Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 110

Using Genre

From Jane Friedman’s blog: How Important Is Genre When Pitching and Promoting Your Book?

Spoiler: very important.

I love working with books that are cross-genre or genre-bending, but crucially, every book still has a primary genre. Naming one primary genre tells me that you understand genre, that you’re a reader, and that you know where your book fits in the market. When I sell books that cross the boundaries between literary fiction and fantasy, for example, to literary fiction editors, I’ll call it a “work of literary fiction with speculative elements,” and to sci-fi & fantasy (SFF) editors I’ll call it “literary fantasy.”

Of course the bits bolded above caught my eye. The bolding is mine. The person quoted defines “literary” in “literary fantasy” as a quality describing the writing, by the way.

I never know how to talk about the Death’s Lady trilogy.

I usually say “literary fantasy” when I mention the first book. But the other two — still literary fantasy? Or epic fantasy? Or something else? If literary in this context means refers mainly to the quality of the writing, I guess I feel more comfortable calling the whole thing “literary fantasy.” In contrast, if “literary fantasy” were to indicate minimal fantasy elements, the first book fits, but the other two don’t.

I’m pretty pleased with Kuomat’s story at this point, by the way. It was a challenge to write in a couple of ways. It proved a good deal more difficult to write from the pov of a Talasayan person than an American, for reasons which are probably obvious — syntax and phrasing and also attitudes and just everything required a lot more conscious, deliberate focus all the way through. In contrast, writing from the pov of either Jenna and Daniel is much easier, even restful. That’s not why a subsequent novel would be written from their points of view, but it’s a significant benefit to doing it that way.

Here’s the cover for Kuomat’s story, by the way:

You can see which title I decided to go with. I kind of expect to go on with this series eventually, and at that time I expect I will have a chance to use some of those other titles. This one fits this story, flows from the previous sets of titles, and I like it.

It’s 75,000 words, by the way. I don’t know whether that quite makes it a full novel, but it’s about 12,000 words longer than The Year’s Midnight — even counting the Interlude. That’s why I went ahead and made it “Book 4” rather than listing it as associated content.

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The Opening Chapter Makes a Promise

From Kill Zone Blog: The Opening Chapter Reveals a Secret Vow

Except it’s not a secret. It’s actually an explicit promise: Here’s what the story is about. Here’s the main character. Here’s the problem. Here’s the setting.

This is the beginning of the linked post:

[This opening was] gripping, tense, love the story rhythm, the way he pauses at just the right moment. I could not flip the pages fast enough. Lovin’ every second of it! And then… In the next chapter, I find out it was all a dream.

Ouch. Yes, that would inspire a certain tendency toward Kindle-Hurling, though I trust we would all resist the impulse.

The post then goes on, now speaking of a different book:

We learn the protagonist is a child and her older sister is rescuing her from an imminent threat. …. the author did a terrific job of showing the action. Finally, I could sink into a gripping read. Or so I thought. …The next chapter consisted of pages and pages of backstory. No plot, only backstory. The premise still intrigued me, so I kept reading. Then I hit a flashback that dragged on for several pages. The worst part? It added nothing to the main storyline. … in Chapter 2, I read more pages and pages of backstory and another flashback. The next chapter was equally disappointing, with more pages of backstory and a third (fourth?) flashback. I lost count.

Whiplashed from being thrown forward, then backward, I couldn’t take it anymore and closed the book. A good premise will only take you so far. At some point, you need to deliver on the promise you made to the reader.

Bold is in the original. And yes. Also, by “at some point,” what we really mean is “pretty darn soon.”

This is reminding me of a similar phenomenon — the thing where you open the book and there’s this exciting first chapter, and then the protagonist gets killed and you start over with a different protagonist.

That, to me, feels like the same kind of broken promise. Here is the story! It’s about this protagonist! WHOOPS, FOOLED YOU. I don’t think that’s funny or cute or … I’m not sure what the author is actually going for. Shock? What that sort of bait-and-switch novel opening actually produces is disengagement, at least for me. I tolerate that only in murder mysteries and only because it’s so ordinary in that genre that it’s not a surprise. Even there, I don’t necessarily care for it.

