I've gone over the downsides of starting from scratch, as well as the advantages of not, but any writer who's worked in speculative fiction within the confines of a real-world frame knows that it has its own dark, looming specter:
Research.
To write in the real world, you first need to know the real world, and that means more than a five-minute Wikipedia search. If you want fiction to be unique and compelling, that requires finding something new and different within the world we all live in every day.
Unfortunately, with the Internet reporting on every compelling story as it breaks, the world of the 'new' is shrinking. That means you have to dig, and digging means dirty hands and aching shoulders.
You get the idea.
But if you find writing to be work enough, it's hard to have the energy left for something as in-depth and action-bereft as research. It instantly conjures up imagery of long nights in the dark corners of a dusty library hoping to beat a deadline for the coming morning's class.
Research is reading but without all the fun. It's the very antithesis of the type of writing you're trying to do: it's uncollated, unorganized, scattered and buried amidst pages upon pages of dry, unentertaining text. Like the Silmarillion.
...Okay, that was low, I admit it.
But there are ways to make research into something less than an exercise in personal torture:
1. Look for stories, not just figures.
That means not just looking at the disease but looking at those who have it, looking at those who've studied it, or where it all began. It means not just looking at the chemical reaction but all the factors that can impact it, imaging the lab around it and the poor, sleep-deprived grad student who made the discovery by accident.
Stretching the story beyond the numbers not only makes it a more interesting read, it can help you arrange what seem like stranded pieces at first into one coherent series of causal events. Even better: the very same scenes you dream up to piece together the facts and figures can easily turn into scenes in your finished work.
2. You're not paid by the citation.
Don't go overboard. Most stories only need one thing to stray off the beaten path to create a new and difference sense of adventure.
A good rule of thumb is to have one true-but-obscure element per major pivot point in the story. In many stories, that means one to two at the most, in others, three or four. Either way, you're not needing to unearth miles upon miles of data. Find two or three zingers and build off of how they react to a hypothetical environment. You'll save yourself a great deal of work, and avoid risking having your reader sit through an accidental dissertation just to get it all in print.
3. If you have to be certain, ask a human being.
People can often answer your questions faster (and more completely) than any Google search. If you're finding a lot of scattered references or aren't sure the pieces fit the way you think, find someone in the field and ask. Even a quick email will suffice (though beware of forums, where wild conjecture abounds).
And remember, if you do find an expert who helps you make a breakthrough with the work in any way, be sure to credit them.
4. Don't stop at "it can't be done."
The trouble with research is that it's much more often responsible for shattered dreams than uplifted ones. The very reason we so often crave fiction is that fact, for many of us, is often secondary to what we can imagine.
What that means is that you should expect your research to nullify and otherwise block many of your original designs. It isn't enough to know that it can't be done: understand why.
Not only will the answer likely lead you to another solution (or at least help you avoid running into a similar dead-end), the very search for that answer can make for compelling dialog inside the work itself.
Have your characters follow the same patterns (possibly in reverse) searching for an explanation; for the source. The resulting red herrings not only provide added suspense and drive for the characters, they also create a more complete perspective on the research you've done to assure more critical readers that you've considered all possibilities.
5. You're never going to please everybody.
The more obscure the data, the better the chance for conjecture and misconception. Somewhere, somehow, someone will disagree no matter how much research you do. In fact, the more facts you bring together, the higher the chance someone will claim you haven't any basis in fact at all.
Aim for your majority audience, and don't sweat the minor details. When you're satisfied that the major pivot points have been verified, it's time to get to writing. If you're not sure that the historical or scientific pieces fit together the way they do in your head, have a friend read over your work once it's done. I reiterate, do this always.
Lastly, remember that you're writing a story, not a doctoral thesis. Fanboys aside, there's only so much work you can put in before it's time to focus on the parts of the story that will make it engaging and entertaining for everybody.
And that's a fact.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Three's Company - The Concept of the Spare in Romantic Fiction
If there's anywhere that writing truly is a numbers game, it in the characters you create.
It's a common misconception to believe that most romantic stories are about two people. In point of fact, most of them are about at least three people, and oftentimes more. Writing those characters off as "fluff" and "comic relief" is all well and good, but subtract them, and you'll soon notice just how vital some of them can be.
The idea of a "spare" or a "wedge," the front fork of your literary tricycle, is ancient, tested and largely understated. A couple searching for love in an environment that seems hell-bent on tearing them apart is compelling, certainly, but unless you're up for a lot of internal monologue that ends with a rush of "meh," you need a secondary agent.
Enter the spare.
Most stories, even love stories, tend to focus on one particular character at a time. Even if you wrap several such stories together, the reader's attention is better kept if it clings to someone with whom they can form a deeper, more lasting relationship (and not get motion sick when trying to shift perspectives without a clutch).
When you tear lovers apart or create obstacles to keep them from being a sensible, realistic, and ultimately boring match, you introduce a unique problem: how is the side of the pair you're focused on going to live out his or her angst without pages upon pages of what amounts to well-phrased LiveJournal monologue?
The answer, as you've doubtless seen countless times, is the spare.
A friend, a similarly-cursed companion, even an unimpressive enemy all make spectacular spares. The spare travels with the lead on their quest to find their beloved again. They can be fonts of insight, comic relief or purely a shoulder to cry on.
The more base examples serve as foils against whom the hero looks all the more bold and bright by comparison. They stumble, they stutter, or are shown as less moral, less stalwart, less resolute or less open-minded. It helps establish that the hero is an uncommon individual, set apart not by their circumstances but by some unique, intangible essence growing within them.
Others are the guides and guardians, taking the hero through their trials until they are worthy of the object of their affections. You can even combine the two, revealing the guardian's light-hearted side or giving the clumsy sidekick a sudden moment of clarity. These sorts of spares are either killed before the end credits or else happen upon a soulmate of their own somewhere off to the side of the epilogue, one with whom they can begin a sensible, realistic and ultimately boring relationship for all time.
From a technical perspective, the spare turns weighty monologue into witty dialogue; both a quicker and more emotional venue for outing the hero's feelings and devotion throughout the adventure. It also gives the audience and the author a mouthpiece in an otherwise heavily-biased circumstance.
Consider Romeo & Juliet, one of the classics, and notably lacking a true spare. Both sides of this torn and tangled affair are so busy being swept up in the melodrama of being teenagers forbidden to date that there's very little grounding the story in reality, giving it a very fairy-tale feel (which, being as it's Shakespeare, may well have been the point).
The spare adds a new dimension. If Mercutio had remained decidedly un-run-through till the end of the work, not only would Romeo have had someone to help rein in his astronomical hopes and dreams, but the open gang war happening all around them might have garnered more than passing mention as "gee, our parents sure are cooky."
As it stands, he did his best.
There's a flighty quality to personal romance that can leave some readers in the dust if they haven't wholly bought into the character's own affections yet. Just because your character is head over heels doesn't mean the reader is. Yet. Selling someone on the love-conquers-all motif helps if you keep it grounded in the beginning, which is precisely where having a spare becomes so valuable.
The spare is the friend telling you you're crazy, and then helping you plan the stunt anyway. He's there to slap you on the back of the head when your heart gets carried away and leaves your head behind. The spare doesn't stop you being hopeful and romantic. To the contrary, he lets you make a fool of yourself, and then is there to call you as much.
The idea of the spare is an insertion of the audience itself into the work. When you leave someone alone to hide in the bushes and stare at a girl in a nightgown gazing up at the stars, a modern audience is more concerned with "Is he a stalker?" than "What light through yonder window breaks?"
Having a friend there (or one to confront him later in retrospect) to chide him for being creepy lets the audience feel validated (and rules out for them the chance that you yourself see no issue with watching a girl on her balcony at night while hiding in the hedgerow). Likewise, as the story progresses, the friend can start to slowly see what makes the two leads such a great match, hopefully in time with your audience's own come-round progress.
It allows you to seed a hopeless romantic without letting the entire story be seen through their star-dusted lens. The spare keeps at least one element of the work firmly grounded in reality, leaving you room to at once hold both an optimistic (romantic) and skeptical (realistic) perspective on the exact same scene, which changes the voice from lovesick idealist to weathered, practiced dreamer, something this post-fairy-tale generation has come to crave.
