starting with protagonist waking up
Dan Goodman
being a cliche. The real problem is that, usually, this is not where the
story begins.
The protagonist wakes up, and sees that there's an angry elephant in his
bedroom -- that's probably the beginning of a story.
The protagonist wakes up (style of yawning described; undistinguished
bedroom described); gets dressed; eats cereal and toast and drinks coffee
for breakfast; goes outside; buys a newspaper; goes to work, where he
discovers that all his fellow employees have transformed into angry
elephants -- waking up is not the beginning of the story.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Mary K. Kuhner
Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>Seems to me the _real_ problem with such a start has nothing to do with it
>being a cliche. The real problem is that, usually, this is not where the
>story begins.
Le Guin, quoting Chekhov, suggests taking off the first three pages of
whatever you've written--that may well get you to where the story really
starts.
I have to confess that I tried this on my current story, shrieked in
dismay, and put them back. She may be right, but I'm going to wait for
a Critter to say so....
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Jo Walton
To be honest, I don't think that's true of any of my stories, not even
the one I started when I was 13. Where the story begins is not generally
something I have a problem with. I've run into that with middle - with
running out of what comes next and resorting to giving too much detail
because I don't know what's important, but never with the starts.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
First NorAm Public Appearance: Imperiums to Order, Kitchener, March 20th
Freshly UPDATED web-page http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia;
RASFW FAQ, Reviews, Fanzine, Momentum Guidelines, Blood of Kings Poetry
Anne M. Marble
Dan Goodman (dsg...@visi.com) wrote in message ...
>Seems to me the _real_ problem with such a start has nothing to do with
it
>being a cliche. The real problem is that, usually, this is not where
the
>story begins.
>
his
>bedroom -- that's probably the beginning of a story.
I didn't want to annoy people.>
Now that makes me feel better about my story. Yes, it starts with my
protagonist waking up. But he wakes up because he hears a noise, and he
is just in time to see the succubus attacking his companion. Still not
as exciting as the angry elephant in the bedroom. But it beats the
descriptions of the yawns, the pajamas, and so forth.
For some reason, I've never had much trouble with writing "protagonist
waking up" beginnings to my stories. Of course, I've had problems
finishing my stories; keeping the words "glared" and "stared" from
ending up on each page; and so forth. If it's not one thing, it's
another. (Gee, maybe I should join Critters!)
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>
> Seems to me the _real_ problem with such a start has nothing to do with it
> being a cliche. The real problem is that, usually, this is not where the
> story begins.
>
> The protagonist wakes up, and sees that there's an angry elephant in his
> bedroom -- that's probably the beginning of a story.
One of the stories I have as a WIP starts with the protagonist being awoken
by a phone call. Your time-honored "We've got trouble" call that P.I.s,
politicians, troubleshooters, and so on often get. Sure, I could start the
story later once the protgaonist gets someplace, but then I don't get to do
all of that fun character and world building you can do as the protagonist
deals with his computer, gets ready for his trip, and so on. These are all
standard devices. You might be able to leave them out in a short story, but
a novel needs stuff like that. You could start with the character already
awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating. And you'll
have to discuss the backstory anyway and you'll wind up starting with the
protagonist being notified by someone to bring him into the story. He
could be awake at the time, but that seems like a trivial difference.
I could start the story earlier, a typical prologue that relates some
element of the upcoming story from a different view, but then the 1st or
2nd chapter would still start with the character waking up, and that didn't
seem to really solve the problem--assuming it really is a problem.
Bruce
Dan Goodman
>Dan Goodman wrote:
>>
>> Seems to me the _real_ problem with such a start has nothing to do with it
>> being a cliche. The real problem is that, usually, this is not where the
>> story begins.
>>
>> The protagonist wakes up, and sees that there's an angry elephant in his
>> bedroom -- that's probably the beginning of a story.
>
>One of the stories I have as a WIP starts with the protagonist being awoken
>by a phone call. Your time-honored "We've got trouble" call that P.I.s,
>politicians, troubleshooters, and so on often get.
That is _not_ the same thing. What I was talking about was:
character wakes up in the usual boring way, and proceeds to have a
boring day till the first real event in the story.
Your beginning sounds as if it's a reasonable place to start the
story. The next problem is a temptation to overdescribe what happens
before the next interesting thing which happens.
Sure, I could start the
>story later once the protgaonist gets someplace, but then I don't get to do
>all of that fun character and world building you can do as the protagonist
>deals with his computer, gets ready for his trip, and so on.
Sure you do. You just leave it in a separate file, or delete it
completely. What's fun for the writer doesn't have to interfere with
what's fun for the readers.
These are all
>standard devices.
Which doesn't mean they're worth using. Characters lighting cigarets
was a common device in science fiction, once. I've seen _one_ story
in which it added anything: Asimov's "The Dead Past," in which one
character's reaction to another character lighting up was a useful
part of the story.
You might be able to leave them out in a short story, but
>a novel needs stuff like that.
No. A novel needs _the information_, which can be given in other
ways.
And quite possibly, not all the information. Harry Turtledove's
fantasy tends to include stuff I (as a reader) consider unnecessary --
for example, I already know how to use a chamberpot. I like some
Turtledove short stories; I've given up reading his novels.
You could start with the character already
>awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating.
Not to me, it doesn't. Why does it seem like cheating to you?
And you'll
>have to discuss the backstory anyway
_Some_ of it, probably. But only some.
and you'll wind up starting with the
>protagonist being notified by someone to bring him into the story.
Sometimes; only sometimes.
He
>could be awake at the time, but that seems like a trivial difference.
You're conflating two different things, here. First is what I was
discussing: the protagonist wakes up at the usual boring time, for
the usual dull reasons, dresses in the usual unremarkable clothes
(described in great detail), eats the usual mediocre breakfast (also
described in detail, for the benefit of readers who've never
encountered corn flakes), takes the usual boring trip to work.
The other is what you're talking about -- the entirely different
situation in which the protagonist is woken up _by something unusual
happening which is relevant to the story_.
>I could start the story earlier, a typical prologue that relates some
>element of the upcoming story from a different view, but then the 1st or
>2nd chapter would still start with the character waking up,
It doesn't have to. It's your choice, if you want to write it that
way or if you think it works better that way. But I see no reason why
you need to start with the character being informed something has
happened.
and that didn't
>seem to really solve the problem--assuming it really is a problem.
The problem is starting the story with dull and nonrelevant stuff --
someone waking up, starting the day, going to work; after which
something interesting and important actually happens. That's not a
problem with the kind of beginning you're talking about.
What _does_ look like a problem to me is, you seem to think telling
the story requires certain details. Details which are commonly
omitted from, or very barely referred to some time after the opening,
in sf stories.
Mariane Desautels
>
> On Sun, 28 Feb 1999 17:02:36 +0000, Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> <sirb...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> > You could start with the character already
> >awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating.
>
My guess: kairos instead of chronos. Books don't usually happen in real
time anyways...
> > And you'll
> >have to discuss the backstory anyway and you'll wind up starting with the
> >protagonist being notified by someone to bring him into the story. He
> >could be awake at the time, but that seems like a trivial difference.
>
> Why not start with him on the way to deal with whatever it is?
How many stories start with the protag going to sleep?
M
--
"Hello. My name is Agent Scully. You killed my father,
my sister, my daughter and my dog, gave me cancer, abducted me,
performed bizarre experiments on me and made me chase suspects
in heels. Prepare to die." --- Lady Miss Tree ---
Dan Goodman
>Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, 28 Feb 1999 17:02:36 +0000, Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>> <sirb...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>> > You could start with the character already
>> >awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating.
>>
>> Why?
>
>My guess: kairos instead of chronos. Books don't usually happen in real
>time anyways...
Is this approximately what you mean by the above?:
Kairos was one of two Greek terms often used to mean "time"; the
other, chronos, had a distinctly quantitative meaning. Kairos was a
more qualitative term, as per culturally-based [31]analogies to
archery and/or weaving--however, it maintained an element of ethical
balance. As Carl Glover points out, Kinneavy's "conclusions and
classroom applications of kairos ignore . . . the chronos/kairos
distinction" [32](91). Nonetheless, for definitional purposes it is
easy to see how Kinneavy arrived at "situational context." In some
scholarly translations of both Plato and Aristotle, karoi is roughly
equivalent to entautha + pote irois which has been translated as
"circumstances." Kinneavy and Eskin note that "kairos" mediates the
theoria/praxis distinction outlined in Plato's Phaedrus.
Aristotle more commonly used the term poia , meaning "occasions" or
(sometimes) "reasons," which is less forceful than the meaning implied
in "kairos." However, Aristotle did see great value in the concept of
kairos - particularly in the [33]Athenian courtroom, where the great
rhetoricians of the day battled over epieikeia , the legal concept of
equity which best translates to "kairic law."
Dan Goodman
>On Sun, 28 Feb 1999 23:13:39 -0500, Mariane Desautels
><desautelsm...@POLLUTIONvideotron.ca> wrote:
>
>>How many stories start with the protag going to sleep?
>
>That's an absolutely fascinating question. I think Zelazny's THE
>DREAM MASTER might...
I think the frame story in H.R. Eddison's _The Worm Ouroboros_ does.
Peter Dickinson's _Merlin Dreams_ (?) -- though again, it's the frame
story. The stories in _Five Fates_, I think. If going into coldsleep
counts, probably a bunch more.
Dan Goodman
>On Sun, 28 Feb 1999 19:29:37 GMT, dsg...@visi.com (Dan Goodman) wrote:
>
>>Seems to me the _real_ problem with such a start has nothing to do with it
>>being a cliche. The real problem is that, usually, this is not where the
>>story begins.
>>
>>The protagonist wakes up, and sees that there's an angry elephant in his
>>bedroom -- that's probably the beginning of a story.
>>
>>The protagonist wakes up (style of yawning described; undistinguished
>>bedroom described); gets dressed; eats cereal and toast and drinks coffee
>>for breakfast; goes outside; buys a newspaper; goes to work, where he
>>discovers that all his fellow employees have transformed into angry
>>elephants -- waking up is not the beginning of the story.
>
>Yes, exactly. Thank you for saying clearly what I was fumbling with.
More than welcome. Note that Lawrence Block has said it much better
in _Spider, Spin Me a Web_.
Mary K. Kuhner
>On Sun, 28 Feb 1999 23:13:39 -0500, Mariane Desautels
>>How many stories start with the protag going to sleep?
>That's an absolutely fascinating question. I think Zelazny's THE
>DREAM MASTER might...
It would seem like a good place to start a cold-sleep space travel
story, but I don't remember any specific examples.
Hm. This could be taken as a challenge.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> That is _not_ the same thing. What I was talking about was:
> character wakes up in the usual boring way, and proceeds to have a
> boring day till the first real event in the story.
>
> Your beginning sounds as if it's a reasonable place to start the
> story. The next problem is a temptation to overdescribe what happens
> before the next interesting thing which happens.
Oh! Okay. I guess I've been the victim of another generalization again
(there are so many of those) that left me with the wrong impression that
a particular cliche is bad in a broad sense, not a specific subclass of the
cliche used in a particular way.
> Sure, I could start the
> >story later once the protgaonist gets someplace, but then I don't get to do
> >all of that fun character and world building you can do as the protagonist
> >deals with his computer, gets ready for his trip, and so on.
>
> Sure you do. You just leave it in a separate file, or delete it
> completely. What's fun for the writer doesn't have to interfere with
> what's fun for the readers.
None of this would interfere with what's fun for the reader. No more than
Tolkein spending a paragraph describing a particular rock, anyway.
> >These are all
> >standard devices.
>
> Which doesn't mean they're worth using. Characters lighting cigarets
> was a common device in science fiction, once. I've seen _one_ story
> in which it added anything: Asimov's "The Dead Past," in which one
> character's reaction to another character lighting up was a useful
> part of the story.
Your character should write a cigarette when the character should. I
don't think one should cut back on this if it isn't an essential element.
Just so long as it's not too distracted or too wordy.
> >You might be able to leave them out in a short story, but
> >a novel needs stuff like that.
>
> No. A novel needs _the information_, which can be given in other
> ways.
Yes. Lots of less natural, more annoying ways. Remember - show, don't
tell. With countless novels to reference, I see nothing to indicate that
every single word is essential. Not that I'm advocating filler, but just
that describing lots of fun stuff the character would do between waking up
and the next major event is useful stuff.
> And quite possibly, not all the information. Harry Turtledove's
> fantasy tends to include stuff I (as a reader) consider unnecessary --
> for example, I already know how to use a chamberpot. I like some
> Turtledove short stories; I've given up reading his novels.
Well, then that is your personal bias. I would be more than happy to be
able to sell as many novels as Harry Turtledove, even if it meant losing a
few readers who didn't like all the unncessary information. You can't
please everyone.
> >You could start with the character already
> >awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating.
>
> Not to me, it doesn't. Why does it seem like cheating to you?
Because you're artificially changing stuff *solely* to avoid the cliche,
without making any difference. Because you would then wind up telling
everything anyway, only know in some sort of reminiscence or flashback
or lots of unnatural infodumps.
> >And you'll
> >have to discuss the backstory anyway
>
> _Some_ of it, probably. But only some.
And that's the some I'm talking about in the first place.
> >and you'll wind up starting with the
> >protagonist being notified by someone to bring him into the story.
>
> Sometimes; only sometimes.
Well, what I'm talking about is one of those times. Okay? Sheesh.
> >He
> >could be awake at the time, but that seems like a trivial difference.
>
> You're conflating two different things, here.
No, I'm not. Perhaps you are, though.
> First is what I was
> discussing: the protagonist wakes up at the usual boring time, for
> the usual dull reasons, dresses in the usual unremarkable clothes
> (described in great detail), eats the usual mediocre breakfast (also
> described in detail, for the benefit of readers who've never
> encountered corn flakes), takes the usual boring trip to work.
Right. Got that. To me, the above isn't even an issue because it's an
example of bad work. I don't think this is the cliche most people are
referring to in this context. If it *is*, then they should call it something
else, like "the boring writing cliche that really has nothing to do with the
protagonist waking up".
> The other is what you're talking about -- the entirely different
> situation in which the protagonist is woken up _by something unusual
> happening which is relevant to the story_.
Right.
> >I could start the story earlier, a typical prologue that relates some
> >element of the upcoming story from a different view, but then the 1st or
> >2nd chapter would still start with the character waking up,
>
> It doesn't have to. It's your choice, if you want to write it that
> way or if you think it works better that way. But I see no reason why
> you need to start with the character being informed something has
> happened.
And there's no reason why not to, either, if it's more natural than
other places, and there's nothing wrong with using the most general
sense of that cliche.
> >and that didn't
> >seem to really solve the problem--assuming it really is a problem.
>
> The problem is starting the story with dull and nonrelevant stuff --
> someone waking up, starting the day, going to work; after which
> something interesting and important actually happens. That's not a
> problem with the kind of beginning you're talking about.
Right.
> What _does_ look like a problem to me is, you seem to think telling
> the story requires certain details.
This goes without saying, and I don't see how it's a problem. Novels, in
particular, require certain details and more details than a short story
does.
> Details which are commonly
> omitted from, or very barely referred to some time after the opening,
> in sf stories.
No, not those details. In fact, if they are commonly omitted or barely
referred to, they wouldn't be particularly cliche.
I am very definitely talking about both relevant details, and less relevant
but entertaining details, and the not relevant but not boring or distracting
details. For instance, a description of what a person is wearing is often
not relevant, and is often left out of short stories, but often included to
some extent in novels. There are, of course, exeptions.
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>
> On Sun, 28 Feb 1999 17:02:36 +0000, Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> <sirb...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> >awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating.
>
Because you're artificially selecting a spot just to avoid a cliche, and
have the more awkward task of backfilling (see my other posts about this).
> > And you'll
> >have to discuss the backstory anyway and you'll wind up starting with the
> >protagonist being notified by someone to bring him into the story. He
> >could be awake at the time, but that seems like a trivial difference.
>
> Why not start with him on the way to deal with whatever it is?
Because then you may have the task of filling in the details that were
skipped artificially, or skip telling them at all. But as I discovered
from elswhere in this thread, I think you and others were arguing against
the boring and irrelevant stuff, which I wasn't talking about at *all*
since to me it goes without saying and had nothing per se to do with the
protagonist waking up at the start of a story.
As I get older and wiser I become more and more convinced that most of the
disagreements in life stem from discrepancies in definitions. Unfortunately,
these tned to be the easy problems; the really *hard* ones stem from either
different axioms or simply faulty logic.
Bruce
PWrede6492
Watt-Evans) writes:
>Why not start with him on the way to deal with whatever it is?
Or even with him arriving at wherever it is he's going to deal with it? Or in
the middle of the first bit of dealing with that he does?
A large percentage of the folks who come through my classes seem to feel that
they have to somehow get all the background information and all the backstory
into the first few pages of the story, or the first few pages of the chapter.
This is, however, rarely necessary. Unfortunately, rather a lot of the time,
the people who have started their stories this way have a great deal of
difficulty in visualizing any other way to start the story, because they have
been thrashing around for so long and *this is where it starts, dammit.* The
fact that the story is perfectly comprehensible to everybody even if they start
with the page marked "Chapter Two" doesn't seem to penetrate.
Patricia C. Wrede
David J. Parker
Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>Seems to me the _real_ problem with such a start has nothing to do with it
>being a cliche. The real problem is that, usually, this is not where the
>story begins.
>
Exactly. In college I took three fiction writing classes, and by chance I
had the same teacher for all three. The guy gave me exactly *two* pieces
of advice that I have found useful, and he apparently got both of them from
*his* college writing proffesor. These two tidbits were "Never start a
story with an alarm clock ringing" and "Sometimes it's ok to say, 'Five years
later, in Brazil...'"
