Pyramids and alt-worldbuilding and language

Still making my way slowly through the first draft of Pyramids.  The characters have settled and become more real to me and - as usual with my first drafts - I'm alternating between taking days over a handful of paragraphs, and then trotting merrily through the next couple of pages, and then hitting a go-slow again.  I'm not someone who can "just put words on the page" and then go back and fix it.  If the foundation of the preceding events doesn't ring true for me, then I won't be able to build on it.

So far, it's quite a 'busy' novel in that there's a lot of different threads all running through each other - my poor characters just want to investigate a murder, and all this other stuff keeps happening to them, and some of it is relevant and some of it isn't but is kind of overwhelmingly important to the rest of their lives (and the rest of the series).

Without a doubt the most worldbuilding heavy story I'm ever going to write - perhaps inevitable given the starting point of our world.  Also by far the highest in terms of magical creatures - both Touchstone and Stained Glass Monsters technically had scads of different creatures, but you really only 'met' a couple.  I'm coming up on writing the primary triskelion scene and I'm really looking forward to it - without doubt one of my most favourite (and odd!) creatures.  Although I'm very fond of the folies and the amasen as well.

Amasen is a neologism for a creature depicted in Celtic art that has no known name (as opposed to triskelion, which is a co-opted word, and folies, which is simply a development of 'foliate') and neologisms are one of the big balancing acts that writing such a very alt world requires.

Technically all the characters are speaking Prytennian, which is what I'm pretending you'd get if you took the language of southern Britain around the time of the Roman withdrawal, and kept it as a distinct and defended language group (ending up with not-quite-Welsh) but then incorporated a bunch of Egyptian while expanding northward through existing Latin territories, and then territories strongly influenced by Norse, and also the various multiple waves of invasion that Britain went through - so you do still get your Anglo and your Saxon and your French in there, but all the balances are different.  And all the while all the other languages are developing and evolving on their own account.  Norse becomes a Swedish which is not quite current Swedish.  Latin is a living language that has grown and changed.

And then I, fool author, write it all out in English anyway, and have to make a million little decisions like: what is the money called?  Do I keep pound and sovereign and shilling because that's less work for the reader, even though it makes no sense etymologically?  What about all the place names?  Londonium has become London, but the Tamesis did not shift to Thames.  Anything with 'kirk' and other Christian-rooted names don't exist because Rome had strong reasons to stick with Jupiter, and that of course makes enormous differences.

My current choice is the standard form of polite address.  Mr and Miss and Mrs and all that - would Prytennian still use that?  French doesn't have nearly the same ties, and Prytennians would not use an honorific to distinguish between married and unmarried women (because their rulers, the Suleviae, don't marry and so marriage has become less of a focal point of female identity).  I've gone through many options to find a word I like!  I ended up wishing we used the Japanese honorific system, which doesn't even distinguish between polite address for men or women (-san) or tag gender to most titles.  Currently I'm caught between using "dama" for women and "daman" for men - or to just use "damin" for both men and women.  Both options have advantages.

Anyway - I am always slow at first drafts, but now I have added excuses!  Plus at the beginning of August I leave for three months in the UK, and it's hard to guess how that will impact my output since I do most of my writing on the train to work each morning.  I am speeding up a little, because I know my characters and world quite well at this point, but I can still make no real estimates about release dates.

I am, however, really looking forward to sharing this world and these people with you all.

The Power of What Happens Next

My main interest in reading is plot.  I like to find out what happens next.  I read stories where the blurb suggests a story I will enjoy, or where it's an author whose other stories I've enjoyed.  I do re-read, but I have to be drawn by a love of a particular character or facet or the writer's voice or some such to revisit a story (though it helps that I have a shockingly bad memory).

There was one particular book - fifth in the latest series of an author I'd followed for years.  She wasn't an absolute favourite, or a re-read author, but I'd enjoyed all the books so far.  The blurb told me this latest book was about two characters - one who is kidnapped by zealots and has to survive, and the other who is blamed for the kidnap and has to mastermind a rescue.

