Category Archives: On Writing

Sequels

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So I’ve been thinking about sequels lately, for the obvious reasons (starting Water Fall this week) and the not-so-obvious ones (check out next Wednesday’s post for more on that.)

The biggest question most people wrestle with is, how good is the sequel? But for the writer, the bigger question is, what makes the sequel good? In movies, sequel status is almost a death knell. For books, sequels are much more viable and, in fact, the publishing industry usually wants fiction to be serial in nature, rather than a bunch of stand alone novels, since the pre-existing audience makes selling the story much easier. On the other hand, even among books, the first book in a series is frequently viewed as the best, perhaps simply because the ideas and the presentation are fresh and the reader approaches them without expectations, or at least with fewer.

That’s not to say that there are no cases of a sequel being just as good as, if not better than, the proceeding works. But it’s a rare thing, and when it does happen most people are surprised because they recognize that it’s the exception and not the rule. So what are the things that set those rare exceptional sequels head and shoulders above the rest?

Well, as is so often the case, there are at least three main things (probably more, but humans like threes, so that’s how many you get.)

A larger story at work. There are many great examples of this, but I want to be consistent in this post and use something most readers will recognize, so I’m going to pick the classic Star Wars trilogy. The Empire Strikes Back is widely considered the best movie from the trilogy (not by me, but I still feel it’s at least as good as the original, although in different ways) so it’s fair to say it was a sequel that equaled or exceeded the original. One of the things that made it work was the fact that George Lucas wanted A New Hope to feel like part of a larger story. With a galaxy wide rebellion in progress, of which he basically only showed us one small part, it comes as no surprise to us that there’s more story.

Sometimes authors or film makers do a story, wrap everything up, publish and then realize they’ve got bottled lightning as their story just flat out takes off. This can result in awkward sequels getting written, because there was no more story planned for afterward. The simplest way to get around this is to set your story in a world that’s really, really big, with more than enough going on in the background to allow for another story or two. Of course, you can always be planning to slowly spin your stories into one, titanic mythos, as well… Whatever you do, it never hurts to make your world and characters bigger than the bounds of their story,

Excellent use of characters as a resource, rather than an obligation. There is a kind of compulsion, once you have a story you like, to include every aspect you liked about it in the next, especially in terms of characters. This is to be avoided. Your new story needs new characters to stay fresh, and to make room for them sometimes old characters will have to get less screen time, or even catch a bus. The Empire Strikes Back introduced us to people like Lando Calrissian, Yoda and Boba Fett, while the droids and Obi-wan Kenobi got less screen time (although it seems we couldn’t give up Old Ben entirely, even if he was dead…)

Finding the right mix of characters to properly carry out your story is an adventure in trial and error, but as a general rule some kind of re-balancing of characters has to be done. Your main character is probably going to be a constant, although even that’s not an iron clad rule, but new faces have to crop up to give new dynamics to relationships, and old faces have to step back some in order to really make the sequel work.

New developments, as opposed to retreading the same ground. Coyote and Roadrunner do not have sequels, just variations on a theme. The situation must change some from story to story, or people will rapidly loose interest. Star Wars does this particularly well by starting off the second film with a Rebel defeat and chasing them across the galaxy while their heaviest hitter takes a break for self improvement. Then it throws a massive plot twist and a cliff-hanger ending into the mix for added impact. It’s this novel, heavy-hitting formula that makes it so many people’s favorite part of the trilogy. (It’s also only possible because it’s the second film in the set, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Carefully examine the pacing and plotting of your stories, and make sure they’re different from each other. It’s a good rule for all fiction writing, not just stories that are a direct sequel to something else. Also, make sure the plot points themselves aren’t too similar, and that different characters from among your leads and rogue’s gallery are making an impact.

Of course, there’s no recipe for instant great book, but with these three things in place, sequels begin to look a lot like books that stand on their own, rather than just a continuation of what came before. Once a story is judged on its own merits, the some of the stigma of being a sequel is gone. More importantly, by actively trying to make it as fresh as possible you ensure that the story is as good as it can be on its own merits, thus making it as strong as possible. Which is all a writer can really hope to do, anyways.

Writing, Philosophy and the Colors of Magic

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Mark Rosewater is the head designer for Wizard of the Coast’s card game Magic: The Gathering. He’s also a former scriptwriter for the TV show Roseanne and has a degree in communications. He also goes to great pains to interact with the audience of the game and share information with them. One subject that frequently comes up is the color pie.

