General Battuta posted:

Now do the smart thing and avoid SFWA and everything associated with it for the rest of your life!

sebmojo posted:

General Battuta posted:

Now do the smart thing and avoid SFWA and everything associated with it for the rest of your life!

DropTheAnvil posted:

Huh? This is the first negative opinion of SFWA I have encountered.

It's hard to play devil's advocate here and see your point of view. I guess if you were like, indie or punk and hated establishments you might be against SFWA. Or if you were on a magazine that was previously snubbed by SFWA rules. I don't have much experience with volunteering with SFWA, nave you volunteered with them in the past and had a bad experience?

General Battuta posted:

It just fuckin sucks. It's an awful professional environment. It is not well suited to doing things that matter like 'writing books' and 'being happy'.

Coquito Ergo Sum posted:

One reader said "Oh, that's neat, I actually like it," but I got heavy pushback from the other two readers who seem to be massive lore pedants who believe that "unreliable narrator" is something that should never be done.

General Battuta posted:

It's like being on Twitter. There's very little to gain from it and a very good chance you will get sucked into something unbelievably stupid and possibly life-destroying.

Djeser posted:

if only we had a dome to put all the writers in

sebmojo posted:

They would just fight

Coquito Ergo Sum posted:

The novel has also been an exercise in writing close POVs and unreliable narrators, which has caused interesting feedback. I have both readers of traditional fantasy and readers who are fair weather fantasy fans like I am. The latter tend to pick up on things like the unreliable narrators while also enjoying having mysteries to keep them reading. Their critiques are usually about things like the flow of my prose and recommendations for cleaning up passages here and there. The former get quite upset about things like lore consistency and are really unhappy about having mystery.

General Battuta posted:

It's like being on Twitter. There's very little to gain from it and a very good chance you will get sucked into something unbelievably stupid and possibly life-destroying.

There is no boundary between professional and fan spaces in SFF. 'Fan' activities like organizing conventions and litigating polyamorous drama occur in the same spaces as 'professional' activities like running publishing houses or reviewing work. 'Fan' preoccupations like determining the morality of character ships in Steven Universe bleed directly into 'professional' preoccupations like talking shop about who got a big advance. They happen in the same spaces among the same people at the same time.

If you have looked at the kind of drama that happens in fan spaces, you can imagine what kind of septic environment SFWA generates. Add some deranged stalkers (who, for example, recently scraped the personal info of everyone in SFWA and are now busily looking for people to accuse of pedophilia) and a culture of paranoid reading and circular purity testing that has been hardened by least twenty years of constant internal grudgebuilding over every issue imaginable. Add the occasional blowup so bad it makes international news and/or hospitalizes someone.

Now imagine that as a professional organization. Would you want to sign up?

e: The new blood also comes in through a narrow cluster of writers' workshops like Clarion and Odyssey, so they all know each other and are pre-set to start having affairs and big friend breakups over who got a book deal first. These interpersonal networks kind of stack in a columnar fashion all the way back to the 70s when everyone slept with everybody else.

It just fuckin sucks. It's an awful professional environment. It is not well suited to doing things that matter like 'writing books' and 'being happy'.

Leng posted:

What? What have these traditional fantasy readers actually read from the canon that they aren't acquainted with the idea of unreliable narrators?

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

When they announced Lackey was getting grandmaster there was Discourse around it and ultimately people went with "look she hasn't said anything THAT bad for somebody her age and she's contributed a lot and people can change, we can't keep kicking out left-leaning people because they said something problematic once" and then immediately after being awarded she's like TIME FOR A SLUR FROM THE 1930S

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

She called Chip Delany "Colored"

Which like, I know there are worse slurs but you've gotta know that's not a good thing to say, that hasn't been a thing that's been okay to say for a really long time.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Not really sure how I feel about the ardent defence of her. It's not the worst thing she could've said but considering how she must know there was debate around her past comments and some people were unhappy with her nomination, it feels like maybe she could've chosen her words more carefully. I don't buy "she's old", she was born in the 70s, not the 40s.

The statement is an overreaction but it was a lovely thing to do and she should've known better.

Coquito Ergo Sum posted:

So I got some enthusiasm readers for my novel project and some interesting results.

For setup purposes, the book is a dark fantasy horror-thriller inspired by stories like The Thing, The Descent, Day of the Jackal, and Death Wish (Brian Garfield's anti-vigilante novel, not the ridiculous but fun movies) and is meant to be an anti-war, anti-imperialism narrative. I wrote it because I really generally don't like most fantasy I've read and I'm trying to write to my personal tastes by making the story very character- and character action-focused. That means no omniscient lore dumps and the absolute minimum of noodly fantasy genre-style descriptions. There's no real magic, and there are three species of sentients (Human, Elf, and Dragonborn-like Lizardmen). The nations and cultures are all basically mirrors of many of our real world cultures, so I have characters named Lorraine, Hiram, Rupert, Oliver, Vera, etc.

