Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 122

Really Close Third Person Raises Questions of Personal Style

So, as you know, I’ve been working on Black Dog novellas recently. The one I’ve just finished — mostly finished — I’m going to go back and change a few details that impact the ending — ANYWAY, it’s from Thaddeus’ point of view.

Now, obviously, Thaddeus is not, for example, Grayson. Or Ethan. He doesn’t speak in the same way at all, which extends to his direct thoughts and, in very close third person, also to the overall style of the story.

Take a look at this:

1. Maybe Thaddeus should of expected that.

2. “You’re pretty sure your circle could of kept me out,” he observed.

3. That would of killed practically any black dog.

Now, previously, when I’ve written from Thaddeus’ point of view, I’ve used that should of / could of / would of locution. This is not a mistake. Regardless of how utterly annoying homonyms have become, this is not a mistake I would ever make. Every now and then someone contacts me and points this sort of thing out as a typo. Which is fine! I appreciate readers pointing out typos! But this is a deliberate choice.

But is it a good choice? Show of hands, please. When you see this in Thaddeus’ pov, does it sound right? I’m considering limiting this to solely dialogue and the most direct thoughts. That is, leaving it for the second example above, but not the first and maybe not the third.

Also, Thaddeus has been part of Dimilioc for just about two and a half years now. (How time flies!) I’m not sure how fast, or whether, speech patterns like this might change, but he’s been listening to people with a significantly more formal style for that long.

It would be relatively easy to alter this. Obviously it’s not practical to search for “of” in a document, but if you search for “ld of ” that takes care of that problem. I can therefore say that this “of” locution occurs eleven times in the story. I might take that back to half as many. Or I could not use “of” this way at all. Thoughts?

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The foundations of civilization

An interesting Twitter thread here:

“Cheese is one of the 5 things the Western book as we know it depends on. The other four are snails, Jesus, underwear and spectacles. If even one of these things was absent, the book you hold in your hand today would look completely different. I’ll explain why…”

This thread is at least moderately persuasive. It’s certainly interesting. By all means click through if you’ve got time to read through a long Twitter discourse.

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The Most Influential SF Books of All time

A Book Riot post: THE MOST INFLUENTIAL SCI-FI BOOKS OF ALL TIME

Well, what leaps to mind?

Dune.

Stranger in a Strange Land.

The Left Hand of Darkness.

Those are what occur to me first. Also, possibly classics such as Nineteen Eighty-Four and that bunch. Fahrenheit 451. Generally I think of those in lists of classics rather than lists of influential SF, though of course they’re SF.

What were the seminal works for space opera? EE Doc Smith, of course, with the Lensmen series and others. I never actually read any of those. I think space opera was reinvigorated with the publication of the Vorkosigan series. Probably there was some space opera being published all along, but it seemed to me that this subgenre was pretty much in eclipse for some time and then there was a resurgence of space opera, with LMB’s series either at the forefront or at least coming out at about the time that started. I should do a post on that, as I think I define space opera more strictly than some people — at least, I’m always seeing lists of space opera that include titles I don’t think belong to the category at all.

What was a foundational work for military SF? Starship Troopers, probably, and The Forever War. But I’d personally also say that Ender’s Game later became an influential work.

Let me see what the Book Riot post considers the most influential SF novels ever…

Ah! All the old classics. That’s almost this whole list. With their dates of publication — wow, did you realize Starship Troopers came out in 1959? (???!) I didn’t realize it was that old.

Yes, I’m seeing almost all the ones I thought of, plus a few others. Oh, here’s Psion by Joan D Vinge. I liked that novel a lot. I wouldn’t have thought of it as particularly influential.

Recognized by the American Library Association as one of the Best Books for Young Adults, this 1982 release has inspired generations of young sci-fi fans to delve deeper into the genre.

I didn’t know that. Good for Psion. Hey, look, it turns out Psion is the first book of a trilogy! I didn’t know that either! I have the first two, but I must have missed the third, Dreamfall, when it came out. Vinge must have tied up the story enough in Catspaw that I didn’t really look for a third book. Well, how about that. I need to re-read Psion and Catspaw and see if I still like them enough to read the third book.

Okay, next on the list, let’s see … oh, it’s the Oankali series by Octavia Butler. I don’t know that I agree. This may be my favorite work on this entire list, but influential? I’m not so sure.

