WRITING ADVICE: MY Short Stories (and HER novels!) – Advice and Observation #37: Kathy Reichs “& Me”

In this feature, I’ll be looking at “advice” for writing short stories – not from me, but from other short story writers. In speculative fiction, “short” has very carefully delineated categories: “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories by word count; Novel 40,000 words or over; Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words; Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words; Short story under 7,500 words.”

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 I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Without further ado, short story observations (though in HER case, it's her novels being turned into SCRIPTS (a form of short story!) by Kathy Reichs – with a few from myself…

Kathy “Reichs began her career…as a forensic anthropologist who helped solve violent crime by examining the bodies of the victims.”

As much as I would have LOVED to begin my writing career as a member of the crew of the USS Enterprise, I began my career as a science fiction nerd who was drawn into the sciences by some good teachers – mostly my 9th grade science teacher (Mr. W…; my biology teacher, Mr. H; NOT my chemistry teacher Mr. J; and absolutely NOT my physics professor in college, Mr. ??? – BUT by the Organic Chemistry lab professor, Dr. Kowanko. I became a science teacher with my license in biology. When I couldn’t find a full-time biology job to save my life, I went back to college briefly to get a Middle School certification (biology, Earth science, and Physical science (chemistry/physics).

Even so, I followed the sciences avidly and started to take my writing seriously. “Reichs’ background as a forensic anthropologist provides more than just the inspiration for (her fictional main character) Temperance Brennan and her career. It also infuses her novels with a unique blend of science and storytelling. As aspiring authors, we can study her books to understand how to weave accurate details about our own backgrounds and career into our narrative, which can elevate the authenticity of our work.”

I’ve always been fascinated with aliens and behaviors that extend OUT of a living creature’s biology, hence my drift into biology and education. While I wrote dozens of stories prior to my first published story, “Absolute Limits” in the August 1996 issue of ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact, I didn’t address aliens for another twenty years – and it wasn’t about aliens, per se, but “Fairy Bones”(CAST OF WONDERS November 2015, https://www.castofwonders.org/2015/11/episode-181-fairy-bones-by-guy-stewart/) – and while the fairies WERE alien, they were small, earthly inhabitants of a marsh not far from where I live…though, I suppose…)

“Temperance Brennan, the central character in Kathy Reichs’ novels, is a vividly relatable human being…immersed in the world of science and logic…often grappling with the nuances of human emotions. Her…relentless pursuit of justice and truth sometimes blinds her to the emotional toll her work takes on her own well-being…making her a nuanced and relatable protagonist…”

OK – I write NOTHING like her forensic scientist, BUT…I do write about people I understand: people like me and the students I have had in my classrooms over the past nearly 50 years.

For example:

“…her success [comes from her skill at] conveying complex scientific concepts in a digestible manner without compromising the pace of her stories…that doesn’t sacrifice the momentum or emotional impact of your story.” In my own story, “Technopred” (https://aurorawolf.com/2013/05/guy-stewart/), I imagine that the interaction between “urban wildlife…like coyote, turkey, squirrels, rats, racoons and foxes…” and their interactions with Human both intentional and accidental (traps, poisons, shooting and cars, inappropriate foods) are rapidly accelerating the evolution of intelligence in some of these animals…” (https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2026/04/14/coyotes-turkeys-and-other-city-critters)

In my story, raccoons have started to show up who are communicating in WRITING (English). I nick-named them “narns” (in honor of CS Lewis’ “Narnians”…) I do science along with story – something that Reichs’ writing strengthened in me after my wife and I started watching the TV show whose main character is based on Kathy Reichs’ novels. I use science to educate young people – as well as spin a good story.

“Other writers can learn from Reichs how to strike that delicate balance between educating your readers and entertaining them.”

OK? What the heck am I doing writing this! I need to get to work on a new story!

References:
https://www.hiddengemsbooks.com/what-writers-learn-from-kathy-reichs
https://www.writerswrite.co.za/bits-of-writing-advice-from-kathy-reichs/
https://shows.acast.com/quick-book-reviews/episodes/kathy-reichs-on-evil-bones-temperance-brennan-writing-crime
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 707

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them? Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.

F Trope: White magic
Event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD1SLcyMZRE

Mahamat Abeche and Liha Beledweyne looked at each other across the table in the Gersthofen Commons of Göggingen College.

“The thing about Americans?” Liha said. She watched a gaggle of students mutter on by.

“Which thing about Americans?” asked Mahamat. Liha looked at him in disgust. For having so many bad things to say about the US, he certainly had no qualms about the food. He was stuffing a sheaf of “French” fries into his mouth then washing it down with a Coke.

