Guest Post: “Writes & Wrongs” by Edward Cox

It’s time for me to admit that I might have taken the longest route possible to getting an agent. I’m something of a blunderer by nature, and learning the hard way is the theme of my life. So much so that I sometimes wonder how I managed to get an agent at all.

The original version of The Relic Guild is very different from the version that was signed by Gollancz. It was written for a Master’s degree that I concluded in in 2009. When I was coming to the end of that degree, I had been wondering if my work could hold its own with the bigger names in the publishing industry. I sent the first three chapters and a synopsis of the novel to the man who is now my agent. It impressed him enough to request the remainder of the book. However, although that early version of The Relic Guild gained me an MA, it didn’t quite make the grade with my agent.

For the sake of avoiding long and boring explanations, let’s just say that the original version was something akin to an academic exercise. The result fell somewhere between a fantasy adventure and a pseudo-intellectual dystopian wannabe. It was right for academic purposes, but wrong for the publishing industry. It had potential, but lacked focus and commercial value. Make it the fantasy adventure it wants to be, my agent said, and then we’ll do business.

Guest Post: “‘Don’t Worry, It’s not My Blood’ – On Tough Guys” by Snorri Kristjansson

At this moment in time, human interaction is very heavily coded. We learn from a tender age what’s good, bad, not allowed and WHY ARE YOU POOPING UNDER THE DINNER TABLE?! (Which is, in retrospect, also ‘bad’.) We can talk for a while about where our behaviour comes from – some say ‘nature’, some say ‘nurture’, some say ‘a very small shed in Hatfield’ – but there can be no doubt that at the moment we are animals with highly complex behavioural patterns that start with ideals at an early age.

Now, I am a ‘man’. My generously padded 6-foot frame gives it away, as does the beard and the deep voice. And as a ‘man’, I’ve lived with the ideal of the Tough Guy all my life. He is tall (usually), mysterious (sometimes) and handy in a scrap (always). The Tough Guy might not be best suited to navigating the treacherous waters of, say, office politics or teenage girl drama, but with every roll-back of learned behaviour, with every step backwards to the rule of might, the Tough Guy’s role increases. Basically, when the going gets tough I will happily take my big ol’ manly frame and hide in a very manly fashion behind a proper Tough Guy.

Jonathan Franzen on Writers and Social Media

In the October 6th issue of the Atlantic Weekly, author Jonathan Franzen had an article called, “Why Novelists Should Stay Off Facebook”. [Before I continue, I must say I’ve been enjoying the Atlantic Weekly a great deal – it’s a brilliant read for anyone who can’t wait the month between each issue of the main magazine – and I’ve particularly enjoyed the articles on books and literature.]

The author is no shrinking violet when it comes to his opinions on technology, and especially any advancements that have an impact on publishing. He is not, for example, a big fan of eBooks, and has warned that they are “corroding values” and “damaging [to] society”. Anyway, the article was interesting, so I thought I’d offer some comments here, and see what other people think. The article carries a pretty restrictive prescription, especially in this day and age, but if you stand back and take a look at it, there may be some truth in what he writes (subjective and individual truth, of course, as there is no One Way to Write a Novel).

Let’s begin with this comment:

“... the internet in general – and social media in particular – fosters the notion that everything should be shared, everything should be communal. Where that becomes especially dangerous, I think, is in the realm of cultural production – and particularly literary production. Good novels aren’t written by committee. Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves, go deep, and report from the depths on what they find. The result is communally accessible, but not the process itself.”

Guest Post: “The Details in the Devil” by Lou Morgan

There is one really, really stupid thing you can do as a writer. Monumentally, head-thumpingly stupid.

And that’s to put the Devil in your book.

Where do you start? Whatever name you give him, whatever face, Old Nick comes with some pretty hefty baggage. Trickster, manipulator, tyrant, victim, former angel or demon… he’s still the Devil. You can race with him; you can be caught between him and the deep blue sea. You can have sympathy for him (or not) and he’s even been known to wear Prada.

