Marie Brennan's Blog, page 52

Public Readings from A to Z – Part 2 – What Material Should You Read?

Welcome to part two of my continuing series on how to do public readings of your work! You can find the video accompaniment to this post on Youtube.

Part One: How Much Should You Read?Part Three: Preparing an ExcerptPart Four: PracticePart Five: PacingPart Six: IntonationPart Seven: Character VoicesPart Eight: Live PerformancePart Nine: Digital Performance

 

The next question to ask is what you should read.

Choosing your material can be the trickiest part of the process. Sometimes you may not have much of a choice: if you’re participating in a group reading for an anthology, then you’re almost certainly going to be reading your contribution (or a selection therefrom). If there’s a theme going on, like the whole convention is about women in science, you may want to pick from among the pieces you have that are relevant to that theme, assuming you have any. But if it’s an open field, there are several factors to consider.

 

Short story or novel excerpt?

There are two schools of thought on this. One says that you should generally read from novels because you want to boost their readership and sales. The other says short stories are preferable, if you have one of suitable length, because then you can give your audience a complete experience instead of a partial one.

This is a question with no “correct” answer. (Unless you only write novels or only short stories, in which case it’s a moot point anyway.) Both can work; which one you choose may depend on other factors, like whether your audience has a lot of overlap with another event you did recently, or whether your novel has an excerpt that makes for good event reading. If I’m at a con right after a book has come out, I tilt in the direction of choosing that; if it’s months later, I lean toward a short story, because I like being able to deliver the whole thing, and I get tired of always reading the same bit of a novel.

 

Published, forthcoming, or in draft?

When I’m on tour for a novel in a series, I tend not to read from that novel. Why? Because it’s already on the shelves. Depending on timing, some of my audience may have already read it — and while they may not mind hearing it out loud, I like rewarding them for coming to my reading by giving them a sneak peek at something not yet available to the world at large. That means my tour readings are almost always excerpts from the next book. Assuming the excerpt stands on its own reasonably well, that’s going to be every bit as effective at luring new readers to pick up the series, so I’m still on-target with promotion, but avoiding redundancy. (There are exceptions. When I toured for for In the Labyrinth of Drakes, the penultimate volume of the Memoirs of Lady Trent, the fifth and final book had no good selections that weren’t also full of spoilers for book four. In that instance, I chose instead to read a short story related to the series — a good solution, if you happen to have such a story lying around.)

But tours are a special case. If I’m reading a short story, it’s almost always one that’s already been published, because short fiction is a fragmented enough market that the odds of my audience having already read that piece are low. I will sometimes read a story that hasn’t yet been printed, if I particularly love it; I almost never read an unsold draft. Some authors really enjoy reading from works in progress, but anecdotally, I feel like the people who do that tend to be well-established in their careers. They know their audience will love a glimpse of their process, and won’t mind the occasional rough edges. Me, I prefer to share a polished text, rather than an incomplete first draft . . . though admittedly that’s been changing a little, as I myself get more established.

 

Drama or humor?

All other things being equal, I say choose humor.

That doesn’t have to mean a story that is entirely comedic. The occasional snarky line will do nicely, in terms of how the audience engages. For the most part people react to drama silently, but they laugh at humor, which makes the response more active and communal, i.e. contagious. Plus you’re often going to be working against ambient noise — people wandering through the bookstore, clinking dishes in the adjoining café, or conversations in the hallway outside your convention room — which makes it difficult to build and maintain a properly tense atmosphere. It’s much easier to pull off something less emotionally fraught.

This also has to do with buildup, especially when you’re looking at a novel excerpt. Really good drama generally relies on the weight and momentum of the preceding narrative to deliver its punch; how often have you found the beginning of a story to be heart-wrenching? You may adore the scene where your characters declare their love for the first time, but in the absence of all the pre-declaration tension, it won’t come across the same to your audience.

