Seventeen times I've asked for a transfer back to civilization. Seventeen. Once a month for the past year and a half I have begged out of the Wasteland. Once a month, the base computer comes online, and allows me to transmit a message. Twelve hours later, the lights dim and it goes silent again. I don't know if anyone can hear me, or if my messages are just piling up at mission command. None of this makes sense to me anymore, and I'm not sure it ever did.
All I can say for sure is that I am stuck here, cataloging rocks. Pick up a rock, set it on the pedestal. Capture a 3D scan and thermal image. I am supposed to make sure that the rock in question hasn't already been photographed, but I can't tell anymore. If I'm being honest, and I don't see why I shouldn't be, I stopped being able to tell about eight months ago. Two months after that, I stopped caring. There are only so many rocks here.
I'm not really sure why Sanderson took this position. She told me once, sitting down to our nighttime meal, that after what she did in Crimea she had her pick of assignments. She chose the Wasteland Base, but couldn't tell me why. She said it just felt right, but I could tell from the hollow look in her eyes and her sunken cheeks that she didn't believe that any more than I did. She came here for some other reason. She was drawn here. Drawn by the stories of life in the rocks. They all were. Drawn here to die.
McCarthy did end up sneaking out into the desert to look for O'Day. They'd been friends. Some said lovers, but I believe they just clicked as people. McCarthy had been in charge of the thermal imaging. She'd written the software that controlled the camera and processed the images. She and O'Day worked well together, and to her, losing O'Day was like losing an arm or a leg. It is with a strange sense of symmetry that she returned from the desert short one of each. She crawled all the way to the Wasteland Base's first aid hut, and expired on the doorstep, her remaining hand balled into a fist and pressed against the door, in a desperate attempt to knock.
Sanderson locked down the base, ordered security to bring her all security cam footage, and holed herself up in her office, scanning hours of footage. I retired to my bunk, laid on my back and stared up at the ceiling, wondering if any of us would get home again. Some of the others had taped pictures of their loved ones above their bunks, so that their faces would be the last thing they saw at night, and the first thing they saw in the morning. I liked this, though I didn't participate. Their hope was enough for me.
Two days later, Sanderson emerged from her office, clenched jaw poking through her sullen cheeks, her skin waxy, but her eyes cold and hard. She signaled to two guards. The trio marched through the base, straight to my bunk. Sanderson pounded on the door with her fist. Swinging my legs down from the bunk, I stepped to the door and opened it halfway. Sanderson extended her arm, throwing the door wide, and jerked her head at me, telling me to follow her.
She turned and walked back to her office, me behind her, the two guard flanking me, one on either side. My chest ached with hunger;
I had not eaten in the past two days. In her office, she ordered me to stand by the desk while she played a video.
"It was you," she said, showing me a video of a me-shaped figure pulling wires and circuits from the main computer, plugging them in at what seemed like random places. "You were the last to speak to O'Day before he disappeared." The video changes to the me-shaped figure speaking to an O'Day shaped figure. Both shapes gestured wildly with their hands until the O'Day figure's shoulders slumped and quivered, his head shaking. He was crying. I told him to seek the truth in the desert. O'Day looked up at me, his pupils dilated, his face pallid. He nodded, turned, and walked to his own death.
"And then there's McCarthy," she said. This time, as the video switched to show McCarthy sneaking out of the base in the still of the night, and a shadow me following her, the guards moved two steps closer to me, their hands moving to their side arms. By the time the video had jumped forward to show me coming back into the base carrying McCarty's arm and leg, both guards were dead, and Sanderson had collapsed into a heap from fear and shock. For all I know, she's still in her office, quivering in the corner. By now, I'd imagine she's been dead for at least a couple of months. Everyone else is.
There wasn't much commotion. No one knew what was going on. Most ended up in the large walk-in freezer, snacks saved for later, far better than the K-Rations sent along in the once-a-decade supply drops. I am alone here again, waiting to hear from the world, ready to return to it, to the people. To my prey.
2015-11-10
2015-10-26
On Predictions in Science Fiction
“I'm not actually predicting the future, I'm generating scenarios.” - William Gibson
Back to the Future Day has come and gone. Fun, wasn't it? Well, not for the Cubs. For fans of the movie, though, we got to compare the real day to the one in the movie. What came to pass? What didn't (again, sorry Cubs fans)? However, some people take this fun too far, and ask, “What predictions did 'Back to the Future' get right?” Science fiction is a fantastic genre, and almost always deals with what might happen, and this can trick people into believing that Science Fiction is the genre of “predictions”. It is not. Science Fiction is the genre of possibilities.
What's the difference? In 1993, William Gibson released his fourth novel, “Virtual Light”, a story set in San Francisco in the year 2006 and features a subplot about a TV show called “Cops in Trouble”, a reality show focusing on police officers who have screwed up. Many give Gibson credit for predicting the popularity of reality television, and that seems fair, until you realize that the real-life reality show “Cops” premiered four years earlier, in 1989. This is not to take anything away from Gibson; it would be easy for someone to notice shows like “Cops” and others that started in the late 80s/early 90s and say, “These will never last.” Even when shows like “Survivor” started in the early 2000's, people were still saying that.
Gibson did not predict the popularity of reality TV. What he did was actually way cooler. He looked at the current situation, and extrapolated what might happen. From an interview in GQ: "I was never able to predict," Gibson says. "But I could sort of curate what had already happened." He curates what has already happened. That's what most science fiction writers strive to do. Take what they see in the world around them – technology, culture, people, attitudes, etc - and put them together in such a way that they can see where society might be going.
It seems magical, but it is not. Science fiction writers cannot see the future. “Virtual Light” may have given us a glimpse of the future of reality TV, but it also presents VR glasses as a commonplace item, which, in 1993, we all believed would be an accurate prediction. However, today, 22 years later, we're still wondering if something like the Occulus Rift will finally catch on, and make home virtual reality a thing. Sometimes, these works inspire innovations - wireless communicators led to work that became cell phones; Jules Verne's projectile in "From the Earth to the Moon" can be seen in the design of the Apollo CSM - but many times, they just notice the trends.