So I read.  And read.  And I'm feeling bored, and wondering why.  And I read, and I'm irritated, and I'm halfway through the book, and by this stage I'm skimming, and I end up flipping through in big chunks, and was left dissatisfied and annoyed.

I've never read that author again.  And it wasn't even her fault.  It was the blurb.

In as much as I take writing advice, one of the pieces of advice I seem to have taken to heart is "The beginning of your story is the event - large or small - where your character(s) life changes".  So Medair starts when Decians interrupt her sulking fit on Bariback Mountain.  Champion begins with the discovery of a new rose, transforming Soren from curiosity to someone required to be important.  Stained Glass Monsters is the moment when a woman in white appears mysteriously in a field.

The first line of the blurb for Stray is: "On her last day of high school, Cassandra Devlin walked out of exams and into a forest."  The first line of the book is Cass's reaction to being on Muina.

Now I could have spent some time establishing what Cass was like at home first.  Fun scenes of Cass and Jules squabbling over the remote control, and Cass and her best friend plotting to win Nick's heart, and Cass preparing for exams.  Cass sitting her English exam.  Cass trying to decide what university she wanted to go to.  Cass sitting her Geography exam.

Imagine that going on for half the book.  Longer.  How long till you started skimming?  In the book of that now-abandoned author, the kidnapping happens three-quarters of the way through the book.

Blurbs can make or break a book - not just for selling the story in the first place, but for setting reader expectations on what the story is about.

Although I'm not outstanding at writing blurbs, every time I remember that kidnapping book, I'm endlessly, boundlessly glad I can control what goes into mine.
The blurb for And All the Stars is a prime example:

Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfect subject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pin him down for the sittings. 

None of her plans factored in the spires: featureless, impossible, spearing into the hearts of cities across the world – and spraying clouds of sparkling dust into the wind.

Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare?  They are questions everyone on Earth would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem. At Ground Zero of the Sydney spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of St James Station, she must make it to the surface before she can hope to find out if the world is ending

And this (still to be polished a little) is how the story opens:

Madeleine Cost lay on her side, wedged between an upright and a diagonal. Dull pain marked upper shoulder, hip, thigh. A different hurt pounded her skull. She felt dusty all over, grimed with it, except her lower half, which was wet. Getting wetter.

With a jerk Madeleine came fully awake, cracking her head against the diagonal above. Stars blossomed in the dark, and she lay and gasped until she could dare to do more.

Her world was a tight, close space: a triangle tilted so that her head was lower than her feet. A glimmer of light reflected off metal, not enough to give any details. There was barely room to squeeze one hand past the slick surface, to cautiously explore her face, her skull, and find powdery dust and a throbbing lump.  Free-flowing liquid was draining past her head. She could hear it falling. 

She could smell blood.

The blurb introduces you to the main character, tells the reader something which is learnt in the second chapter, and drops you right into the situation as described.  So, can you tell me what's going to happen three-quarters of the way through the book?

Seriously.

First Drafts

After spending a year revising and publishing already written novels, it's an interesting shift for me to go back to 'fresh' writing.

I'm what's known as a 'discovery writer', meaning I start with a situation or concept, create a character, and 'discover' more about the story by writing it (as opposed to those who write a plot outline of some description before beginning the draft).

Discovery writers and outliners are not so very different as some may assume.  While I don't write an outline, or plan the book before I start writing, I usually have a very good idea of where the story will end up by the time I've written a chapter or two.  Not committing an outline to paper doesn't mean I don't think ahead to where the story is going, though it does mean perhaps more changes (particularly in early chapters) than would occur if I wrote out a detailed plan beforehand.

With And All the Stars, I started with a statement (after a discussion with two readers) that I don't write post-apocalyptic or survivalist fiction - which immediately led me to wonder what I would write if I did write such a thing.  I do like watching apocalyptic/survivalist movies - I'm always fascinated by the disaster itself, and discovering what happened, the spectacle of the more dramatic ones, and then the adjustment stage, the figuring out how to supply basic needs when x and y are no longer available, the shifting of rules, the new dangers and the sharpening of old dangers.

