Category Archives: writing

Every Novel is Written Differently

 

 

I do not mean that novels between novelist are written differently but rather that my own works each one takes a new path from conception to execution.

Some I have a great deal of the plot details already in my skull when I sit down to draft an outline, and I always outline, while others it’s much more of a character study that the outline is generated from.

My newest novel, which hasn’t yet reached the outline stage, has found a new path. It has started with the world-building. (Sorry Steven King, that’s a perfectly acceptable word and I simply do not understand your rejection of it.)

This new book is set on Mars, and I already had social forces that will be pushing the characters around. (That’s the thematic focus of the work, how the system we create trap and corral us all.) And I have the McGuffin that’s going to be driving the plot along with a pretty strong sense of the ending along with a possible final line, but right now the vast center of the book is in a deep fog to me.

So, I have started with the world around the characters, the corporations, associations, cloques, and social movements the character swim in. With hose elements in place, I have moved onto the characters themselves and as I sketch them out, they grow their flesh, their tastes and distastes, their dreams and nightmares, which lead to their choices, their mistakes, and slowly emerging from that fog, the actual book itself.

It’s almost as organic as a pantser just writing from a blank page but not quite.

Every book is different and therein lies the thrill and the terror of writing.

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ANOTHER CLICHE I DISLIKE

 

Twice in the space of a week I have been subjected to films that used the cliche ‘the character was psychotic’ and none of the dramatic events actually transpired.

(Spoilers for a 48-year-old film.) In 1975’s Footprints on the Moon, a woman discovers that she cannot remember the previous several days while also being terrified by a recurrent dream about a sadistic doctor torturing astronauts on the moon. She investigates clues as to where she had been during her amnesiac hours with the movie’s final reveal being that she was insane and all of it had been the product of a psychotic break.

The other film I shall not mention by title as it is much more recent and still playing exclusively on a streaming service. However, it lands with the same climax, a woman, after trauma from her past resurfaces and disrupts her perfect life, attempts to deal with the man who cause the trauma but none of it was real, and the entire film had been her break with reality.

When a movie utilizes the “Our protagonist is insane and all the fantastic events were hallucinations” trope this is little more than a dressed up, fancier edition of ‘it was all a dream.’

Like dream narratives psychotic break twists are infuriating. Throughout the story I may have invested serious emotional weight to the character’s issue, objectives, and challenges only to discover that I have been a sucker. None of it mattered, none it had any real consequence. Success and failure held the same values because reality did not apply. The ‘mystery’ Alice is attempting to solve in Footprints on the Moon has not weight because at the story’s start and its conclusion nothing has changed. She began the tale insane and ended it equally mad.

Shutter Island (2010) plays close to this cliche but the events on the screen are reality it is their interpretation that is subject to the protagonist’s delusions. When the story resolves there has been actual character growth and change making the tale have meaning rather than attempting a ‘gotcha’ with a twist.

There is the crux of the matter for me with this cliche. It renders everything meaningless without the weight of dramatic change.

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Why Naming Characters in Vulcan’s Forge Proved Challenging

 

For me coming up with the names for characters in my fiction is always something to bedevils me, but with Vulcan’s Forge I faced a new wrinkle in that challenge.

The background to the novel is that in the later 21st to early 22nd century it weas discovered that a brown dwarf, the burnt-out husk of star, would pass through the inner solar system disrupting all the planets and ejecting Earth into interstellar space.

To survive humanity constructed automated Artificial Intelligence controlled Arks to established new populations on distant worlds. Taking centuries to reach their destinations and without the

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technical capability to sustain crew no persons were actually aboard these Arks. By way of sperm, eggs, and artificial wombs, the colonists of the new worlds would be born once the A.I.s had established the settlements and the required infrastructure.

These Ark were not terribly expensive to construct or launch with each costing the equivalent of about half a billion dollars today. This provided the opportunity for all sorts of smaller social units and sub-cultures to launch their own Ark, programming the Artificial Intelligences to raise the future humans in a manner to propagate their own cultural values.

