Three Junes is one of those books that should be a lot longer: three narratives, three points of views, with decades passing in the lives of the characters. Yet Glass takes the family saga and boils it down to three snapshots, three important periods, and uses the time constraint of three months to keep the book brief. It was recommended to me by my friend Jo Dunn for this reason: that I could see how Glass keeps things short while still juggling a lot of time and spatial difference. She employs a great economy of word: not drawing things out, but still managing to handle the same depth of larger family sagas such as House of Spirits or One Hundred Years of Solitude. Glass’s method for brevity is partly achieved in that the three sections are wholly distinct. Point of view doesn’t alternate between or within chapters so in each section, we get one strong voice.
These clear delineations do not affect its power. Three Junes keeps a resonance, with mysteries and bubbling secrets threading throughout. I feel like the book lost a lot of steam in the denouement, that the final section lacked the power of the first two, but that things still tied up neatly.
When I tried to describe the book to someone yesterday, I found myself unable to sum it up in a way that gave it justice. The book’s plot is so simple, that trying to describe it in those terms sells it short. Much like Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, that’s a sign to me that Glass has created something very internal and powerful. Thank you Jo for recommending it.
1.10.2010
10.01.2009
George R.R. Martin has Epic Fantasy Covered: David’s Review of a Game of Thrones
I have to confess, I’ve been backing off of reading epic fantasy for a while now. I’ve started a few series, only to put them aside in favor of something more accessible that isn’t going to lead me to too many sunrises as I obsessively read. And a number of the books I’ve tried in the last few years couldn’t capture my attention. A slow start that doesn’t draw me in by page 50 usually means I’m going to look at the looming volumes as a daunting task and put it aside. Sometimes the sheer size of a paperback means I’ll pass it over when reaching for the next thing to read.
On my flight back from Munich last week I finally cracked open a book I’ve been putting off for about ten years: George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. The news that HBO is making it into a television series bumped it up my list, but I’m certainly glad I brought it along to Europe. There’s nothing quite like the German pageantry of Oktoberfest to set your mind on the Medieval.
Martin reaches the apex of the genre. The multiple points of view interweave beautifully, and the very effective technique of titling chapters with the name of the POV character made it easy to keep things straight. Despite the many characters, Martin keeps their voices distinct, and their thoughts or commentary on one another help keep you siding with various factions. The mystery of the piece, the revealing of state secrets that prompt a war, is nicely spun.
One thing I noticed right away was that Martin keeps a hard emotional distance from his characters. You find yourself cheering for a character who then meets a rather hard end, and Martin executes these fates without a hint of sentimentality. He balances his characters on the edge and shows absolutely no hesitation in pushing them into freefall. In this sense, the book reads a bit like a history. Only the immediacy of the characters’ emotions ties you into the narrative. Martin largely follows the show not tell rule, though I found myself wishing he’d break it a bit more often. As good as the book is, it’s burdened by its sheer length of 800 pages. A few characters could have been eliminated without detracting from the themes or narrative. This might have helped bring the book into a more manageable size, though I suspect that with the scope of the series, he’ll make use of these players later. As the genre goes, Martin definitely starts with action, draws you in with relatable characters, and neatly breaks the book into clear cut scenes. He’s created a fantasy world with the usual western European flavor, and he does it with style. Magical swords, beasts, jousts, battle, and intrigue all fill the pages. The story is compelling, and I’ll certainly be picking up the other volumes, saving them for snowy weekends or another transcontinental flight.
On my flight back from Munich last week I finally cracked open a book I’ve been putting off for about ten years: George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. The news that HBO is making it into a television series bumped it up my list, but I’m certainly glad I brought it along to Europe. There’s nothing quite like the German pageantry of Oktoberfest to set your mind on the Medieval.
Martin reaches the apex of the genre. The multiple points of view interweave beautifully, and the very effective technique of titling chapters with the name of the POV character made it easy to keep things straight. Despite the many characters, Martin keeps their voices distinct, and their thoughts or commentary on one another help keep you siding with various factions. The mystery of the piece, the revealing of state secrets that prompt a war, is nicely spun.
One thing I noticed right away was that Martin keeps a hard emotional distance from his characters. You find yourself cheering for a character who then meets a rather hard end, and Martin executes these fates without a hint of sentimentality. He balances his characters on the edge and shows absolutely no hesitation in pushing them into freefall. In this sense, the book reads a bit like a history. Only the immediacy of the characters’ emotions ties you into the narrative. Martin largely follows the show not tell rule, though I found myself wishing he’d break it a bit more often. As good as the book is, it’s burdened by its sheer length of 800 pages. A few characters could have been eliminated without detracting from the themes or narrative. This might have helped bring the book into a more manageable size, though I suspect that with the scope of the series, he’ll make use of these players later. As the genre goes, Martin definitely starts with action, draws you in with relatable characters, and neatly breaks the book into clear cut scenes. He’s created a fantasy world with the usual western European flavor, and he does it with style. Magical swords, beasts, jousts, battle, and intrigue all fill the pages. The story is compelling, and I’ll certainly be picking up the other volumes, saving them for snowy weekends or another transcontinental flight.
9.24.2009
Back to Basics: The Zen Circle of Writing
One of the things I've picked up in Yoga is that even advanced practioners need to get back to the basics sometimes. As I work on my next project, while still querying on Eastlight, I'm looking at writing as a craft in a whole new light.
The new project (working title Ghost Town), is in the early stages and this gives me the chance to be better organized from the start. I'm back at the start of the development cycle, and I'm fortunate that I'm bringing more experience to my game.
What does that mean exactly? I'm breaking my work into tighter scenes. I'm rambling less when I write. I'm writing stronger sentences out the gate and hopefully with more clarity. I've also learned (and this is a big one for me) that not every idea which springs to mind needs to go into every chapter or book. Sometimes, my first idea for a scene isn't the best, so I take the time to refocus setting before writing.
I'm at the start of the project, but I'm looking at my writing with a lot more confidence and a lot more skill than what I brought to Eastlight and Neophyte. I'm hoping the eventual payoff will be the need for less rewrite this time. I know rewrites are a natural part of the project lifecycle, but I'd like to shorten the number to get projects out to market faster.
The new project (working title Ghost Town), is in the early stages and this gives me the chance to be better organized from the start. I'm back at the start of the development cycle, and I'm fortunate that I'm bringing more experience to my game.
What does that mean exactly? I'm breaking my work into tighter scenes. I'm rambling less when I write. I'm writing stronger sentences out the gate and hopefully with more clarity. I've also learned (and this is a big one for me) that not every idea which springs to mind needs to go into every chapter or book. Sometimes, my first idea for a scene isn't the best, so I take the time to refocus setting before writing.
I'm at the start of the project, but I'm looking at my writing with a lot more confidence and a lot more skill than what I brought to Eastlight and Neophyte. I'm hoping the eventual payoff will be the need for less rewrite this time. I know rewrites are a natural part of the project lifecycle, but I'd like to shorten the number to get projects out to market faster.
8.30.2009
Queries and Confidence: Rules for the Query Process
You may have sensed a little radio silence on the blog lately, and I'll admit I've been busy. My next two projects are coming together, and I'll soon have to choose which one to devote myself to for the rest of the year. I've also taken the time to join the Rocky Mountain Writers Association to expand my contacts and critique circle.
Publishing continues to be a scary game right now, as Jenny Rappaport relays, and more than a few agents are closed to queries, particularly from debut authors. It's not a good time for trying to break in. The query process can be intimidating, and it requires just the right grip on your work: you have to believe in your book, but also you have to know when editing is required.
Despite all the doom and gloom, I'm optimistic about my writing. I'm hopeful about Eastlight's chances, and weirdly enough, I get excited when I'm researching my queries.
Rejection is a powerful motivator, if you take it right. You can choose to go hide from the process (and I'll confess that starting my day by reading up on the state of Publishing is a powerful motivator to fire up the Playstation and avoid reality), or you can rally and use the frustration as fuel to get more queries out there.
All this engagement with the query process has led me to some personal rules:
1. It only takes one yes: don't give up and query widely.
2. Rejections are normal and the nature of the game.
3. The sooner you query, the sooner you sign (don't let the process get you down).
The one caveat as always, is the balance: your work has to be ready. You have to have it in the most polished, professional state you can. With few exceptions, regardless of genre, you can only query an agent once for a book.
Publishing continues to be a scary game right now, as Jenny Rappaport relays, and more than a few agents are closed to queries, particularly from debut authors. It's not a good time for trying to break in. The query process can be intimidating, and it requires just the right grip on your work: you have to believe in your book, but also you have to know when editing is required.
Despite all the doom and gloom, I'm optimistic about my writing. I'm hopeful about Eastlight's chances, and weirdly enough, I get excited when I'm researching my queries.
Rejection is a powerful motivator, if you take it right. You can choose to go hide from the process (and I'll confess that starting my day by reading up on the state of Publishing is a powerful motivator to fire up the Playstation and avoid reality), or you can rally and use the frustration as fuel to get more queries out there.
All this engagement with the query process has led me to some personal rules:
1. It only takes one yes: don't give up and query widely.
2. Rejections are normal and the nature of the game.
3. The sooner you query, the sooner you sign (don't let the process get you down).
The one caveat as always, is the balance: your work has to be ready. You have to have it in the most polished, professional state you can. With few exceptions, regardless of genre, you can only query an agent once for a book.
8.18.2009
Masks: a Review of Elizabeth Bear's Carnival
Writing political fiction is difficult. It’s easy to reduce debate to liberal and conservative, large or small government, progress or status quo. It’s also tempting to beat the reader over the head with your own views and use the bully pulpit of the story to attack the opposition. Humanizing two factions and giving the reader sympathy for both perspectives takes a deft hand. Elizabeth Bear manages this quite well in Carnival, a sci-fi trip to a future when humanity is greatly changed, and spread out over the stars, but where too many of our sad divisions remain. Even in futurist, fictional societies, it’s easy for an author to take sides and Bear wisely creates characters at conflict with their respective societies, making it hard to know whose side they, and she, are on. Every one in this novel is wearing at least one mask. It’s high intrigue with astronomical and very personal stakes for the point of view characters.
Carnival’s plot builds slowly, and I didn’t mind the simmer as Bear's conflict came to a boil on the jungle world of New Amazonia. Two diplomats from the Old Earth Coalition find themselves on a world where women have inverted the power structure. Women rule and men are a lesser caste. Sinead O’Connor once said that the “opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, but fraternity,” and Bear reinforces this idea by clearly demonstrating that the society of New Amazonia has as many flaws as the patriarchy the separatist women left behind.
One of the first things I noticed was the complexity of Bear’s universe. It took me a while to sort through the factions, characters, and loyalties. The technological vocabulary of the Coalition diplomats slowed me down. This was part of the fun, being a tourist in an alien society, but it made Carnival a book you can’t just casually read. This one takes some focus, but it is well worth the time. The book is thoughtful, and it turned my mind towards a number of topics I don’t regularly consider. Bear invests the conflict with a good amount of gender study, and I was impressed by the time she took to work out how a matriarchal warrior society would handle issues of reproduction, the rights of males, and status. I had questions as I read, and her characters addressed most of them over the course of the novel.
Once the plot heats up, the philosophical consideration gets pushed aside and things move very quickly. In this sense, it was like reading two books, one with a more considered tempo and a second with a strong action beat. I personally preferred the first part, though I can’t deny that the latter section was more of a page turner. The only real difficulty in reading was the exposure to two cultures, not simply one. The reader is transported with the diplomats into the world of New Amazonia, but it took the course of the novel for me to understand where the diplomats were coming from and for the opposing viewpoints to become clear.
Bear’s use of technology, both Amazon and Coalition, was well-conceived. These are interesting and more colorful than the average space opera. The relationship of the technology to the character fit their background and loyalty. She imbues her characters with appropriate prejudices, based upon their side in the conflict, and these come through, enriching the characters and the story world.
In many ways, Carnival isn’t an easy journey. You’re being exposed to a confusing foreign culture, and you don’t speak the language, but if you’re up for a little adventure outside the normal light reading, it’s well worth the trip.
Carnival’s plot builds slowly, and I didn’t mind the simmer as Bear's conflict came to a boil on the jungle world of New Amazonia. Two diplomats from the Old Earth Coalition find themselves on a world where women have inverted the power structure. Women rule and men are a lesser caste. Sinead O’Connor once said that the “opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, but fraternity,” and Bear reinforces this idea by clearly demonstrating that the society of New Amazonia has as many flaws as the patriarchy the separatist women left behind.
One of the first things I noticed was the complexity of Bear’s universe. It took me a while to sort through the factions, characters, and loyalties. The technological vocabulary of the Coalition diplomats slowed me down. This was part of the fun, being a tourist in an alien society, but it made Carnival a book you can’t just casually read. This one takes some focus, but it is well worth the time. The book is thoughtful, and it turned my mind towards a number of topics I don’t regularly consider. Bear invests the conflict with a good amount of gender study, and I was impressed by the time she took to work out how a matriarchal warrior society would handle issues of reproduction, the rights of males, and status. I had questions as I read, and her characters addressed most of them over the course of the novel.
Once the plot heats up, the philosophical consideration gets pushed aside and things move very quickly. In this sense, it was like reading two books, one with a more considered tempo and a second with a strong action beat. I personally preferred the first part, though I can’t deny that the latter section was more of a page turner. The only real difficulty in reading was the exposure to two cultures, not simply one. The reader is transported with the diplomats into the world of New Amazonia, but it took the course of the novel for me to understand where the diplomats were coming from and for the opposing viewpoints to become clear.
Bear’s use of technology, both Amazon and Coalition, was well-conceived. These are interesting and more colorful than the average space opera. The relationship of the technology to the character fit their background and loyalty. She imbues her characters with appropriate prejudices, based upon their side in the conflict, and these come through, enriching the characters and the story world.
In many ways, Carnival isn’t an easy journey. You’re being exposed to a confusing foreign culture, and you don’t speak the language, but if you’re up for a little adventure outside the normal light reading, it’s well worth the trip.
7.24.2009
Practice Makes Perfect
If there’s one thing to be said about writing, it’s that you get better with practice. A lot of writers have a number of books under the bed, in the closest, somewhere, which will never see the light of day. I’ve collected one of these skeleton books so far, and I don’t regret writing it. My first book taught me more about writing than anything I’d done before, just as Eastlight taught me even more. I truly believe that Eastlight isn’t due for that pile. Why do I believe in my book so much? I’ve followed all the steps, read all the blogs, paid the dues, and done everything I can to make it the strongest book possible. I’ve gotten critique from honest parties and rewritten it over and over, hammering it into the book it is now. And if I can’t find representation, or it doesn’t sell, then I’ll just finish the next book and keep the process going until one catches an agent’s eye. With practice, I improve, and each book I write teaches me more about my craft.
I’m definitely seeing an upwards progression in quality as I read through the Dresden files series. I enjoyed the first two books, but the third really hooked me, and the fourth, Summer Knight, really seemed to bring all the elements to just the right boil. Characters reach a maturity in the fourth volume, the world gets fleshed out, and Jim Butcher does a superb job of overlaying the supernatural onto the material. He’s got me anxious for the rest of the series, and I’d start the fifth tonight if I had it in hand. There’s not a lot to say here that I didn’t put forward in my review of the first three, but I’ll say that I highly recommend the series, particularly if you’re wanting to see urban fantasy done right. Butcher clips off some of the elements I found a bit silly in the first two volumes, like potions made from mundane items such as coffee, and plunges full hilt into his take on the faerie mythos. The stakes get upped for Harry Dresden and his world. Butcher adds a ticking clock to the mix, nicely increasing the tension and forging a real page turner. Old allies return and Harry solves his mystery with a deft combination of magic and mental gymnastics.
I’m definitely seeing an upwards progression in quality as I read through the Dresden files series. I enjoyed the first two books, but the third really hooked me, and the fourth, Summer Knight, really seemed to bring all the elements to just the right boil. Characters reach a maturity in the fourth volume, the world gets fleshed out, and Jim Butcher does a superb job of overlaying the supernatural onto the material. He’s got me anxious for the rest of the series, and I’d start the fifth tonight if I had it in hand. There’s not a lot to say here that I didn’t put forward in my review of the first three, but I’ll say that I highly recommend the series, particularly if you’re wanting to see urban fantasy done right. Butcher clips off some of the elements I found a bit silly in the first two volumes, like potions made from mundane items such as coffee, and plunges full hilt into his take on the faerie mythos. The stakes get upped for Harry Dresden and his world. Butcher adds a ticking clock to the mix, nicely increasing the tension and forging a real page turner. Old allies return and Harry solves his mystery with a deft combination of magic and mental gymnastics.
