Category: Reblogging Project

The Implicit Contract Between Writer and Reader

Fellow Wyrdsmith Sean M Murphy mentioned this idea in the comments on my original what the author owes the reader post at Wyrdsmiths and it came up a lot at CONvergence 2007, so I thought I’d discuss it. When an experienced reader picks up a science fiction or fantasy story they do so with a number of implicit expectations which form a contract of sorts between the reader and the writer (this is also true for other genres, but the expectations have some variations, so I’m going to focus here on F&SF).

They expect that the story will be about something. They expect that there will be clues and foreshadowing that will point toward the ending. They expect that the author won’t introduce things into the denouement that were not introduced or implied somewhere earlier in the story. They expect things to conform to the general rules and tropes of the genre or for deviations to be explained at some point.

For example, readers expect science fiction to follow the general rules of science. The technology should be of a generally consistent level. Deviations from that norm should be explained either at the time of the introduction of the deviation, or at least noted as being a deviation, with the expectation that the reason will be explained later. If the author wants to write an SF story with magical elements, then the magic had better be shown to exist very very early in the story and there will have to be a scientific explanation (even if it’s just handwaving) somewhere in the story. Likewise, if you’re writing fantasy with elements of sf you want to let the reader know about it early on or at least hint at it.

Another important aspect of the implicit contract has to do with a term I’ve borrowed from science education, the problem statement. Somewhere early in the story, ideally in the first couple of pages, the author has to define the problem that is going to be solved or addressed over the course of the story. The problem can be, the One Ring is a powerful magical device and we will have to learn what it is and what to do with it. It can be Miles Vorkosigan has washed out of military school, what is he going to do with the rest of his life? It can be Corwin of Amber realizing he doesn’t know who or what he is. The answer doesn’t have be resolved as the character expects or wants it to be, in fact in general it shouldn’t be as they expect, though it should be logical and follow naturally from the flow fo the story. But the reader needs to have some idea what to watch and watch for, or they will become increasingly unhappy over the course of the story, and downright irate if the rug is suddenly jerked out from under them somewhere along the line.

Now, it’s possible to do every one of the things I’ve said you shouldn’t, but it has to be done consciously and extremely well or the book is likely to end up traveling in a ballistic arc and lose you a reader, certainly for that story and possibly forever.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog July 12 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

What Does the Writer owe the Reader?

Fellow Wyrdsmith Eleanor Arnason was on a panel about what the writer owes the reader at WisCon, and she talked about it here . It’s an important question and I really wanted to come back to it. Eleanor’s post included the following:

“Ellen Kushner said writers owe readers the truth, which I guess is true.

I would say the writer owes readers — and herself — the best job she can do.

I tend to believe that the writer owes readers a work that will make their lives better, something they can use in dealing with life.”

I agree with all these points, especially the second one, and yet…I want to say something more.

I guess for me it’s contextual. What story am I trying to tell? Who is the character I’m currently writing? When is the story set? And where? Those are all the sorts of things that will determine what I owe the reader in a given piece. Most importantly of all, what am I trying to achieve with this story?

Sometimes, as in the case of the hard science fiction shorts I wrote for middle school students, it’s conveying good, real, science in a way that lets student see the gears move. Sometimes, I owe the reader a true representation of my core beliefs. Sometimes, if the character disagrees with me, I owe my reader the best arguments I can make against those same beliefs. Sometimes I just owe the reader a damn good ride, or some laughs.

It’s good to write truth. It’s good to give a reader something they can use to make their lives better. It’s good to make a reader laugh or cry or think deeply. But you don’t have to do it all at once. No one story should have to carry everything the writer hopes to accomplish with their fiction.

Picture a story as a boat. Yes, there are great ships that can ferry a life’s work across an ocean—stories that can do everything. But there are also submarines and canoes and even surfboards. Stories that touch you beneath the waterline of the subconscious, or that glide silently across the lake of the mind with a single smart thing loaded amidships, or that just give you a hella ride through the surf. Every single one of them has its proper place and purpose and that’s important to remember.

