Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 122

Fangirls and Portals

A while ago I was talking about the portal stories in children's fiction -- how it must have been common enough that it was considered a trope that gets spoofed, but I hadn't been able to think of anything for children other than the Narnia books. I did eventually dig up some others, and there was the mention of E. Nesbit, who got referenced in the Edward Eager books.

Well, I finally remembered to request one of the E. Nesbit books from the library (most of them seem to be in the archive warehouse, so they aren't shelved in the regular libraries and have to be requested). And I may not be able to get through the whole thing. I can see why Edward Eager sort of lampooned them. They seem to be an artifact of their particular time and place. At least, this one was. It's not so much the fantasy part that's the problem. It's the characters. I've barely made it to the fantasy part. I liked the way the characters found the magical land, but boy, are those kids insufferable. I'm not sure I'd have been able to get through this even when I was a child.

So, this little bit of research for the portal fantasy story I'm plotting (which involves a story within a story -- it's a portal fantasy that involves a portal fantasy) may have to go by the wayside. I just know of another way of getting between worlds that I'll have to avoid.

Over the weekend, I read what I suppose you could call a genre-adjacent book, the young adult novel Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. The idea I'm playing with involves a character who's a fangirl of the portal fantasy book, so I wanted to see what else has been said about fan culture (I like to read any books that might get compared to my idea to make sure to differentiate mine). This book is about a college freshman who seems to be shy and withdrawn, without a lot of friends, but she has an active online life as a big-name fan fiction author for a series that's basically Not!Harry Potter. She writes epic Not!Harry/Not!Draco romances. As a college student, she's struggling with keeping up with her fan fiction while also navigating classes and relationships.

I had a rather uncomfortable response to this book. On the one hand, it does seem to accurately reflect what I've seen of fan culture. I've known way too many people exactly like the heroine (just substitute for the fandom of any real property). On the other hand, while the depiction was rather respectful, it also had a note of suggesting that she was this obsessed because she had a lot of emotional damage. She also seemed extremely disconnected with reality -- she's surprised to get an F on a college creative writing assignment because she turned in fan fiction, and she couldn't understand why her professor kept talking about how her work needed to be original when she kept insisting that the story was all hers and therefore was original, even if she borrowed the characters and situation from another writer. I've encountered fan writers who were unclear on how that works (someone once sent me a Buffy fanfic that "fixed" the Willow and Tara relationship to send to my publisher because they were sure lots of people would want to read a book about that), but it was hard to sympathize with the character when I was siding with the professor. The book seemed to go back and forth on whether all this was a positive force in the character's life or something holding her back. It was a big seller -- big enough that apparently the author published a novel that was the fan fiction story the character was writing -- but I'd be curious to know how people really involved in the fan fiction community felt about the depiction.

On the other hand, I did like the way college life and relationships were portrayed, the way friendships form in a dorm and in classes. The romantic plot was rather lovely -- a healthy, positive relationship rather than the weirdness you get with a lot of college-based romances.

It was a fun book I read quickly, though it ends up that this depiction of a fangirl is very different from the one I have living in my head. Actually, the one living in my head was somewhat inspired by a girl at my church who's just so enthusiastic about the things she loves, she manages to work them into every conversation. She was in late elementary school when I first encountered her, and she made what I think she believed to be an obscure and slightly veiled Doctor Who reference. I shocked her by replying in a way that made it obvious I got it. And then she talked my ear off with enthusiasm for having someone to talk to about her obsession. That's going to be my fangirl, the person who meets a kindred spirit and bubbles over.

My Weather Happy Place

It's a delightfully dreary Monday morning, and I'm looking forward to a good day of writing, if that antihistamine ever wears off. It seems to get worse the longer I take it, so now I have to take it right after dinner if I want to wake up at a reasonable hour and not feel groggy for several more hours after I wake up.

I had a delightful rainy Sunday afternoon yesterday. It's been ages since I had a day like that. It was perfect for spending the day reading and drinking tea. Yeah, it was somewhat work-related reading, but it was enjoyable work-related reading, so it didn't really count as work.

