WRITING ADVICE: What Went RIGHT #46…With “Bog Father” (Submitted 1 time with 0 revision, sold to Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE, December 2017)

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

Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

WRITING ADVICE – Lisa Cron #16: Story is Character Action, Plot is World Action

In 2008, 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. To learn more – and to satisfy my natural tendency to “teach stuff”, I started a series of essays taking the wisdom of published writers and then applying each “nugget of wisdom” to my own writing. During the six years that followed, I used the advice of a number of published writers (with their permission) and then applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda to an analysis of my own writing. Together these people write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Today I add to that list, Lisa Cron who has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences, and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. After reading her book, WIRED FOR STORY, I was overwhelmed by the information, so I distilled it down to 23 of the most important points she made. For the next few Elements of Cron and Korea and Cron, I’m going to share what I found – not so much for you, but for me!

Action Plan 1: Story is how a character reacts and acts to the plot, which is what happens.

As strange as it may sound, I forget this sometimes.

Let me back up. I write from an outline of my story, not a “literary” outline, but a storyboard I create with small, yellow sticky notes (invented, I might add, through a tangled, lawsuit-strewn path, by 3M (which actually stands for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing), which world HQ is 25 miles from where I am writing this!)

Ahem…

Once I set up the outline, I write from it. Not slavishly, as I allow for my characters to occasionally do something I hadn’t foreseen, but it IS like putty – hard to reshape once I’ve got it down.

I’ve forgotten recently, that my characters are “alive” in the sense that while I’m writing a story, I’m trying to move them along a predetermined path, but they also need to react to what’s going on around them out of the personality I’ve created.

I’m a Christian (in case you haven’t figured it out!), and I know that while God gives me free will, He has also laid out a plan for my life. I’m free to choose not to follow the plan, but He does know what’s best for me and I would be wise to follow His will.

My current work-in-progress is a case to point. I’ve brought back two characters that readers liked in “Road Veterinarian” and though Thatcher left a note with Dr. Scrabble reading, “You and I are not finished yet”, this new story doesn’t allow them the intimacy they had in the Northwest Angle. So, now what? Scrabble asks Thatcher out on a date – and she turns him down. Why? The problem is that it has nothing to do with the story, and now he’s disappointed. What am I supposed to do with that development?

As well, this story is complicated by a number of factors, including a resurrected dinosaur called a Korean Tiny Terror and a possible infectious disease (which I haven’t even gotten to yet in the story, and what the heck does that have to do with Scrabble – he’s a veterinarian!)

On the other hand, she has “…doctorates in invertebrate zoology and molecular biology from UBC, Vancouver, with undergraduate studies in nanochemical engineering, wildlife management, and forestry.” So, she’s smart.

He is, too. Though I don’t reveal it in the first story, besides having a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, he also has undergrad degrees in Cellular and Molecular Biology, Animal Sciences with an emphasis in Animal Biomedical Science and, Veterinary Technology.

But neither one has much experience with paleontology…

OK, so you see my problem. I get off track. I am a science geek and I love research, but in this story series, I am easily distracted by the SCIENCE rather than focusing on the story.

To write a good story, I need to concentrate on the character’s reaction to what is HAPPENING (plot). I tend to overwrite things that are happening. In this case, I also have many characters – Thatcher, Scrabble, Hosik, Hulan, and Jang. The story’s going to be long, BUT I need to start killing some of these people off in order to get back to the story of Thatcher and Scrabble. Maybe I can let Jang live, even though she’s the most disagreeable of the lot of them.

But…hmmm…I need to get back to the story because in writing this, I’ve gotten some clarity on what I need to do and what I have been doing. In this case, they aren’t the same and have been bogging down the story. I’ll be letting you know what happens!

Image: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51ddbf8fe4b0bf85e2f4edd2/t/592c2f0b414fb5ddd3a1259d/1496067864402/BookImage.jpg?format=300w

Elements of Cron and Korea #15: From 10% to 30%...Applying Lisa Cron’s Wisdom Consistently

I may  have mentioned that one of my goals is to increase my writing output, increase my publication rate, and increase the relevance of my writing. In my WRITING ADVICE column, I had started using an article my sister sent me by Lisa Cron. She has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences, and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. I am going to fuse the advice from her book WIRED FOR STORY with my recent trip to South Korea. Why? I made a discovery there. You’ll hear more about it in the future as I work to integrate what I’m learning from the book, the startling things I found in South Korea, and try and alter how I write in order to create characters that people will care about, characters that will speak the Truth, and characters that will clearly illustrate what I’m writing about.

“Remember when Luke has to drop the bomb into the small vent on the Death Star? The story writer faces a similar challenge of penetrating the brain of the reader. This book gives the blueprints.” – David Eagleman

I’m done with iterating what I’ve learned and applied from Lisa Cron’s “A Reader’s Manifesto: 15 Hardwired Expectations Every Reader Has for Every Story”. The list is below here and I’ve put links to each essay in the series below.