Vulcan’s Forge takes place on the colony of Nocturnia, with a cultural directive that idolizes mid-twentieth century urban Americana. The people who commissioned Nocturnia’s founding Ark, as is so often the case with people viewing history through the distorting lens of nostalgia, ignored the racism of that time and the colony was founded with the ethnic/genetic heritage of the United States of the early 22nd century.

With a population whose genetic heritage reflects the vast and diverse population of the United States, and the archived records of that population, the colony’s founding A.I.s could name members of the initial generation anything at all. However, unless every egg and sperm were labeled with the ethnic/genetic background of their donors, something the commissioners of the Ark would not have done, then the link between ethnic heritage and naming conventions is shattered. Each and every person in the initial generation and the ones that followed could have a name from any of the group and cultures of the United States.

Vulcan’s Forge is a science-fiction noir and with its strong element of mystery, with the exception of the prolog, the story is presented as a first-person narrative from the protagonist, Jason Kessler’s point of view. Dissociating name from the ethnic/culture histories combined with a point-of-view nearly ignorant of that created quite a challenge. For example, Jason’s fiancé Seiko, her given name is Japanese but her ethnic heritage is Latin. Jason can’t comment on it directly in the narrative because this mismatch in his mind simply doesn’t exist. All 3 million people in Nocturnia have names that for Jason has no real sense of history. This is all well and good for Jason but what about the reader holding the book? How could I as the author makes sure that they weren’t picturing a someone of east Asian ancestry every time a scene included Seiko?

It helped that films and their use a method of culture transmission played a central element to Vulcan’s Forge. Jason’s love of cinema allowed me to refer to famous movie characters in reference to the people of his life. That’s the route I took and I hope that my readers weren’t too confused by Nocturnia’s unique naming convention.

As a traditionally published novel Vulcan’s Forge can be ordered from wherever books are sold. I am including links to San Diego premier specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy along with links to Amazon.

Mysterious Galaxy Paperback

Mysterious Galaxy eBook

Amazon Paperback

Amazon eBook

 

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The World Building Has Started

 

After the holiday break — which wasn’t a real break as there was a lot of overtime at the day job — I have begun the rough ideas on paper stage for my next novel.

While I have an idea for the characters and the central plot and story there are a lot of details yet to work out. For me that starts with the world building.

I know some of the outlines of the world that this story has to take place in. The plot dictates elements of the worlds. You can never have Alien happen in a world of happy socialism, so to get to Alien you must have a world with greedy corporations.

Given that the working title for the next novel is Company Town: Mars that means the world building has to include a lot of capitalism and all that entails. It’s set about 120 years in the future and will be mostly a sociological science-fiction tale about the system to hem, corral, and define our actions.

What is fun in this phase is discovering the new aspect of the universe as they appear in my little noggin. The very act of making the notes open new idea and expands into constructions I hadn’t considered before putting words to documents.

I am thinking that this book will take place in a world where divergent political pressures have shattered the United States and the grand Union has failed. While I expect none of the story will actually take place on Earth much less in the United States the background is essential to creating the fictional present.

I don’t know how others feel about the world building but for me it is one of the more fun aspects of writing.

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Glass Onion’s Ending

 

 

Clearly as I am speaking about the final resolution to the satirical second outing of Detective

Netflix

Benoit Blanc, the center piece of this post is built entirely on a crucial and major spoiler for the film. Proceed if you have seen the movie or simply do not care about knowing the ending.

 

 

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

After Detective Blanc revealed that billionaire tech-bro Miles Bron had murdered his former partner, Cassandra Brand, along with a friend bent on blackmailing Bron with that knowledge, but that he lacked direct evidence to convict Bron, Cassandra’s sister Helen’s rampage destroys Bron’s home. The fire destroyed Bron plans, upon which he had wagered his entire company, for a new safe energy system.

Among the artifacts destroyed in the conflagration was the famed painting The Mona Lisa, on loan to Bron by the French government and for whom Bron held an obsessive interest. Expressed in his desire to do something that would be so great, so extraordinary, that it would be remembered in the same breath as Davinci’s famous work. The ironic justice in Helen’s rampage is that by being responsible for the Mona Lisa’s destruction Miles Bron as in fact achieved his obsessive fantasy of forever being linked with the painting.

