Category: Writing

April 2015 update

I guess the biggest news in my personal writing world is that Fictionvale is closing. Sad news! I had such a great editorial experience there. They’re still planning to release the final issue (with my story in it), but there is no official release date yet. So it goes.

I had been pounding through a couple of stories (new and revised both) for the Hidden Youth anthology, but the submission deadline got delayed from 4/30 to 7/31, so I now have a little breathing room to work on some other stuff and return later to my suite of stories about 19th-century Hungarian Jews.

What other stuff? Well, right now it’s back to my Conquistador Dragons story for another revision pass at long last. I’m also working on a short AI Romance piece that I threw together in 4 days for a challenge on the Other Worlds writing group. It needs some serious revision and clarification, but it’s a beauty!

What else? Got a membership for MidAmericon2 next year in Kansas City, got a bunch of rejection letters; excited for 4th Street Fantasy and for my upcoming move to St. Louis. Lots of neuroscience, blah blah day job phantom pain cortical sensory remapping.

Victorious Thrones

So, that “piece for a Codex contest” I mentioned? I managed to win the contest! (See “2015 Codexian Idol” here.) I mean, there were only 4 completed stories in my section, but allow me my moment of pride nevertheless.

I’m very excited about this story. “The Empty Throne” centers around the Jewish experience in the aftermath of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution: about faith, progress, and (naturally) revolution. A few months ago I’d been digging into Jewish mythology in search of ideas, and a few stories really captured my interest, but I could never get a solid narrative out of those images. But with the help of the contest’s constraints, seeds, and deadlines, I have a beauty here (if I may be so modest). I’ve already given it a major round of revisions past the contest-winning version, and it’s out for some last critiques before I send it forth into the wild.

March 2015 update

Hello, blog! I have been way too busy cuddling up with rejection letters, buying a new house, and creating a piece for a Codex contest. What with creating a competitive short story from scratch in 4-6 weeks for that last one, I have been productive without a lot of distinct things to report!

I’m hoping to revise and submit 2-3 pieces for end-of-April deadlines (including the Long Hidden anthology), so enough of the blogging and back to the writing!

February 2015 Update

Time for an end-of-February update! Just a quick one, since my blog has been full of posts this week.

I have seven stories out under submission — all of them launched Jan 29 or later — and I think three of them are real winners. (Including my Viable Paradise Thursday story!) None of them are at fast markets, but I should hear about a few by the end of March.

I’m currently working on three pieces, all of which have me very excited:

  • “The Distant Shore,” my VP submission piece, has gotten another deep discussion and rethink, and I have lots of ideas! This is aside for the moment as I focus on…
  • A story I’m writing for a contest at Codex. I don’t want to give a title or anything too identifying, because it’s an anonymous contest and I don’t want any other Codexians to figure out which is mine!  This is my first totally-new piece in months, and it’s full of imagery and tone that I’ve been wanting to use for a long time, so I’m very excited to get back to it.
  • Just this afternoon I set aside “The Promise of Iron,” a major rewrite of the piece shortlisted for last year’s James White Award. It’s still a steampunk piece about Jews in 1850s Budapest, and now more awesome than ever. For a while it was my best story, and I think it’s regained that perch. I plan to send it to Hidden Youth in April.

And my first publication is due to appear in Fictionvale this month! Woo!

Chosen Ones and the Power of Love

In “Chosen One” plots, the protagonist has some born-in virtue or heritage that makes her the One Person Who Can Save Us. This is extraordinarily common in fantasy fiction, though it appears in SF as well (e.g. Jupiter Rising). In “Power of Love” plots, love has a spiritual, emotional, or mystical power that can directly affect the world. This is rampant in Hollywood (e.g. Interstellar); possibly less so in books, but that may be my reading tastes.

I see these two plot components — Power of Love and Chosen One — as “the same thing,” because they represent two facets of the same basic story choice. And that choice is pandering.

The common characteristic here is that success comes through no skill, training, or expertise. You could be revealed as the Descendent of the Hero! (You can worry about your training montage after that.) Maybe you love your Cylon enough to make a mixed-species baby possible! This allows the you, the reader, to more easily put yourself in the place of the hero — but it’s a cheap identification. Forget interesting characters, forget engaging stories, just make the hero able to succeed via things the reader could do.

This is why it’s pandering: it’s a lowest-common-denominator viewpoint. Who cares about education and expertise, if all you need is love? And this is also why it’s more common in movies than in books: because movies want to reach a wider audience, and make them leave the theater feeling proud and justified, as if they could’ve saved the world.

