Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 15

Establishing voice on the first page

Let’s try a real book, chosen basically at random — these are just all sitting up at the top of the downloaded books on my phone right this minute, that’s all — and compare each to Claude. My assumption is that the real book will have “voice,” that nebulous quality that brings the protagonist to life in the reader’s mind, and the AI generated story won’t. I’m not going to try concealing which is which. This is about voice, not really about AI at all.

***

Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear

On the last day of school, after walking to the old brownstone building on 895th where they had an apartment, Peter’s father told him that they would be going away for a few months. Peter gave him a squint that said, What, again?

The mailbox in the lobby was empty. Peter had been hoping for a letter from his mother. She had not written in a month.

They walked up the three flights of stairs in the hallway that always smelled of old shoes and mice — the polite word was rats — and his father said, “You think I’m going to take you to North Dakota or Mississippi or someplace, don’t you?”

“It’s happened,” Peter said.

Anthony Belzoni gave his son a shocked look. “Would I do that to you — more than once?”

Sad that there had been no letter in the box and that school was over, Peter was in no mood for his father’s banter, but he tried to sound upbeat. “We could go to Florida,” he said hopefully. He loved Florida, especially the Everglades.

***

Claude, please begin a story in which Peter’s dad tells him they’re going to have to move again after just a year. Peter likes his current school.

“Peter, can you come in here for a minute?” his dad called from the living room. Peter dragged himself away from his video game, already dreading what his dad wanted to talk about. They had just moved to this new town a year ago after his dad’s job transferred them once again.

When Peter walked into the living room, his dad was sitting on the couch with a serious expression. “Have a seat, son. We need to talk.”

Peter’s heart sank. He knew that look and that tone. “What is it, Dad?” he asked, trying to keep the dismay out of his voice.

His dad let out a long sigh. “I’m really sorry, Peter, but we’re going to have to move again. My job is transferring me to their Louisville office at the end of the school year.”

The words hit Peter like a punch to the gut. Not again! He had finally started to settle in and make friends at his new school. The idea of having to start over yet again made his stomach churn.

“But Dad, I really like it here! Can’t you ask to stay or find a different job?” Peter pleaded, desperation creeping into his voice.

***

Okay, so, the real book by Bear is lively in a way that the generated opening just isn’t. The real book is lively, engaging, and Peter and his dad both immediately seem like they’re real people. The generated books lacks any of that. What is causing the difference?

A) Unexpectedness. The real story has it and the generated story does not.

B) Smooth use of dialogue tags and indications about emotions. The real story has it and the generated story does not.

C) Use of cliches. The real story basically avoids cliched phrases, while the generated story is packed with cliched phrases from top to bottom.

But what about voice? This is what makes the characters seem real.

***

Sixth of the Dusk by Brandon Sanderson

Death hunted beneath the waves. Dusk saw it approach, an enormous blackness within the deep blue, a shadowed form as wide as six narrowboats tied together. Dusk’s hands tensed on his paddle, his heartbeat racing as he immediately sought out Kokerlii.

Fortunately, the colorful bird sat in his customary place on the prow of the boat, idly biting at one clawed foot raised to his beak. Kokerlii lowered his foot and puffed out his feathers, as if completely unmindful of the danger beneath.

Dusk held his breath. He always dead, when unfortunate enough to run across one of these things in the open ocean. He did not know what they looked like beneath those waves. he hoped to never find out.

The shadow drew closer, almost to the boat now. A school of slimfish passing nearby jumped into the air in a silvery wave, spooked by the shadow’s approach. The terrified fish showered back to the water with a sound like rain. The shadow did not deviate. The slimfish were too small a meal to interest it.

A boat’s occupants, however …

It passed directly underneath. Sak chirped quietly from Dusk’s shoulder; the second bird seemed to have some sense of the danger. Creatures like the shadow did not hunt by smell or sight, but by sensing the minds of prey. Dusk glanced at Kokerlii again, his only protection against a danger that coudl swallow his ship whole. He had never clipped Kokerlii’s wings, but at times like this he understood why many sailors preferred Aviar that could not fly away.

***

Claude, please begin a story about a man named Dusk, who is in a small boat, watching a frightening sea monster pass below the boat. There is a bird perched on the prow of the boat. The bird keeps the monster from noticing the boat.

Dusk gripped the sides of his tiny rowboat, his knuckles white. His heart pounded in his ears as the massive shadowy form slowly undulated beneath the shallow waters around him. He didn’t dare move or even breathe too loudly, praying the nightmarish sea creature wouldn’t notice his meager vessel.

A small seabird was perched on the prow, casually preening its feathers. Dusk envied how calm and oblivious the bird seemed in the face of such a terrifying leviathan brushing up against the bottom of the boat. Somehow, the bird’s nonchalant presence seemed to be masking Dusk’s own fear and the boat from the monster’s senses.

The beast’s bulk blocked out the sunlight, leaving Dusk in its dark, cold shadow. He could vaguely make out the rough, scaly texture of its hide and the occasional jutting spine or barnacled ridge as it propelled its titanic form forward. The monster’s mouth was an abyssal black pit that could easily swallow the tiny boat in one bite.

Dusk couldn’t tell if the creature was simply too large and dim-witted to detect his tiny speck of a boat, or if it was intelligent enough to know he was there but unbothered by his insignificant presence. He didn’t want to find out the answer.

After what felt like an eternity, the sea monster’s massive tail finally slipped past, allowing the sunlight to return. Dusk let out the breath he had been holding as the last ripples faded. The seabird took to the air with a dismissive squawk, perhaps annoyed that its perch was moving again.

Dusk fell back against the boat’s hull, drenched in cold sweat. He knew he should turn around and head back to shore while he could.

***

Again, the real thing has unexpectedness, better setting details, more smoothly integrated into the narrative, and many fewer cliched phrases.

