Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 279

Every writer’s experience is different

Here is Dean Wesley Smith today:

Simply put, fiction writers, when it comes to the very basis of being a fiction writer, toss all logic out the window and listen to people who have never written or published a book.

This goes on from the very beginning of every writer’s career. The one uniform trait in becoming a full-time fiction writer is that you must have the ability to unlearn all the crap. Unlearn all the illogical aspects of both the craft and the business.

Now I talked about much of this in the posts called Killing a Sacred Cow of Publishing or of Indie Publishing. You can read all those under the tab above or buy the books.

But let me give you a few examples here applying logic to some of the more illogical aspects of publishing.

— Agents. If you wouldn’t give your gardner 15% ownership of your home for mowing your lawn every wee, so why give an agent 15% of your property for doing even less work? Yet writers spend years and years chasing the opportunity to do just that.

… and I skidded to a halt.

I’m sure a lot of Smith’s points are accurate, or accurate-ish, or accurate for some writers. Even this point about agents is no doubt accurate for some writers.

But please. Do those of us who stick with agents the courtesy to imagine that our experience of the professional relationship might be different. My agent worked very hard to get rid of the noncomplete clauses in my recent contracts. She also got sensible reversions of rights for foreign and audio into the contracts, and in fact she wound up getting one publisher to double their initial offer for an advance. Worth 15%? You bet.

Well, click though if you want to read the rest. As I said, I suppose he does make some good points in there.

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Recent Reading: Hidden Steel by Duranna Durgin

How many times have you read a book / watched a movie where someone wakes up with no memory of who they are or how they got to wherever? Lots, yes? Fledgling by Octavia Butler and Soldier in the Mist by Gene Wolfe and, well, lots of others. Even more if you include false or misleading memories like in Chime by Billingsley. Oh, and how about The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Pearson, which is all about truly not being the person people tell you that you are. Cuckoo Song by Hardinge, too. Yeah, no shortage of stories using this kind of trope.

Now, how many times have you read a book / watched a movie where someone wakes up with no memory of who they are, and they’re also a prisoner? More than one, I bet. Corwyn of Amber, right? Who else, if right off the bat you remember another one?

Well, now I’ve got another you can add to that list: Micky in Duranna Durgin’s Hidden Steel.

Thus we see that it’s not the cliché that’s the problem, when you happen across a super-common plot element like waking up with no memory of yourself. If there is a problem, it’s with the execution.

Honestly, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a plot that is too clichéd. In the right hands, anything can work. In Durgin’s hands, the waking-up-amnesiac plot works just fine. It’s really fun, actually, from the beginning right on through to the end. No trace of an SF or fantasy plot, btw; this is strictly a contemporary setting.

Micky is, well, she is exactly the kind of person you’d want to be if you woke up with no memory and found yourself being held prisoner by nefarious characters. That’s part of what makes this book so much fun! You don’t want to be misled by the cover.

Despite what this image might suggest, Micky doesn’t stay a prisoner for more than a couple pages, and she doesn’t spend a lot of time feeling sorry for herself. But of course she doesn’t know why she is the kind of person she clearly is – good with violence, good with weapons, good at escaping and staying out of sight while she tries to figure out who kidnapped her and why. Is she a good person or a bad person? She isn’t even sure about that.

Steve Spaneas is a good male lead. He’s got a backstory that explains not only why he’s also pretty good with violence, but also why he’d be inclined to help a woman like Micky. Their relationship develops believably while they both try to find out who Micky actually is and what she is supposed to be doing. There’s plenty of action. I’d say the pace is brisk rather than breakneck, but I don’t think anybody is going to get bored waiting for the plot to unroll. The overall plot struck me as a little strained, but really not too much so given the genre conventions. Plus Durgin sells the plot well; there’s no moment when you’re likely to think, Oh, come on, seriously? It all makes sense in context.

I think of Duranna Durgin as a fantasy author, but I guess she’s branched out because this is an adventure-romance kind of thing. In that order, because though the romance is important, it’s not quite as dominant as I’d expect in a romance-adventure. This is a restrained romance, too, no super sexy scenes, so if you prefer less explicit sex in your romance, this would be a good one to try.

Evidently Durgin has at least one more adventure-romance book out, Making the Rules, because there’s a teaser at the end of Hidden Steel. I’m not much for teasers; as long as I’m pretty confident I’ll like the book, I’m happy to just pick it up and toss it on my TBR pile and find out what the first chapter holds when I open it up for real. After thoroughly enjoying Hidden Steel, I am indeed pretty certain I’ll enjoy another story of this type from Durgin, so I’ve picked up Making the Rules — I’m pretty likely to get to it soon-ish, too, because I like contemporaries when I’m working on a fantasy of my own.

