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! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
Without further ado, short story observations by Gene Wolfe – with a few from myself…
“What is impossible is to keep [my Catholicism] out. The author cannot prevent the work being his or hers.” Gene Wolfe
You can see above one of the reasons I admired Gene Wolfe – he was a Christian and wasn’t interested in hiding his faith. People took him as he was. I’m sure there were people who refused to read his work because of his faith, figuring his worldview was so absurd that he wouldn’t have anything to say that would interest them.
That’s OK – because there were enough people who COULD do that, while his books were never “popular”, they were intense, deep, and you put down the book or the short story pondering…something. His work wasn’t the kind that you read and forgot. Part of THAT was because he made you stop and think; ponder what he was trying to say, then go back and read it again, once more.
Incredibly POPULAR, multiple award-winning English writer, Neil Gaman admired Gene Wolf’s writing without sharing his faith. In 2011, he wrote: “He's the finest living male American writer of science fiction and fantasy...possibly the finest living American writer.” Other clearly not of his faith persuasion also praised his work: “Ursula Le Guin calls him ‘our Melville,’ and Michael Swanwick says he ‘is the single greatest writer in the English language alive today.’”
So – what was it about Wolfe’s writing that inspired such an observation, and how can I learn from it? I haven’t read everything he’s written – far from it – but what I have read (both short stories and novels) has captivated my attention at the time and left a deep impression on me.) Does he START OUT trying to write deep? Apparently, the answer is “No.” When asked if “the Urth of the New Sun series begin as a darkly literate intentional parody and subversion of the Sword & Sorcery tradition, or am I just reading it that way?
Gene Wolfe said, “No, it did not. At the beginning of that whole series, I simply wanted to write a short story or novelette for Orbit. I was at some Con down in Chicago and Bob Tucker grabbed me and dragged me to this panel on costuming, which I would not normally have attended, so he’d have someone to talk to. As I listened to this panel of professional costumers, I started sulking a little that none of my characters had ever been made into costumes. And then I realized I’d never written a character that would make a good costume – so whose fault was that? I started listening to these people and thinking up a costume people could make easily and enjoy wearing.
“Black boots – nothing easier; black trousers – ditto; no shirt, black cloak – for beans you can make a black cloak. A mask. A big sword. And I thought – who is this guy? The answer was obvious. He’s an executioner. I started writing this thing and it kept getting longer and longer.” Which resulted of course, the four novels for which he is best known: The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch.
Neil Gaiman bumped into Gene Wolfe once and asked him for ten bits of writing advice. Gene Wolfe said he couldn’t possibly come up with ten things on the spot! Gaiman asked for five, and this is what he said:
“Get up early and write.” I’ve done this for years now, ever since my children grew up and started staying out and up late. I was a “night writer”, working until 2 am…now I start at 5 am…
“Read what you’re trying to write, for Godsakes!” While there’s truth in this and I AM an avid reader of short stories and it’s what I write; I love a good long novel every once in a while.
“Remember that it is characterizing that puts your story heads and shoulders over the others in the slush pile.” Oooo…ouch…I clearly don’t have a good handle on this. Unless it has to do with humorous interaction. That seems to be my forte. NOT outright slapstick, though I’d tried that. But I guess I adhere to the MASH “school of writing”: deal with a serious issue; and (in the best episodes), reveal a humorous side to the deadly side. I’ll need to remember that in the story I’m writing right now.
“You do not characterize by telling the reader about the character. You do it by showing the character thinking, speaking and acting in a characteristic way. You simply show it and shut up.” Ah…I need to remember this, too. I get too much into “explaining” what’s going on in a story. I need to show my characters acting…um…characteristically in order to illuminate their…um…character…OK – that sounds stupid, but it ALL OF A SUDDEN MAKES SENSE TO ME. It suddenly explains SO MUCH about Severian (“hero” of the BOOK OF THE NEW SUN)…which leads me to…
“Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story’s ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.” And there you go – it’s why I’m having so much trouble with my current work in progress. I don’t know where it’s going, so I don’t know how to start it. Severian’s ending was the same as the journey of Jesus, whose destiny was to be the Christ. Wolfe himself said that Severian was “a man who has been born into a very perverse background, who is gradually trying to become better.” Not exactly the Christ story, but then, there is only on Son of God.