The key isn’t to do everything every time, it’s to do what you want to do this time to the best of your ability, and it’s okay if all you’re shooting for in a given story is one pure silly smile. Don’t let yourself get trapped into thinking beyond the needs of the story.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog July 10 2007 and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

 

Writing Tools and Environment

My first book was written on my first computer. This is not a coincidence. Without modern writing tools and the ability to freely move paragraphs around and make corrections I probably wouldn’t be a writer. I need that freedom to change my mind.

In fact, freedom is generally important to me in writing. My first book was written on a generation one MacIntosh which I could easily pick up and move around the apartment to suit my current whim. Much of it was written with my feet up on the couch, the keyboard in my lap, and the computer off to my right on the coffee table. Terrible ergonomics, but ideal for my thinking process.

Now I do all my writing on a laptop and I have for as long as I’ve been able to afford one. This means I can write on the porch, at the coffee shop, in bed, sitting in the corner under a stairwell at one of my wife’s physics conferences, even tucked away behind a display at the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. and I’ve written happily in all those places.

2013 update: In reading this again now, I realize it’s probably worth noting that the desire for freedom in my writing space extends to the idea of societal expectations of work space. Put me at a desk and it becomes very difficult for me to write. I think that’s because my sub-conscious interprets desk as day job space. Likewise I find I work better on a chaise or easy chair with my feet up and lots of open visual space around me—ideally with lots of windows and an outdoor view. I really really don’t like feeling constrained.  

On the other hand, I know people who draft long hand with a pen, on an actual typewriter, using voice recognition software, or dictating into a tape recorder while walking in the mountains. Everyone does it differently and we all have our reasons. The only thing that really matters is that the writing actually gets done.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog June 28 2007 and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Travel and Recharging the Batteries

So I’m just back from two weeks wandering around the Canadian maritimes with friends (Or, I was in June of 2007 when I first wrote this). On one level it was a vacation, on another level it was very much a business trip. One of the most important things a writer can do is collect new experiences, ideas, images, and places that can be filtered and focused and used as grist for the mill of our work.

For me, travel is one of the most important ways to develop new ideas and scenes for works in progress and works yet to be, in part because I’m a world driven writer. On this trip I had two particularly fabulous visits that will be incorporated into future work, as will the whole trip over time. Oh, and I might get a bit of blog fodder as well, if you hadn’t guessed.

First was a place called Woodleigh. It was one of those weird tourist attractions driven by an eccentric genius with intense focus. In this case it was a good sized parklike area studded with miniature versions of important British landmarks in varying scales, including a Tower of London big enough to walk through and a Westminster with doors only a few inches high but with two tons of lead used in the roofing. Fascinating and utterly bizarre, it will be a major and important setting for parts of WebMage book IV. In fact, the book will take place almost entirely in the Canadian Maritimes.

Second and even more important for me was Halifax and in particular, The Citadel—an 1850s era British fortress with a mix of kilted re-enactors and actual soldiers manning it. The place was fantastic and I literally couldn’t move without getting story ideas. In all I collected scenes and ideas there for WebMage IV, The Eye of Horus, Outside In, and a new as yet untitled book to be written after I’ve got some free time again, maybe 2-3 years out at the current rate. I took well over a hundred pictures and made a number of short cryptic notes that tie back to big ideas for various stories. A lot of it needs to marinate in the back of my head for a while, especially the future Halifax book, but some of it will come out more immediately with WebMage IV and Eye of Horus. 2013 update: It did indeed come out in both of those books.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog June 26 2007 and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Writing Humor

So in response to a question Sean M Murphy posed on the Wyrdsmiths blog about how to write funny, I have this to say: Use your toes.

More seriously, this is a really tough question, and I’m not sure there is a satisfactory answer. Humor is incredibly subjective and the line between funny for me and funny for you is thin one. There are jokes that I find hysterically funny that my wife barely laughs at and vice-versa. Likewise, delivery matters.

There are jokes that are funny when told by a master that aren’t funny at all when an amateur tells them. There are jokes that are funny only because of very specific cultural contexts and jokes that are only funny when one person tells them. There are jokes tuned for gender, for age, for military experience. There is, in short, almost no such thing as a universal joke.

Medium matters too. I know people who are very funny in print but who aren’t often funny in person, and vice-versa. That has a lot to do with context and subtext. When you tell a joke or make a funny comment in person, you’re using a very different set of tools than when you do the same thing textually. Things that could sound quite mean or hurtful on the page can be delivered in person with the appropriate tone and body language to convey that the whole thing is really good natured. Just as something that might seem flat and overly subtle in person can be hysterically funny on the page.

