Fiction Writing: Advice and Discussion

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General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I think everything a writer does should consider the effect on the reader.

Another easy example to point to is Asimov. He wanted to write a big sweeping story, a future history about the fate of empire. He called it Foundation. It was heady, intellectual, unconventional in its tensions - and mostly absent of women. So Asimov, probably by accident, certainly because he didn't have the tools required to cut through the ideology of the society he lived in, wrote a story that suggests that women are not important to the future of civilization. It was an error of neglect, an error of defaulting - he didn't mean to write that story. He just wasn't aware of the ideology he was writing into his world.

e: Sorry Martello, just saw your post but gotta run to work - looks reasonable though!

# ¿ Mar 13, 2014 16:34

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 06:27

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

blue squares posted:

Definitely, different things work for different people. Yeah I could have written more, but I had studying to do, papers to write, and hastily typed, unrevised opinions to post here. Plus, books to read. Still, find time to write every day. I honestly do think that is pretty non-negotiable. Even if it's half an hour. Of course, I'm not a professional author so maybe my opinion is worthless. On the other hand, you don't get in the NFL by only practicing football on the weekends and when you're not too tired from work.

I don't know if you've become aware of this in your quest to become a professional writer (maybe you have!) but almost every professional fiction writer has a day job. The field pays absolute dogshit to nearly everyone in it. Full-time writers are the exception, and the need to write full time means a lot of them literally can't afford to slow down and write well.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2014 05:08

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Re titles: don't sweat it too much. Publishers tend to veto author titles anyway, so it's only really a relevant skill in amateur (read: non paying) places like the dome.

What? I have never in all my pro sales had a title veto'd, and only once did the editor even ask me to consider changing it (he thought the reference I used was too obscure).

# ¿ Mar 20, 2014 07:11

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

That was probably Charles Stross.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2014 15:53

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

supermikhail posted:

I just wrote:

"The Binary sun shone above in a lopsided squint."

Which is supposed to indicate that the secondary is visually smaller and is below the level of the primary. But I'm not sure it does, and neither that it's appropriate to use in a non-poetry book. On the other hand I love the way it sounds. What's your opinions, goons?

Imagery and visual metaphor are absolutely appropriate for prose writing. Some of my favorite English sentences are metaphors like this:

quote:

Waking to an inner flash of metallic migraine light, as if reflected off wings of receding dream.

Your construction should probably be 'the binary suns shone above in a lopsided squint', or 'the binary suns shone above, a lopsided stellar squint' or something more radical like 'the binary stars squinted down'. It's not perfect, but it is an image, and I think you should roll with it instead of crowdsourcing if you love it. You can't talk your way into better writing. You just need to put words down, read authors better than you, think about why their words are better, get a few crits, and repeat the cycle (forever).

Writing imagery isn't about making perfect logical sense. You can deploy logically meaningless constructions as long as they convey an intuitive emotion to a reader. Cat Valente is a master of this - a really mild example, grabbed at random, "[There was] no place that did not suppurate in her absence, which was not ringed with the light of her old selves, like film burned with a cigarette.�"

I think you will not get much useful advice here because you're presenting an isolated image. In the context of a paragraph or a passage the reader will probably skim it, say 'okay', and move on without conscious thought. Write for effect.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Mar 22, 2014

# ¿ Mar 22, 2014 17:29

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Axel Serenity posted:

Well, I just finished the first draft of my first novel. 71k words that took almost a year to write. I guess I should be excited, but it's honestly kind of worrisome knowing I'll have to go through an revise/edit a good portion of it. Plus, it's the first of a trilogy, so I already want to keep the story going into the next book before I've properly cleaned up the first one.

Still, it's been a journey. I usually just lurk in this forum, but you goons have definitely given some great advice that's kept me motivated to finish this thing. Hopefully the next step will be the bookstore.

Your next step after drafting is sim subs to a bunch of agents, unless you're planning to self publish.

What kind of book is it? I recently hooked a great agent with my first fantasy novel so I have some experience with this bit if you're in the SF/F genre.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2014 07:16

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

magnificent7 posted:

Whoah wait what? What's a sim sub? And, you're saying start the book pitch part now, instead of a round or two of revisions and beta readers?

(not disputing you, just looking at 6 months of slow revisions wondering if I should/could have put my energies elsewhere.)

Oh, no, definitely do as many rounds of revisions and beta readers as you want (that's what I meant by drafting). Sim subs means 'simultaneous submissions', something you're allowed to do with novels but generally not short stories: you can identify a list of agents who might be receptive, and submit to all of them at the same time. Be sure to read their submission guidelines super carefully and give them each exactly what they want. In particular, hone your query letter down to a slim, effective hook, because it's all most of them will ever look at.

And yes, do not self-publish and expect agents to then represent you. Statistically, self-publishing isn't going to make you more money than traditional publishing, so I don't personally think there's any reason to close the traditional publishing door right away.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2014 16:29

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Nobody in SF/F buys novellas except, perhaps, Giganotasaurus (or serialized installments in another magazine, but good luck with that). Don't know what genre you're writing though.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 17:39

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Short stories are often exquisite and they're great ways to hone your prose-level writing. They don't teach some valuable skills you need for a novel, mostly regarding long-term structure. They DO teach how to open a scene, hit your beats, and get out into the next scene in a smooth, satisfying way. They're also a nice way to practice basic techniques like beats between dialog and telling details.

