After last Friday’s post, a friend reached out to tell me that she understood my point, but loved fanfics too much to agree with me. It made me realize that I had never actually talked about fan fiction in that post, and that made me question why.
The first and obvious reason is that I don’t really read fanfics. I know a lot of people who do, I am aware that there exists some great literature in that community, and I am familiar with the tales of great commercial success that originated as fan fiction (though, sadly, when the first example that comes to mind is 50 Shades of Gray, I struggle to feel very appreciative about it).
However, it has just never interested me. To me, the “canon” is always what the creator of the work says, and nothing else. Even in superhero comic books, where there are so many authors and artists working on the same characters, I will still almost never read “what if” or alternative reality stories, because they just detract from the “real” thing (please, don’t take this as snobbishness, it’s far more obsessive-compulsive than it is pretentious, I promise).
With that said, fan fiction has also never bothered me, and I do see a firm distinction between that and author tweets or fan theories. See, fan fiction is actual fiction. Good, bad, brilliant, or atrocious, it is a dramatized experience of the characters of a given work. A story. It treats them the same way the original author does – as creations to be put through their paces in an isolated frame.
Fanfics don’t treat people or events as any more “real” than the work that inspired them. And this is why, while not for me, I have great appreciation for the form. In the end, fans want more or different adventures (or, yunno, crazy naked sex) for the characters they love, so they create them, or go read the works of others who have created them. It is ultimately a positive and constructive act on both the creative and reading end.
Tweets about the characters, providing “information” about them that does not exist in any kind of work, be it original or fan-made, are not the same thing. Neither are theories that presume material that does not yet/will never exist. And, as I said last week, I am not in any position of authority – legal, moral, or otherwise – to tell you how to enjoy the things you enjoy.
But if I am going to learn about pooping wizards, I want to learn it from a work of fiction, not social media. You are not your characters’ town crier. You are their creator. And as far as I am concerned, you should always act like it.
So, here’s the thing. Reading has always been a huge part of my life. Growing up, I never didn’t have a book I was currently on, and it impacted every aspect of my existence. My hobbies, my first freelance work, things I have been doing for literal decades (reviewing), and things I have only been doing for a short time now (writing).
But something happened around the time when I left home and came to study in America. For the first time in my life, I was living alone, had a personal laptop (don’t @ me, I’m Eastern European, and old), and then — not long after — came out as gay. Life changed, and reading was kind of left by the wayside. It’s not that I stopped reading, exactly, but I went long periods of time without a book by my bedside.
Last year, I decided to do something about it. I was already doing much better, but I wanted to get ambitious (for me). So I set a Goodreads (by the way, follow me!) goal of 52 books in 2019. A nice, weekly number. The only problem? I set that goal in late September. What’s a boy to do?
CHEAT!
(Kinda.)
Desperately trying to catch up (I had not read over 30 books by that point), I turned to the venerable literary form of the novella. And realized that I had been an idiot, because that is, as far as my scientific analysis shows, fiction in its most perfect form. The “condensed novel” is a brilliant medium, and I discovered a metric fuckton of writers I would have otherwise ignored — some who write long form as well, and some for whom this is as long as they get.
Needless to say, I have leaned heavily on novellas for my 2020 reading challenge as well. Maybe this time I will go higher than 52. But either way, I will have read so much great fiction, that I won’t care.
Moral of this confession — cheat often, you never know what will come out of it!
A fairly straightforward exercise from The 3 A.M. Epiphany: to write a short scene centered around a memorable article of clothing. The goal is to focus on the ways clothing describes the people that wear it — their class and status, profession, goals, awareness of self. For all that it is a simple idea, it is also a profound one, as clothing exists in 99.99% of fiction, in one form or another, and it always says something, be it about the characters, or the author.
The vest was beautiful. In the crowded street market, under the din of merchants hawking their wares, and customers arguing, it was hard to focus on anything. But this piece, placed on a stand most of the people walking the street could not afford to shop at, had caught Valen’s eye immediately, and held it. Dark blue, the color of Ocean’s mists, embroidered with glimmering golden thread. No pockets, no clasps. It was meant to be worn open, over a bare chest – a symbol of status and bravery.