This isn't unique to Gibson, either, this is all of Science Fiction. As Ray Bradbury put it, “Science fiction is the art of the possible.” Science fiction explores our society, our nature, through exploring where we might be going (and in the case of sub-genres like steampunk, where we might have gone had society progressed differently). From Hugo Gernsback, one of the fathers of modern sci-fi:
Ray Bradbury is credited with predicting flat-screen televisions, as some of his stories featured flat-panel monitors. However, he also wrote stories about colonies on Mars, where the humans explored the surface in everyday clothing, breathing and functioning normally, and even interacting with fully-formed, intelligent life. None of this is possible. Is Bradbury now a bad science fiction writer?
No, because the point of science fiction is not that anything written therein actually comes to pass. The point isn't that this is what is going to happen, it's what could happen. Back in the 1950's, we didn't know much about Mars, and many people truly believed it had an atmosphere and intelligent life. It hadn't contacted us yet, but then, we hadn't grown sophisticated to contact it yet, so maybe it was in a similar stage of its existence. Alternatively, maybe they were far more advanced, and didn't want to contact us.
Even deeper than that, though, is that these stories aren't about Martians, they are about Earthlings. They are about us. Even stories written about the far reaches of the galaxy, about races who have nothing to do with humans, are about us. That is what science fiction is: it is an exploration of the human nature, through the metaphor of science.
In “Doctor Who”, one of my favorite TV shows of all time, The Doctor (non-human), squares off against various other non-human adversaries, including the humanoid-turn-cyborg Cybermen, and the mutated alien Daleks. The Cybermen, human brains, stripped of emotion, of persona, of individuality, marching across the galaxy, converting all they deem compatible, destroying all who oppose them. This is not just an alien race conquering the galaxy, it's humans forgetting what makes them human. That's the fear we have when watching these episodes. Not that we might be killed by the Cybermen, but that we might become like them, that our current society asks us to become them. Cold, calculating, emotionless.
The Daleks, while similar, don't quell all emotions. They leave the hatred for all others. Born of an endless, genocidal, planet-wide war, the Daleks were engineered to be the super-soldiers that would wipe out the enemy, and end the war once and for all. They succeeded, and then progressed out into the galaxy to continue their conquest. The Daleks represent the flipside of the Cybermen: anger and emotion carried to the extreme, boiling over until all we want to do is exterminate.
These stories take place in the future (mostly), but they neither predict nor foretell of coming invasions of alien races. They tell of the dangers inherent in human nature. They also inspire the best of human nature – the drive to overcome, to survive, to innovate. This is why science fiction is such an important genre, and what so many people miss about it when they pass it off as nerdy or silly fantasy. We may never have warp drives to take us to distant stars within our life times, and there might not be intelligent life on Mars, or breathable atmosphere. Science may prove that lightsabers cannot exist, but it has also shown that teleportation, at least on a very small level, might, in fact be possible.
The question should not be, “Was this prediction accurate?” It should be, “What does this prediction say about us, and what did it inspire us to achieve?”
Back to the Future Day has come and gone. Fun, wasn't it? Well, not for the Cubs. For fans of the movie, though, we got to compare the real day to the one in the movie. What came to pass? What didn't (again, sorry Cubs fans)? However, some people take this fun too far, and ask, “What predictions did 'Back to the Future' get right?” Science fiction is a fantastic genre, and almost always deals with what might happen, and this can trick people into believing that Science Fiction is the genre of “predictions”. It is not. Science Fiction is the genre of possibilities.
What's the difference? In 1993, William Gibson released his fourth novel, “Virtual Light”, a story set in San Francisco in the year 2006 and features a subplot about a TV show called “Cops in Trouble”, a reality show focusing on police officers who have screwed up. Many give Gibson credit for predicting the popularity of reality television, and that seems fair, until you realize that the real-life reality show “Cops” premiered four years earlier, in 1989. This is not to take anything away from Gibson; it would be easy for someone to notice shows like “Cops” and others that started in the late 80s/early 90s and say, “These will never last.” Even when shows like “Survivor” started in the early 2000's, people were still saying that.
Gibson did not predict the popularity of reality TV. What he did was actually way cooler. He looked at the current situation, and extrapolated what might happen. From an interview in GQ: "I was never able to predict," Gibson says. "But I could sort of curate what had already happened." He curates what has already happened. That's what most science fiction writers strive to do. Take what they see in the world around them – technology, culture, people, attitudes, etc - and put them together in such a way that they can see where society might be going.
It seems magical, but it is not. Science fiction writers cannot see the future. “Virtual Light” may have given us a glimpse of the future of reality TV, but it also presents VR glasses as a commonplace item, which, in 1993, we all believed would be an accurate prediction. However, today, 22 years later, we're still wondering if something like the Occulus Rift will finally catch on, and make home virtual reality a thing. Sometimes, these works inspire innovations - wireless communicators led to work that became cell phones; Jules Verne's projectile in "From the Earth to the Moon" can be seen in the design of the Apollo CSM - but many times, they just notice the trends.
This isn't unique to Gibson, either, this is all of Science Fiction. As Ray Bradbury put it, “Science fiction is the art of the possible.” Science fiction explores our society, our nature, through exploring where we might be going (and in the case of sub-genres like steampunk, where we might have gone had society progressed differently). From Hugo Gernsback, one of the fathers of modern sci-fi:
"Science fiction...can be defined as: Imaginative extrapolation of true natural phenomena, existing now, or likely to exist in the future."This is why claiming these works “predict” anything rankles me so. It cheapens science fiction, takes something noble, and pushes it into the realm of hotline psychics and palm readers. Yes, these comments are meant to praise visionaries like Bradbury, Gibson, or Jules Verne. We trumpet how good these writers are based on what they predicted correctly. What does that say about writers who predicted incorrectly? What does that say about the science fiction writers who looked at society and made what seemed like perfectly reasonable claims at the time, but turned out to be as far-fetched as turning lead into gold? Do we call them crackpots? Silly writers of fantasy?
