WRITING ADVICE: What Went RIGHT With “Absolute Limits” (ANALOG May 2000)? Guy Stewart #5

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.

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 to the left will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

I started writing when I was thirteen – I turned thirteen in 1970. While I wasn’t thinking about writing my own stories, I’d started reading ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT with this issue:

I’d read the science fiction in the school library and when I finished this book:

I wrote my first story – in pencil on lined paper. It was called THE WHITE VINES and took place in a corn field I saw every day while riding home on the bus.

I was hooked on the writing habit. Twenty-seven years later, I reached my first goal: publication in ANALOG with a Probability Zero story called “Absolute Limits”.

I’d been submitting to Stan Schmidt, who’s been editor of ANALOG since 1978 and only retired in 2013, giving his spot to Trevor Qachri. I had over a hundred rejections from ANALOG since my first submission in the middle 1970s.

What did I do right? What changed the unbroken string of rejections by my favorite magazine? For years, I thought I did everything right, yet my stories were bounced back to me without comment and the standard “Dear Contributor,” sheet of paper.

In a word – passion. Not the sexy kind of passion -- the EXCITED kind of passion. The INVOLVED kind of passion

“Absolute Limits” was a short story about something that bugged the living daylights out of me. People who drive faster than the speed limit – not matter what the speed limit is. The Germans solved the problem by removing those limits on the autobahn to allow anyone to go any speed.
In that impassioned piece of fiction, I sort of flew “sideways” to the German solution. I imagined a world where the development of a Faster Than Light drive had come up against a brick wall. People in that world, despite the average speed limit being 100 mph (161 km/hr), STILL speed. The FTL researcher, as frustrated with speeders in his future as I am in this world, sees a car with a jet engine roar past him. This sets off a rant and he rails, “It doesn’t matter what the speed limit is, people are going to break it!” – and the rant sparks an idea.

A few months and several legislative sessions later, the highway departments of several states put up brand new speed limit signs: SPEED LIMIT 186,000 Miles Per Second…
I believe that no matter what kinds of limits are put on people, they'll do their level best to break the limits. Break the law.


Presented with a sign that said that they could NOT go faster than the speed of light, what's the first thing people will try and do?


Absurd? Yes. I didn’t set out to write a PZ story and initially the 600 words that were published were a story that was about 2000 words long.

Humorous? I tried to make it funny.

I sent it and for the first time in my career, Stan sent a note back asking me to shorten it. Stunned, I did exactly what he asked and sent it out again.

My next contact with ANALOG was a contract. The day my wife called me at work to tell me the contract had arrived, I wept.
After I got the check, I waited. The proofs arrived, though I had no more contact with Stan Schmidt. The next thing I knew, my name was on the Table of Contents of the August 1996 issue of ANALOG.

So what did I do RIGHT?

1. I was passionate about the “subject”. In other words, people who speed irritate the living daylights out of me. But I couldn’t write a short story about me destroying them…well, I suppose I could, but George Miller’s Mad Max was written and filmed in the late 1970’s already...I had to do something different. How about absurd exaggeration instead?
2. I had a market I dearly wanted to break into.
3. Everything I wrote was aimed at that market.
4. I kept writing – trying a new story, new ideas, and new manuscripts regularly.
5. I had a clear idea of what I wanted the story to say.
6. When the editor wanted a re-write, I offered no argument. I re-wrote it.
7. I was fast with the rewrites.

Since that manuscript, Stan – and now Trevor Qachri – usually rejected my work with a personal note. But sometimes there were acceptances. I’ve had three stories in ANALOG and I’ve tried to write my stories for them (and for every editor) with passion. I'm working on my first sale to Trevor, and I'm hoping it will be soon.


[It was! See my post here: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2014/09/story-acceptance-after-decade.html]

Image: http://static4.quoteswave.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/We-are-all-apprentices.jpg

I'M ONE OF FIVE STARS!

HEY!
I'm one of FIVE stars in this SAMPLER of the magazine for which I am a slushpile reader. I wrote the story...well, a long time ago and it was so tragic in the end that editor Bruce Bethke was the only one who saw what I wanted to do in the story.


