Thursday Thoughts

My post this week comes as a result of this:

World's Cutest Kid Explains Why He Doesn't Eat Octopus

(For those who might not be in a place to watch a video, basically, it's a young boy declaring he doesn't want to eat animals because he wants them to stay standing.  It is pretty adorable.)

When I first saw this, I was struck by the boy's logic and how dismayed he became.  I enjoyed this as a clever glimpse into a child's mind and personally, it didn't even occur to me to think, "Oh, sheesh, another touchy-feely plea for vegetarianism."  (Yes, I am very much a carnivore, myself.)

Until I read the comments.

Ninety percent of those who commented seemed to ignore what to me is the "story" here to praise or criticize the kid's point of view, point out that he'll change his tune as soon as he has a bacon cheeseburger, etc.  I wondered ... why can't people just enjoy this without obsessing over the message?

(Now, I'll admit the end of the video is a bit more blatant - the comment that he's doing something beautiful - but I still don't think that undermines my overall point.)

This is my problem with fiction writing - I feel like some people, both writers and readers, miss the delights of the story because they're fixated on the message.  Now, that isn't to say that the message can't enhance the story, or that many stories don't have some kind of organic message even if the writer has no conscious intent ... but there is a matter of focus and priority here.

To me, the first priority is always the integrity of the story.  I think this is in good part because a good story feels real to me - as if the writer is a travelogue writer in another realm, not an inventor.  When story elements are excessively shaped to portray something specific, it robs me of the verisimilitude.  The Cave People of Shri should be superstitious about people flying because that's how they are, not as a metaphor for shortsightedness.

(One of these days, I should cull all my terrible examples in these posts and attempt to write a story from them.  It would be epic ... in the worst sense.)

So when writing, at least in novel length, I always start with worldbuilding - and once that's in place, I rarely change it to the convenience of the story.  (I can't say never, but I would be extremely reluctant.)  To me, the reality of the world is not negotiable for the advancement of plot.

Scylla and Charybdis, which I'm in the process of final editing right now, does a lot with gender dynamics.  I decided very early on that I didn't want to make some specific statement about how men and women interact - but rather that I wanted to use the situation to set up some interesting (and rather broken) societies and then explore them, and gender interaction happened to be the experimental variable.  If there is a central message in SaC, it's less about gender and more about the hazards of concealing things from others "for their own good" ... but I didn't set out to say that.  It's just a statement (one of many) that you could make from the events of the plot.

So when I watch the video above, I'm not thinking too much about the ethical dimensions of vegetarianism.  I'm thinking about the boy's choice of words.  I'm amused by the mother referring to the "chopped little legs" of the octopus.  I'm thinking about octopus gnocchi and where can I get some of that - and where was this filmed that it's an appropriate food for a three year old?

I'm coming up with a horror story where the food comes back to life ... all right, maybe not.  However, I did write a story once from the point of view of an animated servitor comprised of foodstuff ...

Thursday Thoughts

It's been an eventful week, most of which I spent on the east coast - traveling to Baltimore to visit with my folks, and from there into Virginia wine country.  Got to tour Monticello (and Jefferson's more private retreat, Poplar Forest), saw so many gorgeous views, dabbled in wine-tasting, and tried duck for the first time.  As always, it wasn't long enough and I'm reluctantly easing back into the daily routine, but I did miss my puppies.

On the writing front, I wrote a poem - free verse - got the germ of an idea for another, and pondered expanding a third ... but as to the last, I've looked at it multiple times and it seems to resist being turned from its current state - a single cinquain, a snapshot of imagery - into something with enough meat to submit.  I also finished Nesting Instinct, which at 17,700 words and a little change has a lot of heft of it ... and still has that, "Yes, but ..." ending I love to wirte.  Oh, boy, does it ever.  I think an immediate sequel to this work would have to be a novel:  the implications are too broad even for another novella.

... and if there's one thing I learned from writing Nesting Instinct, it's that I don't think I could survive writing an entire novel from the first person perspective of a blind woman.  The tactics I used in a shorter (relatively) work would begin to wear thin and leave a reader unsatisfied in book-length fiction, I think.  On the other hand, maybe I should take that as a challenge ...

My next project is the final editing pass for Scylla and Charybdis, a focused, "cramming style" readthrough.  I found this immensely helpful with Butterfly's Poison (even if Harper Voyager didn't agree) and I'm looking forward to a similar clean sweep.

Forward march!

Thursday Thoughts

The subject on my mind this week is stories inspired by or reinterpreting various myths, fairy tales, ballads, and so forth.  I'm going to arbitrarily set what I'm talking about apart from retellings that are relatively faithful to the source material - that's not the topic I'm interested in.  Obviously, there are grey areas, but for the purposes of this, let's say that a retelling would relating part or all of Snow White from the point of view of the huntsman; a reinterpretation would be a story where Snow White is a werebear and she's hibernating, not sleeping.  (I never promised to provide good examples.  On the other hand, I would read that story.)

I'm fascinated with the opportunities provided by this source material.  Much of it has a primal depth to it, and you can offer a number of variations before you start to dilute the core.  The story (or stories) that got me thinking about this was a (series of) retellings from a shared world where I decided to use the ballad The Cruel Sister as partial inspiration for a character's background.

(It's a common story with a lot of variations.  One version is here:  The Cruel Sister.  Loreena McKennit also has an - overly prettified - version, The Bonny Swans.)

Since my character was a harp player - ironically, this was before I came to the instrument; ancient history, that - obviously, he came into play as the musician of the piece.  I decided he and the lady-harp developed a romance, one that is shattered in the fallout of the revelation that ends the ballad.  (We never find out what happens after, at least not in any versions I've seen.)

This was a fantasy land created by someone else outside of the bounds of story or ballad, so some changes / disguise of the original narrative were inevitable.  Still, I made a few direct references:  the title of one of the stories was "So Coal Black Grew The Other One" (another version of a line in the first verse, above).