7.16.2009
Late to the Party: Some Comments on Trying to Publish and Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys
You might notice that the list of links on the blog is growing. This will keep happening as I keep finding new sites that help with my understanding of the publishing process and business. If you're an aspiring writer, I recommend any of them, as they'll help you get the lay of the land. They most certainly should be read and carefully studied before you start the query process. I especially recommend Kristin Nelson, Nathan Bradsford, and Janet Reid for this.
As a whole, the process of publishing can really get you down. Writing and publishing are two very different things. When I was writing my first book, I heard a lot of comments that made me scratch my head. Most were usually along the lines of: “Won’t that be nice? To write a book and make a ton of money?” I knew these weren’t comments on my talent, but rather a supposition that writing a book leads to fame and fortune. Let’s be clear: I’m getting more savvy about the state of publishing every day, and it’s an uphill battle to make it out of the trenches, publish a book, and see it succeed. Even if you reach this point, continued success is not guaranteed. You have to continually evolve, continually market yourself and your work, and continually improve. Frankly, the whole process of breaking into commercial fiction can get me down. Quitting isn’t an option, but taking a breather isn’t a bad idea either. For me, a breather is a book or movie that reminds me why I love writing, and the English language, so much.
Nearly eleven years ago, my friend Alan gave me a copy of Wonder Boys. It’s even autographed. And for eleven years it sat on my shelf, unread. I wish I’d cracked it open years ago. Wonder Boys is that rare book about books, like A.S. Byatt’s Possession, that brings out my love of the written word. Chabon nails his characters so well, so cleverly, and sums up the crazy things writers do to find material to work with. He also captures a lot of the pretension and manic energy that surround them, and I have to say, I can spot myself or some people from my college program in his pages. Here I am, reading a book that most of you probably discovered a decade ago. But I think we’ve established I tend to move at my own pace when it comes to reading, though I’m quickly trying to better synch myself with the state of the market and adjust my reading list accordingly.
When reading a book as good as Wonder Boys, you have two directions you can take your feelings: jealousy that you may never write anything nearly that good, or you can be inspired to write more, write better, and fall back in love with your craft. I’m sure there are some people out there who would have a third reaction, which would be “I can do better than that,” but I’m not among them. I choose to be inspired, to let books this good drive me to write better and push myself out of my comfort zone. I could give you a solid critique of Wonder Boys, break it down for you, but I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun. It’s worth reading if only for Chabon’s fantastic phrasing, which turns over and over to make me laugh or catch my eye on some delicious detail in his wording. If you trust me on these matters, just read the book.
As a whole, the process of publishing can really get you down. Writing and publishing are two very different things. When I was writing my first book, I heard a lot of comments that made me scratch my head. Most were usually along the lines of: “Won’t that be nice? To write a book and make a ton of money?” I knew these weren’t comments on my talent, but rather a supposition that writing a book leads to fame and fortune. Let’s be clear: I’m getting more savvy about the state of publishing every day, and it’s an uphill battle to make it out of the trenches, publish a book, and see it succeed. Even if you reach this point, continued success is not guaranteed. You have to continually evolve, continually market yourself and your work, and continually improve. Frankly, the whole process of breaking into commercial fiction can get me down. Quitting isn’t an option, but taking a breather isn’t a bad idea either. For me, a breather is a book or movie that reminds me why I love writing, and the English language, so much.
Nearly eleven years ago, my friend Alan gave me a copy of Wonder Boys. It’s even autographed. And for eleven years it sat on my shelf, unread. I wish I’d cracked it open years ago. Wonder Boys is that rare book about books, like A.S. Byatt’s Possession, that brings out my love of the written word. Chabon nails his characters so well, so cleverly, and sums up the crazy things writers do to find material to work with. He also captures a lot of the pretension and manic energy that surround them, and I have to say, I can spot myself or some people from my college program in his pages. Here I am, reading a book that most of you probably discovered a decade ago. But I think we’ve established I tend to move at my own pace when it comes to reading, though I’m quickly trying to better synch myself with the state of the market and adjust my reading list accordingly.
When reading a book as good as Wonder Boys, you have two directions you can take your feelings: jealousy that you may never write anything nearly that good, or you can be inspired to write more, write better, and fall back in love with your craft. I’m sure there are some people out there who would have a third reaction, which would be “I can do better than that,” but I’m not among them. I choose to be inspired, to let books this good drive me to write better and push myself out of my comfort zone. I could give you a solid critique of Wonder Boys, break it down for you, but I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun. It’s worth reading if only for Chabon’s fantastic phrasing, which turns over and over to make me laugh or catch my eye on some delicious detail in his wording. If you trust me on these matters, just read the book.
7.11.2009
The Delicate Art of the Serial II: The Dresden Files
The Modern Language Association (MLA) is the style manual I cut my college teeth on. It’s the preferred manual for English papers and so I first learned to underline book titles rather than italicize them. I’ll confess a dirty secret: I started italicizing a while back, unless I was writing a paper, since it just looks cleaner to me, and when dealing with electronic formats, avoids confusing the title with a URL. Here’s another one Daily Writing Tips reports that the MLA has finally caught up and decided that italics with titles are the way to go. This should give a few million English majors an easier time as well as help resolve conflict with the Chicago Manual of Style, which other majors such as my History degree, use. I highly recommend subscribing to Daily Writing Tips. They’re doing a lot of great work and keeping me up to date.
The second book series I’m examining is the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. I’m going to start with two disclaimers: I completely missed the television series, so I won’t be discussing it to any degree. Second, I read the first book a while ago and the second more recently. I’m revisiting them for critique, but I’m already a fan and likely a bit biased towards them. I know there are several more, and I am behind, but they’re in the stack and I hope to get to them very soon.
In Butcher’s first book, Storm Front, he set up a stand alone adventure with a few threads he could build on for subsequent plots. This looks typical for the business (and is the model I’ve used for Eastlight). You don’t want to torture your readers with unresolved issues if you don’t get a longer publishing deal. Harry Dresden as a character is established and his basic traits are put up there for us to see: technology doesn’t work well around this urban wizard, and money is usually an issue for his business. Butcher will revisit these traits at the start of the next two books as an anchor for us to remember but also maintain conflict. The second book, Fool Moon, immediately reminds us of Dresden’s money problems while the third, Grave Peril, instantly brings up the technology problem in a life and death situation.
As characterization goes, Harry is fairly vague in the first book. We get to know him, but a lot of his history (and the potential conflicts it brings) are left out. As a good serial character, he shouldn’t grow or change too fast, and Butcher keeps to the core of who Harry is. He’s brash, has a strong streak of chivalry that is often a weakness, and his aforementioned liabilities surrounding money and technology are a concrete portion of his character. What does get expanded nicely are Harry’s contacts with the spirit world. As the series progresses, we see more of his allies and enemies past the mundane. We’re introduced to some of his old associations, and Harry’s world widens for us. Handling things this way, Butcher wisely doesn’t throw the whole world at us in the first few books: he lets it widen as he goes. By handling it this way, he avoids the typical fantasy trap of over-describing and laying out all the groundwork in advance of the story. Instead, he lets the world serve the story and grow organically. It also means that the reader doesn’t have to remember a million little details about how Harry’s world works. We can just get on with the story and let the world catch up.
Butcher gave the first two books a fairly strong self-contained nature. Characters from them return, but again, he doesn’t wallow in backstory, so the plot gets moving right away. The third book seems to lay the groundwork for a longer series, setting up some pretty important events (which I won’t spoil). The Dresden Files works effectively as a series for a number of reasons, but I think the strongest are that Butcher doesn’t bog us down with unnecessary detail. He repeats critical information but not too often, and he links the books together with details that while important, aren’t essential so you don’t feel as though you’re missing something if you read say, the second book before the first. One warning though: you may get a little hooked. I finished the third book and immediately cracked open the fourth. I'll let you know how it goes.
The second book series I’m examining is the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. I’m going to start with two disclaimers: I completely missed the television series, so I won’t be discussing it to any degree. Second, I read the first book a while ago and the second more recently. I’m revisiting them for critique, but I’m already a fan and likely a bit biased towards them. I know there are several more, and I am behind, but they’re in the stack and I hope to get to them very soon.
In Butcher’s first book, Storm Front, he set up a stand alone adventure with a few threads he could build on for subsequent plots. This looks typical for the business (and is the model I’ve used for Eastlight). You don’t want to torture your readers with unresolved issues if you don’t get a longer publishing deal. Harry Dresden as a character is established and his basic traits are put up there for us to see: technology doesn’t work well around this urban wizard, and money is usually an issue for his business. Butcher will revisit these traits at the start of the next two books as an anchor for us to remember but also maintain conflict. The second book, Fool Moon, immediately reminds us of Dresden’s money problems while the third, Grave Peril, instantly brings up the technology problem in a life and death situation.
As characterization goes, Harry is fairly vague in the first book. We get to know him, but a lot of his history (and the potential conflicts it brings) are left out. As a good serial character, he shouldn’t grow or change too fast, and Butcher keeps to the core of who Harry is. He’s brash, has a strong streak of chivalry that is often a weakness, and his aforementioned liabilities surrounding money and technology are a concrete portion of his character. What does get expanded nicely are Harry’s contacts with the spirit world. As the series progresses, we see more of his allies and enemies past the mundane. We’re introduced to some of his old associations, and Harry’s world widens for us. Handling things this way, Butcher wisely doesn’t throw the whole world at us in the first few books: he lets it widen as he goes. By handling it this way, he avoids the typical fantasy trap of over-describing and laying out all the groundwork in advance of the story. Instead, he lets the world serve the story and grow organically. It also means that the reader doesn’t have to remember a million little details about how Harry’s world works. We can just get on with the story and let the world catch up.
Butcher gave the first two books a fairly strong self-contained nature. Characters from them return, but again, he doesn’t wallow in backstory, so the plot gets moving right away. The third book seems to lay the groundwork for a longer series, setting up some pretty important events (which I won’t spoil). The Dresden Files works effectively as a series for a number of reasons, but I think the strongest are that Butcher doesn’t bog us down with unnecessary detail. He repeats critical information but not too often, and he links the books together with details that while important, aren’t essential so you don’t feel as though you’re missing something if you read say, the second book before the first. One warning though: you may get a little hooked. I finished the third book and immediately cracked open the fourth. I'll let you know how it goes.
7.10.2009
The Delicate Art of the Serial I: Balancing Conflict and Resolution in a Series
Instead of a personal note on mood or what’s on my ipod, from now on I’ll be dropping a note on style or grammar into the blog. As my intended readers for this blog are largely fellow aspiring authors, I want to share my findings as I scour the Internet for tips:
Thanks to Daily Writing Tips, I know that the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) has finally dissolved my tradition of using two spaces after a period. It has been a factor in writing as we transition from print to electronic media. Since I was trained to type in the business manner, I’ve had a hard time letting go of that second space: but I learned in my History and CIS degrees to treat the CMS as definitive so one space it will be from now on.
I don’t think it will shock you much to learn that I was something of a nerd in high school. A bit anti-social, extremely awkward and shy, I spent a lot of time in the company of paperbacks, many of them in a connecting series. This was a great escape, running off into vast landscapes of books where characters grew in slow arcs, defeated foes who’d come back to haunt them, and eventually marry the man or woman they’d been fighting alongside for hundreds of pages. As I intend Eastlight to be a series, I want to spend some time analyzing successful series and what makes them tick. This will be the first of three blog posts looking at series as I read and analyze them.
In high school, I first read long serials, before moving on to comics. I wish somebody had explained that Dickens wrote in serials and should be read as such. We had to read vast chunks of Great Expectations all in one go, and I utterly hated it. I’ve since learned to appreciate Dickens by reading him the way his original readers did: bit by bit, week by week. In this manner I can sip at his prose, slowly taking it in, without feeling buried by his language. Instead of stressing to complete a big block of reading in time to write a terrible paper about it, I have time to enjoy Dickens and look forward to the next chapter.
Back in my awkward teen years, the series that kept my attention the most were Star Trek novels. They were a great way to spend infinite time with characters I loved. I went on to read a lot of comic books. One author who crosses between the two mediums with deft, prolific, effectiveness is Peter David. I think the man must sleep very little. His X-Factor comics have a consistent high quality in a bloated landscape, and his Star Trek: New Frontier books demonstrate a well plotted, character-focused serial.
I took about a twenty year break from Star Trek novels so I’m still surveying the landscape, but as far as I can tell, David was the first to try something of this type: he took a number of B characters in the Next Generation Universe, stirred up his own funky aliens, and dropped them into a ship in an uncharted region of space. Remember when I said he’s deft? David’s strength in writing characters he didn’t create is that he picks vaguely-defined figures and brings them to vivid life.
The short length of the books means I can breeze through one in an evening, though I quickly find that I need a few on hand as I’ll reach for the next as soon as I put one down. In this manner, he’s constructed his series to work just like episodes of a television show, and it works really well. Part of why the series succeeds is that threads aren’t left to dangle: he tracks unresolved elements over the course of many books and gets the conflict resolved. He’s shown a similar talent with X-Factor, where I’ve been happily surprised to see him pick up threads other writers dropped fifteen years ago and wrap them up. His way of writing comics, in self-contained chapters which culminate and collect well into larger books, serves him well in his novels. He likes to leave you with a cliffhanger or an ominous portent. Both serials benefit from a large cast, which aside from cannon fodder, also provides him with many smaller arcs to stretch the narrative over a larger canvas.
One weakness in the serial is that the suspense can be tiring if threads don’t get wrapped up. You want to see things resolved at some point. If an author stretches things out for too long you get anxious. There’s a delicate balance to this that many authors struggle with. In comics, where short attention span reigns, writers only have so long to wrap it up (or we get those annoying dropped threads when the writer changes guard). In the novel these open ended moments can bring you back for more, but only if the payoff is worth the wait. An easy out for a conflict that has stretched over three books leaves a bitter taste. David doesn’t suffer from this problem.
David’s second strength is that he doesn’t lose track of his characters. He keeps them in mind when he returns for the next episode. We get surprised by new facets of a personality, but he doesn’t radically alter a character’s nature. They grow, and our understanding of them grows too. Using this technique, he lets characters resolve their individual conflicts. In the New Frontier series, he seems to have started things with each individual coming on board with a different secret or desire. Each episode clears up one or two of these, so the reader is satisfied while they wait for some of the larger mysteries to simmer. I think David intimately knows his characters, and while they surprise us, I get the feeling he knows exactly what they’re hiding before he began writing the first episode. I’ve long been a fan, but I’m really beginning to admire Peter David’s craftsmanship as well.
Thanks to Daily Writing Tips, I know that the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) has finally dissolved my tradition of using two spaces after a period. It has been a factor in writing as we transition from print to electronic media. Since I was trained to type in the business manner, I’ve had a hard time letting go of that second space: but I learned in my History and CIS degrees to treat the CMS as definitive so one space it will be from now on.
I don’t think it will shock you much to learn that I was something of a nerd in high school. A bit anti-social, extremely awkward and shy, I spent a lot of time in the company of paperbacks, many of them in a connecting series. This was a great escape, running off into vast landscapes of books where characters grew in slow arcs, defeated foes who’d come back to haunt them, and eventually marry the man or woman they’d been fighting alongside for hundreds of pages. As I intend Eastlight to be a series, I want to spend some time analyzing successful series and what makes them tick. This will be the first of three blog posts looking at series as I read and analyze them.
In high school, I first read long serials, before moving on to comics. I wish somebody had explained that Dickens wrote in serials and should be read as such. We had to read vast chunks of Great Expectations all in one go, and I utterly hated it. I’ve since learned to appreciate Dickens by reading him the way his original readers did: bit by bit, week by week. In this manner I can sip at his prose, slowly taking it in, without feeling buried by his language. Instead of stressing to complete a big block of reading in time to write a terrible paper about it, I have time to enjoy Dickens and look forward to the next chapter.
