Marie Brennan's Blog, page 95

“Where do you get your ideas?”

When writers talk about questions they get asked too often, “Where do you get your ideas?” is often high on the list.

Which is odd to me, because I’ve rarely been asked that.

“Where did you get the idea for this book?,” sure. Got that one a lot with A Natural History of Dragons and the Memoirs of Lady Trent in general. But as a broad inquiry into my work as a writer, no. Still, it seems that other people do get asked about it frequently, so lately I’ve been pondering it, that I might be prepared when the question comes my way.

And I think my first-order answer is that it isn’t about learning how to get ideas. It’s learning how to recognize when you have one.

Let me use as my example a flash piece among the first I ever published, “For the Fairest.” Because it’s flash, I can quote the whole thing here, so there won’t be any hidden moving parts:

For the fairest, the inscription read. It spread discord aplenty, as intended. The goddesses squabbled and shrieked, and if beauty were judged to be internal as well as external, none of them were terribly pretty in that moment. The gods knew better than to get directly involved. They passed that responsibility to a mortal, and washed their hands of the whole affair.

The three front-runners, meanwhile, offered the best bribes they could think up: wisdom, power, love. Any normal man would have given his left arm for any one of the three.

But the judge was not a normal man, and the squabbling goddesses — as well as the one who had thrown the apple in the first place — failed to take into account the truly phenomenal size of his ego.

For the fairest, the inscription read. The prince of Troy, handsome even in his rustic shepherd’s garb, buffed the apple’s golden surface, nodded in approval at his reflection, and smiled at the goddesses as he walked away.

Here’s how this one came about.

I was watching the movie Troy, where Orlando Bloom plays the role of Paris. Bloom, of course, also played Legolas in the Lord of the Rings films, and years ago Cassandra Claire wrote a parodic LotR fanfic called “The Very Secret Diaries” that bequeathed to us all the catchphrase “still the prettiest,” which is Legolas’ refrain as the Fellowship goes through their journey.

Still the prettiest. For the fairest. Mental image of Paris deciding to keep the apple rather than give it to any of the goddesses.

Story idea.

Not a very large or deep one, to be sure, but enough to support a piece of flash fiction. Writers often talk about stories starting with “what if” — what if Paris kept the apple for himself, what if this character could go back in time and change things so that person never died, what if vampires were so popular you had to apply to become one, what if the reflection of Venice in its canals was a whole other city. But I can’t boil all of my ideas down to that kind of thing — or rather, if I do, I feel like I’m misrepresenting the actual process by which I came up with them. Sometimes it’s a funny line that seems to imply a lot more story: “Dear Mom and Dad, the good news is, nobody’s dead anymore.” Sometimes it’s an existing story with a hole in it: if the knight is new-slain and nobody knows his body lies there, how has his lady already taken another mate? Sometimes it’s a conflict, and I need a story to explore it: what do you do when you’re working for the bad guys, but the people opposing them aren’t good, either?

I think that many of us have these ideas on a regular basis — many more than realize it. So the first step isn’t necessarily figuring out how to make your brain work a certain way; the first step is becoming aware of your own thoughts and noticing when something that wanders through could be used as the basis for a story.

(Could be used. Won’t necessarily be, because some ideas are trivial and not really that interesting, others are shiny but not really your kind of thing, and once you get in the habit of this, you run a high risk of winding up with more ideas than you can use.)

And here’s the thing: we respond to positive feedback. When you start noticing story ideas and paying attention to them, odds are good that your brain will go, “oh, you want this kind of thing? I can do that!” Whereupon it will start generating more ideas, free-associating everything that crosses its path and bouncing those elements off one another to see if something nifty falls out. Nine times out of ten something stupid will fall out, but hey, you can’t strike pay dirt every time. Professional photographers take dozens or hundreds or thousands of photos for every one they end up using.

