Yesterday evening I attended one of my last panels at Chicon 7--Bad Writer, No Cookie. It started out as a panel about purple prose and how to avoid it, but quickly transitioned into readings of particularly badly-wrought examples from the archives of Thog's Masterclass, assembled by David Langford.
There are definite commonalities, and simple things to look after: a too many adjectives and adverbs are the first lessons to be drilled in, but sometimes they take a while to take, as I first put "generally" back there before I rewrote it. There's a constant temptation to refer to gazes and looks as "eyes," so you end up with things like eyes bouncing across a room or eyes being collected and and eyes doing all sorts of things that eyes just shouldn't be doing.
That's not just purple prose, though. There's a certain overwroughtness that's common among starting-out writers, writers trying to shoot for something grand and glorious, trying to make their offering stand apart from the rest. They certainly do, but not in the way that they had intended. The effect, really, is ridiculous. It detracts from the story because the ornamentation of the verse is so ornate that readers have to peer in close to make sense of it and give themselves concussions on the brass.
It's one thing to talk about, though--it's another to provide examples. That's what Thog's Masterclass is for, that's what last night's panel was for, and that's what this post is. I went trawling through my own archives of incomplete stories, most of them dating from 2008 and 2009. None of them ever saw an editor, which is fortunate, because editors can't edit as well when they're struck blind.
Let me share them with you now.
There were eight thousand and sixteen people watching the launch through the same set of eyes, but he didn't imagine any of them had been betrayed by it like he had. The rocket's vapor trail cut across the placid sky like a tower made from a whirling snowstorm, roaring and biting men like him with all the fury of a freed tiger, or a staircase of clouds leading up to the gates of heaven that would collapse beneath his weight.
Today's lesson: rocket launches are loud and make smoke. I don't even know what the hell I was aiming for here, as the "story" died after this introductory paragraph--and no one else would, either, because no one would ever read beyond a paragraph like this.
Hob McDonnell knew he would die on the moon. There was no garden plot in his future and no weeping willows would scatter the sunlight around his simple tomb. All he could look forward to was the coarse inevitability of the ashen lands and frozen skies that surrounded him, and when he looked ahead all he could see was the fanning cloud of dust kicked up as Sevket Feyzioglu slashed ahead through the regolith with all the fury of a young man drowning in draughts of imagined immortality.
Anyone have any additional ways to get across that the moon is grey and dead? I don't think I established it well enough.
The half-dozen men and women walked like they were made of glass, shuffling through the tunnel like the thirsty drivers of a desert caravan, drifting from one flickering oasis of golden light to the next in a slow, unending zig-zag.
It may come as a surprise to some of you to know that things made of glass do not tend to walk particularly well.
That's only three. Doubtless I have more that I've left behind, and despite my best efforts I'm sure that some unnecessarily-ornamented passages will creep into future prose. It's insidious like that. The best thing you can do as an author is get a sense for the purple and beat it to death whenever you smell it. That is one of the author's jobs, after all.
Showing posts with label advice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advice. Show all posts
Monday, September 3, 2012
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Exam Tips from Acts of Minor Treason
I've been out of the school system for a while now, long enough that those occasional confused dreams that I've got to go write an exam for a class I'd forgotten having registered for have been replaced by occasional confused dreams where I'm convinced I've forgotten to do something important at work. Still, my five years in university gave me experience that I'm eager to pass across to the next generation, especially when it's on a day during which my skull is empty and nothing is rattling loud enough for me to write about it.
Versions of these exam tips originally ran in _Absynthe_, Trent University's alternative newspaper, in 2003 and 2004. Even though it's still the beginning of August, Google searches don't care when a particular post went up the onramp onto the information superhighway (or, as some call it, the "infobahn"). If you're starting university this year, then good luck to you... your first set of exams are only four months away!
Versions of these exam tips originally ran in _Absynthe_, Trent University's alternative newspaper, in 2003 and 2004. Even though it's still the beginning of August, Google searches don't care when a particular post went up the onramp onto the information superhighway (or, as some call it, the "infobahn"). If you're starting university this year, then good luck to you... your first set of exams are only four months away!
- A good night's sleep is a must before any exam. However, be careful to avoid inducing sleep via a sledgehammer to the skull.
- Mnemonic devices are a useful method of retaining crucial information prior to an exam. The 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic, however, is not an appropriate substitute.
- Above all, don't worry about failing the exam. Save your terror for watching the last bus back to campus drive away, just as you reach the stop.
- Some people think that consuming something will grant you its powers and abilities. With that in mind, don't bother studying - just set fire to your notes and eat the ashes.
- Everyone gets stressed out at exam time. Try to take the edge off by building a sophisticated, impenetrable fort in the library stacks where you can study in peace and vaporize anyone who comes too close with your laser turrets.
- When stabbing fellow students in the eyes, be sure the pencil you are using is legal under examination guidelines.
- Ingenuity can outperform pure knowledge when it comes to writing the exam. At some point in the future, be sure to get your hands on a time machine and send the correct answers for those essay questions to yourself.
- Although the dead are technically exempt from writing exams, be careful. That dude with the robe and wizard's hat you met downtown might just be lying when he says he can reanimate corpses.
- Cybernetics might be expensive, but at least that shiny metal wrist of yours won't give out on you twenty minutes into a three-hour exam.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Pay No Attention To What's Come Before
And I say,
Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish
That's the way we do things, lad, we're making shit up as we wish
The Klingons and the Romulans pose no threat to us
'Cause if we find we're in a bind, we just make some shit up
- Voltaire, "The U.S.S. Make Shit Up"
Building a coherent universe is a big responsibility - after all, it is a universe with all the detail that the word implies. Fortunately, creators don't have to go into detail on everything, or even most things; coherent universes can be built with broad strokes and implication, and the nature of those people and places and things that are focused upon in the narrative can imply a great deal about the society they come from.
Use too many broad strokes for too long, though, and you're in danger of a universe that doesn't look particularly like anything much at all. While some creators might be able to pull off that sort of thing, for most people too many broad strokes means that detail is lost. It's particularly easy to fall prey to this sort of thing when you're working in a shared universe - something like, say, Star Trek.
Yeah, that's right.
One of the problems with most of the Star Trek series came from one of its strengths - the starship setting, which meant that at the end of every episode the crew could leave those particular problems behind and not have to face them again. Even when those problems were solved, it was as if the solution was wiped from everybody's mind after the credits rolled because you certainly wouldn't see it show up again. Generally, if a writer was in a jam they - or, for that matter, the script editor who filled in the instances of [TECH] in the scripts - would create some particle or technological doubletalk to make the problem go away, but they wouldn't be filed away for later use. It's not as if every problem the Enterprise encountered was completely unique, but there's rarely if ever any attempt to try solutions that worked in the past. The same thing happens in terms of background details - in many shared universes, it seems, the preference is for something new to be created at need out of whole cloth rather than building upon something that's already been established to exist.
The problem with this is it leaves a long spoor of one-use solutions and settings, and makes the universe sort of like a puddle a mile wide but a millimeter deep; it appears to be big and dynamic and thriving, but it's the authorial equivalent of a set on some soundstage. Because authors didn't take the opportunity to build on what came before, there's a veneer of artificiality to the whole thing.
It's easy enough to correct, and particularly in the modern day - when fans maintain meticulously detailed wikis of their favored properties - there's a lot less reason for writers in someone else's shared universe to be unaware of firm foundations. For something that you created yourself, it behooves you to go back through every once and a while and reacquaint yourself with your work; it could be that some minor off-the-cuff thing you established ten stories ago is just what you need to help resolve something today.
Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish
That's the way we do things, lad, we're making shit up as we wish
The Klingons and the Romulans pose no threat to us
'Cause if we find we're in a bind, we just make some shit up
- Voltaire, "The U.S.S. Make Shit Up"
Building a coherent universe is a big responsibility - after all, it is a universe with all the detail that the word implies. Fortunately, creators don't have to go into detail on everything, or even most things; coherent universes can be built with broad strokes and implication, and the nature of those people and places and things that are focused upon in the narrative can imply a great deal about the society they come from.
Use too many broad strokes for too long, though, and you're in danger of a universe that doesn't look particularly like anything much at all. While some creators might be able to pull off that sort of thing, for most people too many broad strokes means that detail is lost. It's particularly easy to fall prey to this sort of thing when you're working in a shared universe - something like, say, Star Trek.
Yeah, that's right.One of the problems with most of the Star Trek series came from one of its strengths - the starship setting, which meant that at the end of every episode the crew could leave those particular problems behind and not have to face them again. Even when those problems were solved, it was as if the solution was wiped from everybody's mind after the credits rolled because you certainly wouldn't see it show up again. Generally, if a writer was in a jam they - or, for that matter, the script editor who filled in the instances of [TECH] in the scripts - would create some particle or technological doubletalk to make the problem go away, but they wouldn't be filed away for later use. It's not as if every problem the Enterprise encountered was completely unique, but there's rarely if ever any attempt to try solutions that worked in the past. The same thing happens in terms of background details - in many shared universes, it seems, the preference is for something new to be created at need out of whole cloth rather than building upon something that's already been established to exist.
The problem with this is it leaves a long spoor of one-use solutions and settings, and makes the universe sort of like a puddle a mile wide but a millimeter deep; it appears to be big and dynamic and thriving, but it's the authorial equivalent of a set on some soundstage. Because authors didn't take the opportunity to build on what came before, there's a veneer of artificiality to the whole thing.
It's easy enough to correct, and particularly in the modern day - when fans maintain meticulously detailed wikis of their favored properties - there's a lot less reason for writers in someone else's shared universe to be unaware of firm foundations. For something that you created yourself, it behooves you to go back through every once and a while and reacquaint yourself with your work; it could be that some minor off-the-cuff thing you established ten stories ago is just what you need to help resolve something today.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Simplicity, the Writer's Friend
I may still be a beginning writer, but it doesn't take a five-time Grand Master to recognize, and point out, flaws in the craft. Something that only someone who's deeply, deeply experienced can see is honestly not that much of a problem - it's when it's something that anyone can pick up on that you know you've got a problem.
In writing, brevity is a virtue and one of the highest commandments is "thou shalt not waste the reader's time" - or watcher's, or listener's, depending on what medium you're writing for. While indirectness or extended rambles inevitably make their way into first draft versions, part of the revision process is supposed to be the excision of those unnecessary bits, removing the superstructure and every other bit that doesn't strictly need to be there in order to make the thing hold together. Even just thinking about this slightly improved my current work-in-progress in that way; the issue is that the satellite phone connection in the story is scratchy, it's irrelevant that it's being caused by higher-than-normal activity in a gas giant's radiation belts.
Some writers aren't necessarily as quick to pull this sort of unnecessary padding out of their stories, and while it's not always to their detriment it frequently is. The number one offender in this realm, as far as I'm concerned, is Star Trek - specifically, the modern chain of series that aired from 1987 to 2005. The only reason, I think, why I don't recall it leaping out at me more at the time was because I wasn't actively wrestling with these issues at the time.
For example, I've acquired a piece of the script from the Deep Space 9 episode "Sacrifice of Angels," the main attraction of which was the massive computer-generated space battle. The writers on DS9 made a conscious effort to avoid reliance on technobabble of the sort that dominated Star Trek: The Next Generation, but even then some shone through in the form of unnecessary word filler. Take this example...
INT - U.S.S. DEFIANT BRIDGE
The back half of the bridge EXPLODES in a shower of sparks.
They're jamming our signal by generating a rotating EM pulse.
The bridge continues to EXPLODE. Time passes. Starships dart around like fighter aircraft. More things EXPLODE.
The first time I saw this scene after a long while in which I hadn't, O'Brien's line screeched and groaned like a door with a hundred hinges in need of oil. It's simple, really - why do we, as the audience, care how the Jem'Hadar are futzing with the radio? The fact that they're spamming electromagnetic pulses would be relevant if this was the core issue of the story, with the conflict arising from the challenges faced in overcoming it, but here it's just verbal wallpaper that adds absolutely nothing to the story.
There are only two things that need to be addressed in that scene: communications are down, and they need to be fixed. Captain Sisko is trying to keep his ship from flying apart at the seams - it is unnecessary for him to know exactly what is causing this latest issue, because he is not the one who will be fixing it. Were I to rewrite the example scene, it would be something like this:
INT - U.S.S. DEFIANT BRIDGE
The bridge SHAKES and RUMBLES under heavy weapons fire. The consoles do not EXPLODE, thanks to the robustness you would expect 24th-century electronics to exhibit.
See, that's all we need to know - communications are down, but Chief O'Brien knows the score because he is good at his job and is already focused on solving it. He does not need to explain what the situation is to justify a higher "bridge communications" rating in his next performance review.
Simplicity is every writer's friend. It's not something to hide from or to leave in one's dust. Doing that only means that you're doing a disservice to the audience.
In writing, brevity is a virtue and one of the highest commandments is "thou shalt not waste the reader's time" - or watcher's, or listener's, depending on what medium you're writing for. While indirectness or extended rambles inevitably make their way into first draft versions, part of the revision process is supposed to be the excision of those unnecessary bits, removing the superstructure and every other bit that doesn't strictly need to be there in order to make the thing hold together. Even just thinking about this slightly improved my current work-in-progress in that way; the issue is that the satellite phone connection in the story is scratchy, it's irrelevant that it's being caused by higher-than-normal activity in a gas giant's radiation belts.
Some writers aren't necessarily as quick to pull this sort of unnecessary padding out of their stories, and while it's not always to their detriment it frequently is. The number one offender in this realm, as far as I'm concerned, is Star Trek - specifically, the modern chain of series that aired from 1987 to 2005. The only reason, I think, why I don't recall it leaping out at me more at the time was because I wasn't actively wrestling with these issues at the time.
For example, I've acquired a piece of the script from the Deep Space 9 episode "Sacrifice of Angels," the main attraction of which was the massive computer-generated space battle. The writers on DS9 made a conscious effort to avoid reliance on technobabble of the sort that dominated Star Trek: The Next Generation, but even then some shone through in the form of unnecessary word filler. Take this example...
INT - U.S.S. DEFIANT BRIDGE
NOG
Sir, I can't get through to anybody! Communications are down!
The back half of the bridge EXPLODES in a shower of sparks.
O'BRIEN
They're jamming our signal by generating a rotating EM pulse.
SISKO
Can you clear it?
O'BRIEN
I'm trying!
The bridge continues to EXPLODE. Time passes. Starships dart around like fighter aircraft. More things EXPLODE.
O'BRIEN
Comms back on line!
The first time I saw this scene after a long while in which I hadn't, O'Brien's line screeched and groaned like a door with a hundred hinges in need of oil. It's simple, really - why do we, as the audience, care how the Jem'Hadar are futzing with the radio? The fact that they're spamming electromagnetic pulses would be relevant if this was the core issue of the story, with the conflict arising from the challenges faced in overcoming it, but here it's just verbal wallpaper that adds absolutely nothing to the story.