As I start thinking about rewriting it, I ask questions that aren't in the original narrative.  One I've already indicated - what happens after the harp reveals the murder?  What happens to the beloved after the younger sister drowns?  Why / would the older sister really think she could just be given the beloved like a prize?  (Not that women haven't been treated like this in old stories so often it almost doesn't bear mentioning.)  What kind of love is that?

I think this is another powerful lure of these old stories - so often, we're left to ourselves to fill in the gaps, ask the questions ... or be content with the mysterious and nebulous impression that it would all make sense if we pulled back the curtain.  The authority of these stories is such that we don't always feel we have to ... and a fiction writer drawing them can sometimes get away with the same trick, sometimes not.

When dealing with these sources, though, the question (or a question; there are numerous) is how much to disguise them.  Does one maintain names, settings, even specific lines?  Some tales are practically public consciousness; others are more obscure, such that only a student / scholar / geek would recognize even extensive references.  Then there's the story where the author conceals the recognizable elements, only to reveal them at the end, with an, "aha" moment for the reader.  The infamous example of this is the two people who crashland on a planet and turn out to be named Adam and Eve.  Writing this story will get you retroactively blacklisted back to the point your parents met.

I'll plead guilty to writing love letters to Greek myths ... a lot of them.  We're having quite the steamy affair.  Mythocraft is essentially a reintepretation of Greek mythology with a clockwork (we'll call it proto-steampunk) angle.  A story I haven't sought publication for yet, Inside The Box, imagines that Pandora was trapped in the box after she opened it (there's another myth / tale where I don't think we really find out what happens after) and leads her through a series of dream-encounters with other mythological figures.

Then there's the simple substitution method:  X, only with Y.  A writers' challenge to take a fairytale and use a subgenre with which I wasn't comfortable led to a tale I simply had a blast writing:  a steampunk retelling of The Six Swans (or Seven - fairytales seem to have difficulty counting higher than three).  And, of course, The Naming Braid combines multiple Lais of Marie de France.

All of these are pretty transparent:  anyone who is familiar with the source material should recognize it quickly, if not immediately.  One of the major projects I've contemplated writing down the line is a fantasy reinterpretation of the Helen of Troy myth, really utilizing and treating the gods as they were in the source material:  flawed, larger-than-life meddlers.  I've been in continuous debate how much to obscure the original.  Does it lose power if too subtle - or contrary-wise, if one is slapped in the face with it?  But mythological research has already suggested some interesting variants, not all of which the purists will be happy with ... so I don't want to stay so strictly in the lines that people will pick at inaccuracies.  (For instance, my Odysseus is a woman in disguise, and while I have multiple mythological tidbits that made me decide it was appropriate ... oh, there could be uproar.  Confessedly, part of my reason for doing it was also that I hate Odysseus and it's interesting to justify "his" behavior as the effects of trying to conceal gender.)

But enough about me ... finally ... and this is by far the longest post I've done in a while, at that.  What's your favorite myth variation scheme?  How much do you think a reinterpretation or inspired-by story should be disguised?

Mondays for Moms

One of the most important things mothers do for us is introduce us to the world, answering the limitless questions we have - even after we leave the infamous "Why?" stage.  The closest I've come to this personally is as a teacher, and I've found that sharing knowledge with other people is a heady thing.  There are times, however, when it has to get wearing for a parent.  Here's a bit from Taming The Weald.  Keryn has brought Verdant to her home in the space station's living quarters after years in a small, artificial wilderness:


Keryn almost needed a cargo lift to get Verdant into the shower, but once the girl got used to it, she laughed, splashed and used far too much soap.  She reached for her plant-cloak when she came out.  Keryn intercepted her with a towel.

Keryn almost needed a cargo lift to get Verdant into the shower, but once the girl got used to it, she laughed, splashed and used far too much soap.  She reached for her plant-cloak when she came out.  Keryn intercepted her with a towel.

"It's better than the waterfall," Verdant chirped.

"Of course it is," Keryn said.  "You're no longer in the Weald."  Was there running water in the Weald?  There must be - she had heard plants needed it.

"You call my home the Weald?" Verdant asked.

"Yes."

"What do you know about it?"

Keryn had the uncomfortable feeling she was being tested.  She knew children did this.  "No one knows its exact origins," she said.  "It was part of the original station.  Much larger, at one time, but cut down when the need for it passed.  The rest remains out of a sense of tradition."

"What was the need?"

Keryn was embarrassed how little she knew about the Weald.  "I don't know," she said, "but the station has grown immensely since then.  There are a lot of things we don't need.  Most have been forgotten, but the Weald stays."

"That's sad," Verdant said.  "Everyone should remember their roots."

The clothing arrived via chute that afternoon.  Verdant adored it - until she had to put it on.

"It's heavy and slimy," she complained.

"It's not slimy, it's smooth," Keryn said.  "No rough edges, unlike the -" she stopped herself before she could describe the girl's old attire as trash.  "You'll get used to it."

"Is this what living in your world is like?"  Verdant pursed her lips in a frown.

"It's your world, too," Keryn said, "even if - somehow - you were ripped out of it.  You can't go outside dressed in anything else."

"It's not cold," Verdant said.  "Why not?"

She found herself explaining modesty and that led into other social norms, things she had always taken for granted and never been terribly good at.  There was so much to be explained she would have wondered if she was making the right decision, but the girl was avid, attentive, drinking it in ...

***

(Check out the full story here:  Taming The Weald)

Of course, at least most mothers don't have to explain to their children what clothing is ... do they?

GoodReads Review: Icons of American Cooking

Icons of American Cooking by Victor W. Geraci
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book offers twenty-four mini biographies of important figures in the popular culture of cooking. It offers an interesting range, individuals important not just for their careers as chefs or cookbook authors but reviewers (Ruth Reichl, the Zagats), television personalities (Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray), a kitchen supplier (Chuck Williams of Williams-Sonoma) and even a few entitites that aren't people at all (Betty Crocker and the Culinary Institute of America). It spans a good range of the modern era, with a bit of a paucity in the last two decades - but I guess it's hard to say which currently prominent chefs will endure as icons. I do think that this book isn't properly complete without Alton Brown, however. I'd argue the man is more of a modern institution than Mario Batali is.

