Taboo: waking up
Joy Beeson
<introduction>
It looks as though if I want conversations, I'm going to have to start
one.
Context: my serious writing is non-fiction; I hang out here because
you guys used to have a magical talent for converting malignant posts
into enjoyable, intelligent conversations -- and without actually
working at it! You just weren't interested in insulting people and
punching noses, and followed up on stuff that *was* interesting.
My fiction is like fanfic: the only entertainment intended is my
own. The story quoted below is dead: it's as published as its going
to get, and I'm no longer interested in improving it. Might correct a
typo if I notice one.
</introduction>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advice often given to the neophyte writer is "don't start the story
with the protagonist waking up unless he wakes up to find a leprechaun
with an AK-47 sitting on his chest. It's natural to start the story
at the start of the day, but jump ahead to where something *happens*;
we aren't interested in watching the hero shower and get dressed."
So that's exactly what happens in this story: the protagonist wakes
up, takes a shower, and the Thing That Is Different doesn't happen
until he's deciding what clothes to put on way down in paragraph
seven.
I *think* I've gotten away with it because the yawns and shower are
infused with hints that We Are Not In Kansas, but am I fooling myself?
<hopes that general discussion of openings will ensue>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anjelan Spring
The cool light said that it was somewhat later than dawn. Cris kicked
off his covers and looked at his anklet. It was nearly six. He yawned
and stretched and thought of bracelets. Even Ivan, who resented
bracelets, said that it was proper that the subject should occupy his
mind. Ivan had said a lot of things. Yesterday he had not only
tolerated, but answered, some very personal questions.
Cris couldn't lie here forever. It was past time for exercise. At
the end of a joyfully strenuous fifth of an hour he was breathing fast
and perspiring just enough to enjoy a quick shower in blood-warm
water.
Ivan had once waxed eloquent over the forbidden pleasure of showering
in hot water. It sounded painful to Cris, but it was such a fond
memory for Ivan that Cris thought that if he ever got the chance, he
would try it.
Cris opened the mirror to comb his hair and waste a little time
admiring himself. He was indeed getting too tall and too well filled
out to be seen without controls, and too pretty to hide himself in a
boy's tunic. At Lissa's sixteen party some of the women had petted him
with an attitude entirely different from the way people cuddled Laif
and Clay. It must be soon.
Well, he had to cover himself with boy's clothes today. Dungarees or
tunic? It had been only the day before yesterday that Lissa was taken
off the schedule, and Cris wasn't sure that it was his turn to groom
Buttercup and Daisy. He punched up his schedule:
CRIS KILBUK:
Groom horses
Biochem class canceled
Report to Murphy Med immediately after breakfast
Afternoon free
Class cancelled! Who had a right to cancel his biochem lesson with no
notice and no explanation? Then he saw the third item. It had to be
Mother.
--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
Eric Ammadon
>It looks as though if I want conversations, I'm going to have to start
>one.
Either that, or mumble.
>Context: my serious writing is non-fiction;
What kind of non-fiction?
Do you find that writing fiction is less fulfilling than writing
non-fiction, or is it a matter of which is a better path toward paying
bills?
--
arggh, is it priate day again?
Gerry Quinn
jbe...@invalid.net.invalid says...
> Advice often given to the neophyte writer is "don't start the story
> with the protagonist waking up unless he wakes up to find a leprechaun
> with an AK-47 sitting on his chest. It's natural to start the story
> at the start of the day, but jump ahead to where something *happens*;
> we aren't interested in watching the hero shower and get dressed."
>
> So that's exactly what happens in this story: the protagonist wakes
> up, takes a shower, and the Thing That Is Different doesn't happen
> until he's deciding what clothes to put on way down in paragraph
> seven.
>
> I *think* I've gotten away with it because the yawns and shower are
> infused with hints that We Are Not In Kansas, but am I fooling myself?
[snip intro]
I don't think you have anything to worry about, pretty much everything
you describe seems fairly unconventional, even in the absence of
leprechauns toting assault rifles.
- Gerry Quinn
John Park
On a quick read, it doesn't seem a bad way to start. But when you come to
revise the whole draft, you might ask yourself if you could have started a
bit later in the day. The answer may well be No. I think it depends in
part on whether your story is a more-or-less-typical day in the life at an
interestingly strange community (probably No) or a plot-driven adventure
involving coming-of-age (maybe Yes, start closer to the first pivotal event).
At a guess your story is somewhere in between. So, it's not at all a bad
opening, but it may not be the best.
--John Park
Suzanne Blom
"Joy Beeson" <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:e6gri5d4gk3rjhjm7...@4ax.com...
you don't plan to revise it, but still--is the above sentence, which is in a
tense that doesn't let one know right away whether Cris is still thinking
about things. A "He got up and spent a joyfully...." might well clarify
things.
> Ivan had once waxed eloquent over the forbidden pleasure of showering
> in hot water. It sounded painful to Cris, but it was such a fond
> memory for Ivan that Cris thought that if he ever got the chance, he
> would try it.
>
> Cris opened the mirror to comb his hair and waste a little time
> admiring himself. He was indeed getting too tall and too well filled
> out to be seen without controls, and too pretty to hide himself in a
> boy's tunic. At Lissa's sixteen party some of the women had petted him
> with an attitude entirely different from the way people cuddled Laif
> and Clay. It must be soon.
>
> Well, he had to cover himself with boy's clothes today. Dungarees or
> tunic? It had been only the day before yesterday that Lissa was taken
> off the schedule, and Cris wasn't sure that it was his turn to groom
> Buttercup and Daisy. He punched up his schedule:
>
> CRIS KILBUK:
>
> Groom horses
> Biochem class canceled
> Report to Murphy Med immediately after breakfast
> Afternoon free
>
> Class cancelled! Who had a right to cancel his biochem lesson with no
> notice and no explanation? Then he saw the third item. It had to be
> Mother.
>
It did take me a second read to guess where this might be going, which is
probably just as well.
Michelle Bottorff
> I *think* I've gotten away with it because the yawns and shower are
> infused with hints that We Are Not In Kansas, but am I fooling myself?
> <hopes that general discussion of openings will ensue>
I think you've gotten away with it, and I would definately read on
because I want an explanation of the Not in Kansas stuff, if for no
other reason.
But I don't know that I have much more to say other than that. :(
I tried blathering about what *I* was doing, but it had nothing to do
with your message, and I erased it.
I seem to be doing that a lot this past year or so. I'll blather away
quite happily for paragraphs and paragraphs, but I can hardly ever bring
myself to post it.
Bill Swears
Personal take, on one level you've gotten away with it. IF this was a
novel, I'd be happy enough, from my perspective. I like your writing.
But, as a short story, it's a good policy to count words, and trim out
those that don't add to the story in at least two or three ways. One of
the reasons I become vexed with Dan Goodman's openings is because I
never see a finished product, and I always want to read more.
Dan has a way of making the opening seem homely, while giving both
background and action in the same breath.
Since I can't do that, I usually start en media res, and slip in
cultural details while the copilot fights to stop the spin and start an
engine, and the passengers fight to subdue the erstwhile hijacker who
shot the pilot with a drug that turned him into a werewoolfe.
Or some such thing.
Bill
Bill Swears
methods. For this thread, I'm going to try to avoid dragging up my old
stories. I think the regulars know enough about those.
Bill
--
Living on the polemic may be temporarily satisfying, but it will raise
your blood-pressure, and gives you tunnel vision.
David Friedman
Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
I also write mostly non-fiction, although at the moment my main writing
project is fiction.
It might be interesting to discuss similarities and differences. Back
when I joined the group, one of its mantras seemed to be "fiction is
different." But I don't think it was all that clear just what differs
and why.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_
Brenda Clough
> Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>> Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> I *think* I've gotten away with it because the yawns and shower are
>>> infused with hints that We Are Not In Kansas, but am I fooling myself?
>>> <hopes that general discussion of openings will ensue>
>>
>> I think you've gotten away with it, and I would definately read on
>> because I want an explanation of the Not in Kansas stuff, if for no
>> other reason.
>>
>> But I don't know that I have much more to say other than that. :(
>>
>>
>> I tried blathering about what *I* was doing, but it had nothing to do
>> with your message, and I erased it.
>> I seem to be doing that a lot this past year or so. I'll blather away
>> quite happily for paragraphs and paragraphs, but I can hardly ever bring
>> myself to post it.
> Joy wants you to talk about your methods. I want you to talk about your
> methods. For this thread, I'm going to try to avoid dragging up my old
> stories. I think the regulars know enough about those.
>
> Bill
>
Start a new thread!
Brenda
Brenda Clough
> In article <okqri55t5cnf60ovo...@4ax.com>,
> Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>
>> Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> It looks as though if I want conversations, I'm going to have to start
>>> one.
>> Either that, or mumble.
>>
>>
>>> Context: my serious writing is non-fiction;
>> What kind of non-fiction?
>>
>> Do you find that writing fiction is less fulfilling than writing
>> non-fiction, or is it a matter of which is a better path toward paying
>> bills?
>
> I also write mostly non-fiction, although at the moment my main writing
> project is fiction.
>
> It might be interesting to discuss similarities and differences. Back
> when I joined the group, one of its mantras seemed to be "fiction is
> different." But I don't think it was all that clear just what differs
> and why.
>
The one true thing about all the arts -- all writing, fiction and non,
all theater, all dance etc. -- is that you have to hold onto your
audience. If the reader can put down the book, if a guy in the audience
finds it possible to stand up and walk out, if the viewer in the Lazyboy
is able to change the channel, BZZT! Bad, bad, bad.
So, to hang onto your reader, you marshall all appropriate arts. In
fiction you wield plot and character like a sword. In nonfiction you
can't use plot and character, but you do have theme. Everything, even
the shortest nonfiction, should be ABOUT something.
Brenda
Bill Swears
> David Friedman wrote:
>>
>> It might be interesting to discuss similarities and differences. Back
>> when I joined the group, one of its mantras seemed to be "fiction is
>> different." But I don't think it was all that clear just what differs
>> and why.
>>
>
>
> The one true thing about all the arts -- all writing, fiction and non,
> all theater, all dance etc. -- is that you have to hold onto your
> audience. If the reader can put down the book, if a guy in the audience
> finds it possible to stand up and walk out, if the viewer in the Lazyboy
> is able to change the channel, BZZT! Bad, bad, bad.
>
> So, to hang onto your reader, you marshall all appropriate arts. In
> fiction you wield plot and character like a sword. In nonfiction you
> can't use plot and character, but you do have theme. Everything, even
> the shortest nonfiction, should be ABOUT something.
>
> Brenda
mean the most fact-filled, but the most enjoyable, and therefore most
effective for me, uses fictive techniques. Reading Jimmy Doolittle's "I
Could Never Be So Lucky Again" was like reading a set of intense
short-stories. When I finished the book, I wanted to be Jimmy
Doolittle. It's the only time I've ever felt that way.