Some authors like to choose an action scene for their readings. If that’s the type of thing you write and therefore what your audience expects, then go for it . . . but I’ll say that, despite my well-documented love for a good action scene, I think they often come off worse in performance than on the page. As with drama, if you lack the buildup to give it context, the action scene is often mere spectacle instead of gripping narrative — especially if it’s a fight, because you need the character conflict to give the punches meaning. And for those members of your audience whose imaginations don’t tend toward the visual, it’s frequently difficult to build a coherent picture out of your words when they can’t control the pace of delivery. For action to work aurally, my experience is that you need to pay close attention to your pacing and intonation — two things we’ll talk about in later installments — so that you’re cuing your audience as to which details are important, giving them time to digest each beat of the scene, etc. Action lures writers into reading quickly, because they want it to seem exciting, but the result is that the words smear together into an undifferentiated mess.

 

Beginning or middle?

As the previous section suggests, if you’re choosing an excerpt from a longer work, you don’t have to start at the beginning of the story. You can — and there are certainly many virtues to doing so. After all, in theory the beginning contains a compelling hook, something to lure the reader into wanting more. And if you’re reading a standalone work or the first in a series, then the opening requires no prefatory explanations at all, because the reader is assumed to know nothing about the characters or the situation. Even a sequel may include a lot of the necessary information within the first chapter, smoothing the way for your audience.

But that doesn’t mean the beginning is always a great choice for a performance reading. Maybe you’re reading from a sequel and the opening scene contains a howling spoiler for the earlier books. Or maybe that scene is just way too long for your time slot, and you’ll have to cut off at an arbitrary point to no good effect. Or maybe it’s a great, hooky scene . . . on the page. Out loud, not so much.

My thought is, there are certain qualities you should look for in your selection. If you find those at the beginning of the story, great! If you have to look elsewhere in the text for them, also great! The point is to end up with something well-suited to performance.

 

And for that, tune in for the next installment, where we’ll discuss the art of selecting and preparing a good excerpt!

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Public Readings from A to Z – Part 1 – How Much Should You Read

I’ve been asked more than once for advice about doing a public reading of your own work. This is something authors will frequently be encouraged to do as a promotional activity, and yet most of us get thrown into the deep end without a lot of guidance; small wonder that it can be a source of anxiety. If we wanted to be actors, we wouldn’t have chosen a profession that mostly involves sitting alone at the computer talking to the imaginary people in our heads!

Actually, I love doing readings. And judging by the responses I’ve gotten, I’m fairly good at it: not a professional performer by any means, but good enough that I feel comfortable giving some advice. So I thought, “self, you should write a blog post about this!”

. . . nine posts that are also videos later, it turns out I have a lot to say.

Welcome to my miniseries on public readings! Or maybe a not-so-mini-series — how many installments can you have before it isn’t mini any longer? But don’t worry. It isn’t nearly as intimidating and complicated as it sounds. I’m just verbose, digging into the rationale behind various decisions instead of simply dropping sound bites of advice on you. You can find the video accompaniment to this post on Youtube.

Part Two:What Material Should You Read?Part Three: Preparing an ExcerptPart Four: PracticePart Five: PacingPart Six: IntonationPart Seven: Character VoicesPart Eight: Live PerformancePart Nine: Digital Performance

 

Let’s start with figuring out how much you’re going to read!

 

Step One: Find out how much time you’ll have for the reading.

It boggles me how many writers don’t seem to take this into account. I’ve been to group readings where one person hogs far more than their share of the time slot, or individual events where the author glances at the clock mid-reading and seems to be surprised by what they find.

Don’t be that author. Plan ahead. And remember that the time you get is not the time you get.

If you have a half-hour solo reading slot at a convention, do you have half an hour to read? Nope. Because it’s going to take a little while for people to clear out from the previous reading, and you want to make sure you’re not the jerk whose audience delays the next author in line. You also probably want to leave at least a little time for Q&A. So if you’ve got a half-hour slot, that means you want roughly a twenty-minute selection at most. If it’s an hour-long slot shared with two other authors, that’s twenty minutes apiece, which means your own offering should be fifteen minutes at most.

