A Source for Inspirational Strikes

About a year and a half ago, I learned about an interesting podcast: Writing Excuses

A group of professional, published writers pick a topic and chat about their understanding or experiences; topics range from writing techniques and mechanisms, to genre dissection, to business advice, to … far more subjects than I could possibly list here.

The usual hosts are:

• Mary Robinette Kowal
• Brandon Sanderson
• Howard Tayler
• Dan Wells

although this year they’ve been adding a few more people: Wesley Chu, Piper J. Drake, and Mary Anne Mohanraj.

Now, I’m pretty late to the party: this podcast is in its twelfth season. But now that I know, I must share. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to take apart and reconstruct your writing project like it was the recalcitrant engine of a classic car, these are the people to listen to.  They’re full of broadly-applicable advice, and know which spanner to lend you.

However, I must admit that I especially appreciate their focus on science fiction and fantasy.  Most of the universities (and other classes) in my area tend to focus on “great [Canadian] novels”. I read this as “fiction”, which is fine in itself, but not the only worthwhile genre. (Save me from genre snobs.) It’s great to listen to serious discussions on how to write great SFF, from people who already do so.

Check this one out, if you haven’t already.

Broccoli-eating of writing

There’s this fantasy anime/manga favorite of mine, Hunter X Hunter, which has a world-building detail I used to find random and arbitrary. The characters of this world, who invent and develop their own superpowers, can make themselves significantly more powerful by putting extreme limitations on themselves. Want that fireball to have some real juice to it? Make it so you can only produce fireballs during odd days of the month when you’ve eaten at least 10 chili peppers first. Want to be able to fly really, really fast? Make it so you have to spend the rest of your time in a wheelchair and then first recite a 10-minute epic poem to the wind in a foreign language. (In case you’re wondering, neither of these are real examples from the series.)

Limitations on superpowers are essential in story-building, to make sure the superpowered don’t just smite their opposition out of existence. Just ask the creator of Superman’s Kryptonite. Or just ask whoever tried to write a storyline for Peter Petrelli in Heroes season 2. But there was something about the way Hunter X Hunter said outright that limitations equal power. As though it was a philosophical stance, not just a plot-writing necessity.

Which brings us to Twitter.

I have only a slight acquaintance with tweeting, but in my experience it’s hard. Banging out some one line response that boils down to either, “Haha, you’re so right!” or “Grrr, no, and now I dislike you!” is one thing. But actually crafting something that’s meaningful yet humorous, or poignant yet comprehensible, or incisive yet fair? And then fitting it into a 140-character post? Without using so many shortcuts that the post looks like a preschooler’s message in crayon crossed with the output of an Enigma machine?

“…that make us sound illiterate and probably leave out important context.”

A good tweet is art, my friends. Half the time I find myself “liking” tweets more for their technical delivery than for their message. Anyone can explain themselves if you give them enough space; boiling essays down to the size of an aphorism is brilliant.

There are also other restricted writing modes. My library had a “Tiny Story Contest” a few months back, where entries were limited to 420 characters.  I wrote a few tiny stories, just for the hell of it, and had fun but found it challenging. How do you fit plot, characterization, and setting into 420 characters? It’s the same kind of challenge I have writing tweets; how do you lay out even the slightest complexity in 140 characters? Because I’m stubborn, and I refuse to give up on complexity.

One thing these limitations have taught me is that I use too many useless qualifying words that can be cut when something makes me. I also use a lot of long, complicated words and phrases that can be replaced with something shorter. The complicated words aren’t always the wrong ones; but often the writing becomes stronger with simplification because it’s cleaner and clearer.

Incidentally, this is an awareness I plan to apply to a book draft I’ve been working on … which might be too long.

So, just like eating broccoli is good for my health, I’m convinced that practicing tweets and other short forms would be good for my writing style. (Twitter itself might be less good for my blood pressure, but that’s another kettle of rotting fish heads to deal with.)

Seems I’ve come around to the idea that limitations can make you stronger, after all.

And, also incidentally, I like eating broccoli. Especially in teriyaki stir-fry. Yum.

Trajectory of a Horror-Fairy Tale Romance

Recently I plotted out the chapters for a new book idea I’ve been working on, trying to keep it down to a concise ten (and a prologue).  The book is a horror fairy tale with a romance central plot, which is a bit of a stretch for me–the romance center, not the horror fairy tale. Horror-fairy tale just sounds like fun.

So I threw a “romance trajectory” scale into my outline, trying to make sure it had some kind of natural buildup and that it wasn’t just an “Act of Author” bringing the romance into existence.

So is this what a romance trajectory should look like?

The two columns are the two characters. The warm colours are for fuzzy-feeling interactions and the cold colours are for relationship chill. Grey is neutral. Each subsequent colour becomes deeper because, hey, relationships are built up on the sum of all previous interactions; you don’t get to reset to the faded pastels just because something new happens. And I tried to make sure their impressions of each other were nicely mismatched during the buildup, mutually disastrous during the crisis, and mutually fuzzy during the climax. (Plot climax; clarification for the gutter minds out there.)

The darkest colours, not so coincidentally, happen to coincide with the most horror-filled of my horror fairy tale scenes.

Keeping it balancing throughout guaranteed that there were some believable evolutions on both sides. So now that the colourful little map in my chapter outline has convinced me I know what I’m doing, I’m eager to actually write the thing.

~ And yes, in case there is any remaining question about it, I am an outliner. A Mad Outliner. If I didn’t outline, I’m afraid my characters would have stream-of-consciousness conversations and walk in and out random doors like they were in particularly lame farces. Also, I might never reach the ending. ~

Beginning of the Bloggg

This website represents the beginnings of a pursuit of a professional fiction writing career, or at least the social media aspect thereof.  However, as I am currently, ahem, “publication challenged,” I’m afraid I won’t have much professional news to share. (Yet. Of course. No overwhelming fear of failure here.)

So I plan to take this opportunity to talk about the works I already enjoy, as well as discussing the various tribulations of that career pursuit.  The former will be gathered under the heading of “Reviews”. Everything else, about the state of the writer, the writing, and the world at large, will be in the blog.

I hope to keep it light, keep it informative, keep it succinct, and keep it interesting. Feedback is very welcome (unless you’re a troll, in which case, I plan to feed you to my imaginary alligators.)

Welcome to the beginning of the blog. May it become a place you’ll want to visit frequently.

Arbutus tree. Photograph taken by me in April 2015, and filtered to look more sunny than it actually was.