Also, the real character has a specific personality trait that is important. What is that trait? Reluctance to infringe upon the freedom of the bird. This is a remarkable reluctance. Given this situation, I would almost certainly clip the feathers of the bird. Dusk in unusually committed to not clipping the feathers OR that is not just a bird, but a person, so that clipping the feathers would be morally much iffier.

***

A Matter of Profit by Hilari Bell

He would have to tell his father. He couldn’t tell his father.

Ahvren hoisted his three overstuffed gear bags and tried not to let his reluctance slow his feet as he boarded the shuttle that would take the spaceline’s passengers down to T’Chin. The voyage from Mirmanidan had lasted five interminable weeks. Ahvren was probably the only one aboard who wished it had lasted longer.

He might not even have a choice about telling his father, the the bizarre compulsion that had seized his tongue so often during the last few months overcame him, he’d blurt out the truth to Viv Saiden the moment he opened his mouth — whether he wanted to or not.

Hello, Father, I realize this will disgrace our family, perhaps even end our line if I’m declared unfit, but I just can’t help them conquer anyone else …

When had his own people become them?

***

Claude, please begin a story about a young man who dreads telling his father that he wants to quit the space fleet, that he cannot stand the thought of engaging in missions of conquest.

Jarik stared out the viewscreen at the vast inky blackness of space. The dim pinpricks of distant stars provided little comfort as his stomach churned with dread. He knew he had to tell his father soon, but he feared his father’s reaction.

Ever since Jarik was a child, his father had groomed him for a life of military service in the space fleet. It was a proud family tradition going back generations, serving the Planetary Alliance through galaxy-spanning campaigns of conquest and domination over new worlds.

Jarik had excelled at the military academy, completing the rigorous training at the top of his class. Part of him had reveled in the glory and honor of carrying on his ancestral legacy. But another part of him had grown increasingly uneasy with the fleet’s brutal tactics and oppressive goals of subjugation.

On his first few missions, seeing the devastation wrought on colonies that dared to resist the Alliance had shaken Jarik to his core. He began to question the righteous motivations he had been taught to blindly believe in. The more he witnessed, the more his soul recoiled at the cruelty and injustice of the fleet’s actions.

Now, as Jarik prepared for another massive assault, he knew he had reached his breaking point. He could no longer be a party to such wanton destruction and tyranny, no matter what sacred oaths or family traditions were at stake. But how could he make his father understand?

Jarik’s father was the embodiment of the space fleet’s merciless spirit. He had led many of the most ruinous campaigns, celebrated as a ruthless scourge of the Alliance’s enemies. In his eyes, any refusal to comply with the fleet’s doctrine would be an act of treacherous cowardice.

Taking a steadying breath, Jarik turned and headed to the officers’ quarters to request an audience with his father.

***

The real story has a great first line — really great. Just my cup of tea, in fact. No wonder I picked up a sample. The real one also has better details, more setting, the protagonist is far better integrated into the setting, and again there are many fewer cliched phrases. If I never again see “his stomach churned with dread” or “shaken to his core,” that would be great.

***

Now, let’s think about this really boring opening page of a real book, where I pulled out the first page in a post last year:

On the anniversary of his wife’s death, Sam Anderson visited her grave.

It was a crisp spring morning in Nevada, with dew on the grass and fog rolling through the cemetery. In one hand, Sam carried a bouquet of flowers. In the other, he gripped his son’s hand. Ryan was eleven and strong-willed and introverted, like his mother. After her death, he had withdrawn, spending even more time alone, playing with LEGOs, reading, and generally avoiding life.

Counselling had yielded little help for Ryan. At home, Sam had searched for a way to get through to his only son, but he had to admit: he wasn’t half the parent his wife had been. Most days, he felt like he was simply reacting to his children, making it up as he went, working on a mystery without any clues.

He hoped the visit to Sarah’s grave this morning would be the start of turning that around.

Same’s daughter, Adeline, gripped Ryan’s other hand. She was nineteen years old, and to all outward appearances seemed to have coped better with her mother’s passing. but Sam wondered if Adeline was just a better actor than Ryan or himself. He worried about that too, about her bottling it all up and carrying the burden of unaddressed grief.

Last night, he had seen a glimpse of her hidden rage. Adeline was still furious with him over the evening’s argument. So angry she wouldn’t even hold his hand or look at him. Hence, Ryan walking between them.

But she had agreed to be there that morning, and Sam was thankful for that.

They walked in silence through the cemetery much like they had floated through life since Sara’s death: hand-in-hand, trying to find their way through it all.

Fog drifted in front of the headstones like a curtain being drawn and opened. Across the cemetery, sprinkler heads rose and began deploying water. The cemetery likely cost a fortune to irrigate out in the Nevada desert, but of all the problems Absolom City had, money wasn’t one.

At the edge of the grass, Sam thought he saw a figure watching them. He turned his head, and yes, there was a man there. He wore a dark uniform, though Sam couldn’t make it out from this distance. Fog floated in front of the man, and when Sam looked again, he was gone.

***

Is this better than Claude’s generated story openings? A lot better or a little bit better? I think — and I’m not super happy to come to this conclusion — but I fear I’m coming down on the “it’s at most a little bit better” side of the spectrum.

This real, actual opening from a (bestselling) novel is boring. It’s all telling — which can be fine if the telling is massively more artistic and effective than this, but this really is boring, imo. In the previous post, I bolded all the telling and pointed out other elements of this opening that I disliked. The fundamental problem is boringness. The generated beginning for the Sixth of Dusk clone is less boring than this, because while it’s also all telling, plus filled with cliched phrases, it’s also a far (far!) more interesting situation.

I think it’s a shame that the opening of ANY novel, far less a bestselling novel, has little if any more “voice” than a generated opening. I think … it seems likely to me … that any author who is struggling with liveliness, wit, catchiness, or any other quality that is “voice” or contributes to “voice” might want to try something like I’ve done at this post — read the first five pages of a dozen real novels. (Good novels. Not boring novels.) Then generate the first bit of a handful of stories with prompt that match those novels. Compare. THEN try to write the opening of their own novel.