In the game of subversion, it's your way of still telling a modern fairy tale of true love while at once denouncing fairy tales as hopelessly unrealistic and silly, which lets you catch both sides of the reader's brain no matter where they rest on the optimism spectrum.
But the grounding element isn't just to the benefit of your audience: often it's the only thing keeping your hero alive. In extreme cases, your idealist would walk into spinning blades to get to their love. Such devotion (read: "obsession") often makes them oblivious to everything else in the world, danger being chief among the things they overlook.
You can keep your hero supernaturally dedicated to their quest, their journey, their one true love, whatever the object be, while at once letting the spare be the one to help them through the very real-world obstacles that lie between, often gaining audience sympathy when his or her efforts go completely unnoticed.
When your lovers are kept apart not by environmental factors but by their own personal inability to drop the pretense and start humping like bunnies, the spare becomes a catalyst; a somewhat self-interested interloper dedicated to the two lovers becoming a couple for whatever reason (often just so the tension in the room will go down).
Even the matchmaking spare works to shatter the mega-romatic air that we often wrap our own relationships in by becoming the jarring element that pushes one half of the pair or the other over the edge; in effect, the spare distracts them from their own issues long enough for base instinct to take over.
The chief weapons of the matchingmaking spare are blunt admission and canny misdirection. These are the sort to set up a clandestine meeting between the loves, writing each a letter posing as the other until they find themselves alone and confused somewhere romantic and/or a small, confined space in which they can be easily trapped by the now-snickering spare.
When the only barrier between two people is their own awkwardness, the spare is often the one to grab the hero by the ankles and forcefully huck him or her through said barrier and into the unsuspecting lap of their intended. ...At times, literally.
The spare is prime for comedic timing and fourth-wall-stretching commentary to keep your romance from feeling too cheesy, or to help delay the moment of gushy goodness for as long as possible, to make it all the more rewarding when even the loudmouthed cynic in the room is forced to admit it's a little cute.
The spare gives your audience someone to connect with other than the main characters, so that even those long past sparking their first love or not caught up in finding their own can still delight in the third-person onlooker's perspective with a real and waiting shell standing there, smirking on the sidelines.
Which means, done right, the spare can turn out to be most beloved character of all.
It's a common misconception to believe that most romantic stories are about two people. In point of fact, most of them are about at least three people, and oftentimes more. Writing those characters off as "fluff" and "comic relief" is all well and good, but subtract them, and you'll soon notice just how vital some of them can be.
The idea of a "spare" or a "wedge," the front fork of your literary tricycle, is ancient, tested and largely understated. A couple searching for love in an environment that seems hell-bent on tearing them apart is compelling, certainly, but unless you're up for a lot of internal monologue that ends with a rush of "meh," you need a secondary agent.
Enter the spare.
Most stories, even love stories, tend to focus on one particular character at a time. Even if you wrap several such stories together, the reader's attention is better kept if it clings to someone with whom they can form a deeper, more lasting relationship (and not get motion sick when trying to shift perspectives without a clutch).
When you tear lovers apart or create obstacles to keep them from being a sensible, realistic, and ultimately boring match, you introduce a unique problem: how is the side of the pair you're focused on going to live out his or her angst without pages upon pages of what amounts to well-phrased LiveJournal monologue?
The answer, as you've doubtless seen countless times, is the spare.
A friend, a similarly-cursed companion, even an unimpressive enemy all make spectacular spares. The spare travels with the lead on their quest to find their beloved again. They can be fonts of insight, comic relief or purely a shoulder to cry on.
The more base examples serve as foils against whom the hero looks all the more bold and bright by comparison. They stumble, they stutter, or are shown as less moral, less stalwart, less resolute or less open-minded. It helps establish that the hero is an uncommon individual, set apart not by their circumstances but by some unique, intangible essence growing within them.
Others are the guides and guardians, taking the hero through their trials until they are worthy of the object of their affections. You can even combine the two, revealing the guardian's light-hearted side or giving the clumsy sidekick a sudden moment of clarity. These sorts of spares are either killed before the end credits or else happen upon a soulmate of their own somewhere off to the side of the epilogue, one with whom they can begin a sensible, realistic and ultimately boring relationship for all time.
From a technical perspective, the spare turns weighty monologue into witty dialogue; both a quicker and more emotional venue for outing the hero's feelings and devotion throughout the adventure. It also gives the audience and the author a mouthpiece in an otherwise heavily-biased circumstance.
Consider Romeo & Juliet, one of the classics, and notably lacking a true spare. Both sides of this torn and tangled affair are so busy being swept up in the melodrama of being teenagers forbidden to date that there's very little grounding the story in reality, giving it a very fairy-tale feel (which, being as it's Shakespeare, may well have been the point).
The spare adds a new dimension. If Mercutio had remained decidedly un-run-through till the end of the work, not only would Romeo have had someone to help rein in his astronomical hopes and dreams, but the open gang war happening all around them might have garnered more than passing mention as "gee, our parents sure are cooky."
As it stands, he did his best.
There's a flighty quality to personal romance that can leave some readers in the dust if they haven't wholly bought into the character's own affections yet. Just because your character is head over heels doesn't mean the reader is. Yet. Selling someone on the love-conquers-all motif helps if you keep it grounded in the beginning, which is precisely where having a spare becomes so valuable.
The spare is the friend telling you you're crazy, and then helping you plan the stunt anyway. He's there to slap you on the back of the head when your heart gets carried away and leaves your head behind. The spare doesn't stop you being hopeful and romantic. To the contrary, he lets you make a fool of yourself, and then is there to call you as much.
The idea of the spare is an insertion of the audience itself into the work. When you leave someone alone to hide in the bushes and stare at a girl in a nightgown gazing up at the stars, a modern audience is more concerned with "Is he a stalker?" than "What light through yonder window breaks?"
Having a friend there (or one to confront him later in retrospect) to chide him for being creepy lets the audience feel validated (and rules out for them the chance that you yourself see no issue with watching a girl on her balcony at night while hiding in the hedgerow). Likewise, as the story progresses, the friend can start to slowly see what makes the two leads such a great match, hopefully in time with your audience's own come-round progress.
It allows you to seed a hopeless romantic without letting the entire story be seen through their star-dusted lens. The spare keeps at least one element of the work firmly grounded in reality, leaving you room to at once hold both an optimistic (romantic) and skeptical (realistic) perspective on the exact same scene, which changes the voice from lovesick idealist to weathered, practiced dreamer, something this post-fairy-tale generation has come to crave.
In the game of subversion, it's your way of still telling a modern fairy tale of true love while at once denouncing fairy tales as hopelessly unrealistic and silly, which lets you catch both sides of the reader's brain no matter where they rest on the optimism spectrum.
But the grounding element isn't just to the benefit of your audience: often it's the only thing keeping your hero alive. In extreme cases, your idealist would walk into spinning blades to get to their love. Such devotion (read: "obsession") often makes them oblivious to everything else in the world, danger being chief among the things they overlook.
You can keep your hero supernaturally dedicated to their quest, their journey, their one true love, whatever the object be, while at once letting the spare be the one to help them through the very real-world obstacles that lie between, often gaining audience sympathy when his or her efforts go completely unnoticed.
When your lovers are kept apart not by environmental factors but by their own personal inability to drop the pretense and start humping like bunnies, the spare becomes a catalyst; a somewhat self-interested interloper dedicated to the two lovers becoming a couple for whatever reason (often just so the tension in the room will go down).
Even the matchmaking spare works to shatter the mega-romatic air that we often wrap our own relationships in by becoming the jarring element that pushes one half of the pair or the other over the edge; in effect, the spare distracts them from their own issues long enough for base instinct to take over.
The chief weapons of the matchingmaking spare are blunt admission and canny misdirection. These are the sort to set up a clandestine meeting between the loves, writing each a letter posing as the other until they find themselves alone and confused somewhere romantic and/or a small, confined space in which they can be easily trapped by the now-snickering spare.
When the only barrier between two people is their own awkwardness, the spare is often the one to grab the hero by the ankles and forcefully huck him or her through said barrier and into the unsuspecting lap of their intended. ...At times, literally.
The spare is prime for comedic timing and fourth-wall-stretching commentary to keep your romance from feeling too cheesy, or to help delay the moment of gushy goodness for as long as possible, to make it all the more rewarding when even the loudmouthed cynic in the room is forced to admit it's a little cute.