One of the hardest things about picking up writing is that it gets less fun as you get better at it, because you become more aware of your own flaws and failings. (The sense of competence does return eventually, and it never stops feeling great to get into the zone and nail a scene.) Some of the reasons you had fun with your novel may actually be bad habits that you had room to indulge.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 20:55

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Axel Serenity posted:

Thanks a ton for this link. I had no idea there was an online resource for listings, so the $30 I would have spent buying Writer's Market can go towards submissions.

Don't pay for submissions! Unless you mean postage or whatever. Money moves from the publisher/agent to the author, not the other way around.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 03:17

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Bear in mind that Pixar advice is really good for making Pixar stories - which are often great! But they are intentionally very conservative in their narrative design, so they won't fit every kind of story anyone could ever want to tell. It's pretty trivial to come up with great art that doesn't fit their spine structure at all.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2014 00:52

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Agent's submitting novel to publishers. Fingers crossed.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2014 02:53

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I was in a social neuro program for a while, so I've got some grounding in those studies. While they're very interesting, you're being pretty reductive about the problem (and it's worth noting that the old caricature of System 1 and System 2 is a gross oversimplification of a more complex model). Even if the 'why' of criticism is confabulated, the 'what' is still very useful information. Knowing where a reader's attention drifts and where you hold them rapt is vital.

Your job as a writer is to figure out what input to deliver to create reader's trance and to evoke the emotional responses you're after. Even if your targets are black boxes, you can still learn to associate certain inputs with certain outputs - and to do that you need the outputs.

It's also profoundly unlikely that the experience of reading is a purely automatic process and that a reader's critique has no diagnostic validity whatsoever in trying to figure out why they liked or disliked something.

The whole free will debate in general would be resolved if everybody just recognized monist physicalist compatibilism as the correct solution. :colbert:

# ¿ Apr 19, 2014 01:09

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

You would have to post a sample for us to decide whether there's any merit to the critique. Those certainly sound like they could be valid points, not simply a case of reader-writer incompatibility.

e: you have a ton of posts in this thread so you probably know this already

# ¿ Apr 24, 2014 07:29

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Scrivener works really well for me and Mac is the lead platform.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2014 03:07

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

magnificent7 posted:

What comes first? Finding an editor, or finding an agent? (assuming you plan to submit your MS to publishers).

Agent. I just pulled off the the manuscript -> agent -> three book deal with Tor :toot:

dream over the last year, so I'm happy to answer any questions. (the answers are 'read the submission guidelines' and 'have a really good really short query letter')

# ¿ May 5, 2014 19:30

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

sethjosephdickinson at gmail

# ¿ May 5, 2014 20:14

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Kind of an odd question, but is there a general "best" range in word count for trying to get short stories published? Like obviously if you are George Saunders or Alice Munro something you can get away with writing basically novellas, but for the average person with no credentials, I'm curious how long a story should typically be. I've heard that under 1k words is just considered flash fiction and isn't particularly marketable, and I've also seen advice from published writers claiming that 2-3k words is the sweet spot for most publications.

In SF/F the sweet spot is 3-5k, but honestly 2-3 might be even sweeter these days. I think short stories tend to be too long.

Dr. Kloctopussy posted:

Oh wow, three book deal with Tor!!! That really is the dream. Congratulations.

How much of book 2 do you have written? Did they make the deal based on book 1 alone or ask to see part of 2?

Did you write the manuscript in this year, too?? (And if so, do you also have a day job and/or life?) can you afford to quit your day job now?

It was all based on book one. I started writing in March and finished in August or September, followed by a couple months of drafting. I dropped out of my PhD program around June, so I had a few months working on it full time.

I'm currently working as a writer at Bungie Studios, but I'm fairly new, so I'm not sure how much spare time I'll have for writing. Quitting your day job is generally a bad idea in writing, even with a nice advance.

# ¿ May 5, 2014 23:38

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Get a Year's Best anthology edited by Strahan. Or just go to Clarkesworld and start reading everything they post.

# ¿ May 10, 2014 15:18

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Shimmer's going to be putting stories online in the near future I believe.

# ¿ May 11, 2014 22:18

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

One of my first sales was a story broadly written in McCarthy's style, though, alas, the editor ended up wedging in a bunch of semicolons (and I probably slipped up and committed a few as well). I'm hesitant to put it forward as any kind of exemplar, but it certainly gave me respect for both the difficulty and the power of his technique.

# ¿ May 25, 2014 03:53

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Symptomless Coma posted:

Oh my. Are semicolons frowned upon? Or is this one of those, "unless you really know how to handle them, and you probably don't" things?

We were talking about emulating Cormac McCarthy's style in particular. I don't think he ever uses semicolons.

# ¿ May 25, