet, and always excited about the cool new thing you've just discovered.

You can do this in books with themes, characters, ideas, plot threads---you name it. The trick is to neither let the book stagnate nor flood it with too many different concepts too quickly. A smooth movement from idea to idea, character to character, subplot to subplot, is, in my opinion, ideal.

But I'd love to hear from others on this one. Tell me about your favorite books, and how they dealt with this. Did the central themes, characters, and plots of the book unroll one at a time, or were they tossed out all at once?

Things Learned from Videogames: Balancing Difficulty

2008-06-19T21:36:00.003-06:00

So I talked a little bit on Tuesday about how Final Fantasy 7 is an extremely well-balanced game, and how that's a big part of what makes it enjoyable. Balance is an interesting topic, and when it comes to videogames, it's sort of the holy grail. Games that are well-balanced become classics, while those that aren't tend to get relegated to the bargain bin. As evidence I cite Starcraft, so well balanced that it's still played competitively more than ten years after its release.

As for how this applies to writing books, well, let's give it a shot, shall we?

First, I think we need to establish that getting frustrated while reading is a negative thing. I think there are about as many readers who enjoy getting frustrated as there are gamers--which is to say a very small, very masochistic minority who like slogging their way through impossible material because after doing so they can brag about it.

There are many things that can frustrate a reader, but one of them is difficulty. If it's too damn hard to figure out what an author is saying, most people will get frustrated. Witness the legions of books abandoned partway through by high school and college students, let alone the general public.

So step one, people don't like to get frustrated. Step two, things that are too difficult can be frustrating.

Okay, but most people don't like books that are too easy either. The kind of learn-to-read chapter books that fascinated you in early elementary school don't still rivet you with their quality, do they? No?

Okay, so then we've established that people don't like books that are too easy or too hard. The goal, therefore, must be to land somewhere in-between. To achieve balance when it comes to difficulty.

Voila! We have learned something about how to write from the issue of balance in videogames! But there's more. They can even teach us a few things about how to do it. Tune in tomorrow for that bit.

Contracts!

2008-06-18T17:42:00.003-06:00

I got to work with contracts today! Muahahaha!

Seriously, the company I work for is putting all of their contract info into an electronic database, and that means that I got to spend today poring over contracts and putting all the important information in them into a spreadsheet.

My co-intern seemed to find the situation mind-numbingly boring, but I was thrilled.

It was very, very, enlightening to get to look at the contracts, at how they're set up, at what the different terms mean, and most importantly---at who gets what terms, what they mean, and why they're important.

For instance, I saw today that advances tend to be pretty meh, and that having a good agent can increase your royalty rate by like 25-50%. I also learned that some people make decisions on subrights I find very interesting---take, for interest, translation rights. A lot of people seem to negotiate these so that the author gets a bigger cut than the publishing house.

This makes sense on the surface, I suppose, but if you dig a little deeper it's pretty illogical. The only reason I can see to cut the publishing house in on the money at all is if they're doing the work of shopping the title in other countries. If you plan to do that yourself (or have your agent do it), then they really don't deserve any of the money, in which case you should reserve all the rights. If you can't reserve those rights, then you'd want to give the publishing company an incentive to do the work by cutting them a higher stake of the profits from the translation. If you plan to have them do the work, giving them a smaller slice of the pie will discourage them from shopping your novel around at all, and that doesn't help anyone.

I also had the fun experience of running into some agency names I'm familiar with and seeing what they got for their authors. Unfortunately, book contracts are confidential, so I can't share (and neither, it seems, can they, or some of them certainly would), but in a perfect world I think I'd want to see example contracts up on every agency's website, as those contracts are a big part of what they do for authors and seeing exactly what each place can offer would be a great help in ranking them.

Pacing

2008-06-17T17:24:00.002-06:00

So I've really been knuckling down on my research these past couple days, as I've realized I'm quite far behind where I need to be, and if I don't start working a bit harder I'm gonna have some crazy days waiting for me at the end of the summer---which is NOT where I want to be.

In consequence, today I've spent about 7 hours playing through Final Fantasy VII. Right now I'm taking a brief break, and then it's back to the grind.

What has surprised me through the experience is that the only thing forcing me to take breaks is quite literally my body (sitting for too long makes my legs stiff and my eyes get tired from staring at the screen for so long...oh for the days of my youth when I could spend 12 hours at once playing videogames and not even realize they'd passed!). I haven't gotten sick of the game, at all---even when one particular part (Anybody remember the Wutai side-quest, when Yuffie steals all your materia?...yeah.) frustrated the hell out of me. As I sit and ruminate over why this is, I think it's a consequence of two things.

The first is unique to videogames, and that is simply that the game is pretty much perfectly balanced. Your characters progress at a very gratifying rate, and enemies get harder at the same rate you get stronger so that you never feel frustrated or annoyed, but are constantly impressed with what your characters can do and the new, badder enemies they're killing. So kudos to the designers on that one---I'll post more about what I think you can learn as an author from videogame balancing in the future, because despite the obvious differences in medium, I think there's definitely a helpful lesson there.

But the second is what I want to focus on today, and that's that the story is expertly paced. Despite the many, disparate plot threads (Cloud's romantic interests, his past, his status as a Sephiroth clone, his identity, Tifa's past, her memories, Aeris's past and connection with Zach, Zach's identity, Aeris as an Ancient, the Ancients in general, Shinra, the Turks and their role both past and present, Rufus and his machinations...I could literally go on just about forever here), the game deals with each in its turn, never letting any one drop for long enough that you forget about it, never staying on one so long that you tire of it, and weaving them together in just enough ways you do and don't expect to always keep you guessing.