There are only two things that need to be addressed in that scene: communications are down, and they need to be fixed. Captain Sisko is trying to keep his ship from flying apart at the seams - it is unnecessary for him to know exactly what is causing this latest issue, because he is not the one who will be fixing it. Were I to rewrite the example scene, it would be something like this:
INT - U.S.S. DEFIANT BRIDGE
NOG
Sir, I can't get through to anybody! Communications are down!
The bridge SHAKES and RUMBLES under heavy weapons fire. The consoles do not EXPLODE, thanks to the robustness you would expect 24th-century electronics to exhibit.
SISKO
Chief!
O'BRIEN
On it!
See, that's all we need to know - communications are down, but Chief O'Brien knows the score because he is good at his job and is already focused on solving it. He does not need to explain what the situation is to justify a higher "bridge communications" rating in his next performance review.
Simplicity is every writer's friend. It's not something to hide from or to leave in one's dust. Doing that only means that you're doing a disservice to the audience.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Reality in the Details
Details are important; for writers, they're how you establish the nature of your world. How important they are varies depending on what you're actually creating - for genres like sf and fantasy, defining and using background details properly is a key method to flesh out the world and demonstrate how it differs from what we're familiar with on modern Earth. Otherwise, using details properly to give a feeling of the world is not so important as just getting the details right. In most literature, the setting is reality unless noted, and the details are things that can easily be verified on Wikipedia or in a travel guide.
Errors in details are, I think, something that authors should strive to avoid. Note that there's a sliding scale in this kind of error; there's a distinction from a break from reality, intentional or no, which is actually used as a point in a story - like, say, the bit in the beginning of Goldeneye where James Bond is somehow able to catch up with a plummeting plane in freefall. I'm talking more along the lines of a story or movie that claims that the capital of Canada is Toronto, with the truth or falseness of it being completely irrelevant to the story at large.
This is not the Parliament of Canada. I promise.
This came up recently with X-Men: First Class. I've never seen it, but on a forum I visit I encountered some grousing about a reference in the movie where the US Navy's Seventh Fleet was sent to blockade Cuba. Just some military reference thrown in for verisimilitude, water off a duck's back, right? Depends if you've actually got some military familiarity. As it happens, the Seventh Fleet is based in Japan, is responsible for the western Pacific Ocean, and this has been the case for seventy years. A blockade of Cuba would be properly handled by ships of the Fourth Fleet, which has responsibility for the Caribbean less Puerto Rico and South America.
Now, you may say that this is irrelevant - in a movie with mutants and superpowers, who gives a shit about fleets? It all goes back to reality being the touchstone for all fiction, and how that reality should be modified sparingly. There's no reason I can think of that the presence of mutants and superpowers would effect the US Navy's fleet distribution. A changed detail like that wouldn't necessarily be out of place in, say, an alternate history story, except for the fact that it's rather obscure outside its field.
No, here the answer is simple - the writers fucked up and didn't check their work. Determining the deployment zones of US Navy fleets takes less than two minutes on Wikipedia. When I'm made aware of an error like that, an error that the writers evidently didn't think to check, it makes me wonder what else they got wrong. Errors in the details fracture the willing suspension of disbelief, no matter how relevant they are to the story as a whole.
Errors in details are, I think, something that authors should strive to avoid. Note that there's a sliding scale in this kind of error; there's a distinction from a break from reality, intentional or no, which is actually used as a point in a story - like, say, the bit in the beginning of Goldeneye where James Bond is somehow able to catch up with a plummeting plane in freefall. I'm talking more along the lines of a story or movie that claims that the capital of Canada is Toronto, with the truth or falseness of it being completely irrelevant to the story at large.
This is not the Parliament of Canada. I promise.This came up recently with X-Men: First Class. I've never seen it, but on a forum I visit I encountered some grousing about a reference in the movie where the US Navy's Seventh Fleet was sent to blockade Cuba. Just some military reference thrown in for verisimilitude, water off a duck's back, right? Depends if you've actually got some military familiarity. As it happens, the Seventh Fleet is based in Japan, is responsible for the western Pacific Ocean, and this has been the case for seventy years. A blockade of Cuba would be properly handled by ships of the Fourth Fleet, which has responsibility for the Caribbean less Puerto Rico and South America.
Now, you may say that this is irrelevant - in a movie with mutants and superpowers, who gives a shit about fleets? It all goes back to reality being the touchstone for all fiction, and how that reality should be modified sparingly. There's no reason I can think of that the presence of mutants and superpowers would effect the US Navy's fleet distribution. A changed detail like that wouldn't necessarily be out of place in, say, an alternate history story, except for the fact that it's rather obscure outside its field.
No, here the answer is simple - the writers fucked up and didn't check their work. Determining the deployment zones of US Navy fleets takes less than two minutes on Wikipedia. When I'm made aware of an error like that, an error that the writers evidently didn't think to check, it makes me wonder what else they got wrong. Errors in the details fracture the willing suspension of disbelief, no matter how relevant they are to the story as a whole.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Breaking the Action
For a while, I've been buying and reading old science fiction magazines - Astounding, Galaxy, If and so on, partially because they reflect the stages through which writers' sensibilities have passed. Even reading something from the 1970s gives me some insight as to how styles, assumptions, and modes of thought have changed in the subsequent decades, and I think that helps me improve as a writer. Still, it also means I find things fairly often that annoy me, and which I can't explain.
Things like the commercial break.
Okay, that's not what it's actually called - I call it that not only because I have no idea what term is appropriately applied to it, but because that's what the thing feels like. I'll be reading through a story, generally be in the middle of a conversation between two people, when the author will toss this my way:
#
That, in standard manuscript format, indicates a line break, and line breaks are generally used to separate scenes. What really gets me, what really grinds my gears and so on, is when it feels like that line break is misused - when it's jammed in the middle of a conversation for absolutely no reason. I was always of the impression that a scene should end on a conflict, an unresolved question, or a potential sticky situation in order to encourage the reader to keep going on. What I tend to find more often in these twentieth-century stories are line breaks inserted seemingly for the sake of line breaks. There's no scene transition - when they're misused, things pick up after the break exactly where they left off, and it's not even a natural break.
Let me illustrate what I'm talking about - here are a couple of paragraphs from my short story The Platinum Desolation, very slightly modified to accord with what I'm complaining about.
"Then it's a betfair that Lady Luna didn't start potshotting their ride until they were long after gone," Sujatmi said, ensconced in their own rumbling rover. "Question is, why haven't they come back? No one's filed any recent missing reports. The rover's listed as surplus out of Yutu, thirty years old. They rent them out to tourists, I've heard."
"Goddamn idiot earthworms," Christine stood and sighed. It figured she'd have been led there when the beacon needed quick fixing, lest some hauler wander off the trail and end up paying an unscheduled visit to Neil Armstrong's grave. "Don't know the first thing about their own security. They'd take off their own helmets on the surface if they could."
That break seems a bit out of place, doesn't it? I mean, nothing's changed. The situation is exactly the same as it was before, the characters are doing the same thing, and the break feels as artificial as a shoehorned TV commercial break. There's no reason for it to be there.
Maybe this was some kind of style back in the day. I don't know. All I know is that it's distracting; the way I see it, scenes should be separated because they're different scenes, not because separate scenes are just something that's done.
Things like the commercial break.
