I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...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! As always, your comments are welcome!
Without further ado, short story observations by Mary Robinette Kowal – with a few from myself…
“Your Setting is a Telegraph” – WRITING EXCUSES, hosted by (in this, episode 14.16) by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Margaret Dunlap, and Howard Tayler).
I’ve seen notices and quotes from this podcast; and I’m familiar with podcasts (my son-in-law and daughter used to do them (North Saint Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxgJGJUBYeCI9oOrNMUDj2g where: “…we play video games. I don't know what you expect me to say. Did you see the happy robot in the banner? He's pretty sweet isn't he? His name is Beep Boop. He hates video games. Anyway. Come join us as we play games and discuss many scholarly pursuits. ...you) know what? That scholarly pursuits thing was probably a lie. Don't hold me to that.” (I think my daughter wrote that…)
At any rate, I’m just not a podcast person. I’m not even a TV person (or a ipod or shuffle or any kind of music person even though I sing, play guitar and have been in two bands that traveled primarily MN, ND, SD, IA, and WI (as well as WY, CO, NE, NY, RI, and other states), and then spent 10 months visiting churches in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Liberia)…anyway, I digress.
So, in order to get some insight on the kind of advice Mary Robinette Kowal offers for free (she also teaches online classes). She’s well published in both fantasy and Alternate History SF (https://maryrobinettekowal.com/fiction-collectio/bibliography/) The difference between Mary Robinette Kowal and everyone else I’ve taken short story advice from, is that I’ve met her. I have a book signed by her, and she and my daughter had a nodding introduction at the recently burned down UNCLE HUGO’S SCIENCE FICTION BOOKSTORE and UNCLE EDGAR’S MYSTERY BOOKSTORE in Minneapolis.
Below, you’ll find the link to her homepage where she not only teaches her writing skills, she also hosts various podcasts and programs solo and with other writers.
I’m just going delve into one of the pieces and how that applies to me. But her site is FULL of advice! (She must have been a teacher in a former life…or she IS a teacher in her present life!)
This time, I’m looking at the episode of WRITING EXCUSES called “Your Setting is a Telegraph”.
What’s THAT mean? “Comes from the phrase ‘telegraphing a punch’. It means here that in choosing a setting, the writer is telling the reader exactly what to expect in a story.” In particular setting “mood”.
Word choice, what a character is doing; BUT you want to communicate the mood of a story instantly. How can we do this for our readers.
Mary: “If you are specific and concrete with your choices at the beginning, …if there’s a hand cannon, then there must be shooting thing it must be military SF; From the Three Stooges…if there’s a coconut crème pie on the mantle, then by the third act, someone is going to get hit in the face with it.”
She also points out something that may seem obvious to you all, but was something I DIDN’T discover until much later in my writing life: “One of the things about that is that you've got the specific concrete detail, but you also have the character's relationship to that detail.”
Duh. I realized again, in a story I just finished writing, I HAD to use all the things I carefully laid out at the beginning. For me, that meant I had to go back and carefully place the things I DID use, and remove things that I DIDN’T use.
For example, here’s the opening three sentences of the story: “Abercrombie Dylan Kristin Carol Went probably had no excuse to look miserable, certainly not based on what was in the abstract that popped up on my security monitor. I scrolled a bit. Maybe a small excuse. I had cranked the volume of my favorite band, Marrowbone & Cleaver. Their music was created with the instruments of their name, replicas of which sat in an admittedly dusty window at the front of Mantilla’s.” The marrowbone and cleavers in the front window of Mantilla’s DO play a vital role in the story and are actually there for the climax and denouement. I think THAT was a successful telegram.
But, they weren’t there when I started writing.
Mary Robinette Kowal says that the beginning of her LADY ASTRONAUT (Alternate History series) “…tells you about the setting that we're in… And, granted, I'm doing this in narration. It is a first-person character. But I'm using the setting there to tell you what this is going to be about. That you can expect a story in which we're dealing with relationships, we're dealing with disaster, and that there's going to be some comedy. It's not going to be disaster all the way down.”