Ray Bradbury is credited with predicting flat-screen televisions, as some of his stories featured flat-panel monitors. However, he also wrote stories about colonies on Mars, where the humans explored the surface in everyday clothing, breathing and functioning normally, and even interacting with fully-formed, intelligent life. None of this is possible. Is Bradbury now a bad science fiction writer?
No, because the point of science fiction is not that anything written therein actually comes to pass. The point isn't that this is what is going to happen, it's what could happen. Back in the 1950's, we didn't know much about Mars, and many people truly believed it had an atmosphere and intelligent life. It hadn't contacted us yet, but then, we hadn't grown sophisticated to contact it yet, so maybe it was in a similar stage of its existence. Alternatively, maybe they were far more advanced, and didn't want to contact us.
Even deeper than that, though, is that these stories aren't about Martians, they are about Earthlings. They are about us. Even stories written about the far reaches of the galaxy, about races who have nothing to do with humans, are about us. That is what science fiction is: it is an exploration of the human nature, through the metaphor of science.
In “Doctor Who”, one of my favorite TV shows of all time, The Doctor (non-human), squares off against various other non-human adversaries, including the humanoid-turn-cyborg Cybermen, and the mutated alien Daleks. The Cybermen, human brains, stripped of emotion, of persona, of individuality, marching across the galaxy, converting all they deem compatible, destroying all who oppose them. This is not just an alien race conquering the galaxy, it's humans forgetting what makes them human. That's the fear we have when watching these episodes. Not that we might be killed by the Cybermen, but that we might become like them, that our current society asks us to become them. Cold, calculating, emotionless.
The Daleks, while similar, don't quell all emotions. They leave the hatred for all others. Born of an endless, genocidal, planet-wide war, the Daleks were engineered to be the super-soldiers that would wipe out the enemy, and end the war once and for all. They succeeded, and then progressed out into the galaxy to continue their conquest. The Daleks represent the flipside of the Cybermen: anger and emotion carried to the extreme, boiling over until all we want to do is exterminate.
These stories take place in the future (mostly), but they neither predict nor foretell of coming invasions of alien races. They tell of the dangers inherent in human nature. They also inspire the best of human nature – the drive to overcome, to survive, to innovate. This is why science fiction is such an important genre, and what so many people miss about it when they pass it off as nerdy or silly fantasy. We may never have warp drives to take us to distant stars within our life times, and there might not be intelligent life on Mars, or breathable atmosphere. Science may prove that lightsabers cannot exist, but it has also shown that teleportation, at least on a very small level, might, in fact be possible.
The question should not be, “Was this prediction accurate?” It should be, “What does this prediction say about us, and what did it inspire us to achieve?”
2015-10-14
First or Last?
I tend to approach my writing head-on: start with the first chapter and progress from there. I find this is the easiest way to bang out a story with a minimal amount of rewriting. Some people write whatever part of the story they're thinking of, and I suppose this works for some. I tend to find myself either contorting the earlier story to fit what's to come, or having to re-write large portions of the later text in order to match up with what came before.
For the past couple of months, I have been working on revising a novel I wrote a couple of years ago. I'd had the basic idea in my head, and wrote it quickly for NaNoWriMo. As such, it rambled, focusing on details that probably didn't matter, and glossing over more major events. As I have learned more about structure this past year, I've decided to rewrite the entire novel, applying as much structure to it as I can. This hasn't been easy, and work has been slow. One major problem I've had is that pesky first chapter. It doesn't feel right. I've written and re-written and revised and edited. I've torn it all down, and started from scratch. I've thought about it and fretted and I'm not sure I can think about it any more right now.
See, I want the first chapter to mean something to the rest of the book. Over the summer, I read "To Kill A Mockingbird" for the first time (yes, I am in my thirties and never managed to read the book; never had to read it for school, didn't know much about it, other than that some of my friends had to read it). I thought it slow at first, and even when the action picked up, and I was swept up in the story, the early chapters still felt superfluous. And then I got to the climax, and it blew me away. Scout talks about the final scene in the very first scene, and you don't realize how important that all is until the very end. That's what I want my opening chapter to do.
I'm sure you could think of other examples, too. Books, TV shows or movies, where you see some unexplained action in the first scene that then ties into the climax. The Harry Potter series comes to mind, particularly "Goblet of Fire", when Harry sees Wormtail doing...something (Harry, and by proxy the reader, doesn't know what)...that later ties directly into the climax.
Here's my problem, though: I haven't written the climax yet. I have an idea of what I want to happen, but I'm not sure exactly what will happen. So, as I write more of the story, I find that I keep being drawn back to that opening chapter, to try to shape it more and more, to make it something good. The more I do this, the more I think that maybe I should just hold off - write a sketch of what's to happen in that first chapter, then write the rest of the story. At the end, I can go back and fully write that first chapter.
The only problem I can see with doing this is that if I want to let anyone read the story before it's finished, I don't have a first chapter to show them. Maybe I just need to outline more, and be more sure of the storyline before I start writing? Do all writers deal with this?
I guess I will just push through. Hopefully I figure this out soon. I've spent far too long on this one chapter.
2015-05-19
I am a published author...along with 500 others.
The Grammowrimo book has been published, and made available on Amazon as a 99-cent e-book (all proceeds go to global literacy charities). I contributed to the final vignette, "The Gift", about a man who returns to Pompeii after the eruption to search for a woman he'd fallen in love with, but had to leave. I'm kind of excited, as I wrote a good chunk of the piece, though it has been edited (for the better).
Purchase it here.
Purchase it here.
2015-04-09
New Story, New Site
I have decided to move my writing endeavors to a site more dedicated to writing and writers, in the hopes of connecting with other writers and gaining some visibility (this blog has a handful of page views today, but 99% of them are because this site tracks the blogger's own visits to his or her site). The new site is called wattpad.com, and while it seems to attract more of the fanfic crowd, there is a lot of other fiction being written there, and it supports serial publishing, which is something I was planning on doing here, so I think it will be good for me. I intend to keep posting here, about writing, books, and with links to my stories.
As such, I have begun posting chunks of a short story that I wrote years ago, and rewrote over the past week. You can start reading it here.
I actually don't remember what I called it originally - I think I had just titled it "Mike Rane" after the main character, though it's more likely I called it "Prize Fight" due to the climactic fight scene. I played around with "Journeyman" and "Gatekeeper" this time, the former because Mike is a journeyman boxer (and because at one point he runs away and goes on a journey) the latter because his final opponent might be a "gatekeeper" (a boxer who is almost, but not quite good enough to challenge for a title). In the end, "Journeyman" didn't feel right, and Ray Hamel isn't quite a gatekeeper. I settled on "Journey's End" because it played on the journeyman term, but also the finality of the story. It's also the title of a fantastic episode of Doctor Who.
Of course, the fact that it is the title of a fantastic episode of Doctor Who bothered me, so I changed it again, removing the apostrophe. "Journeys End". They do. All journeys end. The journey to the championship. The journey to professional boxing. The journey to find yourself. The journey of life. Also, while Mike is a journeyman, the story also follows the journeys of Marie, Gary, and even Paolo Glauben.
If you hadn't caught on by now, the story is about a boxer. Boxing is a sport as near and dear to my heart as Pluto is to Mercury. Yeah, I'm not a fan of boxing, but the story isn't about the fight, it's about the fighter. Mike Rane has a unique ability. He and his girlfriend Marie decide that he should use his ability to make some money, and he takes up boxing, with consequences neither could foresee.
My first version of this story featured Marie's younger sister Teresa, involved in drugs and prostitution, and Marie's and then Mike's efforts to save her after Marie dies. Mike agrees to fight the best heavyweight fighter in the world and give the millions he'll get to Teresa, hoping that if she doesn't have to worry about money, she can get away from the people taking advantage of her. It started with Mike climbing out of bed with Teresa; his relationship with Marie is told in flashbacks. Mike is depressed, Teresa doesn't like him (but he protects her, so she stays), and Gary Rodan, Mike's old manager tracks him down and asks him to fight again.
That story was very wordy, very melodramatic. Mike's solution to save Teresa was simplistic, and probably misguided. So, I cut most of that.
In the new version, there's no Teresa. I excised much of the dialog. Scenes become much shorter. My favorite change, though, is that the original was mostly flashback, told straight through, with the main fight interspersed, almost round-for-round. The new version intertwines everything much more intricately. The result is far less linear, and I think more kinetic. The story doesn't bog down in Rodan explaining Vegas and gambling to Mike, or Marie philosophizing about the honesty (or lack thereof) of using Mike's gift while keeping it a secret. Scenes play out around other scenes, basically telling three stories - at three points of Mike's life - all at once.
We learn about the incident in which Mike discovered his gift while we learn about Mike's early fights while we learn about the Ray Hamel fight.
It's risky, but hopefully people will get it, and hopefully it will resonate with them (first off, hopefully people will actually read it). I didn't set out to rewrite the story like this; I started writing the conversation with Marie, and realized that when she asked about how much Mike could take, that would be a good time to switch the scene. As I kept writing like this, I liked it. It reminds me of the way some comics are written - notably "Batman: Hush". The story deals with a string of crimes, but also flashes back to Bruce as a kid, when he hung out with a character introduced in the story. During the arc, he also flashes back to events that happened in earlier comics, as a way of giving background to readers who may not be familiar with the universe. The flashbacks happen throughout each issue, sometimes just a panel or two, and relate to or inform the current sequence. Hopefully I did this as well as they did.
To read Journeys End, Part 1 - The Rodent Returns, click here.
As such, I have begun posting chunks of a short story that I wrote years ago, and rewrote over the past week. You can start reading it here.
I actually don't remember what I called it originally - I think I had just titled it "Mike Rane" after the main character, though it's more likely I called it "Prize Fight" due to the climactic fight scene. I played around with "Journeyman" and "Gatekeeper" this time, the former because Mike is a journeyman boxer (and because at one point he runs away and goes on a journey) the latter because his final opponent might be a "gatekeeper" (a boxer who is almost, but not quite good enough to challenge for a title). In the end, "Journeyman" didn't feel right, and Ray Hamel isn't quite a gatekeeper. I settled on "Journey's End" because it played on the journeyman term, but also the finality of the story. It's also the title of a fantastic episode of Doctor Who.
Of course, the fact that it is the title of a fantastic episode of Doctor Who bothered me, so I changed it again, removing the apostrophe. "Journeys End". They do. All journeys end. The journey to the championship. The journey to professional boxing. The journey to find yourself. The journey of life. Also, while Mike is a journeyman, the story also follows the journeys of Marie, Gary, and even Paolo Glauben.
If you hadn't caught on by now, the story is about a boxer. Boxing is a sport as near and dear to my heart as Pluto is to Mercury. Yeah, I'm not a fan of boxing, but the story isn't about the fight, it's about the fighter. Mike Rane has a unique ability. He and his girlfriend Marie decide that he should use his ability to make some money, and he takes up boxing, with consequences neither could foresee.
