|
|
|
July 24th, 2008
10:38 am - DragonForge
Well. Anything I can say about Maxey's latest book will pale in comparison to Orson Scott Card's glowing review*, but I will gush anyway.
I loved it. Fun action sequences, unexpected plot twists, philosopher-villains and a complex multi-species society. Maxey even manages to mix in steampunk technology and a subtle reference to one of his early stories.
If someone had asked me three years ago whether, in the wake of McCaffrey's famous Pern books, anyone could do something truly original with dragons, I would have said 'No'. I would also have been wrong. Maxey's dragon culture is unique, wondrous, and occassionally appalling, and I am pleased that we got more insight into it this time around than in the first book.
I have only one complaint about DragonForge, and it has more to do with author/reader compatibility than with the book itself. You see, I'm an escapist reader at heart. I like happy books. DragonForge was, at times, too gritty for me. Too many tragic encounters where well-meaning people, by working at cross-purposes, thwart the desires of both. Too many characters facing challenges to their world-views without becoming better people in the process. Too much realism, and too few random acts of kindness.
(Oh yeah, and Maxey killed my favorite character. *pout*)
None of which necessarily bodes ill for Maxey's career. After all, I complain about George R. R. Martin's stuff for the same reasons.
* OSC's DragonForge review is about two-thirds down the page. Just look for the book's title in boldface text.
|
July 21st, 2008
05:20 pm - Virtual Pacing
Alex went on a day-trip with his German grandmother today. They will be visiting the construction site where grandpa is building (with his own two hands) a second house.
The construction site is an inherently hazardous place. It involves sharp objects, heavy items, and a three-story elevator shaft with no elevator in it yet.
Alex will love it.
I am browsing internet forums waiting for everyone to come home safe and sound and demonstrate to my frazzled Mommy brain -- yet again -- that sometimes you just have to let them go off an do fun dangerous things.
|
July 18th, 2008
08:32 pm - Slush Gripe of the Day
Generalities.
By which I mean, situations in which a character or setting is described as being typical of the group. e.g. "It was one of those small towns like any other you might pass on the Nevada freeway at night: hot, desolate, and silent but for the raucous laughter from the streetside casino." or: "None of the girls who lived in the inner city worried much about propriety; Shana was no exception."
The problem with describing an individual in terms of the group is that you're making a statement about the group as much as you're making a statement about the individual. And since you're working with generalities, the statement you're making about the group is very probably riddled with false assumptions. I bet there are several readers who can think of small Nevada towns that are nothing like what I've described above; or that are only that way at particular times of the year.
The second example is even worse. It probably triggered several readers' prejudice- and racism-alarms. Boom. There goes all your rapport with your reader.
If you're working within a character's POV, of course, and you want to show the character's preconceptions, then generalities are a nice way to kill two birds with one stone. The same holds true if you're working in an alien environment and want to give the reader some baseline assumptions to work with when dealing with the world you've created. But if you're working in our world, with situations and social groups readers are familiar with, you're treading on dangerous ground.
Additionally, if you're relying on generalities, it's possible that you're being unnecessarily lazy with your description. Why describe something in terms of stereotypical expectations when you could provide a much more vivid and specific description of what this particular girl or small town is like?
|
July 10th, 2008
08:12 pm - Chickens and Eggs
I'm frequently told that I explain things to Alex too much; that a child his age needs firm, simple directions like "yes" and "no" and so forth. The underlying implication, of course, is that my tendency to explain is the root cause of Alex's resistance to authority figures.
The thing is: Alex doesn't accept simple "yes" and "no". He never has. He forms his own opinions about the world based on his perceptions and understanding. Short of bullying, the most effective way to get him to obey rules is to make sure he understands why they're there. In detail.
I won't claim that I didn't do something during his infancy to trigger this mindset. I wasn't really paying attention to that aspect of parenting back then, so I can't recall which of us adopted which behavior first. I would, however, like to issue the following caution to all well-meaning advice-givers:
The next time you see an atypical behavior coupled with an atypical parenting strategy, take time to ask yourself which direction the causality flows. Parenting is a two-way street. Children shape adults just as much as adults shape children.
|
July 9th, 2008
07:56 pm - Novel Revisions: Linking Chapters Across POV Shifts
One of the things I've noticed while critiquing Mike's novel is which chapter shifts work for me and which don't. He's working with two POV's and I'm reading, on average, a chapter a week, so the question of continuity is particularly relevant for me. Here's what I've noticed:
The shift into a new chapter works best if the opening paragraph immediately picks up a thread that was left dangling by a previous chapter.