True story. While I was writing A Star Shall Fall, I got hit by an idea before I even got out of bed one morning. Wake up, yawn, stretch, slowly become aware of surroundings, first coherent thought to form in my head is . . . “vivisection!!!” Which, yes, fit my plot quite well, but really was not how I wanted to start my day. But my sleeping brain had been chewing on the story and was eager to offer up the fruits of its labor.

(I don’t show the vivisection in the novel. It happens offstage.)

Because I’ve been trying to practice mindfulness meditation lately, I can’t help but see a parallel here, because what I’m advocating here is being mindful of your own thought processes. I don’t claim that no actual work goes into generating ideas, or that the stream of quality ones (or any ideas at all) is a constant quantity; we all go through fallow periods or have to actively prod ourselves into being creative sometimes. And since every person’s brain is different, you might have to take a different approach. But I’ve heard enough writers talk about how they think and work to be confident that “notice when you have an idea” is pretty solid advice. And once you start doing that, you might be able to identify conditions that encourage that type of thinking. Foster that for a little while, and your brain will become an idea-producing machine.

And then you’ll wake up one morning thinking “vivisection!” or something equally WTF. But that’s just a job hazard you learn to live with.

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New Worlds: Cosmetics

There was a brief period of time in junior high where I went to the effort of putting on makeup every day.

. . . that didn’t last long.

I am a fundamentally lazy creature, and especially now, when I work from home and can go days at a time without seeing any human beings I’m not related to, routine makeup is just a thousand times more trouble than it’s worth. I only bother with it now when I’m appearing in public professionally: going to a con or a reading, doing a video interview, or something in that vein. And even then, I rail a bit at the fact that I’m expected to do such things, whereas John Q. Author is not — but at the same time, I’m aware that we have a deep-seated bias toward pretty people, and I derive a benefit from looking my best. (A benefit John Q. Author can also reap, if he knows how to put on makeup subtly enough that he’ll just look polished rather than obviously made up . . . because unless you’re Johnny Weir or equivalently flamboyant, being a dude with a painted face is seen as strange nowadays.)

All of which is a lengthier than usual introduction to this week’s post from the New Worlds Patreon, which (you guessed it) is about cosmetics. What kinds do we use? What do we use them for? And how come I don’t see more magic or high-tech makeup in fiction?

Also, don’t forget that New Worlds, Year One: A Writer’s Guide to the Art of Worldbuilding is now available for pre-order! You can get it from Amazon US or UK (as well as other countries, but I don’t have direct links for those), Google Play, Kobo, and Indigo, with Barnes & Noble and iTunes to follow as soon as I can work out some technical issues. And, of course, it will be on sale at Book View Cafe (the publisher) on the release date, April 10th.

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In which I talk about worldbuilding

I met Christopher Paolini on a panel at Denver Comicon last year, and we wound up chatting for a while afterward. Then we wound up chatting for an hour on camera, because he periodically interviews other authors, and invited me to be one of his guests.

In the video we talk about worldbuilding, writing process, and a bunch of other things. I’m only sad that we stopped recording when we did, because it means you miss out on the part where we started nerding at one another about kdramas and Bollywood and Nirvana in Fire — which, okay, drifted away from the professional focus a bit, but only bit, because we both still think like writers even when being fannish about stuff. But if we’d recorded that it would have been two hours and nobody would have watched the whole thing, so.

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The Art of Cover Copy

Yoon Ha Lee recently posted about How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis by Bryan Cohen, which is a topic that’s been on my mind lately. I can’t swear that I’m a genius at cover copy — what Cohen calls a synopsis; it’s the stuff written on the back or inside flap of the book, or in the “description” field online — but I actually enjoy writing it. And lately I’ve found myself even thinking of various works in progress from that angle, because figuring out what I would put into the cover copy helps me focus on what’s core to the story, what I want to use to hook the reader.