None of which answers the question. I write humor almost as easily as I breathe. Even in my very earliest attempts at fiction I could often generate an out loud laugh from my readers. How do I do it?

Some of it is a talent for the funny in text, and I don’t have any idea how to transfer it. Some of it is by creating characters with a long term friendly fencing relationship, so that the reader know that even the mean jokes are in the spirit of fun. Some of it is always directing the harshest jabs at my protagonist so that the reader gets it filtered through the (unhurt) eyes of my main character. Some of it is by making a lot of the humor self-directed. You’re allowed to say awful but funny things about yourself that you would never consider saying about someone else. Some of it comes from always making sure that the characters are aware of the absurd in their situation–not by breaking the 4th wall and talking to the audience, but by realizing the inherent humor of being chased by a 600 foot firebreathing woodchuck.

Oh, and at least in my case, humor tends to be very very dark. A moderately funny bit in the midst of the world coming apart can be much funnier than the best joke ever while your characters are having a happy tea with no danger in sight.

Finally, a lot of it is hit and miss and fearlessness. You put the joke in and see who laughs. If you’ve got beta readers or writers group readers they’ll tell you when you’re funny and when you’re not. You also understand that sometimes you fail with some readers, that something that’s funny for one reader won’t be for another and you accept that you can’t make everybody laugh all the time.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog June 6 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Notes on Plot (pt 2 and 3 of 3)

For the intro, see part one below. I’m going to move on to models for thinking about plot in this and the next post. All of these can be applied to either internal or external plot.

Model 1-Plot, what, why how: Plot is confusing in part because when writers and readers talk about it, they’re talking about several different things, and we rarely differentiate explicitly.

Plot the what, plot the why, and plot the how. Very often we focus on plot the what, the sequence of events that take us from the beginning of a story to the end, and talk about it in great detail.

The what of plot can be anything and everything and is easy to overthink and to worry about to distraction.

The why of plot is the most important thing for the writer to think about. And, fortunately, it’s much simpler. Why do the things in a story happen? Fiction is the art of crafting stories with a purpose. That purpose can be as simple as crafting a ripping yarn, or as complex as, well, pretty much anything you can conceive of.

The key to a well plotted story is mapping the why onto the what. The how follows naturally after that. Why are you telling the story? What do you want out of the story? Once you have an idea of that you can move on to the how.

In my case, the why is usually built around wanting people to come see my cool world. I decide what parts of the world I want to show off. Where in the world can I place the story for maximum tourist advantage? Then I map out a loose path through the set, and start thinking about what sort of character would follow that path, which leads me to conflict and another way to think about plot.

A note on cost: There is no plot without cost. If the characters in your story don’t have to give anything up (cost) there is no tension, and so no story.

Model 2-Plot as conflict: One writer, (sadly, I can’t remember who) said that all you need to know for plot is “things get worse.” Anytime in the story when you don’t know what comes next, make things worse. Done well, this is true enough. Done wrong, it becomes “hit the bird.” (Disney’s Alladin. Don’t know what to do, hit the bird.) As I said, done right it works. Things keep getting worse for your Protagonist until the end when they get better.

I prefer to think in terms of conflict. Plot is getting from point a to point b with the maximum amount of interesting and appropriate mayhem (conflict) in between. Your character wants or needs something (internal vs. external) and chooses to try or is forced to try to get it or to get away from having to get it. How that plays out, and what he or she loses or gains along the way is plot. This is a sort of hero’s journey model.

Model 3-Plot as conflict part B; internal vs. external: In most fantasy fiction you will have a protagonist and an antagonist, or hero and villain. In conflict type B, the conflict and plot are driven by the opposing needs of the hero and the villain, remembering always that the villain is the hero of his or her own story. This leads us back to internally vs. externally driven plots.