I also got in a little outdoors time this weekend, with a short walk in the woods by the lake. The last time I went to that park, the lake was way lower than it was supposed to be, so it was like a cliff overlooking the lake. Then the lake was flooded, so that whole area was under water for a long time. You could see on the trees where the water line was, and a lot of the trees died. Now the part that was like a cliff is pretty much just the shore. It's thrown off my whole orientation of where things are supposed to be, since I'm used to the lake being much farther away. We're getting to the time of year when it's really nice to be out and about outside. I just need to get through this week first, since I'm supposed to be singing that solo Sunday. I'll be a little less worried about protecting my voice after that, and I'll be seeing the doctor again the following Tuesday, so I'll know more about what's actually going on with me. Then maybe I can play outside some more.

I feel better in general because the weather has switched to cool and damp, which is my happy place.

Meanwhile, I need to get back to full work mode. I've been writing but haven't really been carrying out all my marketing plans. One thing my agent and I agreed I need to focus on is visibility as a fantasy author. I really don't seem to exist there other than with individuals I've met at conventions. In general fantasy groups, when people are looking for recommendations or talking about books, my name never seems to come up. I'm all but invisible in the fantasy world, as I discovered when attending the Nebulas. My readership seems to mostly come around the fringes of that, from paranormal romance, paranormal cozy mystery, paranormal chick lit, etc. That's a huge opportunity for me, a bunch of new readers who might like me who haven't bought my books yet. The trick is finding a way to get more visibility there. I already go to conventions. The Enchanted, Inc. books were well-reviewed in Locus and even got a nice feature in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I just need to figure out what more I can do to hit that target audience.

Why I Procrastinate

The tackled procrastination feels so good. It turns out that I had built up one thing in my head to be really awful, and it turned out to be something different going on than I expected. I'd received an ominous-looking envelope from the accounts receivable department of a company I have an account with, and it looked to me like one of those "you're in trouble now, missy" kinds of letters, which was weird because I couldn't think of any reason I would owe them money. I'm up to date on my bills with them. But when I got it in the mail, I really didn't want to deal with it. I forced myself to face it yesterday, bracing myself for having to make a bunch of phone calls and being put on hold for hours. I opened it and found a check. They were refunding me from an overbilling (not sure why they couldn't have credited me, but whatever). So, I didn't have to make any annoying phone calls. There was another put-off task that I think I resolved, but I may need to make a follow-up e-mail to be sure. Most of this comes from doing multiple things with the same company, but the different branches don't talk to each other in some ways while talking in other ways. Changing billing on one thing affected the billing on another thing, but no one could figure out who I needed to talk to in order to get the other thing adjusted, so I ended up having to deal separately with different departments, even if the billing all came from the one place. I was able to do that online, but I want to confirm that it went through and worked.

Whew! Is there any wonder I procrastinate stuff like that? It meant that I didn't get as much writing done as I hoped. Well, there was other business stuff, and giving input to an artist, and getting caught up on bookkeeping. Someday maybe I'll be able to afford an administrative assistant to do some of the business stuff for me. But now that I've seen the bookkeeping, that won't be anytime soon.

Which means I need to do some writing.

Secrets and Spoilers

I made my writing goal again yesterday, so I'm on target. I'm trying to take advantage of the early enthusiasm because I know there will be a time in the middle when I'm stuck or distracted or just don't want to do anything. There may be a nice day when I just want to go for a long walk. So I'm trying to get as much done as possible now when I want to do it.

I'm having fun getting to use some of my research in this part of the book, something that really did exist and was used that's coming in handy for me now. See, all that reading I did leading up to this book wasn't wasted.

There are four big secrets that are still secret in the Rebel Mechanics books. A lot of people have guessed one of them. One or two people have guessed another. I haven't heard of anyone having the slightest inkling about the other two. I've put in only subtle hints of the sort that could have a totally different meaning for one of them. The other exists only in my head, and I'm still not sure if I'm going to use it. It was there when I started writing, and it was something that came out of my research, but I'm not sure now if I want to have it be that way, and it wouldn't contradict any text if I change my mind.