Back in my awkward teen years, the series that kept my attention the most were Star Trek novels. They were a great way to spend infinite time with characters I loved. I went on to read a lot of comic books. One author who crosses between the two mediums with deft, prolific, effectiveness is Peter David. I think the man must sleep very little. His X-Factor comics have a consistent high quality in a bloated landscape, and his Star Trek: New Frontier books demonstrate a well plotted, character-focused serial.
I took about a twenty year break from Star Trek novels so I’m still surveying the landscape, but as far as I can tell, David was the first to try something of this type: he took a number of B characters in the Next Generation Universe, stirred up his own funky aliens, and dropped them into a ship in an uncharted region of space. Remember when I said he’s deft? David’s strength in writing characters he didn’t create is that he picks vaguely-defined figures and brings them to vivid life.
The short length of the books means I can breeze through one in an evening, though I quickly find that I need a few on hand as I’ll reach for the next as soon as I put one down. In this manner, he’s constructed his series to work just like episodes of a television show, and it works really well. Part of why the series succeeds is that threads aren’t left to dangle: he tracks unresolved elements over the course of many books and gets the conflict resolved. He’s shown a similar talent with X-Factor, where I’ve been happily surprised to see him pick up threads other writers dropped fifteen years ago and wrap them up. His way of writing comics, in self-contained chapters which culminate and collect well into larger books, serves him well in his novels. He likes to leave you with a cliffhanger or an ominous portent. Both serials benefit from a large cast, which aside from cannon fodder, also provides him with many smaller arcs to stretch the narrative over a larger canvas.
One weakness in the serial is that the suspense can be tiring if threads don’t get wrapped up. You want to see things resolved at some point. If an author stretches things out for too long you get anxious. There’s a delicate balance to this that many authors struggle with. In comics, where short attention span reigns, writers only have so long to wrap it up (or we get those annoying dropped threads when the writer changes guard). In the novel these open ended moments can bring you back for more, but only if the payoff is worth the wait. An easy out for a conflict that has stretched over three books leaves a bitter taste. David doesn’t suffer from this problem.
David’s second strength is that he doesn’t lose track of his characters. He keeps them in mind when he returns for the next episode. We get surprised by new facets of a personality, but he doesn’t radically alter a character’s nature. They grow, and our understanding of them grows too. Using this technique, he lets characters resolve their individual conflicts. In the New Frontier series, he seems to have started things with each individual coming on board with a different secret or desire. Each episode clears up one or two of these, so the reader is satisfied while they wait for some of the larger mysteries to simmer. I think David intimately knows his characters, and while they surprise us, I get the feeling he knows exactly what they’re hiding before he began writing the first episode. I’ve long been a fan, but I’m really beginning to admire Peter David’s craftsmanship as well.
6.17.2009
An Interview with Gail Martin, author of the Chronicles of the Necromancer series
For this post, I'm doing something exciting: an interview with Gail Martin. Gail is promoting her series, Chronicles of the Necromancer, and she kindly agreed to let me interview her for the blog. Read on below for more about Gail's series and find the sneak peek she's offering for the fourth volumne: Dark Lady's Chosen.
In the Summoner, you introduced us to a hero, Martris Drake, who as a necromancer, would normally be evil. While Tris uses his spirit magic for good, you have hinted at a dark side to Tris’s powers. Will we see more of this explored in further volumes?
I really wanted to question the assumption that a necromancer is necessarily evil. I don’t think that being dead makes someone a bad person, and just because a spirit is brought back from the dead, why should it change the moral compass the person had throughout life? I realized this when my grandmother died when I was just a girl. At first, the whole ghost thing spooked me, and then I realized that if my grandmother were to come back (to my knowledge, she hasn’t), it would still be my grandmother and she wouldn’t hurt me.
So the ghosts and the power itself are morally neutral. But spirit magic is very powerful and rare, and it carries a real temptation to use it for selfish ends or to say that the ends justify the means. Tris sees what this seduction costs the Obsidian King and the mage Lemuel, whose body was possessed by the Obsidian King’s spirit. As he ventures further into the moral quandaries of being a king and the battlefield issues where right and wrong become murky, it will be harder and harder for Tris to avoid making compromises. So yes, you’ll see more of this struggle, especially in Dark Lady’s Chosen.
You're blending a lot of genres together: fantasy with light horror and most recently quite a bit of romance. What brought you to writing fantasy? What inspired you to write in this genre?
I really just started by writing the stories I wanted to read. I’ve loved fantasy and the paranormal since I was a kid, as well as vampires, ghosts, magic and haunted houses. So it’s inevitable, I guess, for all those elements to end up in my novels. As for the romance—the books are first and foremost action/adventure, but I’ve always enjoyed deeper characterizations and a hint of romance, so there it is. It’s not the most important element or the focus of the book, but when you’re dealing with a cast of characters that are young men and women in their 20s and early 30s it seems like it would be remiss to leave it out. I want to make the characters very real as well as their setting and adventures. My favorite books are the ones where I feel like I’ve really gotten to know the characters as people.
I have to ask about your inspiration for your character naming conventions. Can I ask where you get your names from? They have a great old Europe or Romany sound but also a consistent texture.
Good question! I will admit to having a stack of baby name books by my computer, and I use the online sources as well. Since the setting is quasi-northwestern European, many of the names are variants of Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Celtic and Gaelic names, with some Bulgarian, Slovenian, Romanian influences as well. It depends on the character I’m naming.
I’m really excited for the fourth book in the series, Dark Lady's Chosen. You’ve certainly left us with a couple of cliffhangers and done a great job in splitting focus onto various characters. How long do you expect the series to go, and will we see more of the other characters in main storylines?
Thank you! I’m hoping the series will go on in various forms for a long time. By ‘various forms’ I mean duologies and maybe trilogies that are contemporary to the first 4 books and that also go backwards or forwards in the chronology, as well as some completely unrelated storylines. I think I’ve identified at least 20 story arcs so far I’d like to work on in the Winter Kingdoms, so we’ll see!
Yes, as the books unfold I do plan to show readers more of the Winter Kingdoms and more of characters who may have just had a minor role in other books. There will be new characters as well. It’s a big world—there are lots of interesting people and plenty of stories to tell!
I think your use of a rather singular religion in the series is very interesting. You've got different factions fighting over it anyway, which I think reflects human nature. The Goddess has already made a few cameos. Can you tell us a little bit more about how religion affects your story world? Will we see more of Her and the Sisterhood in the following volumes?
Fantasy often either ignores religion, gives it a superficial nod and then moves on, or makes it the uber-bad guy. I wanted to have it be a part of my world and my characters’ lives in realistic ways, because it does shape the history and the culture of the world, even for agnostics and atheists. As you read the books, I think you’ll see that the Aspect of the Lady a particular individual or kingdom is drawn to colors the world view and even self image of that person/kingdom, and the choice of Aspect often tells you more about the individual/kingdom than it does about the nature of the Goddess herself!
In the real world, whether or not someone is observant or not, religion or the lack thereof is an element of culture, just like geography, social structure, economics, plague, invasion, famine, historical rivalries, politics and personality. I love playing with the texture of the 8 different major practices, and as you’ll see in Dark Haven and Dark Lady’s Chosen, there are older, partially forgotten gods and goddesses who aren’t really gone as well as a wide variety of observances for holidays and life events such as weddings, funerals, births and coming-of-age. And of course, the vayash moru and vyrkin have their own observances and perspectives shaped from their unique situations and for the vayash moru, their long lives. So yes, you’ll see more of both the Goddess and the Sisterhood as the books move forward.
Finally, any tips for the unpublished fantasy authors out there? What do you think aspiring authors can do to succeed?
To succeed, you have to keep trying. Write what you enjoy reading. Don’t write to impress other people or because someone tells you a certain type of book sells well. Write what you enjoy. Then find a couple of trusted friends who like to read the same types of books you do and try your stuff out on them. Pick people who are kind but honest: you don’t want people who enjoy shredding other people’s work for their own amusement. Then write. The more you write, the better you get. It’s ok to start with fan fiction. Many famous writers did. Eventually you’ll find a story of your own and then you’ll find the fire inside to tell it. Learn everything you can about the business of writing by reading books about publishing and going to conventions or conferences where you can talk to real writers. Some of the best books on the subject are published by Writers’ Digest Books. I think I’ve read all of them. They are very helpful.
For more about Gail's dynamic series, visit her site: www.chroniclesofthenecromancer.com. She's got some great content, including podcasts and a calendar of upcoming appearances. You can also read the first chapter of Dark Lady's Chosen here.
In the Summoner, you introduced us to a hero, Martris Drake, who as a necromancer, would normally be evil. While Tris uses his spirit magic for good, you have hinted at a dark side to Tris’s powers. Will we see more of this explored in further volumes?
I really wanted to question the assumption that a necromancer is necessarily evil. I don’t think that being dead makes someone a bad person, and just because a spirit is brought back from the dead, why should it change the moral compass the person had throughout life? I realized this when my grandmother died when I was just a girl. At first, the whole ghost thing spooked me, and then I realized that if my grandmother were to come back (to my knowledge, she hasn’t), it would still be my grandmother and she wouldn’t hurt me.
So the ghosts and the power itself are morally neutral. But spirit magic is very powerful and rare, and it carries a real temptation to use it for selfish ends or to say that the ends justify the means. Tris sees what this seduction costs the Obsidian King and the mage Lemuel, whose body was possessed by the Obsidian King’s spirit. As he ventures further into the moral quandaries of being a king and the battlefield issues where right and wrong become murky, it will be harder and harder for Tris to avoid making compromises. So yes, you’ll see more of this struggle, especially in Dark Lady’s Chosen.
You're blending a lot of genres together: fantasy with light horror and most recently quite a bit of romance. What brought you to writing fantasy? What inspired you to write in this genre?
I really just started by writing the stories I wanted to read. I’ve loved fantasy and the paranormal since I was a kid, as well as vampires, ghosts, magic and haunted houses. So it’s inevitable, I guess, for all those elements to end up in my novels. As for the romance—the books are first and foremost action/adventure, but I’ve always enjoyed deeper characterizations and a hint of romance, so there it is. It’s not the most important element or the focus of the book, but when you’re dealing with a cast of characters that are young men and women in their 20s and early 30s it seems like it would be remiss to leave it out. I want to make the characters very real as well as their setting and adventures. My favorite books are the ones where I feel like I’ve really gotten to know the characters as people.
I have to ask about your inspiration for your character naming conventions. Can I ask where you get your names from? They have a great old Europe or Romany sound but also a consistent texture.
Good question! I will admit to having a stack of baby name books by my computer, and I use the online sources as well. Since the setting is quasi-northwestern European, many of the names are variants of Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Celtic and Gaelic names, with some Bulgarian, Slovenian, Romanian influences as well. It depends on the character I’m naming.
I’m really excited for the fourth book in the series, Dark Lady's Chosen. You’ve certainly left us with a couple of cliffhangers and done a great job in splitting focus onto various characters. How long do you expect the series to go, and will we see more of the other characters in main storylines?
Thank you! I’m hoping the series will go on in various forms for a long time. By ‘various forms’ I mean duologies and maybe trilogies that are contemporary to the first 4 books and that also go backwards or forwards in the chronology, as well as some completely unrelated storylines. I think I’ve identified at least 20 story arcs so far I’d like to work on in the Winter Kingdoms, so we’ll see!
Yes, as the books unfold I do plan to show readers more of the Winter Kingdoms and more of characters who may have just had a minor role in other books. There will be new characters as well. It’s a big world—there are lots of interesting people and plenty of stories to tell!
I think your use of a rather singular religion in the series is very interesting. You've got different factions fighting over it anyway, which I think reflects human nature. The Goddess has already made a few cameos. Can you tell us a little bit more about how religion affects your story world? Will we see more of Her and the Sisterhood in the following volumes?
Fantasy often either ignores religion, gives it a superficial nod and then moves on, or makes it the uber-bad guy. I wanted to have it be a part of my world and my characters’ lives in realistic ways, because it does shape the history and the culture of the world, even for agnostics and atheists. As you read the books, I think you’ll see that the Aspect of the Lady a particular individual or kingdom is drawn to colors the world view and even self image of that person/kingdom, and the choice of Aspect often tells you more about the individual/kingdom than it does about the nature of the Goddess herself!
In the real world, whether or not someone is observant or not, religion or the lack thereof is an element of culture, just like geography, social structure, economics, plague, invasion, famine, historical rivalries, politics and personality. I love playing with the texture of the 8 different major practices, and as you’ll see in Dark Haven and Dark Lady’s Chosen, there are older, partially forgotten gods and goddesses who aren’t really gone as well as a wide variety of observances for holidays and life events such as weddings, funerals, births and coming-of-age. And of course, the vayash moru and vyrkin have their own observances and perspectives shaped from their unique situations and for the vayash moru, their long lives. So yes, you’ll see more of both the Goddess and the Sisterhood as the books move forward.
Finally, any tips for the unpublished fantasy authors out there? What do you think aspiring authors can do to succeed?
To succeed, you have to keep trying. Write what you enjoy reading. Don’t write to impress other people or because someone tells you a certain type of book sells well. Write what you enjoy. Then find a couple of trusted friends who like to read the same types of books you do and try your stuff out on them. Pick people who are kind but honest: you don’t want people who enjoy shredding other people’s work for their own amusement. Then write. The more you write, the better you get. It’s ok to start with fan fiction. Many famous writers did. Eventually you’ll find a story of your own and then you’ll find the fire inside to tell it. Learn everything you can about the business of writing by reading books about publishing and going to conventions or conferences where you can talk to real writers. Some of the best books on the subject are published by Writers’ Digest Books. I think I’ve read all of them. They are very helpful.
For more about Gail's dynamic series, visit her site: www.chroniclesofthenecromancer.com. She's got some great content, including podcasts and a calendar of upcoming appearances. You can also read the first chapter of Dark Lady's Chosen here.
6.10.2009
Off the Beaten Path: David’s Review of Eat, Pray, Love
Finishing my “practical” Master’s in Computer Information Systems sort of knocked me offline for the month of May. I was staring at a computer for most of it, but I’m afraid my writing and blogging got mightily ignored. Whenever this happens, whether from a dry creative period or life just keeping me away, I find I’ve lost focus. It’s not very different from working out: you ignore your muscles and they atrophy. Going back to the gym means finding your place and building them back up again. Completing the degree meant that my brain was very, very tired. It was quite strange, but I realized that I had little ability for meaningful output directly after. Instead I switched to input and started tackling the stack of books piled up beside my desk.
I just finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir piece Eat, Pray, Love, stepping far outside my genre. It was a great read and I got a lot out of tagging along for her global adventure of rediscovering her self. I don’t think I was one hundred pages in before I’d made a mental list of six people, not all of them women, to recommend it to. Gilbert’s journey to explore pleasure and devotion gets kicked off with a brutal divorce, something too many of the people on my list can relate to. I have to admit a lot of the appeal to me was getting into her head, feeling how she experienced her journey. By the end I felt like I’d connected with her as a voice, made another friend “through the pages” as an old saying goes. The book is intensely personal.
In many ways, Gilbert’s journey is mythic and that connects it well to fantasy. After all, our characters in fantasy are usually on a journey. Their experiences and encounters change them, evolve them, and shake them up. The whole concept of the mythic journey is just that: a call to leave an ordinary life. Gilbert is lucky enough to have experienced this in reality, but she touches on why I read fantasy and why I fell enough in love with it to write it: by escaping for a bit, we get the chance to change our perspective. Maybe we learn something, maybe not, but just the experience affects us. Gilbert set out with a mission and a plan, the benefits of which unknowing characters rarely have. Escape can be avoidance, but it does not have to be. Escape, when you’re trapped, is exactly what you need. By traveling with characters on their journeys, we ride along, and hopefully empathize with their plight. When they experience something, maybe we experience too. I’d highly recommend Eat, Pray, Love for anyone in your life who needs a change.