These biographies cover a lot of ground, from history to critique to the personalities of these famous faces. I particularly loved how almost every entry surveyed how the individual became acquainted with food and what their childhood relationship to it was. (The obvious exception being the fictitious entity in the list above.) I was very surprised by the Betty Crocker "bio" - it's fascinating. Who knew an imaginary figure had such a backstory?

Unfortunately, the fact that this book is written by multiple authors makes it somewhat uneven. Some of the bios are slight; some are overly consumed with lists and dates; some don't talk about the personality of the chef, which was one of my favorite parts; others don't make sufficient effort to present events chronologically, which requires the reader to stop and retread. I was particularly disappointed by the brevity of the James Beard bio here, and the Culinary Institute of America "bio" is a particular mishmash of trivium. In some cases, I think the bios aren't much more detailed than you could find on Wikipedia.

Overall, though, the biographies that are good here are fascinating, and there are definitely people in here I hadn't heard of before (and am hunting down now). There are plenty of moments of, "So that's what happened with XYZ" ... and even a bit of dirty laundry. And if you're a foodie follower, you'll be entertained by references to other figures in the field - there's a great story about Tom Colicchio in here, and Rick Bayless comes up several times. This book is definitely worth checking out as a kickstart into culinary figures.

View all my reviews

Thursday Thoughts

So I spent most of yesterday with my younger puppy, who had a medical incident.  (This is writing-related - bear with me for a few moments.)  This morning, I took her in for blood tests to rule out the scarier possibilities.  They're all outside chances - the odds are very good that it was just an isolated episode - but what's hardest to deal with is not knowing the outcome.

After a long, bleary day, I started applying this to a writing context.  In broad strokes, there are various ways of generating suspense for characters.  One is dangling an "inevitable" event or threat over their heads, highlighting what is to come.  Probably the most wretched example of this (at least, to me) is the overused Hollywood trope of starting at the critical moment and then flashing back.  Another is to set up multiple possible outcomes, some of which might be catastrophic, others which might even be beneficial ... and then obscuring which way the pendulum will swing.  (There's a 1.5 option, or maybe it's a 1.66 or ... a compromise where the reader knows what's coming, but the characters do not.  The reverse is also an option, but difficult to do without feeling like a cheat.)

So I got to wonder - which is more effective?  The dread or anticipation of a single moment, or the uncertain shuffling between many?  Obviously, the answer depends on the needs of the individual, but given a choice ... what's your preferred poison?

Mondays For Moms

I think it's only been in the past few years that I've really appreciated the opportunity to be with family - and some of that has been due to living in another state for the first time in my life.  (That's a geographical state, not a state of mind, though perhaps both are accurate.)  I've always been very close to my immediate family, and holidays - even minor ones - seem a little peculiar without them.

One of the central threads of my story Xmas Wishes is the absence of Irena's mother.  She has her reasons (and they may be more than they appear) but Christmas is somehow hollow:


Presents glinted under the tree, but Irena hardly thought about gifts - not even anticipating the look on her grandfather's face when he saw the antique watch.  Instead, she was fixed on the party, the thought of spending time with Justin, and the hovering promise of mistletoe.

Christmas Eve arrived with no phone call from her mother, perhaps because Irena stood staring at the phone, willing it to ring.  She expected to feel more resentment, but her heart seemed encased in ice.  It was difficult to feel anything.

"Her duties are very important," her grandfather said.

"A midnight call, I expect."  Her grandmother's pinched face encouraged her to believe this.  "So as to reach us when it's properly Christmas."

Phone call or not, Irena didn't intend to be home at midnight.  She endured the carols, cookies and traditional Christmas movies - a Christmas Story, Elf and, for reasons never properly explained, The Long Kiss Goodnight - with her attention elsewhere.  She felt more distant from her family than she ever had.

"I don't feel well," she said after dinner, feeling the lie tingle on her tongue.  "I think I ate too much.  Do you mind if I lie down?"

"Go on, dear."

Irena trudged upstairs, resisting the urge to sprint.  She plumped her pillow and blankets in what she hoped was a convincing fashion.  She had never broken out of her house before.  What if she couldn't manage the climb?  Television made it seem so easy.  Obligatory for any teenaged girl, in fact.  She knew she couldn't risk wearing tights and a dress.  Well, she had planned on slacks anyhow:  her thighs were too big.

Maybe that should have been her third wish.

She tossed her cellphone on the dresser - she always put it there when she slept; it would look suspicious otherwise.  She eased the window open, wincing when it creaked.  The cold slapped her in the face.  She held her breath, sliding out.  Her fingers clutched awkwardly at a frost-covered branch.  It stung.  She should have worn gloves, but they were downstairs in the closet.  She wobbled out into the crook of the tree and pushed the window as far shut as it would go from the outside.

Then she was alone in the darkness.
 

Thursday Thoughts

More thoughts hatched from Nesting Instinct ...

We live in a visual world, where the majority of the meaning communicated to us is through imagery - from things as complex as a movie to as simple (but vital) as the colors of a stoplight.  What happens when a writer tries to remove these details from a story - in my case, because my first person narrator is blind?

... a lot of headaches.

I'm not even talking about description primarily, because I've been able to get around that.  My narrator has an assistant / guide who describes places and things for her; she also hasn't always been blind (though it's been almost half her lifetime), so she has some dim visual memories, especially for the character she knew (and almost married) before she was blinded ... and of course, she has a projected idea of what his daughter looks like.  We also get an idea for what the narrator looks like indirectly, through comparisons and by her description of her ethnic type while trying to visualize a new friend of the same nationality.  Are these accurate images?  Does it really matter?