My first version of this story featured Marie's younger sister Teresa, involved in drugs and prostitution, and Marie's and then Mike's efforts to save her after Marie dies. Mike agrees to fight the best heavyweight fighter in the world and give the millions he'll get to Teresa, hoping that if she doesn't have to worry about money, she can get away from the people taking advantage of her. It started with Mike climbing out of bed with Teresa; his relationship with Marie is told in flashbacks. Mike is depressed, Teresa doesn't like him (but he protects her, so she stays), and Gary Rodan, Mike's old manager tracks him down and asks him to fight again.
That story was very wordy, very melodramatic. Mike's solution to save Teresa was simplistic, and probably misguided. So, I cut most of that.
In the new version, there's no Teresa. I excised much of the dialog. Scenes become much shorter. My favorite change, though, is that the original was mostly flashback, told straight through, with the main fight interspersed, almost round-for-round. The new version intertwines everything much more intricately. The result is far less linear, and I think more kinetic. The story doesn't bog down in Rodan explaining Vegas and gambling to Mike, or Marie philosophizing about the honesty (or lack thereof) of using Mike's gift while keeping it a secret. Scenes play out around other scenes, basically telling three stories - at three points of Mike's life - all at once.
We learn about the incident in which Mike discovered his gift while we learn about Mike's early fights while we learn about the Ray Hamel fight.
It's risky, but hopefully people will get it, and hopefully it will resonate with them (first off, hopefully people will actually read it). I didn't set out to rewrite the story like this; I started writing the conversation with Marie, and realized that when she asked about how much Mike could take, that would be a good time to switch the scene. As I kept writing like this, I liked it. It reminds me of the way some comics are written - notably "Batman: Hush". The story deals with a string of crimes, but also flashes back to Bruce as a kid, when he hung out with a character introduced in the story. During the arc, he also flashes back to events that happened in earlier comics, as a way of giving background to readers who may not be familiar with the universe. The flashbacks happen throughout each issue, sometimes just a panel or two, and relate to or inform the current sequence. Hopefully I did this as well as they did.
To read Journeys End, Part 1 - The Rodent Returns, click here.
2015-03-11
The Short Short Story Contest
So, it's been a while since I've posted, and I am sorry for that. I got married in August, went on a honeymoon in October, spent November working on a story for NaNoWriMo, and then...kinda forgot about blogging. I did keep a running journal of our honeymoon to the San Francisco area, and I might publish a short version of it (10+ days of my ramblings...I can't imagine anyone but my wife wants to read that).
At any rate, I have been doing some writing (and a lot of reading). As noted, I wrote a novel in November, inspired by the story of a stalker. I wanted to write from his perspective, chasing the girl, not excusing his behavior or justifying his actions, but trying to show what makes him tick. At the same time, the stalker is writing a sci-fi novel of his own (in real life, he wrote a fantasy novel), so I was writing this science fiction story at the same time, trying to parallel/contrast the events in real life, or use it as his way of dealing with the things that were happening to him. It...well, it's a work in progress. Part of the problem is that I think there is a slim grey area between hopeless unrequited love and stalking, and I see a lot of myself in this character (though not so much the real life stalker). I mean, I've never tracked people down, or studied their schedule to meet up with them "accidentally", but I have fixated on people, and built up relationships in my own head into something more than they were.
The other problem is that it is tough, at least for me, to write a story based around a non-sympathetic character. He is a stalker. He might not start out that way, but that's what he becomes. The story is in the first person (in the vein of blog posts), so there's nothing from the stalkee's POV. We're riding with this guy, watching him follow this woman around, spying on her, pursuing her, violating her privacy. Generally, the reader is supposed to be rooting for the main character, right? Well, I don't want the reader rooting for this guy. Maybe I should make them root for him to change? I will have to think about this story further.
I also submitted another story to a Writer's Digest competition. Last summer, I entered "Folded" in their Short Story competition, and didn't win. This past February, I whipped off a story for their "Short Short Story" competition. 1500 words or less. Sounds like my style of writing, right? I decided to give it a try, because it is a good challenge. I came up with a concept, threw together a quick first draft, revised, revised, and revised some more. With a story so short, it was easy to read through and make changes. The hard part was not rambling.
I got it done, and submitted on the final day. A few weeks later, I found myself thinking about the story, and wondering when I'd hear back. I couldn't remember the exact day mentioned in the rules, but I knew it was close. When I got back to my desk and checked my e-mail, sure enough, there was an e-mail from the contest committee.
Honestly, my actual thought that day was, "I wonder when I'll hear that my story lost the competition". Last year, I thought "Folded" might have a chance. This time, the more I thought about what I'd submitted, the more I cringed. I can't believe I put that out into the world and let people read it. I can't believe I paid to enter it into a contest. I can't believe I asked judges to read it and consider this the best of what I have to offer.
Although, maybe it is. Maybe I'm just mediocre, never progressing past what I wrote in college. I don't know. The story was crappy. Pretentious, trying to make a point about a social issue, but using a different social issue as a metaphor. An unnamed protagonist, a hazy back story, a hazy current story (that's never good), and a conclusion that rendered the rest of everything pointless. I'm not even going to post it here, unless I revise it heavily. I'm that embarrassed by it.
In more upbeat news, I am still working on "Empty Moon" (a rewrite that is taking much longer than anticipated; I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but it is seeming like it will become either a much longer story, or need to be rethought...again), and I do plan on posting that at some point in the future. I'm also working on something new, the seed of which came to me in a dream. Those always work out great, right? We'll see. It might go nowhere (like my writing career...sorry, couldn't resist).
Oh, I almost forgot! This November, while taking part in NaNoWriMo, I also contributed to GrammoWriMo, Grammarly's attempt to write a collaborative NaNo novel about the eruption of Mt Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. About 500 writers contributed, and while we didn't reach the 50,000 word goal, we did put together a collection of vignettes about the disaster, which will be published. I will post details about that if/when it is available.