Not sure that would help. But maybe it would? Attentively reading the opening five pages of a dozen good novels ought to be a fun and interesting thing to do anyway.

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Story Structure: Overstated

From Mythcreants Blog: The Problem With Following Popular Story “Structures,” or, A Dark Night of the Soul for Made-up Nonsense.

I laughed, and I’m ready to agree. Not sure I WILL agree, but that’s my first reaction, because I do think all these notions about “The inciting incident should happen at the 10% mark, you have to have an intimate moment at the 40% mark,” and so on are seriously overstated even for Romance, which is where a lot of this comes from, and worse for other genres. Not necessary wholly and utterly wrong, but not to be taken very seriously.

At Mythcreants, we have written a lot over the years about how popular story “structures” don’t work as advertised. We’ve covered The Hero’s Journey, Hero With a Thousand Faces, The Three-Act Structure, Kishōtenketsu, Virgin’s Promise, and Save the Cat, both Blake Snyder’s original flavor and Jessica Brody’s attempt to repackage it for novels. There are many more we haven’t directly mentioned, usually because we don’t want to give them free publicity. 

While those articles remain useful for showing why these arbitrary pseudo-structures don’t work, there is something missing. Our previous coverage can give the impression that there’s merely no benefit to the structures in question, which can leave them feeling quality-neutral. But after watching multiple clients actively make their stories worse thanks to these structures, I’m confident in saying they’re not neutral at all. Arbitrary requirements are negative across the board, and I’m happy to explain why.  

Whoa. Okay, so they’re way past my “overstated” and into “harmful garbage nonsense.” Fine, Mythcreants, explain why …

When authors try to follow these supposedly all-encompassing structures, they have to discard any ideas that don’t fit. Which will be most of them, since even a really long advice book can’t begin to capture the countless options at a storyteller’s disposal. … [Big Snip Here] … If you can get past the concept phase with your story intact, the next problem is that a lot of the advice in these structures is just silly. If you follow it, your story will be a strange read indeed. 

Okay, now I’m really interested. Silly how?

One of the pseudo-structures we haven’t mentioned before is Story Grid, but I have to break that silence now because it is such a perfect example of giving nonsense suggestions. Story Grid has something called a “polarity shift” or “value shift” in which characters completely change how they feel about something, which according to the book is supposed to happen in most scenes, or maybe every scene! Did you write a scene where characters don’t completely change their mind about something? Better go back and change that. … [Big Snip Again] … Why do pseudo-structures give this kind of bizarre advice? I can’t say for certain, but I suspect it’s because when a problem is complex and stubborn, there’s a powerful allure in doing something, anything. Stories are difficult to understand and even more so to write. Polarity switches are a terrible idea, but they’re easy to identify as action. This is very tempting to new writers who are feeling overwhelmed. 

The thing is, to me, this sort of advice seems largely harmless because it would never occur to me to try to follow it. However, the author of this post … looks like Oren Ashkenazi … seems to work with aspiring authors who have frequently screwed up their novels because they were trying to force their novel into some structure or other. Maybe he’s an editor or “writing coach” — not a term I’m all that fond of — because otherwise it would be strange to see this a lot. He says, When I work with authors, there’s one sign above all that they’ve been misled by pseudo-structures: they try to add scenes that have no reason to be there. So it must happen quite a lot?

Regardless, here is the basic argument that Ashkenazi is presenting in this post:

What do you think makes a story good? Is it creative wordcraft? An exciting plot? Deep and believable characters? What about insightful political commentary or the communication of authentic life experiences? For our purposes today, those are all equally valid measurements, and pseudo-structures almost never help with any of them. Syd Field’s three-act structure can tell you that act two should contain confrontations, obstacles, and tests of character, but it can’t tell you how to make any of that matter to readers.

Bold is mine, and I think this is basically a true statement, and I think Ashkenazi is making a persuasive argument that structural frameworks, presented as prescriptive straightjackets, are harmful. Here is what I think is much more harmful:

A tendency to take writing advice seriously.

And offhand, I think most of the time an aspiring author would be better off if they turned off the internet, ignored all writing advice, read a lot of novels. Then, when they want to learn how to do something — anything, basically — they should open a novel where that thing is done and see how it worked in that novel.

This is because even advice that’s good for some authors is terrible for other authors [Here is where you can insert the continual drumbeat of outline, outline, outline, you should outline, you’d be faster if you outlined]. And most advice isn’t good for some authors; it’s just wrong [avoid adverbs, avoid adjectives, avoid passive voice, “said” is invisible, don’t use dialogue tags, on and on forever]. To this, I guess we can add advice that the inciting incident must happen at 10% or whatever else is indicated by story structure guides. The thing is, if you’ve read a thousand novels, shouldn’t you have noticed that there are lots of counter examples to every possible story structure you can find? And doesn’t that indicate that these things are gentle guidelines at most?

Okay, here’s my actual advice: If you’re looking at ANY story structure, such as Save the Cat or The Hero’s Journey or this Story Grid thing or any other possible structure, the FIRST thing to do is think of ten novels you like and see whether those novels fit that structure. And if ANY of them don’t, there you go, you don’t have to take that structure seriously and treat it like a straightjacket. Whatever is useful in it, use that part. Anything that’s not useful, throw it away.

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Update: I’m Thinking of Building an Ark

Exceedingly cute puppy-and-kitten picture at the end, so scan down even if you’re not interested in updates qua updates.

***

All right, last week was a bit unusual in a lot of ways. Let me see, what all was going on, besides a whole lot of rain?

Well, the grand jury had our April meeting. That was last Thursday and took all day. I have now made several general observations regarding various categories of crimes. Some of these observations are not readily sharable on a blog that is, by and large, family friendly. I will just comment that your life will probably go more smoothly if you avoid getting involved with drugs or, hmm, certain categories of photography. I don’t expect this is a shocking revelation. Still.

By the way, if you’re engaged on a life of crime, it might go better if you never say, “Yes, that’s mine,” about anything that you know is illegal to possess. Maybe there’s a reason people constantly admit ownership of whatever, but I have to say, it seems strange. It sure makes the grand jury’s job remarkably straightforward about 85% of the time.

