WRITING ADVICE: “On Christ the Solid Rock…” I Need To Learn To Build My Stories

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”.

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! As always, your comments are welcome!

[I am reposting this today because it's still important and it made me think...again. It's less advice to those who read this; more advice to myself as I continue to figure out what I write about and why.]

A number of years ago, a church my wife and I were going to encouraged the entire congregation to read and apply the principles elucidated in a fairly thin, profoundly important book.

Unlike the What Would Jesus Do? movement, which was inspired by the novel IN HIS STEPS (as well as the concept of Christian Socialism) and the Prayer of Jabez “fad” which was entirely based on a single verse from I Chronicles, chapter 4, verse 10 (both of which the church we were in did…), this was less direction than observation. Doubtless the author, Reggie McNeal made money from the concept, but his program hasn’t seen near the sweeping faddishness of the other two. Mostly because it takes critical aim at the Christian Church as a whole.

Published in 2003 as part of the John Wiley & Sons Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series; and after reading it in 2005 and 2009, I picked up THE PRESENT FUTURE again recently. Sadly, I haven’t noticed any kind of profound changes in the Christian Church or witness since that time, but I did stumble across something that might help my writing.

As I’ve said before, I’m striving to create both greater consistency and more relevance in my stories. I’ve talked about how to create an ensemble cast, making my stories skinnier, and maybe even agree with myself about what the theme to my writing will be. Seems every writer I like has some sort of theme:

Lois McMaster Bujold: “…bias against the disabled, economic exploitation, and the role of women in society…old-school ideas such as faith in humanity and the desire to probe and do good in the universe…sheer humanity of her characters…” (Project MUSE)

Julie Czerneda: “…first contact, xenobiology…” (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)

David Brin: “…the impact on human society of technology humankind…repairing the world, i.e. people have a duty to make the world a better place…working to improve the human condition, to increase knowledge, and to prevent long-term evils…humans as caretakers…importance of laws and legality…do what common sense dictates as good for all…” (Wikipedia)

Jack McDevitt: “…archaeology or xenoarchaeology…making first contact…a universe that was once teeming with intelligent life, but contains only their abandoned artifacts…novels frequently raise questions which he does not attempt to answer…to puzzle and intrigue his readers…” (Wikipedia)

Anne McCaffery: “strong women protagonists…the problems of living and gaining career success…” (Wikipedia); “gender, power and politics, duty and responsibility, tradition and innovation, self and society…family” (Anne McCaffery Discussion forum)

Michael F. Flynn: education, plans that go awry, how we interact with dying cultures and react to the new, extraordinary first contact…(deduced by reading), sometimes Libertarian (Prometheus Award, nominated and won)

Gene Wolfe: “to make [us]…feel cosmic, epic, large…why human progress may (or seems to be) failing.” (Ultan’s Library)

So what are the things that are important to me? What are my themes?

Guy Stewart: Education. First contact. Faith in God. How we interact with very alien thinking and meeting, domestication (see Jared Diamond’s GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL), technological solution to problems today (wholly unsuccessful right now); self-sacrifice as a missing component of today’s society;

So how does this all tie back to reading McNeal’s book?

A few days ago, I read this: “The central act of the Old Testament is the Exodus, a divine intervention into human history to liberate his people from oppression and slavery. The decisive act of the New Testament is the divine intervention of God into human history to liberate his people from oppression and slavery…In both Old and New Testaments all other mini-dramas and subplots relate back to this central theme.” (Chapter 1, THE PRESENT FUTURE)

As a Christian (that’s what it says in my banner above!), how do my themes tie back to the central theme of God?