If you have an hour all to yourself, does that mean you should choose something forty-five minutes long? You can . . . but unless you’re really confident in your ability as a performer, I’d say not to risk it. Forty-five minutes is a long time to hold the audience’s attention with a single piece. Most of the time you’re going to be better off choosing two or three shorter bits, so that they get a few changes of pace along the way.

And if you’re not sure how much time you have? Ask. The con runners or bookstore manager will be happy to tell you what they expect, so you can plan accordingly.

 

Step Two: Pick something the right length for the time available.

Okay, let’s say you have twenty minutes for actual reading time. How much story does that mean?

The answer will vary somewhat from author to author, so the real answer here is that you need to figure out what it means for you. But my rule of thumb for my own events is that it takes me about five minutes to read a thousand words.

That isn’t really accurate, mind you. I’ve been told I read with very good clarity, which partially makes up for my tendency to go faster than I really should — but even then, if I get through a thousand word in five minutes, I’m probably reading too fast. But it has the virtue of being a number I can easily remember, so I use it as my upper bound, and then work downward from there. If I have twenty minutes, then I want something less than four thousand words long. Fifteen minutes means I’m counting down from three thousand words. Etc.

How do you figure out your own speed? By picking something whose length you know and reading it out loud. Time yourself. Do this several times, with several different texts, until you know what your own ballpark number should be. Of course this will also depend on how you’re reading, so it will go hand in hand with the stuff I’m going to talk about in later installments, but for now, just bear this in mind.

 

Next time, we’ll talk about What Material Should You Read?
Part Three: Preparing an Excerpt
Part Four: Practice
Part Five: Pacing
Part Six: Intonation
Part Seven: Character Voices
Part Eight: Live Performance
Part Nine: Digital Performance

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New Worlds: Surgery

For your Friday delectation, the New Worlds Patreon is taking a look at the ancient (and also very recent) history of surgery! Comment over there!

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The Advent of Scent, Week 5

Slightly late in posting this — but the explorations continue!

* Bubblegum & Rose (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “big round bubblegum bubbles with fruity tuberose blossoms.” Smells like exactly what it says on the tin . . . and much to my surprise, I think I kinda like it? It’s a little odd, because it’s sort of a rose perfume that intermittently gives off gusts of bubblegum smell (though those quiet down after a while), but I think whatever’s going on with the gum helps tamp down on the aspect of the rose that I usually find unappealing.

* Mama’s Porridge (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “brown sugar sweetened oatmeal with a spash of milk and a piece of buttery cinnamon sugar dusted toast.” I’m becoming fairly certain that I loathe the buttery/creamy corner of the scent spectrum. I’m fine with those things as food, but not on me. Eventually this fades to a decent cinnamon, but I do. not. like how it starts.

* Gnome
Described as “an explosive blend of effervescent golden ginger and black peppercorn with sarsaparilla, gurjum balsam, nutmeg, gear lubricant, and smoke.” Points for originality! And early on, there was a fresh, green scent I kind of liked. But then as it dried . . . they’re not joking about “gear lubricant.” I do not particularly want to smell like machine oil, thank you.

* Bliss
Described as “the serotonin-slathered scent of pure milk chocolate.” They aren’t kidding. And I presume there are people who want to smell like they spilled melted chocolate on themselves; I, however, am not one of them.

* Satyr (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “blood orange and vanilla.” Somehow those components manage to smell kind of like licorice early on. That fades, and this again wins some points for being different from most of what I have — but those points don’t make me like it.

* Old Cider Haus (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “old oak, sweet drying hay fields, crushed apple pulp and vanilla husks.” I think the vanilla might be what makes this come across initially as butterscotch. I don’t think I ever really picked up on the oak/hay elements, though; this was mostly just apple, and that faded.

