Burning midnight oil. Working on the weekends. Generally busting my ass. And none of it while working on Cold Streets. It’s been all about the dayjob.
On one level, I don’t mind so much. I’ve been there a year, and it remains a vital and worthwhile place to work. I have fantastic co-workers, a good and supportive boss, great pay and benefits, and work that’s up my alley as a developer. I’m problem-solving every bit as much as I’m tweaking and doing back-and-forth with a project manager or a client. It’s a pretty solid gig.
On the other hand, I know I’m behind in meeting my writing goals. I wanted to finish Cold Streets by the end of this year, and to do that I now have to really kick into a higher gear. I think part of the reason I’ve been held up is a touch of reluctance towards approaching it, knowing that as the world within the story expands, the more supernatural elements will come into play, and I don’t want them to overwhelm the tight pacing and balanced character dynamics I strove to maintain in Cold Iron.
I just need to write through it, I think. Time is running out, and there’s still a story to tell. The increase in supernatural aspects comes with a raising of the stakes. Our heroes need to meet and interact with the new villain, and peripheral players from the first story need to be fleshed out. None of it is going to write itself, and the only way to write is to write.
So tonight & Sunday, writing is most assuredly happening. Saturday is a day off for Magic. Because Return to Ravnica is stupid amounts of fun.
By ‘good’ I don’t just mean extravagant malevolence. Ming the Merciless is a fun character, but he doesn’t have a lot of depth to him. Remember, villains are people too. They have backgrounds, motivations, allegiances, and secrets just like anybody else does. Leave that out of your story and you risk losing audience members to disbelief.
It’s one of the things I didn’t get quite right in Cold Iron. The ultimate villain did not get a great deal of time. His motivations are somewhat shallow and his villainy is, for the most part, superficial. Being a mystery on one level, I did try to keep the identity of the villain somewhat ambiguous, but the trade-off meant I couldn’t spend too much time expanding upon him. I don’t think the story necessarily suffers because of this, but it is a criticism I agree with.
Approaching Cold Streets, I knew a new villain would be appearing, and I am taking the time to draw him out as a character before he engages in truly villainous behavior. I think people need to understand his mindset and motivation in order for me to illustrate why he, and others like him, are dangerous. But I also want to ensure he’s fleshed out as a person. He has specific reasons for doing what he does, and his own way of approaching his challenges, things he will and will not do to get what he wants, and so on. He’s not solely motivated “for the evulz”… he’s a person, and I need to convey that.
I hope to get a bit further with the draft over the weekend, but I will have dayjob work to do so we’ll have to see how things shake out.
Breaking into any extant field can be a daunting prospect. The argument that there’s nothing new under the sun can be made when discussing fiction, film, commentary, web series, criticism, journalism, comic books, you name it. You might look at the shelves at a bookstore, the offerings on Steam, the content on YouTube, or the blog of an eminent Internet personality, and believe there’s no reason to follow through on your creative idea.
The problem with this belief is that it is provably false. Tolkien and Lewis have already written about fantastical worlds, but that has not stopped Martin, Jordan, or Hickman & Weis from doing the same. Asimov, Dick, and Heinlein were pretty much pioneers of long-form science fiction, but if you look on those same bookstore shelves, you’ll see names like Abnett, Stephenson, and Zahn. And as one of my favorite cybernetic characters once said, “The Net is vast and infinite.” There’s plenty of room to start up a new web show if you want to.
The way to be successful with it, in my humble opinion, is to do it differently than others do.
I don’t mean completely change the format or your approach to the subject matter strictly to be different from what’s already being done. That can quickly become gimmicky or trite, and you’ll lose more audience than you’ll gain. What I mean is, instead of copying a methodology or setting or theme wholesale, use it as a starting point and let your own idea grow out of it. The idea should continue to grow, as well, and become its own entity, rather than remaining completely tied to the original inspiration.
I think that was part of the problem with IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! – I wasn’t doing anything to grow or change the idea. I was, for the most part, going through the motions of trying to gain traction and an audience for a medium that, if I’m honest, I’m not sure I’m cut out for. I may be passionate about things like gaming and politics, but a lot of people are, and a lot of people are also not qualified to talk about them from the objective viewpoint of a professional journalist or critic. I think most people would agree that most if not all of my attempts at criticisms are amateur at best.
Does this make them invalid? No. Does this mean I’ll never criticize something again? Of course not.
What I’m getting at is this: I don’t do enough differently as a critic or journalist to justify asking people to pay me for it. From where I stand, my voice is not unique enough to stand out in the ever-growing universe of online critics, and while I could possibly cultivate it to make it stand out more, it would take away from my calling to write fiction, an area in which I do have unique ideas that are working and will get me paid.