I was very, very impressed by what Butler did here with alien behavior and human behavior; with how she handled alien instinct and human instinct. I’ve always regretted not having a chance to talk to her about that, see if she was actually thinking about instinct and what instinct is when she wrote these books. I would love to know if she realized that the main difference between the oankali and humans is that the former have important instincts that are much more hardwired and inflexible than humans. Did she do that on purpose?

Regardless, not many other authors have ever tried to write something like this. Not that I can think of. CJC is in the same broad niche. Not many other authors are anywhere close. I wouldn’t say this work of Butler’s was influential. If anything of hers was, it’d be the Parable duology, which is squarely the dystopia subgenre. Parable of the Sower was first published in 1993. That places it before the recent massive flowering of YA dystopian SF. I don’t know if Parable was influential in that trend, but it could have been.

Returning to the Book Riot post …

Oh, interesting, here’s Ammonite by Nicola Griffith! By no means my favorite of her works. I think Griffith’s later books are much better than this one. Influential? I don’t know. Interesting, sure. In the tradition of The Left Hand of Darkness; that one was influential, while Ammonite — it seems to me — was one of the titles inspired by that influence.

I’m getting the impression that the Book Riot post has now shifted from Most Influential SF Novels to a list of SF Novels That Impressed Me Personally. It’s trying to stuff recent titles into the category of Influential, when really nothing recent can be considered influential. For example, The Imperial Radch trilogy may prove to be a seminal work, but it hasn’t been out long enough to tell, imo. Eight years since the first book. That’s not very long. I would therefore hesitate to include it on a a list like this. I’d put it down a step, in the last and perhaps most interesting category of this post:

Books which may become truly influential

I love predictions. I vote for the Imperial Radch trilogy. I’m not sure what works inspired by this trilogy would even look like. There’s a lot more going on here thandefault-female pronouns. That was a trivial component of this trilogy imo.

I haven’t read any of the books the post puts in this category except the Murderbot stories. I agree there. I think we may well see more robot/cyborg/construct stories that draw on what Martha Wells is doing in her series. I doubt I’ll like them as well. The Murderbot protagonist really hit a sweet spot for me. And for lots of other readers, obviously; hence the enormous popularity of the series. I suspect a lot of works will be inspired by Murderbot, but will mostly tend to be too gritty and nihilistic for me. Regardless, it’ll be interesting to pause and look back in ten years, or fifteen, or twenty, and see if we can parse out a subgenre inspired by Murderbot — and perhaps by the Imperial Radch trilogy.

In fact, now that I type this post, I could see Murderbot as inspired by the Imperial Radch trilogy. I never thought of that before. All Systems Red came out four years after Ancillary Justice. I wonder — I wonder very much — whether Martha Wells read Ancillary Justice before she wrote her first Murderbot story? Breq is no more a gendered person than Murderbot is. They’re both thoroughly nonhuman, even though they have human components. They’re even nonhuman in some ways that are sorta-kinda similar.

Now I’m imagining a line from the Imperial Radch series through Murderbot and on into the near future of a subgenre of SF. That will be extremely interesting to look back on in 20 years.

If you were going to pick out one recent-ish work that might prove to be thoroughly influential in the next couple of decades, what would it be? Anything leap to mind?

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Sale This Week

I’m trying a couple new-to-me promotion services, so I’ve set the Kindle edition of TUYO and THE YEAR’S MIDNIGHT both to $0.99 from today till the 24th. If you’ve been thinking of trying one or the other, this is a good time.

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Louis L’Amour

So, recently I dipped into and then read Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour. This book appeared on my coffee table, which sometimes happens when my mother thinks I ought to read something. I never have time to read anything (or so it seems lately), but nonfiction is good when I don’t have time to read fiction, so as I say, I dipped into this sort-of-memoir and then wound up reading most of it. It’s not exactly memoir, though it has elements of memoir. The emphasis of the book is very much on the books L’Amour read during his life, particularly his early life, before he became a successful author. Spoiler: he read a lot of books.

I’ve never read anything by L’Amour, as far as I can remember. I’ve read some Westerns, as my dad reads Westerns among other things, and I dimly recall trying something of L’Amour’s at some point, but I guess I didn’t like it? Or not enough to seek out more of his work? It was a long time ago and I don’t remember.