“The thing about Americans is that they’re so…materialistic. They think that what they see is what they get.” He rolled her eyes and shook her head. Even she picked up Americanisms without even realizing it. Her father had warned her that America would badly muffle her perception of the spirit world. She’d figured she could handle it. She now figured that it was a good thing that the college was so close to a Somolian neighborhood – while her spiritual sense was nowhere near as sharp as it had been at home, at least she still had one.

Mahamat looked up at her over his plate of fried. Once he’d chewed and swallowed, she said, “You East Africans are so proud of your supposed closeness with the spirit world. What about us? Chad grew from a population emigrated there in the seventh millennium B.C.!”

She snorted. “We were there from the ninth millennium B.C. onward. We were practically there are the dawn of Human civilization.”

“So you supposedly know all about everything spiritual because your forebears were around a couple thousand years before mine were?”

“No, I’m more spiritual because I’m more spiritual. You’re a brainless blob with so little spiritual sense that I’ve been dead trees with more spiritual energy than you have.”

“Hey!” Mahamat exclaimed. The tip of a fry fell from his mouth.

“So, if you’re more spiritual than a log, you’re gonna have to prove it.”

He grunted then said, “I didn’t want to have to bring out the big guns, but now you’ve impugned my masculinity. I have to...”

“Do you even know what the word means?”

“What? ‘impugn’ means ‘honesty of (a statement or motive); challenge; call into question.’ See?” He smirked.

“That’s not the word I meant.”

Scowling, he said, “I know white magic and I can prove it.”

“What?”

Mahamat lifted his chin. “In white magic – as it was passed on to me by my mother – we follow specific ethical codes and adopt social convention. But I know a spell to protect an item.” He leaned over and grabbed his backpack, opened it and pulled his laptop out, opened it and powered it up. Sitting back in his chair, he muttered then looked up at her. “I’ve protected my laptop with a spell.” He stood up. “I gotta go to the bathroom,” he said loudly and walked away.

Liha said, “What are you doing? If you leave your...” He flipped her off and kept going.

She stared after him incredulously, flipped him back, spun around and walked away. She walked past the Göggingen Gallery then came back around, unobtrusively watching the open laptop. It sat just fine for several moments. Four people walked past going in different directions, but no one made a move for the computer.

Then a peculiarly shabby male student, long hair obscuring his face, his sweatshirt slightly rattier than usual walked toward the table. He reached for the laptop…

Names: ♀ Somalia; ♂ Tchad
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS 44: Under Pressure: Exploring Oceans Beyond Earth

Under Pressure: Exploring Oceans Beyond Earth – We're finding liquid water everywhere in the solar system. What will it take for humanity to explore and/or colonize those vast new oceans?
William Ledbetter: 2016 Nebula Award, edits for Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, runs the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award contest (Baen Books, the National Space Society)
Pat MacEwen: anthropologist/author, several short stories in F&SF
Laurel Anne Hill: authored The Engine Woman’s Light, one other novel
Too bad James L. Cambias wasn’t part of this panel. His novel, A DARKLING SEA, takes place under the ice surfaced ocean of the alien world, Illmatar. It’s more complex than that, but his aliens and their entirely fire-less biotech society and culture are fascinating.

Jupiter’s moon, Europa figures in several science fiction stories ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter%27s_moons_in_fiction), more than one dealing with life in the waters under the ice. There’s ice under the surfaces of Mars and Venus as well: http://theconversation.com/water-water-everywhere-in-our-solar-system-but-what-does-that-mean-for-life-76315

Certainly we will explore those places when time and technology are right, but I think this session was looking beyond that. We’ve established that there’s water elsewhere than on the home world. So? Who cares? We need water on Earth – but even though the surface is 71% water, we can only “use” a fraction of that. Roughly three percent of that water is “usably freshwater” and of that, most of it is frozen or underground. Vast swaths of the surface of our OWN planet are completely uninhabited by Humans. We laud and magnify ourselves for having “conquered Earth” as well as chide ourselves for “destroying the oceans”…

But we can easily walk on only 29% of the surface, and of that, 57% is uninhabitable…so, Humans live on just sixteen percent of the Earth’s surface. Seems that “conquered” is a somewhat relative term. Here the discussion looked at “what it will take for humanity to explore and/or colonize those vast new oceans”. Yet we haven’t even colonized our own oceans. We avoid them typically. There are Humans who have never had any encounter with an ocean at all, and the ones who say that they have might have gone swimming in one or flown over one. Even those who live “on” the ocean might have little to do with the water itself. As I live in the land-locked center of North America, I have no idea how many people in Los Angeles actually “use” or have “conquered” the Pacific.

Certainly people HAVE done things with the ocean, interacting with it intimately – my daughter spent time on New Zealand as an exchange student learning about Maori art; most everyone reading this has seen the kid’s movie, “Moana”. Many of us have “been to Hawaii”.