I similarly enjoyed chunks of Yeager's book, when it came out, but have
never owned it.
Bill Swears
but I now see that it seemed like something else.
David Friedman
Brenda Clough <Brenda...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The one true thing about all the arts -- all writing, fiction and non,
> all theater, all dance etc. -- is that you have to hold onto your
> audience. If the reader can put down the book, if a guy in the audience
> finds it possible to stand up and walk out, if the viewer in the Lazyboy
> is able to change the channel, BZZT! Bad, bad, bad.
Less true for a textbook, since the person who chooses it isn't the one
who has to actually read it.
When I rewrote my _Price Theory_ into a book designed to teach economics
to the intelligent layman, it occurred to me that nobody would make the
reader read it. So I deliberately designed each chapter with a hook at
the beginning, something that would, I hoped, get the reader's interest,
prsent him with a puzzle, and so get him to read through to the end.
It's been my most successful book.
J.Pascal
> <introduction>
>
> It looks as though if I want conversations, I'm going to have to start
> one.
>
> Context: my serious writing is non-fiction; I hang out here because
> you guys used to have a magical talent for converting malignant posts
> into enjoyable, intelligent conversations -- and without actually
> working at it! You just weren't interested in insulting people and
> punching noses, and followed up on stuff that *was* interesting.
>
> My fiction is like fanfic: the only entertainment intended is my
> own. The story quoted below is dead: it's as published as its going
> to get, and I'm no longer interested in improving it. Might correct a
> typo if I notice one.
>
> </introduction>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Advice often given to the neophyte writer is "don't start the story
> with the protagonist waking up unless he wakes up to find a leprechaun
> with an AK-47 sitting on his chest. It's natural to start the story
> at the start of the day, but jump ahead to where something *happens*;
> we aren't interested in watching the hero shower and get dressed."
I think it likely has more to do with common neophyte mistakes than
anything else. It's a natural sort of thing to do, to decide to
start when a person wakes up on the day "when everything changes."
When the trigger event happens during the morning routine anyway,
beginning by waking up isn't that big a stretch.
No, it's not a leprechaun with an AK-47 on your chest, but it's not a
long establishment of a normal day leading up to the "odd thing that
happened over lunch" either.
-Julie
Eric Ammadon
>In article <okqri55t5cnf60ovo...@4ax.com>,
> Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>
>> Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> >It looks as though if I want conversations, I'm going to have to start
>> >one.
>>
>> Either that, or mumble.
>>
>>
>> >Context: my serious writing is non-fiction;
>>
>> What kind of non-fiction?
>>
>> Do you find that writing fiction is less fulfilling than writing
>> non-fiction, or is it a matter of which is a better path toward paying
>> bills?
>
>I also write mostly non-fiction, although at the moment my main writing
>project is fiction.
>
>It might be interesting to discuss similarities and differences. Back
>when I joined the group, one of its mantras seemed to be "fiction is
>different." But I don't think it was all that clear just what differs
>and why.
People generally expect non-fiction to be backed by something
resembling fact.
Fiction doesn't have that baggage, as long as you don't shred the
reader's WSOD to the pitch-it-point, you're free to go places that
fact can't imitate. To make non-fiction elicit emotion, especially
specific emotions in specific sequence, is so difficult that it
approaches the impossible.
Eric Ammadon
Half a bottle of a good wine before sitting down should help you
overcome those inhibitions. <g>
Really, I'd much rather read your blathering about whatever you're
working on (or even more interesting, how you feel about it) than some
crap about what sexualities are currently approved by the neo-nazi
community, y'know?
If everybody here is going to be so freaking responsible that they
delete everything they almost posted, it's gonna come down to spam,
sermons from the unthinking, and messages from people who just have to
let us know that nothing we say is worth their time.
Live a little, even a damned flamewar would be better than the spam
and crossposted crap that's been so copiously spewed lately.
Eric Ammadon
>Dan has a way of making the opening seem homely, while giving both
>background and action in the same breath.
Did you mean "homely" or "homey"? Do his openings have buck teeth, or
are they comfortable? <g>
>Since I can't do that, I usually start en media res, and slip in
>cultural details while the copilot fights to stop the spin and start an
>engine, and the passengers fight to subdue the erstwhile hijacker who
>shot the pilot with a drug that turned him into a werewoolfe.
>
>Or some such thing.
Maybe you _can_ do it Bill, but you haven't realized it yet.
Every action hero has a mundane life too, and not all action occurs on
the "job".
Have you ever tried starting in the middle of some disaster in the
protag's homelife? He tries to use the blender to make breakfast and
it explodes because his 4-year-old put a couple marbles in it? His
Ferrari won't start because his wife drove it and left the lights on,
so he has to borrow his son's ancient jalopy to drive to the
oh-so-fancy high-tech office? He runs out of gas on the way to
scramble and save the world, and has to hitch-hike?
Just something to think about, we all have a tendency to limit our
futures to the ruts of our past.
Gawd, I truly miss writing, but I'm stuck in a rut from the past for a
while, and instead of being in rut (sorry, bad joke) here I sit
vaccuming the damn cat! <g>
netcat
jbe...@invalid.net.invalid says...
> Advice often given to the neophyte writer is "don't start the story
> with the protagonist waking up unless he wakes up to find a leprechaun
> with an AK-47 sitting on his chest.
After this approach gets turned into a cliche, the opposite can be very
refreshing.
> we aren't interested in watching the hero shower and get dressed."
If it helps establish character or background, I would be.
rgds,
netcat
Remus Shepherd
> Advice often given to the neophyte writer is "don't start the story
> with the protagonist waking up unless he wakes up to find a leprechaun
> with an AK-47 sitting on his chest. It's natural to start the story
> at the start of the day, but jump ahead to where something *happens*;
> we aren't interested in watching the hero shower and get dressed."
> So that's exactly what happens in this story: the protagonist wakes
> up, takes a shower, and the Thing That Is Different doesn't happen
> until he's deciding what clothes to put on way down in paragraph
> seven.
> I *think* I've gotten away with it because the yawns and shower are
> infused with hints that We Are Not In Kansas, but am I fooling myself?
> <hopes that general discussion of openings will ensue>
The only rule is to 'be interesting'. Whether that involves a leprechaun
with an AK47 or a bed full of sticky lollipops or an ankle timepiece, doesn't
matter.
I think you managed the 'wake up' scene very well. My complaint would be
the 'protagonist looks at himself in the mirror' scene, which is a cliche
of its own.
... ...
Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com>
Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/remus_shepherd/
netcat
As long as we're doing complaints, mine would have been about some
extremely short sentences.
rgds,
netcat
Eric Ammadon
Everybody seems to be telling you how you should have done it, or that
you did it perfectly well. I'd consider cutting most of it and moving
forward with the action. Early reminiscence and mental meandering is
something I usually find boring. It would leave something like this:
>The cool light said that it was somewhat later than dawn.
<major_snippage>
> He punched up his schedule:
>
>CRIS KILBUK:
>
>Groom horses
>Biochem class canceled
>Report to Murphy Med immediately after breakfast
>Afternoon free
>
>Class cancelled! Who had a right to cancel his biochem lesson with no
>notice and no explanation? Then he saw the third item. It had to be
>Mother.
--
Michelle Bottorff
> I was suggesting that Michelle blather about her methods on openings,
> but I now see that it seemed like something else.
My method for opening a story is to start it where it seems to me the
story starts, and then hope I don't get too many complaints about it.
Sometimes I think I have spent more time rewriting beginnings, trying to
take into consideration all the bewilderingly conflicting advice I get,
than I have spend on all other kinds of revision altogether.
Cantata is a wonderful case in point. I got so many complaints that
people were getting lost, that I deliberately pushed the story start
back to a point where the story hadn't really started yet, so that they
only had to deal with one thing at a time. And then, of course, fewer
people complained that I'd lost them, but instead I got complaints that
the story handn't really started yet.
I got a similar thing with Talking With Winds. One set of crits said
"push back opening, we want to a chance to see the world before the
action starts, and the next set of crit said, we don't need to see this
stuff, please skip ahead to where the action starts.
I've pretty much decided that it is impossible to please everyone, and
unless there is some other specific problem that needs to be addressed,
I'm best off just going with my gut instinct on where/when to start. It
will be no more wrong than anything else I try.
--
Michelle Bottorff -> Chelle B. -> Shelby
L. Shelby, Writer http://www.lshelby.com/
Livejournal http://lavenderbard.livejournal.com/
rec.arts.sf.composition FAQ http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
Michelle Bottorff
> Really, I'd much rather read your blathering about whatever you're
> working on (or even more interesting, how you feel about it) than some
> crap about what sexualities are currently approved by the neo-nazi
> community, y'know?
Even if it's me blathering about how I started mentally swaping
different sets of character pairings in and out of the various romantic
scenes I've written, and in so doing I came up with a scenario where one
of my favorite characters commits suicide? (Not that they aren't all
favorites, but still -- I lost him, Wah!, and I wasn't even doing
genuine plot noodling, I was just playing a game.)
The most likely direction I can see describing that scenario taking us
is ye old debate on what does and does not count as rape, which is not
only boring, but beside the point. It doesn't matter what *we* think
is or isn't rape, it's what the *characters* think, and how that makes
them react that matters.
And my characters all react *differently*. That was the one actual
point to the entire exercise.
How I got there, was that I was nattering on about how a small story
point changed between the script version I had previously written for a
graphic novel, and the storyboard version I am currently working on. A
character finds himselves alone and with the girl he loves in his arms,
and it's a bad idea to do anything about it. Doing anything will get
him *hurt*. In the script he is reluctantly sensible, and ends the
encounter -- but when I got the pictures sketched out up to that point,
I couldn't get him to do it. He was going "Let go of her? No way in
hell!"
Which lead me to wondering if I was setting myself up for the accusation
that my heroes are all idiots, to which I can only respond, "Well, maybe
they are, but they aren't all idiots in that particular *way*!" and to
prove it to myself I started mentally swapping other characters into
that situation and watching it play very differently each time, and then
I started swapping him and his partner into their romantic moments
(fair's fair) and, well, it went on from there until eventually I
swapped the wrong couple into the wrong situation and it got kind of
nasty. :(
Michelle Bottorff
I can't tell whether or not this would work for me, because it's too
short.
Suzanne Blom
"Eric Ammadon" <n...@spam.thankee> wrote in message
news:2shui55972penqu1n...@4ax.com...
and therefore fact-like.
For me also a nonfiction piece has to elicit emotions or it isn't much fun.
My favorite nonfiction always has at least a touch of "Oh, wow, is that
cool." That's a good part of why I like science books.
Bill Swears
>
> I think you managed the 'wake up' scene very well. My complaint would be
> the 'protagonist looks at himself in the mirror' scene, which is a cliche
> of its own.
You know, I've never become sensitized to mirror scenes. I look at a
mirror every day of my life, usually several times. So when a character
looks in the mirror, it seems mundane and believable. My only concern
with the mirror scene is that I don't usually go very far to describe my
protag. I'd rather let my audience find her own way of identifying with
the protag. I describe other characters a bit more fully, but even they
are very much filtered by the protags perceptions.