But I have to say, reading this memoir-ish thing has made me much more interested in his fiction. Wow, what a life! Plenty of travel, plenty of adventure. I’m going to have to try something of his. He’s got a historical set in the 12th Century — The Walking Drum. I think I’ll try that. I know I don’t want to even look at an enormous series, so I’m not trying the Sackett family series. I’ll pick up a sample of some standalone Western … there.

Meanwhile, a few quotes from Education of a Wandering Man. This is a selection of brief comments and paragraphs that particularly caught my eye as I read the book.

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

I totally agree. I’ve learned more about history from historical fiction than from history classes, mostly because the fiction is so much more memorable.

Most of what I attempted [to write] at the mine were short stories, but unhappily I did not even know what a story was, although I believed I did. They were mostly pieces of narration without drama or anything else to recommend them. I was, however, trying. And I was putting words together, learning to shape my thoughts into something worth reading.

One is not, by decision, just a writer. One becomes a writer by writing, by shaping thoughts into the proper or improper words, depending on the subject, and by doing it constantly. There was so much I needed to learn that could only be learned by doing, by sitting down with a typewriter or a pen and simply writing. Most young writers waste at least three paragraphs and often three pages writing about their story rather than telling it. This was one of the many things I had yet to learn.

Ideas are all about us, in the people we meet, the way we travel and how we think about things. It’s important to remember that we are writing about people. Ideas are important only as they affect people. And we are writing about emotion. A few people reason, but all people feel. The raw material is not important. It is what the writer does with the material.

Often I am asked if any writer ever helped or advised me. None did. However, I was not asking for help either, and I do not believe one should. If one wishes to write, he or she had better be writing, and there is no real way in which one writer can help another. Each must find his own way, as I was to find mine.

The above caught my eye because of the vast number of questions on Quora like this:

“I’m beginning a science fiction novel. How should I start my novel?”

“I want to write a series, but where should I start?”

“I have an idea for a scifi book, but am having trouble formulating it. How can I begin without sounding cliché?”

“How do you right in the pov of the antagonist?”

“How do I write the beginning of a romance into my story without it feeling forced?”

And so on and on. I’m sure some people manage to answer questions like that in a helpful way. Well, I’m not that sure. I don’t see how any advice could possibly be helpful. I don’t even try. I can’t think of anything to say to questions like that except, “By doing it. If you want to see how it’s done, open up a dozen novels that you think do a pretty good job at whatever you’re trying to do and see how those authors do it. No one can tell you how to do this! There’s no secret tip! Stop asking people how to do stuff and open up your word processor and take a stab at it!” I don’t know whether that would be helpful or not, but that’s the only advice that makes sense to me. That’s why this comment from L’Amour really struck me.

So did this:

My way may not be for anyone but me. In fact, I doubt it is. After many rejections, I sat down on the porch one night where I worked, looking off through our growing plum trees, and decided that all the editors who rejected my work could not be mistaken. Something was basically wrong with what I was doing. … From my shelves, I took several stories by O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant, Jack London, and Conan Doyle. From popular magazines, I took several that I had liked, and I settled down to study them, to see what those writers were doing that I was not.

Finally, let me quote one passage of description. I see from various Amazon reviews that L’Amour’s writing is often noteworthy for description. No wonder.

When the icy winds sweep down from the peaks of that most mysterious of mountain ranges, the Kuen-Lun, the camel-dung fires blaze up briefly, then smolder and smoke, and the dust of thousands of years stirs along what was once the Silk Road from China to the West. The voices around the fire grow still, and men listen into the night for the passing of ghost caravans traveling to ghost cities lost in the Taklamankan.

Beautiful.

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Sudden Clarity

So, I have a nine-page paragraph-format outline for Tasmakat. I wrote that immediately after finishing Tarashana.

That’s a first for me. I just didn’t want to forget certain important elements I thought of. I don’t think I would forget, but it’s going to be a while before I get to really tackle this project, so I didn’t want to take the chance. (By “really tackle,” I mean seriously move toward finishing; I have written about 100 pages of this book so far, but that doesn’t count as getting serious.)

Naturally things will change from the outline — I fully expect that to happen — but I think that a lot of that outline will turn out to be accurate. The point is, I have this outline.