Okay, what other wake-up-a-prisoner-with-no-memory stories come to mind for you? I honestly feel there are a thousand, but Nine Princes in Amber is the one that I thought of first and then I couldn’t think of any other specific examples

Is the amnesia thing a trope that tends to pull you in or push you away? For me this particular trope is a slight negative, so an author had to do a pretty darn good job to make it work for me. How about you all?

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Friday puppy picture

Welcome to the weekend!

May it be as relaxing as this moment where Girl 1 falls asleep nestled against her mother.

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The Series Hugo: What’s eligible?

JJ at File 770 has compiled a list of series which are eligible for nominations for the first Series Hugo.

I don’t need a lot of help nominating in this category . . . I may well not nominate anything but CJC’s Foreigner series, but if I do, I already know which series I’ll likely pick out of the herd.

Still, this is quite a comprehensive list and you may find it helpful if you are eligible to nominate this year.

Here are a few that caught my eye:

Chronicles of Elantra by Michelle Sagara, Cast in Flight — I know some of you are big fans, and I swear, I SWEAR, I will try this series eventually.

Dune by Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson, Navigators of Dune — this caught my eye because REALLY? This series is still ongoing? I think it was Jo Walton (?) who commented that every book in the Dune series is half as good as its precursor. I laughed, but given the first three or four, I have to agree.

Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews (Ilona Gordon and Andrew Gordon), Magic Binds — I don’t think any UF / Paranormal stands a chance, because I don’t think the set of Hugo voters overlaps much with the much bigger set of UF / Paranormal readers. But such an excellent series.

Raksura by Martha Wells, The Edge of Worlds — and here’s where I’m reminded, okay, yes, there are other series I need to nominate besides Foreigner.

Shadow Campaigns by Django Wexler, The Guns of Empire — and, fine, I will probably nominate this as well.

The Five Gods series by Lois McMaster Bujold, except it’s only eligible because of a novella, so does that really count? I would think it makes more sense to require novels in order to be eligible. I may be in the minority about that, though. Incidentally, the Vorkosigan series may not be eligible because Red Queen was available for sale in 2015.

If you are planning to nominate this year, are there any other series you’d be rooting for?

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Are people getting stupider?

This post showcasing ridiculous signs suggests that

a) people are getting stupider, or

b) sign writers are getting funnier, or

c) most likely, businesses feel compelled to post ridiculous signs because occasionally juries rule in ridiculous ways.

I am torn because the competition in this post is truly intense, but this may be the very least necessary sign of all time:

If anyone ever sues a business because they licked the bathroom walls and then got sick, well, all I can say is, I hope I am on that jury. Don’t you want to know what happened that someone felt compelled to make this little sign and tape it to the wall? … Or on second thought, maybe not.

This is my actual favorite sign in the post — it is not the least bit stupid, just really interesting:

That one just begs for an explanation of the backstory!

Click through to admire the display of sheer inanity in signage and pick your own favorite.

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“Groundhog Day” transcends the rules

I hardly get to offer an opinion about movies because I watch so few. I loved “Groundhog Day,” though. Here is a post at tor.com about how the movie breaks the rules of every genre.

Groundhog Day succeeds as a film because of the way it plays with, subverts, and outright mocks the tropes of each of the genres it flirts with. While some people would call it a time travel movie, or a movie about small town America, or the most spiritual film of all time, or a rom-com, it is by breaking the rules of each of those types of films that it ultimately transcends genre entirely.

Leah Schnelbach then discusses how the movie breaks the rules for timetravel movies, romantic comedy movies, spiritual movies, etc. The part about the role the unspeaking homeless character of Pops plays in the movie is especially thought provoking.

I think maybe this week I’ll get that DVD out and watch this movie again.

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Run away, run away

At QueryTracker Blog, this post on a new kind of agency fee:

Then we get to the fun part, where the agency describes their new contract, introducing an administrative fee structure:

The first year we represent a manuscript we charge five hundred dollars ($500.00), then an additional two hundred fifty dollars ($250.00) each year until we place it with a publisher. Upon securing a publishing contract, the agency receives 15% of net revenues.

On their website, they try to sweeten the deal: they explain that this fee helps them partner with writers who are serious and willing to invest in their careers.

No, folks. This is not normal. You don’t have to prove to an agent that you’re serious and willing to invest in your writing. As Gavin DeBecker says in The Gift of Fear, statements like that are designed to get the target to act against his or her own self interest in order to prove s/he isn’t whatever the speaker is accusing them of being.