Some readers seem to want detailed character descriptions. But my take
is that most prefer a tag that they can use to identify characters,
while giving them room to create much their own mind picture.
Bill Swears
>
>
> I've pretty much decided that it is impossible to please everyone, and
> unless there is some other specific problem that needs to be addressed,
> I'm best off just going with my gut instinct on where/when to start. It
> will be no more wrong than anything else I try.
There is truth to that, but I also like to remember one of Pat Wrede's
comments that if everybody is complaining about a scene, there probably
is a problem, even if nobody has really figured out what it is.
I have to admit that I stalled on Cantata, even though I was enjoying
the story. It may have more to do with the fact that I wasn't trying to
crit, but was reading e-text. I generally don't read e-text for
pleasure, because most of my computer time is spent producing one thing
or another.
Will in New Haven
wrote:
> In article <hgmn7j$f1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Brenda Clough <BrendaWri...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > The one true thing about all the arts -- all writing, fiction and non,
> > all theater, all dance etc. -- is that you have to hold onto your
> > audience. If the reader can put down the book, if a guy in the audience
> > finds it possible to stand up and walk out, if the viewer in the Lazyboy
> > is able to change the channel, BZZT! Bad, bad, bad.
>
> Less true for a textbook, since the person who chooses it isn't the one
> who has to actually read it.
>
> When I rewrote my _Price Theory_ into a book designed to teach economics
> to the intelligent layman, it occurred to me that nobody would make the
> reader read it. So I deliberately designed each chapter with a hook at
> the beginning, something that would, I hoped, get the reader's interest,
> prsent him with a puzzle, and so get him to read through to the end.
>
> It's been my most successful book.
In a field where the poll question "read an economics book or eat a
shoe" was usually answered "Is it a NEW shoe?"
--
Will in New Haven
Brenda Clough
> On Dec 19, 11:25 pm, Joy Beeson <jbee...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
>> <introduction>
>>
>> It looks as though if I want conversations, I'm going to have to start
>> one.
>>
>> Context: my serious writing is non-fiction; I hang out here because
>> you guys used to have a magical talent for converting malignant posts
>> into enjoyable, intelligent conversations -- and without actually
>> working at it! You just weren't interested in insulting people and
>> punching noses, and followed up on stuff that *was* interesting.
>>
>>
>
As to beginnings, it is perfectly OK to begin writing a book any darn
place you want. You have to get over the hump first, of HAVING WRITTEN
the thing. Get it all onto paper, any old how. Then, by careful
observation and cold thought, you can usually find the proper place for
the work to begin. It is hardly ever the first few words you put onto
the paper or screen, but that is unimportant. Because YOU WILL FIX IT.
It is very common indeed to have to roll along the runway for awhile
until you achieve takeoff speed. Nobody has to see that boring bit,
afterward, but you had to write it to get to the true beginning.
Now, in the finished work? The story should begin when things start to
really happen. It is OK for this point to be when you wake up in the
morning, IF things start to happen at that moment -- when you open your
eyes and discover you are a cockroach, for example. If you do not
achieve cockroachdom until noon, then noon is the place to begin.
Brenda
Brenda Clough
The other True Thought about beginnings, is that a solid majority of
readers picks up a book at Borders and opens it to the first page. If
your first page is not gripping, it doesn't matter how thrilling page 20
is, the scorching hot sex orgy interlude on pages 68 through 119, the
galaxy-wide senses-stunning space battle on pages 244 through 312. If
the book or magazine goes unpurchased, they will go unread.
It is therefore perfectly sound to put your thumb on the scale. Start
with the most exciting and thrilling and INVOLVING thing you possibly
can. Hook 'em on page one, sentence one (two at the very most!)-- or
lose 'em forever.
Brenda
David Friedman
Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <okqri55t5cnf60ovo...@4ax.com>,
> > Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
> >
> >> Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
> >>
> >> >It looks as though if I want conversations, I'm going to have to start
> >> >one.
> >>
> >> Either that, or mumble.
> >>
> >>
> >> >Context: my serious writing is non-fiction;
> >>
> >> What kind of non-fiction?
> >>
> >> Do you find that writing fiction is less fulfilling than writing
> >> non-fiction, or is it a matter of which is a better path toward paying
> >> bills?
> >
> >I also write mostly non-fiction, although at the moment my main writing
> >project is fiction.
> >
> >It might be interesting to discuss similarities and differences. Back
> >when I joined the group, one of its mantras seemed to be "fiction is
> >different." But I don't think it was all that clear just what differs
> >and why.
>
> People generally expect non-fiction to be backed by something
> resembling fact.
Or at least to give a convincing illusion of being so backed. It still
counts as non-fiction if a well informed reader can figure out that the
facts are almost all bogus.
> Fiction doesn't have that baggage, as long as you don't shred the
> reader's WSOD to the pitch-it-point, you're free to go places that
> fact can't imitate. To make non-fiction elicit emotion, especially
> specific emotions in specific sequence, is so difficult that it
> approaches the impossible.
Not true of biography, which is non-fiction. Not true of the sorts of
non-fiction which portray a sequence of (purportedly real) events which
the reader is supposed to care about. Imagine, for example, an account
of a mine disaster and rescue. More nearly true of an engineering
textbook, say.
Joy Beeson
<sue...@execpc.com> wrote:
> I think this may well be the right pace to start. My only problem--I know,
> you don't plan to revise it, but still--is the above sentence, which is in a
> tense that doesn't let one know right away whether Cris is still thinking
> about things. A "He got up and spent a joyfully...." might well clarify
> things.
That ties in neatly with an essay on transitions that I'm marinating.
(Said essay is three screens long and I haven't said anything yet; it
might not mature.)
So now I need to reflect that big transitions aren't the only
transitions -- even a gap of a few seconds may need to be signalled.
And this applies to my non-fiction, but it's gaps of topic rather than
gaps of time . . .
--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
Joy Beeson
wrote:
> What kind of non-fiction?
How to. And lots and lots of letters.
> Do you find that writing fiction is less fulfilling than writing
> non-fiction, or is it a matter of which is a better path toward paying
> bills?
I did get paid for an essay once.
I write non-fiction because I'm much better at it than I am at
fiction.
Not to mention that, given a story and an essay of equal merit, the
story is no better for whiling away a pleasant hour than thousands of
equally-good stories, but the essay conveys information that nobody
else has, or at least presents a unique organization that is sure to
convey it more palatably for *somebody*.
And sometimes the people who read my essays write back.
John Park
> The other True Thought about beginnings, is that a solid majority of
> readers picks up a book at Borders and opens it to the first page. If
> your first page is not gripping, it doesn't matter how thrilling page 20
> is, the scorching hot sex orgy interlude on pages 68 through 119, the
> galaxy-wide senses-stunning space battle on pages 244 through 312. If
> the book or magazine goes unpurchased, they will go unread.
>
> It is therefore perfectly sound to put your thumb on the scale. Start
> with the most exciting and thrilling and INVOLVING thing you possibly
> can. Hook 'em on page one, sentence one (two at the very most!)-- or
> lose 'em forever.
>
While this may be true for books, does it apply quite so crudely for short
pieces? (There's a similar argument about the role of titles in the two
cases.) With a book, you're trying to sell the work to the reader; for a
short piece, you're trying to sell it to an *editor*. It's his or her job
to sell the whole anthology, magazine etc. to the reader. Perhaps there has
to be something about the publication that will make a reader want to buy
it on the spot, but it doesn't have to be your own opening paragraph.
Certainly as a reader, I'm more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to
a story that seems to start off awkwardly if I know an editor I respect has
bought it.
--John Park
Bill Swears
> Brenda Clough (Brenda...@yahoo.com) writes:
>>
>> It is therefore perfectly sound to put your thumb on the scale. Start
>> with the most exciting and thrilling and INVOLVING thing you possibly
>> can. Hook 'em on page one, sentence one (two at the very most!)-- or
>> lose 'em forever.
>>
> While this may be true for books, does it apply quite so crudely for short
> pieces? (There's a similar argument about the role of titles in the two
> cases.) With a book, you're trying to sell the work to the reader; for a
> short piece, you're trying to sell it to an *editor*. It's his or her job
> to sell the whole anthology, magazine etc. to the reader. Perhaps there has
> to be something about the publication that will make a reader want to buy
> it on the spot, but it doesn't have to be your own opening paragraph.
>
> Certainly as a reader, I'm more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to
> a story that seems to start off awkwardly if I know an editor I respect has
> bought it.
>
> --John Park
you're unlikely to be as easy to hook as the average B&N customer.
Shorts tend to start faster, not slower than novels, since common wisdom
says that every word should count in a short.
Eric Ammadon
Yes, I think WSOD predictably breaks at the point where you cannot see
the events depicted as being possible in any world you can imagine.
That's a likely reason for consistency's being such a writer's
touchstone.
>For me also a nonfiction piece has to elicit emotions or it isn't much fun.
>My favorite nonfiction always has at least a touch of "Oh, wow, is that
>cool." That's a good part of why I like science books.
Science books, especially technical reference books, are fine with me
whether they elicit "wow, cool" emotions or not -- in fact I prefer
not, since I'd rather not be distracted from the information at hand.
Usually, if I don't already have some "wow, cool" task that requires
the information, I'll be otherwise occupied.
I dislike non-fiction that elicits strong emotions. I don't need to
*feel* the pain experienced by starving children, it's bad enough just
knowing about it on an intellectual basis. The facts alone are more
than sufficient to get me steamed up about things, and if they're not
then I don't need lied to in order to provoke my emotions.
Some people seem to enjoy non-fiction that provokes their emotions. I
don't understand that, which could be why it seems to me that it's
difficult to do. Certainly a subject can be chosen, and aspects of
the subject chosen, with the intent of provoking certain emotional
reactions. But to me it seems like information-slanting, like
propaganda, and whether the intent is good or ill I'm not much
interested in being on either end of it. Other than that, methods of
eliciting emotion in non-fiction are more or less "beyond me".
I want non-fiction to be informative and as brief as possible, for
entertainment fiction's my preference. I recall a sci-fi book called
_Gold_Star_ which described the "blink device" that was used for
transportation at hyper-light speeds as not being understood by
anyone, even its inventor; that's something to think about, which is
what my flavor of geekiness finds entertaining.
Eric Ammadon
>On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 02:17:10 -0700, Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee>
>wrote:
>
>> What kind of non-fiction?
>
>How to. And lots and lots of letters.
>
>> Do you find that writing fiction is less fulfilling than writing
>> non-fiction, or is it a matter of which is a better path toward paying
>> bills?
>
>I did get paid for an essay once.
>
>I write non-fiction because I'm much better at it than I am at
>fiction.