If you're interested in THAT, I may have to do a PIE on the subject...hmmm...
ANYWAY, buy the book if you're interested in sampling what Bruce is doing at STUPEFYING STORIES!


http://www.amazon.com/Five-Stars-Outstanding-Stupefying-Stories-ebook/dp/B00MX7YBE4

SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH #62: July 25, 1946

This series is a little bit biographical and a little bit imaginary about my dad and a road trip he took in the summer of 1946, when he turned fifteen. He and a friend hitchhiked from Loring Park to Duluth, into Canada and back again. He was gone from home for a month. I was astonished and fascinated by the tale. So, I added some speculation about things I've always wondered about and this series is the result. To read earlier SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH clips, click on the label to the right, scroll down to and click OLDER ENTRIES seven or eight times. The FIRST entry is on the bottom of the last page.

“What kind of trouble?" asked Tommy Hastings, suddenly  feeling cold down to his toes. It had nothing to do with the cool night air, damp with the water flowing up on to the land from Lake Superior.

Arnie Volz, truck driver and boyfriend of Edwina Olds, Lieutenant, WACS (ret.) down-shifted the truck and said nothing.

“What? What happened?” Freddie Merrill asked.

“People that are with you – you whose parents are in deep trouble with powerful politics – might get in the way of the politics and be hurt. I don’t think this is something that Ed wanted to get involved with,” said Arnie. “I think it would be best if you boys got off here,” he slowed the semi and finally squealed to a halt. Nodding to toward the truck’s door, he added, “I’m gonna have to ask you boys to get out.”

Freddie cried out, “We’re not even to the city yet!”

“I’d say that’s a good thing for me,” he said.

Freddie said, “But...”

Tommy shoved him against the door as he reached for the handle. He turned back to Arnie and said, “I think you’re wrong, Mr. Volz. But thanks for the ride, anyway.” Tommy shoved Freddie out the door.

“Hey! It’s not my ma and dad’s in trouble with Commies!” He landed on his feet, turned and looked up at Tommy. “They want to kill you! I wanna go home!” He pushed past Tommy and said, “Take me home! The Commies don’t want me! They want Tommy!”

Tommy stepped away from the semi, stumbled when he came to the edge of the asphalt, staring at Freddie. He said, “You leaving me?”

Freddie looked up into the cab. Arnie was staring down at him from the driver’s seat. He looked back at Tommy who sighed, turned, and started walking.

Arnie called out, “Better turn around kid, Duluth’s the other way.”

“Not going back home,” Tommy said. A moment later he disappeared along the back of the semi.

Freddie looked up at Arnie and started to climb into the cab. He paused, looked back at Tommy, then finished climbing in. He slammed the door. Without a word, Arnie put the truck in gear and started south down the highway to Duluth.

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9nHoHbwoR0MB_1oJ5beAp2b7-zWTaCSrMKpUSDKni84_bVAPVyPCesTIWkUmVSAmRCZbqceLL7E7GYfzdgjpKvYm66TXFwgDJmUALedsyWGKo2s0NlUqSP4570MZxrj6nEieAeCnJo4A/s1600/aruralcommunity2.png

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 170

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

H Trope: ZOMBIES! (*sigh*, again…)

Current Event: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/13/chinese_internet_rumors_ebola_zombies, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/17/vietnam-war-dempsey-visit-counter-china/14185033/

Quân Nhung sighed as he swiped the story off his comppad and said, “This claim that Ebola doesn’t create zombies out of Humans is just a ploy by Chinese Imperialists to annex us and create another prefecture for Beijing to bleed us dry.” He laid it down on his desk and returned his attention to his own computer, and tapped his screen, saying, “What do you make of Ebola jumping to Haiti?”

Chenda Dara shook her head, “Everything’s a ‘ploy by Chinese Imperials’ to you. How did you ever make it into the International CDC if you think everything’s a plot against normal people?”

Quân looked over at her and snorted as he activated his keyboard projector and began typing while he ranted, “The reason they hired me, Chenda is because I’m a paranoid conspiracist. They need people like me to generate the scenarios they use to create plans to counter endless permutations of apocalypse. If I wasn’t like this, people who trust the rest of the world implicitly would all be dead now.”

“You used circular logic to prove only that you’re good at using circular logic to justify your paranoia.”

He genially flipped her off. Even though they were both seventeen, they were the best Vietnam had been able to produce since calling up the debt America owed them – a debt they counted in permanently denuded a countryside, a slaughtered generation of men, and an infrastructure totally fractured. The US responded guiltily by boosting every child whose family desired it. He and Chenda each had the informational equivalent of a PhD in microbiology and computational simulation technology. The Center for Disease Control had moved to Hanoi when the US government sterilized Atlanta after an outbreak of pneumAIDS appeared from a mutated virus and leaped out of control, taking most of the state of Georgia with it.