Now a brief aside, for those unfamiliar with the game – and yes, this does all tie back to writing so I hope those who are interested in my thoughts on that subject won’t tune out. In Magic, players gather land cards and use them to cast a variety of spell cards. Each spell can be one (or more) of five colors (or no color, but that’s much less common.) In order to make the game more interesting, each color tends to do different things with it’s spells. The layout of what color gets what effects is referred to as “the color pie.”

The mechanics of the pie itself aren’t what’s really important to us, so we’ll gloss over that part. What is important is that each color’s abilities are heavily influenced by it’s philosophy. The philosophies of the color pie are as follows:

White wants every one to stand in line for their pie, and will make sure that everyone get’s a piece that’s the same size.

Blue wants to know what’s in the pie, to study the recipe and try to improve it.

Black just wants as much pie as possible, by whatever means are necessary, and hang the consequences.

Red wants pie now, and doesn’t really care about what it takes to get it. Even if the pie is technically on fire when it arrives.

Green wants organic pie, and as much of it as possible.

Each of these philosophies gives different gameplay. For example, White is all about fair play and order, it’s not going to arrange an “accident” for its enemies in order to get its way, though Black might, neither is it going to run about doing things at random, although Red might. That brings us back to Mark Rosewater, the color pie guru.

See, in the time he spends talking with the people who play the game and getting feedback one question that gets asked a lot is, “Why can’t my favorite color do this?” Where “this” is something that the color wouldn’t normally do, like Red spinning a clever illusion to protect itself from attackers. Red sets it’s attackers on fire. (Works a lot better.) The answer Mark gives, every time, is, “That doesn’t fit your favorite color’s philosophy.”

Okay, so you’ve made it this far and there hasn’t been anything about writing yet. So what lessons can we learn about writing from the way Magic handles the color pie? The answer is simple. Your characters have to be consistent to who and what they are at all times, with meticulous attention to their attitudes, ideas, predispositions and prejudices, whether they’re good or bad for you, them or the story, just like the color pie of Magic, or else their impact will become muddled and your story will suffer.

For a simple answer, it sure was long, huh?

Okay, let’s break that down. First, why is an example from a game designer even relevant to a writer? Don’t get into a haughty snit if you’re not a fan of card games or other geeky hobbies. Magic: The Gathering has lasted twenty years and continues to experience growth in sales and mainstream acceptance. Whatever Wizards of the Coast is doing with it, they’re doing right. Mark, as one of the public faces of the game, insists that the color pie is a big part of it and he’s in a position to know. They do research into this stuff.

Second, just like comic book fans tend to identify with some specific character such as Wolverine or the Flash as their “touchstone” in a comic universe, many people who play Magic identify with a specific color. People care about these things, and if they’re not consistent, they cease to be as meaningful. For Magic, the difference between the play styles of the colors is a big part of what gives them their identity. Look at chess. The black and white pieces all work the same. There’s no identity there. The colors of Magic have identity because they’re different, and those differences must be maintained.

As a writer, your characters are what people identify with and touch base with. You have to stubbornly work to keep them distinctive in order to keep people engaged with them. If all the characters start to look the same, they lose value immediately. It’s better for you to have a character that is passionately hated for consistently unpleasant behavior than for you to tinker with the character and wind up with a totally forgettable character. Keep attitudes and dispositions consistent and a character becomes much more believable.

By the same token, actions have to match attitudes or credibility is lost. If a character isn’t likely take part in a plot of his or her own free will, hound them. You have total control over their circumstances. Put other characters in their path constantly, bend circumstances until they have no choice and then hit them with the consequences of avoidance – lost time, missed opportunities, hurt feelings and anything else you can think of. This stuff is the meat and potatoes of the story.

This isn’t to say that characters shouldn’t change over the course of your story. The characters of your story are very dynamic, and free to discover new parts of themselves or go through revelations that challenge and change the way they think. But we have to see the hows and whys of that change, and if you’re not very deliberate about them then you risk damaging your character’s impact. It’s also important not to do too many of these changes at once, or your readers will have trouble keeping track of everything that’s happening. They already have a lot to track in real life.

But in real life, as in card games and writing, consistency is key. It’s a skill well worth developing for the sake of all three endeavors.

Water Fall: Foreward

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You are too dangerous. By nature, what you are and what you can do is too great a possible threat to let into the world. Certainly, you could do great good. But the very fact that you could also do great harm is enough to cause panic, terrify people into either fighting you or bowing down before you. Neither one is good, and the fact that you have the potential to cause both is enough to warrant preventing them entirely. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just the way the world is. Or it’s the times, or the culture or the conclusion of a more enlightened age. Regardless, we all have to live with it. You’ll just have to live more carefully.