There are ways to write good plots with both of these elements. For example, I forgive Harry Potter a great deal for its ability to make a Power of Love plot work intelligently. But personally, I am tired of stories where Expertise Isn’t Necessary.

Edit: Note that pretty much any “instinct and intuition are correct, all the experts and scientists are wrong” storyline also falls under Power Of Love plot. Exact same thing, different flavor text.

Flaming Bear Mythology

Lately I’ve been reading Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism to find more awesome ideas for stories. There’s a lot of awesome stuff in here, but I had to share the trippiest myth of all:

So, the Prophet Elijah has accidentally revealed how to force the Messiah to come: in this case, by getting the three holiest people of the generation to pray together. Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi arranges this scenario. When the three sages reach the line “He causes the wind to blow,” the wind begins to blow. At the line, “He causes the rain to fall,” rain begins to fall. They are about to reach the next line, “He resurrects the dead.”

Folks in Heaven freak out. “Who has disclosed this secret??” All the angels point at Elijah. The heavenly court gives him 60 lashes of fire for his error. And now I quote: After that Elijah appeared in Rabbi Judah’s synagogue as a fiery bear, and chased everyone out.

That’s right, folks. The Prophet Elijah turned into a flaming bear.

There’s more to the myth of the three sages, as they figure out their identities at other points in history. But none of that stuff is important, because never again do they get stopped by a flaming bear prophet.

Misleading Advice

I’d like to talk briefly about a misunderstood piece of advice that seriously limited my early writing. And, heck, still affects my writing.

Don’t give lots of internal monologue (an instance of Show, don’t Tell)

Don’t tell us a million things about what the character is thinking; instead, show through POV and actions. Sounds sensible for a 3rd-person POV, right? Even third-person-limited is mostly outside the character’s head. Don’t bog down in the character’s stream of thought, but instead let us see the world.

So, I tried to follow that. I showed my characters’ internal lives through their actions. I provided their habits and fidgets, the physical sensations of their actions and reactions, the things they did and felt as they went about their various (mis)adventures.

And in came the critiques and rejection letters.

The fine editor of Fictionvale laid this out for me most helpfully: “We can watch a movie faster than we can read a book, and get the same things out of it if the book isn’t giving us the *inside* of the character as well as the outside.”

So that little third-person-limited POV needs to stick its eyes inside the character’s head more often. Narrate the world from their point of view. Stick their thoughts right in there alongside the physical things they see. Your narrative doing a bit of telling can serve to show the character’s mind. By doing so, you bring your reader right where you want them to be: in that character’s mind alongside you.

In most genres and situations, if the reader ever has to guess what the POV character is thinking, then you’re doing it wrong.

December 2014: Month/Year in Review

This month I got a lot of work done, but not with much success. I spent most of my time revising my VP18 submission story, and it’s much improved now, though it still needs at least one more draft. I also touched up my fantasy story “Weights and Measures” and sent that out again; my flash fiction story “Custom Made” also got relaunched, and I spent some time tweaking my VP18 Thursday story “The Nursery” (though it hasn’t yet reached satisfying-new-version stage).

I also did a round of edits on “The Wind and the Spark,” my story due out in the February issue of Fictionvale. It was a wonderful process, with lots of good feedback. This piece really needed it, since it was one of the earlier things I wrote: first draft in May 2012, first submitted Feb 2013, submitted to Fictionvale on last new years’, sold April 2014. (They turnaround is not normally so slow: I got a “we want this for a later issue than the one you intended it for” reply). The story has a great core idea, but I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to revise it with all the new skills I’ve gained in the last year.

I’m doing a lot of strategic juggling for deadlines this/next month. I’ve got something lined up for F&SF’s electronic submissions period (with C.C. Finlay’s guest editing) in early January, for the James White Award (due 1/31), and possibly the Roswell Award (due 1/15). I might have something for Crossed Genres’ “failure” theme on 1/31. All of those require slight-to-moderate work, except for the CG one that needs a lot of rewriting.

Mostly, this month was notable for its stack of rejections. I racked up seven of them this month, including my two best pieces that seemed like great fits for their markets. Very disheartening.

But looking at the whole year, it’s been a great one for my writing! I sold my first story, and I attended Viable Paradise; I learned an enormous amount, met lots of awesome authors, and my new material is better and better.

I leave you all with a photograph. My wife has had a “Chanukah bush” for the winter holidays ever since she was a child. We couldn’t easily track down a pine shrub, so we went a different route. I think we’re doing it right!

Chanukah Bush - front

Happy new year, everyone!

Plausible Failure Modes

Last night I saw Interstellar, my first Hollywood movie since Viable Paradise. It allowed Kelly and I to try out our new Plot X-Ray Glasses.