Perhaps someday you'll be even better at fiction. Depends on what you
want, I think. I asked because I was curious, I used to write
non-fiction for a living. Technical reference material mostly. It
wasn't much fun but it bought food and clothing for the spawn. <g>
>Not to mention that, given a story and an essay of equal merit, the
>story is no better for whiling away a pleasant hour than thousands of
>equally-good stories, but the essay conveys information that nobody
>else has, or at least presents a unique organization that is sure to
>convey it more palatably for *somebody*.
Stories can convey information that nobody else has too, and can
present it from a unique viewpoint that people may find enjoyable.
>And sometimes the people who read my essays write back.
The same could be said for stories.
I'm lazy. Rather than find some character who has a life worth
writing a biography about, and doing thousands of hours of interviews,
and cherry-picking the events that can turn a life into a story worth
reading, I'd rather just make the whole thing up.
On the other hand writing some articles about offgrid living, creating
your own electricity, designing and building a house, making fine
cabinets, someday those might work their way up my interest queue to a
place closer to the top.
Currently I'm extremly busy at the activity of shirking the effort
that I need to put into building some tools that will help an idiot
keep chunks of language organized through change. Once that's done,
I'll either write a novel or find some other excuse.
Zee cat must be vacuum!
Eric Ammadon
>Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>
>> Really, I'd much rather read your blathering about whatever you're
>> working on (or even more interesting, how you feel about it) than some
>> crap about what sexualities are currently approved by the neo-nazi
>> community, y'know?
>
>Even if it's me blathering about how I started mentally swaping
>different sets of character pairings in and out of the various romantic
>scenes I've written, and in so doing I came up with a scenario where one
>of my favorite characters commits suicide? (Not that they aren't all
>favorites, but still -- I lost him, Wah!, and I wasn't even doing
>genuine plot noodling, I was just playing a game.)
>
>The most likely direction I can see describing that scenario taking us
>is ye old debate on what does and does not count as rape, which is not
>only boring, but beside the point. It doesn't matter what *we* think
>is or isn't rape, it's what the *characters* think, and how that makes
>them react that matters.
Ah, the good old "what constitutes rape" flamewar. I think that rape
amounts to sex that somebody complains about loudly, either during or
afterward (and some marriages may qualify in their entirety), but yes,
it's a subject probably best avoided (and certainly overworked).
>And my characters all react *differently*. That was the one actual
>point to the entire exercise.
>
>
>How I got there, was that I was nattering on about how a small story
>point changed between the script version I had previously written for a
>graphic novel, and the storyboard version I am currently working on. A
>character finds himselves alone and with the girl he loves in his arms,
>and it's a bad idea to do anything about it. Doing anything will get
>him *hurt*. In the script he is reluctantly sensible, and ends the
>encounter -- but when I got the pictures sketched out up to that point,
>I couldn't get him to do it. He was going "Let go of her? No way in
>hell!"
>
>Which lead me to wondering if I was setting myself up for the accusation
>that my heroes are all idiots, to which I can only respond, "Well, maybe
>they are, but they aren't all idiots in that particular *way*!" and to
>prove it to myself I started mentally swapping other characters into
>that situation and watching it play very differently each time, and then
>I started swapping him and his partner into their romantic moments
>(fair's fair) and, well, it went on from there until eventually I
>swapped the wrong couple into the wrong situation and it got kind of
>nasty. :(
The thing that I notice most from what you've posted here is that for
you romance, and romantic entanglement, seems to be a very important
factor. It makes me curious about whether that's "a woman thing" or
if it's "a michelle thing".
For me it's "an incidental thing", just as a palace plot is "an
incidental thing".
I'd be much more likely to write the (totally fictitious) story of how
Nikola Tesla actually discovered everything there is to understand
about electricity, realized that the Earth could be used as a gigantic
battery, recognized that people being what they are they'd suck the
battery dry and the Earth would implode, and determined that it would
be better if he simply appeared to be a hoaxter and died in obscure
poverty.
But I've always been a geeky kid who would rather read about
_Tom_Swift_And_His_Jetmarine_ or _Thuvia_Maid_Of_Mars_ than something
like _Sense_And_Sensibility_ or _Vanity_Fair_, I suppose because
figuring out has always been more interesting to me than groping and
grasping. (Not that I've anything against a good grope, mind!)
Eric Ammadon
I stopped looking in mirrors a long time ago, never anything there to
see.
Eric Ammadon
Jacey Bedford
Bottorff <mbot...@lshelby.com> writes
>I've pretty much decided that it is impossible to please everyone, and
>unless there is some other specific problem that needs to be addressed,
>I'm best off just going with my gut instinct on where/when to start.
>It will be no more wrong than anything else I try.
It seems that: 'You've started in the wrong place,' is often shorthand
for : 'There's something not quite right with this but I don't know what
it is.' I've had the same runaround with one of my earlier books, spent
a lot of time writing three earlier chapters but ended up ditching them
again (though keeping spome bits as flashbacks). It turned out that I
had started in more or less the right place, but I needed to dripfeed in
a few more background details and cut out some of the irrelevant trivia
that I'd got as worldbuilding.
Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford
Jacey Bedford
<n...@spam.thankee> writes
other way to say 'This is not Kansas.'
Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford
J.F. Cornwall
Michelle Bottorff
> > I've pretty much decided that it is impossible to please everyone, and
> > unless there is some other specific problem that needs to be addressed,
> > I'm best off just going with my gut instinct on where/when to start. It
> > will be no more wrong than anything else I try.
>
> There is truth to that, but I also like to remember one of Pat Wrede's
> comments that if everybody is complaining about a scene, there probably
> is a problem, even if nobody has really figured out what it is.
My beginnings may well have problems.
If so, I haven't figured what exactly they are, let alone how to fix
them. Trying to do what everyone tells me I should doesn't seem to have
helped much. I need to understand a problem before I can fix it.
Sometimes it seems like I'm an incredibly slow learner. :(
It took me a couple years to figure out that the problem with Dark Moon
Light (the short story that is up on my website) was that there wasn't a
story there at all... I ended up throwing everything out but the
starting set up, and rewriting the entire thing fom scratch -- the
current version doesn't have even a single sentence in common with the
first version. I didn't figure out what was wrong with Rune & Fire
until I was wrestling with a similar problem during my Cantata
revisions, and I still haven't gone back to try fix it. Grappling with
the problems Cantata had took me so long, I actually ended up writing
Talking With Winds in the middle of them. That's how I got started on
the write a novel, go back and revise the previous novel cycle. I came
off Cantata revisions, and Talking With Winds hadn't been looked at
since I hit the end, but I was sooooo sick of revising by that point
that I wrote Eyes of Infistar instead. Then I revised Winds, then wrote
Pavane, then I revised Eyes...
Suzanne Blom
"Joy Beeson" <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:4ri0j518t85os1mu9...@4ax.com...
interesting is that sometimes I can go, "Yeah, I've got enough for a couple
paragraphs about X," but, when I attempt to write it down, it becomes
glaringly obvious that more research is required.
Suzanne Blom
"Michelle Bottorff" <mbot...@lshelby.com> wrote in message
news:1jb35ul.m6iua71i8jipqN%mbot...@lshelby.com...
>
> My beginnings may well have problems.
>
> If so, I haven't figured what exactly they are, let alone how to fix
> them. Trying to do what everyone tells me I should doesn't seem to have
> helped much. I need to understand a problem before I can fix it.
>
> Sometimes it seems like I'm an incredibly slow learner. :(
>
> It took me a couple years to figure out that the problem with Dark Moon
> Light (the short story that is up on my website) was that there wasn't a
> story there at all... I ended up throwing everything out but the
> starting set up, and rewriting the entire thing fom scratch -- the
> current version doesn't have even a single sentence in common with the
> first version. I didn't figure out what was wrong with Rune & Fire
> until I was wrestling with a similar problem during my Cantata
> revisions, and I still haven't gone back to try fix it. Grappling with
> the problems Cantata had took me so long, I actually ended up writing
> Talking With Winds in the middle of them. That's how I got started on
> the write a novel, go back and revise the previous novel cycle. I came
> off Cantata revisions, and Talking With Winds hadn't been looked at
> since I hit the end, but I was sooooo sick of revising by that point
> that I wrote Eyes of Infistar instead. Then I revised Winds, then wrote
> Pavane, then I revised Eyes...
>
kept saying "more info, more info" until it got to the point where they
said, "Sounds like an infodump." I gave it one more half-hearted pass then
gave up because I was sick of it. I just went back about four years later,
&, you know, it sounds pretty good. Still got some stuff to fix in the
middle, but I think I can do that.
So writing one, writing another, revising the first sounds about right to
me.
Suzanne Blom
"J.F. Cornwall" <JCor...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:Vt6Ym.104446$Wf2....@newsfe23.iad...
Eric Ammadon
Now, now. <g>
Nah, not a vampire, though I do keep strange hours.
But after you've looked at the same ugly mug for long enough, it's
like reading the same story the thousandth time, your eyes just move
over it without seeing a thing.
Michelle Bottorff
> The thing that I notice most from what you've posted here is that for
> you romance, and romantic entanglement, seems to be a very important
> factor. It makes me curious about whether that's "a woman thing" or
> if it's "a michelle thing".
Well, statistically speaking, women are more likely to be more into it
than men. But I'm not sure where that gets you. For the most part my
husband reads the same romances I read, and doesn't read the same
romances I don't read.
> But I've always been a geeky kid who would rather read about
> _Tom_Swift_And_His_Jetmarine_ or _Thuvia_Maid_Of_Mars_ than something
> like _Sense_And_Sensibility_ or _Vanity_Fair_, I suppose because
> figuring out has always been more interesting to me than groping and
> grasping. (Not that I've anything against a good grope, mind!)
I hate to disappoint you, but Sense and Sensibiity is pretty much
completely devoid of groping, therefore a taste for groping *cannot*
explain a taste for that particular piece of literature. (I can't
remember what happened in Vanity Fair -- I've read it, but the plot
didn't stick, just the tone.)
*clears throat*
I've been a big fan of ERB since forever. I count the John Carter of
Mars series as one of the biggest influences on my novel Eyes of
Infistar. Plus, I'm actually not that into groping and grasping.
(Well, I like it when *I* do it, but I'm not much into watching other
people grope.)
But I am convinced that every person would be happier if paired to a
suitable life-mate, so whenever I have a character I like, I want to
find them an appropriate match. A certain amount of grasping and
groping just seems to naturally follow my pursuit of that goal.
If my characters need to save the world first, in order to have time to
spend on their relationships, I'm very understanding and accomodating
about that. >:)
Bill Swears
> Bill Swears <wsw...@gci.net> wrote:
>
>>> I've pretty much decided that it is impossible to please everyone, and
>>> unless there is some other specific problem that needs to be addressed,
>>> I'm best off just going with my gut instinct on where/when to start. It
>>> will be no more wrong than anything else I try.
>> There is truth to that, but I also like to remember one of Pat Wrede's
>> comments that if everybody is complaining about a scene, there probably
>> is a problem, even if nobody has really figured out what it is.