That probably sounds self-evident, but like most writing advice, it's a lot more obvious in theory than in practice. I've frequently found myself floundering because the opening of a chapter drops me back into the middle of the character's life with no easy reference points.
Some reference points are easy. For example:
(1) Continuous Action. The new chapter picks up at the same point in time as the previous chapter (although perhaps from a different point of view).
(2) Intention followed by implementation. One chapter closes with the POV character's decision to take a particular action. The next chapter for that POV opens with an indication that the character is about to carry out said decision.
Other reference points are more subtle, building on more tenuous concepts like theme or internal conflicts. Obviously, the more POVs you're working with and the more complicated your storyline, the more important the clear establishment of chapter links is going to be.
The key in all cases, though, seems to be to establish the connection early in the chapter. Most chapters are connected nicely once you stand back and look at them from an impartial distance. But when I'm up close, reading the book for the first time, it's very helpful if the connection is firmly established in the chapter's opening. Otherwise, I spend the first half of the chapter wondering, "So what? Where is this going? What does this have to do with any of the things that happened before?"
|
09:51 am - Dragon Binge
My review copy of DragonForge arrived last week. James even signed it with the note: "Nancy, thanks so much for your support."
*Gushing fan girl moment.*
Kind of silly to be fannish, I guess, since I've known James on internet forums for years and in most respects I consider him a peer. Not in writing ability, though. I will probably never write as well as he does. Two chapters in, and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself.
[Addendum: I just learned that there's a Dragon Age prequel available as a download from Solaris Books. If anybody wants a sample of Maxian writing.]
|
July 7th, 2008
10:01 pm - Jim Baen's Closes to Submissions July 31
We're almost all stocked up for the year again, and Mike's still got a pile to read on his desk, so we'll be closing submissions at midnight on July 31.
Feel free to spread the word.
|
July 4th, 2008
10:57 am - *Sniff* My little boy's getting all big
A few days ago Alex invited a friend to come to our house after Kindergarten, so I escorted two little boys along the sidewalk while Aubrey slept in the stroller. They held hands. Along the way, I got to listen in on a very serious discussion about what to do if a giant tree branch were to fall on the sidewalk in front of you, who lives closest to Kindergarten, and who gets to come to whose birthday party.
Pure cuteness. Three days later, I still get warm fuzzy feelings thinking about it.
|
July 2nd, 2008
09:26 am - Sometimes Failing is as Important as Succeeding
When I was in college I worked as a volunteer for the 2002 Winter Olympics. The application process and the training program were exciting. (The clothes were cool, too.) I was assigned as a personal assistant to the Austrian team. I was bubbling with anticipation.
The experience turned out to be a disappointing one. The Olympic Committee had engaged far too many volunteers and the Austrian team arrived with its own staff in tow. I spent most of my service hours sitting around a table with other volunteers, hoping someone might eventually need us for something. We were highly qualified people with busy, active lives. There wasn't a single one of us who couldn't think of five better ways we could have been using our time.
I might have been tempted to regret the experience, but a fellow volunteer (a university professor whose class I had taken the semester before) taught me otherwise. "Well," he said. "Now we know. Now we know we didn't miss anything. If we hadn't volunteered, we might have spent the next fifty years wondering if we'd opted out on the Chance of a Lifetime."
The older I get, the more valuable those words become to me.
I'm working on a lot of speculative projects right now. My novel might turn out to be a flop. My kids might be a nightmare as teenagers. Any one of a dozen different efforts might not pan out.
But you know what? If they don't, at least then I'll know. I won't lie awake nights asking myself whether I could have made that bestseller list. I won't spend my life wondering what might have happened if I'd been brave enough to step up to the plate and give it a try.
|
July 1st, 2008
11:50 am - Novel Revisions: Schizophrenic Chapters
The illustrious Mike Shultz is letting me critique his novel.
I don't typically critique novels because it takes so... dang... much... time, but this one had a premise that intrigued me, and Mike's a good writer, so I knew the process wouldn't be painful.