He could appreciate the intent, though he knew how the nobility wore such clothing. They had no understanding of the subtlety that a tailor put into such simplicity. He had seen countless men buying vests like this one, and covering it up with chains of precious metals. They saw themselves as grand only when their wealth was on shameless display.
They couldn’t understand, because they’d never known poverty.
Valen looked down at his own vest. Simple, unembroidered. Good quality which said that it wasn’t handed down, but bought from a merchant with actual gemshards. Not shabby, for sure, but not exquisite either. A thief could not afford to dress gaudy, but neither could they afford to look like street vermin. Presenting as a beggar had its uses from time to time, but usually it closed as many doors, as the eyebrows that rich clothing raised.
If one wanted to be good at that profession, standing out for any reason was out of the question. Valen was a master at walking the middle road.
Still, his eyes lingered on the vest. He was no tailor, but he appreciated craftsmanship. And he remembered a childhood not nearly long enough ago, when any clothing had been a luxury. Doubly so, if it was bug-free. When roofs over your head were not a given, and a piece of sturdy cloth was the next best thing. The boy he had been back then had dreamed of palaces and riches, and the clothing to show it all off. He had probably lacked sufficient amounts of taste, that he would have draped all the precious metal and gems he could find all over himself, if he could.
Valen of today smiled. That had been before the gift of the leviathan. Before riches had become easy to acquire. More an excuse for the life he led, rather than its purpose. It was the challenge he now craved, and with that challenge came appreciation for the simple and understated. The craftsmanship of straight lines and bold cuts. It applied to the clothes he wore, as much as it did to anything else.
The merchant across the stall took his smile as encouragement, and launched into a sermon extolling the virtues of the cloth and skill that had gone into the tailoring of his wares. It was a prelude to asking for an exuberant price, of course, and Valen ignored it entirely. He had no use for this vest, could hardly imagine an occasion that would call for its understated elegance. And he had work to do.
In the end, he cut the man short, apologized for taking his time, and moved out of the way of another customer, this one actually interested in buying something. By the time he had made two steps into the thick crowd, he had been forgotten.
Which was just as well.
Thin tendrils of blue light – light only someone with Valen’s gift would see, and only if they were to look for them in the crowded market – wrapped themselves around the piece of clothing on the table behind him. He kept walking, but his senses were entangled with the manifestation of his power, and he could feel the smooth silk sliding against other vests and jackets, ignored by merchant, client, and passersby alike. The tendrils carried it between legs and flailing arms, passing it to each other through the crowd as they flared in and out of existence.
All the way to Valen’s waiting hands.
He wouldn’t get much use out of it. But he remembered that young boy, and how much he had wanted such a vest.
Disclaimer: This is going to get opinionated. I want to preface it with saying that I am a massive fan of Harry Potter, and I utterly adore Bonds of Brass. What I am about to say should be taken as a broad commentary about the nature of fiction, rather than dissing either work, or its author.
There is something that has been chewing on the sides of my brain ever since I wrote my review of Bonds of Brass.
Bisexuality.
No, just kidding (kind of). It was Emily Skrutskie’s tweet (and comments in other places), stating that the two main characters of the book were bisexual, when they were not coded as such in the book itself. I have been trying to examine why this statement bugged me so much, and I realized it has nothing to do with identity.
Instead, it’s about what is on the page, and what isn’t.
Now, if the title hasn’t forced your mind in that direction, let me just remind the world that, at present, J.K. Rowling is the undisputed champion in extra-literary revisions. With every new tweet about the Wizarding World, she erodes our love for her books a tiny bit more, but it goes further than that — she adds information that was never part of the narrative of those books. That is not a problem for some people, but it is a massive issue for others.
I think there are two fundamental approaches to perceiving fiction (just kidding, there are a million. But stay with me on this one). You can treat it as an alternate reality that you are viewing form the window of the book/screen/whatever; or you can treat it as a work of art, with its internal rules and limitations — a sort of fourth-wall approach, in which you are aware of your role as a spectator. The two are not mutually exclusive, of course. In fact, I think they always intertwine to an extent. But in their extremes, they lead to different perceptions of the reality of the work.
