I could dance without a hundred fingers pointing

21. April 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: General Wank · Tags: , ,

OK, so I’m stealing my heading selections from Elizabeth Bear. Well, not her titles exactly, but the concept of posting sections of lyrics from songs. However, I’m picking obscure songs from obscure bands, which might make me elite or just a huge nerd. Yeah, huge nerd is what I thought as well.

I worked a little on the Edgar Allen Poe vs the Murloc story last night. The voice in this one is tricky, so it’s taking a little longer just to get words down on paper. I’ll have to keep it a short one just for that reason. I’m real close to having another story out to market. Work has been stressing me out lately, because of course I’ve been given very little time to do a project that they changed three or four times, and now they want it delivered to QA. However, it ain’t even working yet. I’m getting close to finishing, but just don’t have the old drive to work all night that I used to have. I’m just getting too old for that crap.

I must have fixed some programming in my head. I had a real hard time there for a while where all I could come up for story ideas were subjects and events that would take way longer than a short story to tell. I think I might have managed to get my brain wrapped around the 2-4k story length. I wrote a 1500 word one Saturday night and now I’m working on one that will likely come in around 3k, and I have a hard science fiction in the notes that will likely come in around 4-5k. This is a nice place to be.

I think I’ve got that sized plotting down to something pretty simple. One event. Of course, you have to sort of understand what the event is. And it can be somewhat ambiguous as to what you should explore when exploring the one event, but it’s not exactly a science like sword making or anything. You just have to fiddle around with it until it works right.

Like my Edgar Allen Poe vs the Murloc is basically about a character finding the beach of lost items, seeing his sister’s beloved comb, and having to battle a fish dude who is going through some initiation to get it from the top of a steep cliff wall [that actually sounds like a lot of events, but the big event idea for me was that some guy on the beach would find a comb and need to battle for it]. The hard science fiction one is even easier–a team of astronauts/scientists must deal with debris from a passing meteoroid. A lot can come from these events, but this is the way I’ve started thinking of short fiction. It’s one major event to explore. My character still wants something, still works to pursue something, and still runs into obstacles, but they normally center on this event.

Maybe when I’ve put a little more thought into it, and developed and sold a few stories with this way of thinking about story, I’ll expand on it. I’m just glad I have some clearer direction now.

I feel like I’m in a good place. I could probably do a story a week or more. I think now I just need to learn to balance my writing time with my reading time. I listen to a lot of stories on podcasts, but I don’t think it’s quite the same as seeing words on paper. I think if you’re a writer you need to see words written on paper by people who know what they are doing as often as possible.

Well, I don’t want to go to work, but pretty much have to. I’ll try to post here more often. I’ll try to keep the topics focused on the fiction as much as possible.

Fiction excerpt from latest WIP:

In those final days when my sister Balentine lay pale in her emerald bedding, coughing out the last of her young life in droplets of blood on lace kerchiefs, and relatives from as far away as the Carolinas made the journey by rail to see her off, I found myself so distracted I wandered to a beach yet unexplored, even in the times of my most curious youth.

Progress

09. April 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: General Wank · Tags:

So last night I put the final scene down for “Restless”.

That felt good, but no time to sit around. Tonight I’m working on some revisions for one of my older stories. The original title of this work was “Deadening”, but I think that will probably change by the time I’m done. This is sort of a pre-apocalyptic fantasy story with a lot of weird fiction elements. I think the ending can work, if I can find something a little less clichéd. I’m starting with revisions on the ending and then working my way back to the start.

Reading over my old work, and I do mean old, this one is from about four years ago, I’ve noticed that I do take a bit more time with the description than I used to. That sort of line-by-line care is one of the things I’ve learned recently that will actually make this a much better story. Additionally, there’s a lot of preachy stuff in this thing. Snarky is ok, but the preachy has to go. Overall though, I want to set a deadline of finishing this thing and getting ready to go around to markets by Sunday. I don’t think that will be too difficult to do, even if I have to rewrite a few large sections of it.

Workshop is this Saturday. I’ve managed to read all the stories and will also be putting together notes for the critiques.

I’m really starting to feel like I’m on more of a roll. It’ll be interesting to see just how well I can revise quickly. I have a bunch of other stories in the trunk I want to get done.