The explanation he gave for the first tidbit was exactly the one you give
above. It's not the fact that the "protag waking up" opening is cliched, it's
that it is rarely the actual start of the story.
-- Dave
John Kensmark
"Anne M. Marble" <ama...@abs.net> wrote:
>
> Now that makes me feel better about my story. Yes, it starts with my
> protagonist waking up. But he wakes up because he hears a noise, and he
> is just in time to see the succubus attacking his companion.
Oh, a voyeur, eh?
> Still not as exciting as the angry elephant in the bedroom. But it beats
> the descriptions of the yawns, the pajamas, and so forth.
One morning, I shot an angry elephant in my pajamas . . . .
> For some reason, I've never had much trouble with writing "protagonist
> waking up" beginnings to my stories.
As far as I know, I've done this twice, both for very unfinished works. The
one that's closer to being finished now has the waking-up beginning as a
flashback two chapters in; it starts, instead, with:
By spring, I had the compound secure, and I went back out for
more supplies. I took the big van and the trailer, the trailer
filled with plastic barrels.
I can only hope it's an improvement. The basic problem with the waking-up
beginning is that the protag wakes up, gradually discovers that everyone in
his town has apparently vanished during the night, and then the narrative
breaks off and skips ahead a few weeks. That's how it needs to go, but it
seemed like a teaser introduction, so I've relegated it to a flashback.
John Kensmark
kens...@hotmail.com
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Carol Flynt
Bruce Sterling Woodcock <sirb...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> >You could start with the character already
>> >awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating.
>>
>> Not to me, it doesn't. Why does it seem like cheating to you?
>
>Because you're artificially changing stuff *solely* to avoid the cliche,
>without making any difference. Because you would then wind up telling
>everything anyway, only know in some sort of reminiscence or flashback
>or lots of unnatural infodumps.
I agree with you that "artificially changing stuff *solely*
to avoid the cliche" might be a short-sighted decision.
But, might I suggest other wording? That, in some stories, we
avoid the initial information because we can better capture the
reader's interest with a different scene, perhaps one with more
action, and then, once the reader is involved, pause for the
other information.
See, it's not just a matter of telling everything that is relevant
to the story. We must also make sure we present that information
to the best advantage. *When* we tell can be as important as *what*
we tell.
As storytellers, we have an arsenal of tricks at our command
to best present our story: pacing, vocabulary, voice, POV, ...
You may choose a different beginning, not because
you wish to avoid the cliche, but because it provides better
pacing for *this* story.
Ultimately, our job is to be true to the story we are telling, and
show it to its best advantage. If a cliche serves that purpose,
go for it.
If your story is best told starting with the awakening,
go for it. However, just because there is relevant information in the
awakening and the events around it, doesn't mean that the
story is best told starting there. Only you can determine this,
however, since you alone know the story in question.
Carol (Hope I'm making sense, here) Flynt
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| PREFERRED EMAIL ADDRESS: ca...@cflynt.com
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Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>In Sylvia Burack's WRITER'S HANDBOOK of a few years back the lead-off
>essay is by Stephen King, in which he explains the secret of
>successful writing. He's not kidding, either. It isn't "avoid
>cliches" or "suck up to editors." It's "Leave out the boring parts."
"Boring," however, is in the eye of the beholder. I don't read King
myself, and while part of the reason is that his style grates on me
because it is brilliant only in patches and quite careless in
others, another part is that it's too exciting, or exciting in the
wrong way. I don't really want to read about the kinds of things he
finds interesting. I won't say he actually bores me most of the time,
because he's really very good at hauling in even this resistant
reader. But I don't like the results; I don't want to go there.
He's not successful with me -- I don't buy his books. He is not
likely to shed any tears over this, given who-all does, but of course
it does concern me.
And sometimes he truly does bore me. There's a scene in THE DEAD ZONE
in which the villain kicks a dog to death, as far as I could tell for
no other reason than to demonstrate that yes, he really is a Bad
Person. The idea was horrifying but the scene was boring; it was like
a set piece; it made me roll my eyes. But if you listed a number of
possible scenes, I doubt that "villain kicks dog to death" is going to
win "Most Boring" over "protagonist wakes up in the morning."
I just snipped a bunch of your message that seems to me to boil down
to "context is all" or "context determines what's boring," with which
I agree heartily; but the question "boring to whom?" also has to be
asked, and I guess I'd say that if the writer isn't interested, there
is not much hope. Where I've started a story in the wrong place, I
haven't actually been that interested in whatever I'm doing, I'm just
trying to get started. But once one's written an opening one gets
attached to it. Asking oneself, "Do I really care about all this?"
might be useful to somebody faced with an "X wakes up and brushes his
teeth and gets dressed" opening.
And despite my difficulties with King, who is obviously not writing
for me, it's pretty clear that he really does care about the scenes he
puts in. And most of the time this comes across even to somebody he
isn't writing for.
--
"Moreover, fantasticality does a good deal better than
sham psychology." -- Virginia Woolf
-----------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet pd...@ddb.com
Mary K. Kuhner
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@ddb.com> wrote:
>I just snipped a bunch of your message that seems to me to boil down
>to "context is all" or "context determines what's boring," with which
>I agree heartily; but the question "boring to whom?" also has to be
>asked, and I guess I'd say that if the writer isn't interested, there
>is not much hope. Where I've started a story in the wrong place, I
>haven't actually been that interested in whatever I'm doing, I'm just
>trying to get started. But once one's written an opening one gets
>attached to it. Asking oneself, "Do I really care about all this?"
>might be useful to somebody faced with an "X wakes up and brushes his
>teeth and gets dressed" opening.
I have a story which, for reasons of its peculiar history, started out
as a collection of just those scenes from it which were juicy for me
to write. I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that those are all
the scenes it has, and I'm just going to have to figure out ways to
get everything else across by indirection: writing linker scenes is
not working out well. They're just as dull to read as they are to write.
I find myself feeling like I've eaten the frosting off the cake, writing
it that way, but there's not much to be done for it now....
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Dan Amerman
>
> lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans) writes:
>
> >In Sylvia Burack's WRITER'S HANDBOOK of a few years back the lead-off
> >essay is by Stephen King, in which he explains the secret of
> >successful writing. He's not kidding, either. It isn't "avoid
> >cliches" or "suck up to editors." It's "Leave out the boring parts."
>
> "Boring," however, is in the eye of the beholder.
Amen.
> I don't read King
> myself, and while part of the reason is that his style grates on me
> because it is brilliant only in patches and quite careless in
> others, another part is that it's too exciting, or exciting in the
> wrong way. I don't really want to read about the kinds of things he
> finds interesting. I won't say he actually bores me most of the time,
> because he's really very good at hauling in even this resistant
> reader. But I don't like the results; I don't want to go there.
> He's not successful with me -- I don't buy his books. He is not
> likely to shed any tears over this, given who-all does, but of course
> it does concern me.
>
> And sometimes he truly does bore me.
Chances are that your own work would sometimes truly bore King too.
Nothing wrong with that mutual boredom, indeed, I would go so far as to
say it is a wonderful thing. So many very different authors filling the
needs of so very many different kinds of readers. So many kinds of
brilliance, so many varieties of entertainment. Every time a writer
matches up with a reader and the reader is satisfied, then it is a
win-win situation. What another reader happens to think of that writer
is irrelevant to the happiness that the writer has brought to the first
reader.
Dan Amerman
Dorothy J Heydt
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>
>In Sylvia Burack's WRITER'S HANDBOOK of a few years back the lead-off
>essay is by Stephen King, in which he explains the secret of
>successful writing. He's not kidding, either. It isn't "avoid
>cliches" or "suck up to editors." It's "Leave out the boring parts."
Lawrence Block has a similar essay [pause to look it up: it's
"The Art of Omission" in _Spider, Spin Me a Web_] in which he
quotes Elmore Leonard as summarizing his writing style as "I try
to leave out the parts people skip."
And the problem, of course, is deciding in advance which parts
the reader is going to skip if you leave them in.
When I figure this one out, I'll let you know.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
_A Point of Honor_ is out....
Harry Connolly
Does this "peculiar history" involve the Commercial Fiction class from
the UW Extension Program? (I noticed your email address)
You sound like you've written one of Pam Goodfellow's scaffolds. If so,
I've done the same thing, and it's killing me.
Thomas Yan
Zeborah <fitc...@netaccess.co.nz> wrote:
>Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Mariane Desautels wrote:
>>
>> >My guess: kairos instead of chronos. Books don't usually happen in real
>> >time anyways...
>>
>> Is this approximately what you mean by the above?:
>> Kairos was one of two Greek terms often used to mean "time";
>
>much explaining the difference between kairos and chronos to me in very
>plain English? I have a suspicion sneaking up on me that it could come
>in handy for something I'm working on.
request seconded, with bonus points awarded for commentary on the
appropriateness of referring to madeleine l'engle's books in the _a
wrinkle in time_ series as her "kairos series", a reference i have
heard exactly once and never understood.
--
Thomas Yan <ty...@cs.cornell.edu> I don't speak for Cornell.
Computer Science Department \\ Cornell University \\ Ithaca, NY 14853
(please pardon any lack of capitalization -- my hands hurt from typing)
Dan Goodman
>Dan Goodman wrote:
>> That is _not_ the same thing. What I was talking about was:
>> character wakes up in the usual boring way, and proceeds to have a
>> boring day till the first real event in the story.
>>
>> Your beginning sounds as if it's a reasonable place to start the
>> story. The next problem is a temptation to overdescribe what happens
>> before the next interesting thing which happens.
>
>Oh! Okay. I guess I've been the victim of another generalization again
>(there are so many of those) that left me with the wrong impression that
>a particular cliche is bad in a broad sense, not a specific subclass of the
>cliche used in a particular way.
And, therefore, you interpreted my explanation of why this was _not_
true as a repetition of the cliche.
>> Sure, I could start the
>> >story later once the protgaonist gets someplace, but then I don't get to do
>> >all of that fun character and world building you can do as the protagonist
>> >deals with his computer, gets ready for his trip, and so on.
>>
>> Sure you do. You just leave it in a separate file, or delete it
>> completely. What's fun for the writer doesn't have to interfere with
>> what's fun for the readers.
>
>None of this would interfere with what's fun for the reader.
As a reader, I can tell you that there have been times when it _has
interfered with what's fun for me. Therefore the above statement is
false -- even if I'm the only reader in all of human history (past,
present and future) ever to have this problem.
No more than
>Tolkein spending a paragraph describing a particular rock, anyway.
>
>> >These are all
>> >standard devices.
>>
>> Which doesn't mean they're worth using. Characters lighting cigarets
>> was a common device in science fiction, once. I've seen _one_ story
>> in which it added anything: Asimov's "The Dead Past," in which one
>> character's reaction to another character lighting up was a useful
>> part of the story.
>
>Your character should write a cigarette when the character should. I
>don't think one should cut back on this if it isn't an essential element.
>Just so long as it's not too distracted or too wordy.
As far as I can tell, it was almost never done for any reason other
than "Let's see -- I need something to keep this from being
all-dialogue. I know -- everybody smokes, so I'll have one of them
light a cigaret!"
>> >You might be able to leave them out in a short story, but
>> >a novel needs stuff like that.
>>
>> No. A novel needs _the information_, which can be given in other
>> ways.
>
>Yes. Lots of less natural, more annoying ways. Remember - show, don't
>tell. With countless novels to reference, I see nothing to indicate that
>every single word is essential. Not that I'm advocating filler, but just
>that describing lots of fun stuff the character would do between waking up
>and the next major event is useful stuff.
Why? Useful how?
>> And quite possibly, not all the information. Harry Turtledove's
>> fantasy tends to include stuff I (as a reader) consider unnecessary --
>> for example, I already know how to use a chamberpot. I like some
>> Turtledove short stories; I've given up reading his novels.
>
>Well, then that is your personal bias. I would be more than happy to be
>able to sell as many novels as Harry Turtledove, even if it meant losing a
>few readers who didn't like all the unncessary information. You can't
>please everyone.
Offhand, I think you're more likely to reach his sales records by
earning a degree in Byzantine history than by putting information
which I consider unnecessary into your novels.
Especially since, in the first few you sell, a whole lot of that stuff
is going to be chopped out. That is, if your career follows the same
path as Turtledove's.
>> >You could start with the character already
>> >awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating.
>>
>> Not to me, it doesn't. Why does it seem like cheating to you?
>
>Because you're artificially changing stuff *solely* to avoid the cliche,
Not me. I would be changing stuff in order to eliminate _to improve
the story_.
>without making any difference.
Differences would include: 1) The story begins closer to
protagonist's first encounter with the problem itself -- rather than
what others say about the problem. 2) The story begins with
protagonist in motion.
Because you would then wind up telling
>everything anyway,
Not everything. I could leave out: descriptions of protagonist's
Killer Rabbit slippers; the scene in which he puts on his clothes; the
process of waking up...
only know in some sort of reminiscence or flashback
>or lots of unnatural infodumps.
Flashbacks work fine for Lawrence Block, who uses them in many of his
mysteries. And who has a rather good sales record.
There are _lots_ of natural ways to give the information. Instead of
protagonist being given the information in the emergency phone call,
he might be given the information at headquarters while he's choosing
his tools and weapons.
>> >And you'll
>> >have to discuss the backstory anyway
>>
>> _Some_ of it, probably. But only some.
>
>And that's the some I'm talking about in the first place.
Not clear to me from what you said.
>> >and you'll wind up starting with the
>> >protagonist being notified by someone to bring him into the story.
>>
>> Sometimes; only sometimes.
>
>Well, what I'm talking about is one of those times. Okay? Sheesh.
Sort of okay. You hadn't made it clear that you were talking about
this one story in particular.
>> >He
>> >could be awake at the time, but that seems like a trivial difference.
>>
>> You're conflating two different things, here.
>
>No, I'm not. Perhaps you are, though.
Very well, then -- you did a rather bad job of demonstrating that you
were aware of the differece.
>> First is what I was
>> discussing: the protagonist wakes up at the usual boring time, for
>> the usual dull reasons, dresses in the usual unremarkable clothes
>> (described in great detail), eats the usual mediocre breakfast (also
>> described in detail, for the benefit of readers who've never
>> encountered corn flakes), takes the usual boring trip to work.
>
>Right. Got that. To me, the above isn't even an issue because it's an
>example of bad work. I don't think this is the cliche most people are
>referring to in this context.
Read this carefully: I began by saying that "starting with the
protagonist waking up" is NOT a problem _because it's a cliche_. I
then explained why it is often/usually a problem.
You are now explaining to me that "starting with the protagonist
waking up" is NOT a problem _because it's a cliche_.
If it *is*, then they should call it something
>else, like "the boring writing cliche that really has nothing to do with the
>protagonist waking up".
Again -- you missed the part where I said that "it's a cliche" isn't
the problem.
>> The other is what you're talking about -- the entirely different
>> situation in which the protagonist is woken up _by something unusual
>> happening which is relevant to the story_.
>
>Right.
>
>> >I could start the story earlier, a typical prologue that relates some
>> >element of the upcoming story from a different view, but then the 1st or
>> >2nd chapter would still start with the character waking up,
>>
>> It doesn't have to. It's your choice, if you want to write it that
>> way or if you think it works better that way. But I see no reason why
>> you need to start with the character being informed something has
>> happened.
>
>And there's no reason why not to, either, if it's more natural than
>other places,
There's a distinction between "natural" and "good". If that's the
best place to start a particular story, they may be the same.
and there's nothing wrong with using the most general
>sense of that cliche.
>
>> >and that didn't
>> >seem to really solve the problem--assuming it really is a problem.
>>
>> The problem is starting the story with dull and nonrelevant stuff --
>> someone waking up, starting the day, going to work; after which
>> something interesting and important actually happens. That's not a
>> problem with the kind of beginning you're talking about.
>
>Right.
>
>> What _does_ look like a problem to me is, you seem to think telling
>> the story requires certain details.
>
>This goes without saying,
No. And it probably shouldn't go without thinking.
It's my contention that some of the details you consider to be
required are not required, not obligatory, not essential.
and I don't see how it's a problem. Novels, in
>particular, require certain details and more details than a short story
>does.
>
>> Details which are commonly
>> omitted from, or very barely referred to some time after the opening,
>> in sf stories.
>
>No, not those details. In fact, if they are commonly omitted or barely
>referred to, they wouldn't be particularly cliche.
>
>I am very definitely talking about both relevant details, and less relevant
>but entertaining details, and the not relevant but not boring or distracting
>details. For instance, a description of what a person is wearing is often
>not relevant, and is often left out of short stories, but often included to
>some extent in novels.
Novels contain _more_ details, yes. Novels contain _irrelevant_
details -- no, not the good ones.
There are, of course, exeptions.
Dan Goodman
Dan Goodman
>Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Mariane Desautels wrote:
>>
>> >My guess: kairos instead of chronos. Books don't usually happen in real
>> >time anyways...
>>
>> Is this approximately what you mean by the above?:
>> Kairos was one of two Greek terms often used to mean "time";
><snip>
>
>Okay, that much I understood. :-( Would some kindly soul mind very
>much explaining the difference between kairos and chronos to me in very
>plain English? I have a suspicion sneaking up on me that it could come
>in handy for something I'm working on.