So, now what?

I practice. I’ve been working hard to use this methodology since I read the article and then the book – which all started April of 2018. Since then, I’ve written nine stories and sold three – two of them to my dream market of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact.

My usual number of published stories has run about ten percent for decades. Since reading Lisa Cron’s article and book, the percentage has jumped to 33 percent. A third of what I write.

That’s significant. It shows that I’ve started to internalize the ideas she presented in the book and article. It shows to me that they’re an effective way to look at writing stories.

The reader expects…

1. …that the story will start making a very specific point, beginning with the first sentence.
2. …the story to revolve around one, single plot problem that grows, escalates and complicates, which the protagonist has no choice but to deal with.
3. …a glimpse of the big picture from the very first page.
4. …that there will be a protagonist.
5. …that the protagonist will be flawed and vulnerable – never, ever “perfect.”
6. …the protagonist to not only have a past, but one that affects the future.
7. …that the protagonist will enter the story with a longstanding agenda – that is, something she already wants, which is what gives true meaning to her goal.
8. …the protagonist will have a longstanding misbelief that has kept her from easily achieving that goal.
9. …that the plot will force the protagonist to confront and overcome her misbelief, something she’s probably spent her whole life avoiding.
10. …to feel something, from the first sentence to the last; and what the reader feels is what the protagonist feels.
11. …a clear, present and escalating force of opposition, with a loudly ticking clock.
12. …that there will be something crucial at stake in every scene, continually forcing the protagonist’s hand.
13. …that as the protagonist tries to solve the plot problem, she will only make things worse, until she has no choice but to face her misbelief.
14. …that everything in the story is there strictly on a need-to-know basis.
15. …that at the end of the story the protagonist will emerge changed, seeing the world through new eyes.

So, I’m working on a new story that combines my veterinarian and South Korea. The working title is “Dinosaur Veterinarian”. In the reviews of “Road Veterinarian” (ANALOG, September/October 2019), while people had trouble believing that a road covering could be a living substance and given enough prodding (starvation) it could actually move, reviewers did like the interaction between my genetically modified soldier and a veterinarian with a genetic disorder called “piebaldism”. I suppose my message is that just because people are genetically changed, they’re still people. Also, the message is that we have a choice: we can take something wonderful and make a weapon out of it; or we can just take in something wonderful. In this case, it’s wildlife – we can take it in (obviously not something like bubonic plague, coronavirus, or other diseases that cause suffering – though I’ve heard that there has been discussion of the philosophy of microbial rights (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3059913/, https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-016-0702-7) or we can turn wildlife into weapons.

The metaphor is carried in my characters, Thatcher is a deliberately modified Human; Javier is an “accidentally” modified Human. The antagonists in the story have not only modified an influenza virus (one of a series of iterations of the H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 Flu Pandemic) to make it more virulent, they have altered the genes expressed in certain species of birds who are the most closely related to prehistoric velociraptors (Microraptoria), in this case, the red-legged and black legged seriemas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seriema) though they are the sole survivors of the small bird family of Caramidae and represented by these two separate species. One, the red-legged seriemas is a runner and often captured in its South American niche and domesticated as a “guard bird”; like a carnivorous form of farm geese in Europe and North America.

A “flock” or pack of these “terror birds” is infected with an avian flu and released in the DMZ. It’s up to my main characters with the help of two others to figure out what’s going on and stop it.

While maintaining the romantic tension between the two mains. If I can execute Cron’s methodology and meet the reader’s expectations, I may be able to sell this story as well.

As always, I’ll keep you posted.

Resource: https://www.creativelive.com/blog/essential-storytelling-techniques/

Image: https://www.ducksters.com/science/chemistry/chromium.gif

Elements of Cron and Korea #12: Character, Character, Character? It’s All, About. How...They React!

I may  have mentioned that one of my goals is to increase my writing output, increase my publication rate, and increase the relevance of my writing. In my WRITING ADVICE column, I had started using an article my sister sent me by Lisa Cron. She has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences, and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. I am going to fuse the advice from her book WIRED FOR STORY with my recent trip to South Korea. Why? I made a discovery there. You’ll hear more about it in the future as I work to integrate what I’m learning from the book, the startling things I found in South Korea, and try and alter how I write in order to create characters that people will care about, characters that will speak the Truth, and characters that will clearly illustrate what I’m writing about.

“Remember when Luke has to drop the bomb into the small vent on the Death Star? The story writer faces a similar challenge of penetrating the brain of the reader. This book gives the blueprints.” – David Eagleman

In considering my next move with the Korean Solar Expansion series, I’m going to look at these two elements:

“Cheomsongmae is an ancient astronomical observatory that not only survived the southern advance of North Korea during the war, but is now a place Koreans visit. It has existed since roughly since 640 AD – about 1400 years.”