I don’t know if they do. My published work is more-or-less silent on God, though in some, I hint that He’s important (“A Pig Tale”, “Teaching Women to Fly”, “Looking Down on Athena”, “Christmas Tree”, SIMPLE SCIENCE SERMONS FOR BIG AND LITTLE KIDS, “Test”…) Though Michael F. Flynn’s work (though I wasn’t reading critically) doesn’t seem to be overtly Christian. Gene Wolfe’s work is founded on his faith, though, again, it’s not overt. Others who are agnostic, atheist, humanist (Isaac Asimov springs to mind), Libertarian (Brin is, by his own definition, “a libertarian’s libertarian”, oddly enough, he’s only been nominated for the Prometheus award once…), Buddhist, Muslim, or any other varieties of faith or spiritual belief allow their beliefs to come out in their writing; so I suppose mine do as well.

What I need to do then, is lay down a clear foundation of Christianity on which to build my stories of Human/Alien interaction, education, and self-sacrifice then work to spin the foundation and theme into saleable works.

“That’s all?” ^raised eyebrow^

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

WRITING ADVICE: Writing My Way Back Into Publication…I Hope…

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”.

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! As always, your comments are welcome!

It feels like my writing – well, to be honest, my PUBLICATIONS – have hit a brick wall.

HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERE and VICTORY OF FISTS were available as ebooks briefly, but the publisher was ignoring my agent’s request for royalties (which actually never came), so I suggest that you avoid MuseItUp Publishing (unless they’ve gotten their act together since the middle of last year)…

At any rate, I had a few stories published at the beginning of this year, and it looked to be good.

Then I hit a brick wall.

In trying to “leave a mark” or “say something”, I clearly stumbled. Since my last sale, I’ve submitted sixty times with no acceptance. My recent stories have fallen on ponderously deaf ears.

“What the Cockroach Said” (N-S Korea), “Storm Change” (Native American sovereignty), “The Princess’s Brain” (What fraction makes us Humans?), “And After Soft Rains, Daisies” (Alzheimer’s future care), “Talking my Way Back Into Life” (what happens when you’re suddenly older than you were?), “Rock of Ages” (When you’ve hated someone for two hundred years, can you make peace?), “Titan Mission Drops Bomb” (scat humor in space…OK, maybe I get it for this one…), “Lovely to Behold” (incredibly weird biology leads to murder; accused of being magic…), “Possums Don’t Have Belly Buttons” (cute but ultimately futile), “Candace Mooney and the Princess of Mars” (homage to ER Burroughs, falls flat on it its face and everyone hates me), “The Daily Use of Gravity Modification in Rebuilding Liberian Schools” (this one is my biggest disappointment…I wanted to show the impact of a technological breakthrough on an everyday job in a civil war ravaged country (I’ve been there, seen the results of war) and how it might be used to help raise a place up; as well, my agent and I parted ways (amicably)…and now I have a slew of stories that don’t seem to be going anywhere.

I am so tempted to be bitter and blame The Media, but the fact is that I’ve turned into my now-least-favorite-author in that I’ve allowed my “message” to sublimate my story. Have I lost focus because I’m intent on “leaving a mark” on society? It’s what I challenge my seniors to do as they contemplate graduation in the spring of 2018. I am trying to meet that goal myself, but…it’s FRUSTRATING. I also wonder about how this blog impacts my work. My politics and religion don’t line up at all with…well, the circles I choose to be in – speculative fiction and education. Seems that how I see the world is diametrically opposed to the majority in both places…

So, I’ve been reading and I’ve started to pick up some wisdom. The three most important things:

1) Think before you write. THAT’S a hard one to do for me. I tend to just pop off a story without much thought as to the emotional and intellectual impact I’m looking for. That segues into…

2) Advice Nancy Kress gave that I’m working hard at absorbing: “How can I lay out a story so that a reader will be ‘always absorbed’?” and “How can I lay out a story so that a reader will END the story with a different perspective, a confirmation of their belief system, or discover a new, interesting place?”

3) VERY recently, I discovered this from Chuck Wendig: “All stories need unanswered questions. All stories demand mysteries to engage our desperate need to know. Storytelling is in many ways the act of positing questions and then exploring the permutations of that question before finally giving in and providing [some] answers.”

