Author
I will make you pay for this indignity, thumb-monkey! You’ll rue the day!
How will you manage that?
By using this* when the thumb-monkeys buy it for me.
That could work.
Let me know when it gets here, I have some eeeebil I mean kind thoughts on uses.
I can’t get past rue the day. Who talks like that?
*image courtesy of Matt Kuchta channeling the feline id.
The most difficult things I’ve attempted as a writer are to write funny and to write poetically well—i.e. in a way that doesn’t look overwrought or overwritten.
I’m not actually sure which is harder, but I know which I’m better at. The books where I’ve written poetically are none of them in print yet, though I’ve had more than one editor say very nice things about them. Mostly that they like them but don’t think they’re commercial enough. I’ve even had editors try to put deals together for them, but as yet they have all gone boom at some point.
Funny on the other hand. Well, even my more serious books get reviewers saying nice things about the elements of humor. I’m good at funny. I have the checks to demonstrate it. Poetic…well, I think I’ve done it well when I’ve tried, and the lurkers* support me in email—I have the very kind rejection letters to demonstrate it.
The thing that I occasionally find frustrating about this is that if you’re doing comedy right, it looks effortless. The reason this is frustrating is that when it gets really hard, as it does sometimes, you feel a bit of a jerk for saying “Hey, this is hard, and I’m stressed about it.” Whereas, no one thinks twice if you’re known for writing beautiful, poetic prose, and you say “Hey, this is hard, and I’m stressed about it.”
This is because, when you’re reading along and you come across a long beautiful poetic passage, you generally think something like “wow, that’s gorgeous, I wish I could write like that,” or “wow, that’s gorgeous, they sure can write.” It’s obvious that what the poetic writer is doing is hard, and people acknowledge it without even thinking about it.
OTOH, when you’re reading along and you come across something really funny,** you laugh and keep right on moving, because that’s what a good joke does. It makes you laugh and it makes you feel a little lighter and more ready to go on. It acts as a lubricant for life, and lubricant is something you generally notice most in its absences.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather have the book contracts and the money that comes with them and make people smile when they read than be able to get more sympathy when I’m feeling whiny. But it was something I was thinking about, and when I’m feeling thinky I generally end up writing about it, because, hey, writer—that’s what we do.
One final note here and I shall go back to attempting to make the very difficult look like slipping on a banana peal. Neil Gaiman. Among the things that make Neil one of the best writers in our field is his ability to simultaneously do both. He writes things that are beautiful and poetic and funny, which makes people say “Wow, that’s gorgeous, how does he make it look so easy,” and then laugh about it, which is amazing.
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*In this case lurker = editor.
**There are exceptions, of course, mostly in the realm of socially relevant humor, where you laugh because it hurts, or because it’s uncomfortable. But the kind of humor I write is mostly there to make you feel like your day just got a little better.
When I first started breaking into the business of writing F&SF I was fortunate enough to meet and by mentored by a number of Big Name Authors. I am eternally grateful to those folks and that’s part of why I’m here with the other Wyrdsmiths doing this writing blog thing. There’s not a whole lot I can do for the BNAs who helped me out, but I can pass on that help to the folks who are climbing the mountain behind me.
Those BNAs gave me a huge amount of good advice on the craft of writing, and a great deal of good advice on the business of writing post-first novel offer. The one place where I had to carefully filter the advice I was getting was in the area of landing that first sale. This is because the world of publishing has been changing at astonishing speed over the last thirty years or so, and advice that was stellar then (whenever then may be) is sometimes simply invalid for the newbie unpublished writer of today. I will occasionally (and entirely goodheartedly) call this stuff dinosaur advice-magnificent in its time, but not such a great idea now that all these nimble little mammals have started cluttering up the scene.
In my class last night someone asked me a question about getting a start in writing by publishing with small presses. In that instant I knew that I had just had my first dinosaur moment–I’m sure I’ll have more. I know that small press is changing the face of the industry and I’m pretty certain that it’s going to change it much more radically in the very near future. There are quite a number of small presses that are doing great work, getting books in distribution channels, winning awards, and giving their authors exposure they just couldn’t get elsewhere. So far so good. But in terms of submitting to small presses, their relationships with agents, and even where to find that kind of information I am totally clueless. In short those darn whipper-snapper mammals are changing the face of publishing and me–big old dinosaur that I am–I don’t understand the rules of the new game.
