This week's work on Banshee brought me to an interesting point, somewhat unintentionally. In brief, my main character, Lt. Samantha Kengle, was injured on a mission (a nasty creature managed to bite her on the neck). She loses consciousness, and when she comes to, she's being treated.
Initially I wrote that she would wake up with her uniform coat off and one of the aliens pressing her hand to Kengle's bare chest. (Said alien can essentially function as a living diagnostic scanner).
But then it hit me about the unintended implications behind that. Sure, it's medical, but the point is my one female human character gets stripped down while unconscious, and wakes up being groped. Sure, groped in a medical fashion by a female fish-alien, but still. I had put in a layer of sexual vulnerability that I had never intended, and it rested largely on the word "chest".
I re-thought the scene. I needed the alien to be able to get at bare flesh and the injury, but keep it professional. Leave no doubt, no subtext, that what was happening was anything other than medical treatment.
So I changed "chest" to "clavicle". Made no difference in terms of the text of what was happening, but pulled away the subtext I wanted to avoid.
I'm not going to get all, "words are important, words have power", because I'm sure you all know that. But word choice is crucial, and sometimes we make strange choices-- subbing in a not-entirely accurate synonym to avoid repetition, going for an uncommon word to avoid a common one. And sometimes the words we choose have unintended consequences.
Fortunately, this time, I think I sidestepped it. But there may be other ones that I'll fall into.
Back to the word mines for now...
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
A Rare Moment of Blatant Plugging: Give the Gift of Texas this Christmas
What are you giving your Science Fiction reading friends and family for Christmas this year? Consider the merits of giving Rayguns Over Texas, a compilation of science-fiction short stories entirely by Texas writers.
It's quite an impressive line-up of writers and stories, if I do say so myself.
- “Pet Rock” by Sanford Allen
- “Defenders of Beeman County” by Aaron Allston
- “TimeOut” by Neal Barret, Jr.
- “Babylon Moon” by Matthew Bey
- “Sovereign Wealth” by Chris N. Brown
- “La Bamba Boulevard” by Bradley Denton
- “The Atmosphere Man” by Nicky Drayden
- “Operators Are Standing By” by Rhonda Eudaly
- “Take a Left at the Cretaceous” by Mark Finn
- “Grey Goo and You” by Derek Austin Johnson
- “Rex” by Joe R. Lansdale
- “Texas Died for Somebody’s Sins But Not Mine” by Stina Leicht
- “Jump the Black” by Marshall Ryan Maresca
- “An Afternoon’s Nap, or; Five Hundred Years Ahead” by Aurelia Hadley Mohl
- “The Nostalgia Differential” by Michael Moorcock
- “Novel Properties of Certain Complex Alkaloids” by Lawrence Person
- “The Chambered Eye” by Jessica Reisman
- “Avoiding the Cold War” by Josh Rountree
- “The Art of Absence” by Don Webb
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Perils of the Writer: Hooks and Investment
Let's talk for a moment about Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, possibly the biggest disappointment of the current season of television. And it was the biggest disappointment because the expectations were set high: take the biggest hit of big screen of 2012, a movie which successfully integrated the worlds of multiple movies to create a mega-star movie, and have the acclaimed and beloved writer/director of that movie helm a new show to explore the deeper nooks and crannies of the greater Marvel cinematic universe that a movie couldn't take the screen time to do.
How could it fail?
If I may be so bold, I'd suggest that it failed with its hooks. Namely, it treats its characters as its biggest hooks, when those characters are not hooking the audience at all. And it feels like it considers it's big hook-- its setting-- as more of an albatross than advantage. One of the executive producers was even quoted saying something like, "You shouldn't be looking for easter eggs".
Now half a season in, its somewhat clear that what we are seeing is not the "growing pains" of a genre show finding its feet. Rather, we're seeing the very show the creators want to do: in essence, a brighter, less skeptical* X-Files.
And that isn't hooking.
Now that's always the challenge a writer faces: that the characters that you love, these hooks that fascinate you... well, that it's just you. No one else is going to invest in it like you do.