I also had fun playing with readers' ideas of attractiveness:  while I have some limited description of two characters, you see mainly through the assistant's perceptions that one is plain, even homely, and the other quite beautiful.

But I digress - what I've found most difficult with this story is dialogue, specifically interspersing it with action and human movement.  How can you describe what your character's conversational partner is doing if you can't mention the smile, the frown, the restless pacing?

Of course, I can mention some of these things to some extent, but the language is complicated:  you can hear the first two in the voice and the rap of feet on stone (or grass, or ... more cues as to the visual nature of the surroundings).  I've had to get clever with ways to show the action without coming off contrived, and sometimes it comes down to picking moments and observations that a visual person might not even necessarily register.  In this, I often go back to my favorite friend, scent cues.

This is not the first time I've tackled a sightless character, but the first time was a flash fiction piece.  Sustaining this in a longer work has proved a challenge.  I'm most concerned about not leaving the readers feeling as if they're in a void, without compromising my character's point of view.  Right now, I'm working on a longer section where her assistant has stormed out in a fit of pique, and ...

... well, you'll have to wait to read it.

Monday for Moms

Welcome to my May-only Monday feature, with excerpts about moms.  Since I'm a daughter myself, I tend to write from that perspective.

Starting out, a brief piece from Flow, after Kit has discovered her grandfather - her mother's father - is a medium:


Kit shifted to face him. A question buzzed on her lips. "Then at least you owe me one thing," she said. "You can talk to the spirits of the dead. What about my mother?" And why doesn't she talk to me, she wondered, fingers moving up to the hidden necklace.

"Only once." His expression turned rueful. "I was not speaking from empty platitude when I told you months ago that she wanted you to have every happiness. Her last words were hope for you, and she went beyond in the belief you were safe."

Kit sat numb, the words pouring like so much sand through her head. It went unvoiced that it was somehow her fault - that Eleanor had done something, stood in the way of someone, defended her daughter with her life. It was a debt no answers could ever repay. Kit burrowed against his shoulder, too disciplined - too old, or maybe just too dry, after the past day and a half - to cry, but she could cling and hold onto ignorance for a little longer. 

After a bit, she tipped her head up to look at him. "Was my mother a sorceress?" she asked.

Arthur rubbed her shoulder, sighing. "If she was, I never saw it. It seems unlikely, but if she gave it up before she had you … perhaps. I wish I could give you her legacy, Enid, but I've nothing but memories."

It was another unanswerable question. Kit nodded against his chest.

"Tell me about what you see," she said, as she had from the time she could form the words.

Arthur led her into the solarium with one hand on her back. They sat in the semi-dark and watched the play of the shadows. He spoke of the footprints of fairy dances and the cobwebs of spells done and undone - and for the first time in years, she believed him.


... or as my own mother (deathly afraid of sharks) would say:  "Lindsey, I'd jump into shark water for you.  For your father, I'd just yell, 'Swim fast!'"

It's not all about life-and-death drama, of course.  often, it's a matter of Mom knowing when the system is wrong:  when to have faith in her child and seek another explanation.  For me as a child, terrible headaches (and behavioral issues because I felt so miserable) stemmed from environmental and food allergies, when the latter were considered something of a fringe science.  I'm fortunate to have had a mother who pursued the research and listened to her own instincts.

... and to have lived inland.

Thursday Thoughts

As I've been writing Nesting Instinct, I've been dealing with a problem that applies in a very specific way to mystery-style stories in a secondary world fantasy setting:  how to worldbuild and give the reader the setting information that relates to the mystery without pointing big red arrows to the culprit.

It's easy to see why this would be an issue.  If I tell you that the murder weapon was a bullet from a handgun, you instantly know a lot about the crime without me having to elaborate further.  As one example, you know that handguns aren't hard to acquire, so you're looking for a different suspect than if the weapon was a sniper rifle or a trebuchet.  I don't have to explain any of this.

On the other hand, say the victim was poisoned by a rare plant - we'll call it plotia devicia - that leaves red stains around the mouth.  Obviously, you've never heard of it, so none of this common knowledge applies.  I potentially have to explain how it kills (ingested, bloodstream, simple contact?), how long it takes, what the symptoms are, where it grows, and who can get their hands on it.  If I only provide one or two of these pieces of information, then you know those are strictly relevant to whodunnit ... and in some cases, that's all right.

Another place where this is tricky is motive.  If I tell you that a rich billionaire in our world is dead and his daughter is a major suspect, one possible motive immediately springs to mind:  she wants her inheritance.  On the other hand, if I tell you that the victim blasphemed against the god of war, I probably have to give you more context to explain why this would be motive for murder.

I've found at least two techniques that are useful for this.  The first is mixing the key fact in with other information.  To take the poison as an example, I would provide all (or nearly all) of the nitty-gritty details, making it less obvious that the key point is not where the plant can be obtained, but the fact that it only poisons if it enters the blood.

The second is providing the information out of context, in a part of the story where the reader isn't looking for a clue.  For instance, let's say there's a romantic subplot in my story about the blasphemer, so I might have my character worry about her significant other's religious tendencies.

(A lot of television mystery shows seem to use the same technique in reverse:  an unrelated conversation, usually with family or friends, gives the clue to the missing piece.)

There is a theme in both these strategies:  they require more content than the strict bare bones of the mystery.  Thus, they're difficult to pull off in short stories.  Nesting Instinct is shaping up to be a novella, but I have successfully written shorter mysteries.  Looking forward to attempting this in novel form ...

Two pieces at Penumbra!

First of all, a blog post - I got so busy I didn't notice this had gone up:

A Moment With Lindsey Duncan

And!  The Penumbra Oceans issue has gone live, with my story.  Check it out:

Penumbra:  Oceans

Mom's Mondays in May

In honor of Mother's Day, every Monday in May, I'll be posting an excerpt from one of my works that features mothers and talking a bit about personal experiences ... though it's certainly true my mother never battled evil, sentient trees for me.  (Evil, non-sentient trees is a matter of interpretation.)  I invite people to share their own thoughts.