If you see the fictional story as something real and independent of your perception, you can easily incorporate any piece of external information into the work. Such as — you guessed it! — Dumbledore being gay. It’s not in the Harry Potter books. It’s not hinted at, it’s not implied. There is literally nothing you can even retrospectively point at, and say “This codes Dumbledore’s sexuality”. If anything, he is the quintessential ace character — a wise old mentor archetype with no sexuality whatsoever.
But if you think of him as a real person, existing independently of the books that tell his story, he could easily be gay. The narrative isn’t about his personal life, after all, right? It’s plausible that it wouldn’t come up.
I don’t think in those terms. And I won’t claim that my approach is “the right one”, because hey — who am I, really, to tell you how to enjoy fiction? But I have always been on the opposite end of the spectrum. I hate fan theories with a fiery passion. I avoid forums that discuss ongoing fantasy series like the plague. No, Tyler, Daenerys is NOT secretly Tyrion’s niece. Jaime didn’t kill his mother. Arya doesn’t have a secret Braavosi lover.
You know why? Because they don’t exist.
These people are made up. Their experiences only ever occur in the fiction that features them. They don’t have independent life outside of it. I will not speculate as to the secret thoughts and actions of non-existent people, because the writer can, at any point, choose to take them in any direction they please. Sometimes — sadly — they do it specifically to subvert the expectations of fan speculation.
This is why the bisexuality of the Bonds of Brass boys bugged me so much. Because that is a story based around romance, and that romance is same-sex. That’s what is presented inside the book, and that’s all that exists of these two entities. Claiming otherwise, even as the writer, implies that they have a life outside of the work, that there are further dimensions to them that I am not privy to. And for all I know, maybe future books in the trilogy will blast their bisexuality in my face. I won’t love those two disasters any less for it.
But in the mean time, I believe that the work is the work, and only the work is canon. It doesn’t matter whether my story is about any particular kind of identity or circumstance. If it matters to me that my readers perceive my characters in any specific way, it is the simplest thing in the world to code them that way, without ever making it a focus of the narrative. A stray thought. A random line of dialogue. Someone casually noticing the attractiveness of someone else.
We are writers. The world of our own work is our butt-monkey. There is nothing we can’t make known to the reader, if we so choose.
In the actual real world that we live in, labels are still important, and identity is the nexus of social and political fights that have defined generations. Hetero is still the norm. Same-sex relationships still read “gay” or “lesbian”. Therefore, if we want to paint our characters in more complex colors (even when we are placing them in a post-identity world), we have to code them as such within the work.
I shouldn’t have to read J.K.’s tweets in order to know something so profound about one of her series’ most important characters. But BOOOOY would I love some hot and steamy prequel story about young Albus getting it on with another dude!
Another really cool exercise from The 3 A. M. Epiphany, this one aiming at omniscient view of the past (or a past, it doesn’t have to be real). The goal is to utilize a type of omniscience that takes a bird’s eye view of an event or people, using the knowledge of that period’s “future” as part of the narrative. It is a very different approach than the present day omniscient POV that I was used to, and the new relationship with the world was interesting to explore. It reminded me of Scott Bakker’s Prince of Nothing trilogy, in which the tight third person would shift to omniscient bird’s eye view during great battles or epic events.
This piece of text is part of the history of the world in which my current novel is set. I hope it isn’t thoroughly embarrassing…
[Excerpt] from “The Fall of the Chantry: Exploration
of the InevitabilitY of the Dissolution”
By Kasheem Se Khaledun, Second Historian of the Sovereign
College, member of the Guild of Lorists
In a world where the Gods are real, faith cannot survive.
That the Chantry would lose power as people lost faith, was
not immediately obvious in the last decades before its collapse. There are
records of religions older than the Leviathan Pantheon, dating as far back as
the Age of Mythology. Faiths and splinter sects, devoted to deities both imagined,
and likely already inspired by the Gods themselves. In all documents surviving
such ancient times, we can see cracks in the façade. Abuse of power, corruption,
dressing malevolence in piety. It is an easy conclusion to make, that not all
who partook of such religions were truly faithful.
So we need to see the world as the Chantry saw it. For all
that many quoted scripture while failing to follow its dogma, this was the most
powerful religious institution in the history of the Jade continent. Lack of
faith had never impeded its influence, nor its control over the political
leaders of the land. It was so powerful, in fact, that we have documents
showing said influence expanding to other continents, when they Converged with our
own during their journeys through the mists of Ocean.
(Such knowledge is perhaps less impressive to the modern
reader than it rightly should be. It is of note that the Chantry existed before
the Fael skyships came to our lands, before the gift of Gleamdark artifice that
would allow the birth of the Guild of Navigators. Traveling to other continents
was impossible at the time, and we only knew of their existence due to the rare
phenomenon of Convergence, when the currents of Ocean would bring our home in
contact with other land masses for a time.)
What is the key to the Dissolution then? How did the
greatest power on Jade collapse into the isolated cults we know today? The
answer is simple: the Gods spoke to their chosen.
People receiving the gift of God power have existed as long
as the leviathans themselves. Those possessed of the ability to change the
world, performing what for generations was deemed miracles. Heroes whose
mysterious sacrifices would pay for boons humanity could barely comprehend. We
know the Pantheon existed during the Age of Mythology. In fact, the leviathans certainly
swam the deep mists of Ocean before humanity even stood on two feet. And in
every age of our existence, the gifted have been with us.
So what changed? I have outlined in detail how the number of
the Gods’ chosen increased dramatically, seemingly overnight (though records
reveal the transition happened over decades). Not only did they become
numerous, but the leviathans were now speaking to them, directing their efforts
to the Gods’ own mysterious ends. The question of “why” has plagued us for
centuries, and I have listed some of the more reputable theories. A common
thread among many of those deals with the imminent arrival of the Fael, the
rise of arcana and artifice as the dominant drives of our societies, which
would lead to the beginning of the Audacity and the world we know today.
Surely, some among the leviathans can see the strands of the future, as the
powers they gift indicate.
But whatever their reasons, one fact remains certain: The Gods
spoke, and the Chantry fell.
The dogma of its scriptures had always had an uneasy
reverence for the chosen. Those rare few who bore the mark of a God or Goddess
of the Pantheon, were an aberration that the power structures of the religion
could neither control, nor fully incorporate into their teachings. Many gifted
women and men used their gifts in sharp rejection of the Chantry, and yet they
were not smitten down for their blasphemous deeds.
The balance held only because such people were so rare.
And then they were not.
More and more awoke to a gift, more and more heard the
whispers of the Gods. When they spoke, their word clashed with the dogma of religion.
And where religion had faith, the chosen had proof. The former can only
survive the latter if their conclusions overlap. But they did not. What we know
today, the simple truth that brought the Dissolution, that turned the Chantry
into subservient cults more interested in tradition, ritual, and service than
any real power, was unthinkable to the people of that period. But over time, it
was also undeniable.
The simple reality of the world is that the Leviathan Pantheon
cares nothing for our deed and thought, our desires and needs. The Gods are
indifferent to all but the ones they choose, and even them they view as but
tools to their will. And if certain rituals have survived to the present day,
they are hollow tradition, unburdened by the tenets of faith.
In the following chapters, I have laid out the first cracks
in […]
This one is narrowly focused on writing a specific type of
science fiction and fantasy, but it’s a fairly prevalent issue, so I figured I
would drop my two cents in that particular slot.
Something I had to deal with from pretty much the first
paragraph of my current book, was how to naturally insert the necessary
information, so that readers would have any chance of understanding what the F is
going on. I believe I have overcome this issue with some level of competence
(courtesy of obsessing over it for literal years), but it did make me evaluate
the role of infodumps in secondary world fantasy and science fiction.
First of all, the terms, for that one person who potentially
doesn’t know what I am talking about:
Infodumps are compressed chunks of information about the
story, world, or characters in fiction. It is, by definition, something to
avoid, as it stops the narrative in its tracks. Rather than the reader submerging
themselves into your work, they are taken out of the story in order to read a
glossary.
Secondary worlds, on the other hand, are locales that exist
outside of our present day world or its known past. Your Middle Earths, Narnias,
Westeroses, and Roshars, for sure. But just as much your Cultures, Dunes, Urths,
and Foundations, because whether an alternate reality, or a distant future, the
further away you get from the reader’s point of origin, the more terminology
and circumstance they will have to learn, in order to become part of your
worlds.