Can we honestly say in any real sense that Humans have “conquered the oceans”? Do we really live there, or do we just USE the oceans? We certainly like to dump stuff there: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/podcast/june14/mw126-garbagepatch.html, in particular, insoluble plastic.

Some people claim that living on the oceans is “impossible” or “unlikely”, but the fact is that we have created artificial islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_islands, we just haven’t made them very large, the largest owned near Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Japan has created the most artificial islands, and Holland has been doing it for two thousand years. The ancient Egyptians also made islands.

But our ability to push back oceans and to really, truly inhabit them is entirely unrealized on this planet. There are no undersea cities – a peculiar dream of mine – but there are some who think they might be possible: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2016/westminster-academics-predict-underwater-cities-downloadable-food-and-3d-printed-houses-by-2116. Science fiction (sort of in some of the cases noted) has had a stab at it: https://io9.gizmodo.com/5560901/the-11-greatest-underwater-cities-of-science-fiction

None of the sources mentioned SEAQUEST DSV, and while there were no cities under the surface of the ocean, there were colonies and (at least in its first season), a serious attempt at writing the stories. In this future, the bottom of the ocean is the only place left where there are exploitable natural resources and Humans need to be there to utilize them.

Yet there are still SOME people entertaining the possibility of us REALLY living under the surface of the oceans. Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3rs886Imgk then give it some thought...would YOU live "20,000 Leagues UNDER the SEA...

Image: https://blaustein.foundation/dubai-underwater-city-life-extending-technological-marvel/

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 706

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: Isaac Asimov’s Three Kinds Of Science Fiction: “Gadget sci-fi: Man invents car, holds lecture on how it works.”
Current Event: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131210071936.htm

Khünbish Qureshi said, “Once we drill through the ice, we can begin extract the uranium. But we have to do it fast.” He tapped the wide pipe with his heavily armored hand. While there was no true atmosphere and the surface of the moon was exposed to the radiation sleet from Jupiter, they both wore flexible suits and had ridden to the surface on little more than a hovering plate.

“You think extracting a few metric tonnes of uranium from this moon would have any kind of effect at all?” asked Yelizavta Zaya. She bounced a few meters back after stomping her foot.

“I can’t say for sure.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a geologist...”

“You mean a Eurologist?”

“That makes me sound like a bladder specialist!”

“Well, it’s not Earth, so you can’t be a ‘geologist’.”

“There’s not a bladder in sight, either!”

Beneath their feet, the ice sang. On any other world, it would have been a quake, but here the ice vibrated, shifting, sliding along cracked edges. Immense crevasses sang bass that shook the world like a drum head; smaller ones sang faint hymns of joy; the smallest sang beyond the hearing of Humans.

Khünbish slapped the pipe again and said, “If there were living things under the surface, maybe my sucking the lifeblood from the water will make them sit up and take notice.”

“I doubt there’re sitting beings under our feet, Khun.”

He grimaced at the diminutive – Americans and Loonies made a habit of lopping parts of people’s names off willy-nilly – and said, “Whatever they’re doing, I’m hoping they notice.”

“And if there’s nothing under our feet but ice, water, uranium?”

“Then we stand to make a fortune and retire wherever we want to.” He bounced back as the ice began to sing again. As he fell to the surface, he grimaced and said, “Can you hear that?”

“Technically, I can’t hear anything. The vibrations from the ice are…”

“Literalist,” Khünbish said.

“I thought you Mongolians were literalists, but here I find you’re a pure romantic,” Yelizavta poked back. She sighed as the ice under her feet shook again.

Her partner froze in place and whispered, “I think I hear something…”

Names: ♀ Russia, Mongolian; ♂ Mongolian, Pakistan
Image: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/C2nVRtyWKDsGheTkefwup8-970-80.jpg.webp

Where Did MARTIAN HOLIDAY Come From?

“Seventeen years ago, I wondered what would happen if Paul, Esther, Stephen, and Daniel had been born on Mars in the 26^th Century…that’s where Paolo, Aster, Stepan, and DaneelAH (with their clone brother HanAH, and clone sisters AzAH, and MishAH) met and got tangled in a revolution. But together, they thought they might turn a revolution into a Reformation.

(Oh…there’s a the Face On Mars, too. And the Dalai Lama of Mars; several mysterious alien artifacts; and a coven of witches, an atheist or two, plus a few other characters as well as violence both war and personal – almost all of them did not want to see Mars destroyed.)

I love this Mars. I hope you do, too.

The Launch of Artemis II To Voyage Around the MOON For the FIRST TIME IN OVER 50 Years...

Just so you know...I was 13 when Armstrong walked on the Moon in 1969. We were at friends' house to watch. Afterward, I ran outside and looked up at the full Moon...to see if I could see Apollo 11 orbiting the Moon.

Today? I wept tears of joy...