Month: September 2012 (page 3 of 4)

Writer Report: Break On Through

Courtesy floating robes
Courtesy Floating Robes

There is something you may not know about the writing process.

The rules of writing have been discussed at length in various places around the Internet. But perhaps a semi-unwritten one is that you have to write as much as you can, as fast as you can, even when you don’t want to. Writing is, after all, a job, and none of us necessarily want to work every hour of every day. But if you want to finish your shit, you have to work at it, even when the notion is less than appealing.

That’s what I did yesterday. I felt a little stuck in Cold Streets. I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to resolve a scene. But I sat down, picked an option, and ran with it. 2810 words later I stood up and stretched. The dam had broken, and words were flowing again. I feel back on track, because I made myself write when it wasn’t appealing to me. That’s what you have to do when you’re a writer.

I may do some groundwork this weekend for one of the other projects. I’m still trying to decide which one, though. A lot of the preliminary stuff for Godslayer is already done considering the previous drafts, but there will be a lot of changes to come in that. The other project, the untitled sci-fi thing, is very nascent, with only a couple of short stories to work off of for now, but I feel there’s a great deal of potential and I’m going to want to explore it. Maybe just jot down some notes? We’ll see.

Either way I hope to continue to be productive over the weekend. I don’t want to lose this momentum.

Uphill Battles

Courtesy University of Northern Iowa Comp Sci Dept

My time management has been pretty borked this week.

Things at the dayjob refuse to stay dead, I’m trying to get a moving date set up, and other minor things are messing with my schedule. I’ve been doing what I can to manage my distractions, but this week has seen me failing more than succeeding.

This does happen, more often than I’d like to admit, and I know in the end I’m only hurting my own efforts. But it isn’t the end of the world, and right now I’m doing my best to remind myself of that.

Even if I continue to get bandied about by a short attention span, I can make next week better. Get out more. Do more exercise. Write blog posts in advance. That sort of thing.

Meantime, be excellent to one another. I’ll be over here, quietly doing my best to not freak out.

Writing Weird Worlds

Courtesy Lady Victorie of DeviantArt

I have an unabashed love for science fiction and fantasy. I grew up on Star Trek (the Next Generation, mostly), and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia was possibly the first full book series I read start to finish. The ability of a writer to completely transport an audience, be it one reader or a million viewers, to a completely alien landscape populated with outlandish characters is one of the reasons I became a writer myself. And yet, for all of my source material and inspiration in these fields, I struggle to write science fiction and fantasy.

My problem is, I believe, twofold. It deals with world-building and pacing. The world-building aspect is not one of building the worlds themselves, no; it’s trying to build the world while also telling a story. The world, no matter how expansive or intricate its design, is merely set dressing. It’s the backdrop against which the story takes place. And what is a story without characters?

Even if there are good characters, though, the pacing problem tends to arise. There’s a habit in some writing I’ve seen in these genres where the action or conversation will stop and description will take over. Tolkien and Martin spring to mind. They’re both writers I deeply respect, but man, they can go on sometimes. While some of Tolkien’s descriptions of landscapes lead to the breathtaking vistas we see in the Lord of the Rings films, and Martin’s in-depth cataloging of grand Westros meals can be mouth-watering, it sacrifices time with characters or plot advancement for the sake of world-building.

The thing to keep in mind, as far as I’m concerned, is that these characters who inhabit these worlds do so the same way we do ours. They coexist with wonders and strangeness the same way we do with things like airplanes and the Internet. Imagine if a writer broke up the action in a tense modern thriller or a detective yarn to describe the interior layout of a 747 in detail, or explained exactly how communication between one computer and another works. I personally don’t think that story would get very far.

While some description is inevitable, especially when it comes to these strange new worlds, I have come to understand that such descriptions should be used sparingly. A quick verbal sketch of something new and interesting may be required for context; I think the description should be made as concisely and quickly as possible. And I don’t believe that in-depth descriptions should ever be used anywhere near the opening of a story.