Elsewhere, Wolfe says, “Read. No matter what you may long to believe, you cannot become a writer without tens of thousands of hours of reading…[and] Write. Writers do it. Would-be writers do not. Just as you can't learn to swim without floundering around in the water a lot, you cannot learn to write without writing. Harlan Ellson tells his would-be writer audiences that they should write a short story every day--three hundred and sixty five little stories over the next year. Is Harlan grandstanding with a piece of ridiculously exaggerated advice? No.” I haven’t done THAT, but I’m making more progress NOW that I have ever made. Of course, I’m retired. I’ve been waiting for this my entire life.
In an interview with Larry McCaffery, when asked about his initial eight-year “training”, Wolfe said, “During those eight years…why weren't you selling? Was your work really that bad or were you already writing far enough outside the accepted genre conventions that it was difficult to find a home for your work?”
Wolfe said, “…mainly I was simply learning the art of writing. You don't go out, buy a violin, and then immediately get a job with a symphony orchestra—first you've got to learn how to play the damn thing. Writing is a lot like that.”
And do great writers have to rewrite? Wolfe definitely has something to say about that! “I do a minimum of three ‘writes’ for everything I do—an original and then at least two rewrites. A lot of stuff goes through four drafts, and some of it goes 15 or even more drafts; basically I'm willing to keep revising until I get it right…[In THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS] I completely rewrote those opening pages at least eight or ten times because it seemed essential to capture that certain flavor I wanted the story to have… since character usually seems to be the single element in my works I'm most interested in, a lot of the rewriting I do involves me trying to fine tune character.”
I just realized that I’ve rewritten several stories more than once – sometimes months or even years later. I did that recently with a story I just sold (“Dinosaur Veterinarian” to ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact)…[Wolfe was also an ANALOG writer! In the May 1973 issue (I was 16…) had the story, “How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion”.]
From GOODREADS, Michael Roetzel had this to say: “I do recall once finding a bare paragraph or two on a long lost blog in which Wolfe described how he wrote. He says he writes first broadly and generally, just describing what is happening, and only begins to really write, to lay out sentences, in his 2nd and 3rd rewrites.” (Possibly anecdotal, but it seems to jive with the interviews I’ve been reading.)
Lastly, the blogger doesn’t say where the qu0te came from, but I saw it in one of the other interviews I read: “Find a very short story by a writer you admire. Read it over…until you understand everything in it. Then read it over a lot more…Put it away where you cannot get at it…When you cannot see it again, write it yourself. You know who the characters are. You know what happens. [But] YOU write it. Make it as good as you can. Compare your story to the original, when you have access to the original again. Is your version longer? Shorter? Why? Read both versions out loud…[and] you can see how the author handled those problems. If you want to learn to write fiction, and are among those rare people willing to work at it, you might want to use the little story you have just finished as one of your models.” This is an exercise I plan to do – and soon. I have two choices of which story to try this with, either “The Tides of Kithrup” by David Brin; or “The Weatherman” by Lois McMaster Bujold. When I’m done, I’ll report back here!
For now? I gotta get back to writing!
References: https://raymondwriteswrongs.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/writing-advice-from-gene-wolfe/, https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2088407-gene-wolfe-on-writing#:~:text=His%20writing%20advice%20is%20surprisingly,name%20a%20character%20Fred%2C%20etc.&text=You%20are%20not%20kidding., https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/wolfe46interview.htm, https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/07/25/12916/a-qa-with-gene-wolfe/, http://scatterings1976.blogspot.com/2016/07/gene-wolfes-advice-for-writers.html, https://www.blackgate.com/2010/11/23/and-it-goes-on-from-there-an-interview-with-gene-wolfe/
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320
Without further ado, short story observations by Gene Wolfe – with a few from myself…
“What is impossible is to keep [my Catholicism] out. The author cannot prevent the work being his or hers.” Gene Wolfe
You can see above one of the reasons I admired Gene Wolfe – he was a Christian and wasn’t interested in hiding his faith. People took him as he was. I’m sure there were people who refused to read his work because of his faith, figuring his worldview was so absurd that he wouldn’t have anything to say that would interest them.