4) Literally TODAY, I learned this from Lisa Cron: "Story is what enabled us to imagine what might happen in the future...we're wired to turn to story to teach us the way of the world." [From the Introduction]

Now, how do I combine those three things in order to take me into CONSISTENCY?

I’ll keep you posted…

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

Slice of PIE: A Solution To Writing FRUSTRATION?

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, Finland in August 2017 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will 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…

Lately, I’ve been frustrated with my writing.

It’s not that I haven’t been able to produce anything – I have.

It’s not that what I’ve written doesn’t have a message couched in a good story -- I hope.

It’s that I’m not doing it WELL enough.

See, I know I can write for the professional market. My publications list to the right proves that to my doubting mind, I CAN. I’m a member of two professional organizations – the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. The groups have offered help several times, so they’re not just “self-congratulatory, back-patting clubs”. I’ve learned things from both.

But as I’ve said before, I’m on the wrong edge of being able to write well CONSISTENTLY.

I’ve tried several “how to” articles, but most of them fall back to beginning writer’s stuff. I’ve read (and have in my library) a dozen or so writing books aimed specifically at the SF market. I’ve read them, underlined them, studied them even. I’ve gotten better as a writer; but CONSISTENCY is my new bane.

Maybe my most recent stories are TOO serious?

“What the Cockroach Said” – North Korean political prisoner is contacted by Americans through a “cockroach robot” and given a way and a promise of support if she sparks revolution. (Modeled this on John Brunner’s 1970s ANALOG story, “Who Steals My Purse?”)

“Talking My Way Back Into Life” – Jet slips 20 years into the future and a 15-year-old-guy is suddenly 35 and alone and has to remake his life. (I lost the contest, so reworked my response to this Xprize challenge: https://www.xprize.org/press-release/visionary-sci-fi-writers-transport-you-20-years-future-new-xprize-anthology)

“The Princess’s Brain” – A blue-blood royal has her brain transplanted into a genetically “impure” body to spark change on a world. (Sci-fi twist on PRINCE AND THE PAUPER)

“Titan Mission Drops Bomb” – A humorous thought for ANALOG regarding space poop, Solar exploration, and alien traces. (OK – this one doesn’t suffer from seriousness…)

“Storm Change” – What if a Dakotah in ND got hold of a gene lab and planned on using it to redress the past and was opposed by his brother?

“The Daily Use of Gravity Modification in Rebuilding Liberian Schools” – This was ambitious for me. A genetically unique soldier uses his skills to rebuild Liberia after another civil war and is joined (reluctantly) by a gravity physicist returning to her homeland. (I stayed there for several months and want to see technology at work in much less developed countries. One editor asked me to drop all the “serious parts” and just do the “adventure” parts and it would be much better! I said, “No thanks”.)

“And After Soft Rain, Daisies” – A tribute to Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” and the application of monitoring and AI to the care of Alzheimer’s patients.

“The PsISMoDiDE Evaluation of the Borra-Trottier Stars” – in which the odd distribution of certain kinds of stars MIGHT be a sort of “vision test” laid out by vastly superior aliens for us to figure out. (Model: “Can These Bones Live?” (Ted Reynolds))

The rest of the Nancy Kress quote above goes on to specifics: “Emotional Promise: [signals] ‘Read this and you’ll be entertained, or thrilled, or scared, or titillated, or saddened, or nostalgic, or uplifted – but always absorbed’…Intellectual Promise: [signals] ‘Read this and you’ll see the world from a different perspective’; ‘Read this and you’ll have confirmed what you already want to believe about this world’; ‘Read this and you’ll learn of a different, more interesting world than this’. (The third promise can exist alone or in combination with the first or second one).”

After writing the above, I’ve realized a couple of things:

1) My Emotional Promise isn’t compelling enough. How can I lay out a story so that a reader will be “always absorbed”? Analyze prize-winning stories and see what the writer did to absorb me.