Okay, that's not what it's actually called - I call it that not only because I have no idea what term is appropriately applied to it, but because that's what the thing feels like. I'll be reading through a story, generally be in the middle of a conversation between two people, when the author will toss this my way:
#
That, in standard manuscript format, indicates a line break, and line breaks are generally used to separate scenes. What really gets me, what really grinds my gears and so on, is when it feels like that line break is misused - when it's jammed in the middle of a conversation for absolutely no reason. I was always of the impression that a scene should end on a conflict, an unresolved question, or a potential sticky situation in order to encourage the reader to keep going on. What I tend to find more often in these twentieth-century stories are line breaks inserted seemingly for the sake of line breaks. There's no scene transition - when they're misused, things pick up after the break exactly where they left off, and it's not even a natural break.
Let me illustrate what I'm talking about - here are a couple of paragraphs from my short story The Platinum Desolation, very slightly modified to accord with what I'm complaining about.
"Then it's a betfair that Lady Luna didn't start potshotting their ride until they were long after gone," Sujatmi said, ensconced in their own rumbling rover. "Question is, why haven't they come back? No one's filed any recent missing reports. The rover's listed as surplus out of Yutu, thirty years old. They rent them out to tourists, I've heard."
#
"Goddamn idiot earthworms," Christine stood and sighed. It figured she'd have been led there when the beacon needed quick fixing, lest some hauler wander off the trail and end up paying an unscheduled visit to Neil Armstrong's grave. "Don't know the first thing about their own security. They'd take off their own helmets on the surface if they could."
That break seems a bit out of place, doesn't it? I mean, nothing's changed. The situation is exactly the same as it was before, the characters are doing the same thing, and the break feels as artificial as a shoehorned TV commercial break. There's no reason for it to be there.
Maybe this was some kind of style back in the day. I don't know. All I know is that it's distracting; the way I see it, scenes should be separated because they're different scenes, not because separate scenes are just something that's done.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Plausibility, Plots, and the Future
Except for purely natural events, things tend to happen for a reason - even if that reason is no more complex than "nobody knew what the hell they were doing and, thus, screwed up royally." It's important to keep this in mind as a writer when you're threading your plots and watching the characters do what they do. One of the easy traps of fiction writing is to turn characters into marionettes; for the author to move them from place to place or from ignorance to revelation not because of the experiences that inform them or the evidence they can perceive, but because it's necessary to the story. Plots live and die on plausibility.
If that's the case, your only real option is to pause, go back and look at the situation again, to find a way that the character can get where they need to go in a sensible manner. If the path from beginning to end is full of fiat, the structure isn't going to stand very strongly.
This is true in the big picture as well as the small - it holds up just as well when setting down histories as it does for heroes. Everything is affected by what came before it - earth-shattering revolutions don't really appear out of nowhere. In cases like the Revolutions of 2011 or the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's more the case that unfamilarity or a lack of on-the-ground information contributed to ideas that were thoroughly jossed by the will of the people.
My theory, personally, is that people who don't really write fiction are far more liable to fall into this trap.
A couple of years ago, I picked up a book called Canada in 2020: Twenty Leading Voices Imagine Canada's Future. This is not an anthology, this is not a work of speculative fiction - it's more a work of speculative articling, if such a term exists. Possibilities expressed within run the gamut from 2020 seeing Canada, less Quebec, become the fifty-first American state to immigration turning Toronto into a reflection of Sao Paulo to Canada's return to center stage as a prime supporter of international peacekeeping.
The first one, though, is something else - it's what got me thinking along these lines. "Imagining Canada's 153rd Birthday," by journalist and professor Andrew Cohen, takes a look ahead to Canada Day, 2020, and a Canada that isn't very much a country at all. At its core, it's based around the "Hotel Canada" idea, the concept that new immigrants to Canada are not integrating into this country but just living here. "No, this isn't your father's Canada," Cohen writes. "Nor is it the Canada of Sir John A. Macdonald, Mackenzie King, Lester Pearson, Brian Mulroney, Pierre Burton, Margaret Atwood, Michael Bliss, Douglas Coupland, or Avril Lavigne. They would not recognize it, and few in this new country would recognize them. The nation roams around under a cloud of amnesia, as if nothing happened before yesterday."
That last sentence is perhaps more true than Cohen intended. His Canada in 2020 is the loosest of confederations; for some reason that is not well explained, during the 2010s the provinces crept closer and closer toward autonomy. In 2010, the House of Commons shut down when "the federal government transferred its remaining powers to the provinces" - for some reason that is completely unexplained. The game effectively ended for the federal government in 2014, Cohen says, when the provinces started raising armies.
Seriously.
Onward, soldiers of British Columbia! The wealth of the West Edmonton Mall shall yet be ours!
And so we come back to the issue of plausibility. The Great Recession notwithstanding - how believable do you find the concept of the provinces of Canada raising their own armies? What the hell are they going to do, fight Fenian raiders? In what world would a politician or party that went ahead and adopted such an indefensible takeover of an expensive federal responsibility not be turfed out of office at the first opportunity? Where are they getting their motivation?
It's evident - fiat. Cohen decided that he needed a Canada in 2020 that was atomized, that was barely anything more than lines on a map. Beyond the issues of plausibility, 2020 is way too soon for this sort of thing. Technology may change fast, but culture - except in those places where it is specifically tied to technology, like cell phone etiquette - doesn't. It's as if Cohen's Canada really doesn't have a history.
I mean, really. The Canada in 2020 project started on July 1, 2006, and the book was published in 2008. We must therefore assume that the trajectories toward the futures included within it can be traced back to somewhere between those two dates. Can you swallow the federal government putting an end to the House of Commons, and thereby diminishing its own power, in 2010? Can you swallow Canada spinning apart so fast that twelve years after 2008, it's supposed to be unrecognizeable?
Personally, I recognize it - very well. The author has determined what he wants to see, and he's going to get there: plausibility be damned.
If that's the case, your only real option is to pause, go back and look at the situation again, to find a way that the character can get where they need to go in a sensible manner. If the path from beginning to end is full of fiat, the structure isn't going to stand very strongly.
This is true in the big picture as well as the small - it holds up just as well when setting down histories as it does for heroes. Everything is affected by what came before it - earth-shattering revolutions don't really appear out of nowhere. In cases like the Revolutions of 2011 or the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's more the case that unfamilarity or a lack of on-the-ground information contributed to ideas that were thoroughly jossed by the will of the people.
My theory, personally, is that people who don't really write fiction are far more liable to fall into this trap.
A couple of years ago, I picked up a book called Canada in 2020: Twenty Leading Voices Imagine Canada's Future. This is not an anthology, this is not a work of speculative fiction - it's more a work of speculative articling, if such a term exists. Possibilities expressed within run the gamut from 2020 seeing Canada, less Quebec, become the fifty-first American state to immigration turning Toronto into a reflection of Sao Paulo to Canada's return to center stage as a prime supporter of international peacekeeping.
The first one, though, is something else - it's what got me thinking along these lines. "Imagining Canada's 153rd Birthday," by journalist and professor Andrew Cohen, takes a look ahead to Canada Day, 2020, and a Canada that isn't very much a country at all. At its core, it's based around the "Hotel Canada" idea, the concept that new immigrants to Canada are not integrating into this country but just living here. "No, this isn't your father's Canada," Cohen writes. "Nor is it the Canada of Sir John A. Macdonald, Mackenzie King, Lester Pearson, Brian Mulroney, Pierre Burton, Margaret Atwood, Michael Bliss, Douglas Coupland, or Avril Lavigne. They would not recognize it, and few in this new country would recognize them. The nation roams around under a cloud of amnesia, as if nothing happened before yesterday."
