Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 216

Why bugs ruin everything

I like bugs fine … mostly … most of them … unless I open my eyes and find a giant spider on my pillow, for example. (A little jumping spider doesn’t upset me even then.)

But this post is funny enough that I thought I would share it with you anyway. I will justify it by saying that it’s a great example of a casual, inviting writing style.

The Earth is almost the best planet ever. It’s stunningly gorgeous, optimally located in space, and it’s perfectly suited for its magnificent array of flora and fauna to live and thrive.

Almost the best planet ever.

Unfortunately, you can’t be the best planet ever when your clearest defining characteristic is a revolting worldwide bug infestation….

Many categories of insects follow, from the small category of acceptable through the nightmare insects. Click through if you have a few minutes; I almost guarantee you’ll enjoy this post no matter your opinions about insects and other arthropods.

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A helpful guide if you’re visiting the UK

Here we have a useful list of 150 swear words, compiled in order from mildest to most offensive.

I just think this is funny. Also, I’m trying to remember whether I’ve ever seen “ginger” used as a swear word in a British mystery, which is where I mostly encounter the words on this list.

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Recent Reading: Magic Triumphs

First: I liked it a lot.

Second: Yes, fine, everyone is right: you really should read Hugh’s story, Iron and Magic, before reading Magic Triumphs. It’s not absolutely crucial, but it certainly works better that way. For one thing, if the reader hasn’t followed Hugh through his redemption arc, that probably seems a bit iffy; and for another, Elara and Hugh are more settled in their relationship by the time we see them in Magic Triumphs and it’s nice to understand how they got that way.

Third: You know, I think Roman is perhaps my favorite secondary character? I didn’t realize that until this book, although honestly I think I fell in love with him in the previous book, Magic Binds. The idea of having the priest of the black god officiate at your wedding is so much fun, and Roman is so determined to make sure the wedding goes well, no matter what kind of disaster is looming or how utterly indifferent Kate is to the details. Roman is great in Magic Triumphs as well, though his role is smaller.

Fourth: It is absolutely priceless when Erra and Hugh sit down with Roland to sort out their tactics for their huge climactic battle, and Hugh winds up drawing little stick figures to get the idea across to Roland. I really enjoy how Roland, for all his power, is really not that smart and certainly not a tactical genius at all.

Fifth: The resolution worked pretty well. It was plainly going to be tricky to sort things out without having Kate dead at the end. I do wonder how far in advance the authors worked out exactly how they were going to do that? Plainly they had it set up in Iron and Magic, but perhaps not before that.

Sixth: I didn’t see that thing coming with Curran, but it was a pretty nifty deus ex machina moment. Um, so to speak. I’m not one hundred percent sure that Kate wouldn’t have figured that out beforehand. Though I grant, she was pretty distracted.

Now I’m re-reading Magic Binds. I think I’ll work my way backward through the series for a couple of books and then perhaps read Magic Triumphs again.

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Scene, summary, exposition, backstory

At Killzone blog, a post by  James Scott Bell: Mastering the Four Modes of Fiction.

Scene is the action on the page. In movie terms, it would be what you see onscreen, and what you hear in dialogue. It’s the show part of show, don’t tell.

Summary is a narrative recounting of action in order to transition to another scene, or to cover a long period that would be too cumbersome to show. Thus, it’s the tell part of show, don’t tell. (There are other “tells” in fiction, but that’s another topic).

Exposition is story information delivered to the reader. Such information is usually about a setting (description, history, social life) or a character (description, skills, education).

Backstory is history relating to the characters or plot, something that happened before the novel begins. A flashback is all backstory, but sometimes backstory bits are dropped in as part of the narrative.

Bell then uses a particular opening scene to discuss these modes, ending thus:

[T]hree sentences of backstory in the first 2500 words, all together or spread out. Three paragraphs of backstory in the next 2500 words, all at once or spread out.

I’m intrigued, partly because Bell says explicitly that this is not a “rule,” just a suggestion to help a novice writer foreground action and scene in the opening, putting backstory and exposition on the back burner.