2) My Intellectual Promise isn’t compelling enough. How can I lay out a story so that a reader will END the story with a different perspective, a confirmation of their belief system, or discover a new, interesting place. The second is the biggest challenge for me because I’m a Christian. There aren’t as many Christian science fiction readers as there are readers with not-Christian belief systems, so fewer will find confirmation through my stories. That being said, there ARE SF writers who are Christians whose stories sell and who (maybe?) angle their stories to do either the first or the third Intellectual Promise. Maybe I’m emphasizing the second Intellectual Promise too…impolitely?

Hmmm…now I’ve got something to think about!

Image: http://www.morefamousquotes.com/quotes-pictures/91/every-story-makes-a-promise-to-the.jpg

Slice of PIE: How Can I Make My Stories Sing If I’m Tone Deaf?

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Finland, I will NOT jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. Today, I’ll start with notes I took from the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Fall Conference.

While the focus of the conference was “Make Your Stories Sing”, I was looking for a solution to my problem of writing INCONSISTENTLY.

I don’t mean having a time to write regularly. I don’t mean having an instrument and place to do my writing. I have both of those. I mean that I’ve published stories in the biggest markets in my chosen field – CRICKET/CICADA, for children’s writing; ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact for my SF writing; even THE WRITER (online) – but I don’t get published CONSISTENTLY.

The statistics back me up.

CRICKET/CICADA – Total submissions since 1990: 44; Total publications: 4; Total submissions since FIRST publication: 40 (It’s my thought that I’ve been blacklisted since my fourth publication, but I have no proof and no evidence…just a feeling based on “what I did”.)

ANALOG – Total submissions since 1990: 42 ; Total publications: 5; Total submissions since FIRST publication: 20

ANALOG has numerous subs before 1990, but I didn’t keep much in the way of records, so I won’t count those.

I posed the problem to the most recent winner of the Newbery Award winner. In case you don’t know: “The Newbery [is] considered the…most prestigious award for children's literature in the United States. Many bookstores and libraries have Newbery sections; popular television shows interview the winners; textbooks include lists of Newbery winners, and many master's and doctoral theses are written about them.”

Not only was she the keynote speaker, during the Q&A after her talk, I was able to pose my question: “I’ve been published in the big markets, but I have not been consistently published in the big markets. Do you write consistently well – and if you DO, how do you do it?”

She told me it was a good question, then offered a quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway, “The first draft of anything is shit.” [If you are a quote National Socialist like I am, here’s a discussion of the attribution: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/20/draft/]

It's only a part of a quote, usually taken out of context. When you find it IN context, the particular line is bracketed by precursor statements and a sort of coda: “Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself.”

Given Hemingway's is somehow a truism that applies to the art of revision, Ms. Barnhill continued, “The secret of consistency is revision.”

Hmmm…she should know because she taught high school English in Oregon, then 7^th grade English in Minnesota where she taught her class to call her Princess Barnhill. She probably also taught them to not hand in first drafts and to do lots of draft. While she lived in Oregon, she’d written a mystery novel, sending it out to agents. When she DID get a response, the agent told her that she’d written the wrong book…

Set free from that book, she restarted writing something different and after having the image of a kid in a car holding a drawing tablet on his lap on his way to (of all places) rural Iowa, she felt compelled “to write a place for him to belong”. The result was THE MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF JACK.

Now granting the importance of revision, what did she mean by it? She answered with an anecdote and an appalling practice she committed when she first started writing (she has since come back to her senses – possibly after her husband nearly lost his mind…or something like that…)

The anecdote: When she and her husband worked for the US Forestry Service in Oregon, they were surveying the damage created by a huge blowdown. Another park Ranger was assigned to work with him. His first name was Vic and I have NO idea what I wrote for his last name except this: “Stanscliskie”. At any rate, overwhelmed by the damage, she and her husband had no idea where or how to start. Vic said, “Take the worst part of the trail and make it the best.”

Since that time, Ms. Barnhill has adapted that advice to her writing. The practice she committed however, seems wildly reckless, (though from our really brief time in the session, it seems to somehow mesh nicely with her description of how her principals viewed her as a teacher: “…impertinent. And impatient. And insubordinate. And I had a difficult time holding my tongue.”)