The spare gives your audience someone to connect with other than the main characters, so that even those long past sparking their first love or not caught up in finding their own can still delight in the third-person onlooker's perspective with a real and waiting shell standing there, smirking on the sidelines.
Which means, done right, the spare can turn out to be most beloved character of all.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Kingdom of the Sun - A Case Study in Character Introduction
The rusted latch squealed its objections1 as Marcus turned back the deadbolt. It scraped along the warped wood of the door, leaving no bastion between him and the unmistakable evidence of pure squalor lying in wait just beyond the portal.2
He set his keys on the old dresser as he passed, his brief reflection in the mirror mired by the grime clinging to its edges with unusual tenacity. His coat he let fall on the couch, sending up a fresh cloud of the same old dust as it landed heavy on the fraying fabric. Himself he threw into a chair by the window3, letting the tinted sunlight blanket his face in the otherwise shaded room.
Overcome by the wear of the day, he rested his head back against the cracked leather and shut his eyes, drinking deep the meager warmth from the window. His mind echoed a peaceful chord in tune with the hum of the overhead light as it flickered in tireless vigil of his once-great private kingdom.4
A sharp 'ping' rang like a bell in the small room, waking him from his dream-filled stupor. The computer on his desk, the one paragon of the modern age set against an empire of rotting antiquity.5 The leather of the chair groaned in time with his own unkind utterances as he leaned forward to flip the power switch on the monitor.
It buzzed to life, its own hum much higher and more shrill than that of the quiet overhead light.6 The small white box in the corner held the name of the offender; the one whose coming had shattered Marcus' meditation so abruptly. fahrenheit104. April's idea of a joke.7 The boys like it, she told him once. He had never wanted to know.
"u there?"8 she asked, the cursor marking the time before he made his reply.
"I'm here," he typed back, cringing at the chime of her immediate response.
"good," said the box,9 "get to chance & one-eleven right away. i'll meet you there."
Marcus chuckled at the exchange. How a girl10 who couldn't be troubled to spell out a three-letter word always found time for things like 'one-eleven' remained a mystery to him. It made him wonder if she might have a compulsion against calling a thing by its proper name. It would explain why she still called him "Sarge"11 despite his promotion to captain years ago.
It had become more his name now than "Marcus" anyway. It was a funny thing to be known only by what you did. It made him appreciate all the meaning wrapped up in a name like "Smith," but despite the history, Marcus' family had never truly made much of anything, least of all of themselves12.
Cutting the monitor off with a 'click,' Marcus struggled to his feet and moved through the room to gather up his things, brushing a fresh layer of dust off the back of the coat before swinging it over his shoulders and grabbing his keys.
He paused at the door, casting a last long, lingering look13 over at the small, shabby apartment behind him. Dust kicked up in his exit now danced in the beam of light from the window, twinkling in the sun like specks of falling snow.14 The sight of it made him think of Christmas and the peace of winter; the stillness that chill lends to all the world.
His mood then took a turn for the macabre15 and Marcus quickly cleared his throat to scatter the encroaching silence, opening the door with another pained squeak of metal before shutting it behind him and leaving the sunlight alone to warm the space he had left behind.
Footnotes:
1: Personification, right from the start. The deadbolt is alive and complaining. This sets the tone for the entire apartment to have a life of its own, turning it from a cold building into a familiar friend or a waiting pet.
2: Already we've learned two things: that Marcus lives in relative squalor, and that he needs some protection against it. Whether these are the normal ravages of being poor or simply the shame of living in a shabby apartment remains to be seen.
3: Marcus tosses himself much like he did his effects, again putting him in line with the objects in the room, making him as lifeless and discarded as they are alive and sympathetic. Both serve to tie him to the apartment, which means everything in it becomes a symbol of some part of him.
4: Sunlight through a grimy window is now this man's greatest treasure. The line also implies that he had a more comfortable or more impressive life once, and has since fallen to these sad circumstances.
5: Furthering the "kingdom" analogy, which in turn colors the reader's impressions of how Marcus sees his apartment. This is his palace, shabby though it may seem. It again makes it a kindred spirit, something he cherishes in spite of its blemishes.
6: The discordance of the computer makes it stand out from the room. This is the first unwelcome object we've seen, which gives the reader an idea of Marcus' opinion on it and perhaps technology in general, given the statement on the room at large.
7: Notice how the joke isn't explained. We leave it to the reader to wonder what the meaning might be. It might be as simple as April implying that she's "hot," or it might have a much deeper meaning somewhere in their joint past. Either way, we know Marcus knows, which tells us something about their relationship.
8: In one letter, we've established several things about April using the cultural connotation of typing "u" to represent "you." She may be young. She may be tech-savvy. She may text constantly. She may not have any love for outdated conventions and old etiquette. Contrast this with Marcus' "antiquity," and we already have the setup for a tried-and-true dichotomy of contrast between them.
9: Objectification again. We have uplifted objects and whittled down people, causing everything to meet in the middle. Alternatively, it could be seen as Marcus' opinion on talking through instant-messenger versus a voice or in-person conversation; another implication that he may have a certain reluctance to using technology.
10: Marcus, at least, refers to April as a girl, which clues us in to a discrepancy in their ages, with Marcus being the older. Were she the same age or older, she would be a "woman," and were she much much younger, she might be a "child," but "girl" denotes a fairly distinct "younger-than-me" contingent of the female population. In context with the other clues, we might be able to start guessing at her age.
11: Again drawing on the cultural consciousness: "sarge," especially when paired with the reference to captain later in the sentence, is short for sergeant, a title that is uniquely military or police-related. Sarge is the more informal variety, which again gives us an angle on April's irreverence for formality or hints at a more intimate (though likely not romantic) relationship between the two characters.
In addition, sergeant in all its forms is a lower rank, often associated with front-line leadership or training new recruits, which both gives us a glimpse of Marcus' roughneck background and allows for a possible former professional relationship between him and April, especially given that she still calls him "sarge" despite his promotion. All that from five little letters.
12: The sudden divergence of topic gives the impression that Marcus' own mind is wandering, which suggests either he's tired or that his brain is taking whatever small respite it can before heading out to his next assignment. The latter remark about his family establishes a sizable chip on his shoulder: breaking a familial trend of never amounting to much, which, given the current state of his apartment, he may still be struggling with himself.
13: Alliteration can add humor, a sense of music or a sense of haste to a sentence. Overdoing it will seem goofy to your reader, but a quick three- or four-part sequence can lend a sense of quickened pace or poetic rhythm to your work. Useful, but be warned: switching words to line up an alliterative march can alter the meaning. Intention and impression are still paramount; poetry comes second.
14: Note the contrast: the sunlight was the only source of warmth, yet now it's being used to illuminate "snow." It may lead to implications on how fragile the things Marcus clings to can be (like snow in warm sunlight), or it may simply be another diversion of his mind; a symbol of a memory from some significant winter.
15: Notice we again don't explain exactly where his mind is going. Given the end of the last sentence, there's a certain allegory for the grave arising from an otherwise peaceful recollection. Putting the two together, the reader might get the impression that Marcus lost something precious in the wintertime, like a loved one. Add the significance of family and Christmastime (there's that cultural consciousness again) and an already tragic event can become devastating.
All this may just be laying the tracks for a later reveal about a dark moment in Marcus' past. For now, the reader can only wonder at what set him off and hurry after him in hopes of learning the secret.
He set his keys on the old dresser as he passed, his brief reflection in the mirror mired by the grime clinging to its edges with unusual tenacity. His coat he let fall on the couch, sending up a fresh cloud of the same old dust as it landed heavy on the fraying fabric. Himself he threw into a chair by the window3, letting the tinted sunlight blanket his face in the otherwise shaded room.
Overcome by the wear of the day, he rested his head back against the cracked leather and shut his eyes, drinking deep the meager warmth from the window. His mind echoed a peaceful chord in tune with the hum of the overhead light as it flickered in tireless vigil of his once-great private kingdom.4
A sharp 'ping' rang like a bell in the small room, waking him from his dream-filled stupor. The computer on his desk, the one paragon of the modern age set against an empire of rotting antiquity.5 The leather of the chair groaned in time with his own unkind utterances as he leaned forward to flip the power switch on the monitor.