I suspect that three of the secrets will have to come out in this book, all for plot reasons, though I figure one of them shouldn't be dragged out any longer because it's becoming obvious enough that if the characters don't do the math, they look pretty dumb.

It's funny when people pull me aside at conventions to whisper questions about what they've guessed. I've only confirmed any of the answers with my former editor (mostly because I had to make my case for keeping some things in the first book, pointing out that clever readers might notice something in that scene that will be important later). Otherwise, it's fun singing out, "Spoilers!"

Meanwhile, I've designated today as a Procrastination Conquering Day, in which I set aside time to tackle a bunch of little things I've been putting off. Either it will turn out to be quicker and easier than I feared, or it will justify the procrastination.

But first, I'll go find absolutely anything else to do before that. My sock drawer really needs to be reorganized.

Off to a Good Start

I got a good start on my Not Really NaNoWriMo book yesterday, in spite of frittering away the morning and running errands in the afternoon, coming in with a couple of hundred words more than my goal. I'm resisting the urge to recalculate the daily target based on that, as it's more about finishing the book than about hitting an actual word count, and I could go over or under. But I am trying to rack up word count in the early days when enthusiasm is high so I'll have a cushion for when I'm slogging through the middle or if something comes up later in the month. I tried to be realistic about days I would be writing. I included Saturdays unless I had other plans but didn't include Sundays, and I didn't include travel days around Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day itself, but I didn't give myself the entire holiday weekend, so if I get ahead of things, that's probably where that time will go.

I have choir tonight but not children's choir, so it will be a shorter day, but not as short as a usual Wednesday, so I should be able to hit my goal, but maybe not go over.

Tomorrow, though, is supposed to be cool and rainy, and I don't have to be anywhere or do anything, so I'm hoping for a great writing day.

It's always fun and a little daunting to step back into one of my fictional worlds. I was worried about finding my Verity voice after spending the summer writing Katie, but I slipped right back into the more Victorian mode. Reading Frankenstein over the weekend probably helped, as that more formal voice was in my head.

Meanwhile, I went to the library for early voting this morning and picked up a few books that may be references for the proposal I'm playing with.

It's nice to really be back in work mode after being sick. Now I just need to get back on all the business and marketing stuff that I've let slide.

Frankenstein

Part of my Halloween weekend fun was watching Young Frankenstein for the first time in ages (probably since I've been adult enough to get all the jokes), and then I realized that I'd never actually read the original novel of Frankenstein. I've seen the old silent movie, I've seen numerous spoofs, I've seen more recent adaptations that were closer to the book, but I hadn't read the book. I decided this was as good a time as any to rectify that, and since it's in public domain, I got it on my tablet.

I have to say that for a novel that's considered one of the early works of horror, it wasn't that scary. I have to agree with those who classify it as science fiction. It really is more about the science and the implications of the science than it is about the scares. There's suspense, it's atmospheric, and some of the stuff happening is horrible, but I didn't find it all that scary. Also, most of the "classic" movie interpretations are so thinly based on the book as to be entirely different entities -- the look and behavior of the creature, the scope, the events, the time period.

I was a little amused by the very 19th century story telling style, something I'm coming to think of as Novel Inception, where it's a story within a story within a story within a letter. That seems to have been a common thing in early novels, where they couldn't just tell a story. It had to be a letter describing events. Sometimes, it's a letter describing a story told to the letter writer. In this case, it was letters describing events that led to meeting someone who told a story, and part of that story was a story told to that storyteller. At one point in the book, it's a letter relating a story told to the letter writer by someone who's telling a story someone else told him.

Now I think I need to read Dracula, since that probably bears little resemblance to all the adaptations that have become famous. Maybe next Halloween.

Back in Work Mode

I'm considering myself to be more or less back to "normal" and therefore will start going back to a normal routine. I've had several nights of solid sleep, and the coughing is almost gone. That's about three weeks earlier than it normally would have been without treatment, so that's a win. I've already started doing some housework to get things back in shape after I let them really slide while I was sick.