However, many of these stories turn into psycho-dramas of 'good person' facing off against 'evil dictator', or everyone becoming gradually nastier and more compromised by the situation they're stuck living through, which is generally not a story I'm interested in, so it's rare that I like the ending of apocalyptic/survivalist stories.

I decided I wanted to start with what seemed like an alien invasion - the sudden appearance of enormous towers in cities around the world - and the immediate consequences of that for my protagonist, less interested in the alien invasion than she is in not being trapped under rubble.  Initially the rubble was Centrepoint, but I moved it to St James Station because the purpose of the towers is not destroying infrastructure, so all the arrivals are in parks and golf courses (St James Station is under Hyde Park).

My idea for the main character began with "curly-haired Australian girl" - because I've never written a curly-haired character before and think they're under-represented (I had to ask a curly-haired co-worker lots of questions about living with curly hair :) ).  Very unusually, I then began trawling stock photo sites for photos of curly haired girls to use for the cover, since I was planning to use a photograph rather than painted art for this cover (photos are a better mental fit for current-day disaster stories than painted art).  I came across a very striking photo of a green-eyed girl with very frizzy/curly hair.  She was nothing like the girl I was thinking of, but I was so captured by the image that my main character became a skinny very serious wanna-be professional artist instead of a short, sarcastic sporty girl.

I am definitely not a "quickly write a first draft and then come back and edit" person. I polish and edit and think about pace and structure all the way through, and will get hung up for long patches on finding the exact word or phrase, and whenever I sit down to write I will usually re-read the entirety of the current chapter.  At times I will re-read through from the beginning, but it's more usual for me to be able to move on from a chapter once I've a first draft of it (jumping back only to edit in details and remove contradictions).

It took two chapters to get my artist out of St James Station, but three chapters of writing, because the first draft of chapter two included a rescue of a trapped woman and her daughter.  Since Madeleine would never meet this woman again, and I didn't want to introduce the other main characters at that stage, I promptly deleted large parts of chapter two and rewrote it - the rescue was interesting, but served no overall purpose to the main story. 

By this stage I knew who the four other main characters would be (Noi, Nash, Pan and Fisher), had worked out where Tyler was (and his function), and had a rough idea of events up to the two-thirds point of the novel (to the chapter where all my readers will want to kill me).

When I'm thinking about later chapters while drafting earlier ones, I will sometimes create a file called 'Later' to store character names and fragments of conversation which I've been thinking about, which I can grab and use (or discard) when I reach the relevant chapters.

Once I'm past the very beginning of the novel I can usually 'see' the landmarks of the whole book - not just to the big reveal point, but how things wrap up in the remaining third of the novel - where, to some degree, the characters have a chance to act rather than react to their situation.  Certainly not every conversation or event, but the pivotal moments.  Even theme is starting to emerge.

By the time I reach the end of a first draft, it's usually structurally nine-tenths there.  At that point I'll put the draft away for several weeks/months and go write something else, and come back to the draft 'fresh', better able to polish clumsy phrases, pick up typos, measure pacing issues, and subtly emphasise the theme(s).

On the whole, I find the editing much easier than the initial drafting, but there is some pure pleasure in first drafts.  Being able to finally write That Scene is a particular one for me.  The scene I've been thinking about since halfway though chapter one, the one where readers will shriek and gnash their teeth, or laugh, or gape with wonder and disbelief.

Reaching That Scene is a major motivation for getting through a first draft for me, though I still have a lot of fun along the way.

How Long

Say, here's a topic for discussion - what's your rate of production? Not just wordcount, but the whole process. How long does it take for you to get from typing 'Chapter 1' to hitting the send button on the Smashwords/Amazon/whatever page? And what stages take the shortest and longest with you? -- Dave

This is a little like asking how long is a piece of string.  (I swear, I could answer every question put to me with "it depends".)