So let’s step back and be serious, as the agent wants us to be. This agent seriously wants you to fork over five hundred bucks before even starting the job, and that $500 won’t come out of the advance when the book sells. Then, if the agent fails to sell your book in one year, the agent gets rewarded with an additional $250.

In what reality does this make any sense for the writer? After taking your five hundred dollars, why would the agent work hard to sell your manuscript? Agents should get paid by commission. If they don’t sell, they don’t get paid.

Agents do not get to charge you $500 to make them do their job, then collect commission if they do it correctly, then collect an additonal $250 if they don’t do it correctly, and then shake you down for a final $500 when you decide to leave because they didn’t sell your book.

Lots more at the link. But, wow, this sure looks like an extra-awful twist on predatory agenting.

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Seriously, what?

A quote from Stern’s Introductory Plant Biology, from which I am making study guides for a student.

“A number of years ago, an Australian farmer, while plowing a field, glanced back and was startled to see what looked like flowers being tossed to the surface of the furrows. He climbed off his tractor to take a closer look and found that what he saw were, indeed, flowers. Furthermore, the plants to which the flowers were attached were pale and had no chlorophyll. He reported his find to a university, where botanists determined that the farmer had stumbled upon the first known underground flowering plant. The plant proved to be an orchid that lived on organic matter in the soil and was pollinated by tiny flies that gained access to the below-ground flowers via mud cracks that developed in the dry season.”

Okay.

This plant is now called Rhizanthella gardneri. Here is a picture of a flower:

And here is what Wikipedia has to say:

Rhizanthella gardneri, also known as Western Underground Orchid, is a plant in the orchid family, discovered in the spring of 1928 in the wheatbelt of Western Australia.

Jack Trott had bent to investigate an odd crack that had appeared in his garden’s soil, and had noticed a sweet smell that arose from the ground. Scraping away the soil, he soon uncovered a tiny white flower, about half an inch across, growing underground. What he had found was an entirely new type of orchid. The discovery generated such excitement that a wax model was toured around the British Isles.

More from Wikipedia at the link. Apparently it is a parasite on a more normal plant called broom honeymyrtle.

Well.

This plant was discovered in 1928? I can’t believe I never heard of this before. Talk about living in a science fiction universe. If you put something like this in a story, who would be able to suspend disbelief far enough to accommodate it? Not me. Or not before today.

The world is always weirder than we know.

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Good News Tuesday

Nanotechnology is upon us! Scary, but also promising. I mean, check this out:

Scientists Can Use Wires 3 Atoms Wide to Create Fabric That Generates Electricity

“What we have shown here is that we can make tiny, conductive wires of the smallest possible size that essentially assemble themselves,” said Hao Yan, a Stanford postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper. “The process is a simple, one-pot synthesis. You dump the ingredients together and you can get results in half an hour. It’s almost as if the diamondoids know where they want to go.”

The needle-like wires have a semiconducting core – a combination of copper and sulfur known as a chalcogenide – surrounded by the attached diamondoids, which form an insulating shell.

Their minuscule size is important, Melosh said, because a material that exists in just one or two dimensions – as atomic-scale dots, wires or sheets – can have very different, extraordinary properties compared to the same material made in bulk. The new method allows researchers to assemble those materials with atom-by-atom precision and control.”

It’s a science fiction universe, it really is.

Same basic theme:

Scientists Build Battery on Single Sheet of Paper Powered by Bacteria

Researchers at Binghamton University – SUNY (State University of New York) have created a bacteria-powered battery on a single sheet of paper – a design that could revolutionize the use of bio-batteries as a power source in remote, dangerous, or resource-limited areas. The simple manufacturing technique also reduces the fabrication time and cost.

Interesting!

This next one may be a bit of an overstatement, but still:

2017 – the year seasteading begins



Our venture is poised to launch a seasteading industry that will provide environmental resiliency to the millions of people threatened by rising sea levels, provide economic opportunities to people in remote and economically deprived environments, and provide humanity with new opportunities for organizing societies and governments.

As far as I’m concerned, the year seasteading begins is the year it actually, you know, begins. Not the year various bureaucrats lay plans to begin seasteading eventually. Still, wouldn’t this be cool? Definitely a science fiction universe.

Okay, more currently useful:

Zambia tries new way to beat drought: solar grain mills

Since 2015 [Zambia’s government] has been installing hundreds of small solar-powered mills in rural areas as a way to help hold down the price of producing food.

One hopes this pans out for them and other countries.