Add that to the first, most important point that I extracted from Cron’s WIRED FOR STORY: “Story is how a character reacts; to the plot which is what happens.”

I’m going to add another element to this as well. From this essay https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/10/elements-of-cron-and-korea-where-do-i.html, I’m going to extract this: “He grew up in South Korea, going to schools there until his family moved back to the US. He enlisted in the Air Force, became a pilot after going to college and getting his first degree in aerospace engineering.”

In addition to something like this happening to my grandchildren, I also have a former student who graduated from high school (not spectacularly, but he did graduate), who worked at Target. A fine job, but not exactly what he wanted. That was the problem though. He didn’t know WHAT he wanted. A little over a year ago, I ran into him at his work and he was excited – uncharacteristically so. He thought he knew what he wanted in life and he asked to come and see me at school. We met and he told me he wanted to enlist in the Air Force and become a mechanic. That was great, but being who I am, we talked a bit more and I suggested he look higher – maybe even to space.

The thing is, he’d never thought of that.

I remember when the desire of many kids was to “be an astronaut”. I haven’t really heard that sentiment in recent years. In fact, since the American Human space program essentially died with the moth-balling of the Space Shuttle fleet (which needed to happen, by the way. They were old. The first tested in 1977, the last landing in 2011 – so thirty-four years they flew the same design with only minor modifications.

Eight years later, and Americans still have not gone into space on anything but the Russian Soyuz spacecraft (though supplies have been delivered by the US (Cygnus), Russia (Progress), the European Space Agency (ATV), SpaceX (Falcon), and Japan (Kounotori).  

So, where does story come in here? What would happen if an amateur built a space craft? This was an “everyday occurrence” in the stories of Robert A. Heinlein; most notably ROCKET SHIP GALILEO. Amazon.com has several books delineating the creation of amateur rockets and pushing the boundaries higher and higher. One article linked below notes that government agencies actually need to monitor amateur launches.

While nothing like Rocket Ship GALILEO has happened, the operative word here would be “YET”. Some years ago, I tried a story in which NASA spread out its satellite and supply launches by creating a mobile launch platform. This is NOT a crazy idea. The military has the capability of moving missile launch systems and does so on a regular basis. The launcher is surrounded by support vehicles like a mobile “mission control”, tracking radar, and power generators. While the missiles are small, there doesn’t seem to me to be any barrier to ramping up the size. Also, with the development of SpaceX’s soft-landing system, completed successfully in 2015, seems to indicate that while I doubt we’d want to try and land rockets in suburban neighborhoods, it’s technically feasible.

So, the basis of my story? A fresh technical college graduate (yes, he understands theory, but no, he can’t calculate orbits in his head at the drop of a hat and then explain the physics of rocket launches…) with certifications in several areas pertinent to space travel; he has ideas and plans but hasn’t had any kind of experience in space.

Like Tom Godwin’s “Cold Equations” (ASTOUNDING Science Fiction, August 1954. Read a reprint here in LIGHTSPEED, http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equations/), what if he stowed away? In recent years, there have been profound criticism leveled at this story. James Davis Nicoll wrote at Tor.com, “But of course, the point of the story, as determined by the author and his editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., is to underline a moral: the universe doesn’t care about human feelings. Natural law dictates that hard men must make hard choices. What the story actually says is that lousy procedures kill. Just another instance of humans looking for justifications to be beastly to each other.” (https://www.tor.com/2019/04/29/on-needless-cruelty-in-sf-tom-godwins-the-cold-equations/)

So, given a smart enough person (I’d write the main character as female (using my granddaughter as a template), but I don’t want to appropriate the gender narrative…but I COULD have my writer/daughter read it and comment! Hmmm…), they could get into such a ship and stowaway into space, take notes (probably dictating via cellphone – would a standard cellphone work in space?), return, and then go on to build an amateur spacecraft; possibly launching it from a balloon…or some such…let me see…where’s my clipboard? Excuse me while I start a story outline, working title, “The Manipulated Equations”…

Resource: https://www.creativelive.com/blog/essential-storytelling-techniques/, https://newatlas.com/homebuilt-single-person-spacecraft-tested/18816/, https://realdoctorstu.com/2011/01/14/how-to-build-a-spaceship-the-best-and-worst-amateur-astronauts/, https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/brief-history-amateur-space-flight/

Image: https://www.ducksters.com/science/chemistry/chromium.gif

Elements of Cron and Korea #11: Where Do I Go NOW??? With The Korean Solar Expansion

I may  have mentioned that one of my goals is to increase my writing output, increase my publication rate, and increase the relevance of my writing. In my WRITING ADVICE column, I had started using an article my sister sent me by Lisa Cron. She has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences, and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. I am going to fuse the advice from her book WIRED FOR STORY with my recent trip to South Korea. Why? I made a discovery there. You’ll hear more about it in the future as I work to integrate what I’m learning from the book, the startling things I found in South Korea, and try and alter how I write in order to create characters that people will care about, characters that will speak the Truth, and characters that will clearly illustrate what I’m writing about.