I just finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir piece Eat, Pray, Love, stepping far outside my genre. It was a great read and I got a lot out of tagging along for her global adventure of rediscovering her self. I don’t think I was one hundred pages in before I’d made a mental list of six people, not all of them women, to recommend it to. Gilbert’s journey to explore pleasure and devotion gets kicked off with a brutal divorce, something too many of the people on my list can relate to. I have to admit a lot of the appeal to me was getting into her head, feeling how she experienced her journey. By the end I felt like I’d connected with her as a voice, made another friend “through the pages” as an old saying goes. The book is intensely personal.
In many ways, Gilbert’s journey is mythic and that connects it well to fantasy. After all, our characters in fantasy are usually on a journey. Their experiences and encounters change them, evolve them, and shake them up. The whole concept of the mythic journey is just that: a call to leave an ordinary life. Gilbert is lucky enough to have experienced this in reality, but she touches on why I read fantasy and why I fell enough in love with it to write it: by escaping for a bit, we get the chance to change our perspective. Maybe we learn something, maybe not, but just the experience affects us. Gilbert set out with a mission and a plan, the benefits of which unknowing characters rarely have. Escape can be avoidance, but it does not have to be. Escape, when you’re trapped, is exactly what you need. By traveling with characters on their journeys, we ride along, and hopefully empathize with their plight. When they experience something, maybe we experience too. I’d highly recommend Eat, Pray, Love for anyone in your life who needs a change.
6.06.2009
Everything Old is New Again
The summer movie season came faster than I expected. It will be dating myself to say that when I was in high school, Terminator 2 was the big action flick. This summer feels like a nostalgia wave: Star Trek, Transformers, and a new Terminator are all hitting the screen.
I find it interesting that we cling to serials and timeless characters, though I’ll have to do a lot more in depth analysis to grasp what I think makes a character last like that. In fantasy, the trilogy seems to be the norm, but the series is another standard. I think some series go on a bit too long, sometimes when the author has simply run out of things for the characters to do. (I’m thinking here of R.A. Salvatore’s action-packed Drizzt series, which I loved for the first eight books or so). Or an author leaves too many threads dangling, and I finish the books feeling like some important plot points were left unresolved.
But we seem drawn to everlasting characters, ones we eventually call classic. I can easily tick off a list of attempts to bring older characters forward: the upcoming Sherlock Holmes film immediately springs to mind. Some of these characters are actually immortal, drawn back from death after their creators have tried to let them go time and time again.
So how do we get from blank stock character to one we want to spend a number of books with? It’s a question I’ll be putting a lot of thought into as I think about Eastlight’s future. I’d certainly like to see it go to series and last at least as long as a trilogy. I’ve started with the idea that characters need to evolve over time, but not too quickly, so they have somewhere to go. While my two main characters certainly grow in the course of the first novel, I’ve left them a lot of room to mature and sprawl out in time. Certainly a character should be unique, original enough the reader wants to spend many books with them, but not too unique. I think of the typical romantic heroine, who shouldn’t be so offbeat or alien that your reader cannot identify with her getting the hero. Genres such as fantasy and science fiction give us the chance to work with characters radically different in culture, history, and even biology. All of these things can help to give a character flavor and a distinct background, but even strongly defining traits shouldn’t override our ability to relate to a character.
I find it interesting that we cling to serials and timeless characters, though I’ll have to do a lot more in depth analysis to grasp what I think makes a character last like that. In fantasy, the trilogy seems to be the norm, but the series is another standard. I think some series go on a bit too long, sometimes when the author has simply run out of things for the characters to do. (I’m thinking here of R.A. Salvatore’s action-packed Drizzt series, which I loved for the first eight books or so). Or an author leaves too many threads dangling, and I finish the books feeling like some important plot points were left unresolved.
But we seem drawn to everlasting characters, ones we eventually call classic. I can easily tick off a list of attempts to bring older characters forward: the upcoming Sherlock Holmes film immediately springs to mind. Some of these characters are actually immortal, drawn back from death after their creators have tried to let them go time and time again.
So how do we get from blank stock character to one we want to spend a number of books with? It’s a question I’ll be putting a lot of thought into as I think about Eastlight’s future. I’d certainly like to see it go to series and last at least as long as a trilogy. I’ve started with the idea that characters need to evolve over time, but not too quickly, so they have somewhere to go. While my two main characters certainly grow in the course of the first novel, I’ve left them a lot of room to mature and sprawl out in time. Certainly a character should be unique, original enough the reader wants to spend many books with them, but not too unique. I think of the typical romantic heroine, who shouldn’t be so offbeat or alien that your reader cannot identify with her getting the hero. Genres such as fantasy and science fiction give us the chance to work with characters radically different in culture, history, and even biology. All of these things can help to give a character flavor and a distinct background, but even strongly defining traits shouldn’t override our ability to relate to a character.
5.09.2009
On Tech: The Site Relaunch is Complete!
Eastlight’s trailer is up, along with a brand new home page for www.davidrslayton.com.
I had thought to hire someone for either the site or the trailer, but I have some fantastic expertise in my world. The site design has been brewing for a while, and I’m happy with the Web 2.0 touches I added. My experts and friends will be quite happy to see me turn my obsessive energy to my next project. The trailer could not have come together better for the budget and I’m very grateful for all the help I got in tweaking the Flash. After fighting the video embed code for a while, I went with Vimeo.com, a quieter and artful YouTube. It has the added bonus of not currently being blocked by a lot of work filters, so I'm pleased to see that the audience shouldn't be affected by that.
A little research tells me that posting the first chapters of Eastlight online could cause problems for various agents or publishers, depending on where they’re at with electronic rights. Rather than risk any fouls in this area, I’ve pulled the chapters offline. The primary source for this decision is here: http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/05/whats-safe-to-syndicate-online.html if you’re wanting some advice for your own work.
As I’m certain that my query process will come down to agents requesting material based on my query letters - what agent has free time to surf the net for my chapters? - I’ll be keeping them down. Instead I’m trying to work up a few short stories set in Eastlight’s world. These strike me as a great way to round out the scope of things a bit and give away a little content. If you are an agent wanting the first few chapters, please drop me an email at author@davidrslayton.com. I’ll also be looking at other “safe” content to post and keep the site fresh over the coming months.
I had thought to hire someone for either the site or the trailer, but I have some fantastic expertise in my world. The site design has been brewing for a while, and I’m happy with the Web 2.0 touches I added. My experts and friends will be quite happy to see me turn my obsessive energy to my next project. The trailer could not have come together better for the budget and I’m very grateful for all the help I got in tweaking the Flash. After fighting the video embed code for a while, I went with Vimeo.com, a quieter and artful YouTube. It has the added bonus of not currently being blocked by a lot of work filters, so I'm pleased to see that the audience shouldn't be affected by that.
A little research tells me that posting the first chapters of Eastlight online could cause problems for various agents or publishers, depending on where they’re at with electronic rights. Rather than risk any fouls in this area, I’ve pulled the chapters offline. The primary source for this decision is here: http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/05/whats-safe-to-syndicate-online.html if you’re wanting some advice for your own work.
As I’m certain that my query process will come down to agents requesting material based on my query letters - what agent has free time to surf the net for my chapters? - I’ll be keeping them down. Instead I’m trying to work up a few short stories set in Eastlight’s world. These strike me as a great way to round out the scope of things a bit and give away a little content. If you are an agent wanting the first few chapters, please drop me an email at author@davidrslayton.com. I’ll also be looking at other “safe” content to post and keep the site fresh over the coming months.
Writes of Spring II: The Query Process
Mood: Still up, but trying to refocus now on my next project.
Music: Byzantine chants, perfect for writing fantasy on a Saturday morning.
Backpack: Just finished Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, turning back to some Rilke.
In my last post, I alluded to the idea that shopping for an agent is like dating. I’m not the first person to make this analogy, but I can take it a step farther: it’s a lot like Internet dating. You craft a query letter, you hope to intrigue a stranger, not look too desperate for representation, and most of all, create a life long relationship that will benefit you both. When I first crafted my query letter, it was pretty bare bones. As I visit more and more sites, I realize different agents want different levels of detail. So the letter has spawned many, many versions. Just like an online profile, I keep testing what to share, what to hold back, and where to hint that I might have a bit more up my sleeve than a cliché opening line.
Things have changed a lot since I shopped my last book. More agents are working through email. This is great for the cost savings, the faster turnaround time, and of course the paper we’re all saving. It also means I can craft a letter on the bus and then fire it off once I get to my day job. It also gives me the chance to reference materials on my web site without bogging down the query letter. Who wants to type a URL from a snail letter into a browser?
The query letter shifts a bit to reflect different agents’ needs. The bare bones is the same, but the more research I do into an agent’s client list, the more likely I am to see if I’m going to align with what they’re looking for. The key to improving the letter is the key to improving any writing: editing and time. The pitfalls are also the same: know how and when to let it go and stop fussing with it. I’ve dropped my kid off for his first day of school. Let’s see if I’ve given him the skills to survive rejection, grow through adversity, and the wits to avoid having his lunch money stolen by scammers. The query also means taking a bit more time for research: the agent has to represent young adult fantasy and hopefully have a track record with the genre. It’s an extra plus when I see they rep an author I love, but like dating, it can also make me more nervous about the introduction.
Then there are the criteria. Some agents go off the letter alone, no pages wanted. This means they’ve got to be intrigued by the blurb alone. Fair enough, think of them as browsers in a bookstore, looking at the back of books. If that’s enough to get them to read five pages, I’ve written the right blurb. Some agents linger a bit longer. They want the first few pages. Always the first few, so make them count. This is the second impression, the first actual date. Try not to blow it. Dress appropriately - is your copy error-proof? Write down the directions – did you include the right contact information, the right format, the right number of pages. Be a gentleman – Be careful to make sure you’ve got the agent’s name and other letter details right. So far, so good. You’ve made it through dinner.
This brings me to the delicate art of the synopsis. A little reading online tells me I’m not alone in finding synopsis writing a challenge. I think one reason is that it’s reversing everything we’ve learned about showing and telling. You have to tell in a synopsis. How else are you going to get the details of your story out in a few pages? That doesn’t mean it can be boring. Even the synopsis has to be punched up to intrigue. My first synopsis draft was too short. It made no sense because I was trying to get the entire story crammed into two pages. My second draft was five pages and way too long. The current, and hopefully final, form is three pages. With each draft I’ve gotten great input from my support network and the language has become more active. It’s not the whole story by any means. I had to leave out a lot of great secondary characters and interesting side-trips, but the meat of the conflict is there. This is the version of the story you’d tell your date over dinner. Don’t bore them with detail but don’t leave out anything critical that’s going to cause her to lose interest. Try to imagine at what point I’d lose my friend or she would start yawning. Really, this is the same process the book should have: at what point was someone able to put it down? When did they get bored? Those are the parts to edit or take out.
Like dating, querying agents means a lot of rejection and a lot of practice. Some people may get lucky and connect with the right agent on the first go, but I’m willing to bet that for most of is, it’s a longer process.
The last bit of leg I can get out of this analogy is that the rejection can get you down. You can feel down about your work and worn out from your efforts here. Taking a short break, working on your next project or even putting writing away for a few days altogether can recharge your batteries. The one piece of advice that won’t hold up is to stop looking. You have to query many, many agents in a wide pool. You have to put yourself out there and stay in the game. Hold me to that as the rejections come in.
Music: Byzantine chants, perfect for writing fantasy on a Saturday morning.
Backpack: Just finished Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, turning back to some Rilke.
In my last post, I alluded to the idea that shopping for an agent is like dating. I’m not the first person to make this analogy, but I can take it a step farther: it’s a lot like Internet dating. You craft a query letter, you hope to intrigue a stranger, not look too desperate for representation, and most of all, create a life long relationship that will benefit you both. When I first crafted my query letter, it was pretty bare bones. As I visit more and more sites, I realize different agents want different levels of detail. So the letter has spawned many, many versions. Just like an online profile, I keep testing what to share, what to hold back, and where to hint that I might have a bit more up my sleeve than a cliché opening line.
Things have changed a lot since I shopped my last book. More agents are working through email. This is great for the cost savings, the faster turnaround time, and of course the paper we’re all saving. It also means I can craft a letter on the bus and then fire it off once I get to my day job. It also gives me the chance to reference materials on my web site without bogging down the query letter. Who wants to type a URL from a snail letter into a browser?
The query letter shifts a bit to reflect different agents’ needs. The bare bones is the same, but the more research I do into an agent’s client list, the more likely I am to see if I’m going to align with what they’re looking for. The key to improving the letter is the key to improving any writing: editing and time. The pitfalls are also the same: know how and when to let it go and stop fussing with it. I’ve dropped my kid off for his first day of school. Let’s see if I’ve given him the skills to survive rejection, grow through adversity, and the wits to avoid having his lunch money stolen by scammers. The query also means taking a bit more time for research: the agent has to represent young adult fantasy and hopefully have a track record with the genre. It’s an extra plus when I see they rep an author I love, but like dating, it can also make me more nervous about the introduction.
Then there are the criteria. Some agents go off the letter alone, no pages wanted. This means they’ve got to be intrigued by the blurb alone. Fair enough, think of them as browsers in a bookstore, looking at the back of books. If that’s enough to get them to read five pages, I’ve written the right blurb. Some agents linger a bit longer. They want the first few pages. Always the first few, so make them count. This is the second impression, the first actual date. Try not to blow it. Dress appropriately - is your copy error-proof? Write down the directions – did you include the right contact information, the right format, the right number of pages. Be a gentleman – Be careful to make sure you’ve got the agent’s name and other letter details right. So far, so good. You’ve made it through dinner.
This brings me to the delicate art of the synopsis. A little reading online tells me I’m not alone in finding synopsis writing a challenge. I think one reason is that it’s reversing everything we’ve learned about showing and telling. You have to tell in a synopsis. How else are you going to get the details of your story out in a few pages? That doesn’t mean it can be boring. Even the synopsis has to be punched up to intrigue. My first synopsis draft was too short. It made no sense because I was trying to get the entire story crammed into two pages. My second draft was five pages and way too long. The current, and hopefully final, form is three pages. With each draft I’ve gotten great input from my support network and the language has become more active. It’s not the whole story by any means. I had to leave out a lot of great secondary characters and interesting side-trips, but the meat of the conflict is there. This is the version of the story you’d tell your date over dinner. Don’t bore them with detail but don’t leave out anything critical that’s going to cause her to lose interest. Try to imagine at what point I’d lose my friend or she would start yawning. Really, this is the same process the book should have: at what point was someone able to put it down? When did they get bored? Those are the parts to edit or take out.
Like dating, querying agents means a lot of rejection and a lot of practice. Some people may get lucky and connect with the right agent on the first go, but I’m willing to bet that for most of is, it’s a longer process.
The last bit of leg I can get out of this analogy is that the rejection can get you down. You can feel down about your work and worn out from your efforts here. Taking a short break, working on your next project or even putting writing away for a few days altogether can recharge your batteries. The one piece of advice that won’t hold up is to stop looking. You have to query many, many agents in a wide pool. You have to put yourself out there and stay in the game. Hold me to that as the rejections come in.
4.29.2009
The Writes of Spring
Mood: Bouncy. Spring is here, though we’re still seeing a bit of snow. The lilacs are just starting to bud, and a young man’s fancy turns to querying agents.
Music: Franz Ferdinand, Tonight
Backpack: Forest for the Trees: an Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner
Your eyes do not deceive you, I’ve been reformatting the blog to apply some of the stuff I’ve learned about message design and merge its theme to the changes over at davidrslayton.com.
It has been a really productive season. I’ve put a lot of myself into Eastlight, getting it to a place where I want to share it and start getting input. I’ve polished the book to the point where I’m ready to query. I’ve been pumping a lot of energy into those materials: the hook, the letter, and the synopsis. I’ve come a long ways on updating my website. We had the photo shoot Sunday and the pictures came out better than I’d hoped:
There, doesn't that look more writerly?
I also took a break last week to catch the Franz Ferdinand concert and catch up with friends. There is nothing as renewing for me as watching my friend Marnie dance, red hair washing back and forth as I feel the music coming up through my feet.