This post ends by asking how many chapters you read before DNF a novel. I would actually sort of like to see a survey on that question with respondents categorized by age. I know that I used to give a novel more time; I know that I used to finish novels that I didn’t really like. I finished a few that seriously turned me off for one or another reason. I remember that, but I look back on it with real puzzlement. Why? Why did I do that to myself? There’s no shortage of other novels.

These days, I don’t think I give most novels a whole chapter before making a DNF decision. It’s more like a few pages — unless I have reason to go on farther than that. Reasons that matter: I trust the author, or someone I trust recommended the novel. Oh, and sometimes I can tell it’s just me; I’m not in the mood for that novel right now, but there’s a good chance I will be later. But overall, I usually give up on a novel before reaching the end of the first chapter.

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Fantasy worlds That Aren’t Earth + Magic

From James Davis Nicholl at tor.com: Five Fantasy Worlds That Aren’t Just Magical Versions of Earth

While science fiction worlds are (somewhat) constrained by the laws of physics the same is not necessarily true of fantasy worlds. Despite this, many fantasy worlds are slight variations on Earth as we know it. Sometimes the continents are different, but generally speaking, the working model is “standard Earth plus magic.” Only generally speaking, however—there are exceptions. Here are five.

Well, that certainly caught my eye. Obviously the world of Tuyo is an outstanding candidate for a list of this sort, not that Nicholl will have read it, probably. So what did he pick out?

Well, scanning through this post, I’m very pleased to see Tuyo does appear in the comments! That’s nice to see. Kind of makes my day.

But back to the actual post. I’m assuming Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is here … yes, there it is. What are the other four?

Under the Pendulum Sun  by Jeannette Ng

The fairy lands of Ng’s novel Under the Pendulum Sun are as unlike Earth as the Fair Folk are unlike humans. Above the flat plain occupied by this world’s inhabitants, a bright sun oscillates on the end of a long string—the pendulum sun of the book’s title. 

Glorantha  by Greg Stafford 

On a small scale, Glorantha looks Earth-like, featuring two large continents separated by a vast sea. Pull back for greater perspective, and this familiar arrangement is revealed as the top of a cube floating in a sea of chaos, surrounded by a great sphere beyond which sensible mortals do not explore.

Tales From the Flat Earth  by Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee’s Flat Earth is a world where the haughty gods consign mortals—whom gods see as an embarrassing mistake—to the care of demons and other deliciously malevolent beings. It is also, as many of you may have guessed by this point, as flat as a tabletop. It is interesting that this flatness is a temporary condition (as is signaled by the phrase “for in those days the Earth was flat”). This Earth must be immune to the tendency of gravity to pull worlds into spheres.

Missile Gap  by Charles Stross

Technically, this tale of Cold War rivalry complicated by alien intervention is science fiction. However, since it is set on an Alderson disc—a massive platter of solid material millions of kilometres across—and since no known material could prevent such a construct from being immediately reshaped by gravity into a more conventional arrangement, it feels sufficiently fantasy-adjacent to mention here. In this particular case, unknown entities have populated a flat projection of the Earth’s surface with Cold War-era humans. The necessary differences between a flat map and a sphere dramatically alter the balance of power between Americans and Soviets. If only West vs East were the most pressing concern confronting humans…

Wow. Several of those do sound wildly interesting and different. I’m not crazy about Stross in general, but I might try this one. Has anybody read it? What did you think? The Pendulum Sun one sounds really neat too.

I wrote a post a lot like this at Beta Shepherd: The best fantasy novels that sweep you into a very strange world

I also picked Discworld (obviously). Other than that, there’s no overlap. I picked:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Chalice by Robin McKinley

The Pyramids of London by AKH

Piranasi by Susanna Clarke

I stand by my choices, but I’m really interested in trying some of Nicholl’s picks, that’s for sure.

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Upcoming sale!