That last sentence is perhaps more true than Cohen intended. His Canada in 2020 is the loosest of confederations; for some reason that is not well explained, during the 2010s the provinces crept closer and closer toward autonomy. In 2010, the House of Commons shut down when "the federal government transferred its remaining powers to the provinces" - for some reason that is completely unexplained. The game effectively ended for the federal government in 2014, Cohen says, when the provinces started raising armies.
Seriously.
Onward, soldiers of British Columbia! The wealth of the West Edmonton Mall shall yet be ours!And so we come back to the issue of plausibility. The Great Recession notwithstanding - how believable do you find the concept of the provinces of Canada raising their own armies? What the hell are they going to do, fight Fenian raiders? In what world would a politician or party that went ahead and adopted such an indefensible takeover of an expensive federal responsibility not be turfed out of office at the first opportunity? Where are they getting their motivation?
It's evident - fiat. Cohen decided that he needed a Canada in 2020 that was atomized, that was barely anything more than lines on a map. Beyond the issues of plausibility, 2020 is way too soon for this sort of thing. Technology may change fast, but culture - except in those places where it is specifically tied to technology, like cell phone etiquette - doesn't. It's as if Cohen's Canada really doesn't have a history.
I mean, really. The Canada in 2020 project started on July 1, 2006, and the book was published in 2008. We must therefore assume that the trajectories toward the futures included within it can be traced back to somewhere between those two dates. Can you swallow the federal government putting an end to the House of Commons, and thereby diminishing its own power, in 2010? Can you swallow Canada spinning apart so fast that twelve years after 2008, it's supposed to be unrecognizeable?
Personally, I recognize it - very well. The author has determined what he wants to see, and he's going to get there: plausibility be damned.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Only Be Sure Always To Call It Please "Research"
With the school year starting back up, the media is unsurprisingly spinning its stories about how cheating is endemic and plagiarism rampant within the system. A recent article in the Toronto Star reported that three out of four students committed an "academic dishonesty" offense at some point during their career, which first off makes me wonder why I'm such a mutant. I never lowered myself to cheating when I had report cards to justify.
Though, to be fair, I didn't have the same temptations. I may have heard of Wikipedia before I got my BA, but given the technological resources now in place my university and high school career might as well have been in a different century. Technically, considering that I started Grade 9 in 1996, much of it was. It was a time before the ubiquitous communication methods available to students today, before Wikipedia provided a wealth of information to be copy-pasted at will. That's one of the key factors of plagiarism now; I've seen reports that some students today don't even consider copy-pasting unsourced text from the Internet to be cheating.
Just the prospect of being accused of cheating was something I tended to worry about during my own academic career - so I did what I could to protect myself from it, to ensure that the words I put on the page were my own. I have no idea if my method of note-taking was officially taught or if I figured it out on my own; it's been considerably more than ten years. Perhaps if additional emphasis was placed on this sort of education in the classrooms, cheating might not be so endemic.
A page of notes that went toward last year's HisT.O.ry: Long Branch, Sea Breezes. This is the standard note-taking format I used through late high school and university.
To protect yourself from the prospect of plagiarism, you need to insulate yourself from the original material; that's why research always consumed 95% of the time required for any assignment I worked on. All my notes were in longhand like what you see above, all of it slightly rewritten from what appeared in the original source. When it came time to write the final paper I would use only my handwritten notes as a guide, the idea being that I would not inadvertently replicate the original author's words. If ever an accusation did come down, I would - so the hope went - only have to hand over the notes I'd taken.
Is this taught in schools now, though? I don't know. Considering the ubiquity of computers and smartphones in classrooms and lecture halls, I don't even know how many students use pen and paper to take notes anymore - I tried using a laptop once, at the tail end of my university career, but it didn't have the same impact. Physically writing down the words let them stick in my brain more easily than typing them into Notepad. Besides, with electronic notes there's always the possibility that they could get corrupted, lost in a computer malfunction, or just not trusted. Physical media has a certain cachet, I think, that electronic alternatives can't replace.
Even though this is a standard refrain for the news media around this time - after all, it's a subject that can be revisited again and again to generate the "in my day" sentiments that keep long-term newspaper subscribers coming back, and generally the articles can be cut-and-pasted year after year with just dates, names, and figures changed - it's still something to be concerned about. Dishonesty in early life doesn't just go away: what works out early tends to be rewarded. Degrees come with some expectation of knowledge; we can't afford to continue building a world where a degree might just as well mean that the holder knew who to copy from and how to not get caught.
Though, to be fair, I didn't have the same temptations. I may have heard of Wikipedia before I got my BA, but given the technological resources now in place my university and high school career might as well have been in a different century. Technically, considering that I started Grade 9 in 1996, much of it was. It was a time before the ubiquitous communication methods available to students today, before Wikipedia provided a wealth of information to be copy-pasted at will. That's one of the key factors of plagiarism now; I've seen reports that some students today don't even consider copy-pasting unsourced text from the Internet to be cheating.
Just the prospect of being accused of cheating was something I tended to worry about during my own academic career - so I did what I could to protect myself from it, to ensure that the words I put on the page were my own. I have no idea if my method of note-taking was officially taught or if I figured it out on my own; it's been considerably more than ten years. Perhaps if additional emphasis was placed on this sort of education in the classrooms, cheating might not be so endemic.
A page of notes that went toward last year's HisT.O.ry: Long Branch, Sea Breezes. This is the standard note-taking format I used through late high school and university.To protect yourself from the prospect of plagiarism, you need to insulate yourself from the original material; that's why research always consumed 95% of the time required for any assignment I worked on. All my notes were in longhand like what you see above, all of it slightly rewritten from what appeared in the original source. When it came time to write the final paper I would use only my handwritten notes as a guide, the idea being that I would not inadvertently replicate the original author's words. If ever an accusation did come down, I would - so the hope went - only have to hand over the notes I'd taken.
Is this taught in schools now, though? I don't know. Considering the ubiquity of computers and smartphones in classrooms and lecture halls, I don't even know how many students use pen and paper to take notes anymore - I tried using a laptop once, at the tail end of my university career, but it didn't have the same impact. Physically writing down the words let them stick in my brain more easily than typing them into Notepad. Besides, with electronic notes there's always the possibility that they could get corrupted, lost in a computer malfunction, or just not trusted. Physical media has a certain cachet, I think, that electronic alternatives can't replace.
Even though this is a standard refrain for the news media around this time - after all, it's a subject that can be revisited again and again to generate the "in my day" sentiments that keep long-term newspaper subscribers coming back, and generally the articles can be cut-and-pasted year after year with just dates, names, and figures changed - it's still something to be concerned about. Dishonesty in early life doesn't just go away: what works out early tends to be rewarded. Degrees come with some expectation of knowledge; we can't afford to continue building a world where a degree might just as well mean that the holder knew who to copy from and how to not get caught.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Enhancing Character Awareness
One of the biggest problems a writer will face is convincing the characters to do what the writer knows is necessary. The fact is, characters aren't robots - whether or not they're empowered with a will of their own on the page, the fact remains is that their words and actions establish their perspectives, motives, and desires, and forcing characters to arrive at decisions through pure authorial fiat cheapens a work immensely. Good writers can manipulate the characters, make them believe that they're doing things for their own reason, seeing things with their own eyes.