I'm not going to do National Novel Writing Month officially -- I'm not going to register or anything like that -- but I am going to do it with the next Rebel Mechanics book. I've written the prologue, but everything else will be written that month. Based on the days I have available to write and am likely to write, I'll need to write about 3,200 words a day to reach my likely target word count. I usually try to do about 4,000 to 5,000 words a day, so this is doable. One of life's great joys is recalculating the daily target word count (or number of days required to write) based on going over the target word count.

Meanwhile, I did a lot of development on that idea for a book proposal. I've built up the world, named it, come up with a timeline, and know what the underlying issue is. I'm going to work on that today, in addition to a bunch of errand and business-type stuff, and that will be what I work on in my "spare" time this month so I can get a proposal to my agent before the holidays.

Which means I have work to do, and I'd better get to it!

Breathing Again

I spent yesterday morning at the doctor, getting checked for that nagging cough that I get every time I get sick. I seem to have a very mild asthma that's triggered by illness, but at the moment, they're hitting it with a lot of stuff to get rid of the cough, and then we'll dig into exactly what's going on. As a result, I have a rather complicated medication schedule. I already feel a lot better. There's still some coughing, but not like there was, and I got a decent night's sleep last night, for the first time in ages. It was funny, at first they weren't thinking about asthma because my lung function test came in at 114 percent of "normal." I pointed out that I'm a singer, so I'm not quite normal. Sure enough, when they had me breathe in some medication and tested function again, it really did improve, which was a sign that there was something that needed to be treated.

I'm still going to be taking it easy this weekend to get completely well. I'm probably going to spend a lot of time brainstorming because a lurking idea that I think might make a good book proposal has risen up to demand attention, suddenly a lot more fully formed than it was, and I may develop it enough to give my agent a proposal to work with while I'm busy writing the new Rebel Mechanics book.

This is totally not an excuse to spend the weekend watching movies and reading relevant research books.

It looks like I'm going to be staycationing this year because every time I try to block out time that I could get away, something arises in those days, so I can't even find three consecutive days to go anywhere. I like to have at least that much time, so that there's a whole day that isn't a travel day. The solo I didn't get to do when I was sick got moved to the Sunday of the weekend I'd been planning for, and then there was an event that's on the border of work and fun that Saturday, so that turned out to be a good opportunity to go to that event. Then I'd thought about going away the following Monday and coming back on Wednesday in time for choir, but then there's an important HOA meeting on that Tuesday, and my follow-up doctor visit is that Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, I more than used up any "vacation" time while I was sick and not very productive. So, what I may do instead is give myself time to do some fun things around town, as opportunities arise. If it's a pleasant day and I'm feeling up to it, I can go hiking or walking. I may visit downtown and go to a museum.

But first, I need to get well, as I just don't feel like doing much right now. I'm hoping that tackling this thing that turns even a minor cold into an epic ordeal will end up making me more productive. Fewer days sick means more days writing, which means more books.

Worldbuilding: Using Your World

I've been talking about worldbuilding, getting into the physical location and the society. Now it's time to start using this world. After all, you're not writing an encyclopedia entry. You're writing a story, so it's more about the things that happen in this world than it is about the world itself.

A lot of how your worldbuilding plays into your storytelling depends on your creative process. Sometimes, you build the world, then figure out the possible stories. Sometimes you come up with the story, then build the world where it can happen. You may come up with characters first, then figure out what kind of world they live in, and then figure out the story. You may come up with the story, think of the characters needed to tell the story, then figure out what kind of world they might live in. Or it may be a series of layers -- a bit of each, building as you simultaneously develop the world, story, and characters, with each new idea in one area sparking new ideas in other areas.

However you go about it, the world itself will show in the larger societal conflicts and in the interpersonal conflicts. You'll see that in wars and the reasons for them, in the crises that are affecting your characters (drought, natural disasters, wars, curses), the places your characters need to travel to obtain the things they need, etc. And it will show in the skills your characters have (or don't have), the resources they have, the resources they need, the way they see and interact with other people. It will show in the laws that constrain their actions and the consequences for violating those laws, as well as what the characters have to do to avoid those consequences or make others pay consequences for their actions (is there a legal system, or do you have to take justice into your own hands?). Your world will even show in what your characters eat, what they wear, where and how they live, the language they use, their superstitions and beliefs, their attitude toward authority, and how that compares and contrasts to other characters who might be from a different culture or class.

