Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 212

Unexpected modern headlines:

‘It’s the real me’: Nigerian president denies dying and being replaced by clone

Wonderful headline! Alas, if you read the story, the conspiracy theorists aren’t really accusing this person of having been replaced by a clone. They are merely (and disappointingly) accusing him of having been replaced by a lookalike.

That is not nearly so interesting.

Of course, either a clone or a mere impostor would surely say exactly the same thing:

“It’s the real me, I assure you. I will soon celebrate my 76th birthday and I will still go strong.”

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Where should a story end?

From Kill Zone Blog:  a pretty good question. Where should a story end? When should you stop?

Or, from a reader’s point of view, did the author stop in the right place?

I think Ilona Andrews stopped in the right place for their Kate Daniels series. I love series; at least, if the quality of the individual books stays high, I keep loving the series. But they took Kate, and her relationship with Curran, and her relationship with her father, and all that, through an arc that had a pretty clear ending point, and when they came to the end, they stopped.

Maybe the way they tied off the thing with Roland was a little pat? I could see that might have been a little pat. Roland was pretty evil, if by “pretty evil” you actually mean “terrible, vile person.” But sure, whatever, my point is, Magic Triumphs was a good ending.

It can be harder with a standalone. In this context I think of Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. Here, I like this cover:

Loved this book. Didn’t love the ending; or rather, if the book had ended at the right place, I don’t believe Kay would’ve needed to include such a long epilogue. I say this as someone who (nearly) always loves epilogues, practically the longer the better. 

This epilogue felt to me very much like Kay didn’t feel he could take the time or the space to tie up the story properly, so he wrote that epilogue. I didn’t find it satisfying because I want an epilogue to show me what happened after the story ended, not take the place of the ending.

This year, the single book that most felt like it ended in the wrong place was the third book of Gilman’s Devil’s West trilogy, Red Waters Rising.

I loved the first book, liked the second book a lot, and felt like this one didn’t end the trilogy properly. There were several things I would have liked to happen that just didn’t: the relationship between the Isobel and Gabriel remained completely unresolved. I did not want a romance, but I did want a sense of resolution that I felt was lacking. The relationship between each main character and her or his magical connection to the land also remained unresolved. And most of all I really wanted Isobel to come full circle by returning to Flood. I wanted her to come face to face with her past, especially with the Devil, and for some sort of resolution to tie up that part of her life. Didn’t happen. To me, it seemed that the story ended too early and literally in the wrong place. Perhaps there will be a fourth book after the Gabriel novella; I don’t know.

In my own current untitled WIP (the obsessive one), I kind of have two endings. This feels rather repetitive, so that has to change. Yet I know I have to have both scenes. The first is logically unavoidable, plus it has some great stuff in it. Yet if I cut the second ending, the story will have ended too soon and a certain kind of resolution will be lacking. I can’t let that happen.

The real problem will be dialing back the feeling of repetition. I think I might have some notion how to do that, but I won’t really know until I finish this revision (very soon, I hope). If I do it right, then readers — at least most readers — will feel that the book ended exactly when and where it needed to.

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Airship!

While You Weren’t Looking, Engineers Combined a Plane and a Blimp to Make a Plimp Airship

I like the headline! But … Plimp? … Please, no. What a terrible name. 

What happens when you cross a blimp with a plane, and give it a few helicopter features? A lighter-than-air plimp-hybrid airship is born, according to a Seattle-based company looking for investors.

Ah, looking for investors! Well, I don’t have four million dollars just sitting around waiting for me to buy my very own Plimp, but sure, I wish the company luck. Airships are just sort of neat.

And just call them “airships.” That’s a much cooler word.

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The Six Swans

Mari Ness has a post up at tor.com about this fairy tale, which is one of my favorites.

Saving the World with Sewing and Flowers

[S]tories of brothers transformed into birds were popular throughout Europe, along with the motif of a young sister thought to threaten the family. In most variants, the brothers are transformed into ravens—that is, birds often associated with death, evil and trickery. In this version, the brothers are transformed into swans—a sign, the Grimms assure us, of their innocence.