It buzzed to life, its own hum much higher and more shrill than that of the quiet overhead light.6 The small white box in the corner held the name of the offender; the one whose coming had shattered Marcus' meditation so abruptly. fahrenheit104. April's idea of a joke.7 The boys like it, she told him once. He had never wanted to know.
"u there?"8 she asked, the cursor marking the time before he made his reply.
"I'm here," he typed back, cringing at the chime of her immediate response.
"good," said the box,9 "get to chance & one-eleven right away. i'll meet you there."
Marcus chuckled at the exchange. How a girl10 who couldn't be troubled to spell out a three-letter word always found time for things like 'one-eleven' remained a mystery to him. It made him wonder if she might have a compulsion against calling a thing by its proper name. It would explain why she still called him "Sarge"11 despite his promotion to captain years ago.
It had become more his name now than "Marcus" anyway. It was a funny thing to be known only by what you did. It made him appreciate all the meaning wrapped up in a name like "Smith," but despite the history, Marcus' family had never truly made much of anything, least of all of themselves12.
Cutting the monitor off with a 'click,' Marcus struggled to his feet and moved through the room to gather up his things, brushing a fresh layer of dust off the back of the coat before swinging it over his shoulders and grabbing his keys.
He paused at the door, casting a last long, lingering look13 over at the small, shabby apartment behind him. Dust kicked up in his exit now danced in the beam of light from the window, twinkling in the sun like specks of falling snow.14 The sight of it made him think of Christmas and the peace of winter; the stillness that chill lends to all the world.
His mood then took a turn for the macabre15 and Marcus quickly cleared his throat to scatter the encroaching silence, opening the door with another pained squeak of metal before shutting it behind him and leaving the sunlight alone to warm the space he had left behind.
Footnotes:
1: Personification, right from the start. The deadbolt is alive and complaining. This sets the tone for the entire apartment to have a life of its own, turning it from a cold building into a familiar friend or a waiting pet.
2: Already we've learned two things: that Marcus lives in relative squalor, and that he needs some protection against it. Whether these are the normal ravages of being poor or simply the shame of living in a shabby apartment remains to be seen.
3: Marcus tosses himself much like he did his effects, again putting him in line with the objects in the room, making him as lifeless and discarded as they are alive and sympathetic. Both serve to tie him to the apartment, which means everything in it becomes a symbol of some part of him.
4: Sunlight through a grimy window is now this man's greatest treasure. The line also implies that he had a more comfortable or more impressive life once, and has since fallen to these sad circumstances.
5: Furthering the "kingdom" analogy, which in turn colors the reader's impressions of how Marcus sees his apartment. This is his palace, shabby though it may seem. It again makes it a kindred spirit, something he cherishes in spite of its blemishes.
6: The discordance of the computer makes it stand out from the room. This is the first unwelcome object we've seen, which gives the reader an idea of Marcus' opinion on it and perhaps technology in general, given the statement on the room at large.
7: Notice how the joke isn't explained. We leave it to the reader to wonder what the meaning might be. It might be as simple as April implying that she's "hot," or it might have a much deeper meaning somewhere in their joint past. Either way, we know Marcus knows, which tells us something about their relationship.
8: In one letter, we've established several things about April using the cultural connotation of typing "u" to represent "you." She may be young. She may be tech-savvy. She may text constantly. She may not have any love for outdated conventions and old etiquette. Contrast this with Marcus' "antiquity," and we already have the setup for a tried-and-true dichotomy of contrast between them.
9: Objectification again. We have uplifted objects and whittled down people, causing everything to meet in the middle. Alternatively, it could be seen as Marcus' opinion on talking through instant-messenger versus a voice or in-person conversation; another implication that he may have a certain reluctance to using technology.
10: Marcus, at least, refers to April as a girl, which clues us in to a discrepancy in their ages, with Marcus being the older. Were she the same age or older, she would be a "woman," and were she much much younger, she might be a "child," but "girl" denotes a fairly distinct "younger-than-me" contingent of the female population. In context with the other clues, we might be able to start guessing at her age.
11: Again drawing on the cultural consciousness: "sarge," especially when paired with the reference to captain later in the sentence, is short for sergeant, a title that is uniquely military or police-related. Sarge is the more informal variety, which again gives us an angle on April's irreverence for formality or hints at a more intimate (though likely not romantic) relationship between the two characters.
In addition, sergeant in all its forms is a lower rank, often associated with front-line leadership or training new recruits, which both gives us a glimpse of Marcus' roughneck background and allows for a possible former professional relationship between him and April, especially given that she still calls him "sarge" despite his promotion. All that from five little letters.
12: The sudden divergence of topic gives the impression that Marcus' own mind is wandering, which suggests either he's tired or that his brain is taking whatever small respite it can before heading out to his next assignment. The latter remark about his family establishes a sizable chip on his shoulder: breaking a familial trend of never amounting to much, which, given the current state of his apartment, he may still be struggling with himself.
13: Alliteration can add humor, a sense of music or a sense of haste to a sentence. Overdoing it will seem goofy to your reader, but a quick three- or four-part sequence can lend a sense of quickened pace or poetic rhythm to your work. Useful, but be warned: switching words to line up an alliterative march can alter the meaning. Intention and impression are still paramount; poetry comes second.
14: Note the contrast: the sunlight was the only source of warmth, yet now it's being used to illuminate "snow." It may lead to implications on how fragile the things Marcus clings to can be (like snow in warm sunlight), or it may simply be another diversion of his mind; a symbol of a memory from some significant winter.
15: Notice we again don't explain exactly where his mind is going. Given the end of the last sentence, there's a certain allegory for the grave arising from an otherwise peaceful recollection. Putting the two together, the reader might get the impression that Marcus lost something precious in the wintertime, like a loved one. Add the significance of family and Christmastime (there's that cultural consciousness again) and an already tragic event can become devastating.
All this may just be laying the tracks for a later reveal about a dark moment in Marcus' past. For now, the reader can only wonder at what set him off and hurry after him in hopes of learning the secret.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Say It, Don't Splain It - The Art of Subtlety in Fiction
Part of me believes this subject is too broad to cover in a single blog post, and that's probably true, but in the hopes of exemplifying that which I aim to discuss, let us cast off and see what harbors await.
Anyone who's ever read bad fanfiction knows that there's something uniquely off in some authors' writing that leaves the reader feeling deeply unsatisfied, despite all points of the narrative being clear and delivered.
The phrases seem to stop short; the taste of it feels dry, like a highly caffeinated fanboy anxious to reach the story's end (which, for most fanfiction, is precisely what we have at play). All the information is there, but you're no happier having had it than you were before. The flavor is missing.
That flavor comes in many forms, from the brusque to the infinitely intricate, but the same element is present no matter how long the storyteller chews the proverbial scenery: there's a subtlety of expression that allows the author to give the reader some idea of what is unfolding without hedging in their imagination.
Just like with music, as much lies in what's not being said as it does in the notes themselves, and the silence is far more difficult to sculpt. That silence is the difference between an awkward writer too rushed to get the ideas out of his head and a storyteller painting a scene with patience and care.
Subtlety gives the reader's imagination room to expand beyond the confines of your words. It entices them into taking a scene and filling in the dark or boring corners with whatever phantoms and dreams their mind can concoct. If you get too caught up in specifics, you leave them with no breathing room.
Don't think of a scene like a blueprint: your audience doesn't always need exactitude. Sometimes the significance or feeling of a thing is far more important than the specifics. It has the added bonus of allowing your reader to map said thing to their particular cultural lens.
Enough of the theory, down to specifics. Seems like a contradiction, no?
First, the base example:
"Charlotte's hands began to bend and point in the air in front of her, shaping the spell she had practiced years ago under her mother's careful teachings. Her right hand turned palm-upwards as her left hand cut a wide arc out to her side, hovering directly over the line of salt on the floor at her feet."
Not horrible, and you have to be a few fathoms past horrible to reach "unpublishable." So why fix what isn't broken? Observe:
"Charlotte's hands began to work the pattern of the spell, each gesture flowing into the next with a graceful rhythm. She could still remember the gentle touch of her mother's hands on her wrists as they guided her through the motions of the now-familiar spell, waltzing across the tiny dance floor outlined by the ring of salt at her feet."