Sunday Snippet

It's been a while since I posted any kind of excerpt, and I thought it was high time to break that streak.  Here's a piece of the beginning of the novella (or so) I've just started, Nesting Instinct - about a blind investigator assigned to discover who stole a highly coveted dragon's egg ...


"Cinny," I called, "tell me what has been disturbed."

She scampered over, her footsteps slowing as she circled the nest.  "Almost nothing.  There are no drag-marks or bootprints in the sand."  Her voice quavered with nerves.

I caught a whiff of perfume, a lingering trace:  lilac, rose, jasmine - and something odd and citrus that did not immediately register.  "Almost nothing is not nothing."

"The indent around the egg is - no, there are little gouges in the sand, but whoever moved it must have been very careful."

"And very strong," I agreed.  "What sort of gouges?"

Cinny described the nest to me, including the other two eggs:  ivory and mottled pale blue.  I measured them with my hands - they would have come up to my shoulder and certainly dwarfed Cinny, who was a half-head shorter than most women.   The faint traces of passage in the sand were not distinct enough to suggest shoe or step, and might in any case have come from authorized visitors.

"Kehler lime," I murmured.

"Ilwen?" Cinny wondered.  Even after I signed her writ of freedom, it had taken almost a year to train her out of the habit of calling me mistress.  Two years later, she thought nothing of it.

"The last scent of the perfume.  Let's inspect the elevator," I said.

She took my arm and walked me across the sands.  I was surprised to feel a quiver in my ankles.  I had taken important cases before in three years working with the captain of the guard, but nothing like this, and I worried what the consequences would be for failure.  And a missing dragon?  It would almost certainly be a dead dragon, if not recovered.  Would there be ransom?  What was a dragon worth?  A hundred times more than any slave.

"Ilwen?" Cinny leaned in close, her breath tickling my ear.  "What if someone stole the egg to keep it?"

I shook my head.  "The imperials would never allow someone not of the emperor's choosing to bond with a dragon.  It would upset the balance of power - and anyone with enough knowledge of dragons to accomplish this theft would know as much."

"Never allow?  But once the bond is formed ..." Cinny trailed off.  "They'd kill them both over politics?"  Her voice muffled; she had turned her head to look behind her.  "The Mother would allow it?"

"Politics is more important than you imagine.  It shouldn't be -" I had felt her protest "- but there's no way to escape it.  The Mother has a great deal of influence, especially since Nerina fell ill … but I do not think she could protect a thief, even if she chose."

"None of this is right," Cinny whispered.

It astonished me how a girl who had been born a slave could have such faith in the world.  "We will do our best to make it right," I said.

Thursday Thoughts

This post is a day late, I know.  It was started on Thursday - that's what counts, right?  I'm also too darned lazy to try alliteration for Friday.

Today, I wanted to talk about character age and social ties in fantasy.

The classic fantasy hero is the young farmboy, the orphan, the wizard's apprentice - a teen or twenty-something at the beginning of life's journey.  The genre has gone many different directions from there, but it remains a popular staple ... including in works of humor that lampoon this familiar archetype.  This type of character is particularly prevalent in quest narratives.  If I can hazard a reason why, it's two-fold:  first of all, such characters don't have ties that would make it difficult for them to set forth into the world; and second of all, without the molding of long history, these youngsters can grow and change readily within the span of a story.  The quest becomes the Hero's Journey becomes a Coming of Age narrative.  All these things in a neat little package.

But that's not the only kind of story that can be written, especially (though certainly not only) if you get away from the quest narrative.  I had a personal epiphany on this when I started working on Butterfly's Poison.  The events occur about a decade after a failed imperial rebellion where the current emperor's sister disagreed vehemently with her father's choice of succession.  The chosen heir was a teenager at the time - which meant for me to have main characters who were involved in the rebellion, they needed to be older.  (Not "old," thank you - just outside the callow farmboy age range.)  Miayde, my first protagonist, was thirty-seven (no, that wasn't a deliberate Monty Python reference), with Treddian being a few years older - and he had a daughter in her mid-teens.

I had so much fun with the history, personal ties and responsibilities that connected the characters.  It helped that the story was more political intrigue, of course - but the amount of material I had to play with got me excited about writing characters rooted in their social sphere.  If they have more resources (possibly another reason why the young hero is so popular - they can't rely as much upon outside help), they also have more complications and restrictions upon their movements.  How they deal with these strictures while still moving towards their goal tells the reader a lot about the character.  It can be argued that more mature characters don't change as readily, but the impact of that change may be more significant.

And, of course - as I posted earlier - a character in this age bracket often has a wider array of family matters to deal with, and that has its own archetypal power.  He or she also has a longer backstory, which can be an infodump pitfall, but can also enrich a reader's understanding of character and world at the same time.  It increases that feeling I love that a story isn't in a void:  it's one point on a continuum, and life continues before and after.

Thursday Thoughts

I think every writer develops tics - habits that don't (usually) affect the content of their writing, but become an integral part of the process.  These become necessary ritual, prelude, part and parcel - a mental signal that writing is afoot.  Here are some of mine:

Before starting a story, I have to choose a font.  I have a group of maybe six fonts I use commonly, and which font I'll choose depends on the "feel" of a story.  A Trebuchet MS story is not an Arial story.  I've written some epistolary stories, and I used to insist on using Monotype Corsiva (it looks like good handwriting).

I always stop writing (and hence start writing) in the middle of a sentence.  Yes, this means occasionally I come back to it and I don't know where I was going or decide the sentence should go in another direction.

It has to be blazingly bright.  I don't like a dim space; I don't even like a semi-lit space.  I have no fewer than three lamps around my desk, and at night, all of them are on.

I (almost) never close a story file while in progress.  Word remains open all the time.

If I'm writing while multi-tasking (that is, during the day while working), I stop at set inches down the page to swap tasks.

This doesn't get into tics that actually affect the content, such as the fact that I generally won't start writing until I have a title.