That was the plainest explanation I found on the Web. I _almost_
understood it.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
Drat, I'm sorry, I just sent you email instead of posting to the
newsgroup. I'll try to reconstitute what I said.
mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>In article <pddb.92...@gw.ddb.com>,
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@ddb.com> wrote:
>>I just snipped a bunch of your message that seems to me to boil down
>>to "context is all" or "context determines what's boring," with which
>>I agree heartily; but the question "boring to whom?" also has to be
>>asked, and I guess I'd say that if the writer isn't interested, there
>>is not much hope. Where I've started a story in the wrong place, I
>>haven't actually been that interested in whatever I'm doing, I'm just
>>trying to get started. But once one's written an opening one gets
>>attached to it. Asking oneself, "Do I really care about all this?"
>>might be useful to somebody faced with an "X wakes up and brushes his
>>teeth and gets dressed" opening.
>I have a story which, for reasons of its peculiar history, started out
>as a collection of just those scenes from it which were juicy for me
>to write. I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that those are all
>the scenes it has, and I'm just going to have to figure out ways to
>get everything else across by indirection: writing linker scenes is
>not working out well. They're just as dull to read as they are to write.
I did something like that with THE HIDDEN LAND, which began as the
second half of a huge novel and ended up being published separately as
my second book. I had read that Robert Heinlein wrote four pages a
day, rain or shine, sick or well, whatever, and I thought I would just
try it and see what happened. I'm not saying everybody else would end
up like this, but I got very good at writing four-page significant
scenes, and produced a novel with no connective tissue whatsoever, and
also some rather odd emphases. I did write the connective tissue, and
did have fun with some of it, eventually; but some of it was just
labor.
It sounds as if what you're doing would be lovely to read but might
work better with a short story than a novel -- which is it?
>I find myself feeling like I've eaten the frosting off the cake, writing
>it that way, but there's not much to be done for it now....
I'm not saying your story permits this, but it is possible to get some
fun out of writing linker scenes, or connective tissue, or whatever
you want to call it. I usually do it by repeating significant imagery
or thematic stuff, and sometimes with humor. I got a whole subplot
out of writing the linking bits later in THE WHIM OF THE DRAGON, but
the book was so long and Berkley so annoyed by this that I had to take
it out again.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>>
>> I don't read King
>> myself, and while part of the reason is that his style grates on me
>> because it is brilliant only in patches and quite careless in
>> others, another part is that it's too exciting, or exciting in the
>> wrong way. I don't really want to read about the kinds of things he
>> finds interesting. I won't say he actually bores me most of the time,
>> because he's really very good at hauling in even this resistant
>> reader. But I don't like the results; I don't want to go there.
>> He's not successful with me -- I don't buy his books. He is not
>> likely to shed any tears over this, given who-all does, but of course
>> it does concern me.
>>
>> And sometimes he truly does bore me.
>Chances are that your own work would sometimes truly bore King too.
I'm quite sure that some of it would, but I also suspect that he has
far broader tastes than I have and might actually like some of it,
which of course is very lowering, but there's no help for it.
>Nothing wrong with that mutual boredom, indeed, I would go so far as to
>say it is a wonderful thing.
Well, I wouldn't go *that* far. Frankly, living in this century and
working and reading in the field of speculative fiction and not being
able to properly appreciate King, I sometimes feel like somebody in
1605 who doesn't like Shakespeare. However, I do agree with what
follows.
>So many very different authors filling the
>needs of so very many different kinds of readers. So many kinds of
>brilliance, so many varieties of entertainment. Every time a writer
>matches up with a reader and the reader is satisfied, then it is a
>win-win situation. What another reader happens to think of that writer
>is irrelevant to the happiness that the writer has brought to the first
>reader.
Certainly. I do sometimes wish that people discussing, oh, say,
Robert Jordan, would remember this.
Mary K. Kuhner
Harry Connolly <maka...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Mary Kuhner wrote:
>> I have a story which, for reasons of its peculiar history, started out
>> as a collection of just those scenes from it which were juicy for me
>> to write.
>Does this "peculiar history" involve the Commercial Fiction class from
>the UW Extension Program? (I noticed your email address)
Nope. The email address is me as a professional geneticist, not an
amateur writer.
>You sound like you've written one of Pam Goodfellow's scaffolds. If so,
>I've done the same thing, and it's killing me.
It's not killing me, but dunno if it's ever going to be readable by
anyone else: an awful lot of the connective tissue didn't get into
those "juicy bits" and I'm not sure it can stand up without it.
Who is Pam Goodfellow, and what did she have to say about this?
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Harry Connolly
> >Does this "peculiar history" involve the Commercial Fiction class from
> >the UW Extension Program? (I noticed your email address)
>
> Nope. The email address is me as a professional geneticist, not an
> amateur writer.
>
I wasn't suggesting that you are an "amateur" anything. You have A UW
email address, which suggests you live in Seattle, like me, and might
have tried her class.
> >You sound like you've written one of Pam Goodfellow's scaffolds. If so,
> >I've done the same thing, and it's killing me.
>
> It's not killing me, but dunno if it's ever going to be readable by
> anyone else: an awful lot of the connective tissue didn't get into
> those "juicy bits" and I'm not sure it can stand up without it.
>
> Who is Pam Goodfellow, and what did she have to say about this?
>
> Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
She teaches the previously-mentioned class, writes under a pen name I
don't know, and runs a small local publishing house. She has her
students write five "scaffold scenes" -- a First Meeting scene, a
Conflict scene, a Resolution etc for each major character and story
thread, then links them together with "bridge" scene. That's a bit
simplified, but essentially accurate.
I had wondered if you had taken the class (which you obviously haven't),
and if so, had success with the method (a moot point).
Enjoy your day
Dan Shiovitz
Zeborah <fitc...@netaccess.co.nz> wrote:
>Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Mariane Desautels wrote:
>>
>> >My guess: kairos instead of chronos. Books don't usually happen in real
>> >time anyways...
>>
>> Is this approximately what you mean by the above?:
>> Kairos was one of two Greek terms often used to mean "time";
><snip>
>
>Okay, that much I understood. :-( Would some kindly soul mind very
>much explaining the difference between kairos and chronos to me in very
>plain English? I have a suspicion sneaking up on me that it could come
>in handy for something I'm working on.
A number of the documents brought up by google.com are
enlightening. For instance, here's a quote from one at
http://www.prtvc.org/sermons/ph98/ph-98-49.htm
In biblical Greek there are two words for time, which sound alike, but
which are vastly different. They are "chronos" and "kairos." Chronos
time is clock and calendar time, as in chronology. Anyone who is
half-careful can be timely, "chronos." Now, "kairos" is a different
kind of time altogether. It is something which happens at the "right"
time, no matter what the clock and calendar show.When the Bible speaks
of Jesus coming "at the right time," the word "kairos" is used. When
someone does or says something at "just the right time," we mean
"kairos", not "chronos."
So the difference appears to be that "chronos" is the abstract,
numeric concept of time, whereas "kairos" is time in relation to
humans and the events that occur.
>Zeborah
--
Dan Shiovitz || d...@cs.wisc.edu || http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs
"...Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened
thought, modern enlightened thought being practically a personal buddy
of hers, Florence gave him the swift heave-ho and--much against my
will, but she seemed to wish it--became betrothed to me." - PGW, J.a.t.F.S.
Rachael M. Lininger
On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Anne M. Marble wrote:
>For some reason, I've never had much trouble with writing "protagonist
>waking up" beginnings to my stories. Of course, I've had problems
>finishing my stories; keeping the words "glared" and "stared" from
>ending up on each page; and so forth. If it's not one thing, it's
>another. (Gee, maybe I should join Critters!)
Critters is very good for people who can work that way. I don't, and
can't; but I know it's very helpful to a great many people. If you
have the time to do the critiquing of other people, it would probably
be a good idea to at least try it.
Rachael
--
Rachael M. Lininger | "Trust your inner squid."
lininger@ |
virtu.sar.usf.edu | Graydon Saunders
Mary K. Kuhner
>I wasn't suggesting that you are an "amateur" anything. You have A UW
>email address, which suggests you live in Seattle, like me, and might
>have tried her class.
I'm sorry, I must have come across as touchy, that was not at all my
intention--if anything, I was covering up a bit of guilt for using
my UW address on Usenet postings.... I haven't happened to take that
class, that's all.
>She has her
>students write five "scaffold scenes" -- a First Meeting scene, a
>Conflict scene, a Resolution etc for each major character and story
>thread, then links them together with "bridge" scene. That's a bit
>simplified, but essentially accurate.
>I had wondered if you had taken the class (which you obviously haven't),
>and if so, had success with the method (a moot point).
Have you tried it? How did it work out for you?
I've got quite a few more bits than five, but similar problems with
the bridge scenes. It doesn't help that the scaffold scenes have
sat in a notebook for over a year, either: *how* did I ever think
I was going to get from A to C? (I've forgotten what B was going
to be, if indeed I ever knew.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Harry Connolly
>
> Harry Connolly <maka...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >I wasn't suggesting that you are an "amateur" anything. You have A UW
> >email address, which suggests you live in Seattle, like me, and might
> >have tried her class.
>
> I'm sorry, I must have come across as touchy, that was not at all my
> intention--if anything, I was covering up a bit of guilt for using
> my UW address on Usenet postings.... I haven't happened to take that
> class, that's all.
>
I'm sorry, too. I'm not usually so defensive.
> >She has her
> >students write five "scaffold scenes" -- a First Meeting scene, a
> >Conflict scene, a Resolution etc for each major character and story
> >thread, then links them together with "bridge" scene. That's a bit
> >simplified, but essentially accurate.
>
> >I had wondered if you had taken the class (which you obviously haven't),
> >and if so, had success with the method (a moot point).
>
> Have you tried it? How did it work out for you?
>
> I've got quite a few more bits than five, but similar problems with
> the bridge scenes. It doesn't help that the scaffold scenes have
> sat in a notebook for over a year, either: *how* did I ever think
> I was going to get from A to C? (I've forgotten what B was going
> to be, if indeed I ever knew.)
>
I did not work for me. It has left me with much more rewriting work
than I would have had if I'd just outlined (I love outlining). You
write about 30 scaffold scenes, for each of 3 0r 4 major characters, and
a set for the relationships between the characters, and a set for
important story elements. And the bridge scenes are determined this
way: You workshop each scaffold scene with a critique group, and one of
the comments people give is a question raised by the (out of context)
scene, like "Why didn't Bob just *drive* to work?"
That question, and any others, are answered by writing a bridge scene.
So you write the part where Bob's car break down and you slip it into
the book before the scaffold. (That part I liked)
The problem is, although she spent some time talking about rising action
(or whatever she called it), the novels came out flat. She assigned
some of the books she had published as in-class reading, so that after a
couple months of working her way, I read books written with her methods,
which she liked enough to publish, and it gave me chills to realize how
much I didn't like them. They didn't go anywhere, the conflicts were
unaltered from start to finish, and the characters had the same
conversations. No build.
I won't do it again, though I know it helped some people.
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>
> On Mon, 01 Mar 1999 03:26:15 +0000, Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> <sirb...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >Because you're artificially selecting a spot just to avoid a cliche, and
> >have the more awkward task of backfilling (see my other posts about this).
>
> may find a better one than the one you initially chose.
>
> Stories don't necessarily start at the most obvious point.
But theoretically one *can* have looked, and not found a better spot. And
if the spot you do have is fine (aside from it being a cliche), then there
is no point in changing it unless it will substantially effect the overall
quality and saleability of the story.
> >Because then you may have the task of filling in the details that were
> >skipped artificially, or skip telling them at all.
>
> And why is this a problem? If the details aren't particularly
> interesting and can be summarized in a line or two of dialogue or left
> out entirely, then do it.
Because they are interesting.
> Stories needn't be linear. Flashbacks are a useful tool in the
> writer's arsenal.
I'm sure this is meant well, but I find it just a tad condescending. I
know about flashbacks, thanks. However, I would not tell you that you
could or should rewrite any of the linear parts of your last novel as
flashbacks simply because a particular part was a cliche.
> In Sylvia Burack's WRITER'S HANDBOOK of a few years back the lead-off
> essay is by Stephen King, in which he explains the secret of
> successful writing. He's not kidding, either. It isn't "avoid
> cliches" or "suck up to editors." It's "Leave out the boring parts."
Lawrence, I don't know why, but this entire paragraph angers me because it
sounds like it's directed at *me* personally. Perhaps you wouldn't take
offense to it, but I've never say something like that to you, as if you
didn't know to leave at boring parts. I bte Stephen King doesn't say the
secret is writing predictable fantasy novels, either, and yet that hasn't
stopped many a success. (No, I didn't mean you specifically, but if I had
worded my paragraph like yours, it would have been nicely ambiguous, no?)
> A description of someone waking up is boring. Leave it out.
I've read non-boring descriptions of someone waking up, so we'll just have
to agree to disagree.
> Cliches are boring. That's why you should leave them out.
>
> If it's not boring, then it's NOT A CLICHE. It may look like one, but
> it isn't really one.
*bangs head against the wall*
I don't think you're listening to me, and when you use definitions like that
there's no way you'd understand me no matter how many times I explain, so
let's just drop this thread. I can't fathom your position either, where
you believe that cliches aren't a problem to be worried about if they are
used interestingly, and yet you pursue mine as if it can't possibly be such
a situation. And then you say those interesting ones aren't cliches.
> > But as I discovered
> >from elswhere in this thread, I think you and others were arguing against
> >the boring and irrelevant stuff, which I wasn't talking about at *all*
> >since to me it goes without saying and had nothing per se to do with the
> >protagonist waking up at the start of a story.
>
> The protagonist waking up is in itself boring. That's the ONLY reason
> it's considered a cliche and a bad way to start a story. If you've
> changed it so it's not boring, then it's not a cliche and there's no
> reason not to do it.
Fine. I'll make it not boring. Let's just leave it at that.
> Look, rules don't come from nowhere. They all have reasons. In
> writing advice, the most common reason for ANY rule is to avoid boring
> the reader.
Really? Hmm, I'll have to think about that. When I and my friends talk of
cliches they are more annoying and distracting and disruptive, not boring.
Yet we still call them cliches. Trite, hackneyed, even stereotypical, but
not necessarily boring.
> Pat Wrede's latest post in this thread is also excellent advice, by
> the way.
And Pat and I are in almost perfect agreement. If we can both agree with
Pat and Pat can agree with us then let us assume we have an understanding
between us if if we've failed to communicate it to each-other.
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> A number of the documents brought up by google.com are
> enlightening. For instance, here's a quote from one at
> http://www.prtvc.org/sermons/ph98/ph-98-49.htm
>
> In biblical Greek there are two words for time, which sound alike, but
> which are vastly different. They are "chronos" and "kairos." Chronos
> time is clock and calendar time, as in chronology. Anyone who is
> half-careful can be timely, "chronos." Now, "kairos" is a different
> kind of time altogether. It is something which happens at the "right"
> time, no matter what the clock and calendar show.When the Bible speaks
> of Jesus coming "at the right time," the word "kairos" is used. When
> someone does or says something at "just the right time," we mean
> "kairos", not "chronos."
>
> So the difference appears to be that "chronos" is the abstract,
> numeric concept of time, whereas "kairos" is time in relation to
> humans and the events that occur.
So, "chronos" is "time" and "kairos" is "timing" in the sense of comedy or
luck or synchronicity. Why didn't they (those explaing the workd) just say
so?
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>
> In article <36d8bd60...@news.clark.net>, lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence
> Watt-Evans) writes:
>
> >Why not start with him on the way to deal with whatever it is?
>
> Or even with him arriving at wherever it is he's going to deal with it? Or
> in the middle of the first bit of dealing with that he does?
Sometimes it is better to start a story elsewhere. Or it would be, assuming
the resulting use of a cliche (which is interesting, so it isn't a real cliche)
isn't a problem.
> A large percentage of the folks who come through my classes seem to feel that
> they have to somehow get all the background information and all the backstory
> into the first few pages of the story, or the first few pages of the chapter.
> This is, however, rarely necessary. Unfortunately, rather a lot of the time,
> the people who have started their stories this way have a great deal of
> difficulty in visualizing any other way to start the story, because they have
> been thrashing around for so long and *this is where it starts, dammit.* The
> fact that the story is perfectly comprehensible to everybody even if they
> start with the page marked "Chapter Two" doesn't seem to penetrate.
Whew. I'm glad I don't have this problem. Storytelling is so complex and
the use of background so measured that I can't envision feeling like a story
can only be told in one particular sequence or order. However, one must not
go to the other extreme, and jump in at a later point in a story and backfill
just because one can. This can result in a story being less powerful or
simply less satisfying.
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> >> >awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating.
> >>
> >> Not to me, it doesn't. Why does it seem like cheating to you?
> >
> >Because you're artificially changing stuff *solely* to avoid the cliche,
> >without making any difference. Because you would then wind up telling
> >everything anyway, only know in some sort of reminiscence or flashback
> >or lots of unnatural infodumps.
>
> to avoid the cliche" might be a short-sighted decision.
>
> But, might I suggest other wording? That, in some stories, we
> avoid the initial information because we can better capture the
> reader's interest with a different scene, perhaps one with more
> action, and then, once the reader is involved, pause for the
> other information.
This is certainly one of the things I've considered for this particular
story. But since cliches don't seem to be a problem, particularly if they
aren't boring, then I'm not sure it's worth the effort.
> See, it's not just a matter of telling everything that is relevant
> to the story. We must also make sure we present that information
> to the best advantage. *When* we tell can be as important as *what*
> we tell.
Oh, absolutely.
> As storytellers, we have an arsenal of tricks at our command
> to best present our story: pacing, vocabulary, voice, POV, ...
> You may choose a different beginning, not because
> you wish to avoid the cliche, but because it provides better
> pacing for *this* story.
Right. In this case, though, I think the story pacing is better served with
the cliche. I had thought I had made that clear but perhaps I didn't. That
was the main point... I was told the cliche was bad but didn't see a way to
rewrite without it that didn't lose something of the power and pacing.