Also, if I had a kid, I would perhaps be hesitant to permit her to pet sit, baby sit, or house sit for ANYONE, despite the fact that I did all of the above and I expect all of you over a certain age probably did as well. I wouldn’t want my kid to grow up thinking she needed to be ultra suspicious of everyone in the universe, and yet.

***

So, on Friday, I helped judge the science fair, which was enormously more fun, obviously.

Here in this county, St Joseph’s Catholic School has the best science teacher by a mile. Ever since they hired him, they’ve cleaned up at the science fair almost every year, and they sure did this time. Last year, I mentioned to a couple of parents that the single thing that would most improve the projects and was lacking in all of them was some appropriate summative measure — either a mean for each treatment or the sum of each treatment, or both. This year, by gum, every single project that should have had a summative measure did, and the projects were in general a cut above last year’s projects.

First, Second, Third, and the first Honorable Mention went to students from this school; the second honorable mention went to a tiny child from a different school, who did a simple but unusually well-designed project involving pet cats and catnip toys. All five of these students did a great job explaining their projects, with plenty of evidence for background understanding of the topics. I do enjoy the science fair very much.

***

Also, on Friday it started POURING rain, which did not stop until Saturday night and in fact it drizzled and misted and rained gently all Sunday as well. I think we got eight inches of rain total. Well, we were having an unusual spring drought, and now that’s certainly behind us.

Horrible rainy weather is great for getting work done, so I finished proofing and formatting the manuscript I took on for a BVC author. Full disclosure: I didn’t like the story at all. Fortunately, for formatting, it doesn’t matter, and that, it turns out, was mostly what this manuscript needed. I just walked down my formatting checklist and redid everything with headings rather than hard line stops and put in an appropriate spacer at all the scene breaks and so forth, whatever, it’s tedious, but also sort of meditative. So that’s done, whew.

***

AND YES, I got well into the climactic scenes for Hedesa, so I’m STILL not finished with it, but honestly VERY CLOSE. I’m not as totally sure about how to handle this next bit, so it won’t be as fast as the first climactic scene, which is now finished. That was fun. I mean, to write. I expect readers will find it exciting and tense. I will be disappointed if you don’t. (But you will.)

I’m kind of alternating forward progress with revision because if I’m going to post half a chapter (or so) at my Patreon every week from now until I drop the whole thing, I have to make sure basic, essential revision is done, as much as I can possibly do it, for at least the first six chapters. This includes utterly trivial revision, such as “Make sure the Tarashana haven’t stopped glimmering gently with starlight since Inhejeriel established that they totally do this.” Realizing I have forgotten something like that is embarrassing. It requires just a teensy bit of revision, as in adding half a sentence here and there in various chapters.

I suspect I’m going to break my (apparently short-lived) rule about cutting anything over 180,000 words in half for publication. I mean, if this were a standalone, I would absolutely cut it in half, but as it is, I do have an ending point in mind and I would like to reach it. I bet the final version of Hedesa comes out above 180,000 words. It definitely (almost definitely) won’t be longer than Tarashana, though.

***

Let’s end with extreme cuteness:

Yes, Maximilian always jumps onto the couch wherever Joy happens to be and snuggles up with her. They really are buddies.

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Writing a novel is “terrifying,” it says here

From Writer Unboxed: When You Are Your Own Antagonist

First paragraph: There is nothing trivial about writing a novel. Regardless of the surface appearance of the story, its genre, its apparent complexity or simplicity, its length, or its intended audience, to create a story is to create a universe. And an act of creation is at its core, terrifying.

Wow, does that look overwrought.

I’m trying to think of appropriate adverbs for the prior sentence. Let me see. How about this:

Wow, does that look astoundingly, stupendously, egregiously overwrought.

The post goes on: What if it’s terrible? What if no one reads it? What if it doesn’t sell? What if no one likes it? What if no one likes me? The post then recommends hope as an antidote to fear, and that’s all very well, but how about this as an alternative:

Writing a novel isn’t terrifying.

Honestly, I want to take this author out for hot chocolate, plonk a friendly spaniel in her lap, and say, “Listen, don’t take all this so seriously. Pet the puppy! Relax! Enjoy writing it! Enjoy discovering how you write! You can worry about whether the novel is any good or whether people will like it later, after it’s finished. And if you decide it’s not that great, so what? Put it aside and write something else.”

***

How many of you have written a book, or some part of a book? How did you feel about it? I’m just wondering. When I started writing, I was in grad school and I was doing it just kind of … to do it. For fun, I suppose. To speed up my typing (real reason) and because I’d read a novel that annoyed me (don’t remember which novel, sorry).

I wasn’t thinking, “What if it’s not good enough to get published?” I wasn’t thinking of it that way at all, just as something to play with. I put it down for months at a time, without feeling bad about that, because so what?

Now, looking back on this period, I wonder how much of that was just me and how much of that was the complete absence of nonstop advice about writing and the total absence of self-publishing as a thing. (All right, near total, you know what I mean.) I really can’t tell. I have never, not once, taken writing advice seriously. I have always, right from the beginning, just opened up novels to see how authors handled something or other, whatever I was trying to do. I didn’t want anybody to critique anything. I didn’t want to show it to people. I mean, not before it was finished. So … maybe the ocean of writing advice wouldn’t have distracted or bothered me. I’m not sure.

I do sort of suspect that it might have been highly beneficial not to have the easy option of sure, just throw it out there, why not that is the default right now. (I’m pretty sure this is the default? An assumption that since you’ve started a novel, you must finish it and self-publish it? Or at least an assumption that if you have finished a novel, you ought to publish it?) I wonder if the easy option to self-publish anything you want might have led to this sort of overwrought advice that takes writing so seriously, like you have to do it right and make it work or … what? Or it’s not worth doing, I guess.