At any rate, I have been doing some writing (and a lot of reading). As noted, I wrote a novel in November, inspired by the story of a stalker. I wanted to write from his perspective, chasing the girl, not excusing his behavior or justifying his actions, but trying to show what makes him tick. At the same time, the stalker is writing a sci-fi novel of his own (in real life, he wrote a fantasy novel), so I was writing this science fiction story at the same time, trying to parallel/contrast the events in real life, or use it as his way of dealing with the things that were happening to him. It...well, it's a work in progress. Part of the problem is that I think there is a slim grey area between hopeless unrequited love and stalking, and I see a lot of myself in this character (though not so much the real life stalker). I mean, I've never tracked people down, or studied their schedule to meet up with them "accidentally", but I have fixated on people, and built up relationships in my own head into something more than they were.
The other problem is that it is tough, at least for me, to write a story based around a non-sympathetic character. He is a stalker. He might not start out that way, but that's what he becomes. The story is in the first person (in the vein of blog posts), so there's nothing from the stalkee's POV. We're riding with this guy, watching him follow this woman around, spying on her, pursuing her, violating her privacy. Generally, the reader is supposed to be rooting for the main character, right? Well, I don't want the reader rooting for this guy. Maybe I should make them root for him to change? I will have to think about this story further.
I also submitted another story to a Writer's Digest competition. Last summer, I entered "Folded" in their Short Story competition, and didn't win. This past February, I whipped off a story for their "Short Short Story" competition. 1500 words or less. Sounds like my style of writing, right? I decided to give it a try, because it is a good challenge. I came up with a concept, threw together a quick first draft, revised, revised, and revised some more. With a story so short, it was easy to read through and make changes. The hard part was not rambling.
I got it done, and submitted on the final day. A few weeks later, I found myself thinking about the story, and wondering when I'd hear back. I couldn't remember the exact day mentioned in the rules, but I knew it was close. When I got back to my desk and checked my e-mail, sure enough, there was an e-mail from the contest committee.
Womp womp.Greetings and thank you once again for competing in The Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition.
As a courtesy, we wanted to inform you that after much difficult decision making (there were over 6,500 entries), judging has wrapped up. We've now been in touch with all winners; they were notified separately by our editors.
Honestly, my actual thought that day was, "I wonder when I'll hear that my story lost the competition". Last year, I thought "Folded" might have a chance. This time, the more I thought about what I'd submitted, the more I cringed. I can't believe I put that out into the world and let people read it. I can't believe I paid to enter it into a contest. I can't believe I asked judges to read it and consider this the best of what I have to offer.
Although, maybe it is. Maybe I'm just mediocre, never progressing past what I wrote in college. I don't know. The story was crappy. Pretentious, trying to make a point about a social issue, but using a different social issue as a metaphor. An unnamed protagonist, a hazy back story, a hazy current story (that's never good), and a conclusion that rendered the rest of everything pointless. I'm not even going to post it here, unless I revise it heavily. I'm that embarrassed by it.
In more upbeat news, I am still working on "Empty Moon" (a rewrite that is taking much longer than anticipated; I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but it is seeming like it will become either a much longer story, or need to be rethought...again), and I do plan on posting that at some point in the future. I'm also working on something new, the seed of which came to me in a dream. Those always work out great, right? We'll see. It might go nowhere (like my writing career...sorry, couldn't resist).
Oh, I almost forgot! This November, while taking part in NaNoWriMo, I also contributed to GrammoWriMo, Grammarly's attempt to write a collaborative NaNo novel about the eruption of Mt Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. About 500 writers contributed, and while we didn't reach the 50,000 word goal, we did put together a collection of vignettes about the disaster, which will be published. I will post details about that if/when it is available.
2014-07-23
"Story Engineering" by Larry Brooks - Review
Very late in Larry Brooks' "Story Engineering", he reveals that he is a former minor league pitcher, which makes the copious amount of sports analogies make some sense. What it doesn't do is make them any easier to slog through.
The idea behind "Story Engineering" - that there are Six "Core Competencies" that any writer must master in order to write publishable stories - is vastly interesting, pretty important, and isn't really taught in creative writing classes. I want to get that out of the way first - I like this book, for the most part, but I am going to be critical of it, because it wasn't as good as it should have been.
The presentation is muddle and obscured by constant harping on how important these principles are, and how lost you will be if you try to change them. He drives these points home with his beloved analogies and metaphors, comparing writing to everything from golf to surgery to sex. Yup, he gave new meaning to "narrative thrust".
His biggest crime seems to be one of padding. There's a Preface, that gives a vague overview of the subject of the book. Then, there's Chapter 1, which does pretty much the same thing. Chapter 2 re-hashes the exact same information, but in a slightly different way. It's not until Chapter 3 that he finally names any of the Competencies. For a book that implores writers to hook readers early in their story, this is a pretty poor example.
Which actually leads me to his second biggest crime: missed opportunity. One of the Competencies is "Story Structure". He lays out the idea that there are Story Milestones that happen at roughly the same point in every successful story (more on both the terms "roughly" and "successful" later). The First Plot Point divides the first two parts of your story (analogous to the first and second acts of a screenplay), and happens at roughly the 25% mark of your story. The Second Plot Point divides the third and fourth parts (analogous to the second and third acts of a screenplay), and occurs right around the 75% mark. In what I'm sure was a complete and utter coincidence, the chapter focusing on the Second Plot Point starts 75% of the way through "Story Engineering" (yay Kindle!). This made me think, "why not lay out the entire book to line up with your Competencies"?
Ok, that's not exactly feasible, since the book is not just about the structure of stories, but also Character, Theme, Concept, Scene Execution, and Writing Voice (the other 5 Core Competencies). That said, why not make this book as tight as the method you're promoting? Why ramble about concepts when you tell us to avoid doing the exact same thing? Why bring up a topic, tell us you're going to explain it, then change course and talk about something else for pages before actually explaining the concept? Why the constant sales pitch to convince us to use the techniques we're trying to learn about (presumably so that we can use them)?