> Ultimately, our job is to be true to the story we are telling, and
> show it to its best advantage. If a cliche serves that purpose,
> go for it.
Okay. I will be less worried about cliches then. This is something of a
personal issue of mine, because some of my writing from high school was
absolutely *riddled* with them. One I re-read them in more recent times,
I've kept a careful eye out in my current writing not to (over)use them.
> If your story is best told starting with the awakening,
> go for it. However, just because there is relevant information in the
> awakening and the events around it, doesn't mean that the
> story is best told starting there. Only you can determine this,
> however, since you alone know the story in question.
Well, consider the opening scene of _To Sail Beyond The Sunset_. Everything
in the first scene could easily have been told by Heinlein in a flashback
or by an infodump between characters. But it wouldn't have been as good a
book. And he wouldn't have been able to start off with such a "fun" line:
I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the
cat was not.
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>
> On Mon, 1 Mar 1999, Bruce Sterling Woodcock wrote:
>
> >Dan Goodman wrote:
> >> That is _not_ the same thing. What I was talking about was:
> >> character wakes up in the usual boring way, and proceeds to have a
> >> boring day till the first real event in the story.
> >>
> >> Your beginning sounds as if it's a reasonable place to start the
> >> story. The next problem is a temptation to overdescribe what happens
> >> before the next interesting thing which happens.
> >
> >Oh! Okay. I guess I've been the victim of another generalization again
> >(there are so many of those) that left me with the wrong impression that
> >a particular cliche is bad in a broad sense, not a specific subclass of the
> >cliche used in a particular way.
>
> And, therefore, you interpreted my explanation of why this was _not_
> true as a repetition of the cliche.
I can't quite parse this through all the levels of our conversation. So
I don't know if I did that or not. However, if you're agreeing with my
previous paragraph, then I don't think we have any dispute here.
> >None of this would interfere with what's fun for the reader.
>
> As a reader, I can tell you that there have been times when it _has
> interfered with what's fun for me. Therefore the above statement is
> false -- even if I'm the only reader in all of human history (past,
> present and future) ever to have this problem.
Okay. I'll rephrase, to be clear:
None of this would interfere with what's fun for the readers I'm aiming
at for this particular story.
I do see what you're saying; my point was simply that the things you were
suggesting that might be in the story that would be boring were not there;
I was talking about things which would (hopefully) not be boring.
> As far as I can tell, it was almost never done for any reason other
> than "Let's see -- I need something to keep this from being
> all-dialogue. I know -- everybody smokes, so I'll have one of them
> light a cigaret!"
Well, that is bad. Useful as a device once, perhaps, but not something
that should be overused.
> >Yes. Lots of less natural, more annoying ways. Remember - show, don't
> >tell. With countless novels to reference, I see nothing to indicate that
> >every single word is essential. Not that I'm advocating filler, but just
> >that describing lots of fun stuff the character would do between waking up
> >and the next major event is useful stuff.
>
> Why? Useful how?
It's hard for me to say without getting either very specific or speaking in
very broad terms. In the end it relates to how a particular story is told,
and in the effectiveness of the storytelling. The support words help in
pacing and in communicating a story to the reader, but I think moreso it
has to do with the reader's enjoyment. A "just the facts, ma'am" version
of _Lord of the Rings_ would not be as enjoyable. (Although, written well,
it could make a very amusing parody.)
> >> And quite possibly, not all the information. Harry Turtledove's
> >> fantasy tends to include stuff I (as a reader) consider unnecessary --
> >> for example, I already know how to use a chamberpot. I like some
> >> Turtledove short stories; I've given up reading his novels.
> >
> >Well, then that is your personal bias. I would be more than happy to be
> >able to sell as many novels as Harry Turtledove, even if it meant losing a
> >few readers who didn't like all the unncessary information. You can't
> >please everyone.
>
> Offhand, I think you're more likely to reach his sales records by
> earning a degree in Byzantine history than by putting information
> which I consider unnecessary into your novels.
We'll have to agree to disagree here... I think there are more authors
who have his sales records without such a degree and who *do* have
"unnecessary" information in their novels. However, I suspect we may now
be using different meanings of the word "unnecessary" and I'd rather not get
into another argument over semantics.
> >> >You could start with the character already
> >> >awake of halfway out the door, but that seems like cheating.
> >>
> >> Not to me, it doesn't. Why does it seem like cheating to you?
> >
> >Because you're artificially changing stuff *solely* to avoid the cliche,
>
> Not me. I would be changing stuff in order to eliminate _to improve
> the story_.
Not me. I would be changing stuff in order to eliminate the cliche and
_hurting the story_ at least marginally. So it's not a good idea unless
the cliche is really a killer in the slush-pile.
> >without making any difference.
>
> Differences would include: 1) The story begins closer to
> protagonist's first encounter with the problem itself -- rather than
> what others say about the problem. 2) The story begins with
> protagonist in motion.
Difference would also include: 1) The story misses all of the other
problems the protagonist encounters, 2) The pacing of the story is awkward,
and 3) The story is less satisfying for the reader.
> Because you would then wind up telling
> >everything anyway,
>
> Not everything. I could leave out: descriptions of protagonist's
> Killer Rabbit slippers; the scene in which he puts on his clothes; the
> process of waking up...
But none of these were said to be in my story and shouldn't assumed to be
in there. Plenty of stories use them anyway; so long as you don't spend
a paragraph on the person getting dressed (unless the outfit is important),
it's probably not an issue.
> only know in some sort of reminiscence or flashback
> >or lots of unnatural infodumps.
>
> Flashbacks work fine for Lawrence Block, who uses them in many of his
> mysteries. And who has a rather good sales record.
And strangle, Lawrence Block didn't use *all* flashbacks, even though he
*could* have. Try to get some perspective, Dan, and stop assuming that
this story is somehow the worst case scenario.
> There are _lots_ of natural ways to give the information. Instead of
> protagonist being given the information in the emergency phone call,
> he might be given the information at headquarters while he's choosing
> his tools and weapons.
Sure. And that *might* hurt the story, too. I would never use such an
example to tell another writer that their story must therefore be starting
in the wrong place, or that it would be perfectly natural to start it in
another.
> >> >And you'll
> >> >have to discuss the backstory anyway
> >>
> >> _Some_ of it, probably. But only some.
> >
> >And that's the some I'm talking about in the first place.
>
> Not clear to me from what you said.
Sorry. I thought I made it clear from the start that my problem with
removing the cliche was because I thought it was bad for the story, and
was only considering removing it for the sake of helping it through the
slush pile. I've since been told that the cliche won't slow it down in
a slush pile (assuming it's not boring), so I am less concerned.
> >> >and you'll wind up starting with the
> >> >protagonist being notified by someone to bring him into the story.
> >>
> >> Sometimes; only sometimes.
> >
> >Well, what I'm talking about is one of those times. Okay? Sheesh.
>
> Sort of okay. You hadn't made it clear that you were talking about
> this one story in particular.
Or perhaps you simply had more trouble understanding it that most. (Not,
let's not take a poll.) Must we make this a case where one person must
be at fault and the other is blameless?
> >> >He
> >> >could be awake at the time, but that seems like a trivial difference.
> >>
> >> You're conflating two different things, here.
> >
> >No, I'm not. Perhaps you are, though.
>
> Very well, then -- you did a rather bad job of demonstrating that you
> were aware of the differece.
Or you did a rather bad job of understanding my demonstration. Again,
must this be a case where one party is right and the other is wrong?
> >> First is what I was
> >> discussing: the protagonist wakes up at the usual boring time, for
> >> the usual dull reasons, dresses in the usual unremarkable clothes
> >> (described in great detail), eats the usual mediocre breakfast (also
> >> described in detail, for the benefit of readers who've never
> >> encountered corn flakes), takes the usual boring trip to work.
> >
> >Right. Got that. To me, the above isn't even an issue because it's an
> >example of bad work. I don't think this is the cliche most people are
> >referring to in this context.
>
> Read this carefully: I began by saying that "starting with the
> protagonist waking up" is NOT a problem _because it's a cliche_. I
> then explained why it is often/usually a problem.
Read this carefully: Right. I got that. To me, the "why it is often/
usually a problem" isn't an issue in my case, because what was shown was
simply bad writing.
> You are now explaining to me that "starting with the protagonist
> waking up" is NOT a problem _because it's a cliche_.
I'm not sure I agree with that statement due to your emphasis. I do have
the position that personally it's NOT a problem to start with a protagonist
even though it is a cliche, so long as it's not used to tell lots of boring
stuff. My concern, initially, was that editors and others felt it WAS a
problem simply for being a cliche. LWE put that concern to rest.
However, neither was what I was explaining to you in the above paragraph.
Rather, that we were talking about the cliche's use in the non-boring sense,
not in the boring, bad writing sense you were describing.
> If it *is*, then they should call it something
> >else, like "the boring writing cliche that really has nothing to do with the
> >protagonist waking up".
>
> Again -- you missed the part where I said that "it's a cliche" isn't
> the problem.
Again -- no, I didn't miss that part. The fact you said that being a cliche
wasn't the problem has nothing to do with my assertion that you should refer
to a bunch of bad writing that uses a cliche as the cliche itself.
> >And there's no reason why not to, either, if it's more natural than
> >other places,
>
> There's a distinction between "natural" and "good". If that's the
> best place to start a particular story, they may be the same.
We seem to be on the same page now.
> >> What _does_ look like a problem to me is, you seem to think telling
> >> the story requires certain details.
> >
> >This goes without saying,
>
> No. And it probably shouldn't go without thinking.
Well, it goes without saying for me. Perhaps others do need to consider
it more carefully. I've already thought it through and determined that
it is indeed true that telling a story requires certain details.
> It's my contention that some of the details you consider to be
> required are not required, not obligatory, not essential.
It's my contention that there's no way for a reasonable person to come
to this conclusion given this thread without having read it. Furthermore,
it's my contention that not all of details generally common in a good
story are required, obligatory, or essential, but simply make the story
better.
> >I am very definitely talking about both relevant details, and less relevant
> >but entertaining details, and the not relevant but not boring or distracting
> >details. For instance, a description of what a person is wearing is often
> >not relevant, and is often left out of short stories, but often included to
> >some extent in novels.
>
> Novels contain _more_ details, yes. Novels contain _irrelevant_
> details -- no, not the good ones.
I disagree. But I suspect I simply have a much strong sense of _irrelevant_
than you do. Irrelevant to the story, yes. Irrelevant to the enjoyment of
the story, no.
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> The explanation he gave for the first tidbit was exactly the one you give
> above. It's not the fact that the "protag waking up" opening is cliched, it's
> that it is rarely the actual start of the story.
To me, then, the advice should have been "Making sure your story starts in a
very good, if not the best, place; starting with the protagonist waking up
in the morning is often not the best place" and not "Never start a story
with an alarm clock ringing."
The two statements have very different implications.
Bruce
Helen Kenyon
<J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>
>To be honest, I don't think that's true of any of my stories, not even
>the one I started when I was 13. Where the story begins is not generally
>something I have a problem with. I've run into that with middle - with
>running out of what comes next and resorting to giving too much detail
>because I don't know what's important, but never with the starts.
>
Starting in the right place hasn't been my problem either. Getting the
beginning *right* has been a problem and beginnings get rewritten more
than anything else. But the problem is not that I was starting in the
wrong place in the story, just that a) I was trying to cram too much
background in too soon or b) I didn't really know the characters well
enough at the start or c) the writing just too flat. Heavens, if I
started on page 3 of the fantasy mystery, we'd just be standing around
the wrecked carriage having missed all the excitement of the accident...
Like you, even when I was young, my stories started in the right place.
Well, more or less. I admit that in the one I started when I was 14
(that I'm now working on again), I have chopped a couple of paragraphs
off the opening, but even that one didn't need to lose three pages off
the beginning.
As it happens, I once wrote a story[1] that began with someone waking
up. But as she was sleeping in a forest and she woke to find she was
being watched by the other main character in the story, it *was* the
right place for that story to start. Any earlier and I'd have had to
start with her arriving at the clearing, making camp and going to sleep
-- only to wake up later. Any later and she'd be riding through the
forest with this little guy she'd just met and who may or may not have
seen her father some years ago. In this case, the being woken up by the
little guy was more dramatic than just meeting him riding along a path -
- which would have been the alternative.
Helen
[1] Not one that's sold, alas, but its lack of success was nothing to do
with the opening paragraphs.
--
Helen Kenyon, Gwynedd, Wales *** ken...@baradel.demon.co.uk
http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
**Please delete the extra bit from e-mail address if replying by mail**
Zeborah
> On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Mariane Desautels wrote:
>
> >My guess: kairos instead of chronos. Books don't usually happen in real
> >time anyways...
>
> Is this approximately what you mean by the above?:
> Kairos was one of two Greek terms often used to mean "time";
<snip>
Okay, that much I understood. :-( Would some kindly soul mind very
much explaining the difference between kairos and chronos to me in very
plain English? I have a suspicion sneaking up on me that it could come
in handy for something I'm working on.
Zeborah
Micole Sudberg
Oh, no. That's terrible. I don't suppose you'd be willing to post it
on your Web site or hand out hints as to what it's about to heartbroken
fans ...
--m.
***********************************
Micole Iris Sudberg
sud...@staff.juno.com
"Language rustles around her with many voices,
none of them hers, all of them hers."
--A. S. Byatt, _Babel Tower_
Micole Sudberg
>request seconded, with bonus points awarded for commentary on the
>appropriateness of referring to madeleine l'engle's books in the _a
>wrinkle in time_ series as her "kairos series", a reference i have
>heard exactly once and never understood.
I don't get this one either, except that it's meant to distinguish them
from the mainstream books with overlapping characters which she calls
the "chronos" books. I find that whole thing really disturbing; in the
mainstream books, the characters never talk about or seem to remember
their fantastical adventures and it just gives the whole thing a feeling
of *wrongness* to me.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>In article <pddb.92...@gw.ddb.com>, pd...@ddb.com (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet) wrote:
>>I'm not saying your story permits this, but it is possible to get some
>>fun out of writing linker scenes, or connective tissue, or whatever
>>you want to call it. I usually do it by repeating significant imagery
>>or thematic stuff, and sometimes with humor. I got a whole subplot
>>out of writing the linking bits later in THE WHIM OF THE DRAGON, but
>>the book was so long and Berkley so annoyed by this that I had to take
>>it out again.
>Oh, no. That's terrible. I don't suppose you'd be willing to post it
>on your Web site or hand out hints as to what it's about to heartbroken
>fans ...
I don't see how, really -- it was all tangled up with other events,
spread throughout the book, and some of them were changed radically.
I'd practically have to put up the entire early draft, and I really
wouldn't want to, because it got polished quite a bit in the revision
process. I'm getting a headache just thinking of it.
The subplot had to do with Benjamin, but frankly at this point I'd have
to reread the manuscript to get it right. It's thirteen years ago.
I'm very sorry I mentioned it, I didn't mean to be distressful.
Graydon
>working and reading in the field of speculative fiction and not being
>able to properly appreciate King, I sometimes feel like somebody in
>1605 who doesn't like Shakespeare. However, I do agree with what
>follows.
I don't like what I've read of King, either.
This is probably because I hit a couple short story collections of
his, and they were all about people being idiots. It's _necessary_ to
the horry genre that all the people be idiots, and I can't stand that
in fiction.
And yes, I'm sure that he's done other stuff, but time is finite and
things packaged as dark and scary, well, I'd rather scrub the bathtub.
--
graydon@ | Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
lara.on.ca | mod sceal þe mare þe ure maegen lytlað.
| -- Beorhtwold, "The Battle of Maldon"
Micole Sudberg
>sud...@staff.juno.com (Micole Sudberg) writes:
>
>>In article <pddb.92...@gw.ddb.com>, pd...@ddb.com (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet)
> wrote:
>
<bits about excluded subplot in =The Whim of the Dragon= snipped>
>>Oh, no. That's terrible. I don't suppose you'd be willing to post it
>>on your Web site or hand out hints as to what it's about to heartbroken
>>fans ...
>
>I don't see how, really -- it was all tangled up with other events,
>spread throughout the book, and some of them were changed radically.
>I'd practically have to put up the entire early draft, and I really
>wouldn't want to, because it got polished quite a bit in the revision
>process. I'm getting a headache just thinking of it.
>
>The subplot had to do with Benjamin, but frankly at this point I'd have
>to reread the manuscript to get it right. It's thirteen years ago.
>
>I'm very sorry I mentioned it, I didn't mean to be distressful.
That's really quite all right. I'd much rather know more about a book I
like, or about an alternate version or unpublished draft (as used to be
the case with =Thrones, Dominations=, for instance, or with Mary
Renault's last novel). and not be able to read it than simply not have
the extra bit of knowledge.
I'm sorry about the headache.
Jo Walton
pd...@ddb.com "Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet" writes:
> The subplot had to do with Benjamin, but frankly at this point I'd have
> to reread the manuscript to get it right. It's thirteen years ago.
Did it explain why he wears a red cloak?
Is Graydon right that he's one of Melanie's victims?
> I'm very sorry I mentioned it, I didn't mean to be distressful.
What you should have done, if you didn't mean to be distressful, is
to writte 8 volumes of it without ever coming to a conclusion, and
then we could have a whole newsgroup that discussed the trivia and
convoluted theories and you could be rich. :]
Meanwhile I'll continue pining for :Winter and Rough Weather:.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
First NorAm Public Appearance: Imperiums to Order, Kitchener, March 20th
Freshly UPDATED web-page http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia;
RASFW FAQ, Reviews, Fanzine, Momentum Guidelines, Blood of Kings Poetry
PWrede6492
<sirb...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>However, one must not
>go to the other extreme, and jump in at a later point in a story and backfill
>just because one can. This can result in a story being less powerful or
>simply less satisfying.