All this, and we’ve barely even scratched the surface… So why would anyone be crazy or arrogant enough to go ahead and write one of the most (in)famous characters in all of literature into their own book?

Guest Post: “On Editing & Writing…” by Jonathan Strahan

On writing tips for new writers from someone who has never written a story, but has read a few

Many thanks to Civilian Reader for letting me stop by and chat about editing and writing. I’ve been thinking about what you might say to a new writer who wanted to write a short story, a great one (who’d want to write anything else?) When I first started to work on a list of tips on how to write a terrific short story I drew a blank. I’ve not written a short story since high school, so I’m no expert. I’ve not even thought about writing a short story myself. But then I realized that, like you, I read. I read a lot. And what I mostly read is short fiction. So, it’s possible I might have picked up an idea or two.

1. Write

This might seem obvious, but no one has ever finished a short story without sitting down and actually writing. I have a folder full of stops and starts on a handful of short stories and novels, but none of them are finished. So, do that. Write. Write every day and finish what you start.

2. Re-write

I know you think you’re finished when you write “The End” at the end of your newly minted short story. You probably are. But it’s possible, just possible, that there’s still a little bit of work left to do. Put it in a drawer for a week, and come back to it fresh. Suddenly you’ll see, if you’re at all like me when I write anything, all sorts of problems with it. You might also let a trusted reader see it. Get their feedback, try to listen to it with an open mind, and be willing to re-write.

3. Read

The only way to learn how to write a great short story is to read great short stories. Read them a lot and think about them. Try to work out how they work and why. Pick a writer whose work you love and see how their stories work. If you love fantasy stories, try the work of Fritz Leiber or Ursula Le Guin, and see if you can unpick their stories. They knew what they were doing.

4. Keep it short

We are talking about writing short stories after all, so keep it short. You probably only want a single plot line (the story) and a single point of view character (the person whose eyes we’re seeing the story though). Longer stories, novellas and short novels, can sometimes have subplots and more than one point of view character, but basically you only need one.

5. Make your story work

I don’t mean make it great. Of course you’re going to do that. What I mean is make your words count. Everything you write in a short story should do more than one thing. Setting builds character, voice advances plot, and so on. Look very carefully at each scene in your story. You won’t have many of them – this is short after all – so make sure each scene does more than one thing. Each scene should build setting, develop character and move the story forward. Avoid scenes that only do one thing. You want to avoid your story being dull (which it was never going to be, but you know what I mean) and making sure your scenes are doing the heavy lifting helps.

If you’ve already written a great short story you probably know all of this stuff, and possibly far more. If you’re just starting out, though, it might help. And if you are starting out keep going. You’ll probably write some stinkers. You’ll possibly write some stories that are almost exactly like stories written by people whose work you love. That’s fine. That’s what you should be doing. You have to write through that so you can get to the stories that only you can tell, the ones that are definitely going to be great. And when you do, send them to me. I love great short stories.

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Fearsome Journeys is out now, published by Solaris Books.

Guest Post: “On Writing Fiction vs. Writing Games” by Richard Dansky

A 14 year veteran of the video game industry, Richard Dansky is the Central Clancy Writer for Ubisoft/Red Storm. Named by Gamasutra as one of the top 20 game writers in 2009, he has written for games ranging from OUTLAND to the upcoming SPLINTER CELL: BLACKLIST (which I’m rather looking forward to). Richard is also the author of six novels, including the critically praised Firefly Rain. He lives and works in North Carolina with his wife and their statistically improbable collections of books, scotch and cats. His latest novel is Vaporware.