Model 4-Plot as motion: In normal life, long periods go by without anything of significance happening. In fiction everything is a significant happening, or should be. If it doesn’t move the story somehow, it probably shouldn’t be in the text. In plot as motion we start at a point of stasis, or immediately after a point of stasis has been destabilized. The story then revolves around getting to a new point of stasis which involves motion through the world and through time. Attempts to halt or redirect the flow of motion create the conflict necessary to interesting story-telling.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog May 31 2007 and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Notes on Plot (pt 1 of 3)

I’ve spent a good bit of time over the years thinking about plot and I thought some of those ideas might be of interest to y’all. I’ll start with a definition of terms today and then discuss four models of plot construction in the next part.

The basic equation of plot as I see it goes a bit like this:

Plot = How Conflict interacts with Cost to achieve resolution
Conflict = The difference between the way things are and the way they ought to be
Cost = Price of resolving conflict

That said, there two basic types of plots. Internally driven and externally driven.

Much of classic fantasy and most of classic science fiction revolves around externally driven plot. Sauron seeks the one ring. Either Frodo and co destroy it or are destroyed. No internal transformation has to take place in any of the characters. They have a goal. The trilogy is built around achieving that goal. In fantasy the external plot is usually driven by a BBE, or big bad evil. Sauron. The White Witch. Etc.

Most lit fic and an ever growing portion of F&SF is internally driven. Internally driven stories usually revolve around the problems of the character though many have explicit external villains as well. The protagonist is broken in some fundamental way, either some time before the action of the book begins, or very soon thereafter. They then go on a journey which either fixes them, or transforms them into someone who no longer needs to be fixed.

I personally try to write a story with both external and internal plot drivers, as I feel that a fusion of the two makes for a stronger story.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog May 30 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

 

 

Conception to Completion (pt. 3 of 3)

The Final Installment--in which the book gets finished and a party is thrown.

Further Chapters: This happens concurrent with the following section. In essence it’s very simple, put in-scene the narrative you’ve developed. In practice it’s messy. You may find out that one of your clever ideas doesn’t work. Or, if you’re fortunate enough to find a good critic to read your working draft, they may point out things that need to be changed to make a better story. For one novel not all that long ago, I scrapped two chapters worth of working outline and started over. I kept some of the same events, but shifted the emphasis and removed the supporting characters entirely to emphasize the central role of the protagonist.

Advanced Blocking: This may or may not be necessary depending on your own individual process. I find that when I’m having trouble with a scene it usually means that I need to take a step back from the actual writing and figure out what I’m trying to achieve with a scene and how best to achieve it. So I might put together something like “Chapter 12, Scene one” with a description of what I want to happen and why, then follow with “scene two,” etc. until I’ve fully blocked out the chapter.

Finish/Clean-up/Ongoing Rewrite: Once the first draft is finished (if you haven’t already) it’s time to go back and clean up any messes made by the changes that will inevitably have drifted in from the initial conception and do things like throwing in foreshadowing for a scene not originally anticipated. A person can also do all of this as they go, going back and inserting whatever adjustments that need to be made as soon as they occur, and this is actually the model I follow though I don’t necessarily recommend it. For many writers what it leads to is a dead stall where they are continually rewriting their first chapters and never actually moving forward.

Celebrate: This is key. If you’ve finished a book you owe yourself a dinner out at the very least, and possibly a blow-out party.

A Final Note: I can’t emphasize enough that this is only one way to reach the goal of a finished book. I know writers who have no idea what’s going to happen with the story from day-to-day and who just “follow my characters around and see what happens” and who write excellent novels. I know writers who would be paralyzed by my model, sinking hundred of hours into blocking and outlines and not working on the text at all. Think of this as one possible starting point. Use the parts of it that make sense or help you move forward, discard those that don’t.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog May 24 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Conception to Completion (pt. 2 of 3)

Part 2–in which I talk about actually starting work on the book. Okay so this is a bit of cheat because I do do some of the initial writing in tandem with the earlier stuff.

Three Chapters: At some point in the process, beginning as early as halfway through basic blocking or anywhere thereafter, I need to actually start writing the book so that I can get a handle on who my characters are and the style I’m going to use to write the story. I find that I am often surprised about some of the details of the story and characters both here and later, despite the fact that I have a very good idea of what the story will look like in overview. I typically start these chapters during the blocking process and finish them in tandem with the basic narrative outline as the two inform each other.