And this is especially true with genre writers. We spent hours upon hours drawing maps and hashing out centuries of history. We are deeply, deeply invested in our work, even if the quality of the work itself doesn't match the passion behind it. I can't tell you how many manuscripts I've read for critiquing purposes that, while the writing didn't hold up, the love was practically pouring off the page.
I didn't get into the story, but I knew that the writer was utterly in love with it.
And, frankly, the craft can be improved, if the love is there.
---
*- By "less skeptical", I mean when they're investigating hovering bodies or apparent telekinesis, they approach it as you would in a world where superheroes beat off an alien invasion in downtown New York: as the sort of thing you have to accept happens now.
How could it fail?
If I may be so bold, I'd suggest that it failed with its hooks. Namely, it treats its characters as its biggest hooks, when those characters are not hooking the audience at all. And it feels like it considers it's big hook-- its setting-- as more of an albatross than advantage. One of the executive producers was even quoted saying something like, "You shouldn't be looking for easter eggs".
Now half a season in, its somewhat clear that what we are seeing is not the "growing pains" of a genre show finding its feet. Rather, we're seeing the very show the creators want to do: in essence, a brighter, less skeptical* X-Files.
And that isn't hooking.
Now that's always the challenge a writer faces: that the characters that you love, these hooks that fascinate you... well, that it's just you. No one else is going to invest in it like you do.
And this is especially true with genre writers. We spent hours upon hours drawing maps and hashing out centuries of history. We are deeply, deeply invested in our work, even if the quality of the work itself doesn't match the passion behind it. I can't tell you how many manuscripts I've read for critiquing purposes that, while the writing didn't hold up, the love was practically pouring off the page.
I didn't get into the story, but I knew that the writer was utterly in love with it.
And, frankly, the craft can be improved, if the love is there.
---
*- By "less skeptical", I mean when they're investigating hovering bodies or apparent telekinesis, they approach it as you would in a world where superheroes beat off an alien invasion in downtown New York: as the sort of thing you have to accept happens now.
Monday, December 2, 2013
Perils of the Writer: Disasters Big and Small
Little things can throw kinks in your day. A speeding ticket throws you ten minutes behind (and a minor headache to deal with). Ten minutes behind means you're now in the worst thicket of traffic that you had hoped to avoid, making that ten minute drive to your destination take twenty-five. Being late means you have to play catch-up, forcing you to miss lunch. The drop in blood sugar makes you slower, leaving you a pile of work that you have to take home that night. That takes up your whole evening, and what time is left for you to squeeze some writing in?
None.
Unless you sacrifice your sleep, and thus oversleep in the morning, come in to work late again, etc. etc.
And what happens when you have a real disaster?
Be it a minor, personal disaster (a grease fire in the kitchen, a fallen tree through the bedroom window, a leak in the bathroom necessitating ripping open the walls) or one's own story within a greater disaster (a flood or tornado tearing through one's home)-- disasters change our expectations of how the rest of our day, week, month, even life are going to go.
And while it's incredibly inconvenient, it's also the underlying source behind great drama in writing.
First off, the thing that comes to mind is the immediate, quick decisions that need to be made in the face of disasters. How we (or our characters) react when disaster strikes define us.
But once a disaster has hit, and the immediate repercussions have been felt, what next? For me, the thing I always start thinking about is the small details. For a personal example, the thing that sticks with to me (in the case of the bathroom one, which happened to us a few years ago) was less the big work of having to have the bathroom remodeled, but the steps we took to minimize dust from the remodel from covering the rest of the house, and cleaning off the bits and pieces of personal items that did get covered.
Stuff like that sticks with you-- sometimes literally, as you find something that got missed weeks later-- and as I work on Banshee, a story that is quite populated with disasters, and how each character deals with the big and small of the disasters that befall them.
Time to jump into the wordmines. See you when I get out.
None.
Unless you sacrifice your sleep, and thus oversleep in the morning, come in to work late again, etc. etc.
And what happens when you have a real disaster?