From the opening scene of Tarashana, I have had certain scenes in mind for Tasmakat. That assassin and that whole subplot got so much space in Tarashana specifically because of stuff that’s going to happen in Tasmakat. Those scenes are included in the outline.

However, though so much has been clear, I’ve also been struggling with certain dilemmas regarding that subplot.

Well, last night I suddenly realized that if I cut one character I had in mind and substituted a different character, poof! all those dilemmas immediately resolve.

Wow. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before. The problem was, the one character I had in mind is a neat character. I would have liked writing him. But it makes A LOT more sense to cut him and handle this plot problem a different way. Doing it like this will solve additional dilemmas that I hardly recognized even were dilemmas until suddenly they were solved.

That came out of nowhere. I wasn’t even thinking about Tasmakat. And yet here we are. Some part of my brain must have been working on this without my really noticing. So this morning, I opened the outline file and revised it — just to make sure I don’t forget that this is one problem I think has been solved.

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More poetry

Kim mentioned a poem involving angels and laundry. I remember that too! I went looking for it, and I’m not sure, but I think it’s this one.

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul   
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple   
As false dawn.
                     Outside the open window   
The morning air is all awash with angels.

That seems very familiar to me. If it’s not the one Kim was thinking of, I’m pretty sure it’s the one I was thinking of. That “awash with angels” is the line I seem to remember.

Kim also mentioned Break, Break, Break by Tennyson. Yes, I love that one!

Break, break, break,
         On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
         The thoughts that arise in me.

Here’s a snippet from Mirror by Sylvia Plath —

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

That’s one I don’t recall ever reading before. That’s certainly an evocative few lines there! At once I agree: I’m feeling old age rise toward me too, like a terrible fish! A shark, perhaps. Oddly, I do think the phrase “terrible fish” may be better there than “terrible shark.” I’m not sure why!

Speaking of e e cummings — and I ought to have remembered him — here’s “All in Green Went My Love Riding, sung by Joan Baez — it’s wonderful set to music.

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Second books; also, Autumn Book Sales!

At Writer Unboxed, this: The Blessed Curse of the Second Book

The publishing world and readers love a debut—shiny and new—but by the time book two comes around, the bloom is off the rose. There are the inevitable comparisons, and authors desperately want to prove they aren’t one trick ponies and that their glorious debut wasn’t a fluke.…

Well, regardless of whether the debut novel was actually glorious, I think everyone is aware of the general opinion that trilogies often sag in the middle. I have to say, despite this general perception, I personally don’t actually go into a trilogy expecting that to happen because, honestly, at least as often as the second book sags, it soars.

Let me see. My own second books …

Land of the Burning Sands. Wow, as I put the link it, I notice the entire trilogy is just $1.99 today for the Kindle edition. If you don’t have this trilogy, today is a good time to add it to your e-library, that’s for sure.

Anyway, what I started to say was, the second book is my personal favorite in the trilogy. It’s not close, either. I really, really like Burning Sands. The writing experience was particularly smooth for this one, as I recall, which may slant my opinion.

Pure Magic. I’m not sure. I like all the novels in this series, but I think I like Copper Mountain best. More germane to the topic of this post, I don’t think I like Pure Magic less than any other. I enjoyed writing Justin. I should manage to give him a significant pov role in Silver Circle.

The Sphere of the Winds. I wrote this such a long time ago, even though I just brought it out this year. (It seems like longer! February seems AGES ago at this point.) Anyway, I’ve gotten several very nice notes about it from readers — not just reviews (thanks for leaving a review!) but personal emails. I think readers in general seem to agree this is a good sequel to The Floating Islands.

Door Into Light.

Okay, I should mention, Hatchette is plainly running a sale on backlist titles, because House of Shadows is also just $1.99 today. You know what, fine, I’m going to drop the price of Door Into Light for a bit, until House of Shadows comes back up, and see what happens. There. By the end of the day, D into L should be just $2.99. That’s as low as I can put it and still list it for 70% royalties.

Tarashana. Not the second book written, but the second book in the main trilogy. Personally, I think it turned out very well. I can’t put it above or below Tuyo; I love both books so much.

As a side note, please don’t leave a one-star review for a book if your Kindle happens to have a meltdown after you buy that book. It’s more effective to contact Amazon about the problem with your Kindle. I’m sure you can all accurately surmise why I mention this here. Mind you, Tarashana still has a nice star rating.

In a sense, In Absence, Darkness. I get that this is an oddly structured trilogy. It’s the first half of a single story. I don’t really think it counts as a second book.

I think that’s it for my personal second books. While reader opinions are sure to vary, there’s not one that I think is markedly inferior to the first book.

The same can be said for lots and lots of other trilogies where the same is true. Let me see.

Okay —

Freedom’s Apprentice, the second book of the Dead Rivers trilogy by Naomi Kritzer. The whole trilogy is so good!

The Fox, second book of the Inda series by Sherwood Smith. This is possibly my all-time favorite epic fantasy series. All the books are great.

Court Duel, the second book of the Crown Duel/Court Duel duology, also by Sherwood Smith, is significantly better than the first book (according to my personal taste). The linked edition contains both books.

Raven’s Children, second book of the Sequoyah trilogy by Sabrina Chase, is better than the first. This is solely because the first book seemed, to me, to take a good while to get going. The story is then one cohesive whole. Once it starts moving, it doesn’t sag significantly at any point. This was one of my favorite SF series when I read it, a year or two ago. I need to re-read it again.

Ancillary Sword, the second book of Ann Leckie’s trilogy, is, for me, as good as the first book. I know not everyone agrees with that. I thought every book was about equal in quality. This is partly because, when events slow down, they slow down in a way I find appealing.

That’s five. I’m sure everyone here can name a trilogy where the second book is as good as the first. If an example leaps to mind, please drop it in the comments.

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4/5 Finished, More or Less

Okay! Once again, I can’t quite decide whether this particular Black Dog novella is quite finished. Does it need another paragraph? Another scene? Two scenes? Three? (Surely not more than three?)

This is Thaddeus’ story. It’s run a little longer than I expected, which in fact does not ALWAYS happen, although it’s certainly not a shock. It’s eighty pages at the moment. I’m not sure whether it will end up about eighty-two pages or ninety or what.

This gives me four stories basically (but not entirely) finished. In the order they’ll appear in the collection, not the order I wrote them, they are:

Keziah’s story, which deals with the skull that used to have the demon in it; you probably remember that from Copper Mountain. Takes place shortly after Copper Mountain, in the winter. Sets up something I’ll use in Silver Circle.Thaddeus’ story, which takes place in spring and also sets up something I’ll use in Silver Circle. You know what, just assume that every story in this collection plays at least a minor role in setting up events for Silver Circle. I think they all do, or will unless I change my mind about what’s going to happen in that novel.Tommy’s story, which takes place in summer, directly after his previous story. I’m sorry that his first story wound up out of order, but I thought there would be more time between Shadow Twin and Copper Mountain. Then I changed my mind about that and here we are, with stories that are out of chronological order. That does bug me, but there’s nothing to do about it now.Ethan’s story, which takes place in late summer. This is my favorite, at the moment.If I can make it work when I go back to it, Grayson’s story. It might switch pov. We’ll see. I kind of need it, although I could make certain events happen off stage if I truly can’t get this story to work.

At the moment, (1) and (2) are probably mostly finished, (3) is for sure mostly finished, (4) is definitely finished, and (5), of course, is the one where I got stuck and went on to other stories. I will pull that one out again shortly.

The four I have are all on the novella side for length rather than the short story side. That’s not why I haven’t finished this collection yet, but it’s a contributing factor.

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Hello there, Creature of the Night

A fun idea for a quiz:

WHICH FAMOUS FICTIONAL MONSTER ARE YOU?

I got Phantom of the Opera, but to be fair, I was answering nearly at random. There were no questions about singing ability. While I’m willing to sing in public, certainly not as a soloist! Not sure this is the best choice of famous monster for me.

Other possibilities, let me see … Oh! If I got to just pick one of these possibilities, I’d pick The Headless Horseman.

You know, roughly a zillion years ago, I was on a school trip where we watched The Headless Horseman and then walked back to our cabin … through the woods … at night … and just about jumped out of our skins when a rabbit dashed out of the underbrush. A surprisingly spooky movie under the right circumstances!

Also, this way I’d get a cool horse.

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