Or maybe an indication that Dortchen Wild just liked swans. Who knows?

Well, as Mari Ness points out, various plot points in the fairy tale might not make perfect sense. Still, as I’m sure you all agree, some of the modern retellings do a fabulous job with this one, and by “some,” I mean Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest.

This is one of the all-time great fairy-tale retellings, in my opinion. The other Sevenwaters books that I’ve read are also good, although I’ve only read the first three and personally I recommend you skip the epilogue at the end of Book Three, Child of the Prophecy.

I really ought to go on with the series. So many books, so little time.

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Grammar Police make terrible writers: discuss

A post I happened across: 4 Reasons Freelance Writers Shouldn’t Be Grammar Police

This title made me pause. I’m too polite (usually) to be a card-carrying member of the Grammar Police, but I’m generally a Grammar Police Sympathizer, at least. And you know, I think I do okay as a writer. Let’s just see what those reasons are, shall we? I thought judgmentally.

Then I read the opening of the post. It starts like this:

The other day I received this email in response to a marketing message I sent out to my subscription list:

Basic grammar forbids the use of double negatives, “…using the wrong
set of skills for the wrong job”. An authority on writing must master
the rules of writing before they can be taken seriously.

I so wanted to let this guy know that “the wrong skills for the wrong job” is hardly a double negative, and that some of the greatest writers of all times used double negatives for emphasis — Shakespeare, anyone? …

This derailed my inclination to be immediately judgmental about the titular four reasons, since it made me smile. I thought, well, the author here, Linda Formichelli, sure missed a chance to respond to her critic. If I’d gotten that email, I would have been inclined to respond:

“Using the wrong skills for the wrong job” isn’t a double negative. A double negative is defined as blah blah blah; here is an example and a citation. I wonder if you meant to put that period outside the quote marks? That is not standard in America. Also, by the way, “An authority on writing” is singular, so you probably shouldn’t have used the plural pronoun “they” in the following clause.”

Then I would have chalked this one up as another example of the basic truism that if you’re going to criticize someone else’s grammar or punctuation, you better proofread your criticism very, very, VERY carefully before you hit “send.”

But sure, now that that’s out of the way, what ARE those four reasons?

1.Ah ha, yes, first on the list: the one about Grammar Police not being perfect.

Well, I disagree. I mean, sure, Grammar Police don’t produce error-free writing. We just produce ALMOST error-free writing, except when we toss errors into dialogue for effect or something like that.

The person who wrote that email with those errors in it is not actually a member of the true Grammar Police, or so I would assert. That person is a mere wannabe, a poser who aspires to true Grammar Police status.

Let’s take a look at Reason Two:

2. Grammar Police waste time worrying about other people’s writing, when they ought to be writing.

Nonsense. Grammar policing is not a career. It’s merely a vocation. A proper member of the Grammar Police is quite able to proffer a quick comment about the correct use of apostrophes just in passing, without a significant loss of time. 

If we want to take even less time than that to police other people’s errors, we can just invest in a t-shirt that says “Silently Correcting Your Grammar,” such as the one at this link. While I don’t have that t-shirt, I should absolutely get one like that.

Next:

3. Grammar Police have bad attitudes.

No, no, that’s the wannabes. True members of the GP have excellent attitudes, though plenty of practice in rolling our eyes. 

Of course, that depends on your definition of GP. The author of this post says:

I think the term “Grammar Police” refers specifically to people who berate you for your grammar errors — all out of proportion to the severity of said errors. Those who tell you your writing won’t be taken seriously with typos, or who paint a picture of you as a frazzled writer who can’t cope with life.

People who berate you for anything are generally being seriously rude, whether or not their response seems to be out of proportion to the severity of your error. Perhaps I should add here that I almost never actually correct anybody unless (a) they’re in an English Comp class and it would be nice if they learned to recognize as nonstandard a particular usage that’s common in this county, such as “They have went …”; or (b) they’re preparing to take a standardized test, so ditto; or (c) something else that makes it reasonable to offer correction. And I’m never snarky about it.