2500 words is roughly 8 pages, or maybe a little more, especially if there’s a lot of dialogue. I’m quite sure I have more backstory and exposition in the opening of my most recent WIP … pretty sure, anyway … but you know, maybe not too much more. Let me open it up and check … okay, I have 22 sentences of backstory and exposition in the first 10 pages. Most are in the first 2500 words.

Is this too much? No, I don’t think so. I think in a secondary world, it’s important to draw the scene and establish that this is not our world, and I think it’s important to do that early. Let’s label that “worldbuilding exposition.”

Without opening a bunch of novels to check, I bet it’s likely that most secondary world SFF is going to include more worldbuilding exposition in the opening than most contemporary thrillers.

Still, it’s quite true that the vast majority of the sentences in these first pages are scene, not anything else. I think Bell’s (mostly) right about his emphasis on scene.

It’s a pretty good post. Click through and check it out if you find the subject of novel openings interesting.

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When writer’s block is actually depression

Here is a post at Terrible Minds: When writer’s block is actually depression.

I think this is a very important topic. You so frequently see articles and posts about writer’s block, and so often they tell you to power through writer’s block or tell you that it’s self-indulgence or that it’s a signal you’ve taken a wrong turn in your WIP and you need to stop and reassess.

All those things can be true, but every article or post about writer’s block should acknowledge that serious clinical depression can also result in a look-alike condition that can’t be handled in remotely the same way as any of the problems listed above.

Chuck says: So, you need to be kind to yourself and get the help you need for depression and anxiety — and trust me when I tell you, that help shouldn’t look like the help you’d give to fix writer’s block. The solution for one is not the other, because the problems are literally different. In that case, the block is a symptom of a larger thing — and treating depression like it’s writer’s block?

Well, it’ll just make the block worse.

And the depression, too.

Yes.

This isn’t a problem I have, for which I am very grateful. But I know writers who stall out because of depression, then are unable to assess the problem because depression often interferes with the ability to assess all problems, including itself.

If you’re stuck on one writing project, fine, that’s perfectly normal, lots of things can cause that.

But if you’re stuck on all writing and feeling like all your ideas are terrible and all your sentences are terrible and there’s no way forward and you’re a worthless excuse for a human being as well as a complete fake as an author … that might be time to put your own judgment on hold as probably compromised, and consult with a professional. Probably their judgment will be a good deal kinder, and perhaps they will be able to help.

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Five books that improve on Heinlein’s juveniles

Here’s a post at tor.com by James Davis Nicholl: Five books that improve upon Heinlein’s juveniles.

Five Books That Improve Upon Heinlein’s Juveniles

That’s a great detail of a cover from one of Nicholl’s picks. I’ll get to it in a moment.

First let me say that when I tried to re-read The Star Beast not that long ago, I was …. kinda underwhelmed. I expect Nicholl could easily have expanded this list to ten. Or 100. But then, others of Heinlein’s juveniles were certainly better.

Nicholl’s criteria:  For me, that requires the intended audience to include teens, that the genre be science fiction in the narrow sense, that the protagonist be a young adult, and that they get to do something that actually matters in the course of the book

Sounds fair. I might add, “Has kinda the same feel as a Heinlein juvenile,” which would exclude things like, say, the Illuminae trilogy by Kaufman and Kristoff , even though this does fit Nicholl’s listed criteria.

Click through to check out all of Nicholl’s picks and his comments about them and which Heinlein juvenile he thinks they go with. I have read only two of his suggestions and I question them both.

The first of those is Falling Free by LMB. I question whether that one fits because the adult protagonist is so important in the book, more so than any of the quaddie kids.

The second is Growing Up Wightless by John M Ford. Although this is a good book, I don’t think it has any close resemblance to the adventure stories Heinlein wrote. It’s far, far more introspective. 