Pete Mack asks: Will I have a sale of early Black Dog books as the 4th collection is released?

YES!

There will be a big sale on the entire Black Dog series starting February 26th.

Here is a link to the series page on Amazon.

If you are signed up for my newsletter and did not know about this upcoming sale, please let me know, because I did send out a newsletter announcement in late January with the dates of both the Tuyo series sale, now over, and the upcoming Black Dog sale. This year, I will try to be more active in sending out newsletter announcements in a timely fashion, so if you are not currently signed up for my newsletter, you may want to sign up. If you thought you were but didn’t get a newsletter, I will look into that.

As before, this is a sale with very heavy discounts, especially for the earliest books in the series. This is absolutely the time to pick up everything in the series. If you haven’t got anything at all in the series, if you think you might ever want to try it, this is the time to pick up at least the earliest four or so, maybe the whole thing. (I mean, from my point of view, definitely the whole thing.)

If you aren’t sure, let me draw your attention to this recent comment from Evelyn Hill:

And while I do like all of your stories, I most appreciate that you got me to eat my words, so to speak. I used to swear that I would never ever like a story about shifters. For me they’re right up there with love triangles and sparkly vampires. But the first BD story used shifting as a way to describe developing self control over one’s more negative thoughts and urges and I thought that was kinda cool so I kept reading. Plus, I liked the characters :)

See there? If you like other books of mine, give this series a try, even if shifters and so on aren’t really your cup of tea!

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Kishōtenketsu: Non-Western Story Structure?

Over at Pub Rants, this: Kishōtenketsu and Non-Western Story Structures

This sounds like an interesting topic! I was immediately very interested!

Unfortunately, I was turned off almost as fast by the first sentence and the whole first paragraph of the post. Here it is:

American fiction writers are all too familiar with the Hero’s Journey and the classical three-act story structure. Or the seven-point plot structure. Or Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat beat sheet. These structures share a lot of features, and they are The Law; to deviate is to accept inevitable exclusion from the hallowed halls of Literary Representation and Big New York Publishing. Yet if you’re well read in recent fiction across a variety of genres (especially by non-white or non-Western authors), then you’ve probably encountered extraordinary stories that unfold in ways that have nothing to do with heroes or journeys or three tidy acts.

What is this “all too familiar” thing? Are you saying that there’s actually something wrong with the hero’s journey structure? Also, the hero’s journey structure is not the same thing as a three-act structure.

Here’s a generic three-act story structure:

Act I – Setup: Exposition, Inciting incident, progress toward the confrontationAct II – Confrontation: Rising action, midpoint, failure or dark night of the soulAct III – Resolution: Overcoming the dark night, climax, denouement

And here is a hero’s journey structure, as best I understand it:

Act I: The Departure: the Hero leaves the Ordinary World.Act II: The Initiation: the Hero ventures into the Heroic World meets various trials, overcomes various challenges, and becomes a true Hero.Act III: The Return: the Hero returns to the Ordinary World.

And obviously there are lots of ways to fit a story into the three-act structure that do not result in a hero’s journey plot, even though the latter also has three main acts.

Also, the three-act structure is The Law, and deviating isn’t permitted? Really. Then it’s a puzzle that there’s a classical three-act story structure and also a seven-point plot structure. That “Save the Cat” thing has fourteen beats: here’s a post about that if you’ve never heard of it (I hadn’t). Honestly, even if you declare that the seven-point thing is really a subset of the three-act structure or any other justification for this apparent puzzle, I’m not keen on this idea that you have to say denigrating things about the three-act structure before you can say admiring things about some other structure.

Then, once we get that far, what is this very special non-Western story structure?

kiku (ki): introductionshōku (shō): developmenttenku (ten): twistkekku (ketsu): conclusion

And my immediate reactions is: That is not a non-Western story structure. That is literally the exact structure of one zillion SFF short stories!