The main "depends" in writing is what else I'm doing.  I have a full-time job.  I like to play computer games.  Very occasionally gardens, and movies and so forth interfere (Cowboys and Aliens isn't bad, but isn't brilliant either - though there is one thing, one tiny nuanced thing, which was remarkably effective).  It also depends on how determined I am to get things done - when I'm writing at home, if I'm serious I'll turn the TV off and listen to music because it's less distracting.

The quickest I ever wrote a first draft was in about three months.  [Or, I guess you could count the Touchstone trilogy, which I wrote in a single year - 350,000 words.  The editing of that took almost as long again.]  I do a whole bunch of end to end editing runs after I'm finished, but first draft is almost always the longest part, especially since I edit as I go along.  I also try to put the book away after the first draft is done and completely forget it for a few months, because you need the distance to look at it with any measure of perspective.

When I'm writing, or thinking about some cool thing to write, I will get up and pace back and forth - very silly.

I don't expect to have The Pyramids of London finished in first draft until late next year (and that only if I exercise some level of discipline with it) because I have so many other things I'm editing.  I've written about 2000 words this weekend and am pressing on for a bit because I really want to write the scene with the hand.  [When the book is done and you're reading it, you will remember me mentioning the scene with the hand.  And then you will say, OMG, the scene with the hand!  My version of vampires is amusing me immensely - and Egyptian mythology seems just made for vampiric lore.]  The speed with which I write depends on what's being written.  Action is fairly easy and quick for me (and hopefully there'll be a lot of action in TPoL!), while what I consider "transitive passages" - the less fun stuff involving polite conversation - can take much longer because I sit there figuring out how to say it just so.

All the formatting and such for publication doesn't take more than a few days.

The Fun Bits

People are always going on about how much work writing is.  Oh the agony, oh the slog, blah de blah.

And, yeah, it's rare that you can avoid the slog.

But, dammit, writing is fun!  I write because I love it.  There are far more highs than there are lows. 

My favourite parts are:

- Accidental coolness - when re-reading that paragraph you tossed off in a hurry makes you stop and blink and double-check that you can claim credit for it.

- Plans coming together - all those plot threads dovetailing so neatly you'd think it was deliberate!

- THAT scene - finally reaching the one scene you've been wanting to write for THREE MONTHS now.

- Unreeling the world - by far my favourite part, when you've got one page written and you're galloping through plot and possibility and why and wherefore and you're walking around with a huge grin because wouldn't it be cool to do that!  And what if, and EW!, and that could work and then, but, and if, and oh, damn, I love this story!

By which you might guess that I've had a first page 'musesploding' all over the place.  Wednesday (which will probably end up being called The Pyramids of London) is occupying every spare thought because I've been having way too much fun working out a world which I'm calling my "Didn't Fall" world.  Where the Egyptian Empire didn't fall because its God-Kings were weather-controlling vampires.  And the Roman Empire didn't fall because the technical difficulties of fighting weather-controlling vampires led to them harnessing lightning.  And Britain is just a bit different after being successively invaded by the Romans, the Vikings, the Egyptians, and something which vaguely resembles the Normans, but is now proudly independent with an airship force to be reckoned with, and coronations are held in the Great Grove dedicated to the Tri-Fold Goddess.

So, uh, yeah.  So much to write, so little time...

[I am faithfully working on Voice every morning, though, and making good progress now that I made it past a tricky bit.]

Mapping

I've updated the trade paperback version of Champion to include the map (there's just a link in the ebook version).  I usually draw a rough map while I'm writing, so that my characters don't head out east to go to the Western Marches, but I hesitated to fool with images when taking my first shaky steps into publishing - so of course my first reviews commented on the lack of a map.  I'll be adding the maps to Medair and SGM over the next month or so.  [A map just wouldn't work with the Touchstone series, though I wish I was artist enough to fill it with little sketches of the things Cass sees.]

I also took the opportunity to add six paragraphs of 'underlining' to Champ to emphasise a particular interpretation of the text.  No change to the plot, but those paragraphs function much like the little arrow on the map of Darest, pointing north.