Anything can be done badly.
And of course, using a later start-point and filling in with flashbacks and/or
various other backfill methods *can* result in a more powerful, more satisfying
story. Or in one that is simply a *different* sort of story. Or in one that
has pretty much the same emotional effect, but which is shorter than the first
effort. It depends on the story, and on the writer.
I think the reason that you're getting persistently nagged about your "waking
up" opening is that while *you* are very clear that it is where the story
starts and that the details that follow are really, truly necessary and
appropriate, it isn't possible for any of *us* to know that you're right,
because we don't know the story and we haven't seen what you've written. So we
have to trust you when you say that you need to do it this way. And since
you've already demonstrated that you could labor under one mistaken assumption
(i.e., that you *couldn't* start with the guy waking up "because it's a
cliche"), people are tending to ask "Are you sure? Are you really, really
sure?" which has to be tremendously annoying when you've said sixty-'leven
times that yes, you are sure.
There also seems to be a rather interesting mistiming problem, in which one
party to the discussion tries to take it to a general level and the other
persists in interpreting the remarks as specific to *this particular
story*...and the two sides of the discussion appear to be alternating in terms
of who's being general and who's being specific.
Patricia C. Wrede
PWrede6492
<sirb...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>To me, then, the advice should have been "Making sure your story starts in a
>very good, if not the best, place; starting with the protagonist waking up
>in the morning is often not the best place" and not "Never start a story
>with an alarm clock ringing."
>
>The two statements have very different implications.
>
Yup. And that's why I am so dreadfully allergic to "writing rules" that start
with "You should/must..." or "Always..." or "Never...". Because I haven't
found any that are that absolute, except "You must get words onto paper/screen
at some point in the process" and that's a definitional thing. If you're not
getting words down eventually, you may be telling stories or doing performance
art or making movies, but you're not *writing.*
Patricia C. Wrede
Brenda
Micole Sudberg wrote:
> In article <7bf1cg$q...@yodel.cs.cornell.edu>, ty...@cs.cornell.edu (Thomas Yan) wrote:
>
> >request seconded, with bonus points awarded for commentary on the
> >appropriateness of referring to madeleine l'engle's books in the _a
> >wrinkle in time_ series as her "kairos series", a reference i have
> >heard exactly once and never understood.
>
> I don't get this one either, except that it's meant to distinguish them
> from the mainstream books with overlapping characters which she calls
> the "chronos" books. I find that whole thing really disturbing; in the
> mainstream books, the characters never talk about or seem to remember
> their fantastical adventures and it just gives the whole thing a feeling
> of *wrongness* to me.
>
> --m.
Me too. L'Engle is one of those authors I have grave difficulty with on many fronts.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD, from Tor Books
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Mary K. Kuhner
>I did something like that with THE HIDDEN LAND, which began as the
>second half of a huge novel and ended up being published separately as
>my second book. I had read that Robert Heinlein wrote four pages a
>day, rain or shine, sick or well, whatever, and I thought I would just
>try it and see what happened. I'm not saying everybody else would end
>up like this, but I got very good at writing four-page significant
>scenes, and produced a novel with no connective tissue whatsoever, and
>also some rather odd emphases.
Now I'm going to have to re-read it and look for scenes--
except I won't, of course, I'll come up for air at the end and
think "Drats, was I supposed to be looking at structure?"
Anyway, thanks! It's reassuring to hear that it *is* possible to
stitch such a thing together in the end (and an interesting hint,
to look for ways of making it fun to do so).
I think I made matters worse for myself by pushing all the plausibility/
plot logic issues off into the scenes that aren't written. That
would seem to be a real hazard of the method.
>It sounds as if what you're doing would be lovely to read but might
>work better with a short story than a novel -- which is it?
I never did a word-count till just now, and to add to my annoyance
with this story, the "good parts" version is 32,000 words. A novel
if it gets much longer; not a short story under any circumstances.
(I'm not too surprised: the story I wrote last month was the one
and only short story I've ever been able to finish to my satisfaction,
and I still don't know how it happened.)
I suspect the 32,000 words is half of something with a hinge
in the middle, since the written part ends with the completely
unsuitable "Having finally realized the nature and magnitude of
their problem, they flee from it." I have three scenes somewhere
that probably belong to the second half.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
>You write about 30 scaffold scenes, for each of 3 0r 4 major characters, and
>a set for the relationships between the characters, and a set for
>important story elements. And the bridge scenes are determined this
>way: You workshop each scaffold scene with a critique group, and one of
>the comments people give is a question raised by the (out of context)
>scene, like "Why didn't Bob just *drive* to work?"
I definitely don't think I could do this: if I sat down with a
blank screen and the instructions "Write the scene where A and B meet"
I would just sit there, puzzled. That's not the way plots occur to me
at all.
>The problem is, although she spent some time talking about rising action
>(or whatever she called it), the novels came out flat. She assigned
>some of the books she had published as in-class reading, so that after a
>couple months of working her way, I read books written with her methods,
>which she liked enough to publish, and it gave me chills to realize how
>much I didn't like them. They didn't go anywhere, the conflicts were
>unaltered from start to finish, and the characters had the same
>conversations. No build.
I know what you mean, though it's a really hard quality to describe in
a critique. I remember a friend and I both reading Lynn Andrews'
_Medicine Woman_ and me trying to explain why I was sure it was
fictitious. It's written in first person, and the first-person narrator
describes going through some huge personal changes: but the voice is
just the same, end to end. If it were really written by its narrator
after the fact, she would have to look at the person at the beginning
of the book as someone different from herself, and she ought to have
some reaction to that: if it were really written by its narrator
in parts during the events, the narrative voice should change between
parts.
I'm not sure how you get that quality in a book written out of order,
but I think it's possible: at least I hope it is. It's got to be
harder than getting it in a book written in order, though, where
the author's grasp of the character can change as the character does.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Dan Goodman
>In article <pddb.92...@gw.ddb.com>,
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@ddb.com> wrote:
>>Well, I wouldn't go *that* far. Frankly, living in this century and
>>working and reading in the field of speculative fiction and not being
>>able to properly appreciate King, I sometimes feel like somebody in
>>1605 who doesn't like Shakespeare. However, I do agree with what
>>follows.
>
>I don't like what I've read of King, either.
>
>This is probably because I hit a couple short story collections of
>his, and they were all about people being idiots. It's _necessary_ to
>the horry genre that all the people be idiots, and I can't stand that
>in fiction.
Or that they be suicidal, perhaps.
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>In article <pddb.92...@gw.ddb.com>,
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@ddb.com> wrote:
>>Well, I wouldn't go *that* far. Frankly, living in this century and
>>working and reading in the field of speculative fiction and not being
>>able to properly appreciate King, I sometimes feel like somebody in
>>1605 who doesn't like Shakespeare. However, I do agree with what
>>follows.
>I don't like what I've read of King, either.
>This is probably because I hit a couple short story collections of
>his, and they were all about people being idiots. It's _necessary_ to
>the horry genre that all the people be idiots, and I can't stand that
>in fiction.
Well, it is standard; I'm not at all sure it's necessary. It's
certainly common.
I like "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut." I do pick up a King short story from
time to time to see what he's up to, but I don't usually finish them.
>And yes, I'm sure that he's done other stuff, but time is finite and
>things packaged as dark and scary, well, I'd rather scrub the bathtub.
Yes, me too. Dark and scary can come into it, but for its own sake I
don't care for it.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>In article <pddb.92...@gw.ddb.com>
> pd...@ddb.com "Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet" writes:
>> The subplot had to do with Benjamin, but frankly at this point I'd have
>> to reread the manuscript to get it right. It's thirteen years ago.
>Did it explain why he wears a red cloak?
I don't think so.
>Is Graydon right that he's one of Melanie's victims?
Well, I think he is. That is, I think Benjamin is one of Melanie's
victims. This is slightly different than being altogether committed
to the idea; I suppose what I know could have some different
explanation. But Graydon did pick up some stuff that is actually
there.
>> I'm very sorry I mentioned it, I didn't mean to be distressful.
>What you should have done, if you didn't mean to be distressful, is
>to writte 8 volumes of it without ever coming to a conclusion, and
>then we could have a whole newsgroup that discussed the trivia and
>convoluted theories and you could be rich. :]
That part actually wouldn't be very hard, assuming anybody would
publish it; but I don't think the story would have the elements in it
that make the people on that newsgroup so involved.
>Meanwhile I'll continue pining for :Winter and Rough Weather:.
There's still a possibility for that, though not soon.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>In article <pddb.92...@gw.ddb.com>, pd...@ddb.com (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet) wrote:
>>sud...@staff.juno.com (Micole Sudberg) writes:
>>
>>>In article <pddb.92...@gw.ddb.com>, pd...@ddb.com (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet)
>> wrote:
>>
><bits about excluded subplot in =The Whim of the Dragon= snipped>
>>>Oh, no. That's terrible. I don't suppose you'd be willing to post it
>>>on your Web site or hand out hints as to what it's about to heartbroken
>>>fans ...
>>[snip] I wouldn't want to, because it got polished quite a
>>bit in the revision process. I'm getting a headache just thinking of it.
>>
>>The subplot had to do with Benjamin, but frankly at this point I'd have
>>to reread the manuscript to get it right. It's thirteen years ago.
>>
>>I'm very sorry I mentioned it, I didn't mean to be distressful.
>That's really quite all right. I'd much rather know more about a book I
>like, or about an alternate version or unpublished draft (as used to be
>the case with =Thrones, Dominations=, for instance, or with Mary
>Renault's last novel). and not be able to read it than simply not have
>the extra bit of knowledge.
I feel that way in general, though there is occasionally a specific
piece of knowledge I'd rather not have. The two variant versions of
THE SWORD IN THE STONE bother me a lot. I think it is generally less
of a problem if the book in question is firmly in my head in one form,
but I came to White late, read THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, knew this was
a book I would keep and reread forever, and then picked up a paperback
of TSitS that turned out to be the other version before I was used to
the first one.
I don't mind the early drafts of THE LORD OF THE RINGS; in fact
they're fascinating, but they seem to have no bearing on the actual
story, which is fixed forever by the thirty or forty readings I'd done
before I looked at its history.
There was a subplot involving Agatha, too. I'm not at all sure the
book isn't better without them; if it could have used to be much
longer, which I think it probably could, the stuff presently in the
last half would have benefitted by a somewhat slower approach, but I
don't know that it needed those subplots. A lot of what's in them
could be in some other book.
>I'm sorry about the headache.
That's all right, it was mostly self-inflicted.
John Kensmark
sirb...@ix.netcom.com wrote, in part:
>
> Well, consider the opening scene of _To Sail Beyond The Sunset_.
> Everything in the first scene could easily have been told by
> Heinlein in a flashback or by an infodump between characters.
> But it wouldn't have been as good a book. And he wouldn't have
> been able to start off with such a "fun" line:
>
> I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a
> stranger; the cat was not.
I haven't read this one, but, in isolation, I would prefer:
I woke up in bed with a cat and a stranger. The
stranger was a man; the cat was not.
Or even:
I woke up in bed with an acquaintence and a stranger.
The acquaintence was a cat; the stranger was not.
But that's probably just my idiosyncrasy. This reminds me of a joke opening
inspired by one of Niven's Unfinished Stories:
"There are some things man was not meant to know."
"Name one."
"What are you, crazy?"
Because of my writing peculiarities, these strike me as too punchy for novels,
though, and better suited to short stories. They're gimmick hooks, almost
certainly, and gimmick tricks are for short stories the way punchlines are for
jokes. In my opinion. I use hooks for books, too, but they're not quite as
sharp.
John Kensmark
kens...@hotmail.com
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
John Kensmark
sirb...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> "David J. Parker" wrote:
> > The explanation he gave for the first tidbit was exactly the one you
> > give above. It's not the fact that the "protag waking up" opening is
> > cliched, it's that it is rarely the actual start of the story.
>
> in a very good, if not the best, place; starting with the protagonist
> waking up in the morning is often not the best place" and not "Never
> start a story with an alarm clock ringing."
>
> The two statements have very different implications.
Fair enough, but rules for writing are often overstatements, apparently
designed to keep beginning writers erring on the side of caution. Learning
the rules is part of the artistic license to break them, after all. If you
want to build a house where the second floor greatly overhangs the first, you
probably should first understand how 'normal' houses are built.
The generalization in question is no doubt a rule of thumb--if you feel
confident enough to go beyond it, more power to you.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@ddb.com> wrote:
>>I did something like that with THE HIDDEN LAND, which began as the
>>second half of a huge novel and ended up being published separately as
>>my second book. I had read that Robert Heinlein wrote four pages a
>>day, rain or shine, sick or well, whatever, and I thought I would just
>>try it and see what happened. I'm not saying everybody else would end
>>up like this, but I got very good at writing four-page significant
>>scenes, and produced a novel with no connective tissue whatsoever, and
>>also some rather odd emphases.
>Now I'm going to have to re-read it and look for scenes--
>except I won't, of course, I'll come up for air at the end and
>think "Drats, was I supposed to be looking at structure?"
*blush*
I don't know how much the seams show -- give what an early work it is,
I should think there would be some, but it did have a good editor.
>Anyway, thanks! It's reassuring to hear that it *is* possible to
>stitch such a thing together in the end (and an interesting hint,
>to look for ways of making it fun to do so).
I have to admit that I might never have thought of this notion for
myself; I got it from Steven Brust, who goes about amusing himself
while finishing a novel in rather different ways than mine but still
deserves credit for making me realize it was possible to do more than
grit one's teeth and just slog.
>I think I made matters worse for myself by pushing all the plausibility/
>plot logic issues off into the scenes that aren't written. That
>would seem to be a real hazard of the method.
I keep thinking, "Oh, that would be so fascinating if it worked" about
remarks like this -- your earlier one about doing all the connection
by indirection had a similar effect.
>>It sounds as if what you're doing would be lovely to read but might
>>work better with a short story than a novel -- which is it?
>I never did a word-count till just now, and to add to my annoyance
>with this story, the "good parts" version is 32,000 words. A novel
>if it gets much longer; not a short story under any circumstances.
That is an awkward length; oh, well, sometimes they just do that.
>(I'm not too surprised: the story I wrote last month was the one
>and only short story I've ever been able to finish to my satisfaction,
>and I still don't know how it happened.)
I have only one of those as well, if you think of a short story as
being under about 7500 words. I seem to have done it by a fairly
ruthless compression. It eventually exploded into a novel despite my
refusal to consider this idea reasonable.
>I suspect the 32,000 words is half of something with a hinge
>in the middle, since the written part ends with the completely
>unsuitable "Having finally realized the nature and magnitude of
>their problem, they flee from it."
Hmm, do I think that's a good idea? No, not really. As an ending,
that is -- it makes perfect sense from the viewpoint of the
characters.
>I have three scenes somewhere that probably belong to the second half.
Isn't it odd how structure sometimes reveals itself?
John Kensmark
gra...@lara.on.ca (Graydon) wrote:
>
> I don't like what I've read of King, either.
>
> This is probably because I hit a couple short story collections of
> his, and they were all about people being idiots. It's _necessary_ to
> the horry genre that all the people be idiots, and I can't stand that
> in fiction.
I don't think it's necessary to the genre in the sense of "genre" meaning,
colloquially, "that kind of story", but perhaps, yes, in the sense of "that
segment of the publishing industry". Lots of stupid characters out there, and
that's hardly the only problem with most horror fiction.
But horror doesn't depend on idiocy, and better horror fiction doesn't rely on
stupid characters. It's just a lazy method, usually.
> And yes, I'm sure that he's done other stuff, but time is finite and
> things packaged as dark and scary, well, I'd rather scrub the bathtub.
To each according to preference. I think most of King's stuff in, I don't
know, the last ten years has been inferior, anyway. He admits himself that
when anything he wrote sold well, he lost his motivation to work hardest on
the tough parts of writing good books. That's a large part of what the
Bachman thing was all about, originally.
This kind of thing probably happens to some authors in any genre, it seems to
me, including some in the SF/F world.
PWrede6492
mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>Harry Connolly <maka...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>You write about 30 scaffold scenes, for each of 3 0r 4 major characters, and
>>a set for the relationships between the characters, and a set for
>>important story elements. And the bridge scenes are determined this
>>way: You workshop each scaffold scene with a critique group, and one of
>>the comments people give is a question raised by the (out of context)
>>scene, like "Why didn't Bob just *drive* to work?"
>
>I definitely don't think I could do this: if I sat down with a
>blank screen and the instructions "Write the scene where A and B meet"
>I would just sit there, puzzled. That's not the way plots occur to me
>at all.
Me either.
Once or twice, I've had a book that evolved from a vivid idea of a scene or
image that was somewhere in the middle of the book. In all cases, that scene
ended up never being written, because it had nothing to do with the story I
ended up writing. I can just picture how frustrating I'd find it to have 30 or
so scenes like that to throw away...it wouldn't be pretty.
>If it were really written by its narrator
>after the fact, she would have to look at the person at the beginning
>of the book as someone different from herself, and she ought to have
>some reaction to that: if it were really written by its narrator
>in parts during the events, the narrative voice should change between
>parts.
>
>I'm not sure how you get that quality in a book written out of order,
>but I think it's possible: at least I hope it is.
Steven Brust does this in the Vlad books; Vlad changes and grows in a
consistent fashion, and his narrative voice (the books are first-person)
reflects this...and the first two or three were written in reverse order.
JHEREG was the first one, and Vlad is a much more...settled sort of character
than the young punk in TALTOS who has a chip on his shoulder the size of the
Rock of Gibralter.
I don't know how he did it, though.