Honestly? I think I communicated the opposite in a story I THINK has a great idea, but it’s a real downer from the first sentence:
“‘I should have died here with the rest of my family,’ said Timviifei Jones. Stepping down from the hovering gravity modified flyer disk, he collapsed, unconscious and barely breathing.
“By the time paramedics got there from a nearby Human town, he was awake. He pushed them away. One smiled, nodded, and said, ‘You seem fine to me, sir. Have a good day.’”
“‘I’m not fine,’ he muttered, lifting his hand to flip off the paramedics.”
So, according to the Writing Excuses folks, I let the reader know almost immediately that the story was going to be. In this case, it was a failure to communicate something that someone wants to read. Mary Robinette Kowal then gives this assignment to their listeners: “…I want you to write an opening…But I want you to write the first half page. In that first half page, I want you to hit three specific concrete details [because]…I want you to actually really dig into this. But I want you to pick three specific concrete details that telegraph setting… That telegraph the tone. That telegraph what the mood is. These details are obviously your setting. So I want you to do that. Then I want you to write it again and telegraph a different mood.”
I haven’t done that part yet, but when I do, I’ll post it here. I think the story I’m writing is important; but I screwed up the beginning so badly that no one wanted to read anything past the first paragraph.
Brandon Sanderson (a WORLD FAMOUS writer both because he finished Robert Jordan’s WHEEL OF TIME series after the author died unexpectedly – and has his own series going) adds at the end, “[Brandon]…use the setting to indicate a different tone. All right. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.”
I’ll get back to you!
References: https://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-writing-process-let-me-show-it-to-you/
Define: “Telegraphing a punch”: “boxers moving their shoulders in a specific manner before throwing a punch. This can also refer to boxers whose overall movement is so slow that it can be anticipated by an opponent…In martial arts often involves hip movements used to shift bodyweight.”
Image: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41JNnybcihL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Without further ado, short story observations by Mary Robinette Kowal – with a few from myself…
“Your Setting is a Telegraph” – WRITING EXCUSES, hosted by (in this, episode 14.16) by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Margaret Dunlap, and Howard Tayler).
I’ve seen notices and quotes from this podcast; and I’m familiar with podcasts (my son-in-law and daughter used to do them (North Saint Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxgJGJUBYeCI9oOrNMUDj2g where: “…we play video games. I don't know what you expect me to say. Did you see the happy robot in the banner? He's pretty sweet isn't he? His name is Beep Boop. He hates video games. Anyway. Come join us as we play games and discuss many scholarly pursuits. ...you) know what? That scholarly pursuits thing was probably a lie. Don't hold me to that.” (I think my daughter wrote that…)
At any rate, I’m just not a podcast person. I’m not even a TV person (or a ipod or shuffle or any kind of music person even though I sing, play guitar and have been in two bands that traveled primarily MN, ND, SD, IA, and WI (as well as WY, CO, NE, NY, RI, and other states), and then spent 10 months visiting churches in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Liberia)…anyway, I digress.
So, in order to get some insight on the kind of advice Mary Robinette Kowal offers for free (she also teaches online classes). She’s well published in both fantasy and Alternate History SF (https://maryrobinettekowal.com/fiction-collectio/bibliography/) The difference between Mary Robinette Kowal and everyone else I’ve taken short story advice from, is that I’ve met her. I have a book signed by her, and she and my daughter had a nodding introduction at the recently burned down UNCLE HUGO’S SCIENCE FICTION BOOKSTORE and UNCLE EDGAR’S MYSTERY BOOKSTORE in Minneapolis.
Below, you’ll find the link to her homepage where she not only teaches her writing skills, she also hosts various podcasts and programs solo and with other writers.
I’m just going delve into one of the pieces and how that applies to me. But her site is FULL of advice! (She must have been a teacher in a former life…or she IS a teacher in her present life!)
