Steven R. Southard's Blog, page 38
August 4, 2019
Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
My stories are set in lots of places. I finally mapped all of them to date.
Some anthologies and magazines ask writers to come up with a brief author biography. In my bios, I often state, “I take readers on voyages to far-off places.” I wondered if I could capture all these travels on a single map. Here it is:
On this map, green dots indicate published stories and red ones indicate unpublished stories for which I’ve written at least a first draft. There are some stories in which I don’t spec...
July 28, 2019
How Things Change
Change is all around us. It’s amazing to watch, and it tends to follow a single, characteristic pattern. Even though the pattern repeats, it often surprises us.
That pattern goes by various names, including the Change Curve, the ‘S’ Curve, the Sigmoid Curve, and the Logistic Curve. I’ll call it the ‘S’ Curve, mainly because my name is Steve Southard, and I’m fond of that letter.
Consider a thing, or entity. As we’ll see, it can be almost anything. It begins in a period of uncertainty, and m...
July 21, 2019
Stepping on the Moon…Again…Someday
As you may have heard, July 20, 2019 marked fifty years since a human first set foot on the Moon. What follows is one fiction writer’s perspective of that event.
Neil Armstrong on the moon I was eleven years old then, and watched the landing on my family’s small black-and-white TV. I stayed awake to watch the “first step” too, though it occurred close to 10 pm central time. There was no way to watch that live event and not feel pride and awe. Even those who balked at the mission’s expense kne...
July 14, 2019
Dial Down the Flame
Some days it seems as if the world is over-stocked with idiots: editors who reject your brilliant manuscripts or insist on unreasonable alterations; reviewers too nit-witted to appreciate your subtle prose; and there’s always the never-ending parade of dolts in the non-writing world. Luckily, you have the Internet, where you can loose your torrent of fury upon them all with wordy weapons of mass wrath.
I’m here to suggest you not do that.
Every now and then an author gets mad at someone and...
July 7, 2019
Technology in Fiction
Most of my fiction involves characters struggling with new technology. These days, learning how to contend with technology is a relevant and fascinating problem for all of us, and I enjoy exploring it.
I wondered if I was roaming the full realm of that topic, so I decided to map it. There are several ways to do this, but I chose to create one axis showing technology development stages, and another describing the spectrum of character responses to technology. Then I figured I’d plot my publis...
June 30, 2019
Your Writing Voice: A Different Take
Some time ago I wrote about finding your writing voice. Recently I read a post by Jessica Wildfire and it forced me to think deeper.
In my original post, I said a writer’s voice included two aspects: the stuff she writes about, and the way she writes it. In other words, (1) the topics and (2) the style. My suggestions on choosing topics are still sound. But Ms. Wildfire introduced some new thoughts about style.
Her 11-item list of style principles is so good I won’t repeat it here and will...
June 23, 2019
Your Tool for Writing Best-Selling Novels
Want to write a best-seller? Together, you and I will figure out the secret.
As I’ve posted before, data scientists have developed software that can predict whether a novel will be a best-seller. These text-analyzing tools are about 84% accurate, but only work when they have text to analyze. That is, you have to write the book first, and then run it through the computer. Not super helpful.
Not available. Anywhere. We can do better than that, at least as a mental exercise. W. Somerset Maugham...
June 16, 2019
The History of Science Fiction…So Far
Many people have written histories of Science Fiction, including Anthony Gramuglia, Robert J. Sawyer, and (in infographic form), the artist Ward Shelley. What follows is my version.
I split SF history into five ages. For each age, I’ll give the years covered, some characteristic aspects, how the age reacted against the previous age, and a list of representative authors. The timeframe for each age is approximate; within each, some authors wrote works hearkening back to the age before, and som...
June 9, 2019
Viewers GoT Angry
Admission: I’ve never watched even one episode of the ‘Game of Thrones’ TV show, nor read even one of the novels in the series by George R. R. Martin. Still, my lack of authority on that (or any) subject won’t stop me from weighing in.
As an author of short stories, I felt stunned to read about the amount of viewer backlash against the screenwriters of the show with regard to the last episode, and the entire last season. Over 1.6 million people have signed a petition challenging HBO to hire...
May 19, 2019
Celebrating Short Story Month
It’s Short Story Month, also known as May. Why they didn’t pick February—the shortest month—I’ll never know.
What is a short story? According to Wikipedia, it is a prose tale you can read in one sitting, one that evokes a single effect or mood. That ‘single effect’ idea can be difficult to understand. Edgar Allan Poe called it ‘unity of effect.”
Think of the effect as the emotional response induced in the reader by the story. The intent of a short story is to produce a single such effect, an...
