Worldbuilding: Cultural Rituals and Coming of Age

I just turned 40, and my son just turned 13, which has me thinking of significant milestones and coming of age.  We make a big deal out of turning 40, of course, and 13 is considered at least a gateway into adulthood.

When I was 13, I went to several bar- and bat-mitzvahs (and one b'nai mitzvah), and I always found the highly ritualized element of "and now you are an adult" fascinating.  Of course, in that case, it was partly fascinating because, on many levels, it was just about the ritual.  My friends weren't expected to get their own apartments and get jobs, after all: they were only 13. 

How a culture deals with that transition into adulthood can be a fun bit of worldbuilding.  It can be something very specialized and ritualized, or it can be a casual observance.  Here in North America, the tradition of a Sweet Sixteen/Quinceñera party is more the latter, but it says the same thing: you are (nominally) an adult now.

In Druthal, it's not much of an observance at all.  Druths tend to be a practical, unsentimental people, so it's mostly understood that at 15 you start some sort of work or higher schooling.  In Thorn, Veranix is 17 and is in his third year at the University of Maradaine.  In Maradaine Constabulary, one of Minox's younger brothers is 15, and he's just started as page in the constabulary-- the traditional form of apprenticeship before becoming a proper patrolman. 

Other cultures on that world have more specialized methods of marking their coming of age.  In Acseria, a theocratic state, there is the Rite of Declaration, where a young adult commits themselves to one of the specific sects of the church, as well as claiming their "adult" name. These two choices are, of course, deeply personal, and represent the child's readiness to be their own adult person.

Another culture with a highly ritualized coming-of-age process is the Bardinæ, who are divided into clans.  Clan affiliation is not finalized until the age of thirteen, when children and their clan-guardians take a pilgrimage to the holy city of Jaukmeira, and each child is allowed-- for the only time in their life-- to touch the Jaukmeir, the great sacrosanct obelisk in the center of the city.  From touching the Jaukmeir, they then declare to either join their clan or be one of the Yja, the clanless holy men. If they choose their clan, then the mark of that clan is tattooed onto their face.*

However, my favorite tradition comes from the Bürgin, a culture of loose city-states.  Bürgin is the farther southern part of its continent, close to the antarctic circle, and it's filled with nearly-frozen rivers.  These rivers are the life-blood of the culture: the source of food, trade and power.  So if you're a child the community believes is ready to be considered an adult, the ritual is very simple: they throw you in the river.

If you manage to survive and swim to shore: congratulations.  You're an adult.  If not, you weren't ready.  Too bad.


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*- Since children aren't marked as being in a clan, it is a tradition amongst the Bardinæ to kidnap children from rival clans, and then deliver them to the Jaukmeir as their own. 

Perils of the Science-Fiction Writer: Avoiding Obsolescence

I'll admit I'm not a big short story reader, nor am I as versed in the classics as I ought to be.  That said, I have a certain fondness for Ray Bradbury's All Summer In A Day, and to a lesser extent, The Martian Chronicles.  Both are very human stories that take place on Venus and Mars, respectively.  But they were very much the Venus and Mars of imagination, the Venus and Mars that couldn't be written about after the 1950s.

It's easy to see how, when all that was known about Venus was its cloud cover, a writer might imagine a Venus where the rain almost never stops.  Now we know that isn't even remotely close to the truth.  We know that All Summer In A Day is an impossible story.  It's still a great story, and it holds up in the sense that you can willfully ignore real-Venus in favor of its pulp-Venus setting.  You allow yourself that willful suspension of disbelief because you know the context.*

We live in an exciting time, in terms of astronomical news.  We are constantly hearing news of another planet being discovered in orbit of a distant star.  We've just learned of an Earth-sized planet in orbit of Alpha Centauri B.

But that also makes it a... challenging time to be a sci-fi writer, especially one that does the kind of in-depth worldbuilding that I do.  Any day I expect the news of a discovery to come that invalidates a major element of my work.  And I can only imagine if, say, such news comes in between finishing a work and it being published.  Would that be embarrassing?  Will it be embarrassing in 60 years?  Or will readers shrug and say, "Hey, that was the 2010s.  They hadn't even met the Helari** yet." 