So, with that said, it is staggering how many ways there are
to present information poorly. Talking heads (which I’ve heard described as “Maid
and Butler dialogue” and “As you know, Bob…” as well) that spout exposition
when they have no reason to be having such conversations. Farm boys or
fresh-out-of-the-portal/cryochamber earthers who need everything explained to
them. Students in magical/SF military schools who supposedly know a lot, but
get to still give the reader tutorials through their daily experiences.
And of course, the old faithful – the omniscient point of
view in which the author’s voice itself stops everything to explain to us what
we are reading and how it works.
The types of infodumping are infinite, but what struck me, as I was thinking of how best to reveal my own worldbuilding to the reader, was that when it comes to secondary worlds, not all in-depth explanations are infodumps. And the delivery of information is not a binary, but a spectrum.
To give examples, on one end you have a Brandon Sanderson. He
likes everything neatly explained and structured, from the magic to the workings
of the world, to cosmology and theology. And if something is a mystery, the
reader knows it is a matter of time for it to be revealed. However, he rarely
falls into the trap of artificial explanations. He worldbuilds with the reader,
but he does it organically, and this approach to writing is at the core of his
work.
On the other end, you have someone like Steven Erikson, who —
in Gardens of the Moon — parachutes the reader into the middle of a war
in an unknown land, right as some kind of dark elf on a flying mountain has a chaotic
magic battle with a group of humans. Names, titles, factions, and plot points
fly around and bounce off of each other, and none of it is explained. You
are left to slowly build your own picture of the Malazan world, if you have the
patience for it.
I tend to prefer understanding a world by myself, absorbing
it through the eyes of characters who are part of it. As I empathize with them,
I can empathize with their reality and circumstances, and it is my favorite
type of “learning curve”. However, I still need some core principles and terminology
to be if not explained, then immediately obvious (and there are many naming
conventions that help with that). Otherwise, curiosity turns to confused frustration.
Meanwhile, the opposite approach has great merit as well. A
gem like Mistborn does not work if Kelsier is not around to explain allomancy
to Vin. The glorious battle scenes of that book only impress because we
understand the “science” of what the characters are doing. Some stories need
the reader to have a firm grasp on their setting in order to tell the story
they want to tell.
Both extremes, and anything in-between can be done well, or
poorly. But I have come to realize that whether you want drop the reader in the
middle of your world, or introduce them slowly to it, some measure of infodumping
is unavoidable, at least for larger works of secondary world speculative
fiction. In this aspect, SFF is fairly unique in comparison to any other genre,
which can lean on the real world for support in its narrative. We don’t have
that luxury, and so we must use tricks and shortcuts to give the reader enough
to work with.
Ultimately, I don’t mind some direct infodumps in the books
I read. If the world, magic, space-faring tech, or the complicated relationships
between characters and factions, are key to understanding the plot, but not the
point of the plot, I’d rather know enough about them from the get go,
rather than trying to piece them together, while figuring out where the
story is going. Some of my all-time favorite authors are able to do that seamlessly
enough that I don’t even notice information has been dumped on me.
And so, this is what I aspire to as well. Because, really, you
try telling a space fantasy story comped as “Final Fantasy meets Mistborn on a
terraformed gas giant” without some infodumps!
In honor of self-quarantining (which, I am told, is now official euphemism for masturbation), I figured I should reveal the shame of what is currently occupying my nightstand. Those are books I have at one point or another bought on a whim, thought to pull out of my bookcases because I “really wanted to check them out”, etc. An odds-and-ends affair, patiently waiting for a better world, in which I read something like five books a week, or have otherwise magically caught up with all my “urgent” reading. Thoughts and prayers.
At C2E2, I decided to look smart at one of the “Writers Talking About Writering” panels, and once the floor was open for questions, asked mine: “If you struggle with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, how do you avoid solving problems too neatly for your characters?” (Let’s pretend I phrased it this way, rather than a mumbling shortness-of-breath situation.) Sam Sykes was one of the people who answered, and his answer, which I am paraphrasing here, was on the lines of “I think of everything that could go wrong in any given moment, and then explore where that takes the character.”
And OH BOY does he! Seven Blades in Black (first in the The Grave of Empires series) is a masterclass in Things Going Wrong, and I loved every. Single. Second. Of it.