Then, of course, I eventually want to get back on board with the novel. But I feel there’s a certain level of skill I need to acquire first. The short stories seem to be a good place to test out and develop that skill. And most of the skill has to do with discipline and writing fast. I don’t think it will do many any good to pursue novel writing if I can’t keep them coming. The publishing industry pretty demands that level of productivity.

BTW – I think I’ll start a series on revisions soon.

Another Excellent Post From Dean Wesley Smith

02. April 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: General Wank · Tags: ,

There are quite a few writers out there who have been a real source of encouragement to me. Dean is quickly rising to the top as an obvious voice of reason. Dean is all about putting ass in chair and getting the job done, as well as putting manuscript in envelope and getting it out the door.

Here’s his latest post on time and writing (paying the price is such an aptly named title). To me, this is just more fuel for the fire, affirming what I know to be true. If you haven’t read through his posts on goals and writing, I would suggest you do so.

The Unified Theory of Story

13. February 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: General Wank · Tags: ,

I’m working on a critiquing workshop. This is just an hour long presentation meant to help writers learn the fine art of the critique. I wanted something easy to remember, easy to sort of break down to use as a template. I tried to think of the various questions you could ask of a work, but it got cumbersome and there were so many things that depended on other things, and the whole thing became such a mess that I found it might be too difficult for anyone to remember.

I remember when I first started critiquing I ran across someone’s critique guide. It was twenty five pages of questions asking specifics about the story’s start, the ending, the characters, the setting, theme, mood, grammar, and the magic systems. I mean any question you could think to ask was in this guide.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do think something like that can be helpful. When you want a real detailed analysis of what’s working and what’s not a guide like that is perfect. If you just need to know where to start, it can be daunting.

More than once, as a newbie writer, I sat down with one of my first drafts and that document and couldn’t really figure out what I was supposed to do. What if I start by fixing the beginning, but then figure out my main character is shallow and I need to start over? What if I fix up the setting, just to learn that I need to cut that scene? I lacked clarity and direction, so more often than not I wasn’t analyzing my own stories.

While at Clarion West I received a great piece of advice from Maureen McHugh. Pick out one thing you think is working and one thing you think needs repaired. Expand on these a little, and that’s about all you need to convey to the story’s author. This has worked well for me, but it’s awfully subjective to my story taste. My taste tends to be Baroque. When the Story Schema hasn’t quite imprinted on your mind, this might not be the most helpful critique to give or get, because you might love Robert Ludlum and I might love Elizabeth George, and even though we are writing in a similar genre our prose and structure are going to look very different.

So I needed something more. At first, I thought I needed a shorter list of questions. Maybe it’s asking the right questions in the right order? But that would be totally based on where the story’s weakness resides (Ideally, you shouldn’t have to initially know this). Then I got to thinking about the Story Schema. There are lots of them. Some people call these plot skeletons. So I considered the plot skeleton as a basis for all my questions, but quickly realized that there are many, many short stories that do not actually contain all the parts of the typical plot skeleton—yet they work marvelously.

Then I realized I needed the simplest model I could come up with. A story in its most basic form. This is the foundation from which to judge just about any story. There are probably some exceptions to this, but I do believe this should cover things generally.

A person struggling for something they want.

If you can remember that statement, you know just about everything you need to ask of a story. Any story, I believe. Even the literary. It’s simple, I know, but the idea is to make sure the basics are covered.

I wanted something that was self-documenting. Self-documenting is a concept that programmers use when writing code. I have the option of writing comments in my code. This allows me to tell other programmers what I might be doing with a particular function or variable. However, I could also just write the code in a way that tells another programmer exactly what it’s doing.

This statement should do that. As a writer you should be able to tell me the following: who the story is about, what they are struggling against, what they are struggling for, and what they want. Generally, I think if you have these things, you have a story. Now there are some ways you can expand on this. For instance, I find the best stories are those where the main character wants something quite badly, but actually needs something that is in conflict with what he wants.

Finding Nemo. A father fish (A Person) faces dangerous obstacles while searching the ocean’s floor with his absent minded companion (struggling for) for his lost son who he wishes to protect from harm (something they want).

This covers the basics for the story, but there is so much more to it. What he really wants is to keep his son safe. What he needs is to let loose and enjoy his son’s life. These two things are in conflict and make for a fantastic story.

However, the idea isn’t to make the perfect system, just give people a good place to start. Your story should at least have a character who wants something and the character should have to struggle for this thing. If these things are missing, you might have a story problem.

Is the character shown and adequately illustrated?