A self-publisher's ability to update is a double-edged sword.  Great for fixing typos, but an eternal temptation, since I've never met a piece of my own writing that I didn't want to fiddle with every time I read it.  I decided on a system of noting the version date on the copyright page, if it's ever updated with more than typo corrections, but on the whole I will try to restrain myself.

Not-Writing

I spent a lot of time not-writing this week.

My best writing time is on the train to and from work (50 minutes each way).  If I'm tired, writing doesn't happen (sometimes snoring almost happens, which is embarrassing on a train).  And, if it's rainy as it has been this week, I tend not to want to take my laptop with me on the 20 minute walk to the station.  So I've been reading and not-writing instead.

I'm almost always not-writing.  It's a valuable process, where I compose my books in thought instead of pixels, trying out ideas, settling what needs to be done.  It can be a trifle frustrating, because while not-writing I often come up with the perfect way to say something, and yet never can remember how it went when I get back in front of a keyboard.  [Sometimes I will jot in a notepad, if it's something I really don't want to forget.]

This week while not-writing, I:

- Truncated a cave-scene in Voice of the Lost.
- Turned over, yet again, the chapter which needs to be added where Medair meets people she hopes she'll never meet again.
- Amused myself with slight variations of a sex scene recently written.  [Or the pre-sex scene.  I'm one of those writers who always cuts away just as you get to the really juicy bit.  Except in the space naga smut book, because the technicalities of that sex scene was half the point.]
- Turned over things I really should do in Caszandra, to make sure Cass doesn't come across as a mere observer in all the big dramatic moments.
- Considered what I would do to Hunting (which is the first in a series of four books I wrote before Medair) and when I would get time to do it.  Refused to let myself go re-read it.
- Refused to let myself go re-read Wellspring.
- Thought of a conversation which should go in The Sleeping Life.

So, a productive week of not-writing!

I did do a little work on Voice of the Lost as well.  But just a little.  I'm in one of those modes where I re-read the first chapter over and over again obsessively changing one or two words each time.  Not productive at all.

The Character Arc of a Fat Detective

Having hit a few too many modern mysteries which didn't work for me, I'm plunging into a re-read of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries.  (Somewhat overpriced) Kindle editions have made it easy for me to complete my collection, and I really enjoy doing end-to-end read-throughs of my favourite classic mysteries, to see the world change around the detectives.

Nero Wolfe, and his not-to-be-forgotten offsider Archie Goodwin, leap off the page of the very first novel.  Wolfe is a brilliant man devoted to (and burdened by) his immense and costly collection of orchids.  He is also a gourmand of expensive tastes.  He undertakes his detecting primarily for money to feed his habit for food and flowers, (although there's no doubt some enjoyment of the intellectual challenge), and he cultivates his reputation of eccentricity to better prevent too many from attempting to stir him into working.  Archie is the live-wire, the energetic go-getter, whose livelihood depends on ensuring the Wolfe earns both their livings.

Today, reading a review of some random steampunk novel, I saw a criticism about how the characters do not change significantly during the novel.  This was termed a weakness, something to be forgiven, a detraction.  And yet here am I, eagerly anticipating reading through 34 novels where the characters do not change.  Oh, they get older, they bicker, circumstances on occasion oblige Wolfe to alter his routine or even, *gasp*, leave the building.  One or two books force him to do rather more, but they don't essentially change the person that he is, and as soon as possible he returns to status quo.

I guess everyone has their own checklist of what is a 'right' novel.  I do tend to avoid books with truly obnoxious treatments of women.  Otherwise, make me care, don't cause my suspension of disbelief to go SPUNG, do not confuse me overmuch, and tie off the ends of the tale in a way that satisfies.  Most of all, do not bore me.  That's all I ask.

Dimunition Romance

Over the past few years I read a well-written series of novels, an alternate history with an intriguing magic system, and good along-for-the-ride adventures which appealed to my plot-bunny nature.  And yet I dropped the series, due to the nature of the romance.