She'd applied Vic's theory of of rebuilding trails to the practice of writing by clicking SELECT ALL -> DELETE -> and then REWROTE THE WHOLE THING FROM MEMORY method of revision.

Since those days, however, she has revised her revision methodology (so-to-speak) to writing long-hand first drafts and then enter them into the computer. She notes that cursive writing or longhand stimulates both sides of the brain (http://www.twosidesna.org/US/2014/03/31/handwriting-helps-the-brain-function/, using actual research references: http://mashable.com/2015/01/19/handwriting-brain-benefits/#hPB0q.o2TsqI) and it’s been effective for her work.

Obviously effective, as she’s won the Newbery award as well as the World Fantasy Award, and she's been nominated for several others.

The takeaway here seems pretty clear, even to me: Take the worst part of the trail and make it the best.

The Site: https://minnesota.scbwi.org/events/2017-mn-scbwi-conference/

Image: https://www.dx-revision.com/wp-content/uploads/posts/revised-revision-logo-font.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Making Science Fiction and Fantasy FEEL Real!

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in August 2016 (to which I was invited and had a friend pay my membership! [Thanks, Paul!] but was unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will 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 past week, I presented at an annual conference wherein experienced writers – of scripts, spoken word, music, stories, journalism, fiction, and any other form of writing I missed – share their methodology with young people in order to encourage the next generation of writers.

My subject was “Wardrobes to Warp Drives: Making Science Fiction and Fantasy FEEL Real”, and while I was searching for ways to bring our characters to life (a problem for me because I can’t seem to CONSISTENTLY do it), I found this…“genre-ist” gem:

“Characteristics of Realistic Fiction”

“A quick way to classify a story or novel as realistic fiction is to identify the following characteristics within that literary work:

1. Realistic fiction stories tend to take place in the present or recent past.
2. Characters are involved in events that could happen.
3. Characters live in places that could be or are real.
4. The characters seem like real people with real issues solved in a realistic way (so say goodbye to stories containing vampires, werewolves, sorcerers, dragons, zombies, etc.).
5. The events portrayed in realistic fiction conjure questions that a reader could face in everyday life.”

“Kara Wilson is a 6th-12th grade English and Drama teacher. She has a B.A. in Literature and an M.Ed, both of which she earned from the University of California, Santa Barbara.”

http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-realistic-fiction-definition-characteristics-examples.html

It shocked me – though I suppose it shouldn’t have – that not only is this teacher promulgating this attitude in her own classroom, she is preaching it to a very large public that utilizes this website for lesson plans. Her impressive credentials state emphatically that she knows what she’s talking about.

While I was preaching to the choir in the classes I taught – the kids choose what interests them from a plethora of offerings – what she wrote deeply offended me! So I showed the kids how we can take ideas from reality, slip them into the future, and say something about today. I did the same thing for fantasy with the rejoinder that, “Harry Potter didn’t capture us because he was a wizard and learned magic spells (you all know that there IS no such place as Hogwarts [at which point they grabbed their hearts and gasped…then giggled] – he captured us because he was a kid who was bullied in the real world of London AND in the magical world of Hogwarts.”

They emphatically agreed.

So lately, I have been using SF  ideas to explore feelings and situations I have personally experienced: how an elderly Hmong neighbor must view this country (“Carpe Hnub” – see AURORA WOLF, an online specfic magazine); how a teen deals with a mentally ill parent (THE MARTIAN WAVE, (https://www.amazon.com/Martian-Wave-2016-Alan-Erwine-ebook/dp/B01J8Z3LGM/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8), how do an estranged grandmother and grandson rebuild their relationship? (“Fairy Bones”, (CAST OF WONDERS, a teen specfic podcast site)  http://www.castofwonders.org/2015/11/episode-181-fairy-bones-by-guy-stewart/)