Onward to the intersection of science fiction and medicine:

Soft Robot Hugs Your Heart to Keep It Pumping

The cylindrical device, constructed of silicon less than a millimeter thick, is layered with actuators that form rings around a sleeve and a helical spiral from top to bottom. These mechanical rings are tubes that inflate and contract when filled with pressurized air. This enables the robot—unlike other heart sleeves—to perform a variety movements on demand, even contracting one side of the heart at a time.

Still in trials, but this sounds very promising. Here’s another, this one already being used in trials on human patients:

The Tiny Robots Revolutionizing Eye Surgery

R2D2 and other robots like it will enable surgeons to, for the first time, operate underneath the retina and interact with blood vessels in the eye. “Undoubtedly this will lead to improvements in quality of eye surgery that require highly technical procedures,” he says. “But most significantly they will open the door to new operations for which the human hand does not have the necessary control and precision.

Yes, R2D2. It actually stands for Robotic Retinal Dissection Device . . . they say. One rather suspects someone had an ulterior motive for coming up with a name that would reduce to, ahem, R2D2. Either way, though, onward with snazzy little tiny robot devices to improve eye surgery!

One more robot-in-medicine, coming to a future near you:

This Tiny Submarine Cruises Inside A Stomach To Deliver Drugs

The swallowable device reacts with stomach acid release of tiny hydrogen bubbles. The bubbles scoot it around the stomach, and a magnesium core reduces acidity as it goes. The tiny device is covered by a special polymer, like a jacket, that is sensitive to changes in the acidity. Once the acid in the stomach is neutralized, the polymer dissolves and the submarines unload their antibiotic payload.

The micro submarine is only 20 microns across, about one-fifth the width of a human hair.

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One of my biggest problems as a reader, explained

Here in this post at Book View Cafe, Alma Alexander takes a stab at explaining something that is a huge (huge) problem — often a dealbreaker — for me as a reader: Why characters do stupid things.

We’ve all read those books. The ones where everything is going swimmingly and then somebody you’re supposed to care about does something so eye-wateringly dumb that your eyes hurt from rolling, and that sound you hear is your molars grinding together.

To some extent, this is inevitable – a story is what happens when *things go wrong*, and what the characters inhabiting that story do to right those things. So there might be a defensible starting point where a character has to do something stupid – or deal with something stupid – to get the story engines rolling properly. But here are a couple of things to watch out for when you’re writing that story.

I disagree. There are always (ALWAYS) ways to make things go wrong without compelling your characters to do something mindbogglingly stupid.

However, this post is actually about ways to watch out for and avoid unnecessary stupidity. Alexander addresses the kind of plot where everything could be worked out if only the characters would TALK to each other (my least favorite ever), the kind of plot where important elements hinge on a character’s brain melting at a crucial moment (my least favorite ever), and the kind of plot where a character does something stupid just because they are told to by someone else (my least favorite ever).

I would add that the kind of plot where the protagonist hovers around the action making ineffectual gestures to deal with the situation as things go increasingly downhill . . . also my least favorite ever. Not because of active stupidity, but because of general passivity and a failure to be a smart, creative, and effective actor.

Yet another: false equivalence. When the protagonist refuses to do something because it “would make us just like the bad guy.” The author ought to be able to see how stupid this is, when the protagonist is defending herself or others and the bad guy is EVIL INCARNATE. The reader can sure tell the difference. Refusing to let the protagonist take action in order to keep the bad guy around for the second half of the book is, well, just find some other way to do that, all right? You can always prevent the protagonist’s reasonable attempt to defeat the bad guy from working somehow. Think about “Let’s take off and nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” That was a smart decision, derailed by circumstance. This is far, far better than stupid decisions.

And one more type of stupidity: a character who is so emotional and impulsive that she (always a she) just can’t control herself and so keeps doing obviously stupid things even though she knows they are stupid … absolutely my least favorite ever.

None of this is even faintly acceptable to me as a reader. I’m not sure anything besides weird word choices and actual typos turns me off more strongly. One of the main things I always want my brother to check for me as a beta reader — actually the single most important thing — is: did any characters do anything unbelievably stupid? Their clever plans were actually more or less clever, right?

Forthwith, some practical examples of each form:

Example the first: To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust. If only the characters had talked to each other! So much grief could have been avoided! I will add that I remember nothing else about this book besides that. I only read it once. This would be why.

Example the second: In the well-known YA alternate China duology Eon and Eona, right toward the beginning the politically astute elderly mentor accepts a glass of fruit juice offered by an unknown hand and drinks it even though it tastes bitter, and even though he had every reason to suspect someone will try to assassinate him. He dies, cause directly attributable to this moment of mind-boggling stupidity.