On the screenwriting podcast Scriptnotes writer/Director Rian Johnson, admitted that there was some trepidation that the audience would rebel at the priceless work of art’s destruction. As an insurance policy should the audience find that a bridge too far for their enjoyment, Johnson filmed a never utilized post-credit scene that revealed that painting consumed on in the blaze had been in fact a reproduction and not the original. However, test screenings showed that people accepted his original scripted intentions and the cannon of the film remained that the original was destroyed.

Had that post-credit sequence been used it would have been a mistake and a terrible disservice to the story.

It is a firm conviction of mine that endings are where all the critical themes and meanings in a story are fully realized. Endings must be earned and that must fulfill not only the narrative and emotional requirements of the story they must mean something.

Famously when Frank Oz adapted the musical play Little Shop of Horrors into a feature film, he found that the audience hated the ending with the protagonist feeding his love to the plant followed by himself. However, Oz’s also edited the number The Meek Shall Inherit where the protagonist, faced with the choice between doing right or self-serving interests, removing that character’s critical decision which justified the character’s death.

Had Johnson used the post-credit scene revealing that the Mona Lisa was in fact safe and sound in Paris then the entire ending would lose all its power. With the original unharmed the most devastating consequence of Bron’s idiocy and arrogance would have been wholly negated. That ending would have lacked justice.

Endings are the most critical element of the story. A flawed ending ruins the destination’s journey. (I am looking at you HBO’s Game of Thrones.) It is why I must be a plotter, outlining my novel before starting them because without knowing the destination how can I ever to earn it?

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A Tired Trope

 

Feature films and television is filled with tired worn-out tropes used to glide past problem spots in scripts and create false tension. There is one that I wish desperately to die, the improvised or fortunate bullet-stopper.

We’ve seen this for decades upon decades. A character is shot in the chest, almost certainly dead, only for it to be revealed later that something stopped the bullet. Bruce Wayne’s improved one with a silver tray in Tim Burton’s Batman, a lead token proved the essential protection in Deadpool 2, books are a commonly used device, though it can be forgiven in Sleepy Hollow as at least there was no modern ammunition was used.

Variations on this trope include impromptu shields, Arnold used bystanders to prevent himself from being riddled with sub-machine gun rounds in Total Recall and Steve Rogers used a convenient taxi door to stop rounds from a semi-automatic pistol in Captain American: The First Avenger.

In all these cases the filmmakers and writers have ignored that modern bullets posses ‘overpenetration.’ The rounds often, depending on the substance of the target, have more the energy to pierce metal and flesh with enough remaining to exit and continue on presenting danger to those beyond.

The sub-machine rounds in Total Recall would have torn through the poor bystander Quaid used as a shield and into Arnold’s character himself. No mere silver tray would stop even a small caliber round and Wayne would have been grievously injured.

I have learned to ignore this trope when it raises it ignorant head, but I will not continue its presence in my own work. Firearms are lethally dangerous even if you have a book in your breast pocket.

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Writing Other Than Yourself

 

A frequent topic of conversation among writers, particularly as ‘Own Voices’ continues to grow is the fraught challenges when someone, usually straight, white, and male, writes for characters from minority or marginalized communities.

There is a school of thought that members of culturally dominate groups should refrain from writing characters coming from those marginalized groups. On one level this seems reasonable and logical. Experiences from marginalized communities can be quite specific, with social queues and particularities that are not visible to people outside of the group. If a writer’s understanding of a group comes from mass culture itis likely to be contaminated with stereotypes, both positive and negative, rather than actual understanding.

There is also a practicality question.

Minority and marginalized communities are under representative in popular media arts and an artist not from such a community can be seen as taken up a spot in the room that might have gone to someone historically shut out from the conversation. So even well intended, well researched, efforts can contribute to harm.

But there is another issue to consider.

If as a straight white male, I should stick to straight white male characters, then my novels become a northern European sausage-fest, one that utterly fails to reflect the reality. Restricted to my own group is a disservice to my art and by extension to anyone who consumes it.

Clearly my works should include the full spectrum of humanity, and yet I do have a responsibility to consider how my place and my voice may impact others.