Still, sometimes the temptation to use authorial intervention to solve an intractable or just difficult problem is too much. I notice it frequently in works of fantasy, where it almost seems to be a staple of the genre - prophetic visions or clairvoyant revelations that give the characters insight into the future, and also serve as easily-installed motives. Say that you've got this sorcerer in a far-off land who you plan to be the Big Bad of the series, but your characters have no reason to even be aware of him, let alone willing to challenge him. Sure, you could weave a complex plot together where the protagonist and the antagonist gradually come into each other's lives through ordinary circumstances and invent their own reasons to stand in opposition - or, you could just have some convenient soothsayer grant a character a vision of what this sorcerer will do when he achieves the power he seeks, and motivate the protagonist to prevent that vision from ever coming to pass.
Personally, I feel that pulling that particular trick out of the writer's toolbox cheapens the work. I believe that a protagonist should travel through the narrative and emerge victorious on their own merits, rather than because of some ineffable gift of second sight.
It's when this same line of thinking shows up in science fiction and other, more reality-rooted genres that I really start to get irritated. Fantasy gets a pass for a lot of things specifically because it is fantasy; the whole genre is practically a paean of longing for things we can't have because the universe is a meanie. To be perfectly blunt, I expect better from things that claim to be science fiction. I speak, specifically, of the Enhance Button.
Zoom in on A4 and rotate the bitmap around the Z axis all you want - the only thing that matters is that pixels gotta come from somewhere.
It's a staple both in modern science fiction and police procedural/mystery shows for the magical computer to take a small, grainy, poorly-resolved image and transform it into something of perfect sharpness - generally it's a key clue or deciding piece of evidence for the main characters, and without it they would be flailing about like a fish on the dock.
This is nothing more than an expression of the same motives that lie behind fantasy's prophetic visions - and, hell, science fiction frequently incorporates prophecy like it's no big thing. Look at Minority Report - without precognition, the story would fall completely apart. More recently, you can find it in StarCraft II's reeling, staggering narrative with the Ihan crystal missions.
What crystallized this for me was a two-part episode of the mystery series Castle, which I can watch thanks to CTV streaming it on their website. In the second-season episode "Boom!," the NYPD is on the trail of a crazy killer who has sent a video of himself with a captive to taunt them. Fortunately, the characters have a magical computer at their disposal. Not only are they able to zoom-enhance a light-drowned corner of a window into a recognizeable image of a New York City bridge, they're also able to completely strip out parts of the audio track with a few keystrokes, thereby isolating the sound of a passing elevated subway train. They then use the sound and the angle of the bridge view to establish precisely where the killer was holed up - and all this in barely more than sixty seconds.
What makes this even more hilarious is that, from the way the rest of the episode unfolds, the killer had expected the police to discover exactly this.
I know from experience that one of the hardest parts of writing is making a worthwhile villain, because they don't have the decency to make some elementary, stupid mistake that the protagonist sees through in an instant. But to create a villain that does cover his bases and have the protagonist make her way to him because of revelations from a magical computer or a prophetic vision doesn't do a work justice.
Still, sometimes the temptation to use authorial intervention to solve an intractable or just difficult problem is too much. I notice it frequently in works of fantasy, where it almost seems to be a staple of the genre - prophetic visions or clairvoyant revelations that give the characters insight into the future, and also serve as easily-installed motives. Say that you've got this sorcerer in a far-off land who you plan to be the Big Bad of the series, but your characters have no reason to even be aware of him, let alone willing to challenge him. Sure, you could weave a complex plot together where the protagonist and the antagonist gradually come into each other's lives through ordinary circumstances and invent their own reasons to stand in opposition - or, you could just have some convenient soothsayer grant a character a vision of what this sorcerer will do when he achieves the power he seeks, and motivate the protagonist to prevent that vision from ever coming to pass.
Personally, I feel that pulling that particular trick out of the writer's toolbox cheapens the work. I believe that a protagonist should travel through the narrative and emerge victorious on their own merits, rather than because of some ineffable gift of second sight.
It's when this same line of thinking shows up in science fiction and other, more reality-rooted genres that I really start to get irritated. Fantasy gets a pass for a lot of things specifically because it is fantasy; the whole genre is practically a paean of longing for things we can't have because the universe is a meanie. To be perfectly blunt, I expect better from things that claim to be science fiction. I speak, specifically, of the Enhance Button.
Zoom in on A4 and rotate the bitmap around the Z axis all you want - the only thing that matters is that pixels gotta come from somewhere.It's a staple both in modern science fiction and police procedural/mystery shows for the magical computer to take a small, grainy, poorly-resolved image and transform it into something of perfect sharpness - generally it's a key clue or deciding piece of evidence for the main characters, and without it they would be flailing about like a fish on the dock.
This is nothing more than an expression of the same motives that lie behind fantasy's prophetic visions - and, hell, science fiction frequently incorporates prophecy like it's no big thing. Look at Minority Report - without precognition, the story would fall completely apart. More recently, you can find it in StarCraft II's reeling, staggering narrative with the Ihan crystal missions.
What crystallized this for me was a two-part episode of the mystery series Castle, which I can watch thanks to CTV streaming it on their website. In the second-season episode "Boom!," the NYPD is on the trail of a crazy killer who has sent a video of himself with a captive to taunt them. Fortunately, the characters have a magical computer at their disposal. Not only are they able to zoom-enhance a light-drowned corner of a window into a recognizeable image of a New York City bridge, they're also able to completely strip out parts of the audio track with a few keystrokes, thereby isolating the sound of a passing elevated subway train. They then use the sound and the angle of the bridge view to establish precisely where the killer was holed up - and all this in barely more than sixty seconds.
What makes this even more hilarious is that, from the way the rest of the episode unfolds, the killer had expected the police to discover exactly this.
I know from experience that one of the hardest parts of writing is making a worthwhile villain, because they don't have the decency to make some elementary, stupid mistake that the protagonist sees through in an instant. But to create a villain that does cover his bases and have the protagonist make her way to him because of revelations from a magical computer or a prophetic vision doesn't do a work justice.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Words About Words: Consistency Through Prereading
It doesn't take many careless slip-ups to make you look like a knownothing. For some readers, the slightest mistake screeches and jangles like a first-day violinist playing along with the orchestra, and they won't give you another chance to let them down. An author is the architect of a window onto a world, and one of the author's jobs is to ensure that the glass is polished and clear and without so much as a crack.
But mistakes happen. No matter how detailed your research, no matter how familiar you are with an aspect of the story, some nit will inevitably slip through. That's why prereading - reading over the story with an eye to content, before it crosses the desk of someone who might be inclined to buy it - is so important. It's a lot harder to take an author's world seriously when the author bends or breaks reality without realizing it.
When I was younger, I always wondered how writers could let contradictions and errors scuttle in from the cold. Weren't they as interested in the story, the background, the nature of the world as I was? Didn't they care to take care about what they were putting together, to make sure it was solid? That was, of course, before I started writing in any serious way. Now I know better, because even though I am interested in the story, the background, and the nature, that doesn't mean it will be perfect on the first pass, or the fifth.
Part of it's just down to the way writing is done. In a good story, the seams where the writer kicked off for the night and picked up the next day won't be visible, but psychologically they're there. Sometimes a writer might establish something offhandedly in one paragraph, but by the next day it's slipped from the brain. Other times, it's the result of a subconscious tug-of-war as to how a scene should be presented. I've run into this error myself in a story that's still searching for a home. One scene I'd vaguely envisioned as wintry, though I'd never specifically established that, and additional description written the next day - people lying on the grass, a man taking his miniature horse for a walk - suggested, upon later reading, something at least autumnal.