“Remember when Luke has to drop the bomb into the small vent on the Death Star? The story writer faces a similar challenge of penetrating the brain of the reader. This book gives the blueprints.” – David Eagleman

OK – I haven’t written on this for a while, so I’m going to start speculating on a series of stories. I’m starting with a foundation from an essay I wrote on October 7, 2018:

1) South Koreans are “space crazy”. They have started their space program from the same “rock bottom” that the American space program started with.

2) As a rule, South Koreans love their history.

3) South Koreans are science and technology crazy.

4) South Koreans (as clearly as I could gather it), have flipped the American paradigm of a house being the dream home, and an apartment a “way station” on the way to a home. South Koreans have had to build vertically both because of the mountainous geography and the “soft” stone geology – mountains are “low” but cannot hold the foundation of any construction steady. The apartment is the Korean goal; homes are passe.

5) South Koreans are solidly rooted in a millennia-old culture.

6) Cheomsongmae is an ancient astronomical observatory that not only survived the southern advance of North Korea during the war, but is now a place Koreans visit. It has existed since roughly since 640 AD – about 1400 years.

7) South Korea is building at an incredible rate!

8) My son commented: “Koreans are aggressive drivers, but they’re not ANGRY drivers like Americans are.”

9) Ancient Korean “signature sticks” are now carved via a computer program.

10) A country with a population of 51 million (imagine the population of Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and the northern half of Texas…the area colloquially as Tornado Alley) squeezed into the southern half of Minnesota...South Korea has few murders, rape is unusual, and children can pretty much safely walk several blocks through a major city to school.

In addition, after reading Lisa Cron’s book, I extracted 52 key ideas that I needed to incorporate into my writing. That many ideas would be very difficult to work with and sometimes the concepts overlapped, so I compressed and rewrote until I had condensed them into 23 key elements to guide me as I write a story:

ACTION PLAN

1)      Story is how a character reacts; to the plot which is what happens

2)      Grab reader, something is at stake on the first page

3)      WHY should they care?

4)      Every scene moves to the ANSWER and pacing is the time between moments of conflict

5)      Plot makes characters confront external & internal issues & CONFRONT THEIR INNER DEMONS

6)      Prose directly accesses character’s mind and what they want to happen

7)      Make us FEEL

8)     Character has ONE objective

9)      Start: character’s worldview is knocked down

10)  Arc: begins one way, ends another

11)   Character is action and anything they do makes things worse

12)  Poke the protagonist until they change, fling them into the fray

13)  Mislead don’t hide, lie, or keep secrets from your reader, or hide the road to the end, (CHARACTERS can do all of these), give information readers need to know

14)  Nothing CAN’T affect the arc

15)   Everything that can go wrong, should

16)  No one should every give up anything they aren’t forced to

17)   Challenges start small and end huge

18)  Threat should be active

19) Hero becomes one by doing something heroic

20)                        Anything that hints at being a pattern had better BE part of it Setup implies future action

21) Payoff has to be POSSIBLE

22) Subplots – MASH style – and mirroring subplots are cautionary tales, validation, or fresh perspectives

23)Keep track of each character’s version of reality

Integrating these two lists into a story produced the first of a series – who knows, maybe even a novel. While I have never met any of the Korean SF community, a friend of mine picked up a publication that’s an overview of that community. Maybe I’ll email one of the members and ask them to read my current story in ANALOG (https://www.analogsf.com/current-issue/table-of-contents/).

In “Kamsahamnida, America”, I’ve created the first block of a series I’ve been thinking about. This essay will be my first attempt at laying out the storyline. From another essay I wrote in September of this year, “In a story that will be in the November/December issue of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, “Kamsahamnida, America” (the first story in my Korean Solar Expansion (planned) series), I had a great deal of trouble writing the end of the story because I somehow got emotionally tied up in it.”

So, as I’ve done before, I’m going to use the two lists above to sketch out an action plan.

First of all, I can’t use the main character from the short story in ANALOG. I need to use other characters. HOWEVER, I need to find a main character who is “me”. Working as I do in a very diverse high school, I know I have no right to cultural appropriation. I can have OTHER characters who come from other cultures (cautious to NOT turn them into stereotypes), but I have to see the story through my own culture. The first story was easy because the main character was me.