One-sentence review: I thought the movie was okay; some great stuff, but also a lot of terrible stuff. But this post is not about Interstellar; the movie is just here to provide today’s example. (Minor spoilers ahead, however.)

What makes a threat feel real?

Early-ish in Interstellar, we have a scene where Mr. Sidekick tries for the first time to dock the launch vehicle with their mothership. The music swells and pounds… but if you ignore the emotional tug of the music and think about what’s happening, there is no tension here. You know the heroes cannot fail; what’s more, you know exactly how they will achieve their goal. What’s missing?

The missing element is a plausible failure mode. What happens if the astronauts fail to dock successfully? Then they never get on their spaceship and the movie ends. The story cannot progress unless the heroes succeed. Worse yet, there’s no tension* about how they will succeed. If something goes non-catastrophically wrong, the astronauts will pull back a couple of feet and try again; but that won’t happen in the movie, because it would make boring and repetitive viewing. While in-story the characters could fail (novice astronauts could crash and die), this is a movie about interstellar travel, with no backup ship or crew. Failure would end or derail the story. This is a challenge with no plausible failure mode.

Contrast with a later spaceflight challenge in Interstellar: their attempt to rescue the spinning and half-destroyed mothership. When that ship exploded, I thought, “I guess they need to get the heck away from the flying wreckage, and the movie’s next act will put them in Dr. Mann’s shoes of isolation and survival.” But instead we have an awesome spaceflight rescue scene! This scene (like most of the stuff on the ice planet) worked very well for me. We had a plausible failure mode, which made me legitimately curious how things would turn out. That curiosity greatly increased my interest in watching the scene unfold.

Moral of the story: a threat will be more believable, and thus more compelling, if it includes a plausible failure mode. Readers will be less afraid of a threat if they realize the writer cannot follow through.

If your threat risks ending or ruining the story, then the heroes cannot fail. If your reader/viewer is sufficiently engrossed that they aren’t thinking about the outcomes, you can get away with this. But if you really want to put the reader/viewer on the edge of their seat (proverbially or otherwise), give the threat a plausible failure mode.

 

 

*: This isn’t the only way to create tension, of course. For instance, inevitability can create tension. To stick to Interstellar examples, consider when Cooper and Dr. Mann** go out on the ice together. However, this generally requires inevitable failure/danger, not inevitable success.

**: While I really liked all the stuff with Dr. Mann, I have to say: they called him “Mann?” For the brilliant driven confident flawed self-preserving person who embodies the best and worst of humankind? Might as well have given him the first name Hugh.

Progress post-Paradise

Since Viable Paradise XVIII I have:

1) Revised my steampunk story “Machines in Motion” and submitted to Crossed Genres. This one I think is well worthy – the first two pages appeared at a reading at Viable Paradise and got a great response, and Victoria Sandbrook helped with the revised post-VP version. Of course now I feel like I left a niggling-but-hateful conceptual flaw, but (A) probably nobody else will notice, and (B) too late to change it!

2) Revised my fantasy story “The Grasp of the Waves” and submitted to Crossed Genres. I got Scott Lynch to critique this one at VP, and and got some good feedback from Shveta Thakrar too, but this perhaps needed more work than I could accomplish before its 10/31 deadline. I decided to give it a shot anyhow, because it’s a very good fit for that theme/deadline; CG is a rare market that allows 2 submissions at once.

3) Revised my fantasy story “Weights and Measures” and submitted to Strange Horizons. I got Elizabeth Bear to critique this one at VP, followed this week by a delightful #VP18edits Twitter swarm-critique of a single troublesome sentence. This story is *awesome* and I cannot wait for someplace to buy it so I can show it off! Hands-down my best work so far.

4) Submitted my science fiction VP-Thursday story “The Nursery” to my online critique group, and gotten feedback from two people. The major issues seem to be the ones I already know about. They are fixable, but it will take some major finesse and craft to resolve. Not sure I can accomplish them before the 11/16 deadline, what with traveling 12th-21st to attend the Society for Neuroscience conference. I will risk the wrath of the jellyfish and aim for the end of the November.

5) Not even touched my VP submission story. All those lovely notes are still sitting on the corner of my desk, wrapped in a ziploc bag. I did get a brilliant plot suggestion from a friend when I read it to my secret post-VP party, so I have some general ideas how to rebuild it. Probably not until December though.

6) Read all kinds of other wonderful post-VP wrap-ups. So nostalgic already! I need to live in a place with more SFF authors around. Twitter is an all-too-timesinky replacement. At least I’ll get to see a few classmates when I travel this month!