I would say that if you don’t enjoy writing, there are lots of other worthwhile hobbies. There are times when writing is unavoidably stressful, I do think that’s true. Those times occur when you hand the finished book to a reader and wait for feedback, or when you hit publish and wait for reviews. I’m usually a bit tense at those moments. “A bit tense” isn’t “terrified,” and if I were terrified for any large proportion of the whole writing and publishing process, I’d do something else.

***

Also, I realize some people just are very histrionic in their approach to everything and declare they’re terrified when they’re nervous. I don’t really get that, but I sort of hope that’s what the author of the linked post means: that she is mildly nervous about writing, not terrified. But she sounds like she takes the whole thing way too seriously.

People have been telling stories since the Stone Age, if not before, and honestly, we’re pretty good at it. Don’t say, “To create a story is to create a universe.” No, it isn’t. It’s a story. Relax and tell it.

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Poetry Thursday: Swinburne

It turns out Swinburne was born in April, plus I have right here his collection of roundels, the book dedicated to Christina Rosetti. The ebook is free on Amazon and most likely free everywhere. This is something I’ve been dipping into a bit, so let me share a couple of these poems with you, because I bet you’ve never seen them before (unless you know Swinburne a lot better than I do).

The Way of the Wind

The wind’s way in the deep sky’s hollow
None may measure, as none can say
How the heart in her shows the swallow
  The wind’s way.

Hope nor fear can avail to stay
Waves that whiten on wrecks that wallow,
Times and seasons that wane and slay.

Life and love, till the strong night swallow
Thought and hope and the red last ray,
Swim the waters of years that follow
  The wind’s way.

*****

I read the above poem several days running, just leaving the ebook open to that page. I really like it.

Then almost at once I hit this next one, which is longer. I haven’t yet moved on from it because I really like this one as well.

*****

Recollections

I.

Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken
Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.

Surely the thought in a man’s heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.

Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken,
Yearning for love that the veil of death endears,
Slackens not wing for the wings of years that quicken
Years upon years.

II.

Years upon years, and the flame of love’s high altar
Trembles and sinks, and the sense of listening ears
Heeds not the sound that it heard of love’s blithe psalter
Years upon years.

Only the sense of a heart that hearkens hears,
Louder than dreams that assail and doubts that palter,
Sorrow that slept and that wakes ere sundawn peers.

Wakes, that the heart may behold, and yet not falter,
Faces of children as stars unknown of, spheres
Seen but of love, that endures though all things alter,
Years upon years.

III.

Years upon years, as a watch by night that passes,
Pass, and the light of their eyes is fire that sears
Slowly the hopes of the fruit that life amasses
Years upon years.

Pale as the glimmer of stars on moorland meres
Lighten the shadows reverberate from the glasses
Held in their hands as they pass among their peers.

Lights that are shadows, as ghosts on graveyard grasses,
Moving on paths that the moon of memory cheers,
Shew but as mists over cloudy mountain passes
Years upon years.

***

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Surrender vs. Culling

I posted a version of this post a long time ago, but the phenomenon of “culling,” and the alternative of “surrender,” still strikes me as both interesting and inevitable. I opt very strongly for “surrender” for some genres, though I’m quite happy to use “culling for others.

Here’s the original post, somewhat revised.

***

Here’s an excellent article at npr.com by Linda Holms.

Surrender, she says, is what you do when you realize that you will never, ever be able to read more than a tiny fraction of the books you would love, and you accept this fact.

Culling is what you do when you declare that all romances / westerns / fantasies / vampire novels are trash and therefore you’re not missing anything when you ignore them. Culling is a psychological trick that protects you from having to acknowledge how much you’re inevitably going to miss.

And Holms says she kind of wonders whether these days there might be a strengthening tendency toward culling:

“What I’ve observed in recent years is that many people, in cultural conversations, are far more interested in culling than in surrender. And they want to cull as aggressively as they can. After all, you can eliminate a lot of discernment you’d otherwise have to apply to your choices of books if you say, “All genre fiction is trash.” You have just massively reduced your effective surrender load, because you’ve thrown out so much at once.”

Well, of course, when *I* cull, it works, because all romances really *are* trash.

Kidding! Kidding! I like plenty of romances! It just took me a while to realize that, because there are so many I don’t like.

Of course you can’t read everything, or even a significant minority of everything, and naturally it’s helpful to narrow your attention down to those chunks of everything in which you’re more likely to find things you really do love . . . but there’s no question that every single time you declare a genre or subgenre not-of-interest and ignore it, you’re setting yourself up to miss those parts of it you really would love.

I do think that this is the exact problem — the problem of finding things you’d love when they’re not in genres you’re focused on — that online book review sites such as The Book Smugglers address, and that the need for great (and prolific) reviewers will become more and more important as self-publishing rises and the enormous pool of books we’d love becomes ever more diluted by the far more immense ocean of books we’d hate.

I don’t really follow any book review blogs anymore, because my TBR pile is so massive that I just can’t face adding heaps more books to it. But, at the time I first posted about this, I bought The Sky is Everywhere and Five Flavors of Dumb because of Ana’s reviews at The Book Smugglers blog. Five Flavors was fine, but The Sky is Everywhere was fantastic and definitely one of my favorite books of those I read that year. And I wouldn’t have ever noticed either if I’d declared contemporary YA and YA romances uninteresting — as Holms puts it, if I’d culled those categories. So put me down on the side of just surrendering to the knowledge that it’s impossible to read everything I’d love. 

I, of course, cheat: I draw a massive proportion of the books I read and of my TBR pile from your comments here. It’s quite rare I pick up any new-to-me author in any other way. It can happen, but it doesn’t happen often. This suggests that a pool of social contacts who share your broad  tastes in books is an alternative means of finding books you’d love amid the vast and growing ocean of available titles.