Be it a minor, personal disaster (a grease fire in the kitchen, a fallen tree through the bedroom window, a leak in the bathroom necessitating ripping open the walls) or one's own story within a greater disaster (a flood or tornado tearing through one's home)-- disasters change our expectations of how the rest of our day, week, month, even life are going to go.
And while it's incredibly inconvenient, it's also the underlying source behind great drama in writing.
First off, the thing that comes to mind is the immediate, quick decisions that need to be made in the face of disasters. How we (or our characters) react when disaster strikes define us.
But once a disaster has hit, and the immediate repercussions have been felt, what next? For me, the thing I always start thinking about is the small details. For a personal example, the thing that sticks with to me (in the case of the bathroom one, which happened to us a few years ago) was less the big work of having to have the bathroom remodeled, but the steps we took to minimize dust from the remodel from covering the rest of the house, and cleaning off the bits and pieces of personal items that did get covered.
Stuff like that sticks with you-- sometimes literally, as you find something that got missed weeks later-- and as I work on Banshee, a story that is quite populated with disasters, and how each character deals with the big and small of the disasters that befall them.
Time to jump into the wordmines. See you when I get out.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Worldbuilding: Rituals for the Dead
I've gone over this before, but it bears repeating: cultures have rituals to mark almost every important occasion: marking adulthood or marriage, for example. Or, it the case of the Minbari of Babylon 5, every single thing possible.
And then, of course, there are the rituals of death.
I've been thinking about this as something of a necessity for Banshee. Without going into spoilers, various aliens die, and treating their bodies in a respectful manner for their cultures is important to the survivors.
In coming up with rituals for the dead, be they for secondary-world human cultures, demi-human cultures, or alien cultures, you need to consider the purpose they serve. On some level, you should address three elements of purpose.
Practical: The body itself must be dealt with. Preserved, interred, cremated, otherwise kept from rotting on the floor. It can be as simple as burial, as complicated as mummification, or somewhere in between.
Spiritual: On some level, the ritual should consider the intangible element of the deceased, matching the faith of the culture. Does the lack of a proper burial mean the dead's spirit wanders the Earth, unable to reach the afterlife?
Emotional: Ultimately, rituals of the dead are for the bereaved. They are how grief is processed, either publicly or privately.
Ideally, your rituals address all three elements, or even better, integrate them into a unique whole.
Consider, for example, the mummification rituals for the kings of ancient Egypt. The actual mummification itself preserved the body, and it was interred in a tomb, designed for the purpose of giving the king everything he would need for the afterlife, allowing the people to process the death of a person they worshiped as a god, knowing that his time on earth was only part of his journey.
This is a pretty heavy-duty one, though. You might want to come up with something simpler for the average person.
How do your cultures deal with their dead?
And then, of course, there are the rituals of death.
I've been thinking about this as something of a necessity for Banshee. Without going into spoilers, various aliens die, and treating their bodies in a respectful manner for their cultures is important to the survivors.
In coming up with rituals for the dead, be they for secondary-world human cultures, demi-human cultures, or alien cultures, you need to consider the purpose they serve. On some level, you should address three elements of purpose.
Practical: The body itself must be dealt with. Preserved, interred, cremated, otherwise kept from rotting on the floor. It can be as simple as burial, as complicated as mummification, or somewhere in between.
Spiritual: On some level, the ritual should consider the intangible element of the deceased, matching the faith of the culture. Does the lack of a proper burial mean the dead's spirit wanders the Earth, unable to reach the afterlife?
Emotional: Ultimately, rituals of the dead are for the bereaved. They are how grief is processed, either publicly or privately.
Ideally, your rituals address all three elements, or even better, integrate them into a unique whole.
Consider, for example, the mummification rituals for the kings of ancient Egypt. The actual mummification itself preserved the body, and it was interred in a tomb, designed for the purpose of giving the king everything he would need for the afterlife, allowing the people to process the death of a person they worshiped as a god, knowing that his time on earth was only part of his journey.
This is a pretty heavy-duty one, though. You might want to come up with something simpler for the average person.
How do your cultures deal with their dead?