Sometimes you have to take a break, mix up your routine, get out of your book cavern, and see what the rest of the world (who isn’t obsessing about scene transitions and dialogue choices) are up to. I have to plug my friends here and praise them. They are my critique group, my first readers, and above all my support system. They listen to my ideas, and I trust them to give me honest input without the sugar coating. Most important of all, they keep me grounded so I don’t descend into my little cave of books and loose leaf paper. To Marnie, Jo, Alfred, Justine, Alan, and everyone else who has been there lately, thank you! Hopefully we’ll soon have cause to celebrate seeing Eastlight in print.
Music: Franz Ferdinand, Tonight
Backpack: Forest for the Trees: an Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner
Your eyes do not deceive you, I’ve been reformatting the blog to apply some of the stuff I’ve learned about message design and merge its theme to the changes over at davidrslayton.com.
It has been a really productive season. I’ve put a lot of myself into Eastlight, getting it to a place where I want to share it and start getting input. I’ve polished the book to the point where I’m ready to query. I’ve been pumping a lot of energy into those materials: the hook, the letter, and the synopsis. I’ve come a long ways on updating my website. We had the photo shoot Sunday and the pictures came out better than I’d hoped:
There, doesn't that look more writerly?
I also took a break last week to catch the Franz Ferdinand concert and catch up with friends. There is nothing as renewing for me as watching my friend Marnie dance, red hair washing back and forth as I feel the music coming up through my feet.
Sometimes you have to take a break, mix up your routine, get out of your book cavern, and see what the rest of the world (who isn’t obsessing about scene transitions and dialogue choices) are up to. I have to plug my friends here and praise them. They are my critique group, my first readers, and above all my support system. They listen to my ideas, and I trust them to give me honest input without the sugar coating. Most important of all, they keep me grounded so I don’t descend into my little cave of books and loose leaf paper. To Marnie, Jo, Alfred, Justine, Alan, and everyone else who has been there lately, thank you! Hopefully we’ll soon have cause to celebrate seeing Eastlight in print.
4.19.2009
Interactive Map of Eastlight's World
As I give my website a much needed upgrade, I've put together an interactive map of Eastlight's world to help promote the book. Here's a link:
http://www.davidrslayton.com/eastlight/map.html
Look for some good changes at davidrslayton.com by May 7th.
I'll be posting the first three chapters of Eastlight soon.
http://www.davidrslayton.com/eastlight/map.html
Look for some good changes at davidrslayton.com by May 7th.
I'll be posting the first three chapters of Eastlight soon.
4.17.2009
Lessons Learned so Far
Status: Eastlight is complete! First query letters are off. The first rejection is in. Now we play the waiting game.
I was really flattered yesterday when someone asked me what he should do to start writing a book. I felt a bit like an imposter, as I haven’t published my novel, but I do think I have figured a few things out. Here are the things I am applying to my own work.
Write. This one is standard advice. You’ll read it anywhere. To write well, you need to write as often as you can. I’d take it a step farther and say that you need to write with a structured approach. Be free form to get it down, but try to keep it in my mind that the work has to make sense to other people. In fantasy we have a tendency to spin out worlds that to us are intricately detailed, with lots of juicy side-trips, but that same book needs to translate into something a reader can engage. My friend Alan says that I “have a hard time seeing the trees for the forest, and my forest is deep and lush.” He’s referring to my tendency to build an entire world, when the reader only needs the part they’re exploring. So I’ve been cutting a lot of these details out and saving them for later journeys.
Grammar. This is one I’ve seen pushed aside in a lot of the creative writing courses I’ve taken. The idea is that writing is intimidating, and grammar more so, therefore it’s important to just write and not worry about grammar, which is something you can bolt in later. I think of grammar and the language itself as the operating system. You might create an incredible video game, but if it won’t run on any computer’s operating system, then you’ve made something that will never sell. So again, write freely, but study grammar and language. Writing truly is a craft and becoming good at it means constant practice and applied study. If you’re writing fantasy, think of it as your own wizardly studies. Mastery takes expertise and training. The beauty of it is that you can always learn more, go farther, and reach a new level in the craft. The next level will always be there. Reach for it, and never stop growing in skill.
Read. Annie Dillard says that the payoff in writing is being a better reader. Actively read, not just in your genre, but in others. See what’s happening in Literary Fiction, Horror, Suspense, etc. Even Romance may have a few things to teach you. This is one piece of advice I see over and over, but the part that I don’t see as often is that you need to read actively. By this I mean that you need to analyze books as you read them. Think about point of view, exposition, plot elements, characterization. Try to grasp what’s working and not working in the books you read or even the movies you watch. I’ll warn you though, this might kind of ruin reading for you. I know I’ve learned to shut off my writer self when discussing a movie with friends. Dissecting a creature does after all kill it.
Share. I wrote my first book in a vacuum. I thought of it as a great opus, a piece of art, and didn’t get any input until it was finally finished. And then, it didn’t sell. The book was bloated, with too much description, too much exposition, not enough dialogue. The book came out just like it was being written: solitarily, with little review. When you’ve got a draft together, carefully select people you trust to share it with. They need to be readers or writers, but it’s hard to find just the right critique circle. I chose readers who have a lot of experience with books but not so much with writing. I felt the writers I worked with were too close to their work or ideas to objectively critique mine. Even then, my readers had very different tastes. I found their feedback to often be helpful not for fixing problems, but for telling me what wasn’t working. Regardless of the feedback, be gracious. Somebody took the time to read a less than perfect version of your book. I really could not have written this book without them.
Open-mindedness. Holding your work too close to you is a sure way to strangle it. Some of the best sentences I framed for Eastlight were the ones I had to cut. They were pretty, but they didn’t fit into the flow. I find that I suffer from too many ideas, too many random directions. I had to cut a lot of these side-trips and segues in order to make the book work as a whole tapestry. Be open to the feedback you receive, and be prepared to make changes. Define which items you’re not willing to budge on, but be sure they’re worth the fight. I may revise this lesson once Eastlight is published, as I suspect that publishers and agents will have some suggestions of their own. The important thing is that I am open to them. I’m not married to the work, and as long as the changes don’t compromise the heart of the story I wanted to tell, I am willing to make them. Get a thick skin. It’s a tough market, and thousands of books are written every year that will never be published.
Editing. You’ve got to be brutally objective when you edit. Stephen King suggests putting a manuscript away for six months before editing. I’m too impatient for that, but I do recommend getting some distance. In my case, I sent the book out for critique and got to work on my next project. I started writing something completely different, so that when Eastlight came back covered in blood red ink, I was ready to see it with fresh eyes. It really helped. I integrated the feedback that I felt enhanced the book, starting with the line by line typo corrections, then turned my attention to items of larger or vaguer note: “This character doesn’t have a big enough part;” “There are too many religious factions to keep track of,” etc. Some of this feedback was a matter of the reader’s taste. Some of them agreed on weak points, and after having taken six weeks off from it, so did I. I cut a lot of factions, speeding things up considerably, and making it easier for the reader to jump into the story. In some places I combined factions, removing partitions, and in one, I changed an important faction that showed up at the end to match one from the beginning, giving the story some nice parallelism. A friend asked why I worried so much about editing, that wouldn’t the agents or publishers take care of that, which brings us to my next lesson learned.
Professionalism. Be in it to win it. Be objective and on. Write the best book you can and try to avoid obsessing about publishing. When you’re ready, and the book is as good as you can make it, start studying the publishing and querying process. Do not just start sending your book out. Read up on agents, what they represent, what they’re looking for. Follow the instructions on their website or in Writer’s Market, or on Publisher’s Marketplace. Never assume you’re the exception to the rule. Be prepared to see your work objectively and take critique. Get real on the chances and on the process. Don’t assume the book you’ve labored on as an act of love is the next big seller. Be kind to the agents that request partials and gracious to those who don’t.
I’m sure as the process progresses that I’ll have a fresh list or a few refinements, but the list above is a good start.
I was really flattered yesterday when someone asked me what he should do to start writing a book. I felt a bit like an imposter, as I haven’t published my novel, but I do think I have figured a few things out. Here are the things I am applying to my own work.
Write. This one is standard advice. You’ll read it anywhere. To write well, you need to write as often as you can. I’d take it a step farther and say that you need to write with a structured approach. Be free form to get it down, but try to keep it in my mind that the work has to make sense to other people. In fantasy we have a tendency to spin out worlds that to us are intricately detailed, with lots of juicy side-trips, but that same book needs to translate into something a reader can engage. My friend Alan says that I “have a hard time seeing the trees for the forest, and my forest is deep and lush.” He’s referring to my tendency to build an entire world, when the reader only needs the part they’re exploring. So I’ve been cutting a lot of these details out and saving them for later journeys.
Grammar. This is one I’ve seen pushed aside in a lot of the creative writing courses I’ve taken. The idea is that writing is intimidating, and grammar more so, therefore it’s important to just write and not worry about grammar, which is something you can bolt in later. I think of grammar and the language itself as the operating system. You might create an incredible video game, but if it won’t run on any computer’s operating system, then you’ve made something that will never sell. So again, write freely, but study grammar and language. Writing truly is a craft and becoming good at it means constant practice and applied study. If you’re writing fantasy, think of it as your own wizardly studies. Mastery takes expertise and training. The beauty of it is that you can always learn more, go farther, and reach a new level in the craft. The next level will always be there. Reach for it, and never stop growing in skill.
Read. Annie Dillard says that the payoff in writing is being a better reader. Actively read, not just in your genre, but in others. See what’s happening in Literary Fiction, Horror, Suspense, etc. Even Romance may have a few things to teach you. This is one piece of advice I see over and over, but the part that I don’t see as often is that you need to read actively. By this I mean that you need to analyze books as you read them. Think about point of view, exposition, plot elements, characterization. Try to grasp what’s working and not working in the books you read or even the movies you watch. I’ll warn you though, this might kind of ruin reading for you. I know I’ve learned to shut off my writer self when discussing a movie with friends. Dissecting a creature does after all kill it.
Share. I wrote my first book in a vacuum. I thought of it as a great opus, a piece of art, and didn’t get any input until it was finally finished. And then, it didn’t sell. The book was bloated, with too much description, too much exposition, not enough dialogue. The book came out just like it was being written: solitarily, with little review. When you’ve got a draft together, carefully select people you trust to share it with. They need to be readers or writers, but it’s hard to find just the right critique circle. I chose readers who have a lot of experience with books but not so much with writing. I felt the writers I worked with were too close to their work or ideas to objectively critique mine. Even then, my readers had very different tastes. I found their feedback to often be helpful not for fixing problems, but for telling me what wasn’t working. Regardless of the feedback, be gracious. Somebody took the time to read a less than perfect version of your book. I really could not have written this book without them.
Open-mindedness. Holding your work too close to you is a sure way to strangle it. Some of the best sentences I framed for Eastlight were the ones I had to cut. They were pretty, but they didn’t fit into the flow. I find that I suffer from too many ideas, too many random directions. I had to cut a lot of these side-trips and segues in order to make the book work as a whole tapestry. Be open to the feedback you receive, and be prepared to make changes. Define which items you’re not willing to budge on, but be sure they’re worth the fight. I may revise this lesson once Eastlight is published, as I suspect that publishers and agents will have some suggestions of their own. The important thing is that I am open to them. I’m not married to the work, and as long as the changes don’t compromise the heart of the story I wanted to tell, I am willing to make them. Get a thick skin. It’s a tough market, and thousands of books are written every year that will never be published.
Editing. You’ve got to be brutally objective when you edit. Stephen King suggests putting a manuscript away for six months before editing. I’m too impatient for that, but I do recommend getting some distance. In my case, I sent the book out for critique and got to work on my next project. I started writing something completely different, so that when Eastlight came back covered in blood red ink, I was ready to see it with fresh eyes. It really helped. I integrated the feedback that I felt enhanced the book, starting with the line by line typo corrections, then turned my attention to items of larger or vaguer note: “This character doesn’t have a big enough part;” “There are too many religious factions to keep track of,” etc. Some of this feedback was a matter of the reader’s taste. Some of them agreed on weak points, and after having taken six weeks off from it, so did I. I cut a lot of factions, speeding things up considerably, and making it easier for the reader to jump into the story. In some places I combined factions, removing partitions, and in one, I changed an important faction that showed up at the end to match one from the beginning, giving the story some nice parallelism. A friend asked why I worried so much about editing, that wouldn’t the agents or publishers take care of that, which brings us to my next lesson learned.
Professionalism. Be in it to win it. Be objective and on. Write the best book you can and try to avoid obsessing about publishing. When you’re ready, and the book is as good as you can make it, start studying the publishing and querying process. Do not just start sending your book out. Read up on agents, what they represent, what they’re looking for. Follow the instructions on their website or in Writer’s Market, or on Publisher’s Marketplace. Never assume you’re the exception to the rule. Be prepared to see your work objectively and take critique. Get real on the chances and on the process. Don’t assume the book you’ve labored on as an act of love is the next big seller. Be kind to the agents that request partials and gracious to those who don’t.
I’m sure as the process progresses that I’ll have a fresh list or a few refinements, but the list above is a good start.
4.07.2009
The Question of Veterans - David's Review of The Steel Remains
There is a question that societies and empires must deal with when wars end: what to do with the displaced veterans. Often they return home as heroes, but that can fade. Just as often, they are left on society’s borders, dejected, with lethal combat skills. How do heroes protect a society that despises them? Do they even know why? How do they live peacefully when killing is all they’re good at? Richard K. Morgan’s the Steel Remains asks these questions brutally, with a challenging approach to adult material. Let me start by saying that is one is most definitely not young adult. It’s full on adult. Rated R adult. In some places it might be NC-17, but that’s a whole other debate that I’m not here for.
Let me also say that I’m not here to discuss “writing the other.” More influential bloggers and accomplished writers have discussed this in depth, to strong effect. There’s a lot of discussion swirling around this book’s main protagonist and since we find out he’s homosexual in the first few pages, I won’t consider telling you this a spoiler. He’s certainly a type we don’t see much in fantasy where homosexual men are portrayed as effeminate bards or predatory pederasts. A lot of the content surrounding the main protagonists is a challenging read, which seems to be Morgan’s main point: the book has been lauded for challenging fantasy conventions, but I found its plot to be comfortably familiar. There’s even a bit of deus ex machina at work as gods move their chess pieces about. It uses a lot of the regular trappings of fantasy: dual knife wielding dark “elves,” mysterious, miraculous blades with great names, religious zealots, other worlds or states of being reached through magic, and accomplished heroes. These elements get woven into a more embittered world, where good and evil don’t exist. Everything, and everyone, has a shade of gray to them. Slavery, drug use, hedonistic sexuality, and language I would not use on a regular basis are all on full display. The world is still reeling from a war, and in this the protagonists stumble. The world itself is a good one, well worth a side trip, but I’m not sure I’m ready to spend a full series there.
The ultimate question is of course, is the Steel Remains a good book? The story had me gripped at points, but the clear, open-ended threads left dangling signaled a trilogy or series. After Robert Jordan, I’m a little nervous about loose threads. A lot of build up was done without a payoff. Some important events were told and not shown. There are a few good twists, so the plot carried me, but I had a hard time accepting the characters’ motivations. I like what Morgan is trying to do, which is stretch the genre, but I think that aside from a few adult trappings, the book fails to do anything new.
Let me also say that I’m not here to discuss “writing the other.” More influential bloggers and accomplished writers have discussed this in depth, to strong effect. There’s a lot of discussion swirling around this book’s main protagonist and since we find out he’s homosexual in the first few pages, I won’t consider telling you this a spoiler. He’s certainly a type we don’t see much in fantasy where homosexual men are portrayed as effeminate bards or predatory pederasts. A lot of the content surrounding the main protagonists is a challenging read, which seems to be Morgan’s main point: the book has been lauded for challenging fantasy conventions, but I found its plot to be comfortably familiar. There’s even a bit of deus ex machina at work as gods move their chess pieces about. It uses a lot of the regular trappings of fantasy: dual knife wielding dark “elves,” mysterious, miraculous blades with great names, religious zealots, other worlds or states of being reached through magic, and accomplished heroes. These elements get woven into a more embittered world, where good and evil don’t exist. Everything, and everyone, has a shade of gray to them. Slavery, drug use, hedonistic sexuality, and language I would not use on a regular basis are all on full display. The world is still reeling from a war, and in this the protagonists stumble. The world itself is a good one, well worth a side trip, but I’m not sure I’m ready to spend a full series there.