The other main way I pick up titles — this doesn’t happen often — is that I happen to get a promotional email from BookBub or someone when I have nothing much going on and I actually open the email and look at it. Then it’s possible I’ll click through to some book or other and take a better look. I don’t pick up many books that way even if they’re free because I’m long past the stage where I’d pick up a book that looked iffy just because it’s free. I HAVE a giant TBR pile. I hardly read ANYTHING by ANYONE these days. I don’t need or want to pile more books on top. But, on the other hand, occasionally I do pick p a book that way. Then it goes on the “someday” list along with everything else.

However, it’s occurred to me, as I update this post, that it’s also possible to do effective culling — not so much by genre, maybe, but by tone. Like this: I will never like anything grimdark, ever, and there’s absolutely no need for me to try any sample of any book that is grimdark or closely adjacent to grimdark.

Boom! That took out quite a broad swathe of fantasy and a chunk of various other genres, and it was both easy and accurate. I mean, I really don’t see how ANY author could EVER make me like anything grimdark. That’s quite different from writing off a whole genre, or so it seems to me.

However, I basically have no problem acknowledging that I will never read most of the great books I would love passionately. That’s just inevitable. Even more so for games I will never play and TV shows and movies I’ll never watch. Unless someone gets hopping with a youthening treatment that hands me an extra few hundred years, there’s no way, and that’s the way it is.

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So, Copy Editing

So, I just volunteered to copy edit / proofread a book for someone from BVC, because he paid someone to do it and they did (apparently) a crappy job. So I don’t think I’m the best in the world at this, but I’ll take a stab at it.

Meanwhile, here is an abruptly relevant recent post at Kill Zone Blog: Copy Edits

The most egregious copy edit ever–and I’m sure I’ve written of it here–came from Rosemary, who changed “Jonathan looked at the door the the kid came through” to “Jonathan looked at the door whence the kid had come.” Whence. In a thriller. 

This post is by John Gilstrap. Now, I think I could use “whence” in a thriller and have it work fine, but I do see what Gilstrap means here. So, if you’re copy editing for somebody, don’t do this.

Also, why would you do this? There are other examples at the linked post, and while they aren’t all this bad, they’re all annoying because they hit the “But why would you even do that?” button, at least for me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not the copy editor’s job to change the sentences because she doesn’t like the style. It’s the copy editor’s job to suggest potential changes to avoid the sentence being misread, and to say things like, “You’ve used very” 712 times in this book; do you want to trim those back?”

Let me see … here’s a post: The Dreaded Copy-Edits

The copy editor’s job is to eliminate errors and inconsistencies in the text and to resolve ambiguities or quirks that could interfere with reader comprehension and enjoyment.

I would say: awkwardness and repetition as well.

My goodness, look at this:

If you look at your copy editor as someone who is there to help you and remove a burden from you, rather than someone who is there to correct you and make you feel bad about all the mistakes you made, you’ll hopefully experience working with a copy editor much differently.

Bold in original, which is what took me aback. Yes? Obviously?

You know what, if you’re making ALLLLLLLL the mistakes, maybe you should fix those first. I mean: once you find out that you tend not to put in the comma after the introductory clause and decide that this is a mistake you care about, then you can quite easily learn to recognize intro clauses. Here’s what I tell students: As a rule of thumb, if you did NOT start the sentence with a noun, then you DID start with an intro clause, so put a comma somewhere. Don’t fuss about where, just stick it in there wherever you feel like it ought to go. Native English speakers will usually (not always, but usually) put the comma in the correct place. Therefore, they don’t have to figure out which word is the grammatical subject. They throw the common into the sentence, and LO! It is in front of the grammatical subject, just as it should be.

AND, if you’re making SOME mistakes that make you look like you’re illiterate, join the club. This, as far as I can tell, is part of the universal human experience, so there’s no need to worry about it.

Oh, here’s a good post: What copyediting is, and what it isn’t

In this post, the author shares a bit of copyedited text, which is interesting to see.

A good copyeditor suggests changes to make meaning clearer.  They work to align a manuscript with the publisher’s style …

Or, if you’re self-publishing novels, with YOUR style. I can’t guess how often someone, an early reader, has said, “This sounds like something Character B might say, not Character A.” Usually these comments are correct.

 A good copyeditor finds factual errors, and also what I’d call “continuity errors” 

Hi, Mike! (Several early readers catch factual or continuity errors, but Mike S. is CERTAIN to catch errors, as well as say things such as, “Did you realize most houses in Las Vegas don’t have a basement?”

And here’s a fun bit from this post that should be titled: How Not To Copy Edit, What Are You Even Thinking?

The bad copyedit made changes to the text that:

introduced grammatical errors (yes, really)introduced typographical errors (for example, missing or extra spaces caused by careless deletions of words, or misspellings caused by sloppy changes to verb tense and so on).changed the meaning of what we wrote (not just subtly!), sometimes by substituting words that aren’t actually synonymous, sometimes by tinkering with technical words and phrases, and sometimes by rewriting entire sentences to leave something quite different than we started with.produced text with meaning unclear. removed information that was necessary for reader understanding. flattened authorial voice without improvement in clarity.

This is astonishing. I’m glad to say that I’ve never had anybody do any of this. But it neatly wraps back around to Gilstrap’s examples from the Kill Zone Blog post.

Also, if this BVC author experienced this kind of bad copy editing / proofing job, well, at least I can fix basically all of this. I just know my eye isn’t as keen as some of yours.

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Oh, Wait, What is this Book About Anyway?

You know, it’s occurred to me that shortly the cover artist will start work on the cover for This Hour, Our Vigil, and once I have the cover, I can both do final editing and drop it at my Patreon, AND put it up for preorder on Amazon. Massively far in advance, which will be odd, but even so, if I’ve got the cover, why wait? But of course I will then need description for it.

I will never forget putting Invictus up for preorder with “Description here” for the description, because I didn’t realize Amazon would show it to readers without my saying by the way, this is up for preorder to ANYBODY, so I thought I would have time to add the description before anybody saw it. Whoops, no, and now I am more careful to add the description before I put a book up for preorder, as you can imagine.