However...however...Quân said, “This whole idea of a zombie plague is idiotic! Who do the Chinese think we are? Superstitious ancestor worshippers?” He rolled his eyes and looked up, “Chenda?” Cussing, he stood up, stretched and followed her out to the smoking deck. At least that’s where he thought she’d gone. He stepped out into the steamy night air of the fiftieth floor balcony of the Hanoi CDC Needle – both symbolic and practical – on top of it was a communication center with a direct link to the American-owned CDC satellite as well as a broadcast tower that could use any frequency known to Humanity. “Chenda?” He took out a pack of real tobacco cigarettes – rare and heavenly as well as affordable on his salary – and lit up.

From the shadowy area near the window, Chenda said, “You have to be the most foolish paranoid I’ve ever met, Quân.”

“What?”

Chenda stepped out of the shadows, “You really think zombies shamble in this day and age? You think we walk around with our arms stretched out and grunt and groan incoherently?” He hand lashed out, grabbing his, knocking the cigarette over the balustrade. He screamed as she bite the fleshy part of his lower arm; bit through the expensive silk shirt and tore a piece of living, bloody flesh from his body…

Names: ♀ Khmer, Old Celt ; ♂ Vietnam

Image: http://www.bbcamerica.com/in-the-flesh/files/2013/04/ITF_S2.jpg

Slice of PIE: STOP OVERWRITING!!!!

The classic example of overwriting is this travesty...er, paragraph... “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” — Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul CLIFFORD (1830)

 

These words have inspired generations of writers since its publication to AVOID such writing like the plague.

And yet people still write like this. On purpose. Without knowing that millions of other writers will mock them and make comments like, “I should enter this in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, “Where ‘WWW’ means ‘Wretched Writers Welcome’”!

What is overwriting – besides the obvious resulting fifty-eight word sentence...

Excuse me? You don’t see anything wrong with the paragraph above and see difference between it and the first sentence of Charles Dickens’ classic literary novel, A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859)? The line that is oft-quoted but almost never completed – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” (see the COMPLETE, one hundred and twenty-eight word sentence here: http://www.memorablequotations.com/Cities.htm)? No difference to you?

*sigh*

I would love to use some examples of unpublished works I’ve read recently in my volunteer position as slush reader for STUPEFYING STORIES. There are some real humdingers I’ve read there, let me tell you! But not only would that be unethical, putting them up on my blog would constitute publishing them – and would give them the same, slightly less elevated status as Bulwer-Lytton’s and Dickens’ work. So I’ll dissect my own work.

While editors have never, in my experience come right out and said, “OVERWRITING!”, they have employed several euphemistic phrases I’ve quoted below:

“I actually found the language you used to be rather dense and information-heavy, which didn't make for particularly easy reading. I would suggest revisiting it with a thought to simplifying it a little for more ease of comprehension.”

“Almost impossible for me to get around the massive amount of information in this piece. It seems like you were attempting to squeeze a novel into a short story.”

“some sentences were difficult to parse (e.g., on p. 18, "Human bodies would flare into the atmosphere and burn up so that the many would put troops down on Weedworld.")...The preponderance of alien names made for some confusing passages, though, and we find our readers prefer things a bit more straightforward -- smoother, with less chance of getting jarred out of the story…”

“Story exceeds our 8k maximum word count”

So what does overwriting mean?

In my experience, it means using more words than are necessary to say something in the story – more than that, though, it means not using the RIGHT words to say something.

Let’s go to poetry – I know, what does poetry have to do with writing stories? I deal with this question the first day of every Writing To Get Published summer school session I teach. In fact, I deal with it on a personal level as well. But when I look at the definition of POETRY, these definitions reflect what I usually get from kids as well as my own perception of it: “Poetry in the Bible has been well defined as ‘the measured language of emotion.’ Hebrew poetry deals almost exclusively with the great question of man's relation to God. Guilt, condemnation, punishment, pardon, redemption, repentance are the awful themes of this heaven-born poetry.” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/poetry?s=t)

“When I used to ask students what a poem is, I would get answers like ‘a painting in words,’ or ‘a medium for self-expression,’ or ‘a song that rhymes and displays beauty.’... ‘One might argue that the page is just a metaphor for all that can’t be put on it, and that a poem is merely a substitution, for better or for worse, for a lived feeling or event.’” (http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/what-is-a-poem/281835/)

When I overwrite, I am trying to say something profound. I’m ALWAYS trying to say something profound. My most recently published story looked at the morality of using organic monkey brains instead of computer chips in disposable work satellites. (“612 See, 612 Do”, http://www.perihelionsf.com/1407/anomalies.htm) Sometimes I do a better job of it. My wife says that short stories are my forte, and maybe that’s true because I work so hard at saying what I’m trying to say with as few carefully chosen words as possible.