>
>
> My beginnings may well have problems.
>
> If so, I haven't figured what exactly they are, let alone how to fix
> them. Trying to do what everyone tells me I should doesn't seem to have
> helped much. I need to understand a problem before I can fix it.
>
No, no. Don't do what everyone tells you, just do what I tell you.
R.L.
> <introduction>
>
> It looks as though if I want conversations, I'm going to have to start
> one.
>
> Context: my serious writing is non-fiction; I hang out here because
> you guys used to have a magical talent for converting malignant posts
> into enjoyable, intelligent conversations -- and without actually
> working at it! You just weren't interested in insulting people and
> punching noses, and followed up on stuff that *was* interesting.
>
> My fiction is like fanfic: the only entertainment intended is my
> own. The story quoted below is dead: it's as published as its going
> to get, and I'm no longer interested in improving it. Might correct a
> typo if I notice one.
>
> </introduction>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Advice often given to the neophyte writer is "don't start the story
> with the protagonist waking up unless he wakes up to find a leprechaun
> with an AK-47 sitting on his chest. It's natural to start the story
> at the start of the day, but jump ahead to where something *happens*;
> we aren't interested in watching the hero shower and get dressed."
>
> So that's exactly what happens in this story: the protagonist wakes
> up, takes a shower, and the Thing That Is Different doesn't happen
> until he's deciding what clothes to put on way down in paragraph
> seven.
>
> I *think* I've gotten away with it because the yawns and shower are
> infused with hints that We Are Not In Kansas, but am I fooling myself?
> <hopes that general discussion of openings will ensue>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Anjelan Spring
>
> The cool light said that it was somewhat later than dawn. Cris kicked
> off his covers and looked at his anklet. It was nearly six. He yawned
> and stretched and thought of bracelets. Even Ivan, who resented
> bracelets, said that it was proper that the subject should occupy his
> mind. Ivan had said a lot of things. Yesterday he had not only
> tolerated, but answered, some very personal questions.
>
> Cris couldn't lie here forever. It was past time for exercise. At
> the end of a joyfully strenuous fifth of an hour he was breathing fast
> and perspiring just enough to enjoy a quick shower in blood-warm
> water.
>
> Ivan had once waxed eloquent over the forbidden pleasure of showering
> in hot water. It sounded painful to Cris, but it was such a fond
> memory for Ivan that Cris thought that if he ever got the chance, he
> would try it.
>
> Cris opened the mirror to comb his hair and waste a little time
> admiring himself. He was indeed getting too tall and too well filled
> out to be seen without controls, and too pretty to hide himself in a
> boy's tunic. At Lissa's sixteen party some of the women had petted him
> with an attitude entirely different from the way people cuddled Laif
> and Clay. It must be soon.
>
> Well, he had to cover himself with boy's clothes today. Dungarees or
> tunic? It had been only the day before yesterday that Lissa was taken
> off the schedule, and Cris wasn't sure that it was his turn to groom
> Buttercup and Daisy. He punched up his schedule:
>
> CRIS KILBUK:
>
> Groom horses
> Biochem class canceled
> Report to Murphy Med immediately after breakfast
> Afternoon free
>
> Class cancelled! Who had a right to cancel his biochem lesson with no
> notice and no explanation? Then he saw the third item. It had to be
> Mother.
I think it might depend on how far you are from Kansas.
If, say, the first sentence has two suns rising, and the POV floating out
through the mud and thatch ceiling by spreading his tentacles, I'm fine.
Especially if we get a survey of his world as he routinely hunts prey,
before anything happens to surprise him.
An early Xanth was fine though tropish, with Bink picking shoes off a
shoe-tree in the garden of his cheese cottage in preparation for Queen
Iris' party. (At least he didn't look in a mirror.) Most of the early and
mid-Xanth books have very informative but smoooth openings, iirc.
I'm afraid your Cris sample loses me, and loses me worse when the Thing
That Is Different happens.
At first, I'm uncertain (not pleasantly) whether this is some future Earth
(near or far future), a space station, etc. The first sentence has cool
light but I don't know whether it is through a window or artificial (Cris
would know). I like the other touches coming fast but they aren't adding up
smoothly, nor contrasting clearly: is this a prison, a military station,
safety precautions in space, etc? It's not clear, but I'm given too much
time to make my own guesses, before the horses (clear contrast) show up.
Then the TTID is suddenly too much our normal: a Mother, a school schedule.
R.L.
Michelle Bottorff
> Yeah, there was the beginning of one story/novel that the writer's group
> kept saying "more info, more info" until it got to the point where they
> said, "Sounds like an infodump."
One of the problems with crittiquers is that they tend to be looking so
hard for problems that they'll occasionally find problems that aren't
really there.
But the only substitute I've found for intelligent feedback is complete
obliviousness to a story's shortcomings, and I think I'd rather not go
there.
> So writing one, writing another, revising the first sounds about right to
> me.
Julie Czerneda can't imagine my having an editor that would let me get
away with it. "What, one of my authors having a story finished and then
making me wait a whole YEAR before I get to read it? Nooooo!"
But I figure I'll worry about adjusting my schedule to editorial demands
when I *have* an editor.
David Friedman
mbot...@lshelby.com (Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
> But I am convinced that every person would be happier if paired to a
> suitable life-mate, so whenever I have a character I like, I want to
> find them an appropriate match. A certain amount of grasping and
> groping just seems to naturally follow my pursuit of that goal.
_Salamander_ has two different romances, both ending in marriage (after
the end of the book, before the beginning of the sequel). Very little in
the way of grasping and groping, but I enjoyed doing the two very
different relationships.
One is between two intellectuals, both inexperienced in such matters,
and the main question is how long it is going to take the brilliant
young professor to realize that he is falling in love with his equally
brilliant star student. While escaping from danger together they spend
two nights sleeping next to each other, but it's pretty clear that
nothing much happens, aside from the clarifying of his emotions.
The other is between two very sophisticated and intelligent aristocrats,
one the heir to the throne, the other the daughter of one of the most
powerful lords in the kingdom. He's a widower. On their first encounter
(in the book--he's known her since she was a child and is suitably
startled when she shows up in the course of his activities as a
strikingly beautiful young lady) they both say things implying that they
have realized that her father is plotting a matrimonial alliance. Near
the end of the book they are negotiating terms for their part of it--and
only when that is done to her satisfaction does Mari make it clear that
she would in fact be delighted to marry him, followed by a brief embrace
and kiss, interrupted by evidence that the adjacent polity has just
figured out a way of clearing the pass in winter and invading through it
and they and everyone else in the keep is in very deep trouble. The
engagement being settled, it's clear that it is a fully committed
relationship.
Neither romance was in my original plans for the book. Mari showed up as
the female protagonist's best friend, the Prince as an
antagonist-but-not-villain.
_Harald_ starts with the beginning of a romance between two minor
characters. And a good deal of the plot is driven by the consequences of
a romance that happened thirty-some years earlier.
I don't feel any temptation to write erotic scenes, but other elements
of romance fit well into what I do.
On the other hand, the central relationship of _Eirick_, the
_Salamander_ sequel, is between two twelve year old boys who have
decided to be brothers.
Michelle Bottorff
> > My beginnings may well have problems.
> >
> > If so, I haven't figured what exactly they are, let alone how to fix
> > them. Trying to do what everyone tells me I should doesn't seem to have
> > helped much. I need to understand a problem before I can fix it.
> >
>
> No, no. Don't do what everyone tells you, just do what I tell you.
Oh. Right.
That certainly makes it a lot *simpler*.
Hey, wait!
Aren't you the guy that is BEHIND me in the slush pile, and therefore
the quicker my story gets rejected, the sooner you'll hear back about
yours?
Why am I listening to you at all?
...It's a conspiracy, that's what it is. All the other writers out
there are conspiring against me. I know it must be true, because I
read about it on someone's blog last week! <g, d, & r>
R.L.
R.L.
On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:12:40 -0900, Bill Swears wrote:
> Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>> Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> I *think* I've gotten away with it because the yawns and shower are
>>> infused with hints that We Are Not In Kansas, but am I fooling myself?
>>> <hopes that general discussion of openings will ensue>
>>
>> I think you've gotten away with it, and I would definately read on
>> because I want an explanation of the Not in Kansas stuff, if for no
>> other reason.
>>
>> But I don't know that I have much more to say other than that. :(
>>
>>
>> I tried blathering about what *I* was doing, but it had nothing to do
>> with your message, and I erased it.
>>
>> I seem to be doing that a lot this past year or so. I'll blather away
>> quite happily for paragraphs and paragraphs, but I can hardly ever bring
>> myself to post it.
> Joy wants you to talk about your methods. I want you to talk about your
> methods. For this thread, I'm going to try to avoid dragging up my old
> stories. I think the regulars know enough about those.
>
> Bill
R.L.
/snip/
> I usually start en media res, and slip in
> cultural details while the copilot fights to stop the spin and start an
> engine, and the passengers fight to subdue the erstwhile hijacker who
> shot the pilot with a drug that turned him into a werewoolfe.
>
> Or some such thing.
Yes. I think starting the middle of a res that has a recognizeable
trajectory is fine. It gives the reader a direction and momentum, even if
all the particulars are jabberwocks and vorpal blades. (Ok, brillig wasn't
quite in the middle of the action, but we could apply poetic license.)
One problem I had with the Cris excerpt is that it was dropping too many
kinds of hints (not quite Kansas, unreliable narrator thinking about
unreliable mentor) with no strong trajectory, not even a routine one, to
hold it together and keep it going. The cure might have been to strengthen
something, rather than to cull anything, though. I can imagine that mix of
hints working fine in a rich, colorful sort of setting or style (such as
Babel-17, Hobbitshire, Discworld, etc).
For Not In Kansas to carry an opening, maybe the setting has to be more
interesting than Kansas.
R.L.
Bill Swears
> Suzanne Blom <sue...@execpc.com> wrote:
>
>> Yeah, there was the beginning of one story/novel that the writer's group
>> kept saying "more info, more info" until it got to the point where they
>> said, "Sounds like an infodump."
>
> One of the problems with crittiquers is that they tend to be looking so
> hard for problems that they'll occasionally find problems that aren't
> really there.
>
I have a friend who writes mysteries. He's constantly trying to get me
not to describe things that are necessary to anybody trying to visualize
an entire world. I go back to published books when that happens to see
if I am over-describing. With the book I'm currently, slowly, writing,
I know I'm not overdoing the descriptions.
I think the problem is that he really doesn't need to describe much,
since his work is set in modern day, and there is a lot more shared
environment.
R.L.
> Remus Shepherd wrote:
>>
>> I think you managed the 'wake up' scene very well. My complaint would be
>> the 'protagonist looks at himself in the mirror' scene, which is a cliche
>> of its own.