This is probably why some of the better sci-fi gives themselves some breathing room-- putting a few centuries between now and the story.  Therefore the minor or major discoveries in the near future can be handwaved away.  Write too close to the day-after-tomorrow, and the work seems very dated.  I love Snow Crash, for example, and it's still a highly regarded work... but it's set in a 1998 that was a nigh-absurd extrapolation when it was written, let alone in retrospect.

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For some other news: Rayguns Over Texas now has a cover!  I'm absurdly excited for this book, especially since I'm being printed with such good company. 


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*- And, of course, one can write something in a deliberate retro-pulp style, but then you're almost writing fantasy instead of sci-fi. 
**- The Helari, of course, would find it amusingly quaint.

Talent, Discipline and the Lure of the Crazy Success Story

While I might sometimes be at odds with what makes "good writing", I do think there's such a thing as talent.  Raw, pure talent, an instinct for craft that gives an artist an edge over their peers.  I know my son has it.  He's been drawing since he picked up a pencil, and he has skill that astounds me.  I don't know where it comes from, because I can't draw worth a damn.  Do I have talent?  I'll let others be the judge.

Because here's the thing about talent: it needs to be tempered with discipline.  Discipline wins over talent, in my book: someone who does fantastic work but can't be bothered to deliver on time is not someone I'd call on; the solid, dependable work that's ready and on time will always win with me. 

This is where the Crazy Success Story creates difficulty, because it's usually about the triumph of talent.  Talent being plucked out and held up high despite discipline.  Or at least despite apparent discipline.

Take, for example, Stephanie Meyers.  Now, I've got no issue with the Twilight books.  I've not read them, and I won't comment on their quality one way or the other.  But it's got fans, so on that level, she's done something right.  So: good on her.  What I do take issue with is Meyers's own narrative of writing and publishing the first book, as I heard her describe on NPR some time ago.  She more or less described the process as some sort of wacky accident:  she was just scribbling stuff down, and someone told her she wrote a novel and she should get it published, and so she did!  Just like that!  She wasn't even trying!  It just happened!

This sort of story undermines what it takes to actually write a novel.  It probably undermines what Meyers actually did to write and publish Twilight in the first place. 

Another one to think about is Douglas Adams.  Now: I am a huge Douglas Adams fan.  HUGE.  But if we're being honest, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy probably wouldn't have been published in today's environment.  It's a Crazy Success Story that is very much the product of its time: Adams was working in BBC Television and Radio at a time when it was a grind job*, and wrote a sci-fi/comedy radio program that was a huge success despite being done on the cheap and shuffled away on Radio 4. This is Adams's talent shining out, pure as sunlight.  The radio show was such a hit that a novel version was demanded by the publisher.  So Adams, despite having no history with writing a novel, was given a contract to write the book.  Then he missed one deadline.  Then another.  Then the "no, really, THIS is the deadline" deadline passed.  Eventually the publisher called and said, "Where are you with it?"  "I'm at this scene." "Well, finish that up, because we're sending a courier on a motorbike to pick up the manuscript, and that's gonna be the book.  Write the rest in the sequel."**

Can you imagine that today?  Let alone George R. R. Martin taking a long time with the next Game of Thrones-- imagine the idea of an unknown, untested writer being allowed to do that?  Wouldn't happen.

But that appeals to the people who believe in talent over discipline.  It appeals to the idea of, "I have an idea for a book, so give me a contract and I'll write it."  Because despite completely failing in terms of discipline-- he didn't even finish the book, and they published it anyway!-- it was a huge hit and launched his writing career.  Because he was insanely talented. 

However, that's a-billion-in-one longshot.  You can't plan a career on that.


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*- Consider this: Adams was a producer on Doctor Who.  In the Tom Baker years. Because at the time it was considered something of a crap job no one wanted.  Can you imagine that being the case in the TV world today.  Especially on Doctor Who?
**- If you can, pick up Neil Gaiman's biography of Adams, Don't Panic.  It's quite a fun read.