Then, after that, we finally get something that seems more like what I’d actually hoped for from this post:

She goes on to explain that in Kishōtenketsu, “tension isn’t the heart of the story…the twist is the high point. The climb to the realization point can have many shapes as long as the twist is the high point of the story.” Further, what drives such a plot is characters’ self-actualization, self-realization, self-development, and introspection, and “because the conclusion can amp up conflict or completely deescalate it into nothing, [Kishōtenketsu] gives [writers] a lot more options and allows for open endings.”

The idea that the twist is the heart of the story doesn’t seem new or different at all. The idea that the twist comes from the protagonist’s self-realization is a lot more interesting than the fact that the twist is the high point. But I’m once again puzzled that this person then says that the conclusion can deescalate tension. That’s not new or different at all! That’s what happens in the denouement of practically every story! Falling tension after the climax or twist or whatever you want to call the high point, that’s practically universal in every kind of novel!

The author of this post is drawing a distinction between Western stories that ramp up tension and this other kind of story, Kishōtenketsu, where tension may not be ramped up. But that’s a false distinction unless you acknowledge that the denouement is a place where tension falls and explain why this is different.

This post declares: But with Kishōtenketsu, the writer has more latitude to explore character growth as a phenomenon not catalyzed by conflict.

THAT is where this post should have focused. That is a LOT more interesting and different than everything else in the post. Yet I at once wonder whether it’s true. For example, suppose that the movement in the novel is toward a moment of self-realization that shifts how the protagonist views events. I think that’s the kind of thing that seems to be indicated by this description of Kishōtenketsu. But then how is there not conflict between the way the protagonist used to view the world and the way she views it now? That’s conflict! Of course it is! It’s just interior conflict!

Look at In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. This is exactly the structure of the story. The whole story is about character growth. There’s conflict … I guess … but not really. I mean, conflict between different people is by no means the heart of the story. The story is about character growth and the tension is intrinsic to the protagonist becoming the person she should be or wants to be, however you’d phrase that.

This overall conclusion of this post:

Western audiences are accustomed to a central conflict that is defeated. … A judgement that all plots need conflict to engage is a judgement based on inexperience. We’re indoctrinated by this Western way of thinking. It’s insular. It creates the idea that there’s only one way to write a story. … That’s how Western stories are written. It’s not how all stories are written.

Seems massively overstated to me, based on a simplistic definition of “conflict” and ignoring a heck of a lot of novels that are not based around a central conflict that is defeated. This post reads to me as though the author of the post is defining “Western fiction” as “space opera” or some other similar subgenre and totally ignoring the existence of the vast number of literary novels that focus on interior movement and growth, as well as a smaller proportion of novels in other genres that also focus on interior growth.

Well, maybe I just have trouble with this particular post. Let me look around for other posts on this topic … and yes:

Here’s a Book Riot post about Kishōtenketsu, with recommendations.

From this post:

Ten, or Twist/Change: The third act, or ten, is where things can get a tad tricky. While “ten” can translate to “twist”, you shouldn’t necessarily picture a big Sixth Sense–style Plot Twist, which is why I like the translation “change” a little better. As opposed to a big, shocking twist, the ten is more of a change or catalyst in the story that, though often unrelated to the elements from the first two acts, impacts them in some fashion and leads the story to its conclusion … it can also just represent a story’s progression in a direction the reader finds unexpected or odd … without necessarily causing a huge impact on the characters, but that is necessary for the reader to understand the conclusion.

Ketsu, or Conclusion: Finally, we have our ketsu, or conclusion. This is the ending of the story, where the elements from the first two acts and the third act are reconciled in some way. What makes the ketsu different from the endings of traditional western narratives is that it doesn’t have to be a resolution with problems solved and bad guys defeated, but is simply an ending. Whether it is open-ended, whether our characters didn’t go through real development or growth, whether we realize nothing much actually happened at all, it doesn’t matter that much in kishōtenketsu … What matters is that the various elements from the different acts of the story come together in a finale, as climactic or as muted as it may be.

