S. Andrew Swann's Blog, page 27

Me – Beard

Here I am at Confluence this past weekend, minus some facial hair:

On the Writing panel:

Signing books (note the cat-shaving battle scars):

Doing the research

Everyone knows that you should do research for any story to make sure you get the facts right.  Few people actually point out why this is an important thing, and why you shouldn't slack off because it's fantasy and it's all made up anyway.  Case in point, bestselling author Beverly Lewis vs. my wife the horse person.  Now, after we met Mary Ellis at the Buckeye Book Fair, Michelle went and got hooked on Amish spirituals.  It wasn't very surprising since, as you might guess, that genre has a l...

Writers + Internet = A List

The subject came up when I was on a writing panel at the Medina library this past Saturday, and I thought I might codify it into some general rules of thumb for writers (aspiring and pro) using the interwebs. This can be considered a companion to my earlier post of what NOT to do:

Write first! Using the web to promote your writing if you aren't actually writing is, to put it bluntly, a damnfool thing to do. Nothing wrong with using the internet for its own sake, but don't rationalize it as...

Me elsewhere. . .

On the Suvudu blog, they're doing a Spectra retrospective, and today, Wolfbreed was up:

"On Friday, March 16th 2007, I had an idea for a novel. It had been bubbling in my head for about a week after watching the anime Elfen Lied. Since it wouldn't leave me alone, I decided to just write the thing out of my system even though I had other things I was supposed to be working on. Little did I know what I was getting into. By the start of April, I was forty thousand words into the thing....

A little writerly observation

It may seem narcissistic to enjoy reading your own work, however, since a writer's job is to engage their audience, and the only direct measure any writer has of that engagement is their own reaction; any writer worth their salt should be writing stuff that, at the very least, blows their own socks off.  It should be a given.  Also, I suspect that it is necessary to have that level of engagement in your own work before you can start engaging other people.

Of course, mentioning how much you...

Tying the whole thing together

I've been light blogging the past few weeks because, even though I'm done with Messiah, I'm not done with Messiah.  Even though the draft is finished (so no one needs to worry about me pulling a Robert Jordon) I'm still in the midst of going through and polishing off the edges of the draft.  I'll also have one last pass after Sheila at DAW gives me her two cents.  I've seen the cover art, and I think it rocks.  All-in-all, I'm rather happy with it.  Especially since, when I began it, I...

Guess what came in the mail?

And our wonderful UPS guy decided to leave the package out in the rain, on top of a trash can next to the house. . .  But I got this to cheer me up.  Go there, you may win a book.

Guns, Carrots and the willing supension of disbelief

Authors of fiction have an advantage that we often don't realize we have:  Our audience wants to believe us.  They know we're lying, but in most cases they're willing to accept anything we want sell them in the name of the story, and ask only that we're honest about what the story is, and we remain true to our premises.  When the willing suspension of disbelief snaps, it is usually not because the event triggering the snap was something that in isolation is inherently more implausible than...

Four More Things Lost Can Teach Us About Storytelling

Back a couple of years ago I wrote about "Five Things Lost Can Teach Us About Storytelling" and I thought I'd add to that list now that the series is complete. Here's a few more things I think Lost did well:

In writing a prolonged series, keep in mind how long your plot arc is: There is a world of difference between shows like Lost where each episode plays out as part of a larger plot arc, and a series like CSI or where the episode is a story unto itself. Many times if the writers shift...

If you're thinking about TV writing. . .

There's a marvelous post over at Io9 that you really must read.  It's titled, "Inside the writers room: Top scifi TV writers reveal tricks of the trade," but it really isn't about genre writing, and it really isn't about tricks of the trade. What it is, is an in-depth exploration on exactly what the working environment is like in a scripted TV show. To anyone unfamiliar with that environment, especially someone with a connection to writing outside that realm, it's an eye-opener. I already ...