Now I need a new character, and I think I’m going to use a combination of my grandson, granddaughter, daughter-in-law, and son…

Japheth (“Call me Jay – NOT JC…”), one of the sons of Noah will be his first name. Their last name doesn’t have an ethnic origin I could find, so after poking around, it will be Karsten. Clementine will be his middle name (no end of teasing, but his mom wanted it and he wasn’t a girl, so there you go.) He grew up in South Korea, going to schools there until his family moved back to the US. He enlisted in the Air Force, became a pilot after going to college and getting his first degree in aerospace engineering. He trained as an astronaut/engineer and spent a few months at the expanded International Space Station, distinguishing himself as an invaluable go-between when South Korean sent up a massive module and nearly doubled the occupancy rate. Because of the relaxation of international regulations and the payment of a huge bribe, their work on nuclear fusion continued and concluded with a working fusion reactor which powered the station for an entire week without solar supplementation.

He retired, married a Korean woman he’d fallen in love with in high school, and settled in both Waegan and Minneapolis where he worked with 3M as a materials engineer for advanced spacecraft. He was 46 when his wife died without children. He was recruited by the Korean Space Program…

And I’m going to stop here except to say that HIS first story will involve dinosaurs and the Korean space program…

Resource: https://www.creativelive.com/blog/essential-storytelling-techniques/

Image: https://www.ducksters.com/science/chemistry/chromium.gif

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS : Of NASA, Democrats, Republicans and the South Korean Space Sprint

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

After JFK sent the United States on a gentle landing (as opposed to a “collision”) course to the Moon, it seems that Democrats turned from the stars to focus on Earth…

Even today, budget battles in Congress have focused on moving into space or more closely monitoring Earth (for Climate Change and Near Earth Asteroids that might collide with the planet and change all life as we know it (see Mary Robinette Kowal’s novels THE CALCULATING STARS, THE FATED SKIES, to be followed by THE RELENTLESS MOON (2020), and the conclusion of the quartet with THE DERIVATIVE BASE in 2022.) The focus has been essentially along party lines, with Democrats seeking to strengthen the knowledge base of our own world, and Republicans eschewing Earth for our place in space.

Private industry is maniacally developing launch vehicles, with one currently making test trips up and down and which will very soon be added to Russian Soyuz capsule as the only vehicle able to carry Human crew and passengers; of course all of this is with a close eye on enlarging their cash cards. Other nations, once content to either ride in the wake of space giants Russia, the United States, and China; are now racing on ahead – with dozens of countries claiming a space program(seventy-two of them), but only fourteen of those with a serious launch capability.

Six have the capability of launching AND RECOVERING biological material; and finally only three have sent astronauts from their own space program into space – Russia (first, April 1961), the US (second, May 1961), and China (third, October 2003).

The International Space Station has been occupied without interruption since November 2, 2000 (currently, 18 years and 343 days) with a total number of visiting scientists of 236, coming from eighteen countries.

Humans have a presence in space – near space, anyway. We’ve landed on the Moon 21 times, starting in 1959 with the Soviet Luna 2 in 1959, to the most recent landing by China’s Chang’e 4 less than a year ago (at this writing; https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/interactive-map-shows-all-21-successful-moon-landings-180972687/). Spacecraft have landed on Mars eight times (all US ships) and Venus six times (all of them Soviet Union ships) and Magellan took extensive radar images that were processed into 3D images. Humans have also shot probes through the atmospheres of Venus (once). NASA/ESA and Italy had Cassini drop a probe into the atmosphere of Titan eventually crashing into its atmosphere while gathering data. The Galileo probe went to Jupiter.

 So – why am I here?

To say that I’m irritated that Democrats seem fixed on Trump’s idiot statements about AGW and insist on directing NASA to send up more satellites to take more pictures of Earth and add more data to something that while people DENY it, has a relatively high probability of being a real trend; those Democrats are totally ignoring the spin the current president has put on NASA’s return to the Moon and mounting a mission to Mars (mostly because it’s flashy and I think he wants to be mentioned in the same space-breath as JFK…)

Check the articles below if you think I’m being an idiot. They’re (mostly) non-partisan (the one partisan piece does the same thing current Democrats are doing: dancing around a revitalized humans-in-space program that Trump’s Tweets have re-initiated).

So, what’s this have to do with writing?

Americans are not only oblivious to but actively ignoring the efforts of the rest of the planet to get into space. In the upcoming issue of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, I have a short story, “Kamsahamnida, America” in which South Koreans land a woman on the far side of the Moon using a bit of gravity modification technology.

The concept is NOT a mere SF idea however. During a month-long stay in RoK, I saw firsthand, the South Korean’s American-like obsession with space. From science museum images of Korean astronauts on the Moon and Mars, to the attitude of people regarding what Americans would consider “cramped living quarters” and the reverse paradigm of the US and its European roots that “wide-open-spaces” and single-family-homes is the only sure sign of success and the Korean paradigm that the poor have “houses” and the rich have apartments that OTHER people take care of so they can do IMPORTANT work. Also, the Korean space program, while it hasn’t landed a person anywhere yet, was independently developed in a way reminiscent of the American space program of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and started with sounding rockets and have gradually scaled up to full-sized rockets capable of launching satellites and (I’m sure) eventually crewed spacecraft…to the fact that in the center of the peninsula, you’ll find the National Fusion Research Institute…(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DA8GnrhTCY; http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=29116) South Koreans are actively experimenting with rockets, fusion power, and countless other technology applications of physics.