That’s OK – because there were enough people who COULD do that, while his books were never “popular”, they were intense, deep, and you put down the book or the short story pondering…something. His work wasn’t the kind that you read and forgot. Part of THAT was because he made you stop and think; ponder what he was trying to say, then go back and read it again, once more.
Incredibly POPULAR, multiple award-winning English writer, Neil Gaman admired Gene Wolf’s writing without sharing his faith. In 2011, he wrote: “He's the finest living male American writer of science fiction and fantasy...possibly the finest living American writer.” Other clearly not of his faith persuasion also praised his work: “Ursula Le Guin calls him ‘our Melville,’ and Michael Swanwick says he ‘is the single greatest writer in the English language alive today.’”
So – what was it about Wolfe’s writing that inspired such an observation, and how can I learn from it? I haven’t read everything he’s written – far from it – but what I have read (both short stories and novels) has captivated my attention at the time and left a deep impression on me.) Does he START OUT trying to write deep? Apparently, the answer is “No.” When asked if “the Urth of the New Sun series begin as a darkly literate intentional parody and subversion of the Sword & Sorcery tradition, or am I just reading it that way?
Gene Wolfe said, “No, it did not. At the beginning of that whole series, I simply wanted to write a short story or novelette for Orbit. I was at some Con down in Chicago and Bob Tucker grabbed me and dragged me to this panel on costuming, which I would not normally have attended, so he’d have someone to talk to. As I listened to this panel of professional costumers, I started sulking a little that none of my characters had ever been made into costumes. And then I realized I’d never written a character that would make a good costume – so whose fault was that? I started listening to these people and thinking up a costume people could make easily and enjoy wearing.
“Black boots – nothing easier; black trousers – ditto; no shirt, black cloak – for beans you can make a black cloak. A mask. A big sword. And I thought – who is this guy? The answer was obvious. He’s an executioner. I started writing this thing and it kept getting longer and longer.” Which resulted of course, the four novels for which he is best known: The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch.
Neil Gaiman bumped into Gene Wolfe once and asked him for ten bits of writing advice. Gene Wolfe said he couldn’t possibly come up with ten things on the spot! Gaiman asked for five, and this is what he said:
“Get up early and write.” I’ve done this for years now, ever since my children grew up and started staying out and up late. I was a “night writer”, working until 2 am…now I start at 5 am…
“Read what you’re trying to write, for Godsakes!” While there’s truth in this and I AM an avid reader of short stories and it’s what I write; I love a good long novel every once in a while.
“Remember that it is characterizing that puts your story heads and shoulders over the others in the slush pile.” Oooo…ouch…I clearly don’t have a good handle on this. Unless it has to do with humorous interaction. That seems to be my forte. NOT outright slapstick, though I’d tried that. But I guess I adhere to the MASH “school of writing”: deal with a serious issue; and (in the best episodes), reveal a humorous side to the deadly side. I’ll need to remember that in the story I’m writing right now.
“You do not characterize by telling the reader about the character. You do it by showing the character thinking, speaking and acting in a characteristic way. You simply show it and shut up.” Ah…I need to remember this, too. I get too much into “explaining” what’s going on in a story. I need to show my characters acting…um…characteristically in order to illuminate their…um…character…OK – that sounds stupid, but it ALL OF A SUDDEN MAKES SENSE TO ME. It suddenly explains SO MUCH about Severian (“hero” of the BOOK OF THE NEW SUN)…which leads me to…
“Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story’s ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.” And there you go – it’s why I’m having so much trouble with my current work in progress. I don’t know where it’s going, so I don’t know how to start it. Severian’s ending was the same as the journey of Jesus, whose destiny was to be the Christ. Wolfe himself said that Severian was “a man who has been born into a very perverse background, who is gradually trying to become better.” Not exactly the Christ story, but then, there is only on Son of God.