What made this worse was that I didn't discover this until the story had already been rejected from the first place I sent it. While I know that there's no way a story would be bounced if that was the only consideration - editors, after all, change words all the time - it left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
That wasn't the only time I made that mistake, either. In another story, two characters have no choice but to escape a stricken space station without spacesuits, or any other kind of protection. As neither of them are Batman, and thus cannot breathe in space, I spent a while gathering information on vacuum exposure in order to make it as accurate as possible for someone who's never been more than 40,000 feet above sea level. One of the key facts of vacuum exposure, and one that I didn't want to flub, is that the "common sense" maneuver of taking a big, deep breath before jaunting into the vacuum is actually a really, really bad idea, as rapid decompression would create pressure differentials that would seriously damage the lungs. To say the least.
So, if rapid decompression is going to happen, the best thing to do is to totally empty one's lungs of air. This is what I had my characters do. What I also had my heroine do, unfortunately, was count out the seconds until she triggered the airlock and created the rapid decompression event. This didn't strike me as off at the time, but a few days later I tried it myself. (Talking after emptying my lungs, that is, not experiencing rapid decompression.) The result wasn't even so much as a croak - croaks, at least, are audible. I edited the scene slightly so that someone else was giving the countdown over the radio.
Errors can slip in anywhere. You've got to always be vigilant if you want to get ahead of them. So after you've finished something, leave it for a while and read over it again with fresh eyes. The nitpickers will always have things to complain about, but it's not an author's job to make things easy for them.
But mistakes happen. No matter how detailed your research, no matter how familiar you are with an aspect of the story, some nit will inevitably slip through. That's why prereading - reading over the story with an eye to content, before it crosses the desk of someone who might be inclined to buy it - is so important. It's a lot harder to take an author's world seriously when the author bends or breaks reality without realizing it.
When I was younger, I always wondered how writers could let contradictions and errors scuttle in from the cold. Weren't they as interested in the story, the background, the nature of the world as I was? Didn't they care to take care about what they were putting together, to make sure it was solid? That was, of course, before I started writing in any serious way. Now I know better, because even though I am interested in the story, the background, and the nature, that doesn't mean it will be perfect on the first pass, or the fifth.
Part of it's just down to the way writing is done. In a good story, the seams where the writer kicked off for the night and picked up the next day won't be visible, but psychologically they're there. Sometimes a writer might establish something offhandedly in one paragraph, but by the next day it's slipped from the brain. Other times, it's the result of a subconscious tug-of-war as to how a scene should be presented. I've run into this error myself in a story that's still searching for a home. One scene I'd vaguely envisioned as wintry, though I'd never specifically established that, and additional description written the next day - people lying on the grass, a man taking his miniature horse for a walk - suggested, upon later reading, something at least autumnal.
What made this worse was that I didn't discover this until the story had already been rejected from the first place I sent it. While I know that there's no way a story would be bounced if that was the only consideration - editors, after all, change words all the time - it left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
That wasn't the only time I made that mistake, either. In another story, two characters have no choice but to escape a stricken space station without spacesuits, or any other kind of protection. As neither of them are Batman, and thus cannot breathe in space, I spent a while gathering information on vacuum exposure in order to make it as accurate as possible for someone who's never been more than 40,000 feet above sea level. One of the key facts of vacuum exposure, and one that I didn't want to flub, is that the "common sense" maneuver of taking a big, deep breath before jaunting into the vacuum is actually a really, really bad idea, as rapid decompression would create pressure differentials that would seriously damage the lungs. To say the least.
So, if rapid decompression is going to happen, the best thing to do is to totally empty one's lungs of air. This is what I had my characters do. What I also had my heroine do, unfortunately, was count out the seconds until she triggered the airlock and created the rapid decompression event. This didn't strike me as off at the time, but a few days later I tried it myself. (Talking after emptying my lungs, that is, not experiencing rapid decompression.) The result wasn't even so much as a croak - croaks, at least, are audible. I edited the scene slightly so that someone else was giving the countdown over the radio.
Errors can slip in anywhere. You've got to always be vigilant if you want to get ahead of them. So after you've finished something, leave it for a while and read over it again with fresh eyes. The nitpickers will always have things to complain about, but it's not an author's job to make things easy for them.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The Convenient Coincidence
I've heard it said that once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, and three times is enemy action. To say it another way, if in a work of fiction something happens often enough it's preferable for it to have been planned that way by an actor within the story. When writing, I think that keeping one eye on this is important. Good plots should be moved by the choices of the characters who are caught up in them, and not by unlikely intercessors streaking out of the sky. There are very few instances in history where the lack of a coincidental occurence would have been enough to make events switch to an entirely new track.
I remember when I was first starting out with serious attempts at writing, twelve and a half years ago. Back then it was extremely tempting to make things happen just because, without rhyme or reason, so that I could do whatever I wanted and wouldn't have to justify it. Thankfully I left that particular habit by the wayside before I started sending submissions out to the markets in earnest. In retrospect, it's an attitude that works in a similar way as training wheels on a bicycle. With "easy mode" plotting, where things happen because Author Wants Them To Happen, beginner authors have the opportunity to assemble whole stories and start getting handles on the process. Once you have your sense of balance, though, those training wheels will only slow you down and trip you up.
There are probably authors who eschew the use of coincidences as much as possible - I can't think of any offhand, but I would be surprised if they didn't exist. If that's what a person is comfortable with, great. I can understand why some authors would want to banish that kind of capricious artificiality from their stories, so that the plot unfolds solely due to the actions of the characters. I don't go that far. There is room for coincidence in stories - and it helps get a better handle on characters. It opens up their fields of choice, because most people don't factor bolts from the blue into their everyday lives.
Despite the endurance of the old saw that says "there is no such thing as coincidences," I don't agree. I don't think there is any sort of plan for the universe. Things can, and will, happen that individuals just can't predict. That precise thing happened here in Toronto just yesterday. On Tuesday, the Toronto Transit Commission approved a fare increase, one which has resulted in many gnashing teeth and complaining complainers in the media, on Twitter, and elsewhere. On Wednesday, a third-party contractor putting in natural gas lines accidentally broke through into the subway tunnel, which the TTC shut down for a safety inspection - right through rush-hour. People were irritated at having to wait for shuttle buses, already frustrated at the 2010 fare increase.
Coincidences happen, and they can't be predicted. Every once in a while it's useful to drop one on your characters and see how they dance.
I remember when I was first starting out with serious attempts at writing, twelve and a half years ago. Back then it was extremely tempting to make things happen just because, without rhyme or reason, so that I could do whatever I wanted and wouldn't have to justify it. Thankfully I left that particular habit by the wayside before I started sending submissions out to the markets in earnest. In retrospect, it's an attitude that works in a similar way as training wheels on a bicycle. With "easy mode" plotting, where things happen because Author Wants Them To Happen, beginner authors have the opportunity to assemble whole stories and start getting handles on the process. Once you have your sense of balance, though, those training wheels will only slow you down and trip you up.
There are probably authors who eschew the use of coincidences as much as possible - I can't think of any offhand, but I would be surprised if they didn't exist. If that's what a person is comfortable with, great. I can understand why some authors would want to banish that kind of capricious artificiality from their stories, so that the plot unfolds solely due to the actions of the characters. I don't go that far. There is room for coincidence in stories - and it helps get a better handle on characters. It opens up their fields of choice, because most people don't factor bolts from the blue into their everyday lives.