Romance is not a necessary component of a good book for me (I love early Norton SF, and most of her characters may as well be asexual), but it's fair to say it's an element I like to see, whatever the genre, and which I invariably include in my own writing.  The romance in Series X had plenty of potential - the main character was in his late teens, child of a famous family, and deeply interested in magic.  He falls hard and fast for a strong-willed, independent and intelligent young woman, who likes but does not fawn over him.

It should have been exactly my cup of tea - I love romances involving independent equals finding what they need in each other.  But the more the romance sub-plot developed, the less I wanted to read.  I could accept that the competent, assured main character becomes a stammering self-doubter in the presence of the object of his affections, but I didn't enjoy reading him that way.  And then, when he foolishly tries to manipulate a situation (for her safety), I was okay with him being called on it and told to stop.  But as the next two books dragged through him being chastised, barely forgiven, and finally being tolerated once again, I seriously started hoping he would meet someone else.  Because every time his love interest became involved in the story, he became less than the person than he ordinarily was: he became not only a stammering mass of nerves, but also this person of lesser morals who had to be forgiven, to win approval.

This is an approach to romance which is not too rare - an assured, competent main character (almost always a man) who meets a love interest who somehow lessens him.  In the cause of pricking his bubble of ego (or humanising him, which I expect is meant to be the aim), she lectures him, bests him effortlessly at his own game, patronises him, or just leaves him looking foolish.  For the romance to succeed, he needs to be cut down to size.  I call it a Dimunition Romance.

One of the tests I tend to apply to romances, particularly when I'm writing them, is to gender swap the main participants to see whether the story would still be tolerable to me if the characters behaved the same way.  Dimunition romances are uncomfortable for me to read when it's a male main character, but it's only clear to me just how much I dislike them when I turn that man into a woman.

A prime current example of this is a (probable) romance which is quite popular among Doctor Who fans - River Song and the Doctor.  If the Doctor was female and River Song a man who pranced onto screen, overly affectionate despite the Doctor's obvious discomfort, calling her Sweetie, showing her up as being such a bad driver, and wagging his finger and tutting "Spoilers!" (while tossing out spoilers left, right and centre), then the audience reaction would be...wow, I can just imagine.

Why is it okay to portray a woman doing this to a man?

Dimunition romances = not for me.

Word v Word(ess)

When I build a world, it's rare for me not to thrust aside the common pattern of social development and make the equality of women both established and unquestioned. It's simply more interesting for me to start from that point, to shift the focus of my female characters away from struggling for acknowledgement due to gender, and firmly on whatever else I want to make them struggle for.

This, however, leads me to some tricky situations with word choice. In "Champion of the Rose", Darest is founded by a woman, and the land was the gift of a woman. Yet I chose to refer to it as a kingdom. It's ruled, depending on the gender of the ruler, by a King or a Queen, with 'queen' used here strictly as 'female ruler', not 'spouse of ruler'. Anyone who marries the ruler is a Royal Consort.

Every time I create a world, and think over the political structure, I come up against this question: are the titles gendered? And given that I have no intention of building a history of gender inequality in the social structure, why are they gendered?

The answer is almost always reader convenience. I can certainly make up a different word than kingdom (kiereddas), and a neutral word for ruler (kier), and for all titles down to a neutral version of lord (keris). And I've done that: those examples are from "Medair". And then the reader gets to learn them all.

I am relatively sparing with my neologisms. I use them for certain jobs, or animals, or concepts which don't have a near-enough equivalent in English. Occasionally I'll add them for colour, or when the story calls for them, as with Medair and the system of power which replaced her own. And every time I use 'kingdom' when I mean 'land politically aligned as a monarchy' I weigh up the benefits of calling it a 'morael' or an 'arenses' or whatever string of syllables occurs to me. And then, usually, I grit my teeth and use the easier, if slightly wrong word.