It’s a simple premise. In troper terms, it’s called The Masquerade. It’s the foundation of a thousand and one paranormal/urban fantasy story lines. In fact, it’s at the heart of Project Sumter and an inescapable influence on the lives of independent talents like Open Circuit, Heavy Water and the Grappler.

It’s a lie.

On some level, everyone understands that. But the lie makes life so much easier. Just do away with the uncomfortable ideas, hide them from people and drag anyone who uncovers them into your Masquerade and you’ll never have to deal with any large scale problems, am I right?

Except the very act of stifling the information in itself raises problems, often far greater ones than the ones you hoped to suppress. Squashing the truth, spiriting people away, coercing cooperation and browbeating silence all comes with consequences. Ask the Soviets. Grudging acceptance and growing resentment are a powerful and dangerous combination, a powder keg just waiting to go off. Instead of constantly working on a better, more stable solution you wind up running around putting out ground fires while a volcano is about to erupt just underneath your feet.

That which you have whispered in secret will be proclaimed from the rooftops.

Sometimes it will come from avenging angels, come to set the wrongs to right at last. But far more likely it will come from upset, middle aged men who have spent their whole lives struggling against heavy handed declarations of what is best for them, working to understand why they cannot seem to use their best abilities for their own edification and the betterment of themselves and others.

Worse, these people will come out of the woodwork with no mind for negotiation, little or no thoughts for the ramifications of their ideas and no mercy at all. The world they’ve lived in has left no room for such things, and it will be at least partially the fault of the people who have worked all those years for secrecy. That’s not to say there’s no fault resting with the other side. When two people come to blows, there’s usually plenty of blame to go around. But when you’ve spent the entire time trying to keep them quiet, why should they keep trying to talk to you?

So what do you do when your duty is to keep law and order but the way law and order has been kept until now is both immoral and chaotic? For a long time, people like Double Helix, one of Project Sumter’s most powerful and experienced talents, have been pondering that issue. But pondering isn’t change, and when the situation calls for change nothing else will do.

Because little by little, Open Circuit is changing the status quo. And with every crime, a little bit of the Project’s control of the situation is lost. They strike the Project like drops of water, slowly leaking through a crack in the dam. Each one carries away a little of what holds the Masquerade together, widening the crack until the whole edifice must way, and the flood begins.

The water starts falling next week. It will be a sight to see.

Put the Outline Out

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Outlines are something of a controversial subject among writers. Some just don’t like doing it – if they’re going to write, they should just write, right? Some think it constrains them too much. Some think it’s impossible to write anything without at least a thesis statement and a dozen bullet points. Some writers without an outline are constantly on the verge of crippling panic attacks. And on and on it goes.

As I mentioned before, I’m working on the outline for Water Fall, the second book chronicling the activities of the U.S. Government’s secret agency that handles talented individuals (read: superpowers).  This has been a therapeutic exercise for me, because I love outlining. It lets me get all my ideas out somewhere I can look at them and mess with them in a physical (or at least digital) medium.

See, I don’t like to just write and run with it, because whenever I do it I wind up leaving something out. On the other hand, when I’m outlining it’s often a frenzied exercise where things just pour out in a rush. For example, on my first pass at the Water Fall outline there were at least two dozen points where I just wrote, “So-and-so does things.”

Sometimes I included a note as to the tone of the things being done, like, “Tension!” or “Foreshadowing” or, my personal favorite, “CD” which of course stands for “character development.”

Not every part of my outline is that vague, some scenes I have a very clear picture for, they just don’t all string together nicely and I frequently have to fill in the gaps between major events during second and even third passes on the outline. Of course, to keep my mind fresh, I usually let the outline sit for a week or two between passes, which is how I come to “still” be working on it. (Because it’s not like I’ve been writing anything else…)

One reason I like having an outline is because it lets me quickly run through the pacing of my story and see how I like it. It’s at this point that I spend the most time moving things around and tweaking what characters a scene might call for. But this isn’t the be all and end all of what I’m going to need, frequently in the process of writing details that I hadn’t anticipated come up and the outline can get changed on the fly. While I like having it, I try not to let it become diktat, that alone can kill a story.

It’s important to keep your outline and the length of your story in perspective. For example, Heat Wave had an outline with 80 to 90 points to begin with. However, Trial by Winter had a ten point outline. Obviously, Trial by Winter was not 1/8th the length of Heat Wave. Rather, each “point” represented a smaller chunk of the story. (Exactly what kind of outlines I tend to use and how they tend to translate into story is probably a subject for another post.)

