Posts Tagged Fiction

Sometimes even when you think your latest story is going magnificently, it doesn’t turn out to be nearly as magnificent when you go back and read over what you’ve written.

Little things, most of the time. Big things sometimes. Like how I somehow managed to completely forget plot in the middle of my new story “The Boy Ran” and somehow wrote several nearly identical chapters that could be summarized by “We woke up, we walked, we went to sleep.”

I finished the story up toward the end of last week, ending up at somewhere around 42,000 words. I usually try to put a few weeks between finishing up a story and going back to read over it again, so that it’s new and fresh to me when I start the initial proofreading process.  However, this time I tried a new writing method where I didn’t go back and read over anything at all the whole time I was writing. I’d been having a lot of little projects that I’d started and never finished – generally because I start second-guessing myself about halfway through.

So, I refused to go back and re-read while the story was in progress. I would get it finished first.  And I did. If nothing else, this method has worked to ensure that my doubts didn’t get in the way of my writing.  However, it also means that this first draft is a lot less polished than I’m used to dealing with when I go through my first proofread.

For one thing, there’s those repetitive chapters, which have now been cut out almost entirely, except for a few gems of paragraphs and dialogue that I condensed down a great deal.  I just cut almost 20,000 words out of my story at one go.

So yeah, that novel? It won’t be a novel by the time I’m done with it, I don’t think. Going back over my plot and organization, I realize that this is a story that is probably best told in a short form anyway.  It’s a departure from my usual writing, particularly considering the age of the protagonist and the prospective audience.  It’s also set in a world that is extremely close to home, dealing with some extremely difficult subjects.

I know that it’s possibly one of the most honest and difficult stories I’ve ever written. Perhaps, like dark chocolate, it is a story best enjoyed in small amounts. The words are getting in the way right now.  I’m hoping that by the time I’m done with editing (and sending it out to my betas for their critiques) that will no longer be the case.

I think I got too caught up on hitting that big word-goal and lost the focus of my story in the process.  Sometimes a story doesn’t need to have a lot of words to make a point.

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(Spoiler-free Review!)

Start out by imagining Elizabeth Bennett. Add a hefty amount of steampunk, a few vampires and werewolves, and a good dose of wonderful sounding food and tongue-in-cheek humor. You might come up with something somewhat like Soulless, by Gail Carriger.

I would’ve known nothing at all about this unassuming little book if not for word of mouth, but it was a wonderful discovery. In the current literary world where vampire stories are a dime a dozen, and the majority of them rather decidedly bad, I found myself having to put aside a certain amount of suspicion of any book involving the supernatural.  Once assured that none of the vampires in the book sparkle (with, perhaps, the exception of Lord Akeldama, and that only with sequins) I decided to give it a chance.

I’m glad I did. This book was one of the most fun reads I’ve had in quite a while, largely due to the humor of the novel.  It has no problems poking fun at the tropes of the genres it straddles, while at the same time presenting them in new and rather refreshing ways.  Alexia Tarabotti is a heroine Jane Austen would be proud of:  an unconventional and independent woman in a society where free-thinking women were rarely welcomed. Like Eliza Bennett, she looks upon the women of her own family with amused annoyance as they natter on about fashion and society gossip.  Her male counterpart is a good bit more Heathcliff than Darcy, but a fitting match for her wits and someone who can appreciate a woman who can think for herself.

I couldn’t help laughing out loud at places, but don’t think that this book is all about the giggles.  At its heart are characters you can’t help but fall a bit in love with, a tightly written mystery story that never did lay all its cards on the table until the end, and a romance that is anything but Victorian.

If you like a little steampunk Victoriana and can enjoy a good supernatural story, be sure to pick this book up.

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When it took me three tries to type the word “seven” this morning in an item for work, I came to the conclusion that a real blog post probably isn’t happening today, as my brain seems to moving at about the pace of really cold molasses.

So, you get linkspam of the funny, thought provoking, or just general mind-boggling things I’ve come across this week:

• Realms of Fantasy has announced an upcoming “Women in Fantasy” themed issue, and is looking for submissions.
• Apparently Science Fiction is created by the devil, and is an evil that is eroding the nation’s moral fiber. (Oh well, not the first time I’ve been told I’m going to hell.)
• While game companies seem to be a bit slow to embrace the idea that girls are gamers, there are a few women out there making strides in the industry, and Kontaku has their list of the Ten Most Influential Women in the Game Industry of the Past Decade up.
• 100 Game Themed Cupcakes, can you guess them all? – I’m a sucker for cute confectionery….
• You all must know by now just how much I love Neil Gaiman. Well, Coraline is up for a People’s Choice award. Go vote for it!

That’s it for now. I’m working on putting together the website for my pending webserial, and am planning to release the first entry next Wednesday.