Sal the Cacophony has an axe to grind. She was once a mage of the Imperium, whose power was stolen during a conspiracy to dethrone an Emperor. She has a list of the people responsible, and she is going through it. With a demon-possessed hand canon that shoots magical explosions.
The book takes place in a no-man’s-but-kinda-every-man’s-land called the Scar. Once a new frontier for the magicratic Imperium from across the sea, it has been ravaged by a generation-long war between Imperial forces and their former slaves, who have wrested freedom through mystical relics and a gun-powering substance found in the new land, and formed the no less bloodthirsty Revolution. Nobody cares about the little people, huddled in their freeholds and townships. Including Sal, who also doesn’t care about either side in the war.
Seven Blades in Black is an anti-heroic fantasy. Sal is a broken, broken woman, and the worst of the scar tissue isn’t even on the surface. She is cynical to a fault, a painful knot of dry wit and nihilism, placing little to no value on her own well-being, so long as she can kill everyone on her list. And when your enemies are some of the most powerful mages of your generation, things tend to get.. damaging. Sam Sykes somehow manages to throw every available kitchen sink at his protagonist, and yet the book never falls into gloom-and-doom territory. While the world and story are certainly grimdark, the narrative is so action-packed that at no point does it even consider dragging.
Another thing Sykes said in answer to my question at C2E2, was that characters who feel very strongly about something will always clash against the rest of the world. This is what drives much of Seven Blades in Black. Where Sal has a monomaniacal drive to kill those who wronged her once upon a time, the people around her do not. The few side characters of the book clash with Sal on a deeply intimate level, and for how action-driven the story is, I found myself genuinely entangled in the borderline toxic relationships she has with others nearly as much as I was with her quest.
So, if you have ever wondered what would happen if you mixed a techno-magical Final Fantasy style world with a classic revenge samurai story, added some serious emotional trauma and made your character somehow still read as the absolute coolest, then Seven Blades in Black is your book, as it was most certainly mine. And I am definitely vibrating on high frequency, waiting for the sequel in August!
Last year was the first time I actually went to a panel on
writing. Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo is a comic-con, rather
than a professional one, but they had acquired some impressive names, such as
Mary Robinette Kowal and Cory Doctorow, among others (both of whom are absolute
rock stars by the way). This time around the stable was even larger, with
people such as John Scalzi, Terry Brooks, and Sam Sykes, as well as a number of
first-time authors like K.M. Szpara and Chris Kluwe, and a serious presence of
the Horror and Young Adult variety, spearheaded by Joe Hill and Rainbow Rowell
respectively.
I focused on the SFF panels, which took the biggest chunk of my convention weekend, and it was an energizing (and a tiny bit frustrating) experience. Despite the well thought out panel topics, the actual result seemed to always amount to “writers talking about writering”, which I totally loved. And listening to people you admire share their experiences in the field you ascribe to, helps tremendously to humanize and demystify said field.
On the other hand, having people talk about living your life’s dream when you sometimes feel so far away from achieving it, can be a bit depressing (beer helps with that, by the way). More than anything though, it paints in stark colors the simple fact that the steps to traditional publishing are very simple, very accessible, and each one requires tremendous amounts of work, patience, and determination. There are no short cuts. But in its own way, this is motivating as well.
Some highlights:
K.M. Szpara and the importance of being earnest. Even among a group as diverse as the panels at C2E2 offered, Szpara stood out to me, and not only because I had practically just finished his book (or because, I was somehow the fanboy who got to be his first signee). He approached both of his appearances (“Tor Presents: Chaos and Cosmos” and “The Devil You Know”) with a mixture of thoughtfulness and passion that really resonated with me. An awareness of the current field, mixed with an impish attitude that I, in my rigid glory, can only admire from a distance. Plus, raising awareness of the important issue of whether Dolores Umbridge would make a good dom.
One thing that stuck with me was his advice on approaching fiction writing with the abandon of a fanfic writer. No fear of censorship, no need to worry about market or reception. It is a constant struggle and a subject of endless second-guessing for me, trying to determine whether I write a certain way because I want to, or because I think that’s how it’s “supposed” to be written. It was refreshing to hear someone who has achieved success vouch for the former. And though of course one can’t just ignore all external factors when pursuing traditional publishing, it is a nice reminder all the same that ultimately you write better when your primary drive isn’t worry about what the market might expect.