I think this is a much, much better description of a structure that does in fact sound different and unexpected. This sounds odd to me, which is another way of saying “different and unexpected.” Your protagonist did not go through any particular change or growth? That is indeed quite different from a novel like In This House of Brede. Here we have a structure in which the reader seems to be able to say, with complete justification, that nothing happened. That doesn’t immediately seem all that appealing. But the Book Riot post goes on to suggest that a reasonable number of Western novels do in fact fit this pattern. Let me take a look at this discussion …

Ah, this post is arguing that Urban Legends often follow this pattern. I can see that! All those “And then as we drove past the graveyard, she disappeared!” types of stories. It’s quite true that there’s no conflict, no personal growth, nothing like that, in these sorts of stories.

A good discussion of The Lottery follows, fitting that story into this pattern. I would say that’s pretty persuasive.

This post also picks out two books I’ve read as examples of this kind of structure. One of them I’m sure most of you have read as well. These are

STATION ELEVEN  BY EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL

This post-apocalyptic novel follows a traveling troupe of performers who wander throughout the Great Lakes region performing Shakespeare and music in an effort to keep art alive in the wake of a pandemic that wiped out much of the global population. During their travels, they encounter a violent prophet who threatens their existence. This melancholic but beautiful book jumps across time, exploring the characters’ lives both before and after the downfall of society and revealing the delicately woven connections they have to each other.

and

THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL, ANGRY PLANET  BY BECKY CHAMBERS

In the first book of Becky Chambers’s acclaimed Wayfarers series, we are introduced to Rosemary Harper and the motley crew she joins, and follow them on their adventures throughout the galaxy. In contrast to the action-packed space adventures many sci-fi readers might be familiar with, this one is a quieter and slower story focused on its characters rather than a big, overarching conflict.

All right, to reprise:

kiku (ki): introductionshōku (shō): developmenttenku (ten): twistkekku (ketsu): conclusion

Now if I re-read one or the other of those, I’ll try to remember this post and keep this concept of story structure in mind. My feeling is that Station Eleven is the one that may more closely fit. That is an exploration of the new world that follows the fall of the old world. Now I’m feeling like maybe world-centered novels may more often fit this kind of pattern, because if exploring the world is the point, there may not be much emphasis on an exciting plot and so on. I can’t remember whether I thought the characters showed substantial growth or change in Station Eleven.

I seem to recall some climactic scenes in The Long Way. These scenes certainly did focus on the characters, but that did not make them any less climactic. Conflict came from internal tension and character relationships, but there was quite a bit of tension and therefore quite a lot of conflict in that regard.

Interesting topic, and I know some of you read plenty of non-Western literature, so maybe you can weigh in on all this in a more informed way. But at the moment, I’m definitely pointing to the Book Riot post rather than the one at Pub Rants for a better presentation of these ideas about Kishōtenketsu qualities and structure.

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Top Five Minor Language Pet Peeves

I mean, if I had to construct a list of my Top Ten Major Pet Peeves, that would include “My mother and I” constructions as the object, when it should be “My mother and me.” Also effect / affect. Also obviously I just detest “alright” and want to see a stake driven through its heart.

Not sure what else would be on a personal Top Ten List of Language Sins, but those three would certainly be the first items listed because they drive me batty.

But as list of MINOR Language Pet Peeves are different. These are things that I do notice and that annoy me, but … they’re minor. They not necessarily less common, but they don’t bother me as much, although I wish authors wouldn’t make these mistakes and when they do, I roll my eyes. So this is a personal list, not a list of how egregious particular mistakes may be, not even how common or rare these mistakes may be.

I’m sure I could come up with ten if I mused for a while, but I thought of five quickly, so here:

Top Five List of Minor Language Pet Peeves

1) Using “instinctive” when it should be “reflexive.” For me, this feels … oh … it might feel to me something mistakes involving “rapier” when you mean “scimitar” might feel to a sword expert. The words instinctive and reflexive are so obviously different to me that this is a mistake that stands out. But it’s also a common mistake and I’m used to it and I don’t really get very annoyed by it.

2) Using “panic” when it should be “terror.” This one seems equally obvious and I’m actually more annoyed by it, rather than less. It seems to me that these are normal words without special jargon meanings. It annoys me when authors make mistakes with normal words like this.

