Karalynn Lee's Blog, page 5

Contract for Slip Point

Now that I have the countersigned contract in hand, I can proudly announce that Carina Press has accepted Slip Point and that it's slated to be published on November 7th of this year.

Now I can relax about having the words "science fiction" up there in my website header.

It'll be interesting getting into the proper head space for edits. My three current projects are all high fantasy, while Slip Point is space opera. I remember having to learn a sort of exuberance while writing it, a sense of to-hell-with-physics executed with enough gusto to cover up the ridiculous bits — or to celebrate them. My fantasy stories pretend to have more dignity.

But I didn't write Slip Point for the plot or for the world-building. I wrote this because I found unexpectedly appealing the boy and the girl who met on a hilltop while starship-gazing.

Once Upon a Time

This is a charming card-based game in which each player is given a random set of typical fairy tale elements: for example, a princess, a tower, an escape, a thief. You start telling a story, aiming to mention the elements on your cards, but other players can interrupt and take over the storytelling, twisting it around to fit their own cards. Everyone also has a single, different happy ending card, which is the conclusion they're striving to reach.

It was actually interesting from a writer's point of view. First of all, being a writer doesn't give you much of an advantage. This is more like improv rather than the planned plotting I'm used to, and many times I lost my turn as storyteller because I stammered while trying to weave in an unlikely card. (The flying objects card kept appearing in my hand.)

Second of all, the ending cards heavily influence the path your story takes, and the first person to lead as storyteller has a huge advantage because he can quickly introduce a setup which makes sense with his own ending. If your happy ending is that the village rejoices, there better be a village with a problem somewhere in the story.

This was tougher for the grade-school-aged child who was in my playing group. She had a "brother/sister" element card and a happy ending card of "The child was restored to happy parents," and tried to force her way to the latter by innocently stating in her story that the brother and sister had a child.

She didn't understand why the adults fell over laughing. I couldn't really applaud her because of the subject matter, but I did appreciate her strategy of introducing a key element of the ending. This is the same advice I often heard for high school essays: link the introduction and the conclusion. Readers will recognize that the piece has come full circle.

And finally, although the stories we told careened quite often into preposterous territory, you could call out "Silly!" when something didn't make sense at all. You could be crazy (we had a flying saucer — not a UFO, but an actual saucer that you could pour milk into), but you had to be logical about piecing things together. You couldn't just use four disparate cards in a single sentence; instead you had to build in each element with a purpose. The window element must play a significant role in the story, and not just be a pretty sight to pass by.

I keep forgetting that "writing" doesn't equate to "storytelling," and that each can be mastered separately. This was a good reminder. I'm looking forward to playing this again and honing my storytelling skills.

Poetry at work

I have poetry scattered around my workstation — taped to the monitor, scribbled on a Post-It on the window, pinned to the wall, hanging from the shelf. On tense days, I force myself to look away from the computer's glow and a word will catch my eye. I read through the lines, each one a stroke of ritardando that lets me lose myself in the beauty of perfect phrasing and cadence, until that uplift of breath that comes with the aching end, unregretted because the length, too, was measured, and resonates. Whenever I move desks, which is fairly often, I shuffle out different poems. On slow days I write out a new find or a just-remembered gem I once encountered in the past.

It took me a long time to realize that not all readers appreciate language as art on its own; authors I adored for their intricate descriptions were scorned by friends to my bewilderment. Now I better understand that they're seeking a compelling narrative, or the conveyance of useful information. But I will forgive many sins for a well-wrought sentence. And in this, I consider poets to be the most masterful of writers.

Poetry is a bit like music for me, in that I am deeply appreciative of it and humbled by others' abilities to create it. Besides the mandatory adolescent scribblings, I've never really written poetry, and I don't have any particular desire to.  And, as noted above, sometimes the urge to write a sentence prettily actually gets in the way of telling a good story — and as a fiction writer, the latter must be my priority. But when I talk about an author's writing style, I'm often speaking of their facility with words, and it is ever my dream to hear mine called lyrical.

Beyond genre

I was surprised to find myself sucked into The Good Wife, which is technically a legal drama TV show — something I've never before been interested in watching. But it has great acting, good writing, complex characters with realistic relationships, and varying shades of morality; it expects its viewers to be intelligent.

It made me wonder how fixed my genre preferences are. Can I be won over by any show as long it offers the above traits? What about in books?

Reading-wise, I've dipped my toes into mysteries, for example, and have discovered at least two series I reliably enjoy. But it's incredibly difficult for me to search out other mysteries I think I'd like. Perhaps I need someone knowledgeable who can identify the sub-genres that would interest me, or just a guide in general. When confronted by a shelf of mysteries, I have no idea where to start. Many of them seem to expect the reader to figure things out, or at least leave breadcrumb clues, while I'm quite happy having everything explained to me, and obfuscation works just as well as a red herring.