Perils of the Writer: Clarity and "Literary" Writing

There are, of course, several schools of thought on what makes "good" writing.  And, frankly, half the time I'm at something of a loss.  By which I mean, many times I will read something that's been identified as "great writing" and think it's a muddled mess.  And many times I'll read things that are scathingly referred to as "puerile" or "simplistic" and think it's fun and entertaining.

When it comes to "great writing"-- in other words, writing that aspires to be literature-- some writers come away with an idea that they need to be obscure.  That just coming out and saying what happened is too base or something.  That to be great, you have to make your readers work for it.

I don't get that.

More to the point, this idea creates the impression among learning writers that they need to avoid clarity in favor of obfuscating the action.  Especially on the academic level, this sort of idea is drilled into heads to the point where it's very hard to knock those bad habits out.

I read one sample chapter for workshopping in which the actual action in the chapter involved the main character visiting the grave of her friend.  I had to re-read the chapter four times before I figured that out.  Words like "grave" or "cemetery" or "headstone" did not appear.  Why?  I can only presume the author had gotten the idea that they needed to avoid direct telling of events in favor of sensory details.

This may not be a popular opinion among writers, but "sensory details" can be the death of clear writing.

Not that sensory details are bad, but many times it's done in a way to be obscure.  Instead of telling the reader that the character sees an elephant, the writer tells us about the sight of large leathery ears, the earthy scent of dung, trumpeting calls and the ground shaking from a thunderous walk, and they hope that we put those pieces together and come up with "elephant".  That type of thing can be fun, in a puzzle-box sort of way, but it isn't necessarily good writing. 

Also, too often I see sensory details are thrown out the for the sake of putting sensory details. I remember one piece of writing advice that said something along the lines of, "If you go a page without each sense being represented, you're doing something wrong".  This is terrible advice.  A sensory detail should be used if it's relevant to the action.

Take smell, for example.  Are you smelling something right now?  Is the fact that you're smelling it strongly on your mind?  To put that to writing, in the scene itself, is the fact that a smell is being noticed key to the scene?  Or is it a detail you're adding because you feel you're supposed to add sensory details?

Of course, sometimes confusing the readers is the point.  And that can be fun, but if you're going to do that, do it well.  For every Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, there are dozens of books that are just unclear.

Twelve Part Structure and Pacing

I will probably never stop being an advocate of structure and outlining.  For me, it's the best way to write.  But figuring it out, working the way to make it work for me, that was a process. 

I've talked, quite a lot, about my Twelve-Part Structure.  Part of working that out, of course, was figuring out the pacing of each part.  If you go into it thinking each part is an equal part of the book, the pacing is going to be very wonky. 

Now, one thing to remember: This is structure.  It is not formula.  There isn't a mathematical way to Write the Perfect Novel.  Anyone who tells you that just wants your money.  

1. Establishment: 5%
Since the purpose of this section is to introduce your protagonists, what their situation is and what their capabilities are-- you need to get your hooks in and land them solidly.  So you don't want to waste too much time with, say, an overabundance of backstory or infodumping here.  So if your target length is a 100K novel, you're looking at 5000 words.  This is handy since a lot of writers' workshops or other critiquing processes want only 5000 words*, so if you can hook your reader and make them want to read more.

2. Incitement: 15%
 Here, you need more work.  Setting up the dominoes, introducing secondary characters and antagonists, really building the world.  Here, once you've drawn your reader in, you can get away with more backstory and infodumps.  The plot starts rolling, and that build of momentum is a bit slow, of course.  But that's all right.

3. Challenge: 10%
Now that you've got your protagonist juggling the various balls of the plot, it's time to start really throwing rocks at him.  The small rocks.  But you can throw several. 

4. Altercation: 10%
The Challenge should flow into the Altercation.  Your protagonist can rise to the occasion, and have their first real "Hell, yes!" moment.  (They might get minor ones up until this point, but the first big one comes in here.)  So, at this point, we're about 40% in. 