What changed? All the information is still there and not much else. We removed the exact framing of the motion of her hands and replaced it instead with the symbol of a dance, one which in turn lends a powerful touch to the notion of her mother's teaching.
Now the memory isn't of a young witch learning a spell from a master, it's of a mother dancing with her daughter. In the instance, we have added for the reader a whole host of possibilities. A little subtle implication leaves an open piece for the reader to fill in.
Consider that Charlotte's mother may not feature in the work at all save in memory and passing mention. The reader now has free reign to picture the matron witch guiding her child in the old ways and the many humorous, frightening or touching moments which no doubt came part-and-parcel with such a unique and at once familiar childhood upbringing.
In addition, leaving the ritual described only in general terms gives your audience power to envision Charlotte's particular brand of magic without their own preferential context.
There are shamanic roots throughout the world that offer mystical and arcane elements in more flavors than might fit within any one person's reckoning. The reader can apply their own template to the motions, thus shifting Charlotte's own culture and background to fit what they find more appealing or more approachable.
Even minor clues can risk ruling out or locking in a particular option. The line of salt, for instance, has many very fixed connotations. While arguably appropriate to the setting if Charlotte is "that kind of witch," a note of "protections" around the room or in a circle at her feet might leave more room for alternatives.
Consider how the scene changes if Charlotte is surrounded by trinkets from her mother's family and the long line of witches before her, meant to link to the spirits of a long lineage. A reader from a difficult culture may be looking for entirely different signs than what you might expect. Providing the meaning of a thing as its description (see "protections") leaves them room to find a familiar connection.
There is an additional advantage to replacing detail with painted implications: in brevity lies speed; speed creates momentum; momentum creates emotion. In short, some scenes are best to hurry through.
Like the motion of Charlotte's hands, use vague, flowing reference and comparative analogy to avoid drowning in the minutia of the moment. Focus on the important details, "zoom out" for the rest.
It can be best to lead with detail to set up a finite pattern and then fade to a more implied series of actions before returning to detail at pivot points and key moments within the scene. Your audience will fill in the missing pieces on their own. Don't feel like you have to draw them a map of every scene.
"The two warriors battled across the ridgetop until they clinched on the edge of the cliff, locked in a struggle to see who if not gravity would win the day."
That's easily three or four pages between the start of the conflict and its first or final pivot point, whittled down to a single sentence.
Unless you know you are writing to those who crave detail and technicality (military fiction or hard sci-fi), don't be afraid to skip to the complicated bits and leave the rest as one quick, flowing brush stroke across your overall canvas. The meat of the novel is important, but it's always the spice that makes it memorable.
Which brings us to at least three separate metaphors for writing within this post alone. I should start calling this place "Analogy Central..."
Anyone who's ever read bad fanfiction knows that there's something uniquely off in some authors' writing that leaves the reader feeling deeply unsatisfied, despite all points of the narrative being clear and delivered.
The phrases seem to stop short; the taste of it feels dry, like a highly caffeinated fanboy anxious to reach the story's end (which, for most fanfiction, is precisely what we have at play). All the information is there, but you're no happier having had it than you were before. The flavor is missing.
That flavor comes in many forms, from the brusque to the infinitely intricate, but the same element is present no matter how long the storyteller chews the proverbial scenery: there's a subtlety of expression that allows the author to give the reader some idea of what is unfolding without hedging in their imagination.
Just like with music, as much lies in what's not being said as it does in the notes themselves, and the silence is far more difficult to sculpt. That silence is the difference between an awkward writer too rushed to get the ideas out of his head and a storyteller painting a scene with patience and care.
Subtlety gives the reader's imagination room to expand beyond the confines of your words. It entices them into taking a scene and filling in the dark or boring corners with whatever phantoms and dreams their mind can concoct. If you get too caught up in specifics, you leave them with no breathing room.
Don't think of a scene like a blueprint: your audience doesn't always need exactitude. Sometimes the significance or feeling of a thing is far more important than the specifics. It has the added bonus of allowing your reader to map said thing to their particular cultural lens.
Enough of the theory, down to specifics. Seems like a contradiction, no?
First, the base example:
"Charlotte's hands began to bend and point in the air in front of her, shaping the spell she had practiced years ago under her mother's careful teachings. Her right hand turned palm-upwards as her left hand cut a wide arc out to her side, hovering directly over the line of salt on the floor at her feet."
Not horrible, and you have to be a few fathoms past horrible to reach "unpublishable." So why fix what isn't broken? Observe:
"Charlotte's hands began to work the pattern of the spell, each gesture flowing into the next with a graceful rhythm. She could still remember the gentle touch of her mother's hands on her wrists as they guided her through the motions of the now-familiar spell, waltzing across the tiny dance floor outlined by the ring of salt at her feet."
What changed? All the information is still there and not much else. We removed the exact framing of the motion of her hands and replaced it instead with the symbol of a dance, one which in turn lends a powerful touch to the notion of her mother's teaching.
Now the memory isn't of a young witch learning a spell from a master, it's of a mother dancing with her daughter. In the instance, we have added for the reader a whole host of possibilities. A little subtle implication leaves an open piece for the reader to fill in.
Consider that Charlotte's mother may not feature in the work at all save in memory and passing mention. The reader now has free reign to picture the matron witch guiding her child in the old ways and the many humorous, frightening or touching moments which no doubt came part-and-parcel with such a unique and at once familiar childhood upbringing.
In addition, leaving the ritual described only in general terms gives your audience power to envision Charlotte's particular brand of magic without their own preferential context.
There are shamanic roots throughout the world that offer mystical and arcane elements in more flavors than might fit within any one person's reckoning. The reader can apply their own template to the motions, thus shifting Charlotte's own culture and background to fit what they find more appealing or more approachable.
Even minor clues can risk ruling out or locking in a particular option. The line of salt, for instance, has many very fixed connotations. While arguably appropriate to the setting if Charlotte is "that kind of witch," a note of "protections" around the room or in a circle at her feet might leave more room for alternatives.
Consider how the scene changes if Charlotte is surrounded by trinkets from her mother's family and the long line of witches before her, meant to link to the spirits of a long lineage. A reader from a difficult culture may be looking for entirely different signs than what you might expect. Providing the meaning of a thing as its description (see "protections") leaves them room to find a familiar connection.
There is an additional advantage to replacing detail with painted implications: in brevity lies speed; speed creates momentum; momentum creates emotion. In short, some scenes are best to hurry through.
Like the motion of Charlotte's hands, use vague, flowing reference and comparative analogy to avoid drowning in the minutia of the moment. Focus on the important details, "zoom out" for the rest.
It can be best to lead with detail to set up a finite pattern and then fade to a more implied series of actions before returning to detail at pivot points and key moments within the scene. Your audience will fill in the missing pieces on their own. Don't feel like you have to draw them a map of every scene.
"The two warriors battled across the ridgetop until they clinched on the edge of the cliff, locked in a struggle to see who if not gravity would win the day."
That's easily three or four pages between the start of the conflict and its first or final pivot point, whittled down to a single sentence.
Unless you know you are writing to those who crave detail and technicality (military fiction or hard sci-fi), don't be afraid to skip to the complicated bits and leave the rest as one quick, flowing brush stroke across your overall canvas. The meat of the novel is important, but it's always the spice that makes it memorable.
Which brings us to at least three separate metaphors for writing within this post alone. I should start calling this place "Analogy Central..."
Friday, February 11, 2011
Using What They Know - Drawing on the Cultural Consciousness
There are bonuses to creating your own setting: the lack of confinement when you not only get your own sandbox but get to build the very sand and tell everyone how it behaves is a tempting proposition. Obviously there's some work involved, but the biggest disadvantage of starting from scratch with your own setting is not always clear from the start.
The power of the cultural consciousness goes without saying so often that most people don't quite realize that it exists.
What I'm referring to is the common bank of information, understanding and emotion that all members of a culture (or at least a large portion of them) regularly draw upon. They can be iconic moments in a common history, normative veins of ambition, popular misconceptions or even just widely-used memes and well-known references.
It's difficult to notice when you're in the thick of it because these things have become the backbone of our everyday communication, especially in entertainment. Nods to beloved movies, famous people and other parodies make up a significant portion of how we convey what we're hoping to say.