>
> You know, I've never become sensitized to mirror scenes. I look at a
> mirror every day of my life, usually several times. So when a character
> looks in the mirror, it seems mundane and believable. My only concern
> with the mirror scene is that I don't usually go very far to describe my
> protag. I'd rather let my audience find her own way of identifying with
> the protag. I describe other characters a bit more fully, but even they
> are very much filtered by the protags perceptions.
>
> Some readers seem to want detailed character descriptions. But my take
> is that most prefer a tag that they can use to identify characters,
> while giving them room to create much their own mind picture.
As has been said in the past, that's fine, provided you don't later give
some specific that contradicts the reader's mind picture. Ie, it's said
give specific appearance early or never.
R.L.
Bill Swears
characteristics that I'll be using later.
Brenda Clough
The shorter a work is, the more work each word has to do, to bear the
entire work up. Think of haiku.
Brenda
Brenda Clough
>
> I'd be much more likely to write the (totally fictitious) story of how
> Nikola Tesla actually discovered everything there is to understand
> about electricity, realized that the Earth could be used as a gigantic
> battery, recognized that people being what they are they'd suck the
> battery dry and the Earth would implode, and determined that it would
> be better if he simply appeared to be a hoaxter and died in obscure
> poverty.
>
>
Have you read THE PRESTIGE? In which Nicola Tesla is, as it were, the
god of the machine.
Brenda
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>> Suzanne Blom <sue...@execpc.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, there was the beginning of one story/novel that the writer's group
>>> kept saying "more info, more info" until it got to the point where they
>>> said, "Sounds like an infodump."
>>
>> One of the problems with crittiquers is that they tend to be looking so
>> hard for problems that they'll occasionally find problems that aren't
>> really there.
>>
>
> I have a friend who writes mysteries. He's constantly trying to get me
> not to describe things that are necessary to anybody trying to visualize
> an entire world. I go back to published books when that happens to see
> if I am over-describing. With the book I'm currently, slowly, writing,
> I know I'm not overdoing the descriptions.
>
> I think the problem is that he really doesn't need to describe much,
> since his work is set in modern day, and there is a lot more shared
> environment.
This is a crucial point many people tend to miss. If you set your stuff
in a reasonably contemporary period and a location likely to be
generally familiar to your target audience, the only things you have to
describe are the NEW things you're introducing. Urban fantasy is, in
many ways, easier than epic for this reason.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
R.L.
> Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>> Suzanne Blom <sue...@execpc.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, there was the beginning of one story/novel that the writer's group
>>> kept saying "more info, more info" until it got to the point where they
>>> said, "Sounds like an infodump."
>>
>> One of the problems with crittiquers is that they tend to be looking so
>> hard for problems that they'll occasionally find problems that aren't
>> really there.
>>
>
> I have a friend who writes mysteries. He's constantly trying to get me
> not to describe things that are necessary to anybody trying to visualize
> an entire world. I go back to published books when that happens to see
> if I am over-describing. With the book I'm currently, slowly, writing,
> I know I'm not overdoing the descriptions.
>
> I think the problem is that he really doesn't need to describe much,
> since his work is set in modern day, and there is a lot more shared
> environment.
Makes sense. I've mentioned Stuart Woods, who describes hardly anything.
Stout iirc described Wolfe's NY in stereotypes. Sayers' few descriptions
are great, but few.
R.L.
R.L.
> Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
/snip/
>> But I've always been a geeky kid who would rather read about
>> _Tom_Swift_And_His_Jetmarine_ or _Thuvia_Maid_Of_Mars_ than something
>> like _Sense_And_Sensibility_ or _Vanity_Fair_, I suppose because
>> figuring out has always been more interesting to me than groping and
>> grasping. (Not that I've anything against a good grope, mind!)
>
> I hate to disappoint you, but Sense and Sensibiity is pretty much
> completely devoid of groping, therefore a taste for groping *cannot*
> explain a taste for that particular piece of literature.
And weren't the Barsoom women all too gropable, at least on the cover? Jane
was always getting kidnapped for that purpose.
R.L.
R.L.
> In message <uc8vi5lmrgg6b62q1...@4ax.com>, Eric Ammadon
> <n...@spam.thankee> writes
>>Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>Everybody seems to be telling you how you should have done it, or that
>>you did it perfectly well. I'd consider cutting most of it and moving
>>forward with the action. Early reminiscence and mental meandering is
>>something I usually find boring. It would leave something like this:
>>
>>>The cool light said that it was somewhat later than dawn.
>>> He punched up his schedule:
That would lose me immediately. I need a few words at least to say where
the light is coming from. Is it from the sun, or indoor and artificial? Is
he indoors or outdoors or what?
As is, if there's a schedule to punch up, then it's probably high tech and
therefore indoors and artificial. Still to have to figure that out ...
feels arty and pretentious, or something.
Well, this reaction is probably an artifact of reading too slowly and in a
vacuum with no pictures or blurb. But the horses keep the milieu in doubt,
too much doubt for me.
J.Pascal
>
> >> Yeah, there was the beginning of one story/novel that the writer's group
> >> kept saying "more info, more info" until it got to the point where they
> >> said, "Sounds like an infodump."
>
> > One of the problems with crittiquers is that they tend to be looking so
> > hard for problems that they'll occasionally find problems that aren't
> > really there.
>
> I have a friend who writes mysteries. He's constantly trying to get me
> not to describe things that are necessary to anybody trying to visualize
> an entire world. I go back to published books when that happens to see
> if I am over-describing. With the book I'm currently, slowly, writing,
> I know I'm not overdoing the descriptions.
I think that going to published books that you enjoy and analyzing
them is the best way not to get entirely lost. How quickly does the
action start *really*? How much description is included *really*?
How spare is the prose *really*?
Some is amazingly spare and is strong for it, but a whole lot is not
spare at all. I remember one presentation a lady gave using one of
her particular favorite romances as an example of showing not telling
or some such implication that the author was being sparing with
outright description and then she read three entire pages describing
in detail how sexy the male protagonist was. It was well done, but
it didn't seem to me to be an example of what she thought it was an
example of.
> I think the problem is that he really doesn't need to describe much,
> since his work is set in modern day, and there is a lot more shared
> environment.
When I have written modern-day I find myself drowning in details that
never get into anything speculative that I write. Perhaps it seems
like there is less description because the description is *less*
general. All the general stuff can be skipped, but the level of
detail is actually greater.
"She looked up at the kitchen clock. It was a plastic thing as
old as the chrome dinette with a green and red rooster perched above
the 12 and vegetables on each hour."
I never write anything like this in a future setting. I don't know
if I've ever seen this clock, but I've seen kitschy plastic versions
that would find a rooster and vegetables good company. I don't have
to describe the *house* though because I've described (hopefully well
enough) a detail in the kitchen that hasn't been updated since 1953.
-Julie
Brian M. Scott
<see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
<news:1aq1yc6uft3u2$.1hrvcoww6touy$.d...@40tude.net> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:10:11 +0000, Jacey Bedford wrote:
>> In message <uc8vi5lmrgg6b62q1...@4ax.com>,
>> Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> writes
>>> Everybody seems to be telling you how you should have
>>> done it, or that you did it perfectly well. I'd
>>> consider cutting most of it and moving forward with the
>>> action. Early reminiscence and mental meandering is
>>> something I usually find boring. It would leave
>>> something like this:
>>>>The cool light said that it was somewhat later than dawn.
>>>> He punched up his schedule:
> That would lose me immediately. I need a few words at
> least to say where the light is coming from. Is it from
> the sun, or indoor and artificial? Is he indoors or
> outdoors or what?
While the author could be deliberately misleading us,. the
probable answers to all of those questions are obvious.
[...]
Brian
Bill Swears
>
> And weren't the Barsoom women all too gropable, at least on the cover? Jane
> was always getting kidnapped for that purpose.
>
>
> R.L.
Bill Swears
> I think that going to published books that you enjoy and analyzing
> them is the best way not to get entirely lost. How quickly does the
> action start *really*? How much description is included *really*?
> How spare is the prose *really*?
>
> Some is amazingly spare and is strong for it, but a whole lot is not
> spare at all. I remember one presentation a lady gave using one of
> her particular favorite romances as an example of showing not telling
> or some such implication that the author was being sparing with
> outright description and then she read three entire pages describing
> in detail how sexy the male protagonist was. It was well done, but
> it didn't seem to me to be an example of what she thought it was an
> example of.
You're losing track of your genres. In romance, a man having sweaty
pecs and a furled brow is an action.
Bill (I'd say GDR, but that one has always bugged me).
Eric Ammadon
>But the only substitute I've found for intelligent feedback is complete
>obliviousness to a story's shortcomings, and I think I'd rather not go
>there.
If your stories are intended to be read, regardless of the issue of
being sold to publishers, you -will- receive feedback in some form.
A case could be made for the approach of doing it once, never looking
back, and letting the world at large be your critique provider.
I get the idea that's the approach SeaWasp has chosen, and he appears
to be surviving, but I'm not privy to the level of beta-reading he
encourages.
Eric Ammadon
Yes, but at the same time you might want to keep descriptives general,
because in as little as 20 years things can change a lot. I'm not
trying to say that everyone ought to be striving to write classics,
but making a story too fad-specific could be a drawback.
Eric Ammadon
Stuart Woods used to be one of my favorite authors, but there came a
point where it seemed as if his success led to a level of affluence
that caused his work to change in a way that lost my interest.
Whether that perception is real or coincidental is another question,
but it's been years since I've found his work interesting (not that
I've bothered keeping current).
Eric Ammadon
>Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>> Bill Swears <wsw...@gci.net> wrote:
>>
>>>> I've pretty much decided that it is impossible to please everyone, and
>>>> unless there is some other specific problem that needs to be addressed,
>>>> I'm best off just going with my gut instinct on where/when to start. It
>>>> will be no more wrong than anything else I try.
>>> There is truth to that, but I also like to remember one of Pat Wrede's
>>> comments that if everybody is complaining about a scene, there probably
>>> is a problem, even if nobody has really figured out what it is.
>>
>>
>> My beginnings may well have problems.
>>
>> If so, I haven't figured what exactly they are, let alone how to fix
>> them. Trying to do what everyone tells me I should doesn't seem to have
>> helped much. I need to understand a problem before I can fix it.
>>
>
>No, no. Don't do what everyone tells you, just do what I tell you.
>
>Bill
LOL, and as grandpa used to say, "Do what I say, not what I do!"
Eric Ammadon
>Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>
>> The thing that I notice most from what you've posted here is that for
>> you romance, and romantic entanglement, seems to be a very important
>> factor. It makes me curious about whether that's "a woman thing" or
>> if it's "a michelle thing".
>
>Well, statistically speaking, women are more likely to be more into it
>than men. But I'm not sure where that gets you. For the most part my
>husband reads the same romances I read, and doesn't read the same
>romances I don't read.
