With the first draft of Citizen in the Wilds done, and gearing up to revise and post the first chapter in what is sure to be a twenty-part series of me getting my ass handed to me, I find myself thinking I’ve no reason to sit idle. I’ll probably start putting ideas on the cork-board for Alchemist at Sea, Citizen’s sequel, but I’d also like to drum up interest in my work.
Marc Schuster had a great suggestion. Since this blog is about writing, and places for people to write, I should be willing to look at periodicals that post fiction, and post about them in turn. It allows those of you who take the time to read these drips and drabs to find places to possibly feature your fiction, and it gives those periodicals free publicity. Win/win, right?
In contemplating these journal reviews, I found myself wondering what I’d shop around. I don’t want to just get something I’ve already written re-printed. Akuma seems to have been something of a success in David Rupp’s Blood from the Underground, and Polymancer Studios is holding onto the rights for Captain Pendragon.
But whatever happened to Lighthouse?
I’ve kicked around the idea of Morgan Everson, human stopgap between the world of the supernatural and the mortal population at large, being featured in short stories instead of a novel. I can drop all of the expository stuff about her and her dad, make the reveal of who and what characters are more gradual, and basically handle things more episodically. Constantine does it in comic books, The Dresden Files in novels (though Harry’s a magician and Morgan’s pretty much a Badass Normal) and, to an extent, True Blood in television. It’s something I still have an interest in doing, and I want to keep writing even as Citizen in the Wilds gets itself vivisected.
I really can’t start on a sequel until the first novel’s really finished, anyway. And who’s going to publish a raw first draft or a bunch of incoherent bloody bits? I’m not going to sit on my hands and wait for the criticisms to filter in, either. The only way to write is to write, after all.
You remember Return of the King, don’t you? How Frodo and Sam are laying there on Mount Doom when (SPOILER ALERT) the eagles, Tolkien’s favorite deus ex machina, sweep down from the sky and carry them away to safety, and after Frodo wakes up to have Merry and Pippin jump into bed with him, the screen fades to black only to fade in again? Remember how that happened a couple of times, leaving you feeling like the movie had three or four endings?
Those are epilogues. They’re portions of the story at the end that, to some, may seem vestigial. Could the aforementioned film have ended without these additional bits of story? Probably. Would it have been improved? Absolutely not. Lord of the Rings, in prose or motion, is focused on its characters, and these epilogues expand even further on those characters, showing what becomes of some of them in the aftermath of this epic confrontation.
While a good ending doesn’t always include an epilogue, an epilogue should always be part of a good ending. Chuck gives great advice on endings which I won’t repeat since he said it first & better, but a good epilogue that’s part of a good ending should fit a lot of his criteria: it should be unexpected, satisfying, and leave the audience hungry for more.
Basically when you hit the last line of the last numbered chapter, the feeling the reader should have is to want to keep turning pages, to see what happens next, how people respond to that line of dialog, etc. Turning the page to find it full of more delicious words instead of just mocking you by being blank is a great feeling for a reader, even if the epilogue begins with a little exposition of what happened after. An epilogue is, by and large, a wrap-up. It’s an opportunity for the author to tie up a loose end or two, get the characters where they need to go after the action concludes, and capitalizes on the reader wanting more. “If there were more,” one might say, “it’d go in this direction.”
You don’t want to leave too many things dangling. That’s sloppy and unprofessional work. You don’t want to drag it out or leave too many things unresolved. If the reader is asking a couple of questions when they do reach that blank page after the words are done, that’s good. The reader asking so many questions it frustrates the hell out of them isn’t.
That’s my goal tonight and into tomorrow, as I pen the epilogue for Citizen in the Wilds. The plot’s pretty much wrapped up, the world has been established and one of its continents explored. Now, without too much faffing about, I need to resolve the situation facing our heroes and show the conclusion of Asherian’s arc. It will end where it began, but the young man’s very different now than he was almost 100,000 words ago. He’s going to keep growing, as I keep writing, and I hope his growth will be as interesting to read as it is to chronicle.