Consider the opening of Blade Runner. The scene in which Leon is tested could take place in any modern building. The only hint of sci-fi trappings is the device on the desk. It concerns itself first and foremost with character moments and building tension. Instead of showing off how awesome its effects are, the film paces itself, only revealing as much as it needs to in order to set scenes and move the story along. Jurassic Park is another fine example. It’s around 40 minutes before we even see our first dinosaur in full, but the build-up is done so adroitly that we are just as invested in the characters as we are in the spectacle, if not moreso. It’s something I’ll be keeping in mind as I get myself together for my next large project.

How do you feel about writing weird worlds? Would you like to see more description in such tales, or less? What good examples come to mind when discussing these stories?

More Writer’s Rules

See this? This here is the bearded penmonkey who is, in my mind, the whiskey-soaked Yoda to my whiny Luke Skywalker, the cuss-heavy Stranger to my bumbling Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, the shouty Elrond to my somewhat smelly Aragorn, Chuck Wendig. He’s going to give you the secret to successful writing. Lean close. You’ll want to get this down. And all over your face.

(Thanks for this, Chuck! Friends, go visit Chuck’s site, buy his books, feed his kid. He deserves it.)

Not so hard, is it? So now you have the secret to writing successfully, but I think it takes more than successful writing to be a successful writer. Yes, more rules. And yes, they’re still simple.

Rule 1: Follow Wheaton’s First Law

Don’t be a dick. Period. It’s fun to joke and whatnot, sure, but don’t look to cross lines or get in people’s faces for the sake of a laugh. There’s boundaries people have, and if you stay on the good side of them, chances are they’ll laugh along with the joke and not consider you a hate-spewing douchecanoe. And if you do cross the line, don’t be a dick about it and act all offended. Apologize, find out what went wrong, ensure it won’t happen again, even offer to make amends if you have to. I feel like I’m waxing overlong on what boils down to common human fucking decency, but it’s the age of the Internet and reality shows, sometimes you gotta spell this shit out.

Rule 2: Be Honest

People are going to ask you stuff. They’ll ask where your ideas come from, if you can read their stuff, what your opinion on X is, etc. Be honest with them. Don’t blow smoke up the people who don’t deserve it, and don’t be nice to someone who’s kicking a friend of yours while they’re down. It’s one thing to be honest, though, and another to be overly blunt. Telling someone the flaws in their work is not the same as telling them they suck and should just give up. Basically, be honest, provided you aren’t violating Rule 1.

Rule 3: Do More Than Market

Getting your words sold is great. I don’t have evidence to back this up, but I’m certain that tweeting and retweeting and sharing the same links and incentives and quick pitches sells more books than simple word of mouth. However (and this may just be me), I find that sort of thing really gets old after a while. If all you have to say day after day is how awesome your books are, I may lose interest in your books. I say, switch it up. Reach out to the community. Jump into fun conversations – or start one. Let people know you’re a real human being, not just a marketing bot with your social media login information.

Pretty simple stuff, and I’ll be trying to stick to these as I write as much as I can, write as fast as I can, finish my shit, make my deadlines, and try really, really hard not to suck.

What rules do you think successful writers should follow?

Flash Fiction: In The Pits

Top Hat with Goggles, courtesy The Victorian Store
Courtesy the Victorian Store

For the Terribleminds Flash Fiction Challenge, “A Game of Aspects.”


His were fitter’s hands. They were meant for securing pipes, connecting cables, moving steam and electricity from one place to another. Hands meant for the labor the upper classes wanted nothing to do with. They relied on hands like his, his strength and his ability to endure punishment, but he never got invited to any of their fancy to-dos. He flexed his hands, bare and marked with scars and the evidence of calluses, the massive mitts rattling his chains.

He could hear the crowd already. Chanting for blood, anticipating the confrontation, ready to see justice done. This was how it worked. Break the law badly enough, get sent to the Pits. He had a reputation, which is why he now was outside the largest of the Pits, the Grand Arena, where tickets were sold at triple digit prices per head, exclusive boxes rented out to the especially rich and powerful. And only the most unsavory or crazy of murderers and rapists fought to survive here.