Okay, but that could mean the only romances he reads are the ones
you've left laying around the house. <g>
>> But I've always been a geeky kid who would rather read about
>> _Tom_Swift_And_His_Jetmarine_ or _Thuvia_Maid_Of_Mars_ than something
>> like _Sense_And_Sensibility_ or _Vanity_Fair_, I suppose because
>> figuring out has always been more interesting to me than groping and
>> grasping. (Not that I've anything against a good grope, mind!)
>
>I hate to disappoint you, but Sense and Sensibiity is pretty much
>completely devoid of groping, therefore a taste for groping *cannot*
>explain a taste for that particular piece of literature. (I can't
>remember what happened in Vanity Fair -- I've read it, but the plot
>didn't stick, just the tone.)
_Vanity_Fair_ seemed mostly about how people of that time lived,
breathed, and talked about nothing except what they would soon
inherit. It was for me a vile story about vile people living in a
vile society, but I learned a lot about writing through the drudgery
of reading it. It is imo an academically fascinating example of plot,
character development, and the use of nearly endless wittering as a
means of character development.
>*clears throat*
>
>I've been a big fan of ERB since forever. I count the John Carter of
>Mars series as one of the biggest influences on my novel Eyes of
>Infistar. Plus, I'm actually not that into groping and grasping.
>(Well, I like it when *I* do it, but I'm not much into watching other
>people grope.)
Yeah, watching tends to be kind of a jealousy-inspiring activity.
>But I am convinced that every person would be happier if paired to a
>suitable life-mate, so whenever I have a character I like, I want to
>find them an appropriate match. A certain amount of grasping and
>groping just seems to naturally follow my pursuit of that goal.
>
>
>If my characters need to save the world first, in order to have time to
>spend on their relationships, I'm very understanding and accomodating
>about that. >:)
See, there's the difference in viewpoint. You (as I'm reading it) see
the fulfilling relationship as the end goal, and saving the world as
no more than an annoying pre-requisite.
I'm certainly in favor of having someone to hang out with who is a
suitable life-mate, partner in times good and bad, and complements
one's desire for occasional groping, but (after several decades of
life with such an individual during both good times and spawn-raising)
I view the relationship as the pre-requisite for other things (though
the world can save its own danged self if it cares to be saved!). <g>
Eric Ammadon
>R.L. wrote:
>>
>> And weren't the Barsoom women all too gropable, at least on the cover? Jane
>> was always getting kidnapped for that purpose.
>>
>>
>> R.L.
>Deja Thoris :-)
>
>Bill
Female grope-object archetype. <g>
Eric Ammadon
I'm pretty sure that I haven't read that one. I see it's been made
into a movie. I've avoided reading details that could be spoilers.
Appears Priest's book was published in 1995, which means I might be
able to snag a copy at the local library. The idea of two battling
magicians is reminiscent of the real-world conflict between Tesla and
Edison. Thanks B.
Eric Ammadon
>For Not In Kansas to carry an opening, maybe the setting has to be more
>interesting than Kansas.
Have you -been- to Kansas? Cold oatmeal is more interesting. <g>
Eric Ammadon
>On Dec 22, 4:12�pm, Bill Swears <wswe...@gci.net> wrote:
>> Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>> > Suzanne Blom <sueb...@execpc.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> Yeah, there was the beginning of one story/novel that the writer's group
>> >> kept saying "more info, more info" until it got to the point where they
>> >> said, "Sounds like an infodump." �
>>
>> > One of the problems with crittiquers is that they tend to be looking so
>> > hard for problems that they'll occasionally find problems that aren't
>> > really there.
>>
>> I have a friend who writes mysteries. �He's constantly trying to get me
>> not to describe things that are necessary to anybody trying to visualize
>> an entire world. �I go back to published books when that happens to see
>> if I am over-describing. �With the book I'm currently, slowly, writing,
>> I know I'm not overdoing the descriptions.
>
>I think that going to published books that you enjoy and analyzing
>them is the best way not to get entirely lost. How quickly does the
>action start *really*? How much description is included *really*?
>How spare is the prose *really*?
I dislike doing that with books I enjoyed, because by the time I'm
ready to jot down the answer to the first question, I've become lost
in the book already.
Doing it with a book that I didn't enjoy is much easier to accomplish,
but then I'm learning how to write what I didn't like. <g>
Bill Swears
Some books are very in the moment, and make a great deal out of
pop-culture references, while some are written to appeal for other
reasons. Both have there places.
You commented yesterday that you liked ERB's Barsoom stories, but their
science is all hopelessly wrong. I read them too, and admire the
storytelling, even though the science is bad, and the cultural
assumptions seem hopelessly goofy.
Ric Locke
> Bill Swears <wsw...@gci.net> wrote:
>
>>R.L. wrote:
>>>
>>> And weren't the Barsoom women all too gropable, at least on the cover? Jane
>>> was always getting kidnapped for that purpose.
>>>
>>> R.L.
>>Deja Thoris :-)
>>
>>Bill
>
> Female grope-object archetype. <g>
I always found the original covers interesting in that respect.
ERB continually describes the characters as naked or effectively so, but
the women on the covers were dressed in the height of Golden Age
fashion, meaning they look to modern eyes as if they'd raided a drapery
shop. Even today, a depiction that followed the actual descriptions more
or less literally would have to have a plain brown overwrap.
Regards,
Ric
Eric Ammadon
I read ERB's stuff as a pre-teen, ignored the pseudo-science, and...
well, I've always considered most everything societal to be hopelessly
goofy but that's just my mirror. They were great fun for me. Swords,
guns, beautiful girls in need of rescue, emminently killable badguys,
lots of action, pretty good level of consistency, and no references to
ipods or twitter for obvious reasons.
Pop-culture references are fine as long as the fact that they tie to a
certain time is recognized. I personally wouldn't want to invest the
time in anything approaching novel size that was dependent on
pop-culture references, but it's a matter of choice.
It does sadden me somehow when I'm reading a book that contains
pop-culture references from before my time, I recognize that I'm
missing something that might be cool. Some people get interested in
researching earlier times' cultures, I have my hands full already.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
I try to file off specific serial numbers, but technology and progress
will still bite you on the butt. _Digital Knight_, for instance, shows
that much of it was written in the last 80s-early 90s fairly clearly if
you note the tech use.
As the rights are reverting to me, I may re-write it to modernize it
slightly (at least to remove glaring anachronisms) and add in the other
two Jason Wood stories before I see if another publisher wants to
reissue it.
David Friedman
Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
> A case could be made for the approach of doing it once, never looking
> back, and letting the world at large be your critique provider.
>
The approach I refer to, in the rather different context of academic
work, as "fire and forget." The opposite extreme is to write one article
and then spend the rest of your academic career defending it.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_
Eric Ammadon
I was somewhat appalled that a Dodge Dart was your vehicle of choice,
which of course dates me probably more than it dates you -- my early
experiences with the Dodge Dart occurred in the '60s when the
wheel-track was about half the length of the vehicle, maybe less, and
the center of gravity combined with its basic geometry made it
roll-prone. Later I remembered that in the years that followed they
widened it somewhat, and guessed that to be the vehicle you had in
mind.
I didn't have any issues with the tech use, but since I started
programming in 1969 and just never let up off the gas, pretty much
anything I read about computers and associated tech sounds like
Charley Brown's mom ("blah blah blah blah") and is left at that.
It seems like a decision-line that gets more difficult the closer you
look at it, but wearing a bad pair of glasses it doesn't seem tough at
all, most folks seem to pull it off well enough. (As you did in
_DK_.)
Eric Ammadon
>In article <p4n3j5t57jfbo76uo...@4ax.com>,
> Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>
>> A case could be made for the approach of doing it once, never looking
>> back, and letting the world at large be your critique provider.
>>
>
>The approach I refer to, in the rather different context of academic
>work, as "fire and forget." The opposite extreme is to write one article
>and then spend the rest of your academic career defending it.
I'm one of those folks who, the third time they read something they've
written, finds that the page is there, the words remain, but even if
the eyes look at every letter nothing is read. That makes it fairly
easy for me to decide on "fire and forget" as you call it, at least as
far as small sections go. A paragraph, several paragraphs, etc., no
problemo.
When it comes to overall organization I'm a total loss. I'll go into
MS-Word and eventually figure out that I want to move a piece from
hither to yon, cut hither into the clipboard, go looking for yon, get
distracted by another hither, snip that into the clipboard, go looking
for its yon, and soon whatever I started with is munged beyond
recovery. If I'm really lucky I'll discover that there's a pending
mess before doing a save; occasionally that happens, in the dark of
the moon, sometimes.
But since I'm a software type all is not lost, I just have to drudge
my way through some software to build myself a tool to make
organization in the large less dependent on the microscopic. Which
turns out not to be that huge a deal since most of the work has to be
done anyway for several other "cool" projects I'm working on. It's no
less drudgeful though.
Michelle Bottorff
> Neither romance was in my original plans for the book. Mari showed up as
> the female protagonist's best friend, the Prince as an
> antagonist-but-not-villain.
In order to have a romance appear in a book that didn't have a romance
planned for it, I would have to actually plan a book without putting a
romance in it.
How likely is that? :)
On the other hand, the first novel-lengthed work I ever wrote had three
romances planned for it and ended up with, IIRC, six. I decided that
was overdoing it, and I've tried to keep my matchmaking instincts in
check since then.
> I don't feel any temptation to write erotic scenes, but other elements
> of romance fit well into what I do.
I have always been under the impression that I was avoiding 'erotic'
myself.
> On the other hand, the central relationship of _Eirick_, the
> _Salamander_ sequel, is between two twelve year old boys who have
> decided to be brothers.
Other than the romances, most of my significant relationships tend to be
familial: parent/child, and sibling. I do not have any really, really
close friends myself, and I always feel like I've accomplished something
notable when I manage to make a friendship a prominant feature of
anything.
--
Michelle Bottorff -> Chelle B. -> Shelby
L. Shelby, Writer http://www.lshelby.com/
Livejournal http://lavenderbard.livejournal.com/
rec.arts.sf.composition FAQ http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
Suzanne Blom
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in message
news:hgt9qr$46u$2...@news.eternal-september.org...
was current when I wrote it, but now sets in a specific time. I don't think
that hurts it; it's the novella part that kills it.
Suzanne Blom
"Eric Ammadon" <n...@spam.thankee> wrote in message
news:kqp3j5ts08hfcm73m...@4ax.com...
> "J.Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org> wrote:
>
>>On Dec 22, 4:12 pm, Bill Swears <wswe...@gci.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> I have a friend who writes mysteries. He's constantly trying to get me
>>> not to describe things that are necessary to anybody trying to visualize
>>> an entire world. I go back to published books when that happens to see
>>> if I am over-describing. With the book I'm currently, slowly, writing,
>>> I know I'm not overdoing the descriptions.
>>
fun of mysteries is seeing the culture and setting.
>>I think that going to published books that you enjoy and analyzing
>>them is the best way not to get entirely lost. How quickly does the
>>action start *really*? How much description is included *really*?
>>How spare is the prose *really*?
>
> I dislike doing that with books I enjoyed, because by the time I'm
> ready to jot down the answer to the first question, I've become lost
> in the book already.