The ultimate question is of course, is the Steel Remains a good book? The story had me gripped at points, but the clear, open-ended threads left dangling signaled a trilogy or series. After Robert Jordan, I’m a little nervous about loose threads. A lot of build up was done without a payoff. Some important events were told and not shown. There are a few good twists, so the plot carried me, but I had a hard time accepting the characters’ motivations. I like what Morgan is trying to do, which is stretch the genre, but I think that aside from a few adult trappings, the book fails to do anything new.
3.26.2009
David’s Review of Dark Haven by Gail Martin
iPod: Yaov. Good stuff!
Backpack: Finally continuing to read R. A. Salvatore’s Cleric Quintet.
I like where she’s going with this. Gail Martin’s third book in the Chronicles of the Necromancer series is out, and she’s chosen to answer a question: what happens in a fantasy world after the big bad is destroyed? A black and white world of moral absolutes can get a lot greyer. Martin has upped the politics and intrigue, setting up factions, each wanting the new king of Margolan dead for their own reasons. A lot of the factions are being opportunistic, taking advantage of the fallout. The protagonists won their war, only to now face a situation where they can’t easily name the enemy attacking them. She’s dealt them a pyrrhic victory. They won their last war but are they too weak to survive the next round?
There’s a bit more romance to this volume, but it’s no detriment. Martin connects her characters on something other than mere appearance, a problem I have with a lot of fantasy. She escapes this cliché. I wouldn’t mind seeing the romance having a bit more conflict, a bit more challenge, but with everything else she’s throwing at them, a little happiness isn’t a bad thing.
I really liked Dark Haven’s battle scenes. I felt like that Martin capitalized on the potential of her characters a bit more, especially Tris Drayke, the Summoner king. The spirits came into play in ways I didn’t expect. This was my only real complaint about the second volume was that she didn’t play as far and wide with the toys she’d crafted as I’d felt she could. She’s making up for it now. One warning, she left it on a cliffhanger, and I’m anxious to continue the story.
Backpack: Finally continuing to read R. A. Salvatore’s Cleric Quintet.
I like where she’s going with this. Gail Martin’s third book in the Chronicles of the Necromancer series is out, and she’s chosen to answer a question: what happens in a fantasy world after the big bad is destroyed? A black and white world of moral absolutes can get a lot greyer. Martin has upped the politics and intrigue, setting up factions, each wanting the new king of Margolan dead for their own reasons. A lot of the factions are being opportunistic, taking advantage of the fallout. The protagonists won their war, only to now face a situation where they can’t easily name the enemy attacking them. She’s dealt them a pyrrhic victory. They won their last war but are they too weak to survive the next round?
There’s a bit more romance to this volume, but it’s no detriment. Martin connects her characters on something other than mere appearance, a problem I have with a lot of fantasy. She escapes this cliché. I wouldn’t mind seeing the romance having a bit more conflict, a bit more challenge, but with everything else she’s throwing at them, a little happiness isn’t a bad thing.
I really liked Dark Haven’s battle scenes. I felt like that Martin capitalized on the potential of her characters a bit more, especially Tris Drayke, the Summoner king. The spirits came into play in ways I didn’t expect. This was my only real complaint about the second volume was that she didn’t play as far and wide with the toys she’d crafted as I’d felt she could. She’s making up for it now. One warning, she left it on a cliffhanger, and I’m anxious to continue the story.
3.17.2009
Aspiration and Inspiration
I was asked this week to name a book that had profoundedly affected me and inspired me to write. There are a lot, all demonstrating the power of language, but I choose to focus on Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye.
I am not entirely certain that I will fully "get" this book until I'm a middle aged woman, otherwise, never.
When I was eighteen, living in Dallas and trying to find my footing as someone on the verge of adulthood and responsibility, a friend recommended that I read Cat's Eye. I had to seek it out used, misfiled under Science Fiction, and I think I paid 80 cents for it.
It's a story about a lot of things, but at the same time it's not easy to sum up. It starts with a myth, of how when we kill something, that thing becomes a part of us. In the plot, it's a girl's spirit which is crushed and she forms a symbiotic relationship with her primary tormentor. Art and memory are two very important themes. What we lose in life as we age, and what we get back in lucky moments of rediscovering ourselves powers the plot, which leaps around in time as different incidents and facts surface in the mind of the main character. The book shuffles the main character's memory like a deck of cards and you have to stay with it to put all of the pieces together. It's certainly too uneventful and internal to ever be a movie.
The book profoundly affected me at the time, like a sip of wine at a very young age: it didn't quite taste right but I knew that if I gave it time there was a world of experience and subtle variations that would open up to me as I matured.
I skipped class, sat in my car, and read the book in a day. I had to reread it again, several times, annually, before I think I fully managed to crack open Atwood's thoughts. I recommended it to everyone I knew, and they all just shook their head at me. They'd heard of the Handmaid's Tale, or read that book in high school, but Cat's Eye was unknown to them.
I'm not big on first editions, believing that books should be distributed and read, not collected; but I have a copy of this one. Every time I go into a used bookstore, if they have a copy on hand I buy it and give it away, sometimes at random.
Atwood's career has blossomed since then. She won the Booker prize and has written some incredible books (Lady Oracle is fantastic), but Cat's Eye remains my favorite of hers, probably my favorite book of all time. I had a professor once say that you have to love people to be a writer, but I disagreed. I don't think Margaret Atwood loves people. In fact, I think she's a bit misanthrophic. She's challenging to read and her characters can be hard to root for. I don't think I could ever be as good a writer as Atwood, but reading Cat's Eye certainly made me want to try.
I am not entirely certain that I will fully "get" this book until I'm a middle aged woman, otherwise, never.
When I was eighteen, living in Dallas and trying to find my footing as someone on the verge of adulthood and responsibility, a friend recommended that I read Cat's Eye. I had to seek it out used, misfiled under Science Fiction, and I think I paid 80 cents for it.
It's a story about a lot of things, but at the same time it's not easy to sum up. It starts with a myth, of how when we kill something, that thing becomes a part of us. In the plot, it's a girl's spirit which is crushed and she forms a symbiotic relationship with her primary tormentor. Art and memory are two very important themes. What we lose in life as we age, and what we get back in lucky moments of rediscovering ourselves powers the plot, which leaps around in time as different incidents and facts surface in the mind of the main character. The book shuffles the main character's memory like a deck of cards and you have to stay with it to put all of the pieces together. It's certainly too uneventful and internal to ever be a movie.
The book profoundly affected me at the time, like a sip of wine at a very young age: it didn't quite taste right but I knew that if I gave it time there was a world of experience and subtle variations that would open up to me as I matured.
I skipped class, sat in my car, and read the book in a day. I had to reread it again, several times, annually, before I think I fully managed to crack open Atwood's thoughts. I recommended it to everyone I knew, and they all just shook their head at me. They'd heard of the Handmaid's Tale, or read that book in high school, but Cat's Eye was unknown to them.
I'm not big on first editions, believing that books should be distributed and read, not collected; but I have a copy of this one. Every time I go into a used bookstore, if they have a copy on hand I buy it and give it away, sometimes at random.
Atwood's career has blossomed since then. She won the Booker prize and has written some incredible books (Lady Oracle is fantastic), but Cat's Eye remains my favorite of hers, probably my favorite book of all time. I had a professor once say that you have to love people to be a writer, but I disagreed. I don't think Margaret Atwood loves people. In fact, I think she's a bit misanthrophic. She's challenging to read and her characters can be hard to root for. I don't think I could ever be as good a writer as Atwood, but reading Cat's Eye certainly made me want to try.
3.08.2009
Beauty and the Nine Volt Battery
Mood: Up. My move is complete and I found the coffee pot. All my hard drives survived.
On the iPod: Gabriel Yared’s rejected Troy soundtrack.
In the Backpack: Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life.
The construction of beauty, particularly as it pertains to woman, is an old topic. The myth of Pygmalion revolves around just that: a sculptor who creates the perfect woman from stone. Hitchcock covered the topic with surreal, analytical depth in Vertigo. The Stepford Wives was Ira Levine’s sci-fi/horror analysis of the myth: man’s quest to control woman by building her better, if more limited. I think Levine’s take was powerful, just avoid the recent terrible remake of the movie. And you can’t really go wrong with Vertigo, though the animation sequence dates the movie terribly. The latest person to consider this topic, of constructed woman, is Joss Whedon, in his Fox series Dollhouse.
I know Dollhouse is taking a lot of flack in the press, but I’ve decided to look at it without the filter of Firefly (which let’s face it, was pretty damn good television). Dollhouse is looking beyond just the construction of a man’s physical ideal. In Dollhouse, people can ask for the perfect anything and have it custom created for the right price.
It’s a premise with a lot of potential, as well as a horrifying possibility. We look at a future of designer genes, designer babies and the ability to alter our traits rather quickly. Plastic surgery alone offers a field ripe with story potential. Sci-fi certainly is filled with examples of the custom person, built to order. The genre is also filled with examples of the idea gone horribly wrong (Whedon used the concept in Serenity and it came up occasionally in Buffy).
But is Dollhouse any good? I’d say yes. A nice twist this week took me by surprise. A little more intrigue and a little less of the fun personality/costume changes would go a long ways to increasing the concept, but I think I can see where Whedon is aiming and I trust him enough to let him run with it.
Suspense television these last few years, particularly of the Sci-fi variety, has had some incredible examples to work with. Lost and Battlestar Galactica have both kept us on the edge of our seats. Dollhouse is hardly that level of intensity, but frankly, I need a bit more lightness. I can only handle so much of Battlestar’s weight before I want to turn to something smart but dopey looking. I’m giving Dollhouse a B, but I’m keeping with it for a while. After all, the first few episodes of Buffy were hardly instant classics.
On the iPod: Gabriel Yared’s rejected Troy soundtrack.
In the Backpack: Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life.
The construction of beauty, particularly as it pertains to woman, is an old topic. The myth of Pygmalion revolves around just that: a sculptor who creates the perfect woman from stone. Hitchcock covered the topic with surreal, analytical depth in Vertigo. The Stepford Wives was Ira Levine’s sci-fi/horror analysis of the myth: man’s quest to control woman by building her better, if more limited. I think Levine’s take was powerful, just avoid the recent terrible remake of the movie. And you can’t really go wrong with Vertigo, though the animation sequence dates the movie terribly. The latest person to consider this topic, of constructed woman, is Joss Whedon, in his Fox series Dollhouse.
I know Dollhouse is taking a lot of flack in the press, but I’ve decided to look at it without the filter of Firefly (which let’s face it, was pretty damn good television). Dollhouse is looking beyond just the construction of a man’s physical ideal. In Dollhouse, people can ask for the perfect anything and have it custom created for the right price.
It’s a premise with a lot of potential, as well as a horrifying possibility. We look at a future of designer genes, designer babies and the ability to alter our traits rather quickly. Plastic surgery alone offers a field ripe with story potential. Sci-fi certainly is filled with examples of the custom person, built to order. The genre is also filled with examples of the idea gone horribly wrong (Whedon used the concept in Serenity and it came up occasionally in Buffy).
But is Dollhouse any good? I’d say yes. A nice twist this week took me by surprise. A little more intrigue and a little less of the fun personality/costume changes would go a long ways to increasing the concept, but I think I can see where Whedon is aiming and I trust him enough to let him run with it.
Suspense television these last few years, particularly of the Sci-fi variety, has had some incredible examples to work with. Lost and Battlestar Galactica have both kept us on the edge of our seats. Dollhouse is hardly that level of intensity, but frankly, I need a bit more lightness. I can only handle so much of Battlestar’s weight before I want to turn to something smart but dopey looking. I’m giving Dollhouse a B, but I’m keeping with it for a while. After all, the first few episodes of Buffy were hardly instant classics.
3.04.2009
The Passing of a Friend
We deal with mentors a lot in fantasy. Thanks to the mythic cycle, we also deal a lot with their passing. Many a good story gets a solid kick when the mentor dies and the student must avenge his master. Moving past the mentor is an important rite of passage for a hero, but in real life, our mentors are people who teach us and believe in us. Then they are gone, and we’re often left a bit more alone and thrust into the unknown without their experience to guide us.
One of my own mentors died recently. Though I only just found out, I have to admit that it’s affecting me more than I thought it would.
Dr. Paul Farkas of Metropolitan State College was my advisor in my English Literature degree. As I stretched my two degrees out over many years, he was also someone I had a lot of contact with. In my first semester as Metro in 2000, I took his course on James Joyce. In my last semester of 2007, I took his Literary Criticism course. His course on Myth, Symbol, and Allusion helped shape my thoughts on the myths and archetypes I wanted to work with in my writing. Further, he did a lot of work with me on myth and popular culture. We analyzed modern myths like Buffy or Xena, often finding humor in how mythic archetypes get replayed in . We shared a love of Margaret Atwood, and I never visited his office without remarking how we owned many of the same books and same editions. One of the things I’ll always remember about Dr. Farkas was his support of me in my writing and aspirations for graduate school. He wore these rather outdated sweater vests and khakis that marked him in my mind as the consummate English professor. He loved Joyce and Auden. Finally, he introduced me to Rilke, a gift for which I will always be grateful. I don’t know where his spirit has gone, but I wish him good journeys. I don’t know where he will be, but I hope he is surrounded by books he loves. Literature was his life, he said once. Analyzing it was a constant process and work of love for him. It was a gift he helped nurture in me.
One of my own mentors died recently. Though I only just found out, I have to admit that it’s affecting me more than I thought it would.
Dr. Paul Farkas of Metropolitan State College was my advisor in my English Literature degree. As I stretched my two degrees out over many years, he was also someone I had a lot of contact with. In my first semester as Metro in 2000, I took his course on James Joyce. In my last semester of 2007, I took his Literary Criticism course. His course on Myth, Symbol, and Allusion helped shape my thoughts on the myths and archetypes I wanted to work with in my writing. Further, he did a lot of work with me on myth and popular culture. We analyzed modern myths like Buffy or Xena, often finding humor in how mythic archetypes get replayed in . We shared a love of Margaret Atwood, and I never visited his office without remarking how we owned many of the same books and same editions. One of the things I’ll always remember about Dr. Farkas was his support of me in my writing and aspirations for graduate school. He wore these rather outdated sweater vests and khakis that marked him in my mind as the consummate English professor. He loved Joyce and Auden. Finally, he introduced me to Rilke, a gift for which I will always be grateful. I don’t know where his spirit has gone, but I wish him good journeys. I don’t know where he will be, but I hope he is surrounded by books he loves. Literature was his life, he said once. Analyzing it was a constant process and work of love for him. It was a gift he helped nurture in me.
2.21.2009
What We Carry On Our Tongues
I read this article today with a bit of sadness mixed with deep interest. As a native English speaker, who has only taken other languages for fun, I find the topic of endangered languages very interesting. After all, English is rapidly becoming the singular language in many places. Linguistic studies indicate that speakers of other languages soon lose their original tongue after immigration (usually by the third generation).
So what’s the problem? What does losing an obscure language cost all of us? The article spells it out: culture. Poetry, literature (usually oral), traditions, and beliefs, these are all lost to us once a language dies out. Of course, in some cases, we’re able to translate documents or eventually unlock what’s left behind, as in the case of Linear B, but the intrinsic native meaning of so much is lost forever.
Anthropology 101 was a long time ago, so long in fact that we had 101s, but I was fascinated by the potential of other, primitive cultures. One fact I carried away was the study of oral literature and memory “hooks,” those oft repeated phrases in the Iliad or Odyssey, which help the poets catch a moment of mental breath in order to remember more of the epic poem. What epics are lost when a culture vanishes?
In fantasy, there are always ruins. Our characters inhabit a world that they don’t often well understand. Whether they are the remnants of our own technological age, an alien civilization, or simply other cultures, ruins are wonderful doorways into the imagination. We often project our own cultural expectations onto them, which is definitely made easier when we cannot read what literature might be available. It took Archeology and Anthropology (both fairly young sciences) a while to understand that a clinical removal of perspective is necessary, but even then, Anthropologists realized that a studied people react differently than an unstudied one. It all comes back to “show not tell.” We can read a story, we can translate it, but it will never be the same as what the initial culture experienced, and that’s the tragedy of a lost language.