And THAT is what overwriting doesn’t do – a writer just…vomits on to a page without giving proper weight to each word. I rarely notice when I’m overwriting; I usually think I’m being profound. But like comparing Bulwer-Lytton to Dickens, the first simply vomited on the page. It’s apparent to me he was just writing.

In Dickens though, the author clearly considered every word and while we don’t remember the entire first sentence, it left a deep enough impact on literature to be repeatedly quoted – even in a Star Trek movie.

Image: http://blog.fishbowlinventory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Star-Trek-2-Spock-gives-Kirk-A-Tale-of-Two-Cities.jpg

LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION: Chapter 19

The Cold War between the Kiiote and the Yown’Hoo has become a shooting war.  On Earth, there are three Triads one each in Minneapolis, Estados United; Pune, India; and Harbin, China. Protected by the Triad Corporation, they intend to integrate not only the three peoples and stop the war that threatens to break loose and slaughter Humans and devastate their world.; but to stop the war that consumes Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber. The Yown’Hoo know about the extra-Universe Braider, aliens whose own “civil war” mirrors the Cold War. The Braiders accidentally created a resonance wave that will destroy the Milky Way and the only way to stop it is to physically construct a sort of membrane that will produce a canceling wave – generated from the rim of the Galaxy inward. The Braiders don’t DO physical stuff on that scale – the Yown’Hoo-Kiiote-Human Triads may be their only chance of creating a solution. The merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a van der Walls Society may produce a stability capable of launching incredible expansion, creativity, longevity and wealth – and building the Membrane to stop the wave.

The young experimental Triads are made up of the smallest primate tribe of Humans –two; the smallest canine pack of Kiiote – six; and the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – a prime eleven. On nursery farms and ranches away from the TC cities, Humans have tended young Yown’Hoo and Kiiote in secret for decades, allowing the two warring people to reproduce and grow far from their home worlds. Grendl, Manitoba is one such place. No one but the Triad Company has ever heard of it and the physical plant goes by the unobtrusive name of Organic Prairie Dairy.

The city Triads never hear of anything they aren’t spoon fed in their luxury worlds and have heard only rumors of the farms and ranches. Surrounded by a Humanity that has degenerated into a “duck-and-cover” society as the Big Boys fight their war, the Triads don’t care about anything but their own lives. Oblivious, cocooned, manipulated, they have no idea that their privileges are about to be violently curtailed and all of their biology ransacked for the correct Membrane pattern. (update: 5/2/2014)

Kashayla Mary-Natalia Kimpo fell to her knees. She had every right to, I guess, because we were talking with a ghost of a Human woman who had both commanded the All Earth Defense Fleet and died spectacularly and very publicly when the Kiiote and Yown’Hoo had blown a hole through the same Fleet as they’d invaded Earth. She’d become not only a hero, but among the poorest of the poor on Earth, she was a saint. Popularly known as Saint Admiral, she even had the blessing of the Catholic Church.

The Kiiote and Yown’Hoo had their own versions of saints – and those were the ones standing in front of us now. I looked over at Lieutenant Commander Patrick Bakhsh (ret), who nodded and said, “Sorta makes you want to fall down and worship me, don’t it?”

I scowled and said, “I’m not a very religious person.”

He laughed, drawing the attention of Saint Admiral, and the leaders of the Yown’Hoo and Kiiote attack on Earth at the outset of their shooting war something like thirty years ago. The Herd Mother of Herd Mothers, Ji-hi had personally accepted the surrender of the old United States and the European Union. The Kiiote Pack Leaders Zir and Pon had each accepted the surrender of China and Russia. All of them had commented on the eventual destruction of St. Admiral.

She gestured to Shay, who stood as she walked past her. Shay’s eyes were practically bugging out of her head as she mouthed to me, “Don’t be stupid!”