Basic principles: you want the reader to know who your protagonist is and what conflict they face, and you want to do so in a fashion that’s consistent with the overall mood, whether that’s lighthearted or lyrical or grim. After that, you walk a tightrope between being specific enough to convey flavor and being general enough that you don’t drown the reader in new information. The latter is especially tough in speculative fiction, where sometimes presenting the conflict is nigh-impossible without first explaining the world. (Ask me some time about trying to summarize the Varekai novellas. Or better yet, don’t.) Writing cover copy requires you to develop your eye for what details are load-bearing (the text will make no sense without it), what details are beneficial (not necessary, but they add a lot), and what details are extraneous.

For novels, I often adhere to a three-paragraph approach. The first paragraph introduces the situation; the second introduces the problem; the third leaves the reader with a sense of momentum and/or tension, a clear awareness that you have shown them the tip of the iceberg, but there is much more to come. Yes, it’s formulaic — but formulas come into existence because they’re good, reliable workhorses.

Since discussing this kind of thing goes better with examples, I’m going to dissect my own copy for Lies and Prophecy, because I can say exactly why I made the choices I did. (It’s also my earliest effort, so not the best, but in some ways that makes it even more instructive.)

First, the copy in its entirety:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and prophecy.

Kim never had to wonder what to major in at college. Her talent for divination made her future clear in more ways than one. But there are limits to what even a gifted seer can predict, and no card reading or prophetic dream can prepare Kim for what’s to come during her junior year at Welton.

Something has taken an interest in her friend Julian — an unseen force neither of them can identify. What starts as a dark omen quickly turns dangerous, as Julian finds himself under attack. To defend him, Kim will need more than her strengths; she will have to call on a form of magic she has never been able to master. If she can’t learn fast enough, she may lose her friend forever.

Kim knows she isn’t ready for this. But if she wants to save Julian — and herself — she’ll have to prove her own prophecies wrong.

This looks like four paragraphs, but really it’s three, with a strapline at the top. Where retailers permit me to do so, I put that first line in bold or italics to set it apart from the rest.

Now, dissecting it:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and prophecy.

True story: this book went through several titles, none of which really clicked until I thought up this line. It’s an allusion to “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” it provided me with my title, and I think the contrast it creates between prophecy (which is usually treated in fiction as immutable truth) and falsehood is a nice way to get the reader’s attention.

Kim never had to wonder what to major in at college.

Introduces the protagonist and the setting. The name and the reference to college majors tell you this is probably set in the real world, in something like the modern day.

Her talent for divination made her future clear in more ways than one.

Our protagonist is now gendered (most people default to reading “Kim” as female, but that’s not a given), and our modern setting is now established as urban fantasy. Furthermore, it’s an open urban fantasy, where magic is known enough that you can major in it during college. We also get a touch of characterization for Kim, who is a) talented and b) a diviner.

But there are limits to what even a gifted seer can predict, and no card reading or prophetic dream can prepare Kim for what’s to come during her junior year at Welton.

To be honest, this is one of the weaker lines. “Gifted seer” repeats information we already have, and while reinforcement isn’t a bad thing, it doesn’t add anything new, and “card reading or prophetic dream” only fleshes out the theme of prophecy. The main function here is to hint at trouble and thereby create a bridge to the second paragraph, and to add the fact that this is not a story about a wet-behind-the-ears freshman; Kim is old enough to have some real training and experience, but not yet done with that process.

I’ll note here that “Welton” is an extraneous detail. Do we need to know the name of Kim’s college? No, because it’s made up and therefore has no existing resonance for the reader. But it also isn’t much of a stumbling block; context makes its meaning clear. I felt the sentence flowed better with the name in there, and it adds a small bit of verisimilitude to what is clearly sort of but not quite our world.

Something has taken an interest in her friend Julian — an unseen force neither of them can identify.