In fact, at roughly the same time, every important figure who should have expected assassination also gets murdered, with none of them taking any action to protect themselves or act against their common enemy.

None of this was even faintly believable. I did finish the duology, but barely, and only after throwing the first book across the room twice. Nothing else as awful happened in it (as far as I remember) and actually I really enjoyed, oh, say, the second half of the second book. But I gave the duology away after finishing it.

Example the third: Actually, I’m having trouble thinking of an example where an important protagonist did something stupid just because they were told to, and then everything went predictably to hell. Anybody got one of those?

Example the fourth: In one of Kelly Armstrong’s books, possibly Bitten but I wouldn’t swear to it, the boss werewolf has a plan that is so eye-wateringly stupid that I actually thought he had some other plan. Nope. Things worked out anyway, but only because of dumb luck. I will add that Armstrong’s portrayal of the wolf half of her werewolves is just delightful. As far as I know, these are the most wolf-like of any werewolves. I read several others in the series because of that. But she could have used a beta reader to say witheringly, “Seriously? This is the plan?” and make her come up with something better.

Example the fifth: I have loved several of Juliet Marillier’s books. Her writing is beautiful. But in Wildwood Dancing, everything slowly and comprehensively goes to hell while the main character wrings her hands and takes absolutely no effective action. This was so painful to read that I gave the book away.

Example the sixth: The protagonist in Kim Harrison’s Dead Witch Walking is so ridiculously impulsive, she is constantly throwing herself into the most asinine situations. I couldn’t stand it and never touched another book in the series. It didn’t help that the author used the word “mink” to refer to an animal that was obviously an ermine, something I wish Harrison’s copy editor had caught. But the stupidity of the protagonist was the main issue for me.

Example the seventh: I regret to say that Sharon Shinn, generally one of my favorite authors, did the false equivalence thing in her Twelve Houses series. First book, I think. The one where Senneth refuses to kill the main bad guy, thus allowing the kingdom to be engulfed in war. How many people died because of that moment of irresolution? Also, the king was super-slow to take effective action, so he was also to blame for putting his kingdom through some completely unnecessary years of hardship and violence. I like the series anyway, but this may be one reason the final book, set after the main conflict is over, is by far my favorite and the one I go back to and re-read.

Things that work much better than any of the above:

1. A character can make a mistake without being stupid. That is what the character’s ignorance of the real situation is for. Look at the Nazi duology by Barbara Hambly. It’s not stupid for the protagonists to not realize how evil the Nazis are. How are they supposed to be able to tell? Still not at all my favorite books by Hambly, but protagonist stupidity is not the issue. Or remember when some of the main characters break into the bad guy’s stronghold in Elizabeth Bear’s Range of Ghosts trilogy? Pity they didn’t know they should find the captive Roc and set it free, but how were they to know that?

2. The character, especially a young character, can be somewhat impulsive without being totally idiotic. Many, many YA novels pull this off perfectly well.

3. The character can take a risk. Alexander refers to this: Having a character do a stupidly brave thing with only poor to middling chances of its success, but trying for it anyway, is a pretty decent way to write something poignant … Yes, that would work. Most books where someone takes a chance like this have that risk pay off. Having the character take a chance and get tails instead of heads should produce real sympathy rather than an impulse toward book-flinging.

4. The character may not choose to obey a superior in a stupid way, but be compelled to. This is rather common. Of course one then expects a plot and character arc that leads to the protagonist defying his or her superior, regardless of the personal cost. That’s a very compelling arc for me.

Alexander sums this all up thus:

Why do characters do stupid things? Because they’re forced to. Because they’re in love. Because in their best judgment (without knowing all the facts, which you as the author are aware of) making a certain choice seems to be the right thing to do and they only find out otherwise much later in the adventure. Because, perhaps, their moral compass tells them to flout authority because they don’t agree with that authority, even though consequences might be dire for themselves. Because they care. Because they DON’T care anymore, because something has hurt them so badly that they’re beyond caring. Because they’re flawed. … When your characters are faced with making the mistakes they will inevitably make in order for your story to move forward… make sure they’re driving the plot bus, not being thrown under the wheels of one for short term pointless comic relief or through pure inattention on the author’s part.

But I would add that it’s definitely not okay to drive the plot with character stupidity. Flaws, yes, but not stupidity. Mistakes ought to be not just understandable, but practically inevitable given the protagonist’s current knowledge of the situation. That’s the key to making the plot work for a reader who, like me, is violently allergic to character stupidity.

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