From her two meter height, St. Admiral said down to me, “Who exactly do you think we are, young man?”

Shay made slashing motions across her throat, probably hoping I’d follow suit with a real knife. For whatever reason, this woman had made my normally sarcastic and skeptical partner a total religious fundamentalist.

Zir and Pan grabbed each member of the Pack by the loose skin at the throat and bit just hard enough to draw blood, then allowed them up to follow. Ji-hi had already butted Dao-hi into submission and led the Herd without challenge. She did have to kick one of the males in its pointy little head to make it back off. It finally got the message and now stood close by Dao-hi, trembling. Both Pack and Herd moved over to where I was speaking up at Saint Admiral. I said, “I think the three of you are the original Triad.”

She and Bakhsh laughed outright, but the Lieutenant was the first one to glare at me. St. Admiral grinned, her white teeth startling in her dark-skinned face. She said, “I suppose you could call us something like that, though I don’t remember signing a contract with the Corporation, do any of you?” Zir and Pan growled, Ji-hi pawed the ground. She looked down at me, not speaking for so long, I almost dropped down to the ground in a bow despite my agnosticism. She paused, then said, “We are the Corporation, boy child. You and your Triads are the invention of the four of us. Zir and Pan and Ji-hi are my tribe as we are each other’s Pack and Herd.”

Dao-hi couldn’t contain herself any longer and blurted, “But there’s no dominance among you! Herd Mother, how can you allow these other,” she used a word I’d never heard her use before. It was a strange sound, part whinny, part jaw-snap, part humming. No matter – it sounded insulting and the hairs on the back of my neck rose, “to dominate you?”

Ji-hi reared up, her tentacles pulling free of their sheaths with a pop as she whirled on Dao-hi, and said, “There can be no more ‘domination’, Herd Parent! The longer we attempt to dominate, the weaker we grow!”

There was silence in the underground garage as all of us stared at Ji-hi. Then Saint Admiral said softly, “I wouldn’t have put it that bluntly, dear, but I suppose we have little enough time to waste. We must send our children into the North before this city is a radioactive crater and all of our hopes for survival of the Three are annihilated.”

Image: http://images.ookaboo.com/photo/m/Eastern_wolves_WSC_m.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 170

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

Fantasy Trope: The Quest

Current Event: http://contemplativequest.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland

Světlana Angelika pursed her lips, looking out over the hectares of forest. In the MSP Vertical Village, it was mostly deciduous trees – oak, maple, patches of white-barked birch, poplar – with a sprinkling of pine trees. The concourse she and Uthman Aali were on was packed with people. Not a hundred thousand, for sure, but too many to think. “We need to go somewhere,” she said abruptly, speaking in the too loud manner of all the inhabitants of Vertical Villages everywhere.

Uthman gave her a look that said, “You’re crazy.”

She slugged him in the shoulder. It was a little kid move – but then, they’d been friends since they were three years old. “No, I’m serious. We need to go somewhere real.”

Without changing his stare, Uthman said, “We can go up to the six hundredth floor...”

“No! I don’t mean here. This is all so...boring. We need to go,” she pause, “through a looking glass.”

“A what?”

“A looking glass! Haven’t you ever read Alice in Wonderland?”

“I might have seen a threevee of it once. Wasn’t it a cartoon?”

“Yes – and no, you haven’t seen this. Lewis Carroll wrote a novel, it’s true. But he was a mathematician. His logic is all over the book. Math. Everything.”

Uthman snorted, “It sounds like science fiction.”

“It’s fantasy – she steps through a mirror.”

“If it’s math and logic, it’s science fiction.”

“There are talking rabbits,” said Světlana. “And a talking, disappearing cat. As well as a talking, smoking caterpillar, talking mice, and soldiers made of playing cards.”

“OK. You win. It’s a fantasy. But what does it have to do with us? What kind of mirror can we jump through? I’m sure there are some here – but...”

“The windows. We can jump through one of those.”

“A window?”

“Come on, let’s go to the outer walls. We’ll leap through one of those!” She turned and ran, Uthman running after her.

Names: ♀ Czech, Roman; ♂ Arabic, Hindu  

Image: http://meetgray.com/Media/Default/%D0%9B%D1%8C%D1%8E%D0%B8%D1%81%20%D0%9A%D1%8D%D1%80%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BB/Lewis_Carroll_Guildford_6-700x525.JPG