My current work is rife with neologisms, to the point where I'm adding a glossary. It's fun to make up words which don't carry with them the implicit structure that these things are male, and that a modifier needs to be added to indicate a female in that position. But I suspect that the next time I build a new world, convenience will trump correctness yet again.

Said Book-isms

I like Said Book-isms.

So many people will jump up and down about Said Book-isms, tell you to remove everything but said, tell you that it's bad writing to use anything else.  And I shake my head and look through my writing, and about half the dialogue uses 'said', and a third or more no dialogue tag at all (usually accompanied by actions).  But a solid portion of my sentences contain 'replied', or 'ordered' or other variants.  I even use 'extemporised' at least once.  Why?

Because it was the better for the sentence.

'Extemporise' tells the reader that not only is the speaker saying something, but what she is saying is a temporary stopgap, an improvised answer.  It contains within a single word an implication that there will be a more considered answer to follow, or at the least there was a rushed nature to the answer.  Is it really superior to use [she said, searching her mind for a better answer]?  Or just to use said, and leave it to the reader to decide that the answer was rushed?

English is a rich and subtle language.  ["Jenny!" he said.] is different from ["Jenny!" he shouted.].  Dialogue tags are a tool, the nails, if you will, holding the sentences together.  Most sentences can be held together with 'small nails' like 'said' - or even get away with no nails at all - but sometimes a more solid nail is needed, or perhaps even a decorative stud.  Without some variations in your nails, your end result is in danger of being weaker than it could be.  Too many big fancy nails, and all people will see is the nails.  Just as with the 'rules' about adverbs, and show v tell, it's all a question of balance and correct use, of choosing the right words in the right proportions.

So if someone shouts, let them shout.

Post-Apocalyptic Character Inversion

In the aftermath of natural disasters, the news is always filled with stories of human bravery. Of people coming together, helping each other. Being the best that they can be.

If you broke down the character of those who live today, some would be monsters. A few paragons. But most would be a mix of minor faults, self-interest, and general 'good' traits. In a crisis, some would quail, some would cower, and a solid portion would try to rise to the occasion.

Where, in post-apocalpytic shows (Survivors, Day of the Triffids), have all these people gone? Why do the pyschopaths, the would-be dictators, and the lunatics have such a superior survival rate?

Yes, yes, they serve the purpose of drama. But I find these post-apocalyptic stories _least_ interesting when it's all about people being horrible to people - that is already part of this world.

By Any Other Name

Twice this year I've found a name I've used in one of my books spending its time in someone else's novels.

To a certain degree this is inevitable, since names are rarely unique. My nephew, for instance, shares his name with a female guardswoman roleplaying character (and my space naga, for that matter). But distinctive or particularly well-known names are ones to treat with care.

It's entirely possible to use established real-world names which happen to feature in books (Hermione or Bella) and not cause a fuss (unless there are other similarities) but even so the reader will bring associations to the name, and may be jarred from your story. And distinctive names unique to or rarely encountered outside a particular novel or series (Rand, Menolly, Severus) are something which will almost always bring negative impacts to the reader/author experience.

In my current cases, my fallback term for magical schools (Arcanum) appears to have most recently shown itself in Patrick Rothfuss' novel. I will probably keep the name unchanged, since it is not nearly so distinctive as something like "Hogwarts". And today I found that the very distinctive surname of one of my main characters is the first name of a character in an extremely well-known series of novels.

Fortunately the spelling is slightly different, and almost everything else nothing alike, so I will also keep this name. But it was a close call. Giving up on a name you've spent a novel with is not an easy task. I can barely imagine how I'd cope if I found out Gandalf and Aragorn were also 'taken'.

Too Stupid to Live

Two-thirds through an otherwise enjoyable cosy mystery, the main character discovers a photograph showing an object linked to a murder, suggesting that it was once in a certain house. Instead of taking the photograph to the police, even though the police are in this case sympathetic to her cause, she goes to the house to check if the object is still there.

In part cosies require characters who will poke and pry and get involved in other people's murders. But it's a strong negative for me to follow a character into unnecessary danger in the face of a more obvious step.