* Horchata (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “vanilla kissed rice milk with a touch of cinnamon.” Further evidence that I do not like milky notes. But this one isn’t as off-putting as Mama’s Porridge was, and it mellows to quite a pleasant cinnamon vanilla. It’s going in the keeper pile for now.

* The Soft Lawn (Imaginary Authors)
Described as “linden blossom, laurel & ivy leaves, vetiver, oakmoss, fresh tennis balls, clay court.” My sister idiosyncratically declared this one “salad dressing,” apparently because it gave her a flashback to some kind of hoity-toity salad she had in the past; we wound up in the kitchen sniffing bottles from the spice cabinet to see if we could figure out what herb it was reminding her of. It’s very sharp and green and I’m not sure I actually like it . . . but I’m keeping it anyway, just because it’s very different from the majority of what I’ve tried, and if I come across anything else with one or more of those components, I’d like to be able to use this one for comparison.

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And YOU get a book, and YOU get a book, and YOU get a book!

Y’all, there are so many giveaways right now for The Mask of Mirrors. In no particular order:

* Alyc and I are asking people to design a Rook and Rose cocktail and mocktail! (We want something celebratory to drink on the book’s release day.) You have until noon Pacific on Monday the 18th to send us a recipe for either one or both, with the only real restriction being that Alyc loathes all forms of gin, so probably best to avoid that. We’ll choose one winner in each category and send them a signed copy of The Mask of Mirrors, along with one of the gorgeous bookplates Orbit had made! (US only — our apologies to people overseas, though we still welcome recipe suggestions from you.) You can post your recipes here or on Twitter or Facebook, or send them via our site.

* Beneath Ceaseless Skies is running their own giveaway, ending Wednesday the 13th. All you have to do is respond to that post with your favorite caper/thief story published in BCS (and there’s a list of candidates to get you started). And in case you missed it, they have a Rook and Rose short story, too!

* And our publisher is running a giveaway, too! This one is open to both US residents and UK residents, with separate portals for each. That goes through the end of the month.

* Finally, you’ve got about two days left (as of this post going live) to enter a Booksweeps giveaway for fifty epic fantasy novels, The Mask of Mirrors included! That one ends in the wee hours of the morning for U.S. residents on Thursday the 14th.

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New Worlds: Anatomy

What do mummification, body-snatching, and anaesthetized pigs have in common? The New Worlds Patreon answers that with a look at how we’ve learned about human anatomy. Comment over there!

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Year 160 of the American Civil War

Today, armed terrorists waving the flag of the Confederate States of America attacked the United States government.

I said on Twitter, “I hope I see the end of the U.S. Civil War in my lifetime. It’s dragged on a century and a half already.” While that’s obviously crafted for the soundbite nature of Twitter, I’m not speaking tongue in cheek. I read a take some time ago (where, I cannot recall), which said that the Civil War had two phases. The first ended in 1865, with a victory by the Union; the second, which was called “Reconstruction,” ended in 1877 with a victory by the Confederacy. I think there’s a lot of truth in that . . . but I’m not sure it’s over even now. For a hundred and sixty years, people waving that flag have prosecuted their agenda of white supremacy with lethal violence. The intensity of the violence has ebbed and flowed, but it’s never stopped, and the flag has never truly fallen.

What happened today wasn’t a protest. It was an attempted coup by forces loyal to Confederate ideals, to overturn the results of a democratic election.

And it wasn’t unexpected. Nor was it just a few bad apples. For the terrorists to get inside the Capitol Building, one of two things has to be true: 1) the Capitol Police were shriekingly incompetent in their job of defense, or 2) they colluded with the terrorists. Since we have video of them removing the barriers, we know what the answer to that is. And even before that, twelve Republican senators — Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee), Mike Braun (Indiana), Ted Cruz (Texas), Steven Daines (Montana), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee), Josh Hawley (Missouri), Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), John Kennedy (Louisiana), James Lankford (Oklahoma), Kelly Loeffler (Georgia), Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Roger Marshall (Kansas), and Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) — had pledged to try to block the confirmation of Biden’s victory.