Also, I’ve got the cover for Hedesa right here, and although I’m not at all likely to put it up for preorder until I know for sure I can make whatever deadline, I AM likely to put it up for preorder pretty soon. Remember, it has to drop at my Patreon well in advance of going up on Amazon. Two weeks is about the minimum, I feel. It is April, or near enough. Assuming I’m ALMOST finished with this draft and get revision comments back from early readers by the end of April … May, June, July … hmm. I would like to drop Hedesa at Amazon June 2nd. Not sure I can make that, though. I do want to drop it early in whatever month, so if I don’t feel secure about June 2nd, then probably July 2nd. Which seems a long way away, but really isn’t.

So I need description for that one as well.

***

THIS HOUR, OUR VIGIL

The veil between the worlds is growing thin.

At midwinter, as the old year dies and before the new year dawns, Tenai Ponanon Chaisa-e, Nolas-Kuomon, Lord Death’s lady, can open the veil at a whim. She may do so if she chooses, for herself or for anyone else who has the need, or the desire, to step from one world to another. After all the dire peril of the past summer, no one could be surprised if Nola Danyel or his daughter Jenna chose to return to their own world.

Taranah Berangilan-sa, the king’s aunt, would strongly prefer that both Danyel and his daughter remain in Talasayan. Indeed, everyone sensible will surely set that prayer before God as midwinter approaches. Taranah has more reason than most to hold that hope, but nor does she wish to persuade Danyel to a choice he may regret.

As the long nights stretch out, everyone must face the decisions and risks midwinter brings …

***

What do you think? You’ve mostly read the story, I expect, and if not, you basically know what it’s about, I’m sure. I’m inclined to put the back cover description into Taranah’s voice, as you see. I threw all the names into the description, which I would NEVER do for the first book in a new world, because a bunch of unfamiliar names would be a serious turn-off to lots of readers. I’m assuming very few readers will ever pick this book up without having read the earlier books in the series, and I’m assuming that even though many readers won’t remember the exact names, they’ll be all right with SEEING the names in the description. But I could be persuaded this isn’t true.

Next:

***

HEDESA

Two years ago, a brave and desperate Tarashana woman asked the Ugaro and Lord Aras for help against mysterious enemies who threatened to destroy her people. Those enemies were thrown back and cast into disarray, but the threat has not ended. The peaceful Tarashana may not be able to face that threat on their own.

Now that woman’s father, Hedesaveriel, has asked both the Ugaro and the Lau to help his people remove that threat.

Offended by the actions of those enemies, the king of the winter country will permit an expedition to investigate and, if necessary, forcefully express Ugaro displeasure. Curious regarding all those distant people and events, the king of the summer country is inclined to support that expedition and send people of his own to witness unfolding events and recommend the appropriate Lau response.

Raga inGara speaks the Tarashana language as well as any of his people — he’ll accompany that expedition. He looks forward to it with delighted enthusiasm.

Tano inGara isn’t so confident the expedition will be easy or safe, but he certainly doesn’t intend to let Raga go without him.

***

This was a lot harder than THIS HOUR.

I feel it’s necessary to re-orient readers to the basic idea and offer a reminder about where this story falls in the timeline of events. HEDESA begins immediately after TASMAKAT, which means before RIHASI, though by the time everyone actually returns from this expedition, it might be about the same time. I’ll have to keep track and either integrate events so the timeline continues to make sense or make sure the stories don’t step on each other’s toes.

But this means I reserved Tano’s name for the end. Of course the ending line is emphasized almost as much as the first line.

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Update: Moving Forward, Not Quite There

All right, I’m sure you all assumed this, but yes, I’m still moving forward with Hedesa, but no, I haven’t completed the draft. I made good progress this weekend, though, and therefore I’m now past the 210,000-word mark, which I expected, so this is fine.

Shortly, today or tomorrow, I will hit the … okay, the beginning of the climax. A new! exciting! way to begin the climax occurred to me last night, different from what I thought I had in mind — this is perfectly normal — and I’m excited to get to it and write that scene, which is great because it’s always nice to be excited about an upcoming scene, plus, as a special bonus, this scene will also set up a way to shrink the list of important characters for the next book.

Wait! I hear you say. You’re not going to kill anyone important, are you?

And the answer is: it depends on how you define “important,” and also I’m not sure, but it’s a possibility, yes. However, the shrinkage of the character list will not depend on character death. This is a different way to do that. Potentially do that. I won’t be completely sure how I’ll move forward until I get there. I mean, see above, I didn’t know exactly how I’d do this part until I got here.

Anyway, I’m on chapter 24, chapter 25 will also contain part of the climax, and then there’s likely to be a short chapter 26 — and this is all subject to my saying, Oh, oops, looks like I’m actually going to 28 chapters, but I don’t think that’s going to happen, and since I’m this close to the end, I might even be right about that.

So that’s where I am.

Plus, I’ve started 125 flower seedlings at this point, plus a tiny number of tomatoes and peppers. The next time we expect a run of warm days, I’ll plant squash and melons outside — maybe okra — big plants that will look good in the garden and not take a lot of fussing. If the weather turns cold again and the seeds fail to sprout, whatever, I’ve got plenty more seeds.

The boys go for their echocardiograms tomorrow, so I’ll be hoping to hear, “Yep, those are murmurs, but the architecture of the heart looks fine, so let’s do nothing for now and recheck in a year.” Otherwise I suppose I’ll be putting one or both on pimobendan, but, I mean, with pimobendan, hopefully they won’t show the least sign of heart trouble for years and years, if ever.

Morgan and Haydee are totally over being spayed, obviously. It’s been what, two weeks, something like that. Haydee did NOT like being restricted from running madly around with Joy, which she does every single day, but probably by this time the restriction is lost in the mists of time. Joy, meanwhile, has started chasing birds in the yard. Normal birds, such as flycatchers, which are way up there and totally hopeless. But she sucks all the rest of the girls into it by yipping in excitement and dashing around. This gets them all dashing around madly, which is great for them all.

You know, I think I’ll go post a picture of that at my Patreon. A public post, of course.