The entire experience has been incredibly educational. I thought I'd share some of the stuff I'm learning. For example:
Schizophrenic Chapters
Some novel chapters have an inherent sense of cohesion while others feel disoriented, like they're jumping around from topic to topic. The funny thing is, the schizophrenic chapters don't have any more scenes, settings, or characters than the cohesive ones. They just seem to be moving in four directions at once.
It took me a long time to realize that the cohesive chapters had a common thread running through all the mini-scenes. Even though they took place at different locations or with different characters, there was something that linked them all: either a chain of causality, or common theme (e.g. each mini-scene added new information regarding an ongoing mystery, or each mini-scene revolved around the same ongoing conflict).
And--here's the thing that amazed me--it turns out that it's not really very hard to create a common theme for the schizophrenic chapters. They're all part of the same novel, after all. The mini-scenes really are all connected. It's just a matter of emphasizing those connections and drawing the reader's attention to them. Voila! Schizophrenia eliminated.
|
June 24th, 2008
03:27 pm - Seamless Exposition (aka: How to Infodump without Looking Like It)
So yesterday I had an epiphany.
I've known forever that there are a lot of ways to feed exposition to the reader: dialogue, narrative summary, flashbacks, etc. The problem is, I've seen every one of these methods fall flat on its face at least as often as I've seen it succeed. I knew the different ways to infodump, but I couldn't figure what distinguishes good dumps from bad ones.
Here's my epiphany: You have to create an event to tie the exposition to.
Exposition for its own sake is a story-stopper. It interferes with the action, annoys the reader, and is frequently viewed as boring.
Exposition tied to an event progresses the story, heightens conflict (by helping to clarify stakes for the reader), and begins to feel indispensable rather than klunky.
Example: In my work-in-progress, the main character's mother died while performing a dangerous activity. I started thinking about events that might link to this fact and remembered that in Chapter 3 Mikaena's father and uncle are arguing about whether Mikaena should be allowed to perform a potentially dangerous task. It was a relatively minor matter to tweak this conversation so that it explodes into an argument about whether or not Uncle is to blame for Mikaena's mother's death.
It would have made a great lead-in to an expository paragraph about how Mikaena's mother died, but in the end, I didn't even need that. The argument itself conveyed all the important points. Voila! Infodump tied to event = seamless exposition.
Obviously, this technique may not work all the time. But I've already found it extremely useful, and I'm certainly going to be applying it frequently in the future.
|
June 23rd, 2008
01:17 pm - Slush Gripe of the Day
Flashbacks.
I know I've griped about this one before. But you know what? I've stopped reading at least four stories in the past half hour because of a flashback.
The story's going somewhere, I'm mildly interested... not fully hooked maybe, but willing to keep going and see what happens... and then everything comes to a screeching halt while the author backs up to fill me in on who so-and-so was and how the main character met her and about two sentences in I'm thinking: "You know what? It's not worth it." And I stop reading.
Flashbacks. I won't say they can't be done well, because they can. I've seen it. But nine times out of ten, they're a death knell.
|
June 17th, 2008
12:12 am - Fake Contest Alert
Apparently an SFWA-sponsored contest has been announced offering large cash prizes. This contest is a fraud and is not sponsored by SFWA. Details here.
|
June 16th, 2008
10:14 am - Slush Gripe of the Day
Magic pills. By which I mean: custom drugs that give you a spiritual experience, indoctrinate you with political views, deceive you into satisfaction with life, etc.
The concept of ingestible epiphanies has been pretty well explored. I won't say there's nothing more anybody could do with them, but if the central point of your story is to say, "Hey, what if there were this nifty pill that... [insert effect here]?" then I'm not very likely to like it.
|
June 12th, 2008
09:45 am - Has the Role of Editors Changed in the Past Fifty Years?
When I read books like Stephen King's On Writing, there is often the mention of some magazine editor whose scribbled notes at the bottom of rejection slips served as both encouragement and guiding light to the aspiring author. The particular example I'm thinking of is teenaged Stephen's note from a prominent magazine editor which read: 'Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%. Good luck.'
My first impulse when I read that was: 'Good editor! That's exactly what novice authors need to hear.'
My second thought was, 'Good gracious, if I wrote something like that on a rejection note, authors would lynch me as an insensitive jerk.'
The world is different now than it was when Stephen King was starting out. Authors are networked. Anyone with an internet connection and half a brain can download tons of writing advice. There's very little that an editor can tell an author that he probably hasn't already heard (and ignored) before.