Patricia C. Wrede
PWrede6492
<kens...@hotmail.com> writes:
>Fair enough, but rules for writing are often overstatements, apparently
>designed to keep beginning writers erring on the side of caution.
Whereas the actual effect of such overstatements, in an enormous number of
cases, is to put beginning writers into an artificial straightjacket...and
encourage them to inflict said straightjacket on anyone else who writes or
wants to write. Do you *know* how many times I've had to whop people upside
the head because they wouldn't do the obviously right thing to fix their story
"because it's against the rules -- you can't...(open with a cliche, open
slowly, open with anything except physical action, ever use adverbs in speech
tags, "tell" anybody anything for any reason, ever use any verb except "said"
in a speech tag, use flashbacks, etc. and on into infinity)"? Or worse yet,
because they were attempting to convince somebody else that the obviously right
thing in the sombody else's story was "wrong" because it was "against the
rules"?
Excuse me, I'm going to go away and froth quietly at the mouth now.
Patricia C. Wrede
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@ddb.com> wrote:
>> Well, I wouldn't go *that* far. Frankly, living in this century and
>> working and reading in the field of speculative fiction and not being
>> able to properly appreciate King, I sometimes feel like somebody in
>> 1605 who doesn't like Shakespeare.
>You think that's bad? I live in New Zealand and don't like rugby. Last
>year the guy who shared my shift would ask me every week, "Did you see
>the rugby?" My reply would be something like "No"; whereupon he'd
>expostulate incredulously "What? You didn't see the *rugby*?" Every
>week I'd carefully explain to him that I would rather watch grass grow
>than see a game of rugby -- even if it wasn't particularly pretty grass,
>dead grass would do, or just a patch of bare soil, anything like that --
>but he seemed to have forgotten this by the same time the week after.
My co-sweetie has had similar problems with co-works who can't get it
through their heads that she doesn't watch television.
I don't have *that* problem with King. People are perfectly willing
to believe I don't like his stuff, or just don't like horror. There
were certainly people in London in 1605 who didn't like Shakespeare.
It's more a feeling that I'm missing something vital.
Graydon
>>Now I'm going to have to re-read it and look for scenes--
>>except I won't, of course, I'll come up for air at the end and
>>think "Drats, was I supposed to be looking at structure?"
>
>*blush*
>
>I don't know how much the seams show -- give what an early work it is,
>I should think there would be some, but it did have a good editor.
Heh.
There's also back-pressure, the accumulated weight of all the stiffled
impulses to _really_ write. That seems to count for something a fair
good fraction of the time.
>>I think I made matters worse for myself by pushing all the plausibility/
>>plot logic issues off into the scenes that aren't written. That
>>would seem to be a real hazard of the method.
>
>I keep thinking, "Oh, that would be so fascinating if it worked" about
>remarks like this -- your earlier one about doing all the connection
>by indirection had a similar effect.
I certainly want to read both of the stories Mary is describing.
>>I have three scenes somewhere that probably belong to the second half.
>
>Isn't it odd how structure sometimes reveals itself?
Is it possible to nominate something for an understatement award?
Julian Flood
> In particular, telling people what they already know is likely to be
> boring, and we all know what it's like to wake up in the morning.
There's an Angela Carter novel in which a girl gets up and goes to
breakfast. It takes five thousand words. I am not disagreeing with your
assessment.
--
Julian Flood
jul...@argonet.co.uk
Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants can be found at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf. Don't ask about the Diddley Skiffle-folk.
Kate Orman
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
[...]
>There are no hard-and-fast rules in writing. There are guidelines and
>suggestions.
>
>If you CALL them guidelines and suggestions, beginners will often
>decide to ignore them -- "they're just suggestions."
>
>If you call them rules, beginners will obsess foolishly about them.
>"I can't do that; it's against the rules!"
>
>It's a no-win situation, and all tangled up with my conviction that
>beginning writers are simply determined to worry about all the wrong
>things in order to avoid looking at the true situation.
It might be worth pointing out, though, that there are some rules the
hopeful writer has to follow - not rules about grammar or style, but the
submission guidelines.
An awful lot of hopeful writers for the "Doctor Who" range have nobbled
themselves by ignoring the guidelines - for instance, by using characters
they were told to avoid.
But I know what you mean about worrying about the wrong things. Many of
the hopefuls I've encountered are nervous about invisible rules (I was,
too, when I started out.). One example: I'm often asked whether a
proposal from an American hopeful would be taken seriously, or considered
at all. (Most of the "Who" authors are British.)
[lots snipped]
>And that's the one real true unbreakable rule: Don't Bore the Reader.
>Everything else is just hints and suggestions on how best to achieve
>this.
All too often, people have such *excellent* justifications for that
tedious info-dump or pointless meandering! :-)
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
previous post. Clearly I was on edge because I thought you were directing
your comments at me, rather than the subject in general. I am glad you
recognized that and managed to avoid any sort of reactionary statements that
could have escalated this into the ugly stage. The last thing I wanted was
another flamewar.
I snipped most of the exchanges from the last post because they were all
pretty much the same thing; you said something which I thought was directed
at my particular situation, and then you clarified that it wasn't. So there
wasn't any real disagreement on many of the points; you have my apologies for
misreading your intent.
However, this whole subthread started because I questioned your downplaying
of the (and please don't jump on the inexactness of this word I am going to
use for the sake of brevity) importance of avoiding cliches in one's writing.
I thought having them was viewed as more problematical than they in fact are,
and I appreciate you helping to educate on that point. When I later went on
to provide some examples of how a particular cliche was in a couple of my
stories, which I had been considering rewriting because I thought virtually
any use of cliche would make it more difficult for them to move through the
slush pile, you began to offer opinions and suggests on how to avoid the cliche.
Given the prior conversation, I thought I was clear that I thought doing so
was problematic and was only considering it because I thought any use would
be viewed negatively. And since your responses were to mine, I thought you
were directing them to my particular case.
So, if you meant to speak to the general case of why the use of that particular
cliche is often bad, that's fine, but I don't think that was ever stated clearly
by you. Given the context of your responses to my points about my own cliche
which I was encountering, I don't think it was at all unreasonable that I thought
your comments were directed to my particular case. Perhaps there is fault on
both sides.
Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>
> On Mon, 01 Mar 1999 20:15:55 +0000, Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> <sirb...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >> A description of someone waking up is boring. Leave it out.
> >
> >I've read non-boring descriptions of someone waking up, so we'll just have
> >to agree to disagree.
>
> Name one. I'll wager it's not waking up that isn't boring, but what
> happens immediately after.
I would, but you're right in your wager, and therein lies to core of a point
I made in a previous post: if this is what you mean, it should be called not
the "waking up" cliche but rather the "waking up and doing a lot of boring
morning stuff" cliche. Cliche because so many writers fall into that trap,
and bad because it is *boring*. I was taking the idea that starting off with
the protagonist waking up at all, no matter how interesting, was considered
cliche and also that the cliche would hurt the piece's ability to move through
the slush pile. You have put the latter point to rest, and as to the former,
it doesn't seem to matter whether it's cliche or not so long as the stuff that
happens after isn't boring.
> >Really? Hmm, I'll have to think about that. When I and my friends talk of
> >cliches they are more annoying and distracting and disruptive, not boring.
> >Yet we still call them cliches. Trite, hackneyed, even stereotypical, but
> >not necessarily boring.
>
> You're defining "boring" too narrowly. "Boring" means "not
> entertaining." It's not quite the same as "tedious," which appears to
> be more nearly what you mean.
Well, I've certainly seen what I thought were cliches but which were still
entertaining. I can't think of a written example offhand, but many a Hollywood
blockbust (_ID4_) are riddled with cliches but are still very entertaining.
> Why do you find cliches annoying or distracting?
This is a good question. I suppose it is just because I've *seen* them before.
I wonder why the person behind it couldn't have come up with something more
original and interesting, and I may be skeptical in their ability to pull the
cliche off in an entertaining fashion. But these feelings can be quickly put
to rest by the material that follows, and I tend to be more annoying by plot
elements which are cliche rather than a particular style or mannerism or scene.
Sometimes I expect a cliche and am surprised when it doesn't materialize, maybe
even to disappointment. (Example: In the last Star Trek movie, I really
expected/wanted to see a scene where Worf is consoled, probably by Troi, on the
death of his wife. It would have been cliche and predictable, but sometimes we
humanoids act in a cliche and predictable fashion.)
I wouldn't say that most of the cliches are boring, though. But you were right
in noting I'm using a more narrow definition of boring (tiresome, tedious) and
also that if the surrounding material or use of the cliche is boring, then I
will be bored.
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>
> In article <36DAF8FD...@ix.netcom.com>, Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> <sirb...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>
> >However, one must not
> >go to the other extreme, and jump in at a later point in a story and backfill
> >just because one can. This can result in a story being less powerful or
> >simply less satisfying.
>
> Anything can be done badly.
>
> And of course, using a later start-point and filling in with flashbacks and/or
> various other backfill methods *can* result in a more powerful, more satisfying
> story. Or in one that is simply a *different* sort of story. Or in one that
> has pretty much the same emotional effect, but which is shorter than the first
> effort. It depends on the story, and on the writer.
Very true.
> I think the reason that you're getting persistently nagged about your "waking
> up" opening is that while *you* are very clear that it is where the story
> starts and that the details that follow are really, truly necessary and
> appropriate, it isn't possible for any of *us* to know that you're right,
> because we don't know the story and we haven't seen what you've written. So we
> have to trust you when you say that you need to do it this way. And since
> you've already demonstrated that you could labor under one mistaken assumption
> (i.e., that you *couldn't* start with the guy waking up "because it's a
> cliche"), people are tending to ask "Are you sure? Are you really, really
> sure?" which has to be tremendously annoying when you've said sixty-'leven
> times that yes, you are sure.
Exactly.
And it's not entirely that I'm sure, either. I've looked for ways to change
the opening, but none of them worked as well. The only reason why I was still
considering it was I thought that just having it might kill it in a slushpile,
and the story would be more saleable without it, even if I thought the story
then was less powerful.
It's also a matter of degree. Perhaps removing the cliche *can* be done with
considerable effort and the story can be made better. But I've learned you
can't spend *forever* writing and rewriting and tinkering with every little
thing of your story or else it'll either never get out the door or it'll die a
death of a thousand cuts. So as long as having the cliche as an opening isn't
a death sentence, I really don't want to worry about it... naturally I think the
rest of the what happens isn't boring, or I wouldn't be writing it down in the
first place!
> There also seems to be a rather interesting mistiming problem, in which one
> party to the discussion tries to take it to a general level and the other
> persists in interpreting the remarks as specific to *this particular
> story*...and the two sides of the discussion appear to be alternating in terms
> of who's being general and who's being specific.
Yes. That's what happened between me and LWE. I think we've got that
straigthened out now, though, hopefully with no hard feelings.
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>
> On Mon, 01 Mar 1999 20:43:22 +0000, Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> <sirb...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >That
> >was the main point... I was told the cliche was bad...
>
> By whom?
Various theses on the problems beginning writers have. I believe one or more
papers off the sfwa website mention this. I'm sorry I can't be more specific;
I've also read about the topic off other web sites (i.e. Speculations) and
various how-to books, so I can't be sure who mentioned it and who didn't.
> >... but didn't see a way to
> >rewrite without it that didn't lose something of the power and pacing.
>
> This can mean either of two things:
>
> Either you're right, and the story is fine as is, or
>
> You just haven't found the right way to tell it yet.
Unfortunately, knowing this in advance is very difficult, perhaps even
impossible. Some writers seem dissatisfied with a story or novel long after
their readers have "accepted" it, and are rarely find the final version on the
printed page to be perfect. At best, it is the best they could make it given
their talent (and in the time they were given).
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>
> In article <36DAFBEA...@ix.netcom.com>,
> sirb...@ix.netcom.com wrote, in part:
> >
> > Well, consider the opening scene of _To Sail Beyond The Sunset_.
> > Everything in the first scene could easily have been told by
> > Heinlein in a flashback or by an infodump between characters.
> > But it wouldn't have been as good a book. And he wouldn't have
> > been able to start off with such a "fun" line:
> >
> > I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a
> > stranger; the cat was not.
>
> I haven't read this one, but, in isolation, I would prefer:
>
> I woke up in bed with a cat and a stranger. The
> stranger was a man; the cat was not.
Actually, I like this as well. It takes a little more parsing to get all
the information, but it is more amusing.
Bruce
Harry Connolly
>
> It's _necessary_ to
> the horry genre that all the people be idiots,
>
No, it isn't.
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
>
> In article <36DB074E...@ix.netcom.com>,
> sirb...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> > "David J. Parker" wrote:
> > > The explanation he gave for the first tidbit was exactly the one you
> > > give above. It's not the fact that the "protag waking up" opening is
> > > cliched, it's that it is rarely the actual start of the story.
> >
> > To me, then, the advice should have been "Making sure your story starts
> > in a very good, if not the best, place; starting with the protagonist
> > waking up in the morning is often not the best place" and not "Never
> > start a story with an alarm clock ringing."
> >
> > The two statements have very different implications.
>
> the rules is part of the artistic license to break them, after all. If you
> want to build a house where the second floor greatly overhangs the first, you
> probably should first understand how 'normal' houses are built.
I've heard this justification before, but I just don't buy it. Mainly because
it is slightly condescending, especially when the actual reasoning behind the
statement *can* be easily explained to new writers. If the explanations were
complex and required a subtle mastery of language, then I understand. But
why be needlessly obscure in your "rules" when you can educate instead?
> The generalization in question is no doubt a rule of thumb--if you feel
> confident enough to go beyond it, more power to you.
Perhaps I'm just an amazingly good writer, but I think most beginners probably
do feel confident that the rule shouldn't apply to them, and that is a problem
because they are usually wrong. Helping them understand why and when they are
wrong, and how to break the rule correctly, would be far more useful.
Bruce
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
> Let me use this to hang a long-building rant on.
Go, LWE, go. :)
>
> There are no hard-and-fast rules in writing. There are guidelines and
> suggestions.
>
> If you CALL them guidelines and suggestions, beginners will often
> decide to ignore them -- "they're just suggestions."
>
> If you call them rules, beginners will obsess foolishly about them.
> "I can't do that; it's against the rules!"
>
> It's a no-win situation, and all tangled up with my conviction that
> beginning writers are simply determined to worry about all the wrong
> things in order to avoid looking at the true situation.
As I mentioned before, I think a little more *explanation* of the guidelines
would help provide a winnable medium between the two extremes. But I could be
an example of an unusually reasonable and erudite writer and what I respond to
may not be what the tupical beginner responds to.
> Bruce said he'd been told never to start a story with a cliche because
> it would give an editor an excuse to reject the story. This is based
> on a faulty premise. Editors aren't looking for excuses to reject
> stories; they don't NEED excuses, because at least 90% of what's
> submitted is utter crap. They're looking for reasons to BUY stories.
This assumes that the editor always buys the other 10%, and/or has time to
thoroughly review each story to see if it is utter crap or not. I have been
told neither are true.
> Think about it from the point of view of the editor. He's not a
> teacher, showing you the best way to do something. He's not a
> bureaucrat, mindlessly following rules. He's a merchant trying to put
> together the best product he can for his customers. His major concern
> is pleasing his readers, so they will continue to pay for it.
>
> He's looking at what you offer him to see whether it's something he
> wants to offer his customers.
>
> Therefore, he looks at it as if he were a customer -- that is, as if
> he were a reader looking for entertainment. He picks up the story,
> starts reading -- and if at any time he finds himself thinking, "This
> is boring; I don't want to read any more," then he puts the story down
> and rejects it and goes on to the next. Because if it bores him, he
> can assume it will bore his readers.
>
> Substitute "stupid" or "pointless" or anything else for "boring," and
> the result is the same. For me, stupidity and pointlessness and all
> the other possible flaws are subsets of being boring, but maybe that's
> not how other people use the word.
This makes perfect sense. The premise in my logic that changed this is that
there was *so* much stuff submitted to editors that if they ran across a
cliche or two, they'd simply assume the rest of it was stupid/boring/bad and
reject it. If they were wrong, eh, no big deal... they can't publish all of
the 10% that is good anyway. Some of the "good" will get rejected, and some
will get published. Sure, "very good" may always get published, but even the
best writer can't make every story "very good" in the eyes of all editors.
> If the editor gets all the way through the story without rejecting it,
> which he usually won't, then it becomes a matter of deciding whether
> it's a good story and suitable for his market, which is a whole
> 'nother issue and not what I'm addressing here, because it has nothing
> to do with cliches or bad grammar or eccentric prose or any of the
> other things that people make Rules about and which new writers get
> confused by -- if the editor read the whole story through, then you're
> past concerns with prose and style and into deeper matters.
And also issues like the piece being the appropriate length for an opening
they have, the editor's personal tastes, whether or not they already have
too many stories with the same general theme, and so on. Although I've
often wondered in those cases why the editor doesn't simply offer the writer
to publish it in 1-2 years beyond the current issue(s) they're working on,
and allow the writer the opportunity to take the piece elsewhere if they
don't want to wait that long.
> When someone tells you that if you start your story with a cliche the
> editor will reject it, he's generally telling you the truth. It's not
> because the editor has an arbitrary rule against cliches; it's because
> a cliched opening will cause the editor to think, "This is boring, and
> I don't want to read any more."
Well, yes, assuming the editor doesn't read any further to see if that's
true or not. If you're saying they'll read a little further to determine
that, then fine. If you're saying they'll stop reading at the sight of a
cliche, then we're back to what I said originally.
> If you write an opening which is, by some technical definition, a
> cliche, but which does NOT evoke this response in the editor, then
> there is no conceivable reason to change it. Cliches are not bad
> because they're cliches. Cliches are bad because they make editors
> reject stories.