Citizen in the Wilds is swiftly reaching its conclusion. The word count you see to your right doesn’t reflect the several hand-written pages I’ve yet to transcribe. I have one crucial scene to finish, an epilogue to craft and another scene to pen in order to sew this puppy up. But the bottom line is, I want to get a jump-start on the next step.
That step is giving the manuscript a blindfold and a cigarette, standing it in front of a pock-marked brick wall, and handing you each a rifle.
Yes, you. I need some assistance here, folks, as I don’t trust myself entirely to catch my horrid but insidious misspellings, repair any split infinitives and hunt down my darlings. I want to make sure my narrative makes sense, my characters have depth, my themes carry meaning and the whole thing is about something. Sure, I care about this thing, but I don’t feel it’s right to expect anybody else to care unless they get a chance to look it over. Make sense?
Now, this could just be my paper-thin veneer of confidence slipping to show just how insecure I am, especially when it comes to my writing. So be it. I try to be honest, and I’d be lying if I said I have a masterpiece on my hands. I think some things work smoothly and others may be a bit clunky. In the process of getting chapters ready for posting, I’ll definitely revise a bit myself, checking word choice and possibly making some cuts. But I still might miss something. The possibility is there that something I think as fine or just ignore entirely could be a deal-breaker for an agent. And that frightens me.
So I’d like to get other eyes and fingers on the thing. I’ve been debating the best way to do it without printing out multiple copies and killing the planet. Google Wave is still being super beta and occasionally vomiting horribly. Google Docs is more stable, but not everybody will want to go about it that way. And they might be uncomfortable with other people seeing their comments. Scrivener? Sorry, don’t own a Mac. Rob Oaks is working on a Linux-based software solution quite similar to it, called LyX-Outline, and I plan on trying that out. Seeing if I can get people to collaborate that way. Let some folks have at the manuscript, kick the tires, jam the gearshift, see if the damn thing runs.
Anybody out there want to get in on this? Get a sneak peek at the novel before it hits the streets, maybe play a role in bringing it to life? Also, any suggestions for collaborative revision, from other software I haven’t found to reasons why it’s a bad idea, are more than welcome.
This is Marc Schuster. He teaches English. He edits for Philadelphia Stories. He’s also a writer and knows a thing or two about characters, especially since contemporary short stories (which he lectured about at this past weekend’s Writer’s Conference) are driven by characters, rather than plot. His full thoughts and lecture notes are available here, but allow me to offer a groundling’s perspective.
“To put it bluntly, if we’re going to publish your story, we need to fall in love with it.”
The thing that links one good story to another, that makes a tale worthy of publication and the attention of others, are characters that stick with the audience. Characters shouldn’t just be empty cypher upon whom the author or audience can project themselves (I’m lookin’ at you, Bella Swan). They should have texture. They should have ‘tells’, those little ticks and nuances about them that help a reader identify them instantly, and also makes it possible to beat ’em at poker. On that subject, can you imagine playing poker with a character? Or going out to lunch with them? Meeting them in a park to feed the ducks, or having an argument at a train station about the economy? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, something’s being done right with that character. Don’t hold this back from your reader, either, if you’re writing a character and have pictured any of the previous situations. As much as you might wish to ‘pity’ the reader, in Vonnegut’s words, layering texture into your characters should surprise the reader, prompt them to read more, and help them fall in love with your characters.
“The character can’t simply serve as a pawn in the larger game of the narrative.”
We all like playing puppet-master as we write. Then again, maybe that’s just me. I might be a little unfeeling or even sadistic when I inflict tragedy or pain upon my characters, but in doing so I don’t intend to make that pain part of a ride on rails. I want my characters to react to getting hurt, to making a discovery, to being kissed. I might plot things out in a sketch, outline or diagram, but one thing I avoid plotting, if I can, is the reaction a character is going to have to an event. By letting the reaction flow out of the description of the complication, the character grows organically. My hope is that taking this tack helps my character become three-dimensional, an actual person, instead of just a cardboard cutout that looks nice depending on how they’re described.
This especially comes into play where a character’s flaws are concerned. Provided you’re concerned with character development, you’ll want your characters to have things they need to overcome or desire to change about themselves. Our flaws make us human, and they’ll do the same for your characters. Just like you should dare to surprise your audience with a character’s texture, dare to write about something you or someone else would be afraid to reveal.