A new year always makes me think about what I want to get accomplished in the coming months. This blog was one of those projects last year. This year, I’m considering starting a webserial.

I’m feeling so inspired by fellow writers such as Heidi Cautrell, Nancy Brauer, Vanessa Brooks, and others who are offering excellent, original, serialized webfiction all over the place these days.

I’m still sorting through a handful of ideas and haven’t finalized anything yet, but my fiction tends to be somewhere between sci-fi and fantasy, not just one or the other.  I tend to subscribe to Arthur C. Clarke‘s idea that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and a lot of what I write tends to have an element of that philosophy within it.

I’m probably looking at posting once a week, perhaps more as I’ve got the time, but once a week will be my goal.  I am hoping to have the website, introduction, and first “chapter” up by sometime next week. (That is, if I can choose between the three ideas I’m batting around.)

I will, of course, need some handy volunteers as beta readers and critics, and I’m certainly happy to return the favor.

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Today is the 72nd anniversary of the Lord of the Rings, a book that, in a lot of ways, birthed a genre.

Many of the strongholds (and cliches) of modern fantasy literature found their beginnings in Tolkien’s masterpiece. Nearly every fantasy novel since then has been written in some attempt to replicate the emotions and adventure contained within those pages. The personalities and cultures of the common fantasy races were created by Tolkien with only the barest adherance to the myths that he drew them from.

It immediately set a standard so high that only very few were able to walk down Tolkien’s path afterwards with success. There are still, nearly three quarters of a century later, few worlds built as elaborate or real or alive as Middle Earth. This was a world of magic, certainly, but a world that people could believe in nonetheless, as full of differing peoples and cultures and languages as our own, and just as in our own, there are petty and minor political conflicts and squabbles due to clashes of those cultures.

This is not an easy book to read, either. At some points it drags, during the chapters of “begats” and explanations, where it leaves the action entirely.  And yet, even children manage to make their way through this epic, and some, like myself, have read and re-read the tale so many times that the books become dog-eared and ragged.

Is it an impossibly high standard to hold fantasy authors to, that they create worlds that, like Middle Earth, you can get lost in?  So much of fantasy literature today is just a shadow, an inexact and inferior copy of Lord of the Rings. It might have birthed a genre of literature, but in many ways it has also limited it over the years, making it difficult to actually be different and original, because the reader has been taught to expect certain things in their fantasy epics…

But as much as we might want the sensation of reading this book for the first time again and again….maybe it’s time to step out of the shadow of this book, wonderful as it is, and create some new worlds without a dependence on the old.

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As I was saying before I was interrupted by the Firefox 3.5 update.

I haven’t done one of my random all-encompassing update posts in a while, though, and I don’t have any real over-arching theme for today, so here goes some randomness:

• Remember that comic artist friend of mine, Steph Sakurai (aka S. Cherrywell), that I’ve mentioned on and off here? Well, she’s found a publisher for her first print book at Slavelabor Graphics, an indy comic publisher known for dark humor, but also for their contract work on several Disney properties, including Gargoyles. Steph’s book is due out in January, so start looking for it in your comic shops then!  I’ll have more information, and possibly some cover art previews for you closer to the release date. (For Steph’s webcomics, see Intragalactic and Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy)
• I’ve submitted a story to the NPR/New Yorker Three-Minute Fiction contest. If you’re a writer and have something short enough to submit, you should too! It should be any piece of short fiction that can be read in three minutes or less (about 500-600 words), and the winner will be read on national NPR stations.  Once the contest is over, I’ll be putting a copy of the piece up here on my portfolio.
• The hastily declared National GLBT Month of June has passed without comment here, rather as I expected.  Pride parades never seem to make it to small town bible thumping Georgia.  It was a nice gesture on the President’s part, but nothing more than a gesture. I can see both sides of the issue here, the President not wanting to endanger other issues by coming out too heavily on the side of Gay Rights, and the people who complain that what he’s done is no where near enough.
• The costumes still aren’t started, but I have a good picture in my head now of what I want, and fortunately it won’t take nearly as much work or time as The Giant Pink Dress.  Bryant’s costume may still change, however. Looking for some more ideas.
• The cats are being cats. This morning “Brother-Mew” decided he wanted to go to work with me again and went marching out into the garage in front of me and waiting for me at the car.  I  considered asking my boss if we could possibly employ him for part time “work snuggies.”
• Finally, before I bore you all completely to death, a quick congratulations goes out to Kari of Mythbusters on the birth of her baby, Neil Gaiman for winning the Locus award, and my boss for managing to make it through a whole vacation only calling the office once a day.  A fond farewell to Blogatelle, one of the best WoW RP blogs I’ve ever seen. That site, even non-updated, will continue to be a resource that I send new roleplayers to for information for as long as it remains.

And that’s that.  I promise I’ll have, you know, an actual topic when I post again Friday.

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