Simple jibes like "Thanks for the tip, professor," may not be consistent across every setting. You have to consider that for a remark like that to make sense, there must be professors, which means there must be colleges and universities, which means there is higher education, a relatively recent concept (and one that may not have a long future, depending on how current trends develop). A dark-ages fantasy novel may need to think of a better quip (and the cut-and-paste method only gets you so far).
Basing your novel in a setting you know lets you call upon real events and idioms that your readership connects with naturally and won't need explained. When the bruiser in a band of thieves reacts to his leader's new cooperative approach with "Great plan, Gandhi," your audience has a good chance of simply 'getting it' without any effort.
It allows you to allude, to be subtle, to jokingly juxtapose common conception with what your characters and narration are saying. You can relate local impact to the larger concepts that touch the hearts of more than just your character's small-town neighbors. To wit:
This was his last chance; the thin line between Leroy and a crumpled heap of a man was his late-night job at the gas station. The Stop 'N' Go had become his Alamo.
In one word, a kaleidoscope of concepts comes to bear: a last stand, proud men, old soldiers, and the cause they were willing to die for. The brutality of the Alamo became a flag around which the remaining revolution rallied. All that implied with a single word.
Tapping into the power of the cultural consciousness allows you to say more with less, but it also just allows you to say more. To call Leroy's situation dire, desperate or futile is all well and good, but any such words are absent of scale. Leroy's "desperate," and your "desperate" as an author may in no way compare to the "desperate" your readers perceive.
The cultural memory can attempt to set the bar. Such icons have an intrinsic and understood value, and while it's not a guarantee, much of your readership will value such events with a relatively similar gauge. At the very least, comparing a dead-end job to a battle in a revolution is a powerful metaphor regardless of the value of that particular event in time.
More than that, choosing the Alamo versus the more generic "a battle in a war" adds an additional layer: the failure of the defenders at the Alamo mission, or the fact that it was fought on what was once holy ground, add more meaning to Leroy's struggle than just "he's a soldier in a war."
Now he's a soldier defending a religious-site-turned-fortress, and the odds are against him. He will fail, and it will not be a graceful loss, but perhaps the fires of his defeat will inspire others to carry on with what he had hoped to do from the start.
When you pin another well-known moment to your story, you give the reader a whole new web of sub-meanings and implications, and I don't just mean the inter-linking labyrinth that is Wikipedia.
We pin our emotions, our dreams, our hopes, our take on our own past to these moments and figures, these people and places and slivers of time. Tapping into that vast and varied array of cultural icons can lend more power, more humor and more depth to your work than a story isolated in space and time.
Hitch your hippogriff to the ongoing conversation of the larger world around you and watch as it rides off in directions you never thought possible. After all, one day, someone may be hitching their flying wagon to you.
The power of the cultural consciousness goes without saying so often that most people don't quite realize that it exists.
What I'm referring to is the common bank of information, understanding and emotion that all members of a culture (or at least a large portion of them) regularly draw upon. They can be iconic moments in a common history, normative veins of ambition, popular misconceptions or even just widely-used memes and well-known references.
It's difficult to notice when you're in the thick of it because these things have become the backbone of our everyday communication, especially in entertainment. Nods to beloved movies, famous people and other parodies make up a significant portion of how we convey what we're hoping to say.
Simple jibes like "Thanks for the tip, professor," may not be consistent across every setting. You have to consider that for a remark like that to make sense, there must be professors, which means there must be colleges and universities, which means there is higher education, a relatively recent concept (and one that may not have a long future, depending on how current trends develop). A dark-ages fantasy novel may need to think of a better quip (and the cut-and-paste method only gets you so far).
Basing your novel in a setting you know lets you call upon real events and idioms that your readership connects with naturally and won't need explained. When the bruiser in a band of thieves reacts to his leader's new cooperative approach with "Great plan, Gandhi," your audience has a good chance of simply 'getting it' without any effort.
It allows you to allude, to be subtle, to jokingly juxtapose common conception with what your characters and narration are saying. You can relate local impact to the larger concepts that touch the hearts of more than just your character's small-town neighbors. To wit:
This was his last chance; the thin line between Leroy and a crumpled heap of a man was his late-night job at the gas station. The Stop 'N' Go had become his Alamo.
In one word, a kaleidoscope of concepts comes to bear: a last stand, proud men, old soldiers, and the cause they were willing to die for. The brutality of the Alamo became a flag around which the remaining revolution rallied. All that implied with a single word.
Tapping into the power of the cultural consciousness allows you to say more with less, but it also just allows you to say more. To call Leroy's situation dire, desperate or futile is all well and good, but any such words are absent of scale. Leroy's "desperate," and your "desperate" as an author may in no way compare to the "desperate" your readers perceive.
The cultural memory can attempt to set the bar. Such icons have an intrinsic and understood value, and while it's not a guarantee, much of your readership will value such events with a relatively similar gauge. At the very least, comparing a dead-end job to a battle in a revolution is a powerful metaphor regardless of the value of that particular event in time.
More than that, choosing the Alamo versus the more generic "a battle in a war" adds an additional layer: the failure of the defenders at the Alamo mission, or the fact that it was fought on what was once holy ground, add more meaning to Leroy's struggle than just "he's a soldier in a war."
Now he's a soldier defending a religious-site-turned-fortress, and the odds are against him. He will fail, and it will not be a graceful loss, but perhaps the fires of his defeat will inspire others to carry on with what he had hoped to do from the start.
When you pin another well-known moment to your story, you give the reader a whole new web of sub-meanings and implications, and I don't just mean the inter-linking labyrinth that is Wikipedia.
We pin our emotions, our dreams, our hopes, our take on our own past to these moments and figures, these people and places and slivers of time. Tapping into that vast and varied array of cultural icons can lend more power, more humor and more depth to your work than a story isolated in space and time.
Hitch your hippogriff to the ongoing conversation of the larger world around you and watch as it rides off in directions you never thought possible. After all, one day, someone may be hitching their flying wagon to you.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Size Doesn't Matter - e-Pubs and the Age of the Novella
Having recently converted from the what's-my-wordcount-this-second school of interim deadline management, I've been reminded of a wholly different change in the works as far as literature on the whole is concerned.
But first, some exposition...
For those of you who haven't considered self-publication, I highly recommend it. Services like Lulu provide a relatively painless means by which to equip something you wrote in your spare time for massive global distribution with the click of a few buttons and at no personal cost to you.
That said, despite the allure of rule-my-own-destiny publication, I found I was still drawn to the old standard of hiring an agent, submitting a manuscript to a faceless editor and praying someone, somewhere, might buy my book. There's a certain validation that comes from a large corporate entity giving you the green light that is difficult to extract from the self-publishing game.
Odd as that sounds.
But the truth is traditions are seeded into each of us heavily and can be difficult to break on a personal level. That was why I started the 90-day ordeal of rewriting a previous novel so that it might be clean, crisp, and up to the snuff of the professional writing world (at least, as well as someone who has never been a part of said world can estimate it might be).
I had planned until very recently to then find myself an agent, submit the work for consideration and follow the trail of dots as they led me on toward the promise of seeing my book on a dusty shelf in the back of an Eddie McKay some day. But then I was offered up the ridiculous tirade of a published author slamming the publishing industry as a whole in an effort to dissuade new authors from even considering it.
While the article itself was based largely on unrelated causal conjecture and personal elitism, it brought to mind a few key points quite my accident that led me to consider the quest I had always intended to embark upon.
Over the course of the last few years, we've seen some incredible shifts in the delivery models of a number of media. It should cause anyone hoping to take a thing from their brain and distribute it en masse to minds worldwide to pause and consider if there might not be a better way than to cram a coffee-stained manuscript inside a manila envelope to start its week-long trek down the street.
At one time, the advantage to a publishing firm was the printers. A regular guy couldn't just hop down to Kinko's and make 300 well-bound copies of his work with any hope of turning a profit, let alone mailing them out to distributors or delivering them direct to customers.
With services like Lulu, that's no longer an issue: customers order your work and have it printed ad-hoc, or you can order a massive printing for resale. Distribution is no longer reliant on a massive central printer station cranking out hundreds of copies a seconds.