He wondered, as he stood and his guards removed his chains, if she was in the crowd now. Her cries for help sounded so sincere, as he rushed in to pull the man away from her. Before either of them knew what was happening, he had broken the man’s arm and shattered his hipbone. Moments away from breaking the man’s neck, she screamed again – “He’s my husband!” The police weren’t about to believe one of his kind would come to the defense of the landed gentry, and rather than listen to the truth, that her husband had meant her harm, they didn’t hesitate to throw the well-meaning, refugee fitter into the Pits without a trial.

Freed, for now, he walked to the entrance to the arena floor. He saw his opponent across the expanse of open ground, under the undulating tapestry of the crowd, waving their scarves, calling for blood. The other man was a serial rapist. For some sick reason, the Pit Masters had dressed him as befit his noble birth, with a filigree waistcoat embroidered with a gear motif, clean white spats, even a top hat with goggles on it, as if he was an aeronaut or something. Not that goggles on a top hat would help him in a flying machine. In fact, they were about as useless as they could be there.

The Fitter, on the other hand, was dressed as per usual: leather trousers, heavy boots, a chain vest over his undershirt and suspenders, and hard metal bracers and greaves. The crowd liked seeing the dark tattoos under the skin of his arms that wound around his shoulders and up his neck, under the close-shorn dark hair. He waved away the helmet. The overdressed idiot across the floor didn’t concern him.

He stepped out into the Arena, where they cheered for him. He gave them a wave. When the other walked in, he spread his arms and turned, grinning like a fool, bowing to the nobles in their box. The fitter could see he carried something at his hip. Some kind of weapon. He frowned; he preferred sending these scumbags to their makers with his bare hands, but even the most callous of them didn’t bring ranged weapons to a fight like this.

The announcer called his name – “The Fitter” – whereas the newcomer was dubbed “Top Hat.” It was, as always, a fight to the death. The crowd liked a good show, and a long one, for everything they paid. The Fitter knew how to amuse the mob, how to draw out the killing blow, how he would seem to revel in the bloodshed. But all he wanted was his freedom. All he wanted was to see his kin again.

The fight began with a tone from the large brass bell at the edge of the Pit’s upper reach. Top Hat drew his weapon, and the Fitter hesitated. Those capacitors… it can’t be. That moment of recognition nearly cost him his life. Lightning snapped across the Pit floor, singeing the hair on the Fitter’s right arm as he ducked to his left. The bolt left a black, angry mark on the wall leading up to the expensive, front-row seats. Top Hat frowned, took aim, and tried to fire again.

Nothing happened.

“Type 3 capacitors need 3 seconds to recharge,” the Fitter said.

Top Hat stared at the Fitter in shock. Grinning, the Fitter crossed the distance between them as quickly as he could move. His large right hand pushed the arm holding the gun away as his left came up hard, breaking Top Hat’s jaw, sending his hat to the dirt-covered floor. He wrapped his thick, fitter’s hand around Top Hat’s wrist and twisted, bone snapping, the lightning pistol dropping from numb fingers.

As Top Hat screamed, the Fitter reached down and pulled the goggles from the hat. He slid them down over the Fitter’s face and broken jaw, twisting them in such a way that they tightened around the man’s throat. The rapists’s eyes bulged. The Fitter’s teeth ground as he forced his opponent to his knees. He could feel his skin burning, knew without looking that the Atlantean ink under his skin was glowing the deep sea-foam green betraying the refined orichalcum trapped there. He didn’t care. He grabbed the man’s neck, crushing the goggles under his grip, and lifted Top Hat into the air with one hand. He slammed the body into the ground once, twice, and a third time, and then threw it into the nearest wall.

He looked down at the lightning pistol as the crowd screamed, some running in panic from the stands. It was a weapon of his home, his kin, and it had wound up in this land-dweller’s hands. Someone knew the truth. Someone knew of their power. He had to find them. Once he got out of the Pits.

The guards approached. The Fitter flexed his hands, cracked his neck, and smiled at them.

“One at a time, gentlemen? Or all at once?”

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