On the whole, outlining is something authors can do to help them get a handle on their story and keep the broad strokes of it in mind, and easily at hand, so that when they are buried in the minutia of the story in progress they don’t have to stop and run through everything again in their mind to get a handle on where they are. Whether it’s something that they haven’t written yet or something that has already been put down in digital print, a glance at the outline brings it to mind much faster than relying on memory or having to page through pages and pages of what’s already written.

So, an exercise! (I know, I’ve never done writing exercises before. If you don’t like them I promise they won’t become a regular thing.) Find your favorite book and put together an outline for it. Then, find a story you’ve written and do an outline for that. And lastly, create the outline for a story you’d like to read from scratch. You don’t have to finish it, just rough out the ideas. Most importantly, enjoy!

Genrely Speaking: Cosmic Horror

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Many genres of fiction focus on unanswered questions. However, the allegory is rather used to create stories that vividly illustrate great truths in a clear and forceful way. I use the term “great truths” to refer to those ideas that are central to the way the author looks at the universe, many of these ideas have been hotly contested since the beginning of time.

Cosmic horror is the allegorical fiction of a particular brand of hard core Rationalism, most forcefully pioneered by H.P. Lovecraft. It attempts to illustrate the emptiness of human existence and the meaningless, indifferent nature of the cosmos, not using math, logic or philosophy but rather through the careful application of pure dread. Whether that is because dread was what Lovecraft felt was the most enlightening human emotion or simply because Lovecraft thought it was most likely to produce the desired reaction in his intended audience is unclear.

A few quick notes before we go on. First, like all brands of mythology, cosmic horror has gained a great deal of popular acceptance over the years, although it’s still much more obscure than many other flavors. However, just as the movie Clash of the Titans had little in common with Greek mythology, most aspects of cosmic horror that are used in pop culture today have little to nothing in common with cosmic horror. Don’t be surprised if what I describe sounds nothing like the stories about squidheaded Old Ones you’ve heard before. If you’ve no clue what that even means and/or you’ve never read any Lovecraft, Nylarthotep is a decent primer.

Second, like all brands of fundamentalist religion, cosmic horror is not representative of the whole or even the majority of Rationalist thought. However, also like most brands of fundamentalism, it does show what core ideas look like in their most undiluted form.

Third, debating the validity of core ideas is not what the Internet is best for. While I am going to point out what look, to me, like weaknesses in cosmic horror as a storytelling platform, deconstructing an analyzing the systems of thought behind the genre is not my purpose here. It’s way outside the scope of a single blog post. That said, I’m sure one of the reasons I dislike cosmic horror as a genre so much is that I also find the ideas it’s founded on to be… lacking. I do have a bias when writing this, so keep it in mind.

So what defines this obviously very difficult genre of fiction?

1. A strong emphasis on the insignificance, helplessness and doomed nature of mankind. Lovecraft didn’t think much of humanity, looked on them as something of a cosmic accident. They had stumbled onto Earth with their bizarre ideas of reason, purpose and civilization and proceeded to muck everything up. Fortunately, they were constrained by their nature and doomed to an inevitable fall back into what they had originally come from – primal instinct and savagery. These instincts are programmed into man, and he cannot escape them no matter how he tries.

2. Powerful, incomprehensible, amoral and uncaring beings, usually aliens, that exist and sometimes tinker with humanity in some way. Probably Lovecraft’s most enduring creation, the great Old Ones were what he considered the nearest thing to gods to exist, in fact they were often portrayed as at the center of cults and possibly even as the inspiration for major world religions now and in the past. These creatures don’t care anything about what their activities do to mankind, they may not even realize we exist, and if they did we are so different that there is no way we could relate to one another. Humanity is helpless before them, we survive only because the stars have aligned in such a way as to thwart their activities and lock them away. (How such incredibly powerful beings could fail to predict and allow for the mathematically logical movements of stellar bodies is unclear.) So powerful and strange are these creatures that just encountering them drives people insane.

3. An emphasis on occult knowledge. Which is to say, the “truth” of the universe is known only to a select few. These people have delved “too deeply” into some field of knowledge, gone exploring where they should not or studied some arcane, forgotten document and thus been exposed to the truth. These truths will ultimately destroy those who know them, but ignorance is no defense, offering only a false sense of security. Characters are predestined for destruction whether they know the truth or not.

What are the weaknesses of cosmic horror? Well, if I got going we’d be here all day, so I’ll try and just hit what I feel are the top three.

Poor characters. While the protagonists in cosmic horror are usually well educated, articulate or at least worldly men, the emphasis on their total inability to accomplish anything of note really cuts them off at the knees. Ultimately they’re unimportant, so why bother getting to know them? Whether because of the nature of the genre or simply because cosmic horror authors rarely learn to develop good characters, there’s rarely anyone you can relate to in a cosmic horror story. This stems, at least in part, from the constraints the genre puts on human characters.