My early fiction didn’t really tie today and tomorrow together well – again, there’s that consistency issue! – but it’s drawn much closer in the past year or so. Though not entirely, except in the real world, where my new son-in-law and I wrote a zombie story together (DEVOLUTION Z, “Rolling Zombie Bones”,  https://www.amazon.com/Devolution-Horror-Magazine-January-2017-ebook/dp/B01N5LIIQ2/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8)

I know I can make characters seem real – I just have trouble doing it consistently. The observations my esteemed colleague in education made above are, in general, helpful and I’ll be applying her methods to my writing, despite them being genre-ist (which, of course might have real world applications as well…)

But the essential handle on  making characters in our SF and F feel more real is to make them as much like us as we can.

…and we do that…how?

I’ll share some stuff I’ve learned next week.

Image: http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/narnia/images/4/4b/Giantsarmy.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150724032627

Slice of PIE: Building Character

Using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, August 2015, I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This is event #4615 . The link is provided below…

Characters with “Character” in YA Fiction Not all characters are created equally. Some are made for moving the plot along, some are created for comedy relief, and some crafted to inspire. A book is created around characters readers can get behind, love, hate or empathize with, laugh at. From heroes to villains and more, authors share some of their favorite YA fiction characters and what makes these characters so interesting. Find out what characters work and what characters don’t for young adult readers. William Campbell Powell (m), Gail Carriger, Deby Fredericks, Rebecca Moesta

Ugh – building believable characters is a real weakness of mine…

So, how does the panel qualify?

William Campbell Powell (m) – a solid SF book under his belt. Check.

Gail Carriger – commented earlier, she wrote the Parasol Protectorate books. Check (again!)

Deby Fredericks – a few Kindle books in fantasy. Check.

Rebecca Moesta – no comment needed! A spectacular writer whom I respect and love to read! (For those of you NOT in the know, she’s written more than a “few” STAR WARS books with her husband Kevin J. Anderson.)

There’s some real fire power here and I’m sure the discussion was fascinating.

How DO you build believable characters?

RM first: “YA and middle grade fiction has been my favorite to read since I was about ten. Somehow, I never outgrew it. There’s a magic in YA: it’s the literature of transformation. Something essential always happens to the main characters. The journey from childhood to adulthood presents challenges and rites of passage that are social, emotional, physical, and moral. Our protagonists confront issues like first love, conflicting loyalties, losing a family member, false friends, uncertain values, leaving home, poverty or violence, idealism vs pragmatism.” (http://www.rowena-cory-daniells.com/2011/10/01/meet-rebecca-moesta/)

GC: “…my favorite kind of character to write – practical to a fault, capable in a crisis, frustrating to the other characters around her, and all too often getting herself into impossible situations out of sheer nerve. It can be a little annoying trying to write myself out of the corner they have gotten the plot into, but they are so rich in friends, they have help in times of dire need.” (http://gailcarriger.com/about/never-ending-interview/)

WCP: “…told through diary entries from the main character with a couple of other things thrown into the mix. I was strongly reminded of The Testament of Jessie Lamb while reading Expiration Day, since most of the book deals with the day to day adventures of a teenager in a world that is collapsing out from under the human race.” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/814967264?utm_campaign=reviews&utm_medium=widget&utm_source=faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com)

OK – so I know I CAN built characters, but I don’t know the formula yet!

How do I do it? I’ve read books and I’ve tried to reduce my own successes to something I can use more consistently. People seem to like Emerald. I think they’ll like Zechariah in HOTSS: Zechariah of Venus the new book I’m working on now.

But if there’s a formula here, I could pull this from the three observations above:

1) “Something essential always happens to the main characters…”

2) “…practical, capable, frustrating to the other characters, sheer nerve…”

3) “…told through diary entries, day to day adventures…”

Program Book: http://sasquan.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ConGuide.toupload.pdf

Image: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2927/13945661442_d7bb77c0f8_b.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: What Went RIGHT With “Learning Through Slushing”, (WORKING WRITER NEWSLETTER May/June 2015) Guy Stewart #33

“We are all apprentices

in a craft where no one

ever becomes a master.”