Once my research is done I may be able to post something about exactly how it does that---that's one of the things I'm hoping to glean from the work, but in the meantime I'll just suggest the game to anyone looking to learn a thing or two about pacing, as it's really a masterwork in the subject.

Apologies

2008-06-16T13:05:00.003-06:00

I want to apologize for not posting much last week. The long and short of the reason why is that I was just exhausted from work. They've got me reading novels and writing press releases for them, which is great in some ways and pretty rough in others.

First, the good: It's great for understanding how the marketing side of publishing works, which is key to figuring out how to pitch my work. I'm going to get better and better and isolating what a book is really about and how it works as the summer goes on, and that experience will translate directly into being able to pitch my book in a way that catches an editor's attention. It's also not bad resume fodder.

Second, the bad: They've been handing me thrillers and horror. Now, I love a good book as much as the next guy, but my imagination has a tendency to get a bit overactive. I didn't get a solid night's sleep once last week, which is why I just couldn't find the energy to post when I got home from work...all I wanted to do was crash on the couch and hope I could sleep later that night.

But I've finished the horror novel they gave me, and maybe I'll get a romance next. Never thought I'd be hoping for that. ;-p

My Research

2008-06-10T12:31:00.002-06:00

Just thought I'd take a minute to let people know what I'm up to with my research this summer.

I'm comparing narrative techniques and character development in Final Fantasy VII, Gundam Wing, and the three original Dragonlance Chronicles books. Aside from the fact that by doing this project I can basically get paid to do things I love, there are a few other reasons why I'm embarking on it.

The first is that I hope through buckling down and really looking at some of my favorite stories with a critical eye I will pick up some tricks to use in my own writing. Like I posted yesterday, I've already discovered one, and I expect to come across a few more as I continue the research.

The second is that it will provide me with something interesting to put in the "about me" section of my query letters and my resume. "I've been a fan of fantasy all my life" doesn't make for a good attention-getter. "I wrote a thesis-length paper comparing storytelling techniques in Anime, fantasy literature, and RPG videogames and have put the things I learned there to use in my own writing" is a bit more interesting. And if I can get it published somewhere (have yet to broach this topic with my advisor, but we'll see...) then so much the better.

The distant third is that I hope, in some small way, to begin to justify fantasy in the eyes of academia. It's not that I hold the opinion of academia in the greatest esteem--but credit should be given where it's due, and one thing I've learned in studying "English Literature" is that only those books which are sanctioned by the highbrow, academic elite will be widely taught in high schools and middle schools (and I'm not talking book reports or independent projects here, but those books actively taught by teachers). As I'm sure everyone remembers, the current fare on offer in those venues isn't always mouth-watering, and the nation as a whole can only benefit by the opening up of more interesting texts.

Lessons Learned from Research

2008-06-09T21:48:00.002-06:00

Alright, nothing earth-shattering to share today---just the first of (hopefully) many bits of storytelling advice gleaned from my research.

I don't think I've gone into too much detail about my research (I'll do so tomorrow), but right now for it I'm playing through Final Fantasy VII again, focusing on character development. One thing I realized very quickly is that the game goes out of its way to remind you that Cloud is "special" in a way that might be sinister.

It really helps to keep your interest, and made me realize that I had failed to do that in my own novel. For all my blather about how it's a novel about Litnig and him dealing with the revelation of his identity, I don't start hinting at that identity in an open way for a long, long time.

Luckily, I've figured out how to use this to kill two birds with one stone (the other being that I've never really described how it feels, physically, to Soulweave). Stay tuned for my next draft to find out how. ;-p

Anyway, I know I'm only regurgitating the advice that every aspiring author gets about going back and picking apart your favorite stories to see how they work, but it really is worth doing, and I think it's taken me far too long to get around to it.

Proofreading: Why You Should Do a Good Job Yourself

2008-06-06T20:49:00.002-06:00

Today I spent most of my morning taking a proofreading test so that I'll (hopefully) be qualified to proofread for the company I'm working at. First of all, I think it's worth noting that proofreading is written more or less in Greek---or at least that's what it looks like. Learning the marks is a bit like learning a foreign language, or a secret code. I've had some experience with it before, and had been studying for a couple of days, but I still had to stop frequently while taking said test and look things up in the Chicago Manual of Style they were so kind as to give me for reference.

But the reason I'm blogging about proofreading is because of one sentence I ran into on the test. It was a piece of dialogue, and ran something like:

"Slender yes. but with curves in the all right places."

Zomg! Grammatical error that's easy to spot!

But how to fix it? The most obvious fixes are to either replace the period with a comma or capitalize the 'b' in but. Unfortunately, that's a fairly major stylistic decision. "Slender yes, but with curves in all the right places." reads quite differently than "Slender, yes. But with curves in all the right places." One is just a statement of fact, but the other implies a wink and a grin--at least to me anyway. And it's difficult to tell whether the author hit the wrong key when going for a comma or forgot to capitalize a 'b'.

While I'm sure it gets easier with time and practice to make those guesses right, I think it definitely behooves the author to just make sure they get it right the first time...and it saves the proofreaders work, which is always a good thing. :-)