5-6. Payback-Regrouping: 25%
I'll admit it, this part may be the hardest section.  This is that "mushy middle" where, having knocked down some of the dominoes early, you set up even more elaborate ones.  This is where you can get away with more backstory and infodumps, but sparingly, as you don't want to lose your audience.  Drop the first shoe here, and build up the bigger set of problems. 

7-9: Collapse-Retreat-Recovery: 15%
Drop that other shoe and run like hell.  I'd like to say the breakdown of this is about 5-5-5, but that isn't always the case.  "Collapse" is the moment when things fall apart**, it's throwing the big rock, and you don't need to dwell on that.  The running away and dealing with what just happened is the more fun part, anyway.  But the point is, this can all blend together.

10: Investment: 10%
Now, the book has to breathe a little bit.  Only a little, because you're at 80% in, and the story should be just on the verge of getting completely away from you.  Of getting away from the protagonists.  But take a moment to appreciate why they're doing what they're doing, and who they are.  All while running like hell.

11. Confrontation: 8%
 Here the pacing should be relentless.  This is the point where your readers should be emotionally incapable of putting the book down, because things are happening like crazy and they're almost at the end and they don't know what's going to happen next and they cannot stop themselves.  No need to draw this out: if you set up things well enough in Investment, then it's just a matter of things falling where you need them to here.

12. Resolution: 2%
Finish up, sew up the remaining issues, throw a little tease for book 2, and get out with your reader wanting more.  No need to overstay your welcome.

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*- Like the ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop, for example.  There won't be one in 2013, but you could start planning to attend the 2014 one now, if you want.
**- Yeah, because that's what "Collapse" means...

Writing is Very Funny Business

I have to confess something: I'm not big into April Fools' Day.  Mostly because the "jokes" and "pranks" tend to be rather obvious.  I do have a certain fondness to ones where a certain degree of craft gets put into it, though.  For example, John Scalzi's "Shadow War of the Night Dragons" is a pretty brilliant bit of satire.  I mean, yes, it's a joke, but it's well written and the cover art is nigh-perfect.

But it seems most April Fool's Jokes boil down to, "I'm telling you something that's blatantly untrue.  Ha ha got you."  Bleh.

So, anyway, I'm not a "funny" writer.  That doesn't mean what I write isn't funny.  It often can be.  But I don't write it to be funny.  Because if I actually tried to write comedy, I'd probably fail spectacularly. 

Actually, I know I'd fail spectacularly, since I did try and do that in college, writing sketches for the talent show that were not particularly funny.  Except perhaps to me.  Or to the people who knew that I was blatantly attempting to rip off Monty Python.  Actually, it probably was not funny to those people.  But that's what you do in high school writing, right?  Take whatever your influences are, barely file off the serial numbers, and do a blatant copy of the style.  Also back in high school, I attempted to write a comedy/sci-fi romp, and it was exactly what you'd expect it to be: a poor copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

That said, several short plays I have written have turned out pretty funny.  Which is strange, given that funny wasn't the goal at all.  Sometimes they became funny in the process of production. 

In my novels, I'm not going for comedy at all.  However, there will always be moments of comic relief.  Holver Alley Crew, for example, has a jokey banter between Asti and Verci throughout.  But, again, I'm not writing jokes.  Something about that seems destined to fail.

As an example, I've always been a big fan of Babylon 5.  However, the comic relief bits never really worked for me.  Always felt off, like it was trying to hard.  However, I have a strange fondness for the appearance of Rebo & Zooty in the season five episode "Day of the Dead".  Not because they're funny-- because they aren't-- but because their humor is presented as utterly subjective and of-its-moment.  It's not funny, but most people on Babylon 5 are laughing at it... except Capt. Lochley, who, like us, just doesn't get it.  And there's something interesting in that.

All right, enough of this.  Off to the word mines.  I have self-imposed deadlines to meet.

The Long Journey of the Writer

My thirties are coming to a close, officially this Sunday.  So, needless to say, I'm getting a little introspective.  But when I think about what my thirties were to me, in the big picture, it was about the process of becoming a novelist.

I mean, I had been writing before that, of course.  In my twenties I had written a few plays, and made several false starts on novels, done a lot of worldbuilding work... but it was all still just dabbling.