I remember my brother reading a romance draft of mine and expressing doubt over some character interaction, but he added the caveat that he's unfamiliar with the conventions of the genre. I think this is probably the key: do you write with the assumption that certain elements will occur, and that readers will find it acceptable or even welcome, because they're found in all members of that genre? Are there major aspects of your story which don't lean on these conventions?

I don't pretend to write genre-transcending literature (my latest work actually began with the heteronormative boy and girl meeting up in the first sentence, and didn't buck assumptions). But it's interesting that I do tend to gravitate toward fantasy and science fiction, and now romance (and I did find romance jarring at first; I wish I'd taken better notes before I grew accustomed to it). And I wonder what I get out of them that I don't in other genres — and what I seek that might also be found elsewhere.

The Dragonwand of Krynn

By Greg Fahlgren and Nancy Fahlgren.

This is a Dragonlance-based entry in the "One-on-One Adventure Gamebook" series, which I played when I was a wee little Karalynn. It was perfect for a pair of siblings who were dragon-obsessed, since it involves two players. I recall making my brother play the role of the big bad Dragonlord, while I got the Solamnian Knight, of course. Our mutual and yet competitive quest: to get the Dragonwand first!

Mechanics: there's a gamebook for each character (who also has a coterie of minions; but they don't get their own books). The players take turns making decisions and flipping to the appropriate pages in their own books. Some of these choices are your basic "Do you cooperate with the guards or break loose?" types of branches, while others are navigational, determining your specific location ("Do you go up the stairs?").

Whenever battle breaks out, the other player takes on the role of your opponent. If you happen to enter the same room as the other main character, the two duke it out and only one continues with the quest. My brother and I used to frantically backtrack if we stumbled into the same place.

I found a lot of the number-crunching annoying (different amounts of damage dealt on alternating turns; juggling up to five characters on the same side in a battle, each with his or her own special rules), and in this reprise with my brother many years later over email, ended up writing a web script to handle the battles. The setting is a slightly prettified dungeon (it's a temple, but it's just a series of rooms where you encounter various monsters; better-lit, but not otherwise elevated). The characters have horribly thin veneers of personality (the main thing I remember about the knight is his mustache); the Dragonlord's better about this, but the knight's companions were a female cleric (of course) and a mischievous kender thief.

And I actually think that it's far too easy to collide with the other main character early in the game — I can see the appeal of this sort of fight, but the loser has to twiddle his thumbs for the rest of the game, which is no fun. I'm not sure how this would be managed, but I'd like to see the competition continue even after the wand is acquired. You still have to make your way out, after all; imagine snatching it from the grasp of the but-recently-triumphant wand-finder! Muahaha.

It didn't play as badly over email as I had feared, but I wonder if that's because there was no gripping narrative. I was perfectly fine setting the book down with my page saved. That said, it was still entertaining, and there's lots of room to trash-talk; that's the extent of the role-playing, but it's still sufficiently interactive to make this enjoyable.

Demon's Fall audiobook

Audible is now selling the audiobook edition of Demon's Fall, narrated by the lovely Zoe Hunter. She was kind enough to ask how the heroine's name should be pronounced (thus proving my editor right about how this might have been usefully embedded in the story), and her speaking voice is certainly far superior to the mumbled performance I'm sure I would give. Also better than my text-to-speech program. (It's a toss-up whether my reading or the TTS app is the better one.)

This has been a good week, publishing-wise. More news to come!

Serial endings

I'm nipping on the blog between my 12-hour workdays to exhale slowly over the end of Digger ("A wombat. A dead god. A very peculiar epic"), a web comic whose tagline grabbed me, and which is the only narrative comic I've stayed loyal to through to the finish. (I say "narrative" because I will be reading xkcd until fire or ice comes.)

I can't imagine writing a serial for so long, and as the artist says, it was unexpected on her end too. Talk about getting an idea and running with it…for over 700 pages. Starting from early 2007. I've had stories sitting in the "in progress" stage for longer than that, but not while constantly interacting with them. They got drawered, gathered dust, were jostled while I was looking for something else, and finally re-emerged to the light of day.

Even though I'm sure Vernon (the artist) made much of it up as she went along, it was lovely to see how pieces meshed together, and trailing ends wove back into the fabric of the story. Isn't that how the writing process works for many of us? Random elements enter — "When in doubt, add an explosion," I've heard a writer friend say — and then justify their presence. But for me, so much of that justification requires going back and nudging earlier references, or even completely changing some elements.

Someday, as a lark, I may try to write and post something as I go. But seeing how I can't even stick to a simple blog on a regular schedule, this may have to wait a while.

Workstations I have tried

Typing on the netbook while sprawled on the couch, often belly-down.

My current favorite and no doubt an ergonomist's worst nightmare.

Typing on an external wireless keyboard in my lap (keyboard trays are rarely at friendly heights for shorter folks) and the laptop propped atop the Oxford American Dictionary on my desk to get it up to a non-neck-craning altitude.

