Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

The Process (Part 1)

Aug 6th, 10 / Comments Off

There was a time when the very first step of any writing process of mine was to open up the word processor and just start with page one. This is a good way to start for some people. I certainly liked the immediacy of it. It’s hugely rewarding to turn a blank page into one with writing on it very quickly. However, for me at least, repetition of this leads to a very large number of very small word files with the first pages of unfinished work.

For something short, this works great, but anything of any length, I need an outline.

So now step one on when an idea comes bounding into my head like a prancing buck, is to open up a wiki on the subject. This isn’t a public wiki, like the one for the Sam Young Chronicles, but essentially just a big note book for me me to scribble stuff out on. In the past, I would’ve gone to a service like wikispaces for something like this. Lately, in accordance with Google’s slow progression in taking over my life, I go to Google Sites.

At this point, the process is simple: I copy over a template wiki I’ve built previously, one with some basic page categories*, and start world building. If I’m working within a universe that I’ve already built out, this isn’t such a big step. Currently I’m working on a fresh world, so I’ve got a blank slate.

After an afternoon of page creation I’ve got maybe two dozen blank pages, placeholders as a reminder to fill in details later, and less then half a dozen with rough character or idea treatments. Articles at this stage aren’t of the same quality you might see in a public wiki, meant to inform someone fresh about a subject. Instead, there is just enough of a framework for me to come back later and remember what exactly I had in mind.

Step two might vary. If I feel like I have a good handle on the ‘voice’ of the work, I’ll move straight into outlining the plot. If not, I’ll put a couple of pages down to nail out how the narrator sounds in my head. The tone of the work will depend a lot on this. A more involved or whimsical narrator will effect how far I go in the plot, and decisions like first person versus third person and who are out POV characters, can emerge here.

Very soon though, I reach the brick wall of needing an outline. This is the case now, of course, so I’m off to work and we’ll meet again in Part 2.

* Characters, Concepts, Organizations, etc.

Writing

Mistborn

Jun 2nd, 10 / Comments Off

I just finished the Misborn series by Brandon Sanderson. It had been on my reading list for a little while now, as I always enjoy Brandon’s ideas and comments on the Writing Excuses podcast. But it was my best friend reading them and giving me the “you HAVE to read this now now now now now” act that got me to bump them to the top of my list. He was right.

Sanderson’s writing is great. Not the actual language of it, of course. If there is poetry in the words, they didn’t translate in to the reading on the audiobook*. If I recall, there was at least once or twice where some word choice drew an actual grown from me.** I’ve written far worse, of course, and the point is not to read Sanderson’s text for liquid prose. You read it because Sanderson is smart and because he’s thought the content out so thoroughly.

I ended the first book thinking that his world was pretty cool and the plot was fun, but that the most impressive idea he’d included was the magical system described. Allomancy is a very concrete system, just this side of a fictional science as compared to the soft magical systems in other fantasy. It’s a really good idea, and seeing how Sanderson has constructed it has made me rethink how I approach magic in my own works.

By the end of the third book, though, the intricately detailed magical systems are probably the least interesting thing going on in the story. All that stuff you thought was just fluff from the first half of the trilogy? It’s basically all a series of Chekhovs guns***. As I’m not fearful of spoilers, I had some idea of what was going to happen at the end of the series and Sanderson was building little things into big things for the entire series, something few series writer’s match. I am impressed.

I’ve read quite a lot of the annotations for the books and it’s useful. I wish more authors would post this sort of commentary on their work, as it lets you see a lot of the thought process behind the finished work. That is very useful for someone trying to learn from it.

*My preferred way to ingest books these days.
** A particular use of two forms of the word distance in the same sentence comes to mind.
*** Chekhov’s armory, if you will.

Commentary

This used to have a pretentious title.

Mar 18th, 09 / Comments Off

“I think that’s enough work for today.” I called across the cube farm to the one other soul left, my overly dedicated boss. He gave me a dismissing wave. It was one of those hot end of the week afternoons, and most of the company had cut out hours ago. I finally followed suit, tossing the last of my papers into a backpack with my sweats and slinging it on my shoulder.

Stepping out into the fading heat of downtown on the edge of night, I found my feet drawn off opposite from my way home. Presently, I was standing before the cheery rosewood door of the only bar in town that felt like home to me. Having moved down here to these sunny coastal climes years ago, I, like all cold weather ex-patriots from the forbidding north, gravitated to this special place.

I’d have gone in for few drinks and some cheery rabble in accents that reminded me of my youth, but alas, after my walk across the bay I would drive the rest of my way home thus intoxicants where off limits for now.

Then, a plan occurred, I slipped in and secured from the barkeep a half dozen bottles of good cider, something that in this whole state you could only find here. I stuffed them into my backpack nestled them in my gym towel. Properly equipped for a Friday evening, I hoisted my pack, with it’s new and lovely cold clink, and headed to down through the park to the foot bridge across the mouth of the bay.

I may have my bouts of homesickeness, but this truly is a remarkable place. Where else in the world would a city planner have the brilliance and foresight to relegate all the noisy vehicular traffic away underground and construct a majestic bridge for feet and bikes alone? Every time I walk out from beneath a canopy of perpetually leafy trees and see the silvery white steel of the bridge, stretching out across the water to the more residential half of the bay, I feel happy. Today, with the red sun low in the sky, a wet salty wind coming off the ocean, and a little bit of home making soft tinkling sounds behind me, was especially good. I walked right along the railing; not my usual businesslike lope, meant to eat the miles quickly but, instead sauntering, with no where else to be but here.