So, we come to 2003.  Oddly enough, what flipped the switch in 2003 was NaNoWriMo.  Now, as I've said before, NaNoWriMo is a great way to learn how to write a novel, but it's not a good way to get a novel written.  NaNoWriMo, is, in essence, your Trunk Novel Workshop.  And for me, in 2003, it was Fifty Year War.  Of course, I didn't realize that at the time.  One never realizes they're writing a trunk novel when they're writing it. 

I "finished" Fifty Year War by the end of 2003, if you can call a 57,000 word plotless meander with no protagonist a finished novel.  I kept working on drafts of it, trying to send it out, somewhat clueless to its pointlessness.  Then in 2004 I tried another novel- a non-genre one called Long Night of the Pieman.  This didn't really come together at all. 

In 2005 I tried my first (failed) attempt at USS Banshee, which was a mess.  Mostly because this attempt to write it was semi-public, in that I was posting 3-5K chunks online every week, like it was a serial.  While that worked nicely on a motivational level, it again was a failure in terms of actually writing something good.  Over the years, I've kept coming back to that space-opera verse, trying to find the story... and I think I finally have.  But, along the way, everything except the main character and, tangentially, the name of the ship has been scuttled.  It's a completely different story than the first one I was doing.  And that's good, because again: plotless meander.

Also in 2005 I took my first shot at Crown of Druthal, which was, I was convinced at the time, going to be the Real Deal.    I even took the fist chapter of Crown to the ArmadilloCon Writers Workshop, my first time attending it.  It was shredded.  At the time, I was all, "What do these people know?", thinking they were fools.  In retrospect, they were right on the money, but I wasn't in a place to hear that at the time.

2006 didn't see much progress in any of these projects-- all of them, as well as a few other vague ideas, didn't ever coalesce into anything.  Frankly, it was a terrible year for me as a writer.  Nothing was coming together.  Not coincidentally, my day job at the time utterly depressed me, and my health and weight were probably at the worst in my life.

In 2007, I turned that around: I left that job, dropped 35 pounds, and put my nose to the grindstone, finishing the draft of Crown.  I also came up with the initial ideas that would evolve into Thorn of Dentonhill, Holver Alley Crew, Maradaine Constabulary and Way of the Shield. 

In 2008, I worked on a new draft of Crown, and started attending SlugTribe meetings, bringing chapters of Crown with me.  I also wrote the first draft of Thorn, the first chapter of which I brought to ArmadilloCon.  This was the year when things started coming together.

In '09, I rewrote Thorn and wrote the first draft of Holver Alley.  I also started shopping Thorn to agents.  Now, one thing to note: this draft of Thorn was 70,000 words long.  I didn't think this was a problem, though most of my queries were getting form rejected or ignored.

But then there was one, at the end of the year-- an agent who said, in essence: I love this, but I can't sell it at this length.  Rewrite it to 90K and get back to me.

So 2010 was, in no small part, about adding 20,000 words to a novel that was already pretty tight, as well as cleaning up Holver Alley to a respectable draft.  I also wrote My Name Is Avenger Girl, which I sold to Paige Ewing's The Protectors, as well as selling my piece to the Hint Fiction anthology.  I also started the rough draft of Maradaine Constabulary.

In 2011, that same agent who advised me on Thorn loved the re-write, and agreed to represent me.  I then sent him Holver Alley as well, while getting the rough draft of Constabulary finished. I also started being on the Teacher's side of the ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop.

Bringing us to last year.  Finished Constabulary and send it to the agent.  Started the rough draft of Way of the Shield.  Did another round of re-writes on Thorn, Holver Alley and Constabulary by my agent's request, which also helped me strengthen the worldbuilding ties between them all.  Wrote and sold Jump the Black to Rayguns Over Texas.  OK, technically, the Rayguns sale came in on January 1st.  Making a great start to 2013.

So where will 2013-- and with it my forties-- take me?  With three novels out there shopping, and a fourth one (and fifth, really) in process... I hopeful that this year will be a Big Year for me as a writer. 

Cross your fingers.