Add to that a publisher's second greatest draw: getting onto the shelves. The publisher handles negotiation with the ailing bookstores on a national (or international) level to get your copy added, sorted and sent out en masse to stores where hipsters sipping their mocha lattes can happen across your overdramatic cover art and be wowed accordingly.
Borders and Barnes & Noble, two of the best known print warehouses in the country, are teetering on the edge of oblivion. While there will likely always be a place where someone can happen across a paper copy of your work, there's a good chance the social meccas that are coffee-shop bookstores may be a dying breed.
Which brings us to the third and possibly biggest advantage of the pro publisher: marketing. Someone else will handle the selling and promotion for you. Someone else will whore your work out to the masses and make it known. Someone else gets to talk about you than you.
For most writers, that may be reason enough in and of itself to hand over your rights to the first publishing shop that will take them. That said, even the self-publishing quorum offer marketing services at less than the price of an agent. It may not be as intense as seeing the word "Penguin" stamped on the side of your book, but it puts your book where it will be seen, on the new shelves today's readers are wandering past.
The e-shelves.
Amazon and its Kindle have redefined the marketplace, and I don't mean that as a pun. People are taking the bookstore with them now, browsing online through an infinite web of related keywords and customers-also-bought threads of commonality. There's no more printing press, no more negotiation, no more cramming your paperback in next to Stephenie Meyer's latest affront to the cultural conversation.
Which brings me at length back to my original point: size no longer matters.
Not that it ever did, really. As many hearts have been tugged by Elie Weisel's Night and the works of Jack London as anything by the late Robert Jordan or Charles Dickens. 700 pages does not a master make you; nor are you clever for fitting a story inside a mere pamphlet of a book. Length is just that: the time it takes to tell your story: no more, no less.
That said, for ages word-count has been the final bell on the worth of a work. Minimums were required: people wanted readers to feel they had gotten their money's worth, and the more pages, the more worth, clearly. I myself fell victim to the old song of "it's not a real book until you crest X-many words," but words are not the wealth of a story: what they hold, what they evoke in you, the reader, is.
Like some surreal welterweight division, the novella has been lost in the overall fight of print publishing for decades. With occasional moments of brightness, the 100-page margin between a hulking short story and a pitiful paperback was a black void of emptiness reserved only for certain unique masters whose ways no one was willing to question.
With the sudden surge of the e-publishing world and the continued decline of print as a singular avenue of expression, the lines between length and size will, I hope, blur to nothing. Without an arbitrary mesh through which to pass all potential contributions and the revelation that more bytes do not cost more to print and send, stories can take as much (or as little) time as they like.
And given the overall predilection for not staring at a screen at length, there's a good chance the shorter, still-heavy works in the forsaken novella range may have their own heyday at last.
Why am I such a fan of the novella? I'm not. I'm eager to see it and its kindred labels of "short story," "novel" and "epic" vanish entirely, though I doubt that will happen any time soon. A story is a big as you make it, as rich as you make it, as deep as you decide to go with it. The dimensions should be fluid so that each writer can take their time (or get to the point) at their own pace.
It isn't a matter of simple comfort for the writer, it's about not stretching a round peg to fit a square whole. It's about removing the boundaries so that any peg, no matter the shape, can pass through unhindered and reach the reader for whom it was destined.
And if that's not enough innuendo for you, I don't know what will be.
But first, some exposition...
For those of you who haven't considered self-publication, I highly recommend it. Services like Lulu provide a relatively painless means by which to equip something you wrote in your spare time for massive global distribution with the click of a few buttons and at no personal cost to you.
That said, despite the allure of rule-my-own-destiny publication, I found I was still drawn to the old standard of hiring an agent, submitting a manuscript to a faceless editor and praying someone, somewhere, might buy my book. There's a certain validation that comes from a large corporate entity giving you the green light that is difficult to extract from the self-publishing game.
Odd as that sounds.
But the truth is traditions are seeded into each of us heavily and can be difficult to break on a personal level. That was why I started the 90-day ordeal of rewriting a previous novel so that it might be clean, crisp, and up to the snuff of the professional writing world (at least, as well as someone who has never been a part of said world can estimate it might be).
I had planned until very recently to then find myself an agent, submit the work for consideration and follow the trail of dots as they led me on toward the promise of seeing my book on a dusty shelf in the back of an Eddie McKay some day. But then I was offered up the ridiculous tirade of a published author slamming the publishing industry as a whole in an effort to dissuade new authors from even considering it.
While the article itself was based largely on unrelated causal conjecture and personal elitism, it brought to mind a few key points quite my accident that led me to consider the quest I had always intended to embark upon.
Over the course of the last few years, we've seen some incredible shifts in the delivery models of a number of media. It should cause anyone hoping to take a thing from their brain and distribute it en masse to minds worldwide to pause and consider if there might not be a better way than to cram a coffee-stained manuscript inside a manila envelope to start its week-long trek down the street.
At one time, the advantage to a publishing firm was the printers. A regular guy couldn't just hop down to Kinko's and make 300 well-bound copies of his work with any hope of turning a profit, let alone mailing them out to distributors or delivering them direct to customers.
With services like Lulu, that's no longer an issue: customers order your work and have it printed ad-hoc, or you can order a massive printing for resale. Distribution is no longer reliant on a massive central printer station cranking out hundreds of copies a seconds.
Add to that a publisher's second greatest draw: getting onto the shelves. The publisher handles negotiation with the ailing bookstores on a national (or international) level to get your copy added, sorted and sent out en masse to stores where hipsters sipping their mocha lattes can happen across your overdramatic cover art and be wowed accordingly.
Borders and Barnes & Noble, two of the best known print warehouses in the country, are teetering on the edge of oblivion. While there will likely always be a place where someone can happen across a paper copy of your work, there's a good chance the social meccas that are coffee-shop bookstores may be a dying breed.
Which brings us to the third and possibly biggest advantage of the pro publisher: marketing. Someone else will handle the selling and promotion for you. Someone else will whore your work out to the masses and make it known. Someone else gets to talk about you than you.
For most writers, that may be reason enough in and of itself to hand over your rights to the first publishing shop that will take them. That said, even the self-publishing quorum offer marketing services at less than the price of an agent. It may not be as intense as seeing the word "Penguin" stamped on the side of your book, but it puts your book where it will be seen, on the new shelves today's readers are wandering past.
The e-shelves.
Amazon and its Kindle have redefined the marketplace, and I don't mean that as a pun. People are taking the bookstore with them now, browsing online through an infinite web of related keywords and customers-also-bought threads of commonality. There's no more printing press, no more negotiation, no more cramming your paperback in next to Stephenie Meyer's latest affront to the cultural conversation.
Which brings me at length back to my original point: size no longer matters.
Not that it ever did, really. As many hearts have been tugged by Elie Weisel's Night and the works of Jack London as anything by the late Robert Jordan or Charles Dickens. 700 pages does not a master make you; nor are you clever for fitting a story inside a mere pamphlet of a book. Length is just that: the time it takes to tell your story: no more, no less.
That said, for ages word-count has been the final bell on the worth of a work. Minimums were required: people wanted readers to feel they had gotten their money's worth, and the more pages, the more worth, clearly. I myself fell victim to the old song of "it's not a real book until you crest X-many words," but words are not the wealth of a story: what they hold, what they evoke in you, the reader, is.
Like some surreal welterweight division, the novella has been lost in the overall fight of print publishing for decades. With occasional moments of brightness, the 100-page margin between a hulking short story and a pitiful paperback was a black void of emptiness reserved only for certain unique masters whose ways no one was willing to question.
With the sudden surge of the e-publishing world and the continued decline of print as a singular avenue of expression, the lines between length and size will, I hope, blur to nothing. Without an arbitrary mesh through which to pass all potential contributions and the revelation that more bytes do not cost more to print and send, stories can take as much (or as little) time as they like.
And given the overall predilection for not staring at a screen at length, there's a good chance the shorter, still-heavy works in the forsaken novella range may have their own heyday at last.
Why am I such a fan of the novella? I'm not. I'm eager to see it and its kindred labels of "short story," "novel" and "epic" vanish entirely, though I doubt that will happen any time soon. A story is a big as you make it, as rich as you make it, as deep as you decide to go with it. The dimensions should be fluid so that each writer can take their time (or get to the point) at their own pace.