So what’s the problem? What does losing an obscure language cost all of us? The article spells it out: culture. Poetry, literature (usually oral), traditions, and beliefs, these are all lost to us once a language dies out. Of course, in some cases, we’re able to translate documents or eventually unlock what’s left behind, as in the case of Linear B, but the intrinsic native meaning of so much is lost forever.
Anthropology 101 was a long time ago, so long in fact that we had 101s, but I was fascinated by the potential of other, primitive cultures. One fact I carried away was the study of oral literature and memory “hooks,” those oft repeated phrases in the Iliad or Odyssey, which help the poets catch a moment of mental breath in order to remember more of the epic poem. What epics are lost when a culture vanishes?
In fantasy, there are always ruins. Our characters inhabit a world that they don’t often well understand. Whether they are the remnants of our own technological age, an alien civilization, or simply other cultures, ruins are wonderful doorways into the imagination. We often project our own cultural expectations onto them, which is definitely made easier when we cannot read what literature might be available. It took Archeology and Anthropology (both fairly young sciences) a while to understand that a clinical removal of perspective is necessary, but even then, Anthropologists realized that a studied people react differently than an unstudied one. It all comes back to “show not tell.” We can read a story, we can translate it, but it will never be the same as what the initial culture experienced, and that’s the tragedy of a lost language.
2.17.2009
I Really Wasn’t Trying to Complain About the Family Friendly
Just watched the second season episode of Torchwood called Adam. (Yeah, I’m quite behind on Television). That was most definitely not a Doctor Who episode. The writers seem to be doing a good job of building up the sense that Torchwood = loss. Characters have to give up a lot of themselves to live in the world they do. They resolve conflict, save the world while looking good doing it, but they pay a dark and heavy price.
At the center of the conflict is our Point of View character, Gwen Cooper. Her relationship with her boyfriend (first season) / fiancé (second season) is the crux of her character. Rhys is Gwen’s anchor to the world outside Torchwood’s bizarre investigations.
I don’t have to tell you that I’m buying it, as obviously I’m into the second season. Still, the sheer darkness of the story world had me wince a few times last night. One thing I’m enjoying about these BBC shows is the short seasons. There isn’t a lot of room for fluff or irrelevant story, though I do find it a bit light on the character development angle. While it’s comparable to other monster of the week shows, I think Torchwood so far has shown a bit more willingness to risk characters’ lives and vary from formula. This definitely isn’t Doctor Who, and it isn’t Buffy, though both of those series are clearly strong influences.
The BBC is about to air Season Three. By the time we get it over here I should be all caught up and quite ready for more.
At the center of the conflict is our Point of View character, Gwen Cooper. Her relationship with her boyfriend (first season) / fiancé (second season) is the crux of her character. Rhys is Gwen’s anchor to the world outside Torchwood’s bizarre investigations.
I don’t have to tell you that I’m buying it, as obviously I’m into the second season. Still, the sheer darkness of the story world had me wince a few times last night. One thing I’m enjoying about these BBC shows is the short seasons. There isn’t a lot of room for fluff or irrelevant story, though I do find it a bit light on the character development angle. While it’s comparable to other monster of the week shows, I think Torchwood so far has shown a bit more willingness to risk characters’ lives and vary from formula. This definitely isn’t Doctor Who, and it isn’t Buffy, though both of those series are clearly strong influences.
The BBC is about to air Season Three. By the time we get it over here I should be all caught up and quite ready for more.
Lean and Mean
In the backpack: Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell
On the IPod: Lisa Gerrard, Ichi Soundtrack
I finished my whole draft of Eastlight in the fall. It had evolved so far from its original shape that looking back over the original scraps, I found it almost unrecognizable. And to be honest, I'm a bit embarrassed by them. So now I've finished another novel, but I had to ask myself the hard question: is it any good?
I’d like to think so, but at 85,000 words, I kept feeling like the book was a bit bloated. There was more description than I needed, particularly in the first, crucial, section. I gave the book to Alan (from over at RandomTope) and his input reflected what I already knew: we needed to do some pruning.
World-building is a key element in fantasy, but it has to be balanced against action. Alan was right on the money when he told me I’d put so much thought into all the factions and politics that the action was taking a backseat.
By the time I finished editing the first half of the book, I’d cut out 5,000 words. A full edit brought the cut to 8,000, though I decided to add a few scenes and the whole thing ended at 79,000. Why all the details on the word count? First, it’s what agents and editors work with, not page counts.
If you analyze a few paperbacks at random, you’ll notice that the word per page count varies wildly. Eastlight is meant to be a first novel, sure, I hope to make it a series, but for now it needs to be as brief and tightly written as possible. All those extra political factions were adding color, but so much that the main conflict wasn’t clear.
The second reason I focused on word count is that Stephen King’s advice in his excellent On Writing, is that an edit should reduce the word count by about 10 percent.
A final note on the importance of the first section: it’s the first thing a reader sees. I imagine at the bookstore, picking Eastlight off the shelf. They read the first line. Does it grab them? They read the first few pages, does it make them want to read more? That’s my goal, to grab them early and hold onto them till the end.
I think I can safely delete those old drafts of Eastlight. A little comparison shows me how much I’ve grown as a writer. The second half of the book needed a lot less cutting than the first. I’ve still got a ways to go, and I never want to stop improving; but I feel like I’m getting it, advancing in a craft and truly seeing a marked improvement in what I write.
On the IPod: Lisa Gerrard, Ichi Soundtrack
I finished my whole draft of Eastlight in the fall. It had evolved so far from its original shape that looking back over the original scraps, I found it almost unrecognizable. And to be honest, I'm a bit embarrassed by them. So now I've finished another novel, but I had to ask myself the hard question: is it any good?
I’d like to think so, but at 85,000 words, I kept feeling like the book was a bit bloated. There was more description than I needed, particularly in the first, crucial, section. I gave the book to Alan (from over at RandomTope) and his input reflected what I already knew: we needed to do some pruning.
World-building is a key element in fantasy, but it has to be balanced against action. Alan was right on the money when he told me I’d put so much thought into all the factions and politics that the action was taking a backseat.
By the time I finished editing the first half of the book, I’d cut out 5,000 words. A full edit brought the cut to 8,000, though I decided to add a few scenes and the whole thing ended at 79,000. Why all the details on the word count? First, it’s what agents and editors work with, not page counts.
If you analyze a few paperbacks at random, you’ll notice that the word per page count varies wildly. Eastlight is meant to be a first novel, sure, I hope to make it a series, but for now it needs to be as brief and tightly written as possible. All those extra political factions were adding color, but so much that the main conflict wasn’t clear.
The second reason I focused on word count is that Stephen King’s advice in his excellent On Writing, is that an edit should reduce the word count by about 10 percent.
A final note on the importance of the first section: it’s the first thing a reader sees. I imagine at the bookstore, picking Eastlight off the shelf. They read the first line. Does it grab them? They read the first few pages, does it make them want to read more? That’s my goal, to grab them early and hold onto them till the end.
I think I can safely delete those old drafts of Eastlight. A little comparison shows me how much I’ve grown as a writer. The second half of the book needed a lot less cutting than the first. I’ve still got a ways to go, and I never want to stop improving; but I feel like I’m getting it, advancing in a craft and truly seeing a marked improvement in what I write.
2.16.2009
Studying the Craft and Other Updates
I haven’t been much for the blogging lately, instead having thrown myself so deeply into editing with whatever free time I get; but Eastlight is out for a fresh pair of eyes, so it’s time to catch up a bit on the virtual side.
Unfortunately my reading has slowed a bit as well, but I’m happy to say that I’m taking the time to get a few books in on writing. I’ve returned to a habit of keeping one on me at all times. Ten minutes here, fifteen there, it adds up. And I’m grateful to have wonderful friends, who for Christmas stocked me up on great books from my Amazon wishlist. I’ll be reading through them and reviewing them here over the course of the year. I’ve already read two, so look for those soon.
I’m also getting close to graduating. My final quarter of courses in my “practical” CIS degree is about to end and from there I’ve only got the project. For that I’ll be giving my actual website a badly needed makeover and expansion, just in time to start the submission process for Eastlight. It’s nice to be able to tie things together.
Finally, I’ve discovered another great resource on writing better query letters. Query Shark has reinforced the great advice provided by Kristin Nelson, Miss Snark, Evil Editor, and well, just about everybody else.
Unfortunately my reading has slowed a bit as well, but I’m happy to say that I’m taking the time to get a few books in on writing. I’ve returned to a habit of keeping one on me at all times. Ten minutes here, fifteen there, it adds up. And I’m grateful to have wonderful friends, who for Christmas stocked me up on great books from my Amazon wishlist. I’ll be reading through them and reviewing them here over the course of the year. I’ve already read two, so look for those soon.
I’m also getting close to graduating. My final quarter of courses in my “practical” CIS degree is about to end and from there I’ve only got the project. For that I’ll be giving my actual website a badly needed makeover and expansion, just in time to start the submission process for Eastlight. It’s nice to be able to tie things together.
Finally, I’ve discovered another great resource on writing better query letters. Query Shark has reinforced the great advice provided by Kristin Nelson, Miss Snark, Evil Editor, and well, just about everybody else.
Some Heroes are Timeless. Some just won’t die.
What’s on the ipod right now? Darren Hayes How to Build a Time Machine.
In the backpack: Ursula K Le Guin Steering the Craft.
As a child in Oklahoma, I had an open love of Science Fiction Television. Every night at 6 pm Star Trek reruns would play on Channel 34. I didn’t yet understand that it had been off the air for years. It was all new to me. Even when the cycle of reruns would repeat, it was okay. I reveled in the characters and the adventures. The bright colors of alien worlds, green women, and bizarre outfits (what was it with Gene Rodenberry and pink faux fur anyway?) added a nightly dose of color to my drab rural world.
My father was working nights at the time, and he’d come home after 10, wake me up, and put me in front of the TV to watch Doctor Who with him at 10:30. In that sleepy state, I’d travel time and space with the Doctor. This was the Tom Baker period and I couldn’t tell you how far off our syndication on PBS Channel 13 was from the original British airdate. I wanted a TARDIS. I wanted a robot dog. I wanted to be Adric (he made math cool in my adolescent eyes).
At some point Doctor Who decayed for me. PBS stopped airing it or I stopped watching. I knew it was still out there, getting lower budgets and a bit weirder. (I remember tuning in once to see ice monsters made of cellophane wrap and plastic party ware). So the Doctor and his adventures slipped into my past, a nice hazy memory of watching TV with my dad.
It took me a while to check out the BBC’s recent revival. I knew Russell T. Davies could write witty dialogue. I knew he’d update it for a twenty-first century world. I knew I also liked Steven Moffat’s writing, but in my brain it remained kid’s stuff, something I’d left behind.
I gave it another shot recently, brought in by the tricky bit of marketing they used to bring back Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, the robot dog I so remembered. Sarah Jane was a vaguer memory, but she’d been part of the mythos when I was little, so off I went on another trip with the Doctor.
The Sarah Jane episode really brought home the sense of lost first loves and closure. She had to move on, let go. In doing so, she got a new life, new purpose, and got her dog back.
Yeah, it’s still kind of kid’s stuff: family friendly and a bit adolescent, but it’s grown up enough to play with themes of loss and growth. I’m all caught up, through Season Four, and while David Tennant’s departure saddens me, I’m going to stick with it for a bit. Maybe someday I’ll have a son and we’ll be dragging out the DVDs. Maybe I’ll even name him Adric.
In the backpack: Ursula K Le Guin Steering the Craft.
As a child in Oklahoma, I had an open love of Science Fiction Television. Every night at 6 pm Star Trek reruns would play on Channel 34. I didn’t yet understand that it had been off the air for years. It was all new to me. Even when the cycle of reruns would repeat, it was okay. I reveled in the characters and the adventures. The bright colors of alien worlds, green women, and bizarre outfits (what was it with Gene Rodenberry and pink faux fur anyway?) added a nightly dose of color to my drab rural world.
My father was working nights at the time, and he’d come home after 10, wake me up, and put me in front of the TV to watch Doctor Who with him at 10:30. In that sleepy state, I’d travel time and space with the Doctor. This was the Tom Baker period and I couldn’t tell you how far off our syndication on PBS Channel 13 was from the original British airdate. I wanted a TARDIS. I wanted a robot dog. I wanted to be Adric (he made math cool in my adolescent eyes).
At some point Doctor Who decayed for me. PBS stopped airing it or I stopped watching. I knew it was still out there, getting lower budgets and a bit weirder. (I remember tuning in once to see ice monsters made of cellophane wrap and plastic party ware). So the Doctor and his adventures slipped into my past, a nice hazy memory of watching TV with my dad.
It took me a while to check out the BBC’s recent revival. I knew Russell T. Davies could write witty dialogue. I knew he’d update it for a twenty-first century world. I knew I also liked Steven Moffat’s writing, but in my brain it remained kid’s stuff, something I’d left behind.
I gave it another shot recently, brought in by the tricky bit of marketing they used to bring back Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, the robot dog I so remembered. Sarah Jane was a vaguer memory, but she’d been part of the mythos when I was little, so off I went on another trip with the Doctor.
The Sarah Jane episode really brought home the sense of lost first loves and closure. She had to move on, let go. In doing so, she got a new life, new purpose, and got her dog back.
Yeah, it’s still kind of kid’s stuff: family friendly and a bit adolescent, but it’s grown up enough to play with themes of loss and growth. I’m all caught up, through Season Four, and while David Tennant’s departure saddens me, I’m going to stick with it for a bit. Maybe someday I’ll have a son and we’ll be dragging out the DVDs. Maybe I’ll even name him Adric.
10.12.2008
Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds
In the backpack right now: Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market
On the ipod: The Frames, Keepsake
We live in a strange and ever interesting world. Wednesday night, my friend invited me to the symphony, whom were performing the music of the Final Fantasy video games. I was curious to hear it, as the series has been a part of my life since high school, since the first game was released on the original NES. I stopped playing at some point, when I realized that the games were taking ever more hours to beat, and that was time I could be spending reading or writing. Still, I kept up on the series.
Wednesday’s concert included giant video screens showing footage from the games. What surprised me was how much I remembered of the footage they showed, and how good some of the music was once it was taken out of its 16, 32, and even 64 bit context.
Each game, and its cut scene movies or music evoked a very specific memory: escaping away into combat and exploration of continents when high school had me depressed. They showed the trailer for FF 8, whose main character, in the form of a giant face, followed me through Dublin the first time I went to Ireland. Strangely, I never played FF 7, the one most people seem to best remember, but I saw the movie Advent Children this summer when I went to see Colorado’s Black Canyon, an amazing piece of landscape I’ve always wanted to explore.
I was surprised how excited the crowd was to hear the guest conductor name each track. I’ve always known video games had music, it just never occurred to me that it could have such fans.
The symphony did an amazing job, bringing a full chorus to handle the vocals on the more operatic pieces, and I’ll confess that hearing the opera sequence from FF 5 made me break out in a huge grin. I’m sure that a few of the classically minded musicians resented playing material from such a source, but it speaks to the uniqueness of our age when a genre as young as video games can be translated through a media as old as classical music.
On the ipod: The Frames, Keepsake
We live in a strange and ever interesting world. Wednesday night, my friend invited me to the symphony, whom were performing the music of the Final Fantasy video games. I was curious to hear it, as the series has been a part of my life since high school, since the first game was released on the original NES. I stopped playing at some point, when I realized that the games were taking ever more hours to beat, and that was time I could be spending reading or writing. Still, I kept up on the series.
Wednesday’s concert included giant video screens showing footage from the games. What surprised me was how much I remembered of the footage they showed, and how good some of the music was once it was taken out of its 16, 32, and even 64 bit context.
Each game, and its cut scene movies or music evoked a very specific memory: escaping away into combat and exploration of continents when high school had me depressed. They showed the trailer for FF 8, whose main character, in the form of a giant face, followed me through Dublin the first time I went to Ireland. Strangely, I never played FF 7, the one most people seem to best remember, but I saw the movie Advent Children this summer when I went to see Colorado’s Black Canyon, an amazing piece of landscape I’ve always wanted to explore.
I was surprised how excited the crowd was to hear the guest conductor name each track. I’ve always known video games had music, it just never occurred to me that it could have such fans.