3) Using “may” when it should be “might.” The typical mistaken construction is similar to this: “She may have been hurt by that anvil you threw out the window” when in fact the incident is in the past and she was not hurt and this is known to be the case. “May” is the wrong word in that construction. The correct word for that is “might.” In some situations, yes, there can be ambiguity about which word is correct, but there’s no ambiguity here. “May” is just wrong in constructions when you know that the thing did not happen. These mistakes are jarring and, if the author does this over and over, turn into a fingernails-on-the-blackboard phenomenon.

4) Making up your own noun when an actual noun is sitting right there. I’m thinking of authors who use a word like “subtleness” when any professional author ought to know perfectly well that the word “subtlety” exists. There are plenty of nouns that are properly created using the -ness suffix and those are fine. But it’s grating when an author makes up a new noun like that for no reason on earth. I have personally DNFed a book because the author did this on the first page.

5) Making mistakes with homonyms or near-homonyms.

None of the above pet peeves is exactly like mistaking “capital” for “capitol” or “tenet” for “tenant.” The above are mostly errors that involve distinctions of meaning in words that aren’t homonyms at all. They are errors of near- or quasi-synonyms instead of errors of near-homonyms.

So for #5, I’m just lumping together all homonym errors, in the full awareness that I’m perfectly capable of typing the wrong homonym myself. Mostly I do catch them promptly, and so should everybody else if they’re putting out a real book. Social media or blog posts, I’m a lot more forgiving because those are inherently more casual and also don’t get exhaustively proofread the way a novel should be. But nobody should allow “parameter” to appear in a finished novel when the correct word is “perimeter,” and so on for the inexhaustible list of homonyms and near-homonyms.

By the way, I loaded the newest and most correct file for the 4th Black Dog collection five minutes ago, because last night I finished reading through the novellas ONE MORE TIME. I caught two more frank errors, a couple phrases that might have been awkward, a few words that were repeated too close together, a handful of commas that now strike me as unnecessary, and so on.

I have four days to catch anything else, and my mother is doing one more read-through right now. But I’m feeling pretty confident that the version now loaded to KDP is clean enough that it won’t embarrass me to have it go out. Whew!

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Back Cover Copy: I didn’t expect to be thinking about this yet

The cover artist for the Death’s Lady series has been really quick off the mark. Here is a draft of the proposed cover. Ignore all the text; it’s just placeholder text borrowed from Book Three.

As you can see, there’s a sword. I did look at an option that didn’t include a sword, as Death’s Lady herself doesn’t appear in this story. I mean, people refer to her, she’s important in the backstory, but Tenai doesn’t make an appearance. So I thought about leaving the sword out. But the cover just looks better with it there.

Meanwhile, that placeholder text! I assured the cover artist I would have a real title for him by the end of the week. Aargh! I hate making decisions.

Almost worse, back cover copy is just never easy.

Now, of course this is a novella associated with the trilogy; few readers are likely to pick it up first — I’ve minimized really serious spoilers, just in case, but really, most readers are only going to get this novella if they’ve already read the trilogy. That does reduce the importance of the back cover description. On the other hand, it would still be nice to have back cover copy that gives a reasonably accurate impression of the story. Here’s my first effort:

A long time ago, Kuomat stepped away into the woods, abandoning his place in the world of men. For years, he’s lived as an outlaw, with little to do with ordinary townsfolk. But when Jenna asked him for help in the name of Death’s Lady and of the king of Talasayan, Kuomat stepped into the affairs of the great.

That did not go unnoticed.

Now Kuomat has one chance to step out of the forest and return to the world ... if he can bring himself to take it.

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The Fear Thesaurus

From Writers Helping Writers, this: Introducing…The Fear Thesaurus!