Poor conflict. The greatest threat to humanity is often the Old Ones, beings so immense in potential that they are to humanity as we are to microbes – they are totally beyond our ability to trouble in any way.

ASIDE: I’m not sure if this analogy is original to Lovecraft, I haven’t read his full body of work, but just about every other cosmic horror writer uses it, so I suspect it is. Regardless it’s a bad one, considering viruses, the smallest of microbes, have probably killed more human beings than war and famine combined… END ASIDE 

Back to the conflict part. Since part of the conceit is that Old Ones drive people insane, just being around them effectively ends the story.  Cultists are sometimes used as proxies, but in the end they’re just as big dupes as the main characters are. The Old Ones are inscrutable, with aims supposedly beyond human knowing, and totally indifferent to humanity. So, by the same token, clever manipulation or direct hostility on the part of the Old One is out the window as a source of conflict.

Most conflict in cosmic horror consists of the main character(s) trying to escape his fate and finding he can’t. This usually takes the form of the environment reshaping itself to prevent it or the character simply being restrained by inexplicable forces. When the character’s reason or the advice of others plays any part in moving him towards his doom he usually repents of it later, only to find he was trapped by predestination, his birth or the wonderful invisible hand all along.

With all these forgone conclusions built into the genre, there’s very little in the way of doubt about the ending. You just sort of sit there and wait for the hammer to fall. It might be kind of entertaining the first time or two, but it doesn’t really hold up well.

Poor analogies. You would think, after nearly a century of existence, the genre would have come up with some new ways to describe the influence of its prime characters.

But no. There are some phrases the genre simply cannot seem to get away from. Unnatural or non-Euclidean geometries. Fleshy tentacles. A feeling of immense presence or intellect. These analogies are evocative, if vague. Lovecraft himself coined a number of other very nice phrases to explain specific instances. A color out of space is probably the best. However, the genre’s very insistence on experiences that defy reason and rely on occult understanding make it a very poor genre for explaining things. You must either experience it and be equipped to understand, the cosmic writer seems to insist, or you will merely be another one of those deluded fools who can’t handle the truth.

Now it may sound like I’ve just said that the very things that define the genre are part of what make it a weak form of fiction. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m saying. The tropes and devices of the genre actually work to undermine it’s storytelling potential – just one of many reasons I dislike it.

What are the strength of cosmic horror? If done correctly, and the reason most people mention Lovecraft as their example first, last and always is that he’s one of the few people to have done it correctly, cosmic horror is really, really scary. Not in the, “something jumps out of the closet and yells boo” kind of a way, nor in the, “look, there are zombies everywhere” kind of a way. Rather, in the, “something under the bed is drooling” kind of a way. You know it’s out there, and that it’s coming for you. But what are you going to do about it? Nothing! HAH! Because there’s nothing you can do!

Ultimately, there’s not much to recommend cosmic horror. Sure, existential dread is great if you’re an angsty teen or an overly intelligent author who never seems to have developed sympathy for your fellow, less intelligent man, but in the end, even if the allegories it presents us with are true, thinking about it overmuch doesn’t get us anywhere any more than worrying about our gray hairs will make them go away or stop them from coming. I have better uses for my time, and you probably do, too.

Portfolio Diversity

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A week from next Monday marks the end of the Nate Chen Summer Short Story Extravaganza, that wacky event where I write short stories until all our eyeballs bleed and hope somebody reads them (and I know from my stats and likes that some of you are, for which you have my thanks.) The first and last of these stories are Project Sumter tales, beginning with #63 at the end of June and ending with Trial By Winter, coming week after next.

But in between I’ve chosen to highlight three other flavors of story that I’ve had bouncing around in my head.

Stories of the Divided Future and the Weavers of the Heartland are based on things I’ve written before I started on Project Sumter, which was actually something of a whim that occurred to me last Spring after I finished reading most of Mark Waid’s Irredeemable. In fact, my first full length novel focused on the Weavers of the Heartland. Maybe someday I’ll get that published in some format…

Endless Horizons is of more recent vintage, like Project Sumter. In fact, they arose just about the same time and, just like Sumter, incorporated aspects of other stories that I had not found a good use for yet. Hopefully all that will come to light in due time.

So why go to all this trouble to get exposure for all these different stories? Don’t authors usually stick to one or two kinds of stories once they get started?

Well, for one thing, I’m not really “started” yet. I have a small readership on a blog in a busy section of the Internet. It’s not like I have a hard, fast profile to keep to yet. Branding is important to a writer, but right now I’m still looking for something that will give enough exposure that branding matters.