I think the answer may be to think of characters existing in orbitals around the protagonist/antagonist nucleus.

The protagonist and the antagonist most likely constitute the majority of my novel’s points of view. It is through these characters’ eyes that I am reflecting the world around them and whose thoughts and emotions are buried in the prose. These characters I should know the best and should be a few steps removed from myself as possible. Each major aspect that is distantly removed from my own is an added difficulty factor in getting the character right.

Sidekicks, friends, and associates are an orbital distant and are less likely to have extended scenes from their points of view. More separation and less time in their heads mean there is less danger, but not none, in committing an egregious error. More factors of difficulty can be safely added.

Minor characters, here for a scene or two, are the most distant. With these characters, as long as stereotypes are avoided, it is the safest to introduce every sort of character, to populate a world fully.

As with most artistic things there are no hard fast rules, but there are always considerations.

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Greg Bear Has Left

Greg Bear Has Left

Following complication from surgery, SF author Greg Bear passed away this weekend.

I have read many but not all of his works and found his writing to be clear, smart, and entertaining. Twice I had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with this noted writer, both times at room parties at conventions.

The more humorous chat concerned his novel Anvil of Stars in which a human ship with alien assistance is one a quest to discover and destroy the civilization that annihilated Earth by completely shattering the planet. Being of quite limited means at the time I had purchased my copy of the novel from a used bookstore. (Let us now also mourn the passing to Adamas Avenue Books as well.) Shortly after the characters have launched their won civilization ending vengeance the next several pages confirmed if they had in fact correctly located the guilty party. The several pages that were in fact missing from my copy.

I relayed this to Bear, and he responded with a jesting tone that’s what I deserved for cheating him out of a royalty.

As I said it was in jest and he laughed as he pronounced my sentence. From panel discussions and those who knew him Greg Bear seemed a thoughtful, considerate, and good man. He will be missed.

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The Joys and Importance of Beta Reads

 

I will return to my season Spooky Movie series tomorrow.

For the last week I have been reading a novella by a fellow writer as a beta reader. For those not in the know a beta read is test read by someone other than the author of a piece. The purpose is to discover how it comes across to someone unfamiliar with the story. Writers often beg and go wanting for good beta readers, after all it is unpaid labor and a good beta read is labor as not only are you responding with ‘I like that character’ ‘I don’t like that one,’ and such. But if you are a writer, you are also trying to feel the pace, the mood, and why it works or doesn’t.

That is why if you are a writer doing beta reads is more important than getting them. Sharpening those analytical skills on prose you did not compose sharpened them for when you are composing as well. The trick is to also understand what the other writer’s voice is and not step on that. The point of your feedback isn’t to turn the piece into something like what you would have written but the improve what is there by coming closer to what the author intended.

I am luck that the piece I am currently reading is well-written and entertaining with few major issues. All writers should as much as possible, go forth and beta read for others.

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Another Novel Completed

 

Yesterday marked the final corrections and updated to my latest Seth Jackson military SF novel. Seth’s an American serving in the European starforces in a future where the United States took a wrong turn in the early 21st century and became a third-rate power.

In some form or another the character of Seth Jackson and the setting has been with me for 25 years, originally taking up residence in my brain about 1988. I have written him and characters around him in short stories and in novel, none of which have yet been published, but hope springs eternal.

The previous Seth Jackson novel got very nicely complimentary rejections from publishers, with no two editors agreeing on precisely what it was about that novel that didn’t work for them. That was encouraging for me. If they all or even most agreed on the fault then it was likely an actual failing in the text but with each having their own reaction it becomes much more about personal preferences.

One editor commented that she really liked the central character and when I started this novel I had hopes of submitting it her first. Sadly, for me not for her, she has now retired from the industry enjoying a well-earned rest.

The novel clocks in at 100,000 words which was the target length I had aimed for. it also represents the first time in this setting where I have written points of view from the ship’s chiefs, which I found to be much more fun to write than the officers.

Now comes the part of the process that I, along with many other authors, despise. The shopping it around. Creating query letters, trying to change my hat from creator to hype man, a role for which I have never been well-suited. I could not sell water in the Sahara.

Whinging about it will not help. Time to do the work that is not fun.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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