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ON WRITING FICTION VS. WRITING GAMES

The big difference between writing games and writing fiction is whose story you’re actually telling. When you’re writing fiction, you’re writing a singular, defined narrative. The characters do what you want them to do. They say what you want them to say, when you want them to say it, and the plot moves, one page at a time, toward the conclusion. The reader receives the narrative; the story’s told in linear fashion, and while the reader can adjust the way they receive it by reading out of order – or by skipping the bits with Tom Bombadil and getting straight to the barrow-wights – the text is set on the page. It’s the writer’s story, not the reader’s.

In games, it’s not your story, it’s the player’s. Every piece of writing you do, every word you put on the page isn’t there to advance your story to a singular conclusion. It’s there for the player to pick up and put on and experience, and then to make their own. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true. Without the player actually playing, those story elements sit there inert. They’re pure potential, waiting to be actualized by the player engaging with them. Until then, they just sit in memory, waiting to be triggered by the player’s actions.

What this produces is a very different kind of story. For all the classical genre tropes that so heavily infest game writing, classical storytelling techniques need to be adjusted to allow the player room to play. It’s what I called “the player-shaped hole” at my Game Developers Conference talk a few years ago, the possibility space around what the player might do at any given moment. And even in the most straightforward game, the list of things the player can do at any given moment is surprisingly large. Shoot? Maybe, but even with that there are innumerable choices to be made (weapon, rate of fire, choice of target, etc.). Move? Duck? Jump? Check inventory? Use a healthpack? Fiddle with the controller? All of these things the player can do, things that might be incorporated into their personal story of playing have to be accounted for so that when the player looks back on their experience, it feels like all the choices they made were the right ones at the time. Before it happens, it has to be open; in hindsight, it has to be seamless.

That’s not to say that the gap between writing fiction and writing games is insurmountable, though I confess, as someone who’s done both, it’s often easier to go from the ultimately interactive scenario of game writing to the ultimately dictated scenario of fiction than the other way around. And a look at the writers working both sides of the fence these days – Austin Grossman, Erin Hoffman, Lucien Soulban, Jay Posey, and many more – might even suggest that there’s some potential benefit to laboring in the vineyards of games and learning the hard way to tell stories not your own.

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If you want to learn more about Richard Dansky and his work, be sure to check out his website and follow him on Twitter.

Author Wisdom: Michael Chabon

This quotation was passed on to me by Alyssa, who found it on Sarah Rees Brennan’s blog, and which originated on a New York Review of Books piece Chabon wrote on Janury 31 2013 (the piece is about Wes Anderson’s movies):

“The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research ‘childhood.’

“There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises ‘adolescence.’ The feeling haunts people all their lives.”

“Let us trespass at once. Literature is no one’s private ground.”

Something rather different from CR’s usual fare. But I was inspired today, by the review I refer to below. Hope people find it interesting.

I’ve been reading the latest issue of The Atlantic, which is probably my favorite magazine: the mix of politics, history and arts features is excellent, and the quality of the articles usually of the highest quality. I came across an article about Virginia Woolf that stood out for me. “The Education of Virginia Woolf”, by Benjamin Schwartz, is a review of The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume 6: 1933-1941, the final collection (edited by Stuart N. Clarke) of the author’s writing leading up to her suicide in 1941. Strangely, I can’t seem to find any evidence of the collection being published – recently or in the near future – in the United States, but it is available in the UK, published by Random House.

I have never read anything by Woolf (much to my detriment, it seems). I do, however, seem to be surrounded these days by Virginia Woolf scholars and aficionados (Alyssa is both, for example), and frequently coming into contact with articles about or that reference the author. Schwartz’s review is well-written – if a bit thin, but I suppose there’s not a whole lot one can do with a volume of collected papers, unless it’s ground-breaking or scandalous). The piece does, however, contain a couple of nuggets of information about Woolf’s thoughts on reading, as well as the story behind a couple of the articles in Essays...Vol.6.

Guest Post: Adventures in Authorland – Kathleen McCaul

As a writer, I’ve done some foolhardy things. I flew to Iraq, a week after my final university exams, to help set up a newspaper in newly worn-torn Baghdad. I’ve hopped on a bus to Srinagar, leaving London behind for a job on the Kashmir Observer. And there were times in these places where I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew.