Well, almost never.

Next:

4. Grammar Police have trouble writing.

It’s perfectly true that anybody determined to make every sentence grammatically perfect is probably not going to be able to write good fiction. 

But you know, you can’t break rules effectively until you’re able to follow the rules. You have to know what effect that comma splice is going to have, or whatever, before you can put it in and actually have it work. Writers with a deep feel for language are always going to write better sentences much more consistently than writers who lack that feel — even though some of their sentences will not be technically correct.

This sort of thing always reminds me, these days, of a writer pointing out that in Great Expectations, Charles Dickens suddenly switches to writing a series of fragments when he introduces Magwitch. Sorry, I don’t remember where that was, so I can’t credit the person who pointed that out.

Grammar Police in the less-strict sense of people who know correct grammar and punctuation backwards and forwards, use it by feel, wince when someone says “Aren’t all these baby’s cute!” on Facebook, and occasionally, when appropriate, correct someone’s misunderstanding … those are the people who also know when to use a series of fragments to stop the action and show the reader a scene.

Ever since noticing that CJ Cherry sometimes uses a semi-colon in front of a conjunction, I’ve felt free to stet that kind of thing myself. No, I think as I zap the copy editor’s correction.  I actually do want a little bit more of a pause right here, and I don’t care that it’s not technically perfectly correct. I put that semi-colon there by feel, but I leave it there because a closer analysis confirms to me that my feeling was right.

Well, anyway, it’s an amusing post. Who knows, maybe the author’s definition of Grammar Police is actually standard. What do you all think? 

Grammar Police = rude, and frequently not as knowledgeable as they think.

Grammar Police = knowledgeable, but generally polite, if sometimes a bit snarky.

 

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Things that happen to other writers

So, this:

I’ll Bet You Think This Story’s about You: When People Keep Finding Themselves in Your Fiction

I change names, genders, ages, locations, and other identifying factors, nothing that’s not standard. I have also at times left a sibling out of a scene entirely if I can get away with it, to minimize the bruising, if I think there will be any.

Mostly, I stick with fiction.

And I’m here to tell you it doesn’t make the problem disappear. I could write about dragons who play tennis on Mars and I would still undergo family scrutiny and receive comments like, “I know who that head dragon was supposed to be,” or “you did a good job of portraying Mom as a fire-breathing tennis champion.”

This is a writer named Gila Green. Apparently she has this issue with every book. Her siblings point at characters and get mad.

This never happens to me. On the one occasion I was thinking of my brother as I developed a character, he had no reason to get mad (and didn’t, though he spotted the occasional resemblance.) On the one occasion I was thinking of my mother as I developed a character, she didn’t notice; unsurprising, since this was very much in the background. As far as I know, that’s it for me. No one (as far as I can tell) thinks I’m putting them in my novels, or commenting on family situations, or whatever. Certainly no one fusses at me about it.

Pretty sure this is not just me. I’m betting Green’s experience would be different if she actually did write about dragons — at least if she plunged her dragons into saving-the-world urgency rather than having them negotiate the endless shoals of family drama. But since she’s writing literary (I think, from a quick glance at Amazon), well, there you go.

Yet another reason to be just as pleased I’m writing SFF. If I put a dragon on Mars, my family will just see a dragon on Mars, not themselves. 

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Door Into Light: Back Cover Copy

Okay, as you know, or at least as you may have hoped, I’m still moving toward releasing Door Into Light this year, if at all possible. 

This weekend, along with having Thanksgiving and moving forward with revising my actual WIP and enduring a pretty nasty and persistent cold, I also waded through the enormously tedious job of fixing everything my helpful volunteer copy editors found. No, I didn’t count the typos. Yes, there were a lot, or it sure seemed like a lot during the hours I spent fixing them. No, the two different helpful volunteer copy editors did not catch (many) of the same errors. Yes, that is amazing.

