Using the Programme Guide of the World
Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki Finland in August 2017 (to which I will
be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on,
rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf
copy of the Programme Guide. The link is provided below…
Role of Secrets in
Speculative Fiction: Secrets are powerful things: secrets from a character’s
past, secrets between characters, secret worlds, secret doorways, secret words,
secret abilities. The mystery these secrets convey can increase tension and
suspense, make a character more intriguing, suggest mood (for good or evil),
create plot twists, complicate relationships between characters, alienate a
character from others or from his society, change the course of a life... the
list goes on.
J.A McLachlan, Author: a short story collection and two
College textbooks on Professional Ethics, novels Walls of Wind, The Occasional Diamond
Thief, and The Salarian Desert Game, another novel, mystery thrillers and short
stories
Jennifer Udden, Literary Agent: with Barry Goldblatt Literary LLC, and
represents SFF authors Emma Newman, Mur Lafferty, Mark Tiedemann, Ren Warom,
Maurice Broaddus, WL Goodwater, and Ruth Vincent
Ian Sales, Speaker: author of Apollo Quartet; also 3 other books, two short
stories; reviews books for Interzone.
Kim ten
Tusscher, Author: five
novels, known for her characters
J. Sharpe, Speaker:
His novel Broken Memory was nominated for the Harland Awards for best novel; honorable
mention for extraordinary originality; nominated for a Bastaard Fantasy Award; translated
to English
Oddly enough, this
past year has been an AWFUL years for selling my work.
I sold one story.
Five published; one sold.
Ouch.
I know I can sell
my work to professional markets, it’s just not consistent. I know I have
something to say, but I can’t say it so that others catch my concern.
I started looking
into how to make my concerns “catch fire”, so to speak. How do I speak so that
others get excited about what I’m saying? How can I writer better so that
others will read and go, “Jeez! That was important! Let me think about what he
wrote!”
There are writers
I return to time and again – I reread the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, the MILES
VORKOSIGAN books, every Christmas, I reread “Easter Egg Hunt: A Christmas
Story”; I often return to “Can These Bones Live?”
Why – and how can
I write that way?
A hint in the
article referenced below: Chuck Wendig makes the startling statement, “EVERY
STORY IS A MYSTERY STORY”. He goes on to defend his thesis by saying, “All
stories need unanswered questions. All stories demand mysteries to engage our
desperate need to know. We flip the little obsessive dipswitches in the circuit
boards of our reader’s mind by presenting enigmas and perplexities. Why is our
lead character so damaged? What’s in the strange mirrored box? How will they
escape the den of ninja grizzlies? Storytelling is in many ways the act of
positing questions and then exploring the permutations of that question before
finally giving in and providing an answer.”
I never knew that.
So, I’m writing a
new story and I’m starting it with a mystery: What is the pile of intelligent
alien cockroaches doing in the middle of the Voyageurs National Forest in the
middle of the winter when the temperature is about to dip to forty below zero?
You know what? It
has ME interested. I’d been working on another story which had seemed
straightforward adventure and I was having a TERRIBLE time writing it. I
couldn’t seem to get going on it. I kept going back to the beginning and trying
again. Then I read this article, and instead of having the main character
rescue the girl from a sewer and have her wake up and tell him who she was…I
made her unconscious. He has to drag her to the Station veterinarian to wake
her up. Then she won’t say who she is or what she’s doing. He doesn’t find out
until the very end WHAT she is…and then he has to decide whether to turn her in
or go with her after they murder a government cop together…
After twisting the
story that way, it had me interested again.
I can’t say that
mysteries are my favorite reading, just like I don’t much care for fantasy
(unless my daughter recommends it or it’s written by one of my favorite
authors) – however because I love some of my friends and family members enough
to read the books that THEY like, I have taken on the works of Craig Johnson,
William Kent Kruger, Tom Clancy and Agatha Christie and decided that while
they’re not my cup of tea, I’d enjoyed them enough to return to their worlds on
and off again.
So I’ve decided
that I’d start throwing a little mystery into my writing…in fact, I just
realized that the ONE story I had published this past year was a murder
mystery! Also, I came to a gentlemen’s agreement with a publisher for my YA
science fiction novel, HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES: Emerald of Earth…which
also has a mystery at its core.
There it is, then,
as my son, who just finished “play programming” his crawling robot: proof of
concept.
Any thoughts?
Resource: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/05/08/25-things-writers-should-know-about-creating-mystery/
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