Are his or her struggles shown and adequately illustrated?

Is what he or she wants shown and adequately illustrated?

I think if you can start here with your critique or with your story analysis, you’ll find what needs to be strengthened, what needs to be cut, what needs to be improved.

Hopefully, with fewer headaches and a lot less confusion.

A change in approach

29. January 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: General Wank · Tags: ,

I did more editing work on “Recall” last night. It’s coming along nicely. I’m applying the old 10% solution. This is something I haven’t really tried before, but I think it’s going to become a mainstay of my writing arsenal. My goal is to have this puppy done and out the door by Sunday. I think that’s doable.

What? No sending it to the critique group? Nope, not this time. I’m changing the way I deal with my workshops now. Honestly, I don’t think they’re helping me, but hurting me. I’ll continue participating and I’ll even submit my work, but I’m not going to use the critique groups to “fix” a manuscript or story. I’m going to use them as guides to improve my craft and that’s about it.

Why the change of heart? Well, I’m blocked. I don’t have writer’s block, I have sender’s block. Nothing is ever good enough to send out the door. So looking around I realize that I haven’t been following the rules. 1) Write, 2) Send what you write to publishers, 3) revise only if the editor asks for it, and 4) repeat above process.

So February is commitment month. I’m committing to writing and sending out 4 stories next week. That’s a story a week. I want to be in a different place as a writer. I don’t like where I am now. I know I can write professional quality work. I’m frustrated that I can’t seem to finish anything. So I’m redefining “finished” for myself. Finished does not mean perfect. Finished does not mean something that has been critiqued to death and then rewritten into something it’s not. Finished is one pass revision and one pass edit and then out the door.

I have to develop some balls about my writing. That’s all there is to it. I’ve seen to many wannabe writers go on and on about how they are going to do this and going to do that, and they might have one or two things published here and there—oh, wait, that looks familiar. I don’t want to be one of those guys.

I don’t want to be the guy who gets a couple of pro sales and writes one novel and never does anything else. I want to be a professional writer. Period. Professionals produce. That’s what they do. They consistently crank out entertaining stories. They consistently have their names on the front covers of the major digests and magazines. They are invited to anthologies and they produce stories for those anthologies quickly. They are invited to write media tie-ins and they do an excellent job with the material. Professionals produce. Professionals sell. And they sell because they produce a lot of quality material. Not one short story every month or every two months.

This is what I call a ‘talking with Red in the prison yard moment’. It’s time to get busy writing and sending or time to get busy doing something else.

Post: Post.  Some of this message comes across a little bitchy, like I don’t appreciate some of the critiques I have received in the past.  This is not true.  I do appreciate the critiques and those giving the critiques.  However, there are times as a writer where you have to look at the process and say, “This just isn’t working for me this way.”  It’s a personal thing and not meant to offend anyone.  When someone critiques my work it is helpful to me as a writer to gauge where I am with my overall fiction, but it probably won’t do much for the actual story.  Hopefully, that clarifies things.

More discoveries about my process

22. January 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: General Wank · Tags: ,

I made excellent progress on the new story last night. This is a military science fiction. Very short. I’m aiming for 4500 words or fewer. I’m at around 2400 and just hitting the central event. This feels different for me. It’s a lot less organic than what I normally write, but the characters feel right for the story.

My goal has been to keep the story simple. The motivations should be clear, the world and how it works should be clear, and the overall character arcs should be clear as well. It should be as simple as a cure song, and hopefully just as enjoyable.

I’m also writing it relatively fast. The prose is a bit sparser than what I normally write, but it’s OK, because that seems to be what the specific magazine I’m writing for likes. It’ll be nice to see this one published.

I did a little more work on the site. I’m still not too terribly happy with it yet. I did at least manage to add links to my fellow CW graduates. I also seem to have lost my CW entrance submissions and biography, which is a bit of a shame. I’m hoping they’re on my older computer.

I think something in my internal story engine has clicked. It’s like a particular gear was out of place and mucking up the machine, because recently the story ideas I’ve been developing are far more complete. They actually have a beginning, middle, and end. What I thought was that I didn’t know how to do short story endings, but what I’ve learned is that I didn’t know how to do short story middles. The middle was killing me.

After reading a huge list of other short works and trying my best to sort of reverse engineer them, I’ve come to the conclusion that I write a particular type of story best. Knowing that will now let me leverage writing those type of stories to keep sales up and continue learning to write other types of stories. I mean, I’m hoping it will help me to keep sales up.