But more than that, once I do have a large readership I’d like to have the reputation of writer who writes lots of different kinds of stories. I like writing about Circuit, Helix and the strange slew of people that you could theoretically call their friends, but I’ve also loved sci-fi and fantasy since I was a kid, and most of all, as a writer, there are a lot of different genres out there that I’ve enjoyed reading and would like to write in.

So I hope to keep writing a lot of different stuff, and I hope you’ll keep reading it. I’m still feeling all this out, as you’ll quickly witness next Monday. I had originally intended to introduce Endless Horizons with a couple of short stories from what I like to call The Legend of Veronica Locke. Unfortunately, I made a common mistake and started the story at the beginning. This is because I wanted to produce two short stories that could stand alone and also make sense together, kind of like the many short stories in I, Robot. After a lot of work, I decided this week that it’s just not working. The Valley of the Shadow of Dagon turns out to be a chunk of a larger story, but something that’s not quite a novel. Consider it a teaser for a project that will hopefully be continued at some point in the future. In the mean time, on Monday we’re going to hop around the time stream a bit and look at something entirely different, but still under the same sky.

I also hope you’ll check back in a few weeks for the beginning of Water Fall, the next Project Sumter novel. I say a few weeks, as I currently plan to take a week off between Trial by Winter and the first chapter of Water Fall, to work ahead a little and hopefully finish a manuscript that I’ll be marketing for publication. The kind that comes with actual payment. (*gasp*) More on that as it plays out! See you next week.

The Fantastic

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It’s a strange word, no?

When you first hear it you probably think of it as a compliment. It means a performance that someone loved, and would want to see again. Something that sets you above the crowd, something that you absolutely loved.

Or at least, that’s one of the meanings. However, according to Merriam Webster, at it’s core it refers to something grounded in pure fantasy or something so extreme as to beggar belief. Something so eccentric that no one would ever expect to find it in their lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone else.

In genre terms, fantasy is a part of science fiction. I don’t agree with that (and sooner or later we’ll cover why, genrely speaking) but there is definitely some overlap.

However, if science fiction serves to illustrate the nature, weaknesses and strengths of human ideas, fantasy serves to illustrate the nature, weaknesses and strengths of humanity itself. There’s all kinds of subgenres in fantasy. High fantasy, low fantasy, political fantasy, urban fantasy, Harry Potteresque, most webcomics, most of the offerings of DC and Marvel publishing, the list goes on. However, one thing unites them:

Once you’ve finished a truly outstanding specimen you will sit back, totally sated, and think to yourself, “That was fantastic.”

There is nothing so extreme, so eccentric, so drenched in personality as the fantasy story. It’s no wonder David Eddings claims that fantasy writers crank out better stories, everything about fantasy is about pushing the limits to bring you the sharpest, best defined stories possible. Fantasy stories sometimes take the trappings of sci-fi, as in James Cameron’s Avatar, one of the things that contributes to the confusion between the two so-called genres. (The opposite can happen as well, sci-fi sometimes hides in the disguise of a fantasy tale.) But at their core, they’re about different things.

So if you’re going to write a fantasy story it has to have, at its core, something truly fantastic. And it can’t be something that market research shows is going to get a fantastic reception from the public, it has to be something you find fantastic or the story just isn’t going to come together. As an example, no matter how popular they are no vampire story I write is going to sell well. I just don’t like them for far too many reasons to go into in here. While vampires are hot stuff right now, no one is going to want to read a story I write featuring one because it’ll be halfhearted, and that will show.

(Note: It’s far more likely that you’ll find a random vampire getting steamrolled by my main characters. After all, the early accounts of vampiresque creatures suggest they were actually a lot more like zombies. Not that I like them either. In fact, don’t look for the undead in my stories period, save for perhaps the occasional ghost…)

Instead of trying to find some idea that everyone seems to love, find something that appeals to you and then push it and push it until it’s so great, so brilliant, so right that others can’t help but love it too. You’ll never get a 100% success rate, of course, but at least you’ll be creating something you love and enjoying it with other people.

The most fantastic image I have ever come across was from C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew. In that book, he introduced the Wood Between the Worlds and showed them a passage between the myriad incredible possibilities that existed beyond the two worlds his stories were focused on. With those possibilities came questions. Why couldn’t Jardis turn things to dust outside of her own world? What other ways besides the magic rings could one jump from place to place? With time flowing separately, how different could technology levels become?