Note: Three is not entirely an arbitrary number, because the basic book proposal format is three chapters (~50 pages) and a detailed narrative plot outline. As a writing tool, three chapters is purely a suggestion as it may well take longer than this to really figure out where the story is going to go and how it will get there. In an adult-length novel ~100,000 words, I will usually nail this down somewhere between 15-20,000. First time authors would be advised to have a completed manuscript before submitting the proposal version in any case.

Working Outline: This is a very different critter from the narrative outline. Here my goal is not to tell the story to a third party reader, but rather to blueprint it for myself. It will include both the events of the story and the structural reasons for those events. So, it might include something like “Draft student into school. Establish teachers, also the student TAs.” This tells me that at this point in this chapter I need to write several short scenes showing my lead character in his classes. One of the purposes of these scenes is to establish some of my other characters and make them distinct. The depth of description in a working outline will vary widely from author to author, and should include everything that you think is important in the scene at the minimum level of detail necessary for you to remember it. This isn’t the story itself and all the time I spend here is time that I don’t have to work on the actual finished product. Generally, the more inexperienced the writer, the greater the detail they should put into this sort of outline.

A working outline should at the very least lay out all the major events. In my case, I like to lay it out chapter by chapter. For Black School what I did was looked at my first three chapters to get an idea of what my chapter length was going to be (this can vary wildly depending on the story) and then mapped it against the max number of words. YA is short: 30,000 at the low end up to 75,000 at the extreme high end. I chose to shoot for 60,000 as a ceiling and to bring it in shorter if possible. That meant 16-20 chapters. Just getting in all the events listed in the narrative outline took about 14 chapters leaving me 2-6 chapters for unexpected surprises. I determined this by looking at the events in the narrative outline and seeing how much space they had taken up in my three demonstration chapters. This is an extremely inexact science, as one event might be a paragraph in narrative because of its importance, but only a short scene in text, while another might be a sentence in narrative, but a chapter and a half in text.

To Be Continued (As always YMMV)

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog May 24 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Conception to Completion (pt. 1 of 3)

How do you put together a novel? There are 1,001 and one ways, every one of them right. I thought I’d talk about how I do it in hopes that it might be of some use to others, or at least a good place to have a discussion of ways and means. So here’s the first part of my process using the book Black School as my model.
Before I start writing the actual book.

Conception of idea: What do you want to write about? This is question one. In my case I usually start with a world or magic system. Starting with a character or a scene or a situation all work too. It helps if you can articulate the idea in a sentence–I want to write about ___________. Or a pitch “World War II with sacrifice magic and dark fey Nazis” for example. That’s a gross oversimplification, but when I say it, my listeners will have an instant sense of where I’m going, and so do I.

Basic blocking: Write out the idea in some detail. Shoot for at least two to five single spaced pages. Put flesh on the bones of the one-sentence description above. Try and think through the ramifications of the ideas, i.e. How would a military magic school work when the magic is built around sacrifice? How big a school? How many students? How many teachers? Where is the school? What is its relationship with the local military? Etc.

By the time I reached the end of this process for The Black School I knew the number of buildings on the campus and what their purpose and design was, my total student body, student rank in relation to general military, class schedule, dorm arrangements, etc. That let me open the first day of the book knowing where my lead character had to be and when, if he followed his schedule. This is not an exhaustive list of everything I needed to know, but it gives the flavor. I come back to this and add to it all through the writing of the novel as more details become clear.

Narrative Outline: What is my actual story? In my case I started with a solid idea of where I wanted the story to start, where I wanted it to end, what kind of general transformation I wanted in my main character, and who that character was. That’s a good start for this model. Other models can work just as well and may mean knowing a lot less about the overall story.

For the narrative outline I typically end with a five page overview (standard length in 12pt Courier). In this case, a page on the school, magic system, and main character, to set the scene. Then I started with my opening scene and wrote a very loose description of events over the next four pages, introducing new characters as they came into the story.

The outline had to answer the following questions: What does the main character want? What do they need? What are they going to get? What obstacles do they have to overcome to get there? What do they have to give up to get what they need? How are they going to fail on the way? Failure is key to plot. If the main character doesn’t fail from time to time, then there’s no dramatic tension or payoff when they succeed.

The final version of the narrative outline should tell the main points of the story in a voice as close to the actual fiction as possible.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog May 23 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)