Ernest Hemingway

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! As always, your comments are welcome!

This one happened for a lot of reasons.

First is that several years ago, me and science fiction writer (1995 Phillip K. Dick award-winner for his novel HEADCRASH, inventor of the word “cyberpunk”, executive editor of the online magazine STUPEFYING STORIES, owner/publisher of Rampant Look Press, and computer genius at CRAY) reconnected after initially meeting in the 1980s. Both of our lives had changed dramatically since the first meeting of a flesh-and-blood writer’s group and his encouragement of my writing on a blog he’d started called The Friday Challenge set the tone of our friendship. A semi-shared life crisis drew us closer together and eventually led to me being one of several slushpile readers for STUPEFYING STORIES (SS).

While I had been reading stories written by students and friends for years, this was the first time that my input would lead to someone getting a story published!

SS was entirely a short story venue and when Bruce first opened the submission doors, the trickle of stories was small enough that he and his wife were able to handle it. But once it became known that he was both paying for stories AND publishing them, the floodgates opened. I don’t know who he “hired” first – my guess would be Henry Vogel – but eventually there were seven or eight of us in addition to himself and his wife. We were to read and rank stories on a scale from 0 to 6, with the highest being qualified as “I would quit my job in order to buy and publish this” (or something like that). A story ranked 0 was rare, but usually meant that none of us could make heads or tails out of it.

Of course, Bruce had final say on what he accepted and published. Thus far, he’s accepted two of mine and published one (and reissued it in a small collection with four other stories, so I DO have a vested interest in SS!

At any rate, as Bruce started passing the stories to the slushers, we fell into “specialties”. I often read pieces that would be classified as “hard science fiction”; others gravitated to horror; still others to the less-quantifiable “speculative fiction”. Even so, the ones that came to me ranged from straight-forward colonies on the Moon stories, to less linear alternate history visions of dark futures. I read all of them and “graded” them.

I also began to learn what made a good story and what kinds of things prompted my instant rejection. First of all, I discovered that many, many, many writers didn’t write stories but formless meanderings that pretended to be stories. After five pages, if I still had no idea what was happening – and another thing I learned is that SOMETHING has to happen in a story! – then I graded it with a few notes and sent it back to Bruce. Somehow, I discovered after reading a few hundred stories that some sort of character has to do something.

Another thing I discovered was that whatever the character was doing had to make sense. This is a slippery slope however and I learned to take the whole story as the context in which the character was doing something meaningful. It might not make sense in THIS world, but it had to make sense in the world the writer had built.

Thirdly, I had to somehow connect with a character. This doesn’t mean I have to LIKE them. It DOES mean I have to understand and agree with some aspect of the character. This of course, precludes the “perfect character” (which I don’t understand at all!) or the “entirely evil” character (which I don’t understand at all). The viewpoint has to be one that is comprehensible by me. BUT it also has to make sense. One story in which I understood the character’s actions still didn’t make sense even within the framework of the story.

Fourth, the writer had to be GOING somewhere with the story. You have no idea how many stories I read where nothing happened…let me amend that, nothing significant happened to the character. This is the most startling lesson I learned from slushing: the story has to have clearly important events. It doesn’t even matter if they’re important to me (as the invisible reader), but they have to be significant to the character!

Last of all is that there are lots of stories out there that are not obviously bad – they’re just not obviously GOOD. This was the hardest thing I learned – I rejected countless stories because, while they were OK, they didn’t stick in my mind. I can’t say that I ever recommended an “award-winning” story, but I HAVE recommended a few that had been published and that are GOOD. What does it take to make a story good – and then consistently do that?

I clearly don’t know yet.

The take-away:

1. SOMETHING has to happen in a story!
2. Whatever the character was doing had to make sense.
3. I have to somehow connect with a character.
4. The story has to have clearly important events.
5. Write a story that will “stick in my mind”.

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/

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