I believe that South Korea will not only one day stun the world by skipping over the “big” nations to make a conceptual advance that all of them expected to be the sole province of Western White Big Country Big Budget Science…That’s what I explore in the story in the November/December ANALOG.

I think they’re poised at the edge of a leap into space; and , “Kamsahamnida, America” is the first in a set of stories that will be set in the same universe. It’s also a universe that sees the achievement of a Korean dream: to reunite the peninsula.

 Articles: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5503/cosponsors, https://spacenews.com/nasa-and-spacex-agree-commercial-crew-development-is-the-highest-priority/, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/where-candidates-stand-nasa-space-exploration-n637771, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/midterm-election-congress-nasa-space/575320/, https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-1c5f68682303ae92a6aed0b75bfcaf6f, http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2019/nasas-planetary-defense-budget-growth.html, http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2019/what-the-recent-budget-deal-means-for-nasa.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_United_States#Kennedy_administration, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_space_agencies

Image: https://scontent.ffcm1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/39266562_10155237483621324_6567120057757859840_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_oc=AQln0m76TDh589sBdjezmVudSmCoMEKWBEB5NGuTCcT3crUPtvdSrp4LtX5OFJcqasmCdlD5ohug9D2riPrgmltl&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-2.fna&oh=75a7fd14342c9e79a67a95c3291c7ee8&oe=5E1E8F65

Slice of PIE: Supplanting Erudition With Entertainment (I Started One Essay, Ended Up Doing Another)

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

For some time now, I’ve pondered what to say about my neighborhood, just two kilometers closer to the city than where I grew up. I live in the worst suburb of Minneapolis: https://www.roadsnacks.net/these-are-the-10-worst-minneapolis-suburbs/        

The criteria we were judged by are listed below. (“FYI: We defined a suburb as being within 30 miles of Minneapolis.”)

• High unemployment rate
• Low median household incomes
• Low population density (no things to do)
• Low home values
• A lot of high school drop outs
• High poverty
• High rate of uninsured families

So, extrapolating, Brooklyn Center has the highest unemployment rate, the lowest median household income, the lowest population density (nothing to do), lowest home value, a lot of high school dropouts, the highest poverty, and the highest rate of uninsured families in the Twin Cities Area.

So, that’s of the suburbs surrounding Minneapolis. How about the rest of the state? The city of Bemidji is poorest and according to the same survey group, it’s also the WORST place to live in Minnesota. (Brooklyn Center is the sixth worst. Yay.)

As far as the US, no city in Minnesota ranks in the lowest 50…so again, yay.

Why am I writing about this? The main reason is that while you can buy books at Target and Walmart, check them out at Brookdale Library in Brooklyn Center, and maybe find a few at a thrift store (one of which recently closed…), the only REAL bookstore pulled up stakes and fled “the hood” on June 13, 2009, a decade ago.

Currently Humans in Brooklyn Center can eat, shop expensive, shop cheap, get their car tabs renewed and get marriage licenses, go for great bike rides, work out “at the gyms”, eat, and get cigarettes. That’s about it. Oh, they can buy booze from the city or a brand new private source. Yay.

They might be able to buy or check out the latest best seller, but they have to go to another suburb to get anything beyond Harlequins, Thrillers, or the most recent celebrity expose or presidential slap down. It’s unlikely you’d find a science fiction novel, and Walmart doesn’t have a “Philosophy” section; though you CAN feel like you’re up-to-date with the latest British royalty scandal and next week’s soap operas.

Erudition has been eliminated in favor of food, tobacco, alcohol, and “stuff” (not that books aren’t “stuff” – I have the magnet above on my bookshelves that my daughter gave me.) But, once Barnes and Noble evacuated its premises, it pulled down the walls of learning. Granted that they weren’t selling enough books to make a commercial go of it, but I wonder sometimes why it didn’t make any attempt to become a niche distributer.

What if, instead of closing and claiming that “everyone” was reading ebooks – or not reading at all…

“…traits that characterize non-book readers also often apply to those who have never been to a library. In a 2016 survey, we found that Hispanics, older adults, those living in households earning less than $30,000 and those who have a high school diploma or did not graduate from high school are the most likely to report they have never been to a public library.” (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/26/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america/)

…bookstores or libraries tailored their offerings to the community. I don’t mean that people could say, “Oh, Webber Park doesn’t need any Shakespeare, W.E.B. Dubois, Octavia Butler, or Renita Weems! They’ll be fine with ESSENCE Magazine, Pete McDaniel, and Bill Reynolds!”

