In September of 2007, I started this blog
with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how
little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak
at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and
Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the
writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran,
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they
write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers,
columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications
now that I can share some of the things I did “right” and I’m busy sharing that
with you.
While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make
enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional
writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write.
When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point
where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above
will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales!
Faulkner once wrote, “The best fiction
is far more true than any journalism.” And Tea Obreht thought that “The best
fiction stays with you and changes you.” These are my goals…
With that in
mind, I should point out that this story started out as an email from Bruce
Bethke, my sometime mentor and always friend (from before I met my wife!).
The story is
here: https://www.twincities.com/2017/10/18/floating-bog-minnesota-lake-marrifield-bay-north-long-lake-crash-dock/
While it’s
certainly bizarre in its own way, it doesn’t seem to scream “speculative
fiction story idea right here!”
Of course, it
didn’t need to. As my family would happily point out to you, I am one of those
writers who will stop suddenly, pull out my (practically) ubiquitous clip
board, and say, “Hang on a minute while I write down this idea!”
That happened
here as soon as I saw the article. As well, for some time I’ve been trying to
do what Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward call, “Writing the other”. (https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Other-Conversation-Pieces-8/dp/193350000X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)
The small book was catalyzed by a writer
at the 1992 Clarion West Writers Workshop they were attending who said, “…it
was a mistake to write about people of different ethnicities: you might get it
wrong. Horribly, offensively wrong. Best not to try at all.”
Since reading
that quote and now the first readthrough of the book, I’ve tried to include
characters that are outside of my personal experience; in fact, I’ve tried once
or twice to write from the point of view of people entirely different than me.
A novel I wrote some years ago, and one in which the main character is a
biracial teenage boy, has made the rounds of various publishers. I had an agent
who tried seventeen different publishers and while it usually got a positive
response, ultimately no one wanted it. It languishes in my files in my basement
office.
My name doesn’t
inspire confidence that I “got it right”; even if I tell people I asked a
former student of mine to read and comment on it and pointed out that he was
from not only different racial group that mine, but he was a first generation
child of a very recent immigrant population. He commented extensively and I
incorporated those comments with story and poetry changes…
All of that to
say that this short bit was along those lines.
I should say that
while I don’t live in Northern Minnesota, I’ve both worked up there and
recreated there. I lived as an alien in a small town on the Iron Range for
close to a year; and I’ve listened to and read countless legends and tall tales
(Paul Bunyan is an integral part of our Minnesota mythology); and I’ve even
read “WEIRD MINNESOTA”, part of series of travel books that includes all but
seventeen of the fifty states.
This fit right
into my paradigm. I created an Ojibwe scientist and a female mayor. I worked to
break the paradigms of my home state.
I also haven’t
read it in four years, so it was fun to do it before writing this.
So what did I do that
was right here?
A lot of things –
I made it into a ghost story/mystery. I kept it short at 1700 words and while the
story ended, it didn’t really have a clear conclusion. In fact, it reads an
awful lot like one of Craig Johnson’s Longmire books; and it’s entirely
possible that I had started reading the books at that time.
At any rate, I
had a mystery, a murder (albeit a long, long time previous to the story), and I
created a bit of conflict between the main characters.
I didn’t consciously
use the ACTION PLAN I’d developed around Lisa Cron’s book, WIRED FOR STORY – (you
can find that here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/10/elements-of-cron-and-korea-where-do-i.html)
part of a series I’ve been writing (with the author’s permission) laying out
how her advice has had an impact on my writing – I’d followed the advice. (If
you’re interested in reading what I learned and how I applied it, the first entry
in the series was two years ago and starts here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/04/writing-advice-lisa-cron-1-start-with.html.
However, I clearly DID use it because I managed to hit most of them in the short
amount of space I used.
Writers and
readers also understand that while Stephen King’s UNDER THE DOME was 333,000
words and was powerful enough to elicit a television miniseries, another short
story, “Children of the Corn” launched an entire franchise as well as being
made into two different movies. Clearly the number of words doesn’t imply
meaning. Master short story writer William Sydney Henry (aka O. Henry) wrote “Gift
of the Magi”, and that story has become a perennial Christmas favorite.
Orson Scott Card
wrote a short story decades ago that launched the novel series named after the
original short story, “Ender’s Game”.
The thing is
that, dissected, all of the stories adhere to the observations laid out by Lisa
Cron. And despite its length, I somehow instinctively laid this story out in
the same way.
In summary, what
did I do right? It was contemporary, it started with a bog island crashing into
someone’s shoreline – and that someone was the town’s mayor. It moved fast and it
presented issues that were important to the characters.
It also involved
a murder mystery, and based on the number of books, stories, television shows,
movies, and stage shows that are of the same genre, it was interesting enough to
keep readers reading.
So there you go –
and because I like to read widely, I’ve slowly started to become a fan of murder
mysteries! Even Isaac Asimov liked to mix the genres (any of this books, and
even a movie loosely based on a character he’d created in “I, Robot”…)
To read the story, follow this link: https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2017/12/today-on-showcase.html
To read the story, follow this link: https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2017/12/today-on-showcase.html
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