It isn't a matter of simple comfort for the writer, it's about not stretching a round peg to fit a square whole. It's about removing the boundaries so that any peg, no matter the shape, can pass through unhindered and reach the reader for whom it was destined.
And if that's not enough innuendo for you, I don't know what will be.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Playing Dress-up - How NOT to Reinvent the Wheel
Anyone with a WordPress account is familiar with the concept of theming: you slap a new skin on what was already there, and while the content is the same, the look is now snappy and new.
People have applied this same basic principle to literature for centuries.
I'll be the first to admit that variations on a theme are a legitimate means of growth and evolution within the literary world (or any story-based medium), but that's not the same as wrapping orange latex around someone else's toy and calling it new and improved.
Down here, we call that "regifting."
While originality is not the only stick by which a work should be measured, to call something your own involves throwing at least a modicum of effort at it. Placing a completed work inside an unfamiliar box just to capitalize on recent trending is a base, if profitable, tactic.
If you want to be upgraded from the state of harlequin knock-off, but don't want to start from scratch, there are a few considerations to take into account:
1) What the hell for?
While I have also stated that meaning is what meaning does, if you're going to reskin an old story, know why you're doing it. If it's money, then you needn't look far from the source. Check Amazon's best-seller list, I guarantee you a theme will be present.
If instead you want to update a classic so its lessons are not forgotten, you are off to a powerful start in the game of becoming well known on your own merit. Your gift will be perspective: don't just insert a gimmick around the characters, update the issues that made them powerful to begin with.
Layering, say, vampires onto Napoleonic politics provides more than just kink-fuel for steamy romances within the work. Agelessness and inheritance becomes an issue; the breadth of history still rich in the minds of those who have lived it; a dark parallel between human parasites and the inner bowels of post-monarchical France...you get the idea.
Understand your reasons for putting the trappings of that particular trend into that particular story and how the two change each other. It doesn't have to be a particularly good reason (personally, I would be all for a steampunk Hardy Boys myself), but knowing the reason will help you shape the setting accordingly.
Sometimes, those reasons just involve chainsaws.
2) Influence and Consequence
Every action will have an equal and opposite explosion. When you introduce a new layer, things change. Having high technology in the days of Abraham pits Moses against the aliens who helped build the pyramids. Oh wait, that's kind of been done already.
Poorly.
The setting changes around what you introduce like a body reacting to an infection. Consider District 9 and the dehumanizing element of introducing actual non-humans. You have to consider how things would (and wouldn't) change when you throw in a new piece that didn't fit before. What's kitsch can be caustic, especially if you don't account for it.
Consider what superpowers do to average people. Having eyes that shoot lasers sounds great until you find you can't turn it off. Now you're one tap of the brakes away from carving a ravine through East 32nd street. You have to consider the consequences, both good and bad. Sometimes the way things suck is more interesting than the awesome bits.
3) The Best of Both Worlds
Dolling up something awful with a fun new reckoning does occasionally pan out, but the truth is outside of open parody, popular fiction follows similar lines as computers: garbage in, garbage out. Making a hacky-sack out of used cat litter gets you points for ingenuity, but nobody's really going to want to play with it.
You may also get a few bonus points for knowing what a hacky-sack is, but I digress.
Throwing mad science into the middle of Hard Times doesn't make the plight of those characters any more fun to read. Don't think of your themes as just something fun to spice up something dull: look for something beloved and try to make it better.
It can help to pick your theme first. Look for lines of harmony between it and periods of history, genres, or authors you're familiar with. Magic and the dark ages are a natural pair, as is apparently fanciful technology and Victorian England (though I hear the Edward era is getting its due).
Look for other similar synchronisities. Modern gothic themes applied to Edgar Allen Poe. Paladin tanks in the Crusades. Actual demons in the Inquisition. Huckleberry Finn in space.
A raft drifting slowly down the Mississippi isn't all that different from an escape pod on Impulse when you really think about it. Given the recent debate, though, you may have to go with something other than "Klingon Jim."
...That was bad and I feel bad.
The point of all this is to caution writers away from slapping a sample of what the proverbial kids are buying onto a ready-made piece not already vaulted to the forefront on its own merits (or simply long past its day in the minds of the young).
If you're hoping to ensure readership by hitching your work to the coattails of what's popular, at least look for the harmonic trends that might bring out something new and legitimately improved about the trend, your work, or literature as a whole.
And for the love of god, don't let it be vampires...
People have applied this same basic principle to literature for centuries.
I'll be the first to admit that variations on a theme are a legitimate means of growth and evolution within the literary world (or any story-based medium), but that's not the same as wrapping orange latex around someone else's toy and calling it new and improved.
Down here, we call that "regifting."
While originality is not the only stick by which a work should be measured, to call something your own involves throwing at least a modicum of effort at it. Placing a completed work inside an unfamiliar box just to capitalize on recent trending is a base, if profitable, tactic.
If you want to be upgraded from the state of harlequin knock-off, but don't want to start from scratch, there are a few considerations to take into account:
1) What the hell for?
While I have also stated that meaning is what meaning does, if you're going to reskin an old story, know why you're doing it. If it's money, then you needn't look far from the source. Check Amazon's best-seller list, I guarantee you a theme will be present.
If instead you want to update a classic so its lessons are not forgotten, you are off to a powerful start in the game of becoming well known on your own merit. Your gift will be perspective: don't just insert a gimmick around the characters, update the issues that made them powerful to begin with.
Layering, say, vampires onto Napoleonic politics provides more than just kink-fuel for steamy romances within the work. Agelessness and inheritance becomes an issue; the breadth of history still rich in the minds of those who have lived it; a dark parallel between human parasites and the inner bowels of post-monarchical France...you get the idea.
Understand your reasons for putting the trappings of that particular trend into that particular story and how the two change each other. It doesn't have to be a particularly good reason (personally, I would be all for a steampunk Hardy Boys myself), but knowing the reason will help you shape the setting accordingly.
Sometimes, those reasons just involve chainsaws.
2) Influence and Consequence
Every action will have an equal and opposite explosion. When you introduce a new layer, things change. Having high technology in the days of Abraham pits Moses against the aliens who helped build the pyramids. Oh wait, that's kind of been done already.
Poorly.
The setting changes around what you introduce like a body reacting to an infection. Consider District 9 and the dehumanizing element of introducing actual non-humans. You have to consider how things would (and wouldn't) change when you throw in a new piece that didn't fit before. What's kitsch can be caustic, especially if you don't account for it.
Consider what superpowers do to average people. Having eyes that shoot lasers sounds great until you find you can't turn it off. Now you're one tap of the brakes away from carving a ravine through East 32nd street. You have to consider the consequences, both good and bad. Sometimes the way things suck is more interesting than the awesome bits.
3) The Best of Both Worlds
Dolling up something awful with a fun new reckoning does occasionally pan out, but the truth is outside of open parody, popular fiction follows similar lines as computers: garbage in, garbage out. Making a hacky-sack out of used cat litter gets you points for ingenuity, but nobody's really going to want to play with it.
You may also get a few bonus points for knowing what a hacky-sack is, but I digress.
Throwing mad science into the middle of Hard Times doesn't make the plight of those characters any more fun to read. Don't think of your themes as just something fun to spice up something dull: look for something beloved and try to make it better.
It can help to pick your theme first. Look for lines of harmony between it and periods of history, genres, or authors you're familiar with. Magic and the dark ages are a natural pair, as is apparently fanciful technology and Victorian England (though I hear the Edward era is getting its due).
Look for other similar synchronisities. Modern gothic themes applied to Edgar Allen Poe. Paladin tanks in the Crusades. Actual demons in the Inquisition. Huckleberry Finn in space.
A raft drifting slowly down the Mississippi isn't all that different from an escape pod on Impulse when you really think about it. Given the recent debate, though, you may have to go with something other than "Klingon Jim."
...That was bad and I feel bad.
The point of all this is to caution writers away from slapping a sample of what the proverbial kids are buying onto a ready-made piece not already vaulted to the forefront on its own merits (or simply long past its day in the minds of the young).
If you're hoping to ensure readership by hitching your work to the coattails of what's popular, at least look for the harmonic trends that might bring out something new and legitimately improved about the trend, your work, or literature as a whole.
And for the love of god, don't let it be vampires...
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