The answer is his third biggest crime: he can't get out of his own way. He loves his Six Core Competencies. He loves his own writing style. He detests "organic" writing (writing with no planning/outlining, just letting the story go where it goes). It is the constant reminders of all of this that get irritating after a while, because on many of his points, I already agree. I get his point about "organic" writing - if you have no plan, the first draft tends to be a rambling mess that goes nowhere. Then, you edit it down into a more coherent story. If you write a full-length novel, this can be incredibly tedious, not to mention time-consuming. Instead, if you plan ahead and know your story milestones, you can bang out a draft that is far closer to being done than if you just wing it.
This makes sense to me. I'm sure other writers won't agree - many believe that outlining robs a story of its spontaneity. My response would be that after the first draft, how spontaneous is the story? If you can write a first draft that is perfect, then yeah, totally spontaneous. After that point? You have the story on paper, and are just tweaking/rewriting it. Not much spontaneity left at that point, so why not plan it out a bit beforehand? You don't have to go crazy like Brooks and lay out every single scene in your novel. You can just sketch out the four parts, and the associated Milestones, then you are free to ad lib as much as you want.
It's like jazz - there are base melodies/progressions/phrases, but as long as you stay within those, you're free to improvise. (Ok, that's my one analogy for this review.)
Brooks does introduce a great tool that can be used by any writer - the beat sheet. Basically, it's a stripped-down outline. I could see "organic" writers using it, as it is essentially a bare-bones first draft. Brooks sort of makes this observation; he discusses the ability to make changes to the beat sheet as far easier than a 400-page manuscript, comparing them to the maneuverability of a speed boat and a cargo freighter, respectively.
Of course, by this point in the book (the last few chapters), his offer of an olive branch to the "organic" writers feels meager and back-handed, especially given the fact that he's still telling them that their approach is stupid and useless. Why not mention that your Six Core Competencies are best utilized when the writer is a planner, but they can help "organic" writers be more efficient and successful? Then, leave out all the cheap shots at "organic" writers, all of the commentary on how you won't get published if you don't follow these principles, and then wrap up with "If you write 'organically', here's how you can apply these principles, but maintain your writing styles."
Instead, it's, "Fine, you still want to write organically? It won't work, but *sigh* try this." Very condescending. Not to mention the fact that some of this comes in Chapter 49 of 50, and still assumes that the reader is clinging to "organic" writing. How did no editor call this guy up and say, "Um, if they're still reading by your second-to-last chapter, they're probably on board. You can probably drop the adversarial stuff now"?
On top of all this is his idea of "successful". He seems to vacillate on what that means. Is it commercial success, or just critical success? He brings up Dan Browns fun but hollow The Da Vinci Code as a shining success story, so you're left feeling it's about commercial success. Then, he admits that while The Da Vinci Code was incredibly lucrative, that doesn't mean the writing was particularly good. Then he goes back to saying that he's not analyzing the quality of the writing, just the structure, and adherence to the Six Core Competencies, but it did sell a lot! Later, he rips into "literature", claiming its champions (snooty folks at places like Oxford...pah!) allow long stretches of character development that doesn't advance the plot, and this is boring, and Moby Dick sucked, and...wait... He's ripping on "literature", both classic and well-respected modern works. All of which got published, and a lot of press. Throughout the book, he's railed on about how failure to adhere to these principles will GUARANTEE rejection. So, how did this "literature" get published?
He is definitely a genre fiction author, and I sense a fierce desire to protect his own. That's fine, and I agree that considering "genre fiction" as a lesser form of literature is a little ridiculous, but it's ok to acknowledge that there are different benchmarks for success. If your goal is to teach us how to write books like Dan Brown or James Patterson, that's fine, but be up front about it, don't patter on about writing, then rip on half the literary world 80% of the way through your book.
And then there's the rules that aren't rules. There are so many contradictions in his statements that he could quite legitimately call this The Bible of Writing. The First Plot point should be right at the 25% mark of your story...unless it's a little earlier or a little later. That's up to you. But in successful writing it is ALWAYS at the 25% mark, except in this example, where it isn't.
He lays out rules, claims they are the only way to do things, then backs off and claims they're just guidelines. Then he gets worried that he's getting too soft and says that they must be followed.
At any rate, his fourth and final (to me) biggest crime is just the grammatical/factual errors. Using plurals when he should be using the singular - "Competencies" in almost all of the Part Titles; "criteria" instead of "criterion", which is a biggie to me, since he's supposed to be convincing us he knows what he's talking about - is the clearest example. He misrepresents the words of Elmore Leonard, too, which makes you wonder about other things he said.
All in all, I think the book is valuable. The concepts in it, when boiled down and distilled, are important, and I think they will help make me a better writer. The rest of the book...actually may help make me a better writer, too, if only to know what to avoid doing. I would recommend it to anyone who is just starting out in writing, or is struggling with it.
The idea behind "Story Engineering" - that there are Six "Core Competencies" that any writer must master in order to write publishable stories - is vastly interesting, pretty important, and isn't really taught in creative writing classes. I want to get that out of the way first - I like this book, for the most part, but I am going to be critical of it, because it wasn't as good as it should have been.
The presentation is muddle and obscured by constant harping on how important these principles are, and how lost you will be if you try to change them. He drives these points home with his beloved analogies and metaphors, comparing writing to everything from golf to surgery to sex. Yup, he gave new meaning to "narrative thrust".
His biggest crime seems to be one of padding. There's a Preface, that gives a vague overview of the subject of the book. Then, there's Chapter 1, which does pretty much the same thing. Chapter 2 re-hashes the exact same information, but in a slightly different way. It's not until Chapter 3 that he finally names any of the Competencies. For a book that implores writers to hook readers early in their story, this is a pretty poor example.