I simply need to focus on what I’m good at. I’m better at telling stories than I am writing objective journalistic breakdowns of what’s wrong with this movie or that game or this aspect of our culture. I can do all of those things, sure, but it’s never going to be more than amateur dabbling and a little running off at the mouth from within my little isolated bubble in an obscure blog perched on a corner of the Internet. And I think I’m okay with that.
I do not want to prevent anyone else from going that route, though. So, if you do, if you really want to set up a platform and podium from which to get the word out on something you think is really wrong out there, by all means, have at it. Just find a way to do it different, do it better, do it right. Don’t just imitate, innovate. And don’t be afraid to pimp yourself. Remember, if you don’t work, you don’t eat.
There is something you may not know about the writing process.
The rules of writing have been discussed at length in various places around the Internet. But perhaps a semi-unwritten one is that you have to write as much as you can, as fast as you can, even when you don’t want to. Writing is, after all, a job, and none of us necessarily want to work every hour of every day. But if you want to finish your shit, you have to work at it, even when the notion is less than appealing.
That’s what I did yesterday. I felt a little stuck in Cold Streets. I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to resolve a scene. But I sat down, picked an option, and ran with it. 2810 words later I stood up and stretched. The dam had broken, and words were flowing again. I feel back on track, because I made myself write when it wasn’t appealing to me. That’s what you have to do when you’re a writer.
I may do some groundwork this weekend for one of the other projects. I’m still trying to decide which one, though. A lot of the preliminary stuff for Godslayer is already done considering the previous drafts, but there will be a lot of changes to come in that. The other project, the untitled sci-fi thing, is very nascent, with only a couple of short stories to work off of for now, but I feel there’s a great deal of potential and I’m going to want to explore it. Maybe just jot down some notes? We’ll see.
Either way I hope to continue to be productive over the weekend. I don’t want to lose this momentum.
I have an unabashed love for science fiction and fantasy. I grew up on Star Trek (the Next Generation, mostly), and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia was possibly the first full book series I read start to finish. The ability of a writer to completely transport an audience, be it one reader or a million viewers, to a completely alien landscape populated with outlandish characters is one of the reasons I became a writer myself. And yet, for all of my source material and inspiration in these fields, I struggle to write science fiction and fantasy.
My problem is, I believe, twofold. It deals with world-building and pacing. The world-building aspect is not one of building the worlds themselves, no; it’s trying to build the world while also telling a story. The world, no matter how expansive or intricate its design, is merely set dressing. It’s the backdrop against which the story takes place. And what is a story without characters?
Even if there are good characters, though, the pacing problem tends to arise. There’s a habit in some writing I’ve seen in these genres where the action or conversation will stop and description will take over. Tolkien and Martin spring to mind. They’re both writers I deeply respect, but man, they can go on sometimes. While some of Tolkien’s descriptions of landscapes lead to the breathtaking vistas we see in the Lord of the Rings films, and Martin’s in-depth cataloging of grand Westros meals can be mouth-watering, it sacrifices time with characters or plot advancement for the sake of world-building.
The thing to keep in mind, as far as I’m concerned, is that these characters who inhabit these worlds do so the same way we do ours. They coexist with wonders and strangeness the same way we do with things like airplanes and the Internet. Imagine if a writer broke up the action in a tense modern thriller or a detective yarn to describe the interior layout of a 747 in detail, or explained exactly how communication between one computer and another works. I personally don’t think that story would get very far.
While some description is inevitable, especially when it comes to these strange new worlds, I have come to understand that such descriptions should be used sparingly. A quick verbal sketch of something new and interesting may be required for context; I think the description should be made as concisely and quickly as possible. And I don’t believe that in-depth descriptions should ever be used anywhere near the opening of a story.
Consider the opening of Blade Runner. The scene in which Leon is tested could take place in any modern building. The only hint of sci-fi trappings is the device on the desk. It concerns itself first and foremost with character moments and building tension. Instead of showing off how awesome its effects are, the film paces itself, only revealing as much as it needs to in order to set scenes and move the story along. Jurassic Park is another fine example. It’s around 40 minutes before we even see our first dinosaur in full, but the build-up is done so adroitly that we are just as invested in the characters as we are in the spectacle, if not moreso. It’s something I’ll be keeping in mind as I get myself together for my next large project.
How do you feel about writing weird worlds? Would you like to see more description in such tales, or less? What good examples come to mind when discussing these stories?