Now we introduce Julian, the secondary protagonist of the novel. I wrestled a lot with this part, because I really wanted to mention Julian being a wilder. But unlike “Welton,” that word doesn’t easily slot into the reader’s understanding; it refers to a specific concept within the world, and furthermore one that can really only be defined by dragging in yet more concepts and comparisons to other things I haven’t mentioned in the cover copy: Krauss ratings, sidhe blood, gifts at birth instead of puberty like most psychics, etc. Ultimately those things, while core to the story of the novel, aren’t core to the story of the cover copy, which is about a young woman on the cusp of independent adulthood having to apply her skills to a real problem. So even though wilders are one of the key characteristics of the setting, they’re too complicated to include here, and Julian remains just Kim’s friend.

As for the vagueness of the threat, well, that’s a limitation imposed by the novel, where the characters don’t know what it is for quite a while.

My FogCon schedule

I’ll be at FogCon this upcoming weekend, with three times and places where you can be sure of catching me!

Friday, 8-9:15 p.m. — “Speculative Fiction, Science, and the Sacred” (panel with Terry Weyna, Michele Cox, Rebecca and Gomez Farrell)
Saturday, 10:30-11:45 a.m. — group reading
Saturday, 8-9:15 p.m. — “Infinite Gold Cheats, Cryptocurrency, and Credits” (panel with Nancy Jane Moore, Alex Gurevich, Caitlin Seal, and Terry Weyna)

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New Worlds: Standards of Beauty + happy anniversary!

Can you believe it’s been a year since I started New Worlds?

I both can and can’t. On the one hand, the time has flown by. On the other, I have nearly sixty thousand words’ worth of posts I’ve written in that time, so, yeah, that’s a thing. In fact, it’s a thing that is in the process of becoming an ebook — there are some outlets where you can pre-order it now, and more to come. New Worlds, Year One will be released on April 10th, at which point I’ll be more than a month into Year Two. And in honor of that, I’ve made a new funding goal: if I reach $250/month, I’ll create a print edition of these books to go along with the ebooks.

Anyway, this week’s post is brought to you by Black Panther and all of its amazing visuals, especially as they relate to personal appearance. I’m not going to get through that whole field of topics in a month, but we’re starting off broad, with an overview of standards of beauty. Comment over there!

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Last chance to hop on board the New Worlds train!

My New Worlds Patreon project is going strong, and about to pass the one-year mark. Everybody who is a patron tomorrow (when the March pledges are processed) will get access to the special anniversary reward, and patrons at the $3 level and above will get a complimentary copy of the upcoming ebook, which collects the first year of essays. Go here to join their ranks!

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Spark of Life: E.C. Ambrose on ELISHA DAEMON

Some of the best moments I’ve had while writing have come when a character who was supposed to be a minor spear carrier insists on developing depth and color and an interesting relationship with the protagonist. You can engineer that kind of thing deliberately, of course, but the best ones (in my experience) are the characters who do it organically, without me planning for it, because my subconscious sees an opportunity there. And apparently E.C. Ambrose’s subconscious saw something in Martin Draper . . .

***

E.C. Ambrose says:

One of the most fun aspects of writing a book is when the characters take on a life of their own. It’s always surprising, and always delightful—though it often requires some re-jiggering later on to incorporate the character’s unexpected actions. When I was writing Elisha Barber, the first volume in the Dark Apostle series which ends with my new release, Elisha Daemon, meeting Elisha’s best friend was one of those moments.

Elisha, the protagonist of the series, is a barber-surgeon in 14th century London: cutting hair, pulling teeth, performing blood-letting, and other minor operations. In the first scene of the book, Elisha is shaving a man’s beard when Elisha’s brother barges in to call Elisha to a childbirth. The client, a wealthy cloth merchant, protests this departure, calling the brother’s pregnant wife a whore. Infuriated, Elisha insults his client, realizing he’ll have to apologize later. Their exchange made it clear that they knew each other well: in fact, that Elisha knew his client was gay. Apparently, this guy had hit on Elisha in the past, but they retained their working relationship in spite of Elisha’s rejection. Elisha had not denounced or blackmailed his client, which told me a lot about Elisha and his attitudes. Interesting.