The rest of the story worked, and I'll read further into the series. But TSTL syndrome is something I definitely hope to avoid in my own writing.

Bad Habits

I overuse certain words in the first draft:

Really
Actually
Pretty (much) (certain) (sure)
Fairly
Half
A bit
Kind of
Mildly
Simply
Mostly
Slightly

Almost all adverbs (and weasel words!). It amazes me how easy it is for me to read over them, and how frequently I do use them. Particularly in the fiction blog I kept for a year, where I barely polished during the first draft, but even on re-reading a manuscript I've polished and re-polished, these lazy words are everywhere.

I am by nature a qualifier, it seems.

Adaptations

Fan of Agatha Christie that I am, I looked forward to a new spate of adaptations on tv. But while I never expect an adaptation to be exactly like a book, this series seems determined to mess around with the stories - to add sexed-up sub-plots and to remove other ones. "The Clocks" was the last adaptation, and they do random things like change two boys to two girls, and to completely remove any reason for liking most of the characters.

The Readerly Text

This was a concept I was introduced to in university: a book is a construction between writer and reader, and is different to every person who experiences it.

Reader reaction to my work often surprises me, and today I had feedback on "Stained Glass Monsters" which completely floored me since it was not a description which I would ever have applied to the story.

When receiving 'surprising' feedback on a story, I find it always important to take a few steps back and weigh up what factors made the reader come up with that response. Then I generally debate adjusting the story to prevent anyone else having that response.

In this particular case, the feedback still feels very off the mark, and though there are a few word dinks I'll probably make, I think in this case it's a matter of someone with very different tastes - or using stronger words to get a point across.

I'm well aware that in writing something which appeals to my specific tastes, I am never going to approach 'high concept'. At what point do you sacrifice writing the story you want, to its highest possible quality, and start trying to write what's marketable? Urban or dark or whatever the current fashion is?

I think, when I was younger, I would be tempted to follow the trends, but I am fortunate to have come to understand that my reason for wanting to be published at all (outside of the very human desire to preen and join a semi-exclusive club) is to share my particular worlds and stories, to have other people love these tales which I enjoy.

It's possible this may make me unpublishable, of course. But I push on with making the stories the best that they can be, and attempt to place them with a publisher who shares my tastes. At least until my October deadline.

A Brief Departure

I'm not a short story writer. Most everything I write wants to be at least twenty chapters long. Very occasionally an idea will fall into my lap, such as when I bought a sledgehammer and wondered what an Australian urban fantasy would look like, but that's no reason for me to want to write a short.

And then I noticed AussieCon 4 was running a short story competition.

Entry mailed today, clocking in a whole 14 words under the 1500 limit. Word limits are hard, though I think the exercise of cutting improved the story. Working in the required phrase, "make ready", was almost as hard, since it's very odd wording, and kept making me think of Captain Picard: "Make it so".

I think I'm most likely to win if no-one else enters, but it was fun to do this once. And who can resist a story with characters called Ru and Blue?

Gaming Weekend

I've been plugging away at Final Fantasy XIII since it came out, and have added Dragon Age: Awakening to the playlist.

FFXIII is, sadly, one of the worst Final Fantasy games I've played. Not terrible, but it's fallen down on what is usually its strongest point: story telling. An annoying, almost contradictory plot and, though I don't hate any of the characters, I'm not strongly behind any of them either. With a weak combat system, and some issues with the power/challenge progression, I've lost interest in finishing the game, and plug away at it only occasionally.

Dragon Age: Awakening - a sequel/expansion of the excellent Origins - also suffers from a slightly flatter story, though with a much better battle system. The flatness of the story is not from the plot, which is reasonable, but from the characters. These simply do not pop and intrigue as much as the characters from Origins (many of whom it would be impossible to bring back). But, still, fun so far.

FFXIII wins hands-down in the prettiness stakes, though, and I'm itching to play FFXIV, which will probably put a major dint in my writing time when it releases later this year. But I'll be analysing the story! It's research! Honest!