Monday, November 25, 2013
Perils of the Writer: NaNo No No No
Right now, on November 25th, the rough draft of Banshee stands at 54,932 words.
If I were doing NaNoWriMo, that would be pretty impressive.
But I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, and I started writing this book in earnest in September. I've been writing at a steady pace that, while hardly breakneck, has been working for me. And it's the fastest I've written a rough draft, with the exception of the one year I did successfully did NaNo.
And that novel is an unreadable mess. Even with a post-NaNo re-write.
This novel? It's a rough draft that will need a strong editing hand when its done. But I feel like I'm laying a solid foundation of character and plot to make that editorial work far more rewarding than I could ever have done with that NaNo project.
Part of that is because I'm a stronger and far more seasoned writer than I was when I did that. That NaNo project was part of the process of learning how to write a novel, and I think it is a fantastic way to do that. When it comes to those Big Question sort of things about "Can I write a novel?" "How do I write a novel?" "Am I really a plotter or a pantser?", then an exercise like NaNo is a great way to test yourself. An old friend of mine recently ran a 5K, more or less to see if he could, to figure out what his currently fitness level is. NaNo is the same sort of thing.
Plus there is the emphasis on "winning" and "losing", and keeping that pace. I know personally, nothing is more discouraging to my writing than failing self-imposed deadlines. More specifically, when falling behind makes making said deadlines feel more and more impossible.
Now, this is different for everyone. If writing at a 1500-2000 words a day pace works for you, if you can manage it without your pulse hitting 180 and your lungs burning, go for it.
But it's not for me. Especially since having only one month as "novel writing month" doesn't work for me. Every month is novel writing month.
Which means its time to jump back into the word mines.
If I were doing NaNoWriMo, that would be pretty impressive.
But I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, and I started writing this book in earnest in September. I've been writing at a steady pace that, while hardly breakneck, has been working for me. And it's the fastest I've written a rough draft, with the exception of the one year I did successfully did NaNo.
And that novel is an unreadable mess. Even with a post-NaNo re-write.
This novel? It's a rough draft that will need a strong editing hand when its done. But I feel like I'm laying a solid foundation of character and plot to make that editorial work far more rewarding than I could ever have done with that NaNo project.
Part of that is because I'm a stronger and far more seasoned writer than I was when I did that. That NaNo project was part of the process of learning how to write a novel, and I think it is a fantastic way to do that. When it comes to those Big Question sort of things about "Can I write a novel?" "How do I write a novel?" "Am I really a plotter or a pantser?", then an exercise like NaNo is a great way to test yourself. An old friend of mine recently ran a 5K, more or less to see if he could, to figure out what his currently fitness level is. NaNo is the same sort of thing.
Plus there is the emphasis on "winning" and "losing", and keeping that pace. I know personally, nothing is more discouraging to my writing than failing self-imposed deadlines. More specifically, when falling behind makes making said deadlines feel more and more impossible.
Now, this is different for everyone. If writing at a 1500-2000 words a day pace works for you, if you can manage it without your pulse hitting 180 and your lungs burning, go for it.
But it's not for me. Especially since having only one month as "novel writing month" doesn't work for me. Every month is novel writing month.
Which means its time to jump back into the word mines.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Worldbuilding: Origins of Herbs and Spices
Food is a crucial part of worldbuilding. This is a point you can be certain that I will keep coming back to. And all foodstuffs, while helping define a culture, has a point of origin. You shouldn't just throw in a few herbs and spices at random and say, "There! Food as worldbuilding. Done." You should think about where these foods have their origins, and apply that sort of thinking to your own world.
Now, that doesn't mean you need to give pure one-to-one correlation. Vanilla has its origins in the Americas, as do peppers and potatoes... but don't feel like you need to create a psuedo-Americas where all three come from if you want all in your world. But you should make deliberate choices, and you should be aware of the real-world origins of foods.
And, of course, cultures can import and fully adopt herbs and spices from other areas, and that's a crucial element of worldbuilding. Cultures do not exist in a vacuum; they bleed into each other. By making the herb or spice originating from one region of the world a critical element of the cuisine of another region, you've already told a lot about that culture.