Then, in chapter four, things got very interesting. Elisha’s sister-in-law has lost the baby, Elisha’s brother has lost his life. Elisha kneels in their bloody house, trying, literally, to pick up the pieces when Martin shows up, and Elisha immediately calls him by name—crossing several levels of the social hierarchy. It’s one thing for a lowly barber to maintain a polite relationship with a wealthy patron whom he knows to be gay, and another thing entirely for the man to show up at his house—to even know where he lives. In spite of his terrible day, Elisha apologizes to Martin. Martin’s warm, sympathetic reaction placed their relationship in a whole new light.

Martin gives him a gift, a scrap of cloth, that proves to be useful in more ways than one later on. I was writing this book by the seat of my pants—no outline, just a few notecards—so I often had to do a mental inventory to see what tools or clues I had left for myself to get through a given scene. Martin’s gift was one of these, a small, apparently worthless item that adds meaning throughout not only this book, but also the succeeding volumes. An unexpected character can be like that: a gift you don’t know you’ve been given until they make their power known.

***

From the cover copy:

In this fifth and final installment of The Dark Apostle, barber-surgeon-turned-sorcerer Elisha must save plague-stricken England from its path of destruction–or risk succumbing to the very dark magic he is trying to eradicate.

Elisha was once a lowly barber-surgeon from the poorest streets of 14th-century London; now, he may be the most powerful magus alive. He faces the necromancers, a shadowy cult of magi who draw their power from fear and murder–and who have just unleashed the greatest plague the world has ever known upon a continent already destabilized by wars, assassinations, and religious conflict.

Empires and armies are helpless with no clear enemy to fight. The Church loses its hold upon the faithful as prayers go unanswered. Europe has become a bottomless well of terror and death, from which the necromancers drink deep as the citizens sink into despair. Elisha knows that if there is to be any chance of survival, he must root out the truth of the pestilence at its unexpected source: the great medical school at Salerno. There, Elisha might uncover the knowledge to heal his world.

But as he does, his former mentor, the beautiful witch Brigit, lays her own plans. For there may be one thing upon the face of the planet deadlier than the plague: the unfiltered power of Death within Elisha himself.

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Indiebound

E. C. Ambrose is a fantasy author, history buff, and accidental scholar.

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In which I am quoted in . . . Forbes???

If you pick up the current issue of Forbes magazine (the one that will be pulled from shelves Wednesday, not the special issue), you will find me and my words on the last page.

How did this come about?

My best guess is that, in assembling their usual page of quotes on a particular topic, the staff at Forbes head over to Goodreads and search for lines tagged with a particular keyword. In this case, the theme of the quotes page is “value,” and some Goodreads user put that tag on a line from The Tropic of Serpents: “One does not cease to treasure a gem simply because one owns another that is larger.” That’s Lady Trent talking about memories, actually, and how she regrets not having seen a particular thing even though she’s had many other awesome experiences . . . but hey, it works.

And how did I find out about this? Well, a bit over a month ago I got an email that I nearly binned as spam, asking for a photograph of myself to be used in Forbes. Let’s be real: as a general rule, the odds of me being quoted in a major business magazine are roughly nil. And I’d been getting a larger than usual volume of spam through the contact form on my site anyway. Fortunately I gave the email a second look, because this turned out to be a legitimate request, and the proof of it is now on my desk.

Had you asked me at the beginning of this year, I would have told you the member of my family most likely to appear in Forbes was my brother (involved with data security at Apple) or my father (international patent licensing). But no . . . it’s the fantasy author, with a quote from an imaginary Victoriain’t dragon naturalist.

The world is a weird place.

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One year of New Worlds + a special surprise!

I mentioned last week that the post on divorce marked the completion of one year of the New Worlds Patreon, but I neglected to mention that I’m going to have a special reward for patrons to celebrate the occasion. So if you’re interested in backing the project, do so by the beginning of March and you’ll be included in that!

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