Midway along, where the massive central spire stabs into the mottled multicolored sky, I saw a familiar flash of white-blond hair, made to glow golden red in the light of the evening sun and leaning against the railing as if to look out at the sunset. My heart leaped a little. I called out a name and was rewarded with a swirl of her hair about a head turning in recognition. I closed the distance.

“Hey you.” I said, a huge stupid grin across my face.
“Hey yourself.” She grinned like a Cheshire cat. “I didn’t know you came home this way.”
“Every day. I leave my car in a lot on the south shore just so I can walk this bit.”
“Wow. I would walk home more often if I’d known that.” I could feel my face stretching out a bit to accommodate an even wider smile.
“Would you like a ride?” I asked. “It wouldn’t be any trouble.”
“Absolutely.”

We set off together, walking so close that our bare arms would brush and the air between us could crackle with unsaid words and brief sideways glances. I was enormously happy, about to float up off the ground and just glide along beside her. But after only a hundred yards or so, she stopped abruptly, brow wrinkled in concentration. Her change in speed was so sudden that I had gone several paces before turning to see her, and for a moment she was a perfect tableaux: long pale hair set aflame in the evening light, dark eyes boring into me with an inquisitivenss, light cotton dress pressed tight against her body in the steady ocean wind.

“What is that sound? It’s coming from your backpack.” She coiled like a cat an lunged at me and after a brief struggle she pulled my pack from me and pulled it open. She held up a bottle of my nostalgic booty “Oh my god, I haven’t had cider in years. Do you mind?” She indicated the bottle in her hand, and without waiting for a response she twisted off the cap and tilted it back into her mouth, taking a massive swig.

I stepped up to her, the smell of apples, alcohol and her overtaking all else. “I don’t mind, as long as you’re sharing too.” And then I kissed her, with the sharp sweet taste still there. She dropped the bottle in surprise before pressing back into me, and it fell over the railing to the water, a small price to pay for a first kiss.

Writing

Apparently, I write like a girl.

Apr 20th, 07 / 4 Comments

The Gender Genie says so. I plugged in all of my stuff for Whilst the Wolf (what was I thinking with that title?), large sections of my blog, and even text for Wolfspider (which is soooo male orientated that it hurts a little). I came up as female 9 of 10 times, though the score is often close. I think the methodology is dubious as is the whole assumption that men and women use language differently, especially in the context of fiction or technical writing.

It does bring up an interesting point about how we view a work based on our perception of the creator of that work. My mother has a story about surreptitiously listening to some gallery goers talking about a piece of hers. “That is so sexist,” one said, “that artist should be ashamed of himself!” I’m not sure my own nome de plume could be mistaken so easily. I do know that whom I think the author is colors my perception of the work, but is that appropriate?

Many people would propose that a work should be experienced of evaluated based on the work alone, but one of the few things I’ve learned about art history is that I personally connect better with a piece when I feel I can place it context, or hang it on a framework of other knowledge. Jacques-Louis David’s work is meaningless to me without knowledge of David’s life and times. I feel that I can’t evaluate a piece of ‘art’ without context.

It is important to know, for example, that Mary Shelly was the child bride of one of England’s premier poets of the day and that she was the daughter of an English feminist who died in childbirth. It’s important to know that the early nineteenth century saw the eruption of new sciences and technology into the popular sphere, and that this frightened people. Shelly wrote Frankenstein at the same decade that the Luddites where rising up and smashing the machines that were putting them out of work.

As an author, I do not feel that I write myself, but I don’t think anything I write can be properly understood without knowing who I am and why I wrote it. The danger, of course, is that the knowledge of who created it and the surroundings of its creation might alter the reader’s perception of the work away from the author’s intention. Many would suppose that a man is incapable of writing a truly gender neutral novel, that it will always snake the arm of patriarchal influence into the text. There is a balance to be struck between understanding the world around a work of creative output and understanding the creative output on its own.

Personal

Stranded

Mar 20th, 06 / Comments Off

He stared at his hand. The back of his knuckles glinted in the pale like of the stars, there was a dried substance there. What was it?Saliva? Mucus? Vomit? He could not remember anymore. He fantasized that it was ice crystallizing on his skin. It was certainly cold enough in here for that,but it probably wasn’t true. He was actually this side of comfortably warm in his powered suit, for now.

The light of the stars filtered in past the frosty windows.Nothing big enough to close enough to reflect any real light meant that he should have been able to see the whole of the Milky Way from here, but the condensation kept forming on the panes and starting to freeze.

He checked the transmitter; still going. He reached out and turned the knob up on the internal speaker. His own voice rose in the cabin.”…calling all ships. Mayday. We have lost engine power and are running on batteries. Systems failing. Please assist. Transponder beacon channeled forty hertz above this signal. Repeat:” There was a very tiny but audible click as the electronics flipped back the beginning of the message. “This is the survey ship Coldridgecalling all ships. Mayday…”

He turned down the speakers. “We” was a misnomer now; it has been for a few hours. He didn’t want to change the message though, as it would drain further power from the ship’s ailing batteries. Besides, “we” made it sound like there was a whole lot of compelling reasons to save the ship, and not just him sitting here alone.

He was pretty hungry but didn’t want to eat. Those chemical heaters built into the food packages would be mighty welcome when his suit’s power ran out. The cold was the big enemy right now.

He had a huge ship filled with perfectly good air, and nobody but he was breathing it now. It would last him for weeks.

He floated over to the communications panel and wedged himself into a seat, folding some straps over himself to tether him while he slept.

He seeped precious heat out into the cold of the ship and the ship seeped it out into the void.

Writing