Er... wait, the last sentence doesn't QUITE follow. It should be, "cliches
are bad IF THEY ARE BORING, and thus make the editor reject it." If you
really meant what you wrote, then any cliche would make an editor reject a
story. Otherwise the paragraph is consistent.
> Keep cause and effect the right way around here. Cliches are bad
> because they bore editors. If they don't bore editors, then they're
> not bad, and there's no reason to avoid them.
Well, and presumably because they bore readers, too. But again, the premise
that was unspoken was there was so much material that the editor didn't have
the time or inclination to take a chance to see if the story is boring or not
upon hitting the first or second cliche., because chances are it will be.
> I should note that this brings us to the single largest advantage
> established writers actually have over beginners. [...]
> So what IS the advantage for an established writer? That the editor
> will give him the benefit of the doubt when reading a weak opening.
>
> For a beginner, the editor will think, "I've read this opening a
> thousand times; toss it."
>
> For an established writer, the editor will think, "I've read this
> opening a thousand times, but this is Lawrence -- he's probably got
> some twist in mind, so I'll read a little further."
But you just seemed to suggest above that the editor *won't* think this for
a cliche. Why the difference? The above lines seem pretty darn close to
validation my original idea... that editors will toss something from a new
writer very easily, rather than "read(ing) a little further" as you put it.
> This is what we mean by saying that once you're a known quantity, you
> can break the rules -- once you've shown that you can write a good
> story, editors (and readers) will give you more slack thereafter. But
> you still need to write a good story!
*sigh* I thought we had made progress, but now you seem to be reaffirming
what I said before. Perhaps you mean to suggest that a new writer can still
break the rules so long as it is a good story, but if the editor doesn't give
it as much "slack" as a famous writer's (supposedly good) story then they won't
know.
Bruce
Zeborah
> Well, I wouldn't go *that* far. Frankly, living in this century and
> working and reading in the field of speculative fiction and not being
> able to properly appreciate King, I sometimes feel like somebody in
> 1605 who doesn't like Shakespeare.
You think that's bad? I live in New Zealand and don't like rugby. Last
year the guy who shared my shift would ask me every week, "Did you see
the rugby?" My reply would be something like "No"; whereupon he'd
expostulate incredulously "What? You didn't see the *rugby*?" Every
week I'd carefully explain to him that I would rather watch grass grow
than see a game of rugby -- even if it wasn't particularly pretty grass,
dead grass would do, or just a patch of bare soil, anything like that --
but he seemed to have forgotten this by the same time the week after.
Zeborah
John Kensmark
pwred...@aol.com (PWrede6492) wrote:
> In article <7bhd1e$9s2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, John Kensmark
> <kens...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> designed to keep beginning writers erring on the side of caution.
>
> cases, is to put beginning writers into an artificial straightjacket...and
> encourage them to inflict said straightjacket on anyone else who writes or
> wants to write.
Yes; I was more ambivalent--and ambiguous--in my last post than I meant to be.
> Do you *know* how many times I've had to whop people upside the head because
> they wouldn't do the obviously right thing to fix their story "because it's
> against the rules -- you can't...(open with a cliche, open slowly, open with
> anything except physical action, ever use adverbs in speech tags, "tell"
> anybody anything for any reason, ever use any verb except "said" in a speech
> tag, use flashbacks, etc. and on into infinity)"?
Now, Patricia, I did *not*, of course, say that all rules handed out in
writing classes are good. In other threads on this sort of topic, I've
railed against the 'rules' myself (my personal most-hated is "Show, don't
tell."). Hell, you may have noticed (or not) that I break rules all the time
myself, such as my intentional choice to put punctuation not related to a
quotation outside the quotation marks, or my tendency to lovingly split
infinities.
What I did say, which wasn't entirely clear, I admit, was, in part:
Fair enough, but rules for writing are often overstatements, apparently
designed to keep beginning writers erring on the side of caution.
Learning the rules is part of the artistic license to break them, after
all.
I should no doubt have added that I feel it's of *immense* importance to any
writer to *know* that the purpose of learning 'rules' is so that you can break
them more elegantly and purposefully. Given that proper mindset, learning
'rules' is liberating, as it should be, and can be useful. I didn't say--and
didn't think I was sounding like I was saying--that 'rules' like these should
ever be slavishly followed by anyone.
> Excuse me, I'm going to go away and froth quietly at the mouth now.
I don't really blame you, but I wouldn't want you to think I was on the side
of Evil in this matter.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>In article <pddb.92...@gw.ddb.com>,
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@ddb.com> wrote:
>>mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>[:The Hidden Land:]
>>>Now I'm going to have to re-read it and look for scenes--
>>>except I won't, of course, I'll come up for air at the end and
>>>think "Drats, was I supposed to be looking at structure?"
>>
>>*blush*
>>
>>I don't know how much the seams show -- give what an early work it is,
>>I should think there would be some, but it did have a good editor.
>Heh.
>There's also back-pressure, the accumulated weight of all the stiffled
>impulses to _really_ write. That seems to count for something a fair
>good fraction of the time.
I think that's what part of makes so many first novels so energetic
and engaging, to the point where authors are always being told by
readers that said readers' favorite work of the author's is the first
one. I have heard from a handful of people who love THE SECRET
COUNTRY best. I went through a head-banging period with this, but at
the present remove it is actually rather comforting.
>I certainly want to read both of the stories Mary is describing.
All right, Mary, go to it.
>>>I have three scenes somewhere that probably belong to the second half.
>>
>>Isn't it odd how structure sometimes reveals itself?
>Is it possible to nominate something for an understatement award?
This is, in fact, the second time it's happened to me in a week.
I'll take yours -- the other was nominated for understatement of the
year, and it was still February.
Micole Sudberg
> I remember a friend and I both reading Lynn Andrews'
>_Medicine Woman_ and me trying to explain why I was sure it was
>fictitious. It's written in first person, and the first-person narrator
>describes going through some huge personal changes: but the voice is
>just the same, end to end. If it were really written by its narrator
>after the fact, she would have to look at the person at the beginning
>of the book as someone different from herself, and she ought to have
>some reaction to that: if it were really written by its narrator
>in parts during the events, the narrative voice should change between
>parts.
>
>I'm not sure how you get that quality in a book written out of order,
>but I think it's possible: at least I hope it is. It's got to be
>harder than getting it in a book written in order, though, where
>the author's grasp of the character can change as the character does.
I guess I can see how that would be problematic in theory, but I don't
have a problem with this as long as I know where the story starts and
where it ends, and have its trajectory by implication. Particular
scenes may have the character in the wrong mode or stage or emotion, but
once I've put them in order it's really clear that one character
wouldn't be that self-confident there, or that another wouldn't be that
angry yet, or that another can't understand that statement yet.
But then, I'm not sure that I do scenes quite as at of order as some of
the other people who've responded. I usually do begin at the beginning
and I try to go straight through so I've got the reward of the ending
last (since I've usually got the last paragraph in my head by then), but
somewhere in the intractable middle I skip ahead and write the end and
admire it with fond parental eyes for a little while before going back
to the part where I left off.
--m.
***********************************
Micole Iris Sudberg
sud...@staff.juno.com
"Language rustles around her with many voices,
none of them hers, all of them hers."
--A. S. Byatt, _Babel Tower_
Joy Haftel
Thomas Yan <ty...@cs.cornell.edu> wrote:
>In article <199903020...@ppp186159.netaccess.co.nz>,
>Zeborah <fitc...@netaccess.co.nz> wrote:
>>Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Mariane Desautels wrote:
>>>
>>> >My guess: kairos instead of chronos. Books don't usually happen in real
>>> >time anyways...
>>>
>>> Is this approximately what you mean by the above?:
>>> Kairos was one of two Greek terms often used to mean "time";
>>
>>Okay, that much I understood. :-( Would some kindly soul mind very
>>much explaining the difference between kairos and chronos to me in very
>>plain English? I have a suspicion sneaking up on me that it could come
>>in handy for something I'm working on.
>
>request seconded, with bonus points awarded for commentary on the
>appropriateness of referring to madeleine l'engle's books in the _a
>wrinkle in time_ series as her "kairos series", a reference i have
>heard exactly once and never understood.
Hauling out the little Liddell (Greek-English dictionary), I find:
Kairos: ..."of Time, the right point of time, the proper time or season of
action, the exact or critical time..adverbial usages ,in season, at the
right time, opportune..."
Chronos: "...a definite time, a while, period, season..."
To me this doesn't quite accurately portray the difference between time in
L'Engle's Chronos and Kairos series. Kairos is the series about the
Murray family. Time, in that series, does not always move forward (or
rather, people do not always move forward in it)--it can be wrinkled and
traveled through (the tesseract), and traveled backwards in (_Many
Waters_, _A Swiftly Tilting Planet_). It's closer to the way some
physicists view time, as a variable rather than a constant' or the way
some theologians view time (to the diety who exists outside time, past,
present and future occur simultaneously).
Chronos is everyday mundane time. This is the world the Austins live in,
where people progress through time in the usual forward way. (Although I
have noticed that Vicky Austin seems to age at about a year a decade,
since that's about how often L'Engle writes a book about Vicky Austin).
Dorothy J Heydt
John Kensmark <kens...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I should no doubt have added that I feel it's of *immense* importance to any
>writer to *know* that the purpose of learning 'rules' is so that you can break
>them more elegantly and purposefully.
And keeping in mind that sometimes rules are training wheels,
which you really need while you're learning, [1] and that sometimes
the rules aren't what you think they are.[2]
*LONG EXPLANATION FOLLOWS: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*
[1] As for example (this example is from C. S. Lewis), Latin
students just beginning to learn to write Latin verse are generally
forbidden to use what is technically known as "a spondee in the
fifth foot." Then as they go on reading, they will occasionally
find a spondee in the fifth foot in Vergil or Horace and wonder
howcome. The answer is that if they're permitted this variation
when they're just learning, they'll use it entirely too often as
a shortcut and never get the proper rhythm of the Classical hexameter
into their heads at all. Later on, they can use it safely.
[2] There's a Latin saying which translates as "Sometimes even
the good Homer nods off." [Sorry, I don't have the Latin
original at my fingertips.] In other words, "even the Master
sometimes goofs." It refers to certain passages in Homer where
the meter seems to be off, a long syllable substituted for a
short one, or a syllable apparently missing. But the Greek
language had changed since Homer's time, with at least two
phonemes dropping out and all kinds of fun vowel elisions gluing
words together. The lines had scanned all right when they were
composed.
We can apply these Classical principles to our own
works-in-progress as seems appropriate.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
_A Point of Honor_ is out....
Jay Random
>
> All too often, people have such *excellent* justifications for that
> tedious info-dump or pointless meandering! :-)
Here, I think, is the nub of it:
One ought, of course, to eschew tedious infodump & pointless meandering. Some
people take this as an injunction against infodump & meandering. It isn't.
It's an injunction against being tedious & pointless -- two things that
readers will never forgive you. If you can dump info or meander while keeping
the reader's interest, bully for you; you're probably a genius. But it's
possible to follow all the `rules' that beginners obsess over, while _still_
writing tedious & pointless stories.
People who do this, I've noticed, have a tendency to regard themselves as `too
literary' for the marketplace, & sneer at all those lowbrow readers who
actually have the gall to want _entertainment_ from their fiction reading.
Zeborah
> A number of the documents brought up by google.com are
> enlightening. For instance, here's a quote from one at
> http://www.prtvc.org/sermons/ph98/ph-98-49.htm
>
> In biblical Greek there are two words for time, which sound alike, but
> which are vastly different. They are "chronos" and "kairos." Chronos
> time is clock and calendar time, as in chronology. Anyone who is
> half-careful can be timely, "chronos." Now, "kairos" is a different
> kind of time altogether. It is something which happens at the "right"
> time, no matter what the clock and calendar show.When the Bible speaks
> of Jesus coming "at the right time," the word "kairos" is used. When
> someone does or says something at "just the right time," we mean
> "kairos", not "chronos."
>
> So the difference appears to be that "chronos" is the abstract,
> numeric concept of time, whereas "kairos" is time in relation to
> humans and the events that occur.
Thanks, Dan. So the moral of the story is, it doesn't matter where you
start, as long as it's the right place to start. I can cope with
that...
Of course the right place to start depends on the style as much as the
story. In one WIP of mine (the 3rd novel in the queue), the original
start described an event that happens two-thirds of the way through the
book, which is otherwise chronological.
But I realised that the story wanted to be written in a different style
(uh, 17th century French prose, except in English. In space) and that
forced me to start it with a summary of the political situation when the
main character was born, before moving rapidly to the start of the
actual story.
I flirted briefly with 19th century French prose, which would be a
little more transparent and also put the start of the novel at the start
of the story, but both I and my sister preferred the C17th one.
The first paragraph as it stands, if anyone's interested, is:
At no time was Earth's dominion so peaceful as when, in 2191, the United
Nations eschewed to return the greetings of Scork, for fear that any
liaison with that planet might upset the delicate balance of Earth's own
population; nor was its administration so encouraging of independence as
when, a few days later, it withdrew control of the four colonies and
allowed them to use their own wisdom and resources in forming a society,
government, and defense force; nor was its bureaucracy so caring as
when, at the same time, it left its military officers in their new home
of space, with no concern for the noble patriotism that led them to
request a return to their old place on Earth.
(The sentences get shorter, I promise. <sigh> )
Zeborah
Zeborah
> I don't have *that* problem with King. People are perfectly willing
> to believe I don't like his stuff, or just don't like horror. There
> were certainly people in London in 1605 who didn't like Shakespeare.
> It's more a feeling that I'm missing something vital.
Ah, well I don't have that problem with rugby at all, or with King for
that matter. I've never picked up one of his books and I don't intend
to; maybe I'm missing out on something, but fifteen minutes shelving in
the psychology/history section of the university library gives me a
longer list of books I'm missing out on than King will ever write.
I have got to stop bringing home books; I know I'm never going to read
them all. And of course they've made it worse by raising the postgrad
quota to fifty books at a time. So far the year is young; I've only got
out fifteen or twenty.
Zeborah
Graydon
>>Meanwhile I'll continue pining for :Winter and Rough Weather:.
>
>There's still a possibility for that, though not soon.
<decorous jig of delighted anticipation>
--
graydon@ | Hige sceal şe heardra, heorte şe cenre,
lara.on.ca | mod sceal şe mare şe ure maegen lytlağ.
| -- Beorhtwold, "The Battle of Maldon"
John Kensmark
sirb...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> John Kensmark wrote:
[...]
> I've heard this justification before, but I just don't buy it.
> Mainly because it is slightly condescending, especially when the
> actual reasoning behind the statement *can* be easily explained to
> new writers.
Yes, you're completely correct; I've had to re-explain myself before, so
obviously I was hopelessly unclear. I did not, for a moment, mean to suggest
that the 'trick' to learning rules (ie, that one can break them freely as soon
as one learns them) should not be revealed.
I do think there is utility in identifying these 'rules', but I did not mean
that they should be presented to beginning writers as absolute limits or that
those writers should be forced to discover on their own that the 'rules' can
be profitably broken. I wasn't clear; it's my error.
Mary K. Kuhner
>This makes perfect sense. The premise in my logic that changed this is that
>there was *so* much stuff submitted to editors that if they ran across a
>cliche or two, they'd simply assume the rest of it was stupid/boring/bad and
>reject it.
It's possible, oddly enough, to grow palm trees in Seattle. The local
guide _Trees of Seattle_ says something like "These stand out like a
sore thumb in the middle of otherwise conventionally landscaped lawns:
but properly integrated into an appropriate planting, excite no
particular comment."
This is very much the impression I get from the stories I've looked
at (in various classes, Critters, etc.) In the problem stories the
cliche is frequently standing out like a sore thumb in the middle
of an otherwise conventionally landscaped lawn. In fact, often enough
there's nothing there but grass and palm trees. I don't know how
to really describe this, but it's pretty obvious after you've seen
a pile of them. I think it's this quality that tends to get a story
tossed. I know I have trouble bringing myself to critique them.
(Apologies to people for whom palms are part of the natural landscape...
but they sure aren't here.)
I think I'm painfully getting to the point with my own writing where
I *notice* that I haven't thought something out and am just using the
easy solution. It's not just "what will the editor think". Cliches
don't get in by accident, generally speaking, but because they're
well-worn grooves and your writing will slide into them readily if
you don't keep steering. I think the best thing you can do to
reduce any bad impact of cliches on your writing is not to memorize
a list of them, but to focus on seeing and feeling your story
clearly and then picking out appropriate words, scenes, and structures.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Dorothy J Heydt
No, it isn't. It helps, if you're not that good a writer.* It is
necessary to horror that the protagonists put themselves in whe
way of what's horrible. Because otherwise, where's your plot?
For them to be too stupid to get *out* of the way of what's
horrible is the easy way out.
-----
*or bone-lazy, or frantic under the pressure of a deadline.
-----
Similarly, it is necessary to romance that the protagonists,
though attracted to each other, remain somehow estranged till the
end of the book, because when they are reconciled the plot's
over. The easy way out is to let them be separated by a
misunderstanding, and the easy way out of that is to let them be
stupid. Or prejudiced. Or one of each. Or a double dose of
both on either side.
Dorothy J Heydt
Zeborah <fitc...@netaccess.co.nz> wrote:
>At no time was Earth's dominion so peaceful as when, in 2191, the United
>Nations eschewed to return the greetings of Scork, for fear that any
May I suggest "declined" rather than "eschewed"?
Other than that, it looks ok. Better start Paragraph 2 with
something light and/or action-filled and/or otherwise grabbing,
so those readers with no taste for history can drop down to it
and return to P. 1 when they realize they need to.