So ... if you are a writer or know a writer, tell me about your / their tics.

Thursday Thoughts

Today, the question on my mind is one of tone, primarily the axis between ridiculous humor and the most unrelenting of serious works.  As to the far ends of that axis, I know virtually nothing of it - I find shallow, silly comedy unappealing as a reader, much less a writer, and there's only so much grimness I can take before I feel the urge to lighten it up.

But there are a lot of gradients in between, as well as variants in the style of humor (and the style of serious, too - but humor is more fun to talk about).  Even a dark, hopeless story may have moments of unexpected laughter.  Many a tale that cannot be classified as comedy nonetheless has a running thread of character banter.  And then, of course, I feel that you can't write a truly entertaining comedy without real stakes, real emotion ... a reason to read beyond just waiting for the next joke.

As far as my own writing, most of the time I fall towards the serious end of the spectrum, livened up by character commentary and the occasional oddity in the setting.  Even assuming a "normal" world with no comic premise, there are always bizarre, funny and entertaining moments - and their very rareness helps them stand out.  A bumbling official, a bizarre law, an unfortunate mishap ... all fair game without altering the tone of the story.

When I indulge in humor, it's most often a somewhat subtle, snarky brand of it, and it frequently sneaks into the style of the prose.  The phrasing and choice of metaphor brings the humor as much as the content.  When I write comedy, I look at the world slightly askew, exaggerating assumptions and starting from places that are - mostly - logical ... then take them just a bit further.

To repeat a point above, my favorite kind of humor is character-based humor because it can thrive regardless of the story's tone.  Whether the characters themselves make jokes or the humor comes from the anticipation of how X will react to an event barreling down the pike, it has a lot of applicability.

At the same time, I love comedy that starts with a humorous premise and takes it as far as it can go:  Thursday Next, much of Pratchett's work (I am thinking particularly of Going Postal here, which examines the entire concept of the postal service under a ludicrous microscope) and I have to point out Patrick Weekes' The Palace Job, which does the heist movie as a fantasy novel.  What separates great comedy from an entertaining read to me is this ability to extrapolate even further - the worldbuilding of it, as it were.  My personal foray into this field is "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" which is basically what would happen if the Greek gods had invented reality television competition to amuse themselves.

But once you've started with a crazy premise, it colors the overall tone of the work.  That doesn't mean it can't be dramatic, exciting and even heartbreaking - take a look at Laura Resnick's Esther Diamond novels for a fantastic job of this; Doppelgangster is probably the only book that made me howl out loud and tear up, both of which are extremely rare occurrences on their own - but it does make it difficult to do anything that doesn't hang out its shingle as a comedy.

There was once a challenge on fantasy-writers.org to write either a serious story in a silly manner or a silly story in a serious manner ... oh, you can guess which I tried and which was insanely hard.  I ended up deciding to go back and plug humor into it again, but discovered even that was difficult once I'd started in a serious vein ...

This whole topic comes up in my mind because the still-untitled story I'm finishing up has a rather light (if not silly) premise:  a royal competition for hairdressers.  I'm writing it rather straight, but there's character banter and a lot of snark in the narrative / descriptive passages.  My hope is that it comes off humorous without being in-your-face funny ... we'll see.

Thursday Thoughts

Still in the wilderness of rewriting with the story I mentioned last week - had a lot else on my plate, much of which has sapped the energy with which I use to operate my brain.  So the Humvee of my creative process has been stranded in the jungle of ... let's just stop that metaphor right there.

In reviewing the story for its new beginning, I was astonished by the fact that I had merely glossed over some of the backdrop elements.  In the story, I have a competition hosted by a king as an elaborate hospitality gesture to the nobility of ten nations conquered by a vaguely defined rampaging horde.  This is primarily the hook for the character's story goal - to win one facet of the competition - but there's so many other implications I'm shocked I didn't develop further.

For instance, this celebration / competition is supposed to be an escape from the grimness of the war ... but I didn't do much to show its effect on the victims.  Some of the captured nations resent the frivolity, and I did use that as a plot point ... but it was one note in the story and especially with the ending, deserves more attention.

If I extended all the implications here to their furthest reaches, I could probably write a whole novel around this one competition - or at least a 20-30k word novella.  I don't want to do that, but the original story exists in so much of a vacuum that it startled me to think I was such a thoughtless writer ... especially because my usual tendency is the exact opposite:  I include way too much flavor, background and culture in all but the shortest works. 
 
For me, though, it's those brilliant flashes that make a short story sing:  that beautiful sense of the iceberg beneath.

GoodReads Review: I'm Just Here For More Food

I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking by Alton Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mad kitchen scientist Alton Brown is back for another installment, this time looking at the process of baking and the chemical compositions that make it work. He divides his recipes into mixing method because it determines the consistency and texture of the final product. This makes a lot of sense for this book and also for anyone anxious to pick out the patterns in a wide variety of recipes. Every section provides examples of the type.

For my money, I thought this book was a little better than the first, though some of the metaphors / illustrations are stretched a mite too thin. Maybe it's because baking is more precise and scientific, so Alton's exacting methodology has less tendency to seem like overkill; maybe it's purely personal, because baking is my favored arena. Regardless, I also found the recipes in this book less basic and more generally interesting - this is a book that lends itself to being used as a recipe book.

However, the way the recipes are laid out and printed significantly hampers this. I always photocopy recipes so I can hang them up in my kitchen and not damage the book - well, several of the recipes are 4-5 pages with illustrations and wide spacing. Even if this isn't your habit and you prefer to have the book on hand, that's a lot of flipping, propping, etc to refresh yourself of the steps. I would have preferred the detailed explanation and then a separate page with the compact recipe. (I can't really complain about the flaps with the Mixing Methods rather than repeating it in every recipe, since Brown's intention is for you to memorize them instead of continuously referring back. It's a good idea ... though I pulled the flaps forward for my photocopies anyhow. I'll get there.)