Update 2013: I’ve had a lot more of these in the six years since I wrote this post. I basically no longer give advice about short story markets. I still don’t know much about the small press scene. And self-publishing, which used to be mostly vanity press and anathema to a career, has blossomed into the indie-publishing movement where a ton of fascinating new models for making a living writing are springing up. Given the rate of change in the publishing industry, I’m starting to think that break-in advice has a finite life cycle of 1-3 years at this point in terms of the business side. On the other hand, the writing side doesn’t change much: Write something really good. Find a way to get reader eyeballs and transfer reader dollars to your bank account. Rinse. Repeat.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog October 19 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
Last night (as I’m writing this) I was fortunate enough to see The Royal Shakespeare Company’s King Lear with Ian McKellen (major props to my aunt Lee for scoring the tickets—2013 update: Lee has since passed away and I miss her). W. O. W.!
I have seen many great performances of Shakespeare including several other Royal Shakespeare productions. None of them was in the same league as this one. Lear, Goneril, Edmund, and Kent were beyond extraordinary. Regan, Gloucester, and the Fool were merely astonishing. Everyone else turned in the kind of performance that would have made a scene-steeling star turn in any other company. It was the playgoing experience of a lifetime and the small touches were every bit as telling and smart as the big ones. I’m only going to touch briefly on a few things so as to get to the part where this becomes a writing post.
In two seconds of side business in the opening scene—side business that managed to be the center of attention just for those two seconds without distracting from the main action, Regan established herself as an alcoholic and set up her own poisoning at the end of the play. Ian McKellen somehow managed to give Lear enormous dignity while naked from knees to armpits and wrestling with his clothes in the storm scene. The fool did quite a number of his pieces as singsong while playing a pair of spoons and managed to be both terribly funny and terribly tragic simultaneously. Kent’s exit at the end of the play to go commit suicide was so right and so poignant at the same time that it hurt.
And all of it was in some cases despite the writing. Yes, you read that right. Shakespeare is one of the greatest writers ever to have walked the earth, and in every other performance I have seen, the writing has transcended the acting. Where there have been moments that fell short it was always because the actors couldn’t quite live up to the play. In this case, the acting was so good that it exposed the weak spots in the writing. Despite the fact that it was Lear, despite the fact that it is one of the great plays, despite Shakespeare’s phenomenal pen, he was outperformed.
Cordelia’s performance in particular was positively heroic in a way that exposed the weakness of the part. The actress’ Cordelia was outstanding, Shakespeare’s not nearly so much. Likewise Edgar, who put into face and gesture things that Shakespeare did not put into the text.
And that is exactly what you want your characters to do in your books. To transcend your writing of them. This is why you want to leave some gaps in description and to sometimes choose to imply things about motivation instead of spelling them out absolutely. So that your actors and set–provided in a novel by the imagination of the reader–have room to do more than you can make them do on your own.
The writer who spells out absolutely everything leaves no room for the reader to make the book their own, and that investment of reader interest and effort is priceless. Of course, you can’t make them do too much of the work or you will lose them on the other end. As with everything in writing it is a matter of balance.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog October 15 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
My friend and fellow writer, Stephanie Zvan, built a really useful novelist’s spreadsheet quite some time ago and I’ve been meaning to talk it up for ages–with her permission of course. It’s a very smart tool for looking at story on a scene by scene basis. Across the top are a series of categories, each with it’s own column and description.
The top row looks like this-reading from left to right:
1. Blank
2. Scene Functions:
3. Scene Plot
4. Story Plot
5. Character
6. Emotion
7. Senses
8. Info/Worldbuilding
9. Going Beyond/Literature
10. Blank
The second row has corresponding descriptions for each column. So:
1. Blank.
Scene
2. Scene Functions:
Description (of scene function)
3. Scene Plot
What are characters’ immediate goals? What conflicts are set up or resolved?
4. Story Plot
How does this scene advance or hinder characters’ long-term goals?
5. Character
What’s revealed or demonstrated about characters? Do they grow or change?
6. Emotion
What emotions is this scene intended to elicit?
7. Senses
What senses have you engaged?
8. Info/Worldbuilding
What necessary or cool information is given to the reader?
9. Going Beyond/Literature
What elevates this above narrative? Illuminating metaphor, wicked description, elaboration on theme(s), etc.
10. To Do
The first column then has a list of scenes by chapter running from top to bottom, 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, for however many chapters and scenes are appropriate.
This allows the writer to look at each scene and how many of the goals it meets in an eyeblink and also to do a more in depth analysis of the piece on a topic by topic or scene by scene basis. As a spreadsheet it also allows for the writer to easily expand the number of topics covered.