“Remember, the last thing you want any reader to think at any point in your story is, ‘Who cares?'”
This was something I carried with me when I entered discussions of Citizen in the Wilds. I didn’t want to focus overmuch on the fantasy setting. I felt my primary question, were I on the receiving end of my synopsis, should not be “what makes this fantasy book so cool I have to read it?”, but rather “who are these people and why should I care?” I’ve shied away from descriptions, partially because it’s just a first draft and all I want to do is get the plot down on paper, but also because of something Marc pointed out:
Writing should advance the plot or develop the characters. Everything else is superfluous.
Now, being that Acradea’s a new world, more or less, fleshing out some concepts like how human magic works or what some of the creatures look, sound and smell like is going to be inevitable. But more often than not, I want to be either telling people more about the characters or moving them from one situation to the next. I’ve felt pangs of fear as I’ve written one conversation or another, afraid that the book might be becoming too ‘talky’ and not have enough action. But if I need more action, I can put it in. The conversations are important, because they involve the characters. If I lost track of a conversation’s through-line I’ll drop it. There’s a reason the good Lord invented the Delete key.
So yeah. This was good stuff. One of the highlights of the conference. Marc is a generous, smart and personable man, and I’m glad he was willing to share these lessons with us.
At this past weekend’s Philadelphia Writer’s Conference, I described myself as primarily a writer of ‘speculative fiction’. A few people asked me what I meant. There are some stereotypes that I think are assigned to areas of speculative fiction I’d like to dispel, and more depth in those stories when they’re done well than some might give them credit for. So let’s explore this a bit, shall we?
What Spec Fic Isn’t
Speculative fiction is not its setting. Science fiction, for example, is not just about spaceships and ray guns. It’s more about themes and methods of exploration regarding those themes than window dressing. The bits of speculative fiction that put it in those genres are the frosting on the cake, the chocolate around a Twix. There needs to be something under that frosting, inside that Twix, or it’ll be insubstantial. It might be sweet and you might find some people who are willing to eat that frosting neat from the container, but most people will want something with a bit more to it.
Joe McGee’s Six Guns and Shadows is a good example of this. It’s what I’d call a “paranormal Western.” It’s neither all about witches & warlocks, nor all about saloons and cowboys. It mixes those two and lays them on top of character exploration and theme. Now, it might be able to get by in some circles on the unique aesthetic alone, but without Lily having some depth and themes of self-acceptance and the preservation of tradition – which I assume is what he’s working on with the Moonstone – it might as well be a Jonah Hex knock-off or something. But Joe’s a smart guy and a cool cat. Witchslinger‘s going to kick ass.
What Spec Fic Is
In addition to being about something, having an emotional core as Chuck would say, speculative fiction lets a writer tackle issues, debates and controversies in a ‘safe’ environment. Heinlein wanted to discuss the romanticism of death and the dangerous allure of militarism, so he wrote Starship Troopers. H.G. Wells was concerned by an ever-widening gap between the elite and the working class, and penned The Time Machine. Jules Verne had ideas about exploration and politics that might have been a touch controversial for his time, and poured those notions into Captain Nemo when he created 20000 Leagues Under The Sea. J.R.R. Tolkien was worried that the lessons of the hard-fought wars that encompassed the world might be forgotten, and ensured they’d be preserved by writing The Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis re-imagined things he’d come to appreciate within The Chronicles of Narnia.
I think I’m belaboring my point a bit, but the “speculative” part of speculative fiction doesn’t just mean speculation on how things might be in the future or on another world or against a certain antagonist. They’re also places allowing for speculation on human nature, politics, religion, sustainability, you name it. So, want to discuss the neo-conservative movement but afraid of Glenn Beck calling you a Nazi or Rush accusing you of hating freedom? Set the discussion in space.
Now, settings do vary but fall into common groups – science fiction, fantasy, horror, paranormal, etc. I’m willing to elaborate on those more, but the point I’m getting at is that they all share the desire of an author to try something new and interesting while exploring relevant themes in a ‘safe’ way. I’ll discuss these things more at length in the future.