Missing words, repeated words, wrong words, endless queries about comma splices and oh did you mean not to have a period at the end of this paragraph … you can imagine, probably. Those of you who have done any copy editing: thanks for not sounding snarky when you point out that singular subjects take “is” not “are” and other similarly basic errors. I swear to God, I don’t make mistakes like that; they just appear by some nefarious kind of magic.

So, so tedious.

But that’s done. Whew. I really ought to order another proof copy and go over it one more time, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile! Back cover copy. Last time you all said, direct quote, “By all that’s holy, do not try to reintroduce all the characters from HoS in the back cover copy! Are you insane?”

So this time, I tried not to do that. This actually reads less like the back cover copy of a sequel and more like a standalone. I guess it could actually be read as a standalone? You will have to let me know what you think, eventually.

There are still, inevitably, a lot of names. What do you think? Too much, not enough, too many names, can you follow this, does it sound interesting? I have actually included a spoiler in the back cover copy, but really, it’s not much of a spoiler; it’s a plot point that’s revealed during, if I remember correctly, the early part of the second chapter. 

Here we go:

A coup against Geriodde Seriantes, ruthless king of Lirionne, forces his only remaining legitimate son, Prince Tepres, to flee to Kalches . . . nearly on the eve of war resuming between the two countries. Tepres may have won the friendship of Kalchesene prince and mage Taudde Omientes ken Lariodde, but in the face of his cousins’ hostility and his grandfather’s mistrust, not even Taudde may be able to protect the heir of the infamous Dragon from the perils of the Kalchesene court. Worse, his duty to his own country may require that he set aside every consideration of friendship . . . unless he can find another path both countries can accept.

In Lirionne, in a city poised to accept a regicide as their king rather than remain divided in the face of imminent war, Leilis holds too many dangerous secrets for comfort. She knows where Tepres fled, and with whom. She knows his father the king is still alive, and where he is hidden, and why he cannot declare himself and take back his throne.

But not even Leilis knows that the true conspiracy was not the one aimed at the king, nor at seizing ordinary power. The true conspiracy was always aimed at the true dragon, the dragon sleeping beneath the mountains of Lirionne. In all the lands of both countries, only Nemienne can hear the dragon as it stirs toward wakefulness. If it rises, Lirionne may fall. If the conspirators force it to their will, worse than that awaits. And Nemienne, only an apprentice mage, with no one to help her but the youngest and least-regarded heir of the Dragon, can find no way to stop any of the disasters poised to crash over both countries.

Still needs some work, I expect! Looking over it now, I can see some potential problems. Go ahead and tear it apart!

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Mars landing of InSight probe … success!

This must’ve been a tremendous relief for everyone involved.

NASA’s InSight landed safely on Mars on Monday afternoon, with scientists now hopeful they’ll get a below-the-surface look at the Red Planet.  …

“This never gets old,” said jubilant chief engineer Rob Manning. “What a relief. Fabulous, fabulous.” …

The InSight lander arrived on Mars’ surface by surviving what NASA called  “seven minutes of terror”  as its prized craft decelerated from 12,300 mph to 5 mph at landing.

Years to get the probe to Mars, $850 million investment, so whew! Glad the probe got down safely.

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Should you read the Chronicles of Narnia in publication order?

Mari Ness says yes. She says it humorously, like so:

I tend to be a bit agnostic on the question of “what order should I read/watch these in?” With three exceptions:

Legends of Tomorrow, which everyone, without exception, should start in the second season, only tackling the first season much, much later after getting a chance to realize that these characters can actually be fun.

Blackadder, which everyone, without exception, should also start in the second season, only in this case, never return to the first season at all.

And The Chronicles of Narnia, which everyone, without exception, should read in publication order.

I’ve never watched Legends of Tomorrow or Blackadder. Is she right?

Of course I’ve totally read The Chronicles of Narnia; who hasn’t? (Anyone?) Is she right there as well?

She asserts that Prince Caspian and The Magician’s Nephew are both weakish, whereas The Silver Chair is the strongest book of the lot. How about that? Right or wrong? 