This time, I’m looking at the episode of WRITING EXCUSES called “Your Setting is a Telegraph”.
What’s THAT mean? “Comes from the phrase ‘telegraphing a punch’. It means here that in choosing a setting, the writer is telling the reader exactly what to expect in a story.” In particular setting “mood”.
Word choice, what a character is doing; BUT you want to communicate the mood of a story instantly. How can we do this for our readers.
Mary: “If you are specific and concrete with your choices at the beginning, …if there’s a hand cannon, then there must be shooting thing it must be military SF; From the Three Stooges…if there’s a coconut crème pie on the mantle, then by the third act, someone is going to get hit in the face with it.”
She also points out something that may seem obvious to you all, but was something I DIDN’T discover until much later in my writing life: “One of the things about that is that you've got the specific concrete detail, but you also have the character's relationship to that detail.”
Duh. I realized again, in a story I just finished writing, I HAD to use all the things I carefully laid out at the beginning. For me, that meant I had to go back and carefully place the things I DID use, and remove things that I DIDN’T use.
For example, here’s the opening three sentences of the story: “Abercrombie Dylan Kristin Carol Went probably had no excuse to look miserable, certainly not based on what was in the abstract that popped up on my security monitor. I scrolled a bit. Maybe a small excuse. I had cranked the volume of my favorite band, Marrowbone & Cleaver. Their music was created with the instruments of their name, replicas of which sat in an admittedly dusty window at the front of Mantilla’s.” The marrowbone and cleavers in the front window of Mantilla’s DO play a vital role in the story and are actually there for the climax and denouement. I think THAT was a successful telegram.
But, they weren’t there when I started writing.
Mary Robinette Kowal says that the beginning of her LADY ASTRONAUT (Alternate History series) “…tells you about the setting that we're in… And, granted, I'm doing this in narration. It is a first-person character. But I'm using the setting there to tell you what this is going to be about. That you can expect a story in which we're dealing with relationships, we're dealing with disaster, and that there's going to be some comedy. It's not going to be disaster all the way down.”
Honestly? I think I communicated the opposite in a story I THINK has a great idea, but it’s a real downer from the first sentence:
“‘I should have died here with the rest of my family,’ said Timviifei Jones. Stepping down from the hovering gravity modified flyer disk, he collapsed, unconscious and barely breathing.
“By the time paramedics got there from a nearby Human town, he was awake. He pushed them away. One smiled, nodded, and said, ‘You seem fine to me, sir. Have a good day.’”
“‘I’m not fine,’ he muttered, lifting his hand to flip off the paramedics.”
So, according to the Writing Excuses folks, I let the reader know almost immediately that the story was going to be. In this case, it was a failure to communicate something that someone wants to read. Mary Robinette Kowal then gives this assignment to their listeners: “…I want you to write an opening…But I want you to write the first half page. In that first half page, I want you to hit three specific concrete details [because]…I want you to actually really dig into this. But I want you to pick three specific concrete details that telegraph setting… That telegraph the tone. That telegraph what the mood is. These details are obviously your setting. So I want you to do that. Then I want you to write it again and telegraph a different mood.”
I haven’t done that part yet, but when I do, I’ll post it here. I think the story I’m writing is important; but I screwed up the beginning so badly that no one wanted to read anything past the first paragraph.
Brandon Sanderson (a WORLD FAMOUS writer both because he finished Robert Jordan’s WHEEL OF TIME series after the author died unexpectedly – and has his own series going) adds at the end, “[Brandon]…use the setting to indicate a different tone. All right. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.”
I’ll get back to you!
References: https://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-writing-process-let-me-show-it-to-you/
Define: “Telegraphing a punch”: “boxers moving their shoulders in a specific manner before throwing a punch. This can also refer to boxers whose overall movement is so slow that it can be anticipated by an opponent…In martial arts often involves hip movements used to shift bodyweight.”
Image: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41JNnybcihL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
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