I’m on a Road to Somewhere

13. January 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: General Wank · Tags: ,

I’ve learned a few things from some recent efforts.  I should say failed efforts, because these are stories that aren’t going out the door; at least not in their current shape.  I’ll pull parts of them out and reuse them, but they won’t resemble the current stories much at all.  I’m OK with this.

I still feel a little like I’m in a place where I’m writing a lot, but publishing very little.  However, I think if something is fundamentally flawed, it has to go.  There is a school of thought that you write every story and send every story.  I guess that’s fine if you want pages and pages of publications.  I do agree that looking at someone with pages and pages of publications is impressive.  Maybe I’m on the brink of getting to a place where everything I write is publishable.

I’m just not that comfortable with what I’m writing yet.  I sort of ask myself after every writing session, “Is this something they might be willing to read on PRI’s Selected Shorts?”  I guess when the answer is closer to yes than “no fucking way”, I’ll be where I want to be.

The first failed effort was a story about a woman attempting to connect with her dead niece.  I liked some of the character work I did, a lot of the description and general writing was working well, and it’s one of the few first person stories I’ve ever written that I think could have stayed in first person.  However, it totally failed on the story front.  Motivations seemed very contrived and a bit unrealistic.  It was huge.  Way too long for the payoff—or lack thereof.

I learned these things from this story:

-Even a more literary work needs conflict (character goal + obstacles)
-It’s incredibly difficult to tell the story of someone offscreen. This is actually something I’ve attempted with a few stories.  I’ve not managed it very well so far, I think I’m going to give up trying for a while until I find a way to make it work.
-Literary pieces are often about the big event.  There must be a build up to this big event and there must be a leading down from the big event.  Not showing the big event and then attempting to just tell the post big event portion of the story doesn’t feel complete.  In fact, it doesn’t feel much like a story at that point.
-focus is important.  Again, this was a story where I tried to tell too many people’s stories in one place.  This should have been about two people, not six.  Six people collectively are a novel’s worth of characters.  Two people are a short story’s worth of characters.

The second recent failed attempt was the Strange Loop story.  I went a little weaker on the characters on this one and focused on plot.  However, it has many of the same issues as the first story.  Seems contrived and a lot of the character motivation doesn’t make sense.

I learned the following from this story:

-conflict wasn’t clearly defined (What was the goal?  What was the obstacle?)
-too many characters explored in one place
-misplaced big event
-focus was OK, but the message was muddled
-basic idea was good, but there was probably a better way to explore it

*(Funny side note on this story.  Another writer liked the concept so much he asked if he could use it to write his own version of the story—his is much better.  I hope he gets it published, because it’s a really great story.  So this didn’t complete go to pot.)

Yeah, there’s a pattern here.

I’m doing something new with the current WIP.  I’m taking extra time exploring character motivations.  In fact, it’s an entire story that explores motivation and lack of understanding between characters.  I’m not sure if this is making any difference, but it’s also not a speculative fiction piece.  This leads me to wonder if too many of my works are trying too hard to be speculative fiction pieces, because every time I bring in the speculative elements it seems to throw off the rest of the work.  It’s as though I’m building a nice sand castle and decide it really needs a wrench somewhere.

-this story is about the little girl and her mother.  There are other characters in this, but the focus is on that relationship.
-there is a clear goal (it’s the mother’s goal, but I think it works in this story for my POV character to not be the hero, but the person most hurt by the events).
-the big event is in the middle.  There is clear movement toward this event and clear movement from the event.  The little girl is deeply changed by the event.  The event is natural and all of the actions and reactions of the characters are believable.  So far, what I read, sounds like something that might be on Selected Shorts—so that’s cool.

That’s mostly what I worked on over the weekend.  I’ve been doing some revisions to a story about a house burning down, sort of a homage to the Ray Bradbury story “There Will Come Soft Rains”.  I think I finished those up last night.  I have the editor’s notes to go over against my changes today, but that should go quickly.  This means I’ll deliver it on time.  So I have another story getting published this year.

The goal for the next few weeks is to finish up the current WIP and quickly get started on two more.

Additionally, I like the way I’m writing the current WIP.  It might be that I’m moving into a new process.  It’s a bit different from the way I’ve written in the past, but it feels pretty good.

I like the results anyway—and really, that’s what matters, right?

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