The symphony did an amazing job, bringing a full chorus to handle the vocals on the more operatic pieces, and I’ll confess that hearing the opera sequence from FF 5 made me break out in a huge grin. I’m sure that a few of the classically minded musicians resented playing material from such a source, but it speaks to the uniqueness of our age when a genre as young as video games can be translated through a media as old as classical music.
4.19.2008
History and the Family Epic: David’s Review of Dragon Prince
Album I'm listening to today: Lisa Gerrard's Immortal Memory
In the backpack: Sunrunner's Fire by Melanie Rawn and The Splendour that was Egypt by Margaret A. Murray
I got to Melanie Rawn along a strange path. My first exposure to her books was through the cover art: particularly the cover to Sunrunner’s Fire. That Michael Whelan painting is still nicely etched in my memory. I wish I had read Dragon Prince, the first book in this trilogy, in high school (and I hereby date myself by letting you know that’s when it was published). Though I’d already started working with some of the characters and ideas that would become my first still unpublished book, Neophyte, I wasn’t reading much fantasy in 1989.
I wish I had. This book definitely seems to be from a different age of writing: it has a lot description and detail, particularly in the realm of colors. I was struck by her detailing of the clothing and colors, which is nearly overdone at points. I think she veers into romance territory often, but a lot of the darkness I find (okay, and write) in fantasy, isn’t to be found here. The most brutal acts in this book didn’t resonate for me. I didn’t shudder with concern for the characters, and well, maybe I’m being a little too harsh.
If you have read Isabelle Allende’s House of Spirits, you know epic family history can be a powerful device in fiction (though to be fair, House of Spirits is magical realism, and down the street a ways from traditional fantasy). My friend Brian, who recommended Dragon Prince, hinted that the first book is a large amount of buildup, that a lot of its events won’t bear fruit until the second novel. After nearly 600 pages, I’m not sure the payoff is going to be worth it.
Front loading is a big issue for me in books lately. I need to get my review of Blood King up, but it turned my attention to this problem that I hope I can avoid. Dragon Prince follows an older style of epic, whereby all the players are set in position and slowly introduced before any action comes to bear. Summoner did a good job of getting right into the thick of it, while its sequel, Blood King really takes a while to execute its plot.
Dragon Prince makes one other crucial mistake: it tells a lot of important deaths and details, rather than showing them. To cover such a wide range of time and so many characters, this was probably necessary, but it definitely robs the book of a lot of impact. I’m glad I read it, and it was compelling enough that I’m working my way through the other two books in the trilogy, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve already been drawn to it.
In the backpack: Sunrunner's Fire by Melanie Rawn and The Splendour that was Egypt by Margaret A. Murray
I got to Melanie Rawn along a strange path. My first exposure to her books was through the cover art: particularly the cover to Sunrunner’s Fire. That Michael Whelan painting is still nicely etched in my memory. I wish I had read Dragon Prince, the first book in this trilogy, in high school (and I hereby date myself by letting you know that’s when it was published). Though I’d already started working with some of the characters and ideas that would become my first still unpublished book, Neophyte, I wasn’t reading much fantasy in 1989.
I wish I had. This book definitely seems to be from a different age of writing: it has a lot description and detail, particularly in the realm of colors. I was struck by her detailing of the clothing and colors, which is nearly overdone at points. I think she veers into romance territory often, but a lot of the darkness I find (okay, and write) in fantasy, isn’t to be found here. The most brutal acts in this book didn’t resonate for me. I didn’t shudder with concern for the characters, and well, maybe I’m being a little too harsh.
If you have read Isabelle Allende’s House of Spirits, you know epic family history can be a powerful device in fiction (though to be fair, House of Spirits is magical realism, and down the street a ways from traditional fantasy). My friend Brian, who recommended Dragon Prince, hinted that the first book is a large amount of buildup, that a lot of its events won’t bear fruit until the second novel. After nearly 600 pages, I’m not sure the payoff is going to be worth it.
Front loading is a big issue for me in books lately. I need to get my review of Blood King up, but it turned my attention to this problem that I hope I can avoid. Dragon Prince follows an older style of epic, whereby all the players are set in position and slowly introduced before any action comes to bear. Summoner did a good job of getting right into the thick of it, while its sequel, Blood King really takes a while to execute its plot.
Dragon Prince makes one other crucial mistake: it tells a lot of important deaths and details, rather than showing them. To cover such a wide range of time and so many characters, this was probably necessary, but it definitely robs the book of a lot of impact. I’m glad I read it, and it was compelling enough that I’m working my way through the other two books in the trilogy, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve already been drawn to it.
4.08.2008
Sultry Fairytale: David’s Review of Thief with no Shadow by Emily Gee
Album Playing tonight: Twilight as Sung by the Twilight Singers.
I bought this book a while ago. It’s the third book by Hyperion that I’ve read, and so far I’m impressed. While Summoner was a good little ghost story, Thief with no Shadow is fairly less epic in its aim, though I think it is better written. Gee’s sentences are simple in style but with good color and depth. She spins a fairly simple plot that drew me in to its depths.
It reminded me of Caroline Stevermer’s When the King Comes Home, which was another simple book that had a lot of thought put into it. Thief is definitely more adult. I wouldn’t pass it along to my teenage daughter, though I was pleased with the distinct voice of the main character. The sexuality is still pretty minimal but not easy to digest. One of the things I think Gee did best was essentialist world-crafting: I got the right amount of detail to envision her locales but not so much that I got lost in boring details of customs or travelogue.
If you’ve noticed that I haven’t given you a plot summary, I should tell you that it’s on purpose. Pick this one up and discover by chance, like I did. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Like its main character, it will sneak up on you.
I bought this book a while ago. It’s the third book by Hyperion that I’ve read, and so far I’m impressed. While Summoner was a good little ghost story, Thief with no Shadow is fairly less epic in its aim, though I think it is better written. Gee’s sentences are simple in style but with good color and depth. She spins a fairly simple plot that drew me in to its depths.
It reminded me of Caroline Stevermer’s When the King Comes Home, which was another simple book that had a lot of thought put into it. Thief is definitely more adult. I wouldn’t pass it along to my teenage daughter, though I was pleased with the distinct voice of the main character. The sexuality is still pretty minimal but not easy to digest. One of the things I think Gee did best was essentialist world-crafting: I got the right amount of detail to envision her locales but not so much that I got lost in boring details of customs or travelogue.
If you’ve noticed that I haven’t given you a plot summary, I should tell you that it’s on purpose. Pick this one up and discover by chance, like I did. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Like its main character, it will sneak up on you.
4.01.2008
No Future in Sight
Today's Ipod song? Nothing. The chaos wave affecting my technology finally hit the pod.
S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire is exactly the type of fantasy that I try to avoid. I have it on good authority that it’s well written and fascinating. What would happen if all of our much vaunted technology was suddenly zapped and ceased to function? In Stirling’s view, it would be interesting chaos: some social conventions would completely die out, others would thrive. The idea that we’re so close to a complete and utter collapse of society sends all too familiar shivers up my spine not because I necessarily believe it, but because I’ve heard it all too often, and it echoes against something drilled into me for many years.
My mother and stepfather are apocalyptic Christians, which means they strongly believe strongly that at any moment the world will unravel, the Rapture will happen, the United Nations will come over the hills seeking our guns and put us all into concentration camps. Hearing this nearly every day in high school didn’t do much for my sense of futurism. It fed in me a distinct fatalism. What was the point of college? Striving for a better career? Any effort you put forth to improve yourself was soon to be wiped out by a cataclysmic change. The best you could do is remain pure in thought or deed, remain as static as possible, in case today was the day when all hell would break loose.
I rejected this teaching in time. I had something in me far too Humanist, far too curious, to do nothing with my life. Having a job flipping burgers could have contributed to it, but I wanted more.
When I first began reading the Enlightenment thinkers, I understood where they were coming from. They were trying to reason on logic while also updating their methodology. I won’t say they hit their mark, but I found in Voltaire and Franklin sympathetic minds. I strive for the rational, though sometimes the superstitious still lurks at the edge of my mind. When I see people being injected with RFID tags for security purposes my mind immediately leaps to the Mark of the Beast. The more I see our privacy violated the more I worry that the world could teeter in that destructive direction. Maybe it will. Maybe my mother was right all those years ago when she told me the tales of the tortures we’d all face at the hands of a world government.
I believe this world is worth living in, that for every terror the nightly news shows us, there is a sublime beauty in nature or in the arts. By endlessly contemplating the horrors awaiting those left behind, my mother fails to edify those she could help: instead of remaining static, she could be feeding the poor, educating the illiterate, improving the world a little bit at a time.
There is only so much time in a life. At thirty-four I know I’m at the halfway mark. It doesn’t make me dread the mystery of the end; it makes me want to do more, faster. If we’re all doomed by some asteroid the government isn’t telling us about or by the work of the devil, I’d still rather get what good done that I can, rather than waste time contemplating the inevitable end.
S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire is exactly the type of fantasy that I try to avoid. I have it on good authority that it’s well written and fascinating. What would happen if all of our much vaunted technology was suddenly zapped and ceased to function? In Stirling’s view, it would be interesting chaos: some social conventions would completely die out, others would thrive. The idea that we’re so close to a complete and utter collapse of society sends all too familiar shivers up my spine not because I necessarily believe it, but because I’ve heard it all too often, and it echoes against something drilled into me for many years.
My mother and stepfather are apocalyptic Christians, which means they strongly believe strongly that at any moment the world will unravel, the Rapture will happen, the United Nations will come over the hills seeking our guns and put us all into concentration camps. Hearing this nearly every day in high school didn’t do much for my sense of futurism. It fed in me a distinct fatalism. What was the point of college? Striving for a better career? Any effort you put forth to improve yourself was soon to be wiped out by a cataclysmic change. The best you could do is remain pure in thought or deed, remain as static as possible, in case today was the day when all hell would break loose.
I rejected this teaching in time. I had something in me far too Humanist, far too curious, to do nothing with my life. Having a job flipping burgers could have contributed to it, but I wanted more.
When I first began reading the Enlightenment thinkers, I understood where they were coming from. They were trying to reason on logic while also updating their methodology. I won’t say they hit their mark, but I found in Voltaire and Franklin sympathetic minds. I strive for the rational, though sometimes the superstitious still lurks at the edge of my mind. When I see people being injected with RFID tags for security purposes my mind immediately leaps to the Mark of the Beast. The more I see our privacy violated the more I worry that the world could teeter in that destructive direction. Maybe it will. Maybe my mother was right all those years ago when she told me the tales of the tortures we’d all face at the hands of a world government.
I believe this world is worth living in, that for every terror the nightly news shows us, there is a sublime beauty in nature or in the arts. By endlessly contemplating the horrors awaiting those left behind, my mother fails to edify those she could help: instead of remaining static, she could be feeding the poor, educating the illiterate, improving the world a little bit at a time.
There is only so much time in a life. At thirty-four I know I’m at the halfway mark. It doesn’t make me dread the mystery of the end; it makes me want to do more, faster. If we’re all doomed by some asteroid the government isn’t telling us about or by the work of the devil, I’d still rather get what good done that I can, rather than waste time contemplating the inevitable end.
3.27.2008
Writing from the Cave
My writing sometimes feels very distant from me, like a thing I’m looking for but cannot locate in a cluttered closet. That is how it feels right now: like Eastlight is a world spinning out there on its own, and I can’t connect with it. One thing I’ve always struggled with and need to master, is the ability to just pick up a book I’m writing and be able to work on it regardless of what’s happening in my outer life. It’s not quite the same as inspiration. If I feel uninspired, I can always edit. In fact, that’s the best time for me to edit: when I can read it without wanting to take an idea off in a dozen directions. Right now if feels like going to the gym: a good habit that I’ve gotten out of.
In defense of my laziness, it’s been a hell of a year so far. I do not know if it’s the leap year effect, as some have suggested, the stress of the impending election, the economy, or a dozen other things, but 2008 so far felt very chaotic, like a lot of changes are happening very quickly.
Of course that turns my mind to fantasy. Change can happen so quickly, on such a large scale, that a kingdom can turn from peaceful to oppressive nearly overnight. Coups and political machinations are slowly plotted but often quickly executed. Keeping the people fed and in shelter requires a delicate balance between order and nature. Our world is filled with political strife and starving people. Fantasy mirrors these problems.
Conflict is essential when writing. You don’t want to read a story where everything is idyllic and your main character is completely unchallenged. How can they possibly grow if they don’t experience change? How can we? Change can come quickly, without warning. That is true in life or in fiction.
In defense of my laziness, it’s been a hell of a year so far. I do not know if it’s the leap year effect, as some have suggested, the stress of the impending election, the economy, or a dozen other things, but 2008 so far felt very chaotic, like a lot of changes are happening very quickly.
Of course that turns my mind to fantasy. Change can happen so quickly, on such a large scale, that a kingdom can turn from peaceful to oppressive nearly overnight. Coups and political machinations are slowly plotted but often quickly executed. Keeping the people fed and in shelter requires a delicate balance between order and nature. Our world is filled with political strife and starving people. Fantasy mirrors these problems.
Conflict is essential when writing. You don’t want to read a story where everything is idyllic and your main character is completely unchallenged. How can they possibly grow if they don’t experience change? How can we? Change can come quickly, without warning. That is true in life or in fiction.
3.26.2008
Meth
I’ve seen addiction portrayed in fantasy. Fred Saberhagen used it to great effect in his Song of the Swords series, and I will never forget his image of people letting worms loop through their skin to get the narcotic effect of the chemicals the worms left behind. Let’s leave Herbert out of it for now. The strongest example of addiction I can name in truly popular fantasy was Willow’s use of magic in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I didn’t care for the angle personally, the metaphor felt forced, but if it helped someone out there, then I am grateful for it.
Have you seen the skeletal face of someone strung out on crystal methamphetamine? I’ve seen mummies with more flesh. I’ve seen healthier corpses. As a Family Guy episode quipped, “it’s a hell of a drug.” Addiction comes up in fantasy a lot, usually in response to power, but as I’ve watched meth melt the brain of someone I once cared deeply for, I’m grateful that it doesn’t exist in my fantasy worlds. Now here’s the hard part: do I wish it didn’t exist in the real world either? One of the reasons I write fantasy is to hold a mirror up to reality, not to moralize, but to question. When we escape into fantasy, we get caught up in the adventure and the universe a writer has crafted for us. I read fantasy to escape, to leave earth for a while, but I’ve found that the best fantasy sends something back with me: I return to reality with something to consider, something to think about. By editing out addiction, I run the risk of editing out something to think on, an issue someone might want or need to consider. If I make my worlds too idealized, I run the risk of separating them too far from reality, and losing the reader if they don’t have enough points of connection.
Is meth right for me? Um, hell no. Have a look at the ruined face of a long time user. Have a conversation with them. I think you’ll find it isn’t right for you either, but it’s a question you have to answer for yourself. The issue of addiction is something that permeates our society. In fantasy we might find a healthy way to confront it.
Have you seen the skeletal face of someone strung out on crystal methamphetamine? I’ve seen mummies with more flesh. I’ve seen healthier corpses. As a Family Guy episode quipped, “it’s a hell of a drug.” Addiction comes up in fantasy a lot, usually in response to power, but as I’ve watched meth melt the brain of someone I once cared deeply for, I’m grateful that it doesn’t exist in my fantasy worlds. Now here’s the hard part: do I wish it didn’t exist in the real world either? One of the reasons I write fantasy is to hold a mirror up to reality, not to moralize, but to question. When we escape into fantasy, we get caught up in the adventure and the universe a writer has crafted for us. I read fantasy to escape, to leave earth for a while, but I’ve found that the best fantasy sends something back with me: I return to reality with something to consider, something to think about. By editing out addiction, I run the risk of editing out something to think on, an issue someone might want or need to consider. If I make my worlds too idealized, I run the risk of separating them too far from reality, and losing the reader if they don’t have enough points of connection.
Is meth right for me? Um, hell no. Have a look at the ruined face of a long time user. Have a conversation with them. I think you’ll find it isn’t right for you either, but it’s a question you have to answer for yourself. The issue of addiction is something that permeates our society. In fantasy we might find a healthy way to confront it.
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