But I think they’d draw more people if they TAILORED the books they sold. Also, I had an idea when the store I was working at was about to close around me – everyone knows B&N discounted books. They also know that there were Clearance! tables. But what if someone had created a B&N Outlet store? It certainly seems to work north of where I live – Levi’s, Hanes, Crocs, Adidas, Mrs. Fields, Subway, Sunglasses Hut, and an uncounted number of others – everyone I know makes a trip there a field trip! They come back with food, clothing, shoes, kitchen stuff, and who knows what else?

I know what they come away with OUT: books. There’s no bookstore anywhere near the Outlet Mall – in fact with two exceptions, there are only two books stores inside of a thirty-mile radius…

Sad, eh?

Does that mean the people near Albertville read ONLY electronic books? According to the survey: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/25/one-in-five-americans-now-listen-to-audiobooks/, that’s unlikely.

Does that mean the people near Albertville ONLY buy their books online? Again, though I can’t find anything specifically about it, some of the other studies indicate that online buying, while important, won’t ever overtake “brick-and-mortar” shopping completely.

What I DO wonder about is that as the number of people reading – science fiction, fantasy, horror, or ANYTHING – has been decreasing, the number of people arguing loudly and with shaky intellectual foundations and facts, seems to be increasing. At least, I have yet to hear, “A book I was reading recently by an unnamed philosopher pointed out…” on a nightly news broadcast. Sound bites seem to have overtaken thorough, personal, directed research as the source of information: “Well, I saw on the news last night…” or, “I was looking at my Snapchat, and I saw that…” appear to be a more frequently quoted source than “I was reading Ibram X. Kendi’s newest book, HOW TO BE ANTI_RACIST, and he noted that…”

According to Lisa Cron points out in her book, WIRED FOR STORY: “We’re wired to turn to story to teach us the way of the world…As readers we need a notion of the big picture, so we have an idea where we’re going, why, and what’s at stake for the protagonist. This not only triggers the sense of urgency that catapults us into the story, it’s also what allows us to make sense of what’s happening from beginning to end…It’s a tall order, but why not try to follow John Irving’s admittedly glib suggestion: ‘Whenever possible, tell the entire story of the novel in the first sentence.’…Ask yourself: What is the scope of my story? What journey will my reader take? Have I made it clear? Don’t be afraid of ‘giving it all away’ on the very first page. Be specific, be clear, don’t hold back. Remember, you’re giving readers what they crave: a reason to care, a reason to be curious, and enough info to understand what the stakes are.”

As speculative fiction writer, I’m worried about this trend and our behavior in public today…and I'm worried about what happened in the sixth worst city in Minnesota (and the worst SUBURB of Minneapolis/St. Paul...) without any sort of real bookstore...

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ff/7c/1c/ff7c1c5daa5b7b70b8b06b2bd459b631.jpg

WRITING ADVICE – Lisa Cron #11: The Reader Expects a Loudly Ticking Clock

In 2008, 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. To learn more – and to satisfy my natural tendency to “teach stuff”, I started a series of essays taking the wisdom of published writers and then applying each “nugget of wisdom” to my own writing. During the six years that followed, I used the advice of a number of published writers (with their permission) and then applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda to an analysis of my own writing. Together these people write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Today I add to that list, Lisa Cron who has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences, and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. Again, with permission, I am using her article, “A Reader’s Manifesto: 15 Hardwired Expectations Every Reader Has for Every Story” (2/16/18 http://blog.creativelive.com/essential-storytelling-techniques/)

Onward then. Cron writes, “The reader expects a clear, present and escalating force of opposition, with a loudly ticking clock.”

What exactly does that mean? I guess I thought ALL stories are supposed to have this element – tension that drives the story from the beginning. And yet, do I always do this? Maybe examining the first sentences of my most recent publications would help to see if I got this right or not.

“As readers we expect a clear, concise idea of what the escalating consequence will be should the protagonist ultimately fail, and a ticking clock counting down to that consequence. That’s what stokes the mounting urgency we feel as she struggles to solve the problem before it’s too late. If we don’t know where it’s going, and what the obstacles are, we can’t anticipate what might happen next…Is the force of opposition clear, and can we see where it’s headed? Does it escalate? Can the reader anticipate what will happen next, why, and what we’re counting down to?”

                                          

While she doesn’t explicitly state this, my guess would be that in a short story, this needs to start from the very beginning. Say, the first sentence or two…in the first paragraph at least, I would expect.

Let’s start with my work-in-progress. At this point, while I know WHERE I’m going, I’m having serious trouble starting it. [I just realized as I typed the previous sentence that I have, perhaps WAY too much going on in this story. By an analogy: my wife and I watched the first season of a British baking competition. One of the challenges was to bake a layered cake. One of the contestants had so many layers that they all “mooshed” together to become indistinguishable from one another. Perhaps that’s what I’ve done to myself here…]

So, the first sentence: “In the dream, my late wife stretched out next to me wearing a brief, red silk pajama top. Her eyes said that there was exactly one thing on her mind. Then a raccoon tossed a popcorn into the air and snapped it up and said to me, ‘Have you ever seen wild corn?’”