Which actually leads me to his second biggest crime: missed opportunity. One of the Competencies is "Story Structure". He lays out the idea that there are Story Milestones that happen at roughly the same point in every successful story (more on both the terms "roughly" and "successful" later). The First Plot Point divides the first two parts of your story (analogous to the first and second acts of a screenplay), and happens at roughly the 25% mark of your story. The Second Plot Point divides the third and fourth parts (analogous to the second and third acts of a screenplay), and occurs right around the 75% mark. In what I'm sure was a complete and utter coincidence, the chapter focusing on the Second Plot Point starts 75% of the way through "Story Engineering" (yay Kindle!). This made me think, "why not lay out the entire book to line up with your Competencies"?
Ok, that's not exactly feasible, since the book is not just about the structure of stories, but also Character, Theme, Concept, Scene Execution, and Writing Voice (the other 5 Core Competencies). That said, why not make this book as tight as the method you're promoting? Why ramble about concepts when you tell us to avoid doing the exact same thing? Why bring up a topic, tell us you're going to explain it, then change course and talk about something else for pages before actually explaining the concept? Why the constant sales pitch to convince us to use the techniques we're trying to learn about (presumably so that we can use them)?
The answer is his third biggest crime: he can't get out of his own way. He loves his Six Core Competencies. He loves his own writing style. He detests "organic" writing (writing with no planning/outlining, just letting the story go where it goes). It is the constant reminders of all of this that get irritating after a while, because on many of his points, I already agree. I get his point about "organic" writing - if you have no plan, the first draft tends to be a rambling mess that goes nowhere. Then, you edit it down into a more coherent story. If you write a full-length novel, this can be incredibly tedious, not to mention time-consuming. Instead, if you plan ahead and know your story milestones, you can bang out a draft that is far closer to being done than if you just wing it.
This makes sense to me. I'm sure other writers won't agree - many believe that outlining robs a story of its spontaneity. My response would be that after the first draft, how spontaneous is the story? If you can write a first draft that is perfect, then yeah, totally spontaneous. After that point? You have the story on paper, and are just tweaking/rewriting it. Not much spontaneity left at that point, so why not plan it out a bit beforehand? You don't have to go crazy like Brooks and lay out every single scene in your novel. You can just sketch out the four parts, and the associated Milestones, then you are free to ad lib as much as you want.
It's like jazz - there are base melodies/progressions/phrases, but as long as you stay within those, you're free to improvise. (Ok, that's my one analogy for this review.)
Brooks does introduce a great tool that can be used by any writer - the beat sheet. Basically, it's a stripped-down outline. I could see "organic" writers using it, as it is essentially a bare-bones first draft. Brooks sort of makes this observation; he discusses the ability to make changes to the beat sheet as far easier than a 400-page manuscript, comparing them to the maneuverability of a speed boat and a cargo freighter, respectively.
Of course, by this point in the book (the last few chapters), his offer of an olive branch to the "organic" writers feels meager and back-handed, especially given the fact that he's still telling them that their approach is stupid and useless. Why not mention that your Six Core Competencies are best utilized when the writer is a planner, but they can help "organic" writers be more efficient and successful? Then, leave out all the cheap shots at "organic" writers, all of the commentary on how you won't get published if you don't follow these principles, and then wrap up with "If you write 'organically', here's how you can apply these principles, but maintain your writing styles."
Instead, it's, "Fine, you still want to write organically? It won't work, but *sigh* try this." Very condescending. Not to mention the fact that some of this comes in Chapter 49 of 50, and still assumes that the reader is clinging to "organic" writing. How did no editor call this guy up and say, "Um, if they're still reading by your second-to-last chapter, they're probably on board. You can probably drop the adversarial stuff now"?
On top of all this is his idea of "successful". He seems to vacillate on what that means. Is it commercial success, or just critical success? He brings up Dan Browns fun but hollow The Da Vinci Code as a shining success story, so you're left feeling it's about commercial success. Then, he admits that while The Da Vinci Code was incredibly lucrative, that doesn't mean the writing was particularly good. Then he goes back to saying that he's not analyzing the quality of the writing, just the structure, and adherence to the Six Core Competencies, but it did sell a lot! Later, he rips into "literature", claiming its champions (snooty folks at places like Oxford...pah!) allow long stretches of character development that doesn't advance the plot, and this is boring, and Moby Dick sucked, and...wait... He's ripping on "literature", both classic and well-respected modern works. All of which got published, and a lot of press. Throughout the book, he's railed on about how failure to adhere to these principles will GUARANTEE rejection. So, how did this "literature" get published?
He is definitely a genre fiction author, and I sense a fierce desire to protect his own. That's fine, and I agree that considering "genre fiction" as a lesser form of literature is a little ridiculous, but it's ok to acknowledge that there are different benchmarks for success. If your goal is to teach us how to write books like Dan Brown or James Patterson, that's fine, but be up front about it, don't patter on about writing, then rip on half the literary world 80% of the way through your book.
And then there's the rules that aren't rules. There are so many contradictions in his statements that he could quite legitimately call this The Bible of Writing. The First Plot point should be right at the 25% mark of your story...unless it's a little earlier or a little later. That's up to you. But in successful writing it is ALWAYS at the 25% mark, except in this example, where it isn't.
He lays out rules, claims they are the only way to do things, then backs off and claims they're just guidelines. Then he gets worried that he's getting too soft and says that they must be followed.
At any rate, his fourth and final (to me) biggest crime is just the grammatical/factual errors. Using plurals when he should be using the singular - "Competencies" in almost all of the Part Titles; "criteria" instead of "criterion", which is a biggie to me, since he's supposed to be convincing us he knows what he's talking about - is the clearest example. He misrepresents the words of Elmore Leonard, too, which makes you wonder about other things he said.
All in all, I think the book is valuable. The concepts in it, when boiled down and distilled, are important, and I think they will help make me a better writer. The rest of the book...actually may help make me a better writer, too, if only to know what to avoid doing. I would recommend it to anyone who is just starting out in writing, or is struggling with it.
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