When Saddam’s sons were caught and the whole country erupted in a celebratory gun shower, I thought it was the start of a civil war. As I tossed up between hiding in the wardrobe or under the bed of our tiny, insecure, house, I realized I had been a bit irresponsible and might cause my parents some grief.

Guest Post: “We know goblins don’t exist, but they don’t…” by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s The Fallen Blade was one of my favourite novels last year, and definitely one of my favourite vampire novels ever. It was dark, original, and visceral, populated by engaging characters. The sequel, The Outcast Blade is out now in the US and imminent in the UK. In this post, he takes a look at what it means to write a character in a particular time period…

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“We know goblins don’t exist, but they don’t…”

In the beginning there was a bad man who met a girl who made him want to be less of a bad man and – if this was possible, and he wasn’t entirely sure – perhaps even a good man in time. And even if being bad was a hell of a lot more fun – for him and for the writer, which concerned him not at all – he still wanted to be good, because he’d done many bad things and the girl loved him and hey, he didn’t want to be bad anymore…

That, basically, is the template for a hundred novels and, with a couple of minor amendments, quite possibly, a thousand, if not ten thousand real lives. I was aware of the psychological profile we expect for a character moving from darkness to light, and the reading protocols, the expectations readers bring to different kinds of books when I set out to write Tycho. What I hadn’t factored in were the complications inherent in trying to place him in a historically realistic setting.

Interview with MADELINE ASHBY

Today I talk to debut novelist Madeline Ashby about robots, Japanese anime, cyborg theory, writing and the distant dream of sleep…

Guest Post: On “Nimpentoad” by Henry L. Herz

A few days ago, Henry Herz got in touch with me about Nimpentoad, an illustrated book he’d written with his two sons. I was intrigued by the sample of artwork he sent, as well as the story of him writing the book with his kids. So, I asked if he would like to write a guest post about the process.

– Stefan

Nimpentoad is the fantasy story of a courageous and resourceful little Nibling who leads his tribe through the perilous Grunwald forest, overcoming obstacles and encountering strange creatures along the way. This post is about the creative journey of Nimpentoad by a man and his two young sons.

Guest Post: “Lessons I Learned While Stumbling Through the Looking Glass” by Jon Sprunk

US Covers (Pyr)

Writing a novel is a mammoth undertaking. It seems pretty easy at the beginning: just string together some interesting scenes involving remarkable characters and keep that process rolling along until you reach The End. Yet somewhere along the line you start to realize that all these “interesting” scenes will have to add up to something important, something bigger than They All Lived Happily Ever After. This is especially difficult when you dream that this novel will someday be published and read by people whom you’ve never met, who will judge your work against the entire history of literature. It’s enough to give a writer the shakes, and that’s before he or she starts hitting the bottle at increasingly-early times of the day.

Fortunately for me, I stumbled onto my first rule of writing: Don’t Sweat It, Just Write It.

Guest Post: On Co-Authoring STRATA, by Brad Beaulieu & Steve Gaskell

First of all, thanks to Stefan for inviting us to stop by and talk a bit about Strata, our new dystopian sci-fi thriller. When Stefan first asked us over, we thought a bit about what would make for a good post, and it seemed as though discussing the characters we initially developed and how they changed would make for some interesting reading, especially for those that have wondered how collaborations work.

An Interview with Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Hot on the heels of his excellent new novel, The Fallen Blade – a novel I very much enjoyed, Jon Courtenay Grimwood took some time to answer a handful of questions for this here humble blog. Given the subject matter of The Fallen Blade, I decided to keep the questions topical and focus on the supernatural.

Tired of Twilight and related teeny-bopper vampire literature? Well, Jon offers recommendations for the more refined palate, and also talks about his writing practices, what he’s looking forward to in 2011, and also the influence of other cultures on his work.