I read this series a long, long time ago, in publication order (I’m pretty sure). I know I liked Prince Caspian much better than The Silver Chair, but objective artistic quality was not something I was capable of judging (or interested in) when I was about, I don’t know, eight or ten or whatever.

The Last Battle was such a downer I hardly got through it to the happy ending. Even when I reached the ending, I wasn’t super, super, super keen on the grim story by which we got to the ending. I don’t believe I ever read the entire story again, just sort of skimmed through it to the ending.

Now, what this actually all reminds me of is a different book: Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of CS Lewis, by Michael Ward.

For over half a century, scholars have laboured to show that C. S. Lewis’s famed but apparently disorganised Chronicles of Narnia have an underlying symbolic coherence, pointing to such possible unifying themes as the seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins, and the seven books of Spenser’s Faerie Queene. None of these explanations has won general acceptance and the structure of Narnia’s symbolism has remained a mystery.

Michael Ward has finally solved the enigma. In Planet Narnia he demonstrates that medieval cosmology, a subject which fascinated Lewis throughout his life, provides the imaginative key to the seven novels. … Ward reveals how the Narnia stories were designed to express the characteristics of the seven medieval planets – – Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn – – planets which Lewis described as “spiritual symbols of permanent value” and “especially worthwhile in our own generation”. Using these seven symbols, Lewis secretly constructed the Chronicles so that in each book the plot-line, the ornamental details, and, most important, the portrayal of the Christ-figure of Aslan, all serve to communicate the governing planetary personality. The cosmological theme of each Chronicle is what Lewis called ‘the kappa element in romance’, the atmospheric essence of a story, everywhere present but nowhere explicit. The reader inhabits this atmosphere and thus imaginatively gains connaître knowledge of the spiritual character which the tale was created to embody.

Fascinating book, and pretty convincing.

What ought to happen is, Ward or someone interested in this subject ought to select a few dozen readers, present them with the characteristics of the seven medieval planets, and suggest they read the books and peg each one to a planet. Would everybody decide on the same pairings? Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Secondary topic: What other series ought to be read in publication order, even though that differs substantially from internal chronological order? I have one:

Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust. I am pretty casual about reading series out of order, but for these, publication order is definitely the way to go. No question. Brust changes and grows as an author over the long period during which he’s been writing these, so trying to read this series in internal chronological order would be awkward, even jarring at times.

Any others?

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A Firefly tie-in novel

Okay, I didn’t know about this until I just saw a reference on tor.com. 

The first original novel tying into the critically acclaimed and much-missed Firefly series from creator Joss Whedon.

The Battle of Serenity Valley was the turning point that led the Independents to their defeat at the hands of the Alliance. Yet the Browncoats had held the valley for weeks against all odds, before being ordered to lay down their arms. Command stated they refused to send in airpower because the ground war was “too hot.” But the soldiers who were there insist that was not true…

While picking up a new cargo on Persephone, Captain Malcolm Reynolds is kidnapped by a bunch of embittered veteran Browncoats who suspect him of sabotaging the Independents during the war. As the rest of the crew struggle to locate him, Mal is placed on trial for his life, fighting compelling evidence that someone did indeed betray them to the Alliance all those years ago. As old comrades and old rivals crawl out of the woodwork, Mal must prove his innocence, but his captors are desperate and destitute, and will settle for nothing less than the culprit’s blood.

The book, which is called Big Damn Hero (great name!)  came out yesterday, which is no doubt why there’s this post at tor.com. It was written by someone named Nancy Holder. Let me see, what else has she written. . . . looks like a lot of media tie-ins for various shows; haven’t read any of her novelizations or tie-in works before. The two reviews for Big Damn Hero that are up already are positive.

The on-trial-for-his-life plot element is not one that appeals to me, but the reviews suggest the feel of the show is captured well and that all the characters get a chance to shine.

Hmm. I certainly can appreciate a good tie-in novel. Maybe I’ll be picking this up. 

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