A lot of how your world is conveyed will depend on how we're seeing it. If you've ever traveled with another person and both of you had cameras, you might notice that each of you has a very different set of photos from the same locations because you notice or are interested in very different things. The perspective of the point-of-view character makes a big difference. Imagine a stranger coming into town and taking stock of his surroundings. If he's a thief, he'll notice how much wealth there is, what objects worth stealing there are, how much security there is, what the consequences might be for thievery, and what possible exit routes there might be. A poor person from a rural area might see even a relatively poor town as wealthy compared to her experience. A wealthy person from a big city may see the same town as poor, shabby, and provincial. A seamstress may notice the clothing, colors, fabrics, and workmanship, while a metalsmith wouldn't notice any of that, instead focusing on the ironwork on the buildings and the armor worn by the guards. A cook may pay attention to the cooking smells coming from houses and the variety of foods available in the market. A hungry person will mostly notice food. A weary person will home in on inns. You get the idea. What would your viewpoint character notice or care about in the parts of the world he visits? If it's not the things the reader needs to know to understand the plot, then you may need to adjust the circumstances -- change the character or find a way to create a situation that will force the character to notice the things you want to convey. I think this is one reason why thieves are such popular fantasy characters -- their work requires them to notice a lot of details, they pay attention to the wealthy as potential targets, and they move among the lower classes. That gives the writer a lot of opportunities for describing the world through the characters' eyes.

One challenge in conveying a world is that a character isn't naturally going to take note of the ordinary. If things are going on just like they always have, most people aren't going to have an interior monologue noting the ordinary details. You want to avoid the "As you know, Bob" conversation in which two characters tell each other things both of them already know. Most people don't sit around talking about the history of the place where they live or think in detail about how a device they use daily works. One good way around this is the fish-out-of-water character, a newcomer who doesn't know these things and who can ask questions -- why does everyone do that when the king passes, why does this city fear that city, how do you use magic, etc. That can either be your viewpoint character who's the newcomer and has to learn the ways of this new situation, or your viewpoint character could be the veteran who has to explain things to a newcomer. The other way to describe the ordinary is to break it. You wouldn't have a character who routinely uses a machine think in depth about how it works when it's working normally, but if it stops working, he may think about what it's supposed to do while figuring out what's wrong. If something unusual happens to break routine, then people might think about what usually happens and what's different about today. If it's a dry climate and it almost never rains, people may not think about the lack of rain, the heat, and the dust, because that's just the way it is. If it rains unexpectedly, then they can notice the difference and notice when things return to normal. Breaking the usual also adds conflict and tension, so it drives the story while describing the world rather than just being description.

Ideally, the worldbuilding should be a seamless part of your story and characters so readers just feel immersed. You want them to understand the world enough to understand the story and for it to feel like a real place. You don't want to become so enamored of your world that you stop the action to tell us all about it.

Next, I'll deal with the special case of worlds that involve magic.

The Movie in my Mind

I thought I was going to start writing the book yesterday, but then I realized that I didn't really have an opening scene. I just had the opening situation. I thought I kind of had an idea what might happen in the opening, but that felt too static. Then there was something else I thought I might do, but that didn't work, either. I did some brainstorming and came up with an entirely new option that fits in all the things I wanted. It needs a little more development, but I'm starting to see the "movie" of the book in my head. When that happens, I know I'm on the right track. So maybe I'll get that opening written today.

I also managed to sing some yesterday, even the high notes. I still cough a bit when I try to sing too much (and I have an appointment for an asthma screening on Thursday), but the rest of the cold symptoms seem to have gone away.

I'm considering this a valid reason not to sign up to volunteer at the Halloween carnival on Wednesday night. I figure that standing outside and being around lots of kids would be a bad idea while I'm trying to get well. That means I get sort of a night off without children's choir, though I will still have to go to regular choir rehearsal.

And now to work ...