But the rest of the book is entertaining and clever. It starts with the building blocks of baking and examines their composition and their purpose in baking - whether they strengthen, leaven, weaken, etc. It's a delicate balance ... but one gets the feeling that by deeper review and perhaps some additional information (for instance, what ratio of X to Y would balance out?), you could alter recipes in a more complicated manner than simple 1:1 substitution - and that's invaluable.

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Thursday Thoughts

So this week, I'm working on a part of the writing process that's somewhat unusual for me:  I am rewriting a story.  To clarify, I'm not editing or simply retyping and making changes as I go (which is a strategy I've used in the past) - I've started writing the same plot and characters from scratch, beginning at a different scene, saving only a few choice phrases and the essence of the tale.

The concept and plot is a lot of fun, and the characters are enjoyable - but the writing itself is awful.  Seriously, who wrote this drivel?  (Me. Sigh.)  Also, a few elements of the plot need to be extracted and altered.

To be honest, I don't rework short stories this thoroughly often for two reasons.  First, if a story is deeply flawed, I would rather put my energies to a new work.  The pool of ideas is simply too rich to obsess over a single story.  Second, there is a point at which alterations to the story changes its inherent nature:  it's no longer the story I set out to tell.  If I wanted to tell a different story, that's where I would have started.

When I have rewritten, it's most commonly because it's one of my favorite ideas, but the prose needs to have a hammer taken to it.  It's too flawed to be handled easily by typical editing - take a few links out of the narrative chain, and it falls apart.  For me, however, an idea is the whole package, and there will usually only be one or two significant points I want to change.

Now, all of this applies mainly to short stories - a novel has so many more working parts and so much more that can (and needs) to be changed.  But for me, with fiction, my time budgeting usually calls for new works rather than taking a wrecking ball to existing works.

GoodReads Review: I'm Just Here For The Food

I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking by Alton Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is not a cookbook: it's a mad-science exploration of cooking. Alton Brown explains the chemistry, physics and processes of the foundational methods of cooking food, breaking them down with hilarious commentary and consistent precision. Throughout the book, he explains the inaccuracies in home equipment and how to combat them ... at an extent that is frankly ridiculous for any but the most neurotic, but it certainly is entertaining to ponder - and that's the point. But no, I won't be melting ice cubes on my grill any time ... wait, I don't have a grill. I digress.

This book is accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, and also a little disturbing - anyone who gets just a liiittle lackadaisical about kitchen sanitations practices will no longer feel that way after seeing the breakdown of hazards in actions we take for granted. And as I said above, it is not a cookbook: while there are recipes, explained with the same clarity and precision as the text, they tend to be fairly standard and iconic - blueprints rather than the specialty products of Brown's kitchen and cookery.

This is definitely a sit-down-and-read book rather than a flip-through book, and it holds up very well to this kind of intensive review. Recommended.

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Thursday Thoughts

Today, I want to talk about family dynamics in fiction.

I'm an only child and grew up with my own space ... a lot of space.  While I was homeschooled for a few years with another girl, that was still a finite situation:  when the "school day" was over, she went home.  So I've never had siblings, and I never had personal experience with the trials and joys of it.  It's probably impossible to interact in the world and not have some knowledge of sibling dynamics, but I was always on the outside looking in, and I found them fascinating.

(Homeschooling also had another effect on my understanding of siblinghood.  Since my interactions weren't confined within a specific age / grade range, I had what I think was more than usual tolerance for brothers and sisters.)

In general, though, my family dynamic was small, close-knit and healthy ... at which point, I will stop talking personal biography and get to the point.  The way that families interact, to me, is endlessly fascinating, with so many powerful permutations - many of which defy logic.  The most virulent rivalries are amongst families ... and so are unbreakable bonds and loyalties held even by people who might otherwise have no redeeming qualities.  A parent's love can overcome tremendous obstacles or scar a child for life.  Sibling rivalries can be the stuff of myths - literally.  Romulus and Remus, anyone?

And what about more distant relatives, with whom we have less frequent interactions?  So often, there's an obligation to spend time with or do things for someone we just don't like.  (I'm fortunate enough that that's not my family, but I know I'm in a minority.)  Family is a grab-bag, often with few common interests and incompatible personalities.  And when a family member is down on their luck, there's pressure from multiple sources - particularly society - to pick them back up.  It's altruism for a stranger, expectation for family.

The nature and intensity of the family bond isn't a static, singular thing, either.  There's a great range in how much people are willing to give, forgive, tolerate, embrace ...

In fiction, family helps make a character feel as if they didn't simply drop out of the sky, fully formed.  It provides them with roots, with a sense of continuity - that impression of history before the story, even if ma and pa's courtship wouldn't make for riveting drama.  Because we all have strong feelings about family, show a character interacting with his or hers - or simply referring to them - and you instantly learn something new about them.  Showing the family at work (or play) provides another avenue for introducing or implying backstory without an infodump whack over the head.

Family is also interesting for the contradictions that develop.  I'll 'fess up:  one of my favorite things to do with my antagonists is to give them a deep sense of family loyalty.  They may do terrible things and have less-than-winning personalities (though I've always liked an honorable antagonist, too), but they have a sibling or child for whom they will do anything.  When I set up Treddian, one of the dubious heroes of Butterfly's Poison, probably the first redeeming quality we see in him comes from his interactions with his daughter.  (That whole book was a lot of fun to write, because it was the first time I really worked with mature characters who had long histories and extended family ties, including children - but I digress.)

Family presents any number of plot possibilities, from a disapproving parent to a tagalong younger sibling ... and especially for short works, it's a good short hand in motivation.  If something has happened to the main character's brother, it needs less explanation than with some other relationships.  Of course, a good story should explore the motivation further, but it's an easy hook to present to hang action upon until there's time to slow down and provide detail.  The emotional charge is instinctive.  We all translate our own experiences.