Also, I think I’ll post a few chapters of Hedesa at my Patreon over the next weeks, for the $2 tier and up. The first chapters are unlikely to change to any great degree, which I can say because I revised chapter one this morning to accommodate a later plot development, so that’s done and honestly, that chapter and chapter two are both in basically their finished form. They’re also really fun chapters and set up the entire story. So I think that’s coming up later this week at my Patreon.

Meanwhile, this has been the best ever year for magnolias. Zero frosts to destroy the flowers, but cool weather that means the flowers hold and hold — for weeks instead of days. They’re all unbelievably beautiful this year.

Ann

Jane, identical flowers but a totally different habit

Angelica

Loebneri hybrid

Butterflies

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Great Writing

I know that there will be far greater kings of far greater kingdoms than Latinus of Latium, my father. Upriver at Seven Hills there used to be two little fortified places with dirt walls, Janiculum and Saturnia; then some Greek settlers came, rebuilt on the hillside, and called their fort and town Pallanteum. My poet tried to describe to me that place as he knew it when when he was alive, or will know it when he lives, I should say, for although he was dying when he came to me, and has been dead a long time now, he hasn’t yet been born. He is among those who wait on the far side of the forgetful river. He hasn’t forgotten me yet, but he will, when at last he comes to be born, swimming across that milky water. When he first imagines me he won’t know that he is yet to meet me in the forest of Albunea. Anyhow, he told me that in time to come, where that village is now, the Seven Hills and the valleys among the hills and all the river banks will be covered for miles with an unimaginable city. There will be temples of marble splendid with gold on the hilltops, wide arched gates, innumerable figures carved of marble and bronze; more people will pass through the Forum of that city in a single day, he said, than I will see in all the towns and farmsteads, on all the roads, in all the festivals and battlefields of Latium, in all my life. The king of that city will be the great ruler of the world, so great that he will despise the name of king and be known only as the one made great with holy power, the august. All the peoples of all the lands will bow to him and bring tribute. I believe this, knowing that my poet always speaks the truth, if not always the whole truth. Not even a poet can speak the whole truth.

But in my girlhood his great city was a rough little town built up against the slope of a rocky hill full of caves and overgrown with thick scrub. I went there once with my father, a day’s sail up the river on the west wind. The king there, Evander, an ally of ours, was an exile from Greece, and in some trouble here too — he had killed a guest. He’d had sufficient reason for it, but that sort of thing doesn’t get forgotten by our country folk. He was grateful for my father’s favor and did his best to entertain us, but he lived far more poorly than our wealthy farmers. Pallanteum was a dark stockade, huddled under trees between the wide yellow river and the forested hills. They gave us a feast, of course, beef and venison, but served it very strangely: we had to lie down on benches at small tables, instead of sitting all together at one long table. That was the Greek fashion. And they didn’t keep the sacred salt and meal on the table. That worried me all through the meal.

Evander’s son Pallas, who was about my age, eleven or twelve then, a nice boy, told me a story about a huge beast-man that used to live up there in one of the caves and came out in twilight to steal cattle and tear people to pieces. He was seldom seen, but left great footprints. A Greek hero called Ercles came by and killed the beast-man. What was he called? I asked, and Pallas said Cacus. I knew that that meant the fire-lord, the chief man of a tribal settlement, who kept Vesta alight for the people of the neighborhood, with the help of his daughters, as my father did. But I didn’t want to contradict the Greeks’ story of the beast-man, which was more exciting than mine.

Pallas asked me if I’d like to see a she-wolf’s den, and I said yes, and he took me to a cave called the Lupercal, quite near the village. It was sacred to Pan, he said, which seemed to be what the Greeks called our grandfather Faunus. Anyhow, the settlers let the wolf and her cubs alone, wisely, and she let them alone too. She never even hurt their dogs, though wolves hate dogs. There were plenty of deer for her in those hills. Now and then in spring she’d take a lamb. They counted that as sacrifice, and when she didn’t take a lamb, they’d sacrifice a dog to her. Her mate had disappeared this past winter.

It was not the wisest thing perhaps for two children to stand at the mouth of her den, for she had cubs, and she was there. The cave smelled very strong. It was black dark inside, and silent. But as I grew used to the dark I saw the two small, unmoving fires of her eyes. She stood there between us and her children.

Pallas and I backed away slowly, our gaze always on her eyes. I did not want to go, though I knew I should. I turned at last and followed Pallas, but slowly, looking back often to see if the she-wolf would come out of her house and stand there dark and stiff-legged, the loving mother, the fierce queen.

***

That’s from Lavinia by Ursula K LeGuin, which I haven’t read. I don’t, as a rule, much like LeGuin’s novels — The Tombs of Atuan is an exception — but I think she writes beautiful prose. I went looking for an excerpt from one of LeGuin’s books and there it was. What do you think?

I think it’s great, and I think it’s great in a very specific way — it’s simpler than some of LeGuin’s writing, or it gives that impression, because she’s writing from the pov of a child. The first paragraph is actually in a different style from the next part. When LeGuin begins writing from the child’s pove, her language becomes simpler, her paragraphs and sentences shorter, and there’s less punctuation. She’s demonstrating how to establish voice without dialogue (well, basically without dialogue), while doing a summary. LeGuin is also demonstrating how to tell rather than show. This is all telling. It’s effective telling. I like everything about it.

She’s also got two especially evocative sentences or phrases in this very brief excerpt. The first is: Not even a poet can speak the whole truth. That’s a statement with impact. It’s preceded by a series of much longer sentences and then there’s a break after it — LeGuin is giving this sentence as much impact as possible.

The other is the loving mother, the fierce queen. Given the story that’s going to be told that’s surely a deliberate preview of where the child narrator is heading.

Here’s the description of the book:

In The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.

Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner—that she will be the cause of a bitter war—and that her husband will not live long. When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to take her destiny into her own hands. And so she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life.

I would probably really enjoy this, depending on how emphatic the tragic elements are. I have a sample, I believe.

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