Of course, many of these questions were firmly outside the scope of The Chronicles of Narnia. But still, I wondered. And over many years, the idea of a wood eventually turned into a sky. A single, unbroken expanse that stretched across countless worlds. If a person could just walk far enough or fly high enough, perhaps you could find a totally different world just beyond that endless horizon.

Worlds upon worlds to explore, full of interesting people, who knows what state of development, what could be more fantastic than that?

If you can’t think of anything better either, or even if you can, I hope you’ll join me on Monday to take that first step over the edge of the earth…

The Long and Short of It (Where It is Writing)

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One of the many things I’m currently juggling is completing the outline for Water Fall. It’s actually mostly finished, but my method of outlining has it’s own idiosyncrasies, which will undoubtedly be the subject of their own post some day soon. But today’s subject is more straightforward: Length. 

When you sit down with an eighty to hundred point beat outline in front of you the thought that you’re going to try and turn all that into a fully fleshed out novel/script/screenplay/whatever can be more than a little daunting. Water Fall is my third crack at writing a novel and the scope of the project is still intimidating, doubly so because it has to keep in mind, expand on and complete things started in Heat Wave. It’s a lot to keep in the air and I have a feeling that I’m going to wind up doing a lot more correcting and rewriting, just in the first draft, than I had to do with Heat Wave. That’s not a bad thing, but it can sometimes be overwhelming. 

But there’s nothing quite like the satisfaction when a long project is finished, and you can sit back (for about ten seconds, at least) and say, “Yes! I have accomplished something.” 

On the other hand, you might expect short stories to be much simpler to write. You just sit down and toss off a couple of thousand words and make sure you don’t contradict yourself in that short span of time, right? 

Well, not so much. For one thing, keeping a short story short is more difficult than it might seem at first glance. Two of the short stories I planned for this summer wound up far exceeding the length I expected of them – both #63 and Shadows and Brightmoor were supposed to be one installment. However, I really don’t want to publish anything too much over 5000 words in a single post, not only because I don’t want to overload people with the Wall of Text o’ Doom but because I simply cannot write that much, plus two other posts for a week, and get it out in good time with good quality. 

For another thing, short stories have little to no time to be leisurely. You can’t putter around when introducing your characters, setting or conflict. Things have to go from minute one or you’re going to wind up with a novella rather than a short story. Finding places to squeeze in all the detail you might want (or need) in your story can be daunting. 

Somewhere in the middle of that is the novella. I might try writing one of those sometime soon, but currently have no plans to work on one before the end of Water Fall sometime next year. But I suspect if you were to try it you’d find it to be somewhere between full novel and short story – just long enough to be intimidating, but short enough that you’ll still feel pressed for space. Fun, no? 

Writing is the use of words. You have to know them, use them sparingly and with maximum impact and keep with them until the job is done. No matter what the scope of your story, your building blocks are the same. There’s a saying among management circles at the library where I work: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” 

The same is true of all stories: They’re written one word a time. 

Keep that in mind, love your words and no matter what kind of story you’re working on, at least the work will be a joy. 

Small Picture, Big Picture

Posted by natechen on

By now you’re probably not at all surprised to learn that I like to put big ideas in my stories. From Circuit’s love of large projects to Helix’s complex family tree to the question of whether we as a society can deal with outstanding people who are outstanding in ways we don’t like, big ideas are the bread and butter of this blog. The problem with big ideas is they tend to take us over.

Say you read a new book, one you really love. How often do you catch yourself measuring everything by that book? Let’s say you took my advice a few months back and read up on Girl Genius. Then you went out and read Whitechapel Gods right after that. I can almost guarantee that you like one of those stories much more than the other, and what’s more, you probably measured them against each other.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Measuring ideas is something humans are hardwired to do, and comparison is one of the key tools we have to do it with. But the problem with running into big ideas is they often become our standard for everything, at least for a short time, and that can throw our perspective out of whack, especially if we keep going from big idea to big idea. Eventually we wind up kind of aimless, just sort of wandering from fad to fad with no idea what we’re doing or what’s really going on at all.

Oddly enough, one of the easiest ways to pick out a person’s big picture is not to walk up to them and ask, “What do you think is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?”

For starters, the cool people are all going to tell you, “42.” (So will anyone else who’s read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.) But more than that, most people haven’t thought it over enough to actually give you a clear answer, or in some cases even realize that they have a big idea at all. (Note: In some circles, this blog included, not having a big idea counts as a big idea. It’s just not a great idea…)

No, the simplest way to work out a person’s big idea is to pay attention to their small ones. All ideas are interconnected, and your big idea defines how you look at all your smaller ones. With a lot of practice and a solid understanding of humanity you can start to extrapolate exactly what it is people are thinking about all the time based on what they’re thinking and talking about at any given minute. All the ideas are connected, even if the core idea is just, “Shiny!” (Actually, that one’s pretty easy to figure out.)