It's hard to think of a novel I've worked on, at least for some time, that hasn't had some family dynamic.  The main plot of Journal of the Dead pivots around Rhiane and her son.  Butterfly's Poison - see above.  Even Scylla and Charybdis has some elements, with Gwydion being in (unrequited) love with his brother's wife.  And Flow?  Flow is absolutely a story about family, identity and discovering the lines between the two.

(As to the heading of this post - hey, I started this when it was still Thursday.  It counts.)

GoodReads Review: The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women

The 12 Secrets Of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor by Gail McMeekin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Liberally filled with thoughtful quotations and illustrative stories, this book tackles the subject of making space in your life to pursue creativity - in terms of time, physical space, mental energy, privacy and many other aspects. Although the author asserts that the contents apply to anyone who wants to access their creativity, the book's slant and the lion's share of the miniature biographies focus on women who pursue creative work as a career. Still, I think it can be validly helpful for those who "merely" want to have a hobby ... but you may feel a little pressured by the end of the book.

It's hard to provide an objective analysis of this book because the subject matter is deeply personal and intrinsically dependent on one's internal beliefs about the societal pressures on women and the creative process, so I feel I should put my biases up first. When it came to the societal elements, I felt that the book verged on a radical feminist perspective in some places, and this made a little skeptical of the contents. As far the creative, I think there's a certain New Age view of creativity as something sacred and exalted, and I've never been totally comfortable with this formalized, almost religious reverence for it. I think to improve the quality of what you create, you also have to treat it as a craft and even (sometimes) a science, and refusing to take creativity down off this spiritual pedestal hampers that.

Some of what is presented in this book is common sense ... but often, common sense isn't, and it's a rare book that can show you something that you knew all along, present it in a new light, and make you see the significance of it. I had that experience multiple times reading The 12 Secrets, particularly the chapter about fallow periods.

I was not so sure about the underlying message that the universe will provide and that persistence and belief will bring you to the right path. I thought that the stories offered throughout didn't provide enough assessment or discussion of what happens when an endeavor falls through. Too many of them seemed to involve serendipity, and I found my inner skeptic piping up. What about those of us who don't have fortunate coincidences? I would have loved to see a cautionary tale about someone who invested too much and went awry. For me, this would have strengthened the inspirational tales and lent validity to them, not subtracted it.

For me, this book happened to come at the right time and proved to be very powerful. It helped me center myself in a mental transition period, and I'm very grateful for it. I do question, however, whether it's a book for all people at all times - but maybe there's something to the synchronicity I just criticized. So maybe I should say that if you're just casually curious, this book may not be for you, but if its premise somehow speaks to you ... read it.

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Thursday Thoughts

It's common (though not universal) wisdom that a professional writer needs discipline:  you can't wait around for inspiration.  Writers who write every day (or lock themselves in their office for the whole weekend) are considered to be better technicians and have better outputs than those who only touch the keys when the right mood strikes.

To a certain extent, I agree with this in the sense that writing is a skill that improves with practice and the ability to write for long stretches requires endurance.  It's like a muscle:  the more you exercise it, the longer you can keep going.

But there's another component to the exercise metaphor:  rest.  Few exercise regimens recommend working out every day of the week.  Instead, you might take a break two days out of the week - or more, depending on the strenuousness of the exercise.  This gives your muscles a break and prevents your body from falling into a routine, which is when exercise becomes less effective.

Similarly, I believe that most people have dormant periods where they need creative rest - time away from the writing to pursue other interests.  It gives your brain a break and prevents writing from feeling like a chore.  A few days a week?  Probably not - I tend to see this in terms of weeks and months, but everyone will be different, not everyone will have a pattern, and frequently it's a question of when and how life interrupts.

When this happens, it's about trust and self-discipline.  You have to know your patterns and believe that the creative spark will come back.  You also have to know when you really need a break versus simply feeling a bit lazy.

And what does one do during the breaks?  Live life - and that's all fodder, after all.

Thursday Thoughts

Two of the most important elements in any work of fiction, I feel, are foreshadowing and fair play ... which in some cases are even interchangeable.  When writing, I apply them to many of the elements of story.

Foreshadowing, of course, is the use of elements or hints in the story to prepare the reader for what is to come - a glimpse ahead.  Fair play, for me, is a shorthand for the rules of fair play used in mystery novels.  These are the standards that allow a mystery reader to play along with the detective.

But foreshadowing and fair play are applicable in more situations than setting up a big event or building up a mystery.  I find fair play particularly important when building towards a twist or revelation - a sudden change in the story that makes perfect sense in hindsight.

To be satisfying, any twist (especially a twist ending) needs to have solid grounding in the facts of the story - and the reader has to be aware of these facts.  So creating a good twist is something like a mystery:  you put in clues for the reader leading to an "aha!" moment.  Perhaps the main difference is that in the mystery, the author is rooting for the reader, whereas in the twist, the author is trying to trick the reader ... but both play by game rules.

To play fair with a twist, however, you can't fool all of the people all of the time, so I've never been fond of stories that depend solely on the twist for interest.

Foreshadowing can be used not only for major plot elements, but for the evolution of character interaction.  Romance, in particular, has its own elaborate language of foreshadowing, hints and touches and baby steps that range from so subtle even the reader may miss them to painful, blunt thudding-over-the-head.

In fact, I like to apply both fair play and foreshadowing to the overall development of plot - any plot.  If the character has a knack for gardening that will turn out to be the common element with the sea monster he meets in the final sequence (... work with me, here), I had better hear him praising the azaleas in the beginning of the story.  If the primary race in the story has telepathy, it shouldn't come up the first time a third of the way through - when one of the characters mindspeaks another so they can coordinate their escape plan.

Does this mean everything is known ahead of time?  Hardly.  Just because the reader might pick out that this piece or that is significant doesn't mean they know how it will come into play ...

It's a delicate balance between predictability and deus ex machina - but if I must err in one direction, it would be the former.  Enjoyment of a story should never be predicated on surprise.  It should be the organic product of everything that comes before, and the reader finding out they were right should be just as satisfying as the reader finding out they were wrong.