(Yes, let's face it -- most of us ignore good advice more often than we take it. It's easier than actually having to make changes.)
So here's the question for the peanut gallery: What role should magazine editors be filling in this new, technologically-connected society? We are no longer needed as dispensers of pre-packaged writing advice. We are somewhat more useful in a one-on-one situation, I think, but there isn't always time for that. What kinds of editorial feedback have you generally found most helpful?
|
June 11th, 2008
09:58 am - Hold on to Your Horses
Pre-orders for Hold on to Your Horses are finally open!
I've had the chance to watch this book grow from the conceptualization phase through the contracting of the artist and into full development. Kind of fun, really, to have a front row seat on stuff that usually happens behind the closed doors of publishing companies.
The story centers on hyperactive little Amy, whose beautiful ideas always seem to land her in the time-out chair. Life looks bad until Amy's mother provides her with a powerful metaphor about creativity, self-control and... well, horses.
There's a free PDF available. It's worth downloading for the pictures alone.
|
June 10th, 2008
03:07 pm - Why Modern Readers are Less Tolerant of Description
This is just a personal theory, but hey, it makes sense:
One hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, the average reader did not travel widely and did not have access to full-color photographs or television. They had never seen pyramids, or elephants, or tropical rain forests. Many people had also never seen a prairie, a pine forest, a stretch of English farmland, or an industrial city. This means that the reader's repetoire of pre-conceived images was not as vast as the modern reader's.
Description was inherently interesting because it took readers somewhere they'd never been before. Description was also necessary because brief phrases like "whitewater rapids" or "towering cliff face" were not sufficient to call up any pre-conceived images.
In general, modern readers still like description, but their taste is different. They like their description in bits and pieces, interspersed around interesting events. Or, if a full paragraph is to be devoted to description, they expect it to do more than simply describe the landscape--they expect the description to cause them to view the landscape in a new way, or evoke new insights into the story, or both.
This is not to say that long descriptive paragraphs are inherently bad, or that there are no readers who like them. But as a rule, modern readers come to the page with vastly different experiences than readers of the last century. This is why "But [insert classic author] did it!" is not a valid justification for opening a story with five paragraphs of weather and landscape.
|
May 30th, 2008
09:24 am - Got Dragons?
James Maxey is hosting a dragon contest to celebrate the launch of his new blog. You can enter just by sending him an email, or for bonus prizes you can send him dragon artwork, dragon poetry (including haiku), or dragon recipes.
Prizes include copies of his new book, Dragonforge. If it's even half as good as the last one, it's well worth the effort of entering.
|
May 28th, 2008
06:21 pm - Warrior, Wisewoman is now available for pre-order!
"Warrior Wisewoman combines stories of women in struggles that range across political, biological, social, and even military lines in a future variably far away...women who may or may not fight with weapons, but always strive for something beyond the fight. Inventive, unusual, these are stories to ponder over time...whether the reader agrees that the women are warriors, or wise, or that anyone can be both."
—Elizabeth Moon
By all accounts, this looks to be a fine anthology. You can find more blurbs at the Norilana web site, as well as pre-order links for Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
My own story in this antho is a personal favorite. Mikaena is one of those protagonists who shows up uninvited on the author's doorstep and then sticks around inspiring stories. I've always liked her, so I suppose it's not surprising that her story has become the basis for the novel I'm working on.
Well, that and the fact that she lives on a nifty-cool planet with a day/night cycle that lasts for several months. ;)
|
May 27th, 2008
09:51 am - Donald Maass -- Writing the Breakout Novel
Just finished this book. Much of it was variations on stuff I've heard before, but there were some real gems, too. As I was reading it I had several flashes of inspiration for my novel-in-progress.
The most useful tidbit relates to character motivations. Maass suggests taking a scene and asking yourself what the protagonist's motivation is. The answer might be something like "needs to get information from the bad guy" or "trying to stay alive" or "looking for clues to solve the mystery". Now, Maass says, dig deeper. Dig all the way to the fundemental motivations, the ones that sound a bit corny. Deep down, the character may be motivated by the search for truth, or respect for life, or love.
Maass then says to flip it around; make the deep, underlying motivation (as opposed to the immediate goal) the character's most significant motivator during the scene, and see whether he or she behaves differently.
Ooh, I thought. Good idea.
|
|
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
nancyfulda's journal