This post is not what I expected. Here’s what this post is about:

Debilitating fears play an important role in story and character arc, so we’ve decided to delve into this topic for our next thesaurus at Writers Helping Writers. Not just any fears, though—the virulent ones that stymie characters and derail them from their goals and dreams. To help you write your character’s greatest fear realistically, we’ll be exploring the following aspects for each entry … If your character has a debilitating fear, you’ll need to show it clearly to readers through the context of their current story—no expository paragraphs or info dumps. An effective way to do this is by showing how the fear impacts the various areas of the character’s life. In this field, we’ll offer ideas on the minor inconveniences and major disruptions a fear can create.

So this post is about how to use some sort of debilitating anxiety or phobia to built a more complex character, which is all very well. A good example is in The Mask of Mirrors by MA Carrick, where the crime lord Vargo is cripplingly phobic about disease, about touching anything that might carry disease. Given his background, this makes perfect sense and it’s handled very well in the story — a great illustration of exactly what the linked post is talking about.

But I was actually thinking of a thesaurus of fear.

This is because one pet peeve for me is writers using panic when they mean terror. These terms are not synonyms, and in particular, while you can usually use “terror” as a substitute for “panic,” you can’t safely make that substitution in reverse. As a reader, I would greatly prefer that authors use the correct term.

Terror:

A terror of being caught. A terror of being found out. I’m terrified of public speaking. She’s terrified of water. He froze in terror.

All these constructions are correct. Panic would be the wrong choice in all of them, but that last one is the one where authors fairly often make a mistake.

Your character should not freeze in panic. Freezing in panic is not a thing. Panic means fear that throws you into wild, unthinking, unconsidered motion — not fear that freezes you in place.

Panic:

I fled in panic.Panicking, I flailed madly at the reaching hands. Fleeing in panic, she plunged off the edge of the cliff before she even knew she’d come to the top of the mountain.In blind panic, he fought back, stabbing and slashing with every weapon that came to hand.

Panic involves motion, especially unconsidered motion. Terror can be substituted for panic almost all the time, but not vice versa.

I’m not sure why it bugs me so much, but it does. I’m sure it would never make it into a top ten list of World’s Worst Word Choice Errors. But I think it probably would make it into my personal list of Top Ten List of Minor Pet Peeves And Please Stop Doing That.

While we’re on the subject, “instinctive” is also not a synonym for “reflexive.” When humans crowd together because they feel insecure and anxious, that’s an actual instinctive behavior. Reaching to touch something because you’re curious about it, that’s instinctive. When you jerk your hand away from a fire, that’s reflexive. If you don’t actually mean “instinctive,” then please say “reflexive.”

Now I’m starting to want to compose a Top Ten List of Minor Pet Peeves with regard to word choice errors. Not the big guys like affect / effect. More subtle and less common. “May” and “might” aren’t totally synonymous either when they are used in a “might have happened” sense. Mistakes with that are pretty common, but definitely subtle.

I’ll have to give this some thought and see if I can come up with ten.

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Marriages of Convenience

Oh, look at that: it’s Valentine’s Day! I literally forgot about that, even though for the first time ever I just released a book that more or less qualifies as a romance.

There are several basic tropes I particularly like in romances. One of them (I’m sure this won’t surprise you) is The Marriage of Convenience. Here’s a post at Smart Bitches Trashy Books which collects a zillion romances that utilize this trope, from paranormals through historicals to contemporary romances.

Here are a couple of titles that caught my eye:

As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Hetty Rhodes helped usher dozens of people North with her wits and magic. Now that the Civil War is over, Hetty and her husband Benjy have settled in Philadelphia, solving murders and mysteries that the white authorities won’t touch. 

I fear disappointment! Because I’m going to feel like this should be a lot like Hambly’s Benjamin January series, and when it no doubt proves different, I may not appreciate the difference. But this is a wonderful concept, and plainly has a lot more magic than the January series. It doesn’t sound much like a marriage-of-convenience romance, but it’s on this list, so we’ll see. Picking up a sample now.