Despite the endurance of the old saw that says "there is no such thing as coincidences," I don't agree. I don't think there is any sort of plan for the universe. Things can, and will, happen that individuals just can't predict. That precise thing happened here in Toronto just yesterday. On Tuesday, the Toronto Transit Commission approved a fare increase, one which has resulted in many gnashing teeth and complaining complainers in the media, on Twitter, and elsewhere. On Wednesday, a third-party contractor putting in natural gas lines accidentally broke through into the subway tunnel, which the TTC shut down for a safety inspection - right through rush-hour. People were irritated at having to wait for shuttle buses, already frustrated at the 2010 fare increase.
Coincidences happen, and they can't be predicted. Every once in a while it's useful to drop one on your characters and see how they dance.
Monday, October 12, 2009
How NOT To Write a Story's Cover Letter
For the record, I'm hardly the final authority on writing. Really, I'm not an authority at all. One story published with the possibility of more in the future doesn't make me much more than a just-starting-out scrivener hanging from the bottom rung, but that doesn't mean I can't dispense advice about it. Maybe my experience, brief as it is, will keep others from repeating my mistakes. Opinions don't require authority.
While well-written stories are the absolute core of the writing business, a professional cover letter can help demonstrate to the overworked editorial staff that you're not just some simpleton who thinks their keyboard smashings the equal of Shakespeare. They're not absolutely necessary, but I've included one with every submission I've done. Recently, while going through my old text files, I found the cover letter I used for my first short fiction submission ever, for a stinker of a story called "Covenant of Ashes" back in 2007.
Oh boy.
At the time I was a total piker, having only just lifted my head to the skies and realized that there were stars to reach for. I finished the story in a white heat while riding the Toronto Express south from Barrie and submitted it to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, out of Australia. The rejection they gave me is the earliest in my file, and for that it'll always be relevant.
If the story itself was a stinker, though, the cover letter was the epitome of Trying Too Hard. Don't take my word for it, though - see it for yourself. This is exactly how it was sent, minus the redaction of personal information and the fixing of my email address to make it harder prey for the spam harvesters.
Andrew Barton
(street address)
(city, province, postal code)
Canada
Phone: (redacted)
Email: apbarton at gmail dot com
To the Crew of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine,
I would like to submit my short story, "Covenant of Ashes," to be considered for inclusion in a future issue of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. It is a story that deals with the preservation of past knowledge in a post-apocalyptic setting.
I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, where I spent three years on the editorial staff of the student newspaper Absynthe. I have been actively writing as a hobby since 1997, and am currently in the process of editing a novel-length story which I completed earlier this year. I have not yet been published professionally, but I believe my writing has reached a state where it is worthy of consideration.
Thank you for reading my story, and I hope it meets with your interest. If for any reason you wish to call me before June 15th, I can be reached at (phone number redacted). I can be reached by email at apbarton at gmail dot com. I hope that I will have the opportunity to discuss this with you further.
Sincerely,
Andrew Barton
Obviously, what I did here was take a job application cover letter and modify it just enough to make it applicable to a story submission. What I didn't realize, though, as that almost everything I had in it was entirely irrelevant. If it's a sin to waste the reader's time, this cover letter's going to require a lot of redemption. The letterhead at the top was probably the only thing I did right.
The editors don't care where I went to school. They don't care what I might do in the future - that novel-length story, by the by, is still sitting in an unfinished fifth-draft state on my hard drive, and realistically would have to be rewritten from scratch in order to have a chance. They don't care what I THINK about my writing. The cover letter is thoughtful gift wrapping; the story it accompanies must stand on its own.
This was well before the time I discovered Robert J. Sawyer's website, particularly the "On Writing" section. He specifically warns against the sort of synopsizing I did in this letter. Today, my cover letters are three or four sentences at the most. There's absolutely no need for wordiness or over-explanation in a story cover letter. Reading it now, two years later it made me cringe - it really did.
Personally, I see the arrogance of inexperience in it. I'd been writing for ten years at that point, but with "Covenant of Ashes" I thought - wrongly, I've since decided - that I finally had something worthy of publication. I couldn't fathom the idea that the magazines to which I sent it would pass on it... but, somehow, they did.
Brevity is a virtue in short stories and the cover letters that accompany them. Save your ink, and don't waste the editor's time. They don't have nearly enough as it is.
While well-written stories are the absolute core of the writing business, a professional cover letter can help demonstrate to the overworked editorial staff that you're not just some simpleton who thinks their keyboard smashings the equal of Shakespeare. They're not absolutely necessary, but I've included one with every submission I've done. Recently, while going through my old text files, I found the cover letter I used for my first short fiction submission ever, for a stinker of a story called "Covenant of Ashes" back in 2007.
Oh boy.
At the time I was a total piker, having only just lifted my head to the skies and realized that there were stars to reach for. I finished the story in a white heat while riding the Toronto Express south from Barrie and submitted it to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, out of Australia. The rejection they gave me is the earliest in my file, and for that it'll always be relevant.
If the story itself was a stinker, though, the cover letter was the epitome of Trying Too Hard. Don't take my word for it, though - see it for yourself. This is exactly how it was sent, minus the redaction of personal information and the fixing of my email address to make it harder prey for the spam harvesters.
Andrew Barton
(street address)
(city, province, postal code)
Canada
Phone: (redacted)
Email: apbarton at gmail dot com
To the Crew of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine,
I would like to submit my short story, "Covenant of Ashes," to be considered for inclusion in a future issue of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. It is a story that deals with the preservation of past knowledge in a post-apocalyptic setting.
I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, where I spent three years on the editorial staff of the student newspaper Absynthe. I have been actively writing as a hobby since 1997, and am currently in the process of editing a novel-length story which I completed earlier this year. I have not yet been published professionally, but I believe my writing has reached a state where it is worthy of consideration.
Thank you for reading my story, and I hope it meets with your interest. If for any reason you wish to call me before June 15th, I can be reached at (phone number redacted). I can be reached by email at apbarton at gmail dot com. I hope that I will have the opportunity to discuss this with you further.
Sincerely,
Andrew Barton
Obviously, what I did here was take a job application cover letter and modify it just enough to make it applicable to a story submission. What I didn't realize, though, as that almost everything I had in it was entirely irrelevant. If it's a sin to waste the reader's time, this cover letter's going to require a lot of redemption. The letterhead at the top was probably the only thing I did right.
The editors don't care where I went to school. They don't care what I might do in the future - that novel-length story, by the by, is still sitting in an unfinished fifth-draft state on my hard drive, and realistically would have to be rewritten from scratch in order to have a chance. They don't care what I THINK about my writing. The cover letter is thoughtful gift wrapping; the story it accompanies must stand on its own.
This was well before the time I discovered Robert J. Sawyer's website, particularly the "On Writing" section. He specifically warns against the sort of synopsizing I did in this letter. Today, my cover letters are three or four sentences at the most. There's absolutely no need for wordiness or over-explanation in a story cover letter. Reading it now, two years later it made me cringe - it really did.
Personally, I see the arrogance of inexperience in it. I'd been writing for ten years at that point, but with "Covenant of Ashes" I thought - wrongly, I've since decided - that I finally had something worthy of publication. I couldn't fathom the idea that the magazines to which I sent it would pass on it... but, somehow, they did.
Brevity is a virtue in short stories and the cover letters that accompany them. Save your ink, and don't waste the editor's time. They don't have nearly enough as it is.
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