The novel has also been an exercise in writing close POVs and unreliable narrators, which has caused interesting feedback. I have both readers of traditional fantasy and readers who are fair weather fantasy fans like I am. The latter tend to pick up on things like the unreliable narrators while also enjoying having mysteries to keep them reading. Their critiques are usually about things like the flow of my prose and recommendations for cleaning up passages here and there. The former get quite upset about things like lore consistency and are really unhappy about having mystery.

When it comes to lore, three of said readers (who have no contact with one another) were upset that a POV character was disappointed that she missed a chance to meet <x> character from <y> nation when she could have, as she had heard <z> about said character's culture. Later on, a character from <y> nation shows up and is nothing like the <z> impression of the culture. I meant for that POV character to be misinformed about <x> nation's culture because she lives thousands of miles away from <x> nation and had no reason to be fully informed about their culture, and is meant to tie into characterization and the sense of mystery. Another POV is from the perspective of a veteran from the losing side of a recent war whose POV is informed by his incorrect prejudices against the nation and people that his country lost the war to. One reader said "Oh, that's neat, I actually like it," but I got heavy pushback from the other two readers who seem to be massive lore pedants who believe that "unreliable narrator" is something that should never be done. They also seem to hate mysteries and also want to point out "historical inaccuracies." One of these inaccuracies was really amusing in that a reader was upset that I had characters written to have Australian dialects and accents, when "Australia did not have that much impact on the Imperial Age" (it's a flintlock fantasy). They seemed to have no problem that I had sapient Lizardmen speaking Australian slang with bogan accents, though.

I posted this because it's an interesting new experience, and I don't get many opportunities to engage with other writers these days.

Sailor Viy posted:

I think the issue here may be a mismatch of genre expectations. To be honest, your novel sounds fuckin' weird--I was really thrown when you opened with "it's like The Thing or The Descent" and then later mentioned there are elves and lizardmen. This isn't a bad thing imo--it sounds like you are trying to do something original with the genre. But it does mean you should think about what kind of readers you want to attract and how you're going to do that. Both in terms of marketing and how the opening chapters set up the reader's expectations.

The "historical inaccuracy" thing is just dumb, especially if you're writing a complete secondary world rather than alt-history-with-magic. Some people are just... very blinkered about stuff like that. I once got a crit that it was "unrealistic" that my fantasy world was cold in the southlands and warm in the north.

Coquito Ergo Sum posted:

You'd be surprised. I had a knock-down drag-out argument with an acquaintance once over the nature of ASOIAF lore where they insisted that there's no conflicting viewpoints or red herrings or anything like that. There are still people who read ASOIAF that fight against the idea that George muddied up the lore a lot.

Sailor Viy posted:

I once got a crit that it was "unrealistic" that my fantasy world was cold in the southlands and warm in the north.

Leng posted:

Forget the larger picture. Did they not pay attention when reading Sansa's POVs at all?

quote:

To contribute something to the discussion. How often you attempt to do something clever structurally? And then, how often do you manage to pull it off? And is there any pattern to the make or break factors?

Because I have just finished reading a first in series that uses three four convoluted framing devices. All four devices were introduced within the first few pages. The first had me going "okaaaaaay", the second made me , the third had me yelling "come on" and by the time I got to the fourth one I was compelled to drop the book. Then I thought that I was probably being unfair and I should continue. 200 pages in, I was still waiting for the pay-off. Shortly after 330 pages in, we had the first pay-off and it was a letdown. After all 542 pages, I was left feeling pretty miffed because there was no clever moment where all those framing devices tied together in a satisfactory way. IMO the author would have been better served just sticking to a multi-POV novel because those framing devices were wholly unnecessary to the story.

Leng posted:

To contribute something to the discussion. How often you attempt to do something clever structurally? And then, how often do you manage to pull it off? And is there any pattern to the make or break factors?

Coquito Ergo Sum posted:

There is only one problem reader, and they are going line by line and nitpicking things like "too many people wearing armor in the flintlock age" when 90% of weapons that people wield in the story are common handheld blades and clubs. Apparently, banjos should not exist in my fantasy setting because ?????

Coquito Ergo Sum posted:

There is only one problem reader, and they are going line by line and nitpicking things like "too many people wearing armor in the flintlock age" when 90% of weapons that people wield in the story are common handheld blades and clubs. Apparently, banjos should not exist in my fantasy setting because ?????

Stuporstar posted:

However, these people are the absolute worst. Fire their crits straight into the sun

Leng posted:

Nonononono. Put these people on a separate list labeled "gamma readers" and call them when you're in proofreading with a list of specific things to look out for. That's when you need their super powers for line and word level nitpicking.

Coquito Ergo Sum posted:

There is only one problem reader, and they are going line by line and nitpicking things like "too many people wearing armor in the flintlock age" when 90% of weapons that people wield in the story are common handheld blades and clubs. Apparently, banjos should not exist in my fantasy setting because ?????