One could add a column listing all the characters who appear in each scene as a tool to see whether some characters could be merged or eliminated. Or in a novel with many points of view, a column that says who is the POV character for each scene might allow for tying some sense or tag to each character to make sure that is engaged in each scene from their POV.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog October 12 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
I iz same size as hole, I fits!
You just keep telling yourself that…
This is what fitting looks like.
Who needs to fit when there iz laps?
You’re all unfit!
Bonus drawer full of ebil!
Matt Kuchta has been listening to the cats and adding things to the shopping list again.
But if you bought me a jetpack, I might have to _do_ something…
And I’m much more interested in my toes than moon landings.
I kick myself just thinking about it.
Walruses don’t jet, nor do they like lasagna.
Wait, dudes, I would totally rock a jetpack!
In his wonderful screenwriting book Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman spends more than a little bit of time talking about Late Entry, by which he means starting the camera as late as possible in any given scene. This, like much of the advice in Goldman’s two books on screenwriting–the other is Adventures in the Screen Trade–is absolutely dead on for novels and short stories as well.
A simple example for why this is true might go like this: Character A enters a room. They then spend forty minutes peacefully reading a magazine before character B comes along and starts a dialogue. Several minutes might then go into them exchanging pleasantries about their extended family before a troublesome memory of A doing something stupid at B’s wedding comes up. A fight ensues and eventually B pulls out a gun and shoots A dead, then flees the scene.
In a movie, with it’s limited time budget, it is obvious why most if not all of the waiting and initial family discussion will not and should not end up being filmed. It’s boring and it wastes half of the two hours you have to tell the entire story. The question is where exactly do you start the camera rolling? The answer is and should always be as late as possible for the scene to make sense and show the audience what they need to see. Depending on the story, you might put in snippets of the wait and pleasantries or you might not. You will almost certainly put in parts of the argument (though those might be better brought it in flashback) and you must put in the shooting.
The question of when to leave a scene is a mirror of the Late Entry principle. How soon can you get out while still giving the audience what they need? The answer is: As soon as possible. And the same principle applies to writing a novel or short story. Any part of a scene that doesn’t cover something the reader needs to know about should go.
So in my class last night (in October 2007, actually) I talked a little bit about this and thought I’d expand and expound on it here. F&SF is the genre of the fantastic. It is defined by the idea of a world not like our own. This can be a world of the future, of the past, of a now that is somehow different from the one we live in, or a world that never has been. We include elves and dragons, cyborgs and star ships, magic, and technology-indistinguishable-from-magic, and we mostly start doing it on page one. This is what our readers expect and demand and yet….
You still have to give your reader banisters–ideas and terms they can hold onto as they ease into the story. Every time you introduce a strange magical beast or a polysyllabic alien name you need to give the reader context, let them know that a gobbledygook is really basically a dragon with the serial numbers filed off, or that Svbuewioboie is really an engineer on a star ship not all that different from star ships they’ve seen in the past. To make a work original and to draw in the reader you have to have gobbledygooks and Svbuewioboie, and whozits and Xzasdxssa as well, but you probably don’t want to introduce them all on page one, because the contextualization you will have to do for the reader is going to kill your pacing.
Spacing out the weirdness is one of the things you can do to help the reader ease into the strange and hopefully come to love it. One other thing you can do is make certain that there’s a good reason that you’re calling a dragon a gobbledygook or a cell phone a WAA (weird-ass acronym) and not do it if you don’t have to. “Dragon” is a fine word with all sorts of wonderful history and built-in associations. A phone is an entirely comprehensible piece of technology and unless the specific nature of the phone is really really important to the story there’s not much point in calling it a WAA.
Like everything in writing it’s a balancing act. You have to decide what strangeness really serves the story and what strangeness is there because it’s really cool, and what strangeness should probably be sidelined in favor of making it easier for the reader. At root it’s learning how to decide whether the glorious history of the gobbledygook species is more important than not calling a dragon a dragon.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog October 5 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
Friday July 5, 2013 7:00pm – 8:00pm, Room 2201
Kelly McCullough will be available to read work from his newest book (actually, I’ll probably read from the next one). Panelists: Kelly McCullough.
Saturday July 6, 2013 2:00pm – 3:00pm, Sofitel Bordeaux
A discussion about how writing styles change when one is writing in different formats. How do you adjust? What is the same? Panelists: Rob Callahan, Sean E. Williams, James Moran, Kelly McCullough, Roy C Booth
Signing – Kathy Sullivan/Kelly McCullough/Emma Bull