Rocket Girls by Housuke Nojiri sounds much closer, plus it sounds like a fun book, plus I sort of think I might have seen people saying it’s good? Weigh in if you’ve read it: what did you think?

The art above is from the cover of Martians Abroad by Carrie Vaughn.  It also sounds good and it also sounds more like it might resemble a Heinlein story. 

Next is The Trove by Tobias Buckell. It didn’t sound all that inviting to me until Nicholl says “Jane is more in control of her destiny than is Don in Between Planets. Kudos to her parents for raising a kid with serious coping skills.” I like a kid with serious coping skills, so that instantly bumped the book from my Whatever, maybe list to my Maybe I should take a closer look list.

And last, Nicholl asks for suggestions for a Heinlein-like YA novel with a protagonist who is “‘Not smart but determined,’” to match Tunnel in the Sky.  I am not super keen on non-smart protagonists, so if I’ve read any SF YA that matched this criterion, I can’t remember it. Yet it sort of seems to me that I have in fact read something where the protagonist’s outstanding characteristic was sheer determination. But it’s not coming to me.

Preferably, as far as I’m concerned, any suggestion to pair with Tunnel in the Sky would have a better ending. Wow, did I ever hate the ending of that one. 

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SF cat toys

Wow, here’s a cat toy I would absolutely get for my cat if (a) he weren’t 18, and (b) I didn’t have a million dogs that would immediately destroy any cat toy.

Mousr, a super-smart cat toy from Petronics that has a time-of-flight sensor, a real-time operating system in a custom-built microcontroller, and A.I. programming all working on concert to convince your cat that it’s a mouse and not a tiny robot. Mousr can map its surroundings — and it even initiates a struggle protocol when it feels trapped by its predator. My cats absolutely love the struggle part.

Neat! 

The author of the post refers to this toy as eliciting your cat’s most disturbing behavior. Does that seem weird to anyone else? I don’t find my cat’s predatory behavior disturbing at all. I mean … doesn’t everybody already know that cats are predators? I think this behavior would be totally cute directed at a toy instead of a real animal. 

If I had indoor-only cats and no dogs, I would totally get this.

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Lots of good advice here

From Janet Reid’s blog, writing advice I actually like. I don’t know that I think this is advice that could be easily taken in a practical sense, but I still like it. It’s from a twitter thread by tv writer Matthew Federman

Some tidbits that particularly caught my eye:

4) When you’re going in the wrong direction it feels like a slog. If you spend a suitable amount of time grinding gears, reassess.

I find that completely true. There can be other reasons your WIP just stalled out. (I’m sure there are an infinity of reasons this can happen.) But by and large, when the gears start to grind, then I personally have found myself deleting thirty or sixty pages and taking the ms in a different direction.

I remember writing three completely different Chapter Fives for one manuscript. And this absolutely happened in House of Shadows too.

18) When characters are complex, plots can be simple.

That sounds so pithy and elegant. Also, it might be true. True-ish. If the writing is inviting enough and the characters are appealing enough, then I expect that the plot can be simple even if the characters are not that complex either. I am thinking of Romance here, but I feel that is basically the case in general.

One might argue that characters have to have a certain level of complexity in order to be appealing, but I’m not actually sure that’s a very high level. Maia in The Goblin Emperor strikes me as an example of a protagonist who is very, very appealing without being all that complex. YMMV, but I think the portrait Katherine Addison / Sarah Monette draws of Maia is intimate and deep, but also simple.

22) While it is great and necessary to have flawed characters in drama, not all flaws are created equally. A Hero can be unfaithful, they can be wrathful, they can be stubborn. One thing they can rarely be: incompetent in their chosen field. 

Now THERE is a true statement. Nothing in the entire realm of fiction is less appealing than a protagonist who is incompetent.

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Writer’s survey

At The Writer’s Cooperative, results from a survey taken by 700+ writers. Have you published a novel, are you working on a novel right now, did you study creative writing, are you part of a writer’s group online, off line, etc.