While all of these elements play into the story as it progresses, I’ve currently got way too many layers here. Maybe if I narrow the story down to a single one rather than one that involves the Shabe, the Pak/Gref, the Krrlgrrbitz, a Mynosaur, the Sand, and Humans…wow. Confusing. I guess I know what I’ll be doing today as it rains…

The first sentence in my soon-t0-be published short story (ANALOG, November/December 2019): “Larry Henry was muttering in the Orion Lunar lander mockup when Mission Control interrupted their regularly scheduled disaster. He was alone today, simulating the death of the rest of the crew.”

WOW. I love that first sentence! No wonder the editor bought it.

The next is from a short story that’s been bounced four times already and is awaiting review at another publication: “Tiviifei Jones straightened, no longer leaning on his cane as the gMod platform sank to the ground. The Human Cemetery and Memorial was still, cool, Earth green, and vast. A final resting place for ten thousand, four hundred, and eighty-two Weldon colonists slaughtered by invading aliens.”

Hmmm…I know where this is going, but the alien first name and the gMod platform. That segues into the third sentence which DOES imply an escalation. I wonder what Tiviifei is doing there. Why a cemetery? Why the visit? OK – perhaps it’s OK; on the other hand, I can see why it may have been bounced.

My most recent published story (Nebula Tales Issue Four, https://www.amazon.com/Nebula-Tales-Issue-Various-Authors/dp/1688967206): “Baek Pi Ji-woo stepped from railroad tie to railroad tie, bundled in her well-worn, quilted Russian jacket, and heavy boots with hard soles. Frigid winds lashed around her. Pausing, she looked up to the distant, pine wrapped, snow blown mountains. She could turn off the rail, walk away, to disappear into the forest. She would tire eventually, lie down, fall asleep in the snow, and never wake.” (OK, so I’m fudging a bit…these are not all the first sentence…)

Lastly, my most recent ANALOG story (September/October 2019): “Javier Quinn Xiong Zaman clicked on the last email in the clinic’s queue and read, ‘Doctor Scrabble, the supply of Dicraeia warmingii you adjusted has reached abundant proportions and the female Goliath Bullfrog appears not only ready to drop her eggs but to deliver an auspicious number, perhaps even enough to assure…’

“From somewhere overhead, he heard a loud bang and scowled. The nightly stream of maglev trains started an instant later, bringing scavenged materials from the DEconstruction And Recycling Robots – DEARRs – to the Minneapolis St Paul Vertical Village. The ground shook and a faint whine reached him even a kilometer west of the tracks. Probably something going on with that abomination.”

Hmmm…this isn’t that great. In fact, the actual story has nothing to do with the bullfrog eggs, the DEARRs, or even MSP Vertical Village…

Each of the publications I sent my most recently bounced story to are top of their field. Currently, the actual first sentences of their current issues:

Clarkesworld (September 2019): “I know what Dave wants even before he says it, before I’ve even taken off my stupid work cap or thrown my keys on top of the pile of crap beside the door. He’s taken his head off again…” (Technically not the first sentence, but there you go.)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (January 2019): “Abby opened the till and found crumbled bits of dry leaves in the stacks of five-dollar bills.”

Asimov’s (September/October 2019): “The land slept hard, after months blanketed beneath deep snow. Seeds nestled in the soil, frozen on the cusp of sprouting, and the earth was riddled with slumbering creatures strewn cold in their tunnels, the husks of the dead and of those yet to reawaken.” (Again, not the first sentence.)

OK…there’s no jargon in those first sentences where there is in mine.

Though, other than that, they are, none of them, spectacular; though the second sentence of the first story automatically compels you to read on. The others, not so much (mine included, except for “Kamsahamnida, America” in the November/December ANALOG…that’s good.)

So, I didn’t always follow my own advice, though Lisa Cron doesn’t actually insist that the tension be right at the beginning. However, “As readers we expect a clear, concise idea of what the escalating consequence will be should the protagonist ultimately fail, and a ticking clock counting down to that consequence. That’s what stokes the mounting urgency we feel as she struggles to solve the problem before it’s too late. If we don’t know where it’s going, and what the obstacles are, we can’t anticipate what might happen next…Is the force of opposition clear, and can we see where it’s headed? Does it escalate? Can the reader anticipate what will happen next, why, and what we’re counting down to?”

I guess this is a clear call to me to go back and examine what I’m doing. I AM doing things right; but I’m not doing things as well as I CAN.

Food for thought for myself. Food for thought for you? Let me know.

Image: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51ddbf8fe4b0bf85e2f4edd2/t/592c2f0b414fb5ddd3a1259d/1496067864402/BookImage.jpg?format=300w