Dorothy J Heydt
Dan Shiovitz <d...@cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>A number of the documents brought up by google.com are
>enlightening. For instance, here's a quote from one at
>http://www.prtvc.org/sermons/ph98/ph-98-49.htm
>
> In biblical Greek there are two words for time, which sound alike, but
> which are vastly different. They are "chronos" and "kairos." Chronos
> time is clock and calendar time, as in chronology. Anyone who is
> half-careful can be timely, "chronos." Now, "kairos" is a different
> kind of time altogether. It is something which happens at the "right"
> time, no matter what the clock and calendar show.When the Bible speaks
> of Jesus coming "at the right time," the word "kairos" is used. When
> someone does or says something at "just the right time," we mean
> "kairos", not "chronos."
>
>So the difference appears to be that "chronos" is the abstract,
>numeric concept of time, whereas "kairos" is time in relation to
>humans and the events that occur.
I love this group. Where else would I find that out? And just
as Hermes/Mercurius is about to explain to Cynthia --- strike
that, he can't explain, he's gotta hint and beat all round the
bush --- that he needs her to do something at an appropriate
time....
I probably won't include the two Greek words, but it's nice to
have the concepts.
Harry Connolly
>
> In article <36DCD4...@earthlink.net>,
> Harry Connolly <maka...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >Graydon wrote:
> >>
> >> It's _necessary_ to
> >> the horry genre that all the people be idiots,
> >>
> >
> >No, it isn't.
>
> No, it isn't. It helps, if you're not that good a writer.* It is
> necessary to horror that the protagonists put themselves in whe
> way of what's horrible. Because otherwise, where's your plot?
> For them to be too stupid to get *out* of the way of what's
> horrible is the easy way out.
> -----
> *or bone-lazy, or frantic under the pressure of a deadline.
> -----
> Albany, California
> djh...@kithrup.com
> http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
> _A Point of Honor_ is out....
Some time ago I read a heckuva lot of books about writing (a phase that
I think a lot of writers go through) and the flat out best of the lot
was from Sol Stein. One of the things he talked about was a "crucible,"
which was supposed to be the thing that kept the conflicting characters
together when most people whould have said "To hell with this." The
crucible keeps the characters involved and makes them unwilling to leave
a conflict, and it can be anything from "bad guys have kidnapped your
daughter" to "a mother doesn't abandon her son because he's a drug
addict."
I think horror stories *need* their crucibles like few other genres,
since the antagonists are usually overwhelmingly powerful. Characters
need more motivation than: "Was that a noise I heard in the basement?"
And I agree about lazy writers, although since the bust in horror, most
of them have moved to greener pastures.
Kate Nepveu
> gra...@lara.on.ca (Graydon) writes:
> >I don't like what I've read of King, either.
> >This is probably because I hit a couple short story collections of
> >his, and they were all about people being idiots. It's _necessary_ to
> >the horry genre that all the people be idiots, and I can't stand that
> >in fiction.
> Well, it is standard; I'm not at all sure it's necessary. It's
> certainly common.
> I like "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut." I do pick up a King short story from
> time to time to see what he's up to, but I don't usually finish them.
His non-horror work is often much better than his horror work. (One
of his recent novels, _Rose Madder_, was a perfectly good story about
emerging from domestic violence and then he had to go throw in a
painting that's a door to another world. That nearly killed the book
for me--it wasn't _necessary_.)
The collection _Different Seasons_ might be worth a try. It's had
three of its four novellas made into mainstream movies. I have no
idea if the movie version of _Apt Pupil_ was any good, but _Stand by
Me_ ("The Body") and _The Shawshank Redemption_ ("Rita Hayworth and
Shawshank Redemption") are very good movies and stories. (The last
novella, "The Breathing Method," seriously creeped me out, so I don't
recommend it to you.)
I think "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" is in _Skeleton Crew_; also good from
that collection, if I recall correctly, is "The Reach." "The Last
Rung on the Ladder," from _Night Shift_, is also quite good. Both are
non-scary.
The non-fiction piece about baseball in _Nightmares and Dreamscapes_
is interesting even to someone who hates baseball, which is
impressive.
Kate
--
http://www.concentric.net/~knepveu/ - The Paired Reading Page; Reviews
"Dissect my thought processes if you must but don't hold me
responsible for my appearance while you do so."
--Caroline Stevermer, _A College of Magics_
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
[snipping useful King recommendations -- thanks!]
>I think "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" is in _Skeleton Crew_; also good from
>that collection, if I recall correctly, is "The Reach." "The Last
>Rung on the Ladder," from _Night Shift_, is also quite good. Both are
>non-scary.
I can handle scary, though it's not my preferred emotion. I am not
interested in being grossed out, however gleefully. King blurs that
line, or doesn't see it where I do. And I don't like most horror
tropes; they don't speak to me; they either make me roll my eyes or
they are disproportionately upsetting and mess up whatever else is in
the book.
>The non-fiction piece about baseball in _Nightmares and Dreamscapes_
>is interesting even to someone who hates baseball, which is
>impressive.
I kind of enjoyed another non-fiction book of his -- DANSE MACABRE,
maybe? -- though I certainly disagree with him a lot.
gur...@saruman.wizard.net
[much snippage]
> The premise in my logic that changed this is that
> there was *so* much stuff submitted to editors that if they ran across a
> cliche or two, they'd simply assume the rest of it was stupid/boring/bad and
> reject it.
Speaking as one very new, very inexperienced editor, I'll say that the
above is not true.
I'm looking for good stories, and I'm smart enough to understand that a
story with one cliche doesn't make it terrible. It's awfully hard to
write a story that has no cliches at all; pretty much anything is a cliche
at some level.
If the writing is good, the plot is good, the pacing is good, the
characterizations are good, and I spot a cliche, I'll keep right on
reading. If the story is one big cliche, then I'll probably reject it.
If some cliches are used, but the rest of the story is worthwhile, then I
won't have a problem with it.
> If they were wrong, eh, no big deal... they can't publish all of
> the 10% that is good anyway. Some of the "good" will get rejected, and some
> will get published. Sure, "very good" may always get published, but even the
> best writer can't make every story "very good" in the eyes of all editors.
This is true to some extent -- I have had to reject really good stories,
just because a couple of excellent ones had come through.
[snip]
> Although I've
> often wondered in those cases why the editor doesn't simply offer the writer
> to publish it in 1-2 years beyond the current issue(s) they're working on,
> and allow the writer the opportunity to take the piece elsewhere if they
> don't want to wait that long.
Because it's more work for the editor, and other great stories will come
along in the interim anyway.
> > When someone tells you that if you start your story with a cliche the
> > editor will reject it, he's generally telling you the truth. It's not
> > because the editor has an arbitrary rule against cliches; it's because
> > a cliched opening will cause the editor to think, "This is boring, and
> > I don't want to read any more."
>
> Well, yes, assuming the editor doesn't read any further to see if that's
> true or not. If you're saying they'll read a little further to determine
> that, then fine.
I believe they will.
Editors aren't dumb brutes who are reading through some massive slushpile
for gems of inarticulate beauty; they're normal human beings who enjoy the
genre they're reading for (hopefully!). They sometimes manufacture rules
to be able to cut down on the slush, but provided you're following the
guidelines reasonably well, I wouldn't worry.
Basically, write stories that *you* *think* are good. Get a few
critiques, if you can. Then find out the specific formatting / content
guidelines for particular editors, and send away your manuscript.
Particularly, send it to me. ;-)
(no novels, please! No! Nooooo! ::Brent is buried under a pile of novel
manuscripts::)
Brent P. Newhall
Editor of Papyrus
http://www.papyrus-fiction.com/
John Kensmark
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote, in part:
> In article <36DCD4...@earthlink.net>,
> Harry Connolly <maka...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >Graydon wrote:
> >>
> >> the horry genre that all the people be idiots,
> >>
> >
>
> No, it isn't. It helps, if you're not that good a writer.* It is
> necessary to horror that the protagonists put themselves in whe
> way of what's horrible. Because otherwise, where's your plot?
> For them to be too stupid to get *out* of the way of what's
> horrible is the easy way out.
> -----
> *or bone-lazy, or frantic under the pressure of a deadline.
> -----
They don't have to *knowingly* put themselves in the way of something
horrible, of course (frex, "Thus I Refute Beelzy"). And sometimes the
horrible thing simply comes and finds them (frex, "How Love Came to Professor
[whatshisname]"), or it's already happened but the revelation comes later
(frex, "The Ghost Who Limped").
Popular horror novels tend to be rather formulaic, which is one reason why I
usually read horror short stories instead. Horror *movies* are whole 'nother
bag of weasel crap, by and large, but, then, Sturgeon's Law. Few speculative
fiction films are much good.
John Kensmark
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> In article <1999030322...@ppp186140.netaccess.co.nz>,
> Zeborah <fitc...@netaccess.co.nz> wrote:
>
> >At no time was Earth's dominion so peaceful as when, in 2191, the United
> >Nations eschewed to return the greetings of Scork, for fear that any
>
> May I suggest "declined" rather than "eschewed"?
>
> Other than that, it looks ok. Better start Paragraph 2 with
> something light and/or action-filled and/or otherwise grabbing,
> so those readers with no taste for history can drop down to it
> and return to P. 1 when they realize they need to.
My thoughts exactly. An it were me, I'd have P2 be a one-line, semi-smart ass
remark. Dry wit, don'cha know.
However, our story does not take place on Earth, so this hardly matters.
(My apologies to the very funny Stephen Leacock.)
Dan Goodman
>kne...@lynx.neu.edu (Kate Nepveu) writes:
>
>[snipping useful King recommendations -- thanks!]
>
>>I think "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" is in _Skeleton Crew_; also good from
>>that collection, if I recall correctly, is "The Reach." "The Last
>>Rung on the Ladder," from _Night Shift_, is also quite good. Both are
>>non-scary.
>
>I can handle scary, though it's not my preferred emotion. I am not
>interested in being grossed out, however gleefully. King blurs that
>line, or doesn't see it where I do. And I don't like most horror
>tropes; they don't speak to me; they either make me roll my eyes or
>they are disproportionately upsetting and mess up whatever else is
in
>the book.
>
>>The non-fiction piece about baseball in _Nightmares and Dreamscapes_
>>is interesting even to someone who hates baseball, which is
>>impressive.
>
>I kind of enjoyed another non-fiction book of his -- DANSE MACABRE,
>maybe? -- though I certainly disagree with him a lot.
I gather that, starting with the latest "Dark Tower" novel, King is
tying all of his worlds together. I remember what happened when
Heinlein did this, and when Asimov did this; and I'll be less eager to
read new King novels.
Obwriting: In my opinion, King is good writing about places he knows
well. He's not nearly as good with other places. Though it _was_
simple bad luck that a story about abnormally low violence rates
around Waco, Texas is now funny in the wrong way.
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
John Kensmark
>> this is that there was *so* much stuff submitted to editors that
>> if they ran across a cliche or two, they'd simply assume the rest
>> of it was stupid/boring/bad and reject it.
>
> guide _Trees of Seattle_ says something like "These stand out like a
> sore thumb in the middle of otherwise conventionally landscaped lawns:
> but properly integrated into an appropriate planting, excite no
> particular comment."
Of course, if you *want* to excite particular comment, you might
intentionally plant a palm tree. This was part of my point about learning
rules so you can break them; identifying cliches can give you an opportunity
not merely to avoid them but to play with them.
Here's a bad, off the top of my head example, a story opening:
The first thing that happened that morning was that the
chicken crossed the road. I have no idea why.
Deliberate use of a cliche (albeit not the kind folks normally mean in this
context) as an attention-getter.
Alternatively, the inversion of a cliche could be useful, for satire or to be
original. You could write a cyberpunk story in which blind people have dark
sunglass-lenses implanted where their eyes would normally be. Or a story
where a boy's alien pet turns out to be . . . an alien dog in disguise. Or,
as Douglas Adams said, a story where boy meets girl and they fall in love
under a silvery moon that explodes for no particular reason.
And so forth. Cliches are cliches for a reason; people's brains like them
(I'm *not* invoking the m*me word). You can use that to your advantage. If
you have a story idea and it seems a little cliched, try tweaking it a bit;
it might become something interesting.
PWrede6492
<sirb...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>It's also a matter of degree. Perhaps removing the cliche *can* be done with
>considerable effort and the story can be made better. But I've learned you
>can't spend *forever* writing and rewriting and tinkering with every little
>thing of your story or else it'll either never get out the door or it'll die
It's also possible that the story could and would be better if you moved the
start point, but your present writing skill level just isn't up to the job.
Back in 1983, when my agent was trying to sell "Talking to Dragons," it went to
an editor who liked it but said "the pace is slow." So I spent three hideously
painful weeks cutting 5,000 words out of a 70,000 word book, one line and one
phrase at a time. I learned an enormous amount about cutting fat and it was a
much better book as a result. And then the editor came back a second time and
said "I like it much better now, but it still needs cutting." I looked at it
again, and there simply wasn't any fat left to cut. None. Nada. It was
hopeless. She didn't have a clue. So we sent it somewhere else, and it got
published.
Ten years later, the book was reprinted by Jane Yolen books as the fourth in
the Enchanted Forest series. And for consistency with the prequels, it needed
some minor changes, and as long as I was doing that anyway, I went through the
book again. Lo and behold: fat. Flabby sentences all over. I cut them.
But ten years earlier, I couldn't even *see* them as fat. My
writing/revising/editing skills just weren't good enough. I sincerely hope
that I will have more or less the same experience, ten years from now, with my
current work -- i.e., that having made it as good as I am currently capable of
doing *now*, I will still have gotten enough better in the next ten years to be
able to look at them and say "Ah, I can fix that, and this, and..."
Which is why sometimes the best thing one can do for a difficult story is to
let it alone and go do something else, until one is enough of a better writer
to come back and be able to *see* what the problem (if any) is, and fix it.
Patricia C. Wrede
PWrede6492
<sirb...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
> But
>why be needlessly obscure in your "rules" when you can educate instead?
The problem isn't that the "rules" are obscure. On the contrary, most of them
are quite clear, and very simple, and completely wrongheaded (IMVAO).
>Perhaps I'm just an amazingly good writer, but I think most beginners
>probably do feel confident that the rule shouldn't apply to them, and that is
a
>problem because they are usually wrong. Helping them understand why and when
>they are wrong, and how to break the rule correctly, would be far more useful.
The trouble is the old "first, you have to get the mule's attention." For far
too many of the subset of beginners who are sure that they are the shining
exception to any rule that is even slightly ambiguous, the ways to get their
attention seem to be either a) give them an *un*ambiguous, simpleminded rule
and beat them with it until they go "Oh, I guess you're saying I shouldn't do
that, huh?", or b) spend an *enormous* amount of time (which few teachers and
even fewer professional writers, editors, or agents have) patiently saying over
and over, "No, this isn't working. Perhaps you should try something else. No,
this isn't working. Perhaps..." Guess which thing gets done more often, a) or
b); write neatly and turn your papers in at the end of the hour...
There is also an unfortunately vocal subset of new writers who *want* rules,
and who will make them up at the slightest provocation. I've run into people
who loudly proclaimed things like "You *MUST* start by inventing your
characters; you must, must must!" When quizzed, it eventually turned out that
they'd been to a class or a panel during the course of which their favorite
writer said something like "Books need good characters; that's why I always
start by making up my characters first, instead of with the plot." The
audience member had taken this fairly innocuous how-*I*-do-it statement and
turned it into an absolute rule for everybody, which they were busy forcing on
every other writer within reach, on the "authority" of the poor, innocent pro
who made a perfectly sensible remark to begin with.
And of course there are folks who actually believe that there *are* a set of
simple rules that they can apply universally. (Series of extremely snide
comments about critics and reviewers deleted...)
It's perfectly *understandable* why people go around giving out "rules." I
just wish they wouldn't.
Patricia C. Wrede
Rachael M. Lininger
On 2 Mar 1999, Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>I don't have *that* problem with King. People are perfectly willing
>to believe I don't like his stuff, or just don't like horror. There
>were certainly people in London in 1605 who didn't like Shakespeare.
>It's more a feeling that I'm missing something vital.
I don't like King very much either; I have read a few of his things
which I actually enjoyed--"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank
Redemption," which I've probably mistitled, and _Eyes of the Dragon,_
which I read about ten years ago and should reread to see if I still
like it. But most of it's boring, for me, and I don't have the
patience to sift through the whole collection to find the parts I'm
actually interested in.
I console myself with the idea that I _can_ appreciate King, it's just
that what he's writing now Isn't My Thing. Rather as if most of
Shakespeare's plays had been Senecan tragedies.
Rachael
--
Rachael M. Lininger | "Trust your inner squid."
lininger@ |
virtu.sar.usf.edu | Graydon Saunders
Wendy Shaffer
"Rachael M. Lininger" <lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
> I don't like King very much either; I have read a few of his things
> which I actually enjoyed--"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank
> Redemption," which I've probably mistitled, and _Eyes of the Dragon,_
> which I read about ten years ago and should reread to see if I still
> like it. But most of it's boring, for me, and I don't have the
> patience to sift through the whole collection to find the parts I'm
> actually interested in.
I also liked _Eyes of the Dragon_ when I read it about ten years ago.
And I liked the first couple of the Dark Tower books very much. (I
haven't read the third and fourth - I'm trying to read them very very
slowly, in a futile effort not to get caught up until King publishes
the final book.)
My vague memory of trying to read _The Stand_ is of being alternately
bored and grossed out for 100 odd pages before putting it down. I've
had similar reactions to some of the other novels.
---wendy
--
Wendy A. Shaffer
wsha...@uclink4.berkeley.edu