It’s mildly interesting. The most interesting thing to me is that a pretty large minority of respondents said they actively write on multiple devices. This seems strange to me. I would be annoyed if I had to continuously merge one document with another, or worse, one type of file with another.

A majority of respondents use Word. Well, sure. Why not? Everybody’s got it on their computer, everyone already knows how to use it, when you send a copy to somebody as a Word attachment, they’ll be able to open it and read it and it will look right without having to fiddle with it. Or if they want to change the font or spacing or something, that’s easy and they already know how to do it.

(I know “everyone” is a tiny bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t think it’s a huge exaggeration for people who have finished a novel.)

The survey was done by people who develop software for writers. Tough gig, probably, when dedicated software meant specifically for writers strikes me — and I’m sure I’m not alone here — as totally unnecessary. I’m sure I’m not the only one who steps back from learning how to use a new program when I already have a perfectly good program in Word.

Strangest comment, imo:

A number of writers are hesitant to study creative writing, seeing it as an art that should not require outside teaching or mentoring.  What they often forget is that in every other art form (painting, sculpting, music, etc.) it is normal and even expected that beginners will learn the basics of their art in a college setting or from an expert. Why should novel writing be any different?

The question did not ask anything that would allow evaluation of writer’s attitudes toward creative writing classes.  It was just a straight up Did you study Creative Writing.  Also, I think the authors of the survey might take note of the large proportion of writers who did not study Creative Writing and re-evaluate their assumption that these classes are helpful.

Especially since Creative Writing programs are famously hostile to genre writing. I don’t know if they really are; I never took any creative writing classes, as far as I can remember. But to the extent that they assume Literary Is It, of course they will turn off everyone who doesn’t like Literary.

Still, it’s always interesting to see results from surveys like this, even if the survey seems to have some flaws.

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Forgotten authors: a panel discussion

So, Archon is coming up in a few weeks. That’s the smallish convention that takes place right across the river from St. Louis; ie, the one that is only an hour and a half from my house, so of course I nearly always attend. 

Incidentally, if you’re in the neighborhood, Archon usually has a really good masquerade, so it’s worth coming just for that. Massively better than other, larger conventions. If you’ve ever been disappointed with a convention’s masquerade, don’t write this one off on that account. Very strong costumer’s guild in St. Louis, apparently. 

I’m on four panels. I kind of like moderating because I guess I’m a control freak in some ways. I mean, most of the time it really annoys me when a panel drifts gently off topic and the moderator doesn’t drag it back. It’s even worse when a particular panelist starts to tell everyone everything about their own books and won’t shut up (I bet I am not the only person to find that seriously annoying), and if I’m moderating I can gently shut that down. 

Also it’s actually easier to do panels as a moderator sometimes, because what you need is a list of questions and then you can pose them to the other people on the panel and go from there.

So I said Sure, I’ll moderate if you want a bunch of times and thus I’m moderating three panels and  I’m on one. Here they are:

Friday 2:00 — To read or not to read: how do you handle reading other people’s books when writing? I’m sure there will be a lot of variation here.

Saturday 1:00 — SF vs Fantasy: how to tell the difference. Lots of blurry lines, you bet.

Saturday 2:00 — Fermi Paradox. I’m not moderating that one, but I must have said it was okay to put me on the panel. The Fermi Paradox is always interesting and I hope we manage to say some stuff that is not already familiar to absolutely everyone.

Saturday 4:00 — Forgotten authors, and finally we arrive at the point of this post. 

I have several authors in mind, not to mention several categories that should help organize the panel discussion a bit. This is also obviously a topic where input from the whole room will be welcome, because surely everyone — everyone — has a favorite author they think is flying / has flown way too far under the radar.

So. Who are the authors you would most want to see mentioned at a panel like this? Drop ’em in the comments and I will make sure they get the mention they obviously deserve.

For example, name an author who has vanished into the mists of time but ought to be much more widely read today.

Or name an author who might be writing today, but is not getting the widespread notice they clearly deserve.

Or both.

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