And what did Donald Trump do, when called upon to stop what he had incited?

He doubled down on saying the election had been stolen, and told his terrorist backers “We love you, you’re very special.”

The Republican Party has openly abandoned democracy in favor of white supremacy. I give no pass to those who aren’t in that list of twelve; anybody who is willing to stand up and be counted with the Republican cause is giving aid and comfort to this unprecedented attack on our system of government. There are a hundred examples of how peaceful protestors in movements like Black Lives Matter (but not remotely limited to that cause) were met with violence . . . but when white supremacists storm the Capitol, the police let them in and then try to talk them down nicely. Where are the tear gas canisters and the rubber bullets when terrorists break into congressional offices and get access to the computers and the files there? Saved for use against people of color, that’s where.

This is the result of the last four years, the last fifty years, the last hundred and sixty years, the last two hundred forty-five years, the last five hundred twenty-nine years. This is racism. This is white supremacy. This is an attack on the principles and practice of democracy, in favor of one ethnicity uber alles.

It has to stop.

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The Advent of Scent, Week 4

No longer actually an advent calendar, unless I’m counting down to . . . some random time in February? But I might as well continue with that name for these posts.

* Cape Heartache (Imaginary Authors)

Described as “Douglas fir, pine resin, western hemlock, vanilla leaf, strawberry, old growth, and mountain fog.” Late in the process I get maaaaaybe a hint of vanilla leaf, but mostly I smell like HI I’M A FOREST. Which isn’t all that bad! (Though my nose misidentified that mix of trees as cedar, which I guess is nowhere in here.) Like O! Unknown, this has a very strong throw — I think I am using my new perfume terminology correctly? the tendency of the scent to kind of leap out and grab you? — which I’m starting to think is characteristic of Imaginary Authors’ woody scents in general, possibly aided and abetted by these being spray bottles instead of dipper sticks. I sort of wish I could just dab it on, rather than getting a big gust.

* Unmasking the Sambaso Dancer

Described as “king mandarin, passionfruit, Moroccan rose absolute, labdanum, and amber musk.” Sadly, the orange in this comes on strong, but fades very fast. When it was wet, I picked up something kind of . . . sharp? . . . which might have been the labdanum? (I haven’t encountered labdanum often enough to really know; it just doesn’t seem like it’s any of the other ingredients.) For a little while there was a floral overtone, but the whole thing didn’t really last.

* Liquid Gold Is [in] the Air

BPAL’s site and my bottle disagree on the exact name of this one.

New Worlds: The Art and Science of Diagnosis

Happy New Year! The New Worlds Patreon is kicking off 2021 with a look through the more surgical side of medicine . . . but this first essay looks at the diagnosis of all kinds of ailments, disease included. So if that’s something you’d prefer not to think about right now, totally understood. If you do want to read, though, comment over there!

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A quick look back

Next year is going to involve more stuff of mine being published in the first two months than I had in the entirety of 2020, but sometimes that’s the way the publication schedule cookie crumbles.

I did, however, publish things this year! Two short stories:

“Cruel Sisters” at Daily Science Fiction (wherein I deal with a continuity error in a folksong), and
“The City of the Tree” at Uncanny Magazine (wherein I explore a different corner of the world of the Varekai novellas).

Book-wise, I put out Driftwood, which, if not one of the best things I’ve done (and it’s gotten enough rave reception in different places that it might well be up there), is certainly the most timely: this is, after all, the book Publishers Weekly described as “hope in the face of apocalypse.” May it continue to bring light where it is needed — as it likely will be for some time.

Come on, 2021. You will not solve all our woes on January 1st — one at least will need to wait for the 20th — but may you at least be a path up out of the underworld.

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