Also this one, which looks much lighter in every respect:

Georgiana Bridgerton isn’t against the idea of marriage. She’d just thought she’d have some say in the matter. But with her reputation hanging by a thread after she’s abducted for her dowry, Georgie is given two options: live out her life as a spinster or marry the rogue who has ruined her life. Enter Option #3 As the fourth son of an earl, Nicholas Rokesby is prepared to chart his own course. He has a life in Edinburgh, where he’s close to completing his medical studies, and he has no time—or interest—to find a wife. But when he discovers that Georgie Bridgerton—his literal girl-next-door—is facing ruin, he knows what he must do.

That’s a classic sort of plot, and a good one. I do like a male lead who’s a doctor or something similar instead of a duke.

That comment — about doctors — makes me think of this one that isn’t from the linked post:

I enjoyed this one; it’s not exactly believable, but nicely told as long as you don’t object to certain tendency toward helpful coincidences.

While on the subject of Carla Kelly, didn’t she write a romance where the main characters were a maid and a butler? This is another marriage of convenience: they wanted to apply for positions in a household where the butler was expected to be married. The female lead gets fired from her previous job for eating a couple of raisins while baking, a detail that has stuck with me because really, raisins? So she needs another job, and she’s at least met this guy, and there we go, a marriage of convenience. I’ve read it a couple of times and like it, but the book seems to have vanished from my library and I can’t remember the title. If that sounds familiar to any of you, what was the title of that book?

One more:

I read this one a couple of years ago and like it a lot. It’s actually a good choice right now if you’d like a very, very slow-burn historical romance with low tension. I don’t think I’m giving much away to say that things work out; I mean, it IS a romance. Here’s my review from 2019. I may start re-reading it; I think a calm, slow-paced romance re-read may be something I’m in the mood for.

And, of course, if you haven’t read it yet:

I mean, marriage of convenience, fits right in.

I feel like there are various marriages-of-convenience in SFF that I ought to be remembering. Not paranormals — secondary world or historical fantasy or both. I can’t think of them right now. If any titles occur to any of you, please drop them in the comments!

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Progress report: ow ow ow

So, I’ve been deleting lots of material and I just want to mention that I don’t enjoy that.

It turned out, when I opened up Invictus, the unfinished draft was 98,000 words, not 80,000 words. But 80,000 is closer to the words that needed to be there to fit my revised understanding of the plot.

First task: relatively simple revision of the first 250 pp of the manuscript, with a lot of going back and forth to sort out minor continuity issues (that would look pretty major if not fixed!).

Second task: muse upon a sixty-page section. Decide to cut the whole thing. That took a couple of days because ouch.

Third task: write the new scenes that take the place of that section.

The draft is now 102,000 words, but wow, there have been major changes. A lot more got removed than has been added. A lot.

Fourth task: revise the next eighty page section. That’s where I am now. I don’t know how much of this is going to be useable. I may wind up cutting a heck of a lot of it.

Fifth task, still a misty glow on the horizon: write the last section of the story.

This is simultaneously taking a lot longer / being a lot harder than I’d hoped, yet also staying on track. I gave myself months to do this. It’s going to take months, but I still expect to finish the draft before the end of the semester. Hopefully long before the end of the semester. But if it comes to The End before May, I’ll be satisfied.

Current Reading:

The Liar’s Knot by MA Carrick. I hit a stressful scene and quit for the moment. For me, the most stressful scenes involve tension between characters when I think they ought to be friends, or at least allies, and right now they’re enemies. It’s hard to take. Really well-written series though! Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones. I remembered the recommendation of the great bodyguard in this one and opened it up. I like it a lot, but I didn’t much like seeing the central relationship show signs of shifting from a friendship to a romantic relationship. I was definitely in the mood for a friendship. Again, very well written, superb worldbuilding. The Use of Medieval Weaponry by Eric Lowe. This is a very readable book even if you don’t know much about swords or fighting. Eric Lowe’s Quora answers made it clear that he understands the concept of writing a fight scene as well as how the fight actually works in practice. That’s why I picked up this book, which I hope will prove valuable as well as interesting. In Arcadia by AKH. I opened this up again when I just did not feel like reading anything else. Please Feel Free to Share:

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