Zack Jordan and the value of showmanship. Zack appeared on only one panel – “Authors on ‘The Best Advice I Ever Got’” – which makes sense, considering his first book, The Last Human, is not even out yet (it is scheduled for late March). That particular panel quickly became a conversation about editing and author reaction thereof, and Jordan made the very important point that if you are trying to get published and sell your work for moneys, then you are no longer writing just “for yourself”. And the editor is the person whose job is to champion the book, not stifle the author, provided of course that the two are a good fit.
What was interesting to me about him though, was not the panel, but rather his booth on the main floor, glued to the Del Rey stand. Jordan, who has background in tech (one assumes) startups had set up a whole performance installation where he and a couple of other dudes in jumpsuits were “scanning” the crowd for potential humans, and issuing honest-to-Cthulhu, printed on the spot ID cards of your actual race, with picture and everything. Beyond the fourth wall, he was also handing out advance reading copies of The Last Human, and when I questioned him about the whole thing, he told me that Del Rey had provided the booth space, and he had set up everything else, from his helpers, to the card printers, the scanning app, all of it.
Moral of the story? For obvious market reasons, first time SFF writers are nobody’s budget priority. But if you are good at selling yourself, you can make a big impression with limited resources. Now if only I could in any way leverage classical violin training for PR…
John Scalzi and the JOHN FUCKING SCALZI!!! Perhaps a little context is necessary. I am sure I will end up writing about this in a bit more detail in the future, but suffice to say that The Collapsing Empire was the book that made me decide I was going to get off (on?) my ass and actually write a damn novel. Later that same year, You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop To A Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing was the collection of blog posts that made me decide I was going to pursue a writing career like a real boy.
So, while I wouldn’t credit Scalzi’s work with the inspiration for my own writing, his personality has definitely been directly responsible for my believing I can do this. And meeting him in person was such an amazing experience. He is a smug dork in the best possible way, and despite having the second largest autograph line after Terry Brooks, he spent a lot of time chatting with everyone and being friendly as hell. In the end, he told me to “keep writing, and don’t dare stopping”, and in my head canon, he is greatly invested in my success.
This is by no means the extent of my impressions of the convention or the writers I met there, but most of my other experiences boil down to small anecdotes, reinforcements of personal feelings, and some truly encouraging advice and raw emotion from Sam Sykes, who I shamefully had not read a word by until the very morning of C2E2 — a mistake I am currently fixing with enthusiasm. Also worth mentioning is Chris Kluwe , who was insanely charming and showed me that just because I am a bigot who thinks sportsball is dumb, doesn’t mean sportsball people can’t be thoughtful or have meaningful contributions outside of hoops, or whatever it is you do in the NFL.
Overall, after nearly a decade of walking around booths of comic books, artwork, and toys, standing in lines for autographs and photo ops with cast members of Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I am discovering that my inner diligent student likes sitting in panels discussing the craft and business of writing more than pretty much anything else a con might offer. So I am definitely ready to test this theory at a professional lit-con. Hopefully, I get a chance later in the year.
Today’s exercise comes courtesy of a recent Writing Excuses episode, in which literary agent DongWon Song suggests rewriting drastically the first sentence of a work in progress three different ways. The result is, by necessity, short, but it actually took me a while to get the different versions to be anything I would want to start a story with. Funnily enough, I am now considering changing the original.
Disclaimer: the opening paragraph this is taken from is an establishing shot of a very non-terrestrial world. As such, it features some terms that are defined through context and might not make sense to readers in isolation. Hopefully, this won’t make the entire exercise unreadable for people who are not currently writing my book.
Version 1: A world with no horizon greeted me when I reached
the mouth of the cave, all distances drowned in the glowing mists of Ocean.
Version 2: An endless blue swirl of mist spreads
before you as you reach the end of the tunnel, the dance of color at once
calming and dizzying, making you put a hand on the stone wall so as not to fall
into the abyss below.
Version 3: The Arc in the night sky bathed Ocean in its golden glow when Valen came out of the cave, and he needed a moment to orient himself, his sense of proportion dwarfed by the immense vista.