As my thickest book, the OAD has since been re-purposed. And people claim they don't need physical books any more! Anyway, this is probably the closest to your standard computer desk setup.

Sitting on the carpet and writing longhand in a notebook on the coffee table.

Koreans are generally comfortable sitting on the floor, so this feels right in a way. But the coffee table's too high to type on, and my handwriting muscles seem to have atrophied from too much computer use.

My netbook on the dining room table and me several yards away on the couch with the wireless keyboard on my lap, unable to see what I'm actually typing.

An extreme form of "don't edit as you write," I suppose. There were complicated reasons for doing this, and I don't expect to do so again.

Netbook on the waist-high bookcase, standing as I type.

My officemate at work actually uses a standing desk. He really loves the setup and claims that being a bit more physically active also helps his mental processes flow better. (I'm mostly grateful because while he's standing, he shifts around enough to satisfy our motion-sensitive ceiling lights, which otherwise like to plunge us into darkness when we sit still too long.) So this is experimental.

I've heard that it's a good idea to have a special writing place in your home, perhaps the same way sleep hygiene works (make sure your brain associates your bed with sleeping by only using it for such). Clearly I'm not a follower of this practice. We'll see how the standing goes.

Life's Lottery by Kim Newman

This one's definitely using different tactics than most branching fiction I'm familiar with.

It starts you off at birth (and points out the perils of early infanthood by inviting you to return to section 0 and start over again if you die in these early days). It tells you that you're a white male of a specific astrological sign and even what height you'll grow to, as well as your name. Luckily, it mostly fast forwards through school, and most of the book deals with adulthood.

Some sections are pages long, others a paragraph. Sometimes you are chided by the text for your decisions. Many endings are ambivalent, finishing with the simple line, "And so on," once your living situation is established, leaving you scratching your head.

The very first choice makes a reference to a television show I had no clue about, unfortunately. And this choice reverberates all the way through the rest of your life — realistic in a butterfly-flapping way, but frustrating, because you can end up with wildly different paths without any clue why.

And I do feel that the author was more concerned about exploring all the possibilities (and gravitating to varied extremes such as murder, rape, and incest). There are a myriad of sexual and romantic possibilities, but a paucity of distinguishing characteristics among the potential partners. Oh, sure, they took you to different endings, but I never felt them to be true characters with full-fledged personalities, just vehicles to take you to another place in life.

It's impressive in an intellectual way, but I think it's trying to accomplish the opposite of what I am. I'm hoping for a story with enough emotional engagement to lead the reader through her choices, and Newman encourages a more experimental approach, without really investing the reader in identifying with the protagonist.

Still writing

I caught up with a high school friend the other day. "Are you still writing?" he asked, amidst all the chat about broken romances and family additions and career crossroads.

"Yes," I said, a little taken aback because I can't imagine not writing, whether my stories get published or not. There may be a hiatus of days or even months, but the stories sit patiently, and I always return.

But it's my fault he had to ask; all my close friends know that I write fiction, but their knowledge stops there. I don't actually discuss the process or the results of my writing, letting their ignorance remain untroubled. I suppose I don't want to be peppered with tiresome questions: "So when are you going to finish your Harry Potter?" Or: "Hey, I hear there are some online publishers these days — you should look into them." And the perennial favorite, "Can you name a character after me?"

I will not expose my friend's name to the wide Internet, but let's say it wouldn't have fit into the high fantasy I was working on.

So I shut down conversational gambits about my writing. I am ruthless. I find trigger topics, ones that never fail to elicit emotional responses from my friends and therefore conveniently change the subject. For the unusually persistent I have an arsenal of vague responses, ready promises to send along a copy of anything I finish that might align with their reading tastes (and chances of that compatibility are pretty low, in my opinion).

They probably have images of me hunched over a typewriter in a dimly lit vault somewhere underground, only accessible via a dark passage through a hidden grandfather clock, so secretive am I about the fruits of my labor. It's not that I'm not ashamed. But it's just too personal, too intimate a part of me to expose in gory detail to people who would care enough about me to listen, but who don't care enough about writing to understand. Someone I know who's involved with graphic novels is tired of telling people that he doesn't write Garfield-like cartoons. He used to painstakingly distinguish his work from Jim Davis's, but then the other person would end the conversation on a joking note: "Hey, let me know if a strip of yours ends up in my local newspaper!" He stopped trying to explain. It's like telling your friend about how you took a trip to Italy to recover from a divorce, and he says, "So did you bring me back anything?"

At the same time, when I turn down the chance to go out with friends the previous Friday night, or any evening at all during the month of November (NaNoWriMo), I've got to tell them something when they ask what I did instead. "There's a vault," I might say…

I think we have a routine now, a sort of truce. "I'm still writing," I say. And that's all. And then we talk about something else.