In the West, the study of ideas is called philosophy, and a lot of Western traditions think of philosophers as wise men and advisers, people who take a hand in advising their community and pointing out potential pitfalls and errors. They’re valuable men, but often rather mundane. In our fiction, they tend to be either well educated men who have devoted their whole life to learning; or people who have simply spent their whole life working, the people they meet and the tasks they carry out teaching them the value of some ideas and the weaknesses of others.

In the East, people who study ideas fall into a group best described as sages. They are men who live in isolation, taking part in community life only when it comes to them for advice or, at times, drags them forcibly back to civilization. Their ideas give them power, physical, political and often in fiction spiritual and supernatural. But the time, dedication, isolation and natural talent needed to develop a sage’s wisdom sets them irrevocably apart from other men. They tend to keep to themselves and associate primarily with other sages. A sage who steps into the world will change it in huge ways, at the risk of destroying one or both of them in the process.

The Weavers of the Heartlands are a group of people who live in the American Midwest. They are a collision of philosopher and sage, at once seeking to live in ways different from their community and shape it and nurture it.

Like the witches and wizards of fairy tales or the sages of Eastern traditions, they often eschew the stifling bustle of humanity that comes with cities, and that’s not surprising. Like those people, the Weavers have understanding and power that exceeds what most people strangely consider “normal”. However, these powers stem from the nature and depth of their thought, not from a natural talent or selective blessing. Rather it is the connection of things and ideas, and the careful analysis of those patterns of connections, that makes a Weaver powerful. And in turn, the ideas Weavers carry are carefully reasoned, vigorously defended and actively prosecuted, putting them in constant conflict with one another and with humanity at large.

Of course, the modern world looks poorly on direct conflict, and magic by any name has baggage of it’s own. So the conflicts between Weavers are a quieter thing these days.

But not gone. No, the Weaver’s magic is alive and well, and in the most unexpected of places…

A Correction to Yesterday’s Post

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It may seem strange to talk about making corrections to a work of fiction, but as big and complex as world building can often get, it’s easy to loose track of details and let little things slip through, especially when you’re playing against type.

In yesterday’s story, Captain Rainer tells Elizabeth to avoid using the term “space navy”. This is because The United States Combined Orbital and Deep Space Forces didn’t start as an outgrowth of the United States Navy.

Many sci-fi settings adopt a naval theme for their space forces because they envision large fleets of ships moving through interplanetary or even interstellar space, their massive crews working to keep the juggernaut of galactic space power moving forward. However, this overlooks the fact that military activity in space is likely to start with small ships, probably crewed by no more than a dozen people and much similar to the heavy bombers of yesteryear than the much larger ships of the Navy. Their mandate will likely have more to do with ensuring that hostile forces stay clear of strategic orbitals than forming large platforms for spaceborn firepower. The USAF handles many of those tasks already and, while it’s true that the Navy does similar things using carrier air power, the fact that the Air Force only deals with those situations makes them more likely to take the lead in developing space power. Once that development begins, bureaucratic inertia suggest they’ll keep it until the Orbital Force break free of the Air Force just as the Air Force once did from the Army.

What does all that have to do with yesterday’s short story?

It has to do with rank. You see, the Air Force was once a part of the Army, and thus uses Army nomenclature when referring to it’s enlisted men and officers. Among other things, this means that Captain Rainer is an O-3 like an Army captain, not an O-6 like a Naval captain, which is why he’s in charge of recruiting at an aging space station rather than commanding a larger garrison somewhere. But more importantly, it means there are no Chief Petty Officers. Rather, ComODS has Master Sergeants, the equivalent to Chiefs in Army, Air Force and Marine ranks. So Elizabeth didn’t get insider information on the application requirements from a Chief Computer Technician’s Mate, she got it from a Master Sergeant.

Naval Chiefs are handy for sci-fi writers for a number of reasons. One is that their rating is right there in the title, which is part of the reason why I accidentally used it in yesterday’s story. The rank also sounds very authoritative, which is nice. But most of all, it’s a naval rank, and space navies are the default for sci-fi writers.

I debated about going back and making the change. However, since my intended history for the Extrasolar Age has the U.S. space military tradition (and several others) founded in the Air Force, I have ultimately decided to go back and edit the story rather than letting it stand as is.

Now, I’m going to pause to consider whether effort expended was worth time invested. I’ve used over five hundred words to explain why I’m changing four. We must as we must, I suppose…