Elsewhere, Wolfe says, “Read. No matter what you may long to believe, you cannot become a writer without tens of thousands of hours of reading…[and] Write. Writers do it. Would-be writers do not. Just as you can't learn to swim without floundering around in the water a lot, you cannot learn to write without writing. Harlan Ellson tells his would-be writer audiences that they should write a short story every day--three hundred and sixty five little stories over the next year. Is Harlan grandstanding with a piece of ridiculously exaggerated advice? No.” I haven’t done THAT, but I’m making more progress NOW that I have ever made. Of course, I’m retired. I’ve been waiting for this my entire life.
In an interview with Larry McCaffery, when asked about his initial eight-year “training”, Wolfe said, “During those eight years…why weren't you selling? Was your work really that bad or were you already writing far enough outside the accepted genre conventions that it was difficult to find a home for your work?”
Wolfe said, “…mainly I was simply learning the art of writing. You don't go out, buy a violin, and then immediately get a job with a symphony orchestra—first you've got to learn how to play the damn thing. Writing is a lot like that.”
And do great writers have to rewrite? Wolfe definitely has something to say about that! “I do a minimum of three ‘writes’ for everything I do—an original and then at least two rewrites. A lot of stuff goes through four drafts, and some of it goes 15 or even more drafts; basically I'm willing to keep revising until I get it right…[In THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS] I completely rewrote those opening pages at least eight or ten times because it seemed essential to capture that certain flavor I wanted the story to have… since character usually seems to be the single element in my works I'm most interested in, a lot of the rewriting I do involves me trying to fine tune character.”
I just realized that I’ve rewritten several stories more than once – sometimes months or even years later. I did that recently with a story I just sold (“Dinosaur Veterinarian” to ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact)…[Wolfe was also an ANALOG writer! In the May 1973 issue (I was 16…) had the story, “How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion”.]
From GOODREADS, Michael Roetzel had this to say: “I do recall once finding a bare paragraph or two on a long lost blog in which Wolfe described how he wrote. He says he writes first broadly and generally, just describing what is happening, and only begins to really write, to lay out sentences, in his 2nd and 3rd rewrites.” (Possibly anecdotal, but it seems to jive with the interviews I’ve been reading.)
Lastly, the blogger doesn’t say where the qu0te came from, but I saw it in one of the other interviews I read: “Find a very short story by a writer you admire. Read it over…until you understand everything in it. Then read it over a lot more…Put it away where you cannot get at it…When you cannot see it again, write it yourself. You know who the characters are. You know what happens. [But] YOU write it. Make it as good as you can. Compare your story to the original, when you have access to the original again. Is your version longer? Shorter? Why? Read both versions out loud…[and] you can see how the author handled those problems. If you want to learn to write fiction, and are among those rare people willing to work at it, you might want to use the little story you have just finished as one of your models.” This is an exercise I plan to do – and soon. I have two choices of which story to try this with, either “The Tides of Kithrup” by David Brin; or “The Weatherman” by Lois McMaster Bujold. When I’m done, I’ll report back here!
For now? I gotta get back to writing!
References: https://raymondwriteswrongs.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/writing-advice-from-gene-wolfe/, https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2088407-gene-wolfe-on-writing#:~:text=His%20writing%20advice%20is%20surprisingly,name%20a%20character%20Fred%2C%20etc.&text=You%20are%20not%20kidding., https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/wolfe46interview.htm, https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/07/25/12916/a-qa-with-gene-wolfe/, http://scatterings1976.blogspot.com/2016/07/gene-wolfes-advice-for-writers.html, https://www.blackgate.com/2010/11/23/and-it-goes-on-from-there-an-interview-with-gene-wolfe/
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320
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