So, in the interest of "I'll make your research a little easier", here's a quick list-- but hardly exhaustive-- of various herbs and spices and their areas of origin. Hope you find it helpful.
Herbs
Basil – India / Southeast Asia
Bay Laurel - Mediterranean
Chervil – Eastern Europe
Coriander/Cilantro – Southern Europe/Northern Africa
Dill – Europe
Epazote – Mexico / Central America / South America
Fennel – Meditteranean
Garlic – Central Asia
Lavender – Western Europe
Mint - Mediterranean / Western Asia
Marjoram – Cypress/ Southern Turkey
Oregano – Western Europe / Mediterranean
Parsley – Mediterranean
Rosemary – Mediterranean
Saffron - Mediterranean / Western Asia
Sage - Mediterranean
Savory – Western Europe
Sumac – North America & Africa
Tarragon – Europe & Asia
Thyme - Mediterranean / Western Asia
Wasabi – Japan
Watercress – Europe / Asia
Spices
Achiote / Annatto - South America
Allspice – Southern Mexico / Central America / Greater Antilles
Anise – Eastern Mediterranean / Western Asia
Cardamom – India/Nepal/Bhutan
Caraway – Western Asia / Northern Africa
Chili – Americas
Cinnamon – Southeast Asia
Clove – Indonesia
Cumin – Mediterranean / Western Asia /India
Fenugreek – Persia / India
Filé – Eastern North America
Ginger – South Asia
Horseradish – Southeastern Europe
Juniper – Mediterranean
Mace / Nutmeg – Indonesia
Mustard - Mediterranean / Western Asia
Paprika – Americas
Pepper – India
Tumeric – India
Vanilla – Mexico/Central America
Now, that doesn't mean you need to give pure one-to-one correlation. Vanilla has its origins in the Americas, as do peppers and potatoes... but don't feel like you need to create a psuedo-Americas where all three come from if you want all in your world. But you should make deliberate choices, and you should be aware of the real-world origins of foods.
And, of course, cultures can import and fully adopt herbs and spices from other areas, and that's a crucial element of worldbuilding. Cultures do not exist in a vacuum; they bleed into each other. By making the herb or spice originating from one region of the world a critical element of the cuisine of another region, you've already told a lot about that culture.
So, in the interest of "I'll make your research a little easier", here's a quick list-- but hardly exhaustive-- of various herbs and spices and their areas of origin. Hope you find it helpful.
Herbs
Basil – India / Southeast Asia
Bay Laurel - Mediterranean
Chervil – Eastern Europe
Coriander/Cilantro – Southern Europe/Northern Africa
Dill – Europe
Epazote – Mexico / Central America / South America
Fennel – Meditteranean
Garlic – Central Asia
Lavender – Western Europe
Mint - Mediterranean / Western Asia
Marjoram – Cypress/ Southern Turkey
Oregano – Western Europe / Mediterranean
Parsley – Mediterranean
Rosemary – Mediterranean
Saffron - Mediterranean / Western Asia
Sage - Mediterranean
Savory – Western Europe
Sumac – North America & Africa
Tarragon – Europe & Asia
Thyme - Mediterranean / Western Asia
Wasabi – Japan
Watercress – Europe / Asia
Spices
Achiote / Annatto - South America
Allspice – Southern Mexico / Central America / Greater Antilles
Anise – Eastern Mediterranean / Western Asia
Cardamom – India/Nepal/Bhutan
Caraway – Western Asia / Northern Africa
Chili – Americas
Cinnamon – Southeast Asia
Clove – Indonesia
Cumin – Mediterranean / Western Asia /India
Fenugreek – Persia / India
Filé – Eastern North America
Ginger – South Asia
Horseradish – Southeastern Europe
Juniper – Mediterranean
Mace / Nutmeg – Indonesia
Mustard - Mediterranean / Western Asia
Paprika – Americas
Pepper – India
Tumeric – India
Vanilla – Mexico/Central America
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