>
I've discovered that, after I've read it six times, I can analyze just about
any book that way.
Suzanne Blom
"R.L." <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in message
news:e2xf4uo4ls2c.h9xsi5qb17oe$.dlg@40tude.net...
> On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:36:17 -0900, Bill Swears wrote:
>
>> You know, I've never become sensitized to mirror scenes. I look at a
>> mirror every day of my life, usually several times. So when a character
>> looks in the mirror, it seems mundane and believable. My only concern
>> with the mirror scene is that I don't usually go very far to describe my
>> protag. I'd rather let my audience find her own way of identifying with
>> the protag. I describe other characters a bit more fully, but even they
>> are very much filtered by the protags perceptions.
>>
>> Some readers seem to want detailed character descriptions. But my take
>> is that most prefer a tag that they can use to identify characters,
>> while giving them room to create much their own mind picture.
>
> As has been said in the past, that's fine, provided you don't later give
> some specific that contradicts the reader's mind picture. Ie, it's said
> give specific appearance early or never.
>
On the other hand, I have a(nother) novella where the people in the writer's
group didn't realize the narrator's gender until about a third of the way
through--and none of them thought it was a problem.
Suzanne Blom
"R.L." <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in message
> On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 01:25:49 -0500, Joy Beeson wrote:
>
>>
>> Context: my serious writing is non-fiction; I hang out here because
>> you guys used to have a magical talent for converting malignant posts
>> into enjoyable, intelligent conversations -- and without actually
>> working at it! You just weren't interested in insulting people and
>> punching noses, and followed up on stuff that *was* interesting.
>>
>> My fiction is like fanfic: the only entertainment intended is my
>> own. The story quoted below is dead: it's as published as its going
>> to get, and I'm no longer interested in improving it. Might correct a
>> typo if I notice one.
>>
>> </introduction>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Advice often given to the neophyte writer is "don't start the story
>> with the protagonist waking up unless he wakes up to find a leprechaun
>> with an AK-47 sitting on his chest. It's natural to start the story
>> at the start of the day, but jump ahead to where something *happens*;
>> we aren't interested in watching the hero shower and get dressed."
>>
>> So that's exactly what happens in this story: the protagonist wakes
>> up, takes a shower, and the Thing That Is Different doesn't happen
>> until he's deciding what clothes to put on way down in paragraph
>> seven.
>>
>> I *think* I've gotten away with it because the yawns and shower are
>> infused with hints that We Are Not In Kansas, but am I fooling myself?
>> <hopes that general discussion of openings will ensue>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Anjelan Spring
>>
>> The cool light said that it was somewhat later than dawn. Cris kicked
>> off his covers and looked at his anklet. It was nearly six. He yawned
>> and stretched and thought of bracelets. Even Ivan, who resented
>> bracelets, said that it was proper that the subject should occupy his
>> mind. Ivan had said a lot of things. Yesterday he had not only
>> tolerated, but answered, some very personal questions.
>>
>> Cris couldn't lie here forever. It was past time for exercise. At
>> the end of a joyfully strenuous fifth of an hour he was breathing fast
>> and perspiring just enough to enjoy a quick shower in blood-warm
>> water.
>>
>> Ivan had once waxed eloquent over the forbidden pleasure of showering
>> in hot water. It sounded painful to Cris, but it was such a fond
>> memory for Ivan that Cris thought that if he ever got the chance, he
>> would try it.
>>
>> Cris opened the mirror to comb his hair and waste a little time
>> admiring himself. He was indeed getting too tall and too well filled
>> out to be seen without controls, and too pretty to hide himself in a
>> boy's tunic. At Lissa's sixteen party some of the women had petted him
>> with an attitude entirely different from the way people cuddled Laif
>> and Clay. It must be soon.
>>
>> Well, he had to cover himself with boy's clothes today. Dungarees or
>> tunic? It had been only the day before yesterday that Lissa was taken
>> off the schedule, and Cris wasn't sure that it was his turn to groom
>> Buttercup and Daisy. He punched up his schedule:
>>
>> CRIS KILBUK:
>>
>> Groom horses
>> Biochem class canceled
>> Report to Murphy Med immediately after breakfast
>> Afternoon free
>>
>> Class cancelled! Who had a right to cancel his biochem lesson with no
>> notice and no explanation? Then he saw the third item. It had to be
>> Mother.
>
>
>
> If, say, the first sentence has two suns rising, and the POV floating out
> through the mud and thatch ceiling by spreading his tentacles, I'm fine.
> Especially if we get a survey of his world as he routinely hunts prey,
> before anything happens to surprise him.
>
> An early Xanth was fine though tropish, with Bink picking shoes off a
> shoe-tree in the garden of his cheese cottage in preparation for Queen
> Iris' party. (At least he didn't look in a mirror.) Most of the early and
> mid-Xanth books have very informative but smoooth openings, iirc.
>
> I'm afraid your Cris sample loses me, and loses me worse when the Thing
> That Is Different happens.
>
> At first, I'm uncertain (not pleasantly) whether this is some future Earth
> (near or far future), a space station, etc. The first sentence has cool
> light but I don't know whether it is through a window or artificial (Cris
> would know). I like the other touches coming fast but they aren't adding
> up
> smoothly, nor contrasting clearly: is this a prison, a military station,
> safety precautions in space, etc? It's not clear, but I'm given too much
> time to make my own guesses, before the horses (clear contrast) show up.
>
> Then the TTID is suddenly too much our normal: a Mother, a school
> schedule.
>
Except Mother's don't usually control the school schedule. That intrigued
me.
Jacey Bedford
<n...@spam.thankee> writes
I saw the movie, but have not yet read the book. I understand they
changed the ending for the movie and I do recall the director/producer
saying 'Don't read the book!' Which I'm sure pleased Priest a lot.
Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford
Eric Ammadon
Yeah, that sounds like enough to piss off the Good Humor Man.
Bill Swears
>
> When it comes to overall organization I'm a total loss. I'll go into
> MS-Word and eventually figure out that I want to move a piece from
> hither to yon, cut hither into the clipboard, go looking for yon, get
> distracted by another hither, snip that into the clipboard, go looking
> for its yon, and soon whatever I started with is munged beyond
> recovery. If I'm really lucky I'll discover that there's a pending
> mess before doing a save; occasionally that happens, in the dark of
> the moon, sometimes.
You can set up MS Word to copy multiple things, and keep them on an
extended version of the clipboard. So you could cut multiple passages,
and then paste them back in, all the while able to look at what you have
left to plug back in. Alternatively, and my method, I copy, then
highlight, text. After I've pasted it where I want it, I go back in a
separate movement and delete the original instant. That way if I forget
what I'm doing, it's a matter of finding two copies and deleting one,
rather than having to go back and restore an earlier version of the
textfile.
R.L.
That surprises me. But it's probably not a problem, because the cover and
blurb etc would probably carry that information. Or would it be a spoiler?
;-)
R.L.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
The only Dart I drove was I think a '74, which for some reason had a
V8-318 engine instead of the V-6 or slant-6 we expected. We called it
"Yoda" because it was ugly and green and had a lot more power than you
thought it would.
R.L.
I forgot my usual disclaimer that I don't LIKE Woods. A neighbor does like
him, so sometimes I read a little there. Once I got curious as to whether
Woods kept up the no description style, so I went through a whole book
(PRINCE OF BEVERLY HILLS) which made me positively dislike him.
Still he sells well, so he's a good counter-example on description.
R.L.
R.L.
And Spielberg's Leia was introduced in white drapery, and Marian had it
twice: the Frenchman's dress and the nightgown.
R.L.
James A. Donald
> You commented yesterday that you liked ERB's Barsoom
> stories, but their science is all hopelessly wrong. I
> read them too, and admire the storytelling, even
> though the science is bad, and the cultural
> assumptions seem hopelessly goofy.
What is wrong with the cultural assumptions?
The only grave inconsistency I see in Barsoom is that
they have these wonderful nuclear rifles, yet always
wind up fighting with swords.
The trouble with wonderful ranged weapons, is that
ranged combat is unromantic. Thus the weapons were
inconsistent with a good story, and good story tends to
win over logic.
In my work in not much progress, the rulers are usually
sorcerer kings, and the most powerful wizards tend to
become rulers. The most effective battle spells have an
area of effect around the caster, so the rulers have
little choice but to personally head right into the
midst of their enemies.
Brian M. Scott
<news:187gj1q9f8c39$.1070itlw...@40tude.net> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> ERB continually describes the characters as naked or
> effectively so, but the women on the covers were dressed
> in the height of Golden Age fashion, meaning they look to
> modern eyes as if they'd raided a drapery shop.
Some covers of the 70s and 80s came pretty close. This is
the 1970 Frazetta cover for _A Princess of Mars_, from the
original and scanned from the book:
<http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/fantasy/images/FrankFrazetta-A-Princess-of-Mars-1970.jpg>
<http://frankfrazetta.org/viewimage.php?loc=frazeta2.jpg>
1972, _Thuvia, Maid of Mars & The Chessmen of Mars_:
<http://www.paperbackfantasies.jjelmquist.com/images/frazetta/hcBurroughsThuvia.JPG>
These aren't Frazetta, but they at least avoided the
drapery:
<http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/edition/?isbn=0345278348>
<http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/edition/?isbn=0345272757>
Back to Frazetta and ERB, though not Mars:
_The Moon Maid_, 1974:
<http://www.paperbackfantasies.jjelmquist.com/images/frazetta/BurroughsMoonMaid.JPG>
_Savage Pellucidar_, 1974:
<http://www.tarzan.org/art/ffeb22.jpg>
_Land of Terror_, 1967:
<http://www.tarzan.org/art/ffeb18.jpg>
_Escape on Venus_, 1974
<http://frankfrazetta.org/viewimage.php?loc=QMan_FF_Legacy_599_Escape_on_Venus.jpg>
It isn't ERB, but this 1969 Frazetta cover for David Mason's
_Kavin's World_ doesn't leave a whole lot to the
imagination:
<http://frankfrazetta.org/new/unsorted/Kavin%27s%20World%20scan0001.jpg>
Frazetta wasn't the only one to skimp on the clothing; Jeff
Jones had has moments, too.
Offutt, _Messenger of Zhuvastou_, 1973:
<http://www.paperbackfantasies.jjelmquist.com/images/jones/OffuttMessenger.JPG>
Gaskell, _The City_, 1968:
<http://www.paperbackfantasies.jjelmquist.com/images/jones/GaskellCity.JPG>
And Rowena Morrill.
Zelazny, _Madwand_, 1981:
<http://www.paperbackfantasies.jjelmquist.com/images/rowena/ZelaznyMadwand.JPG>
But my favorite is this Erik Ladd cover from Elizabeth A.
Lynn's 1980 _The Northern Girl_:
<http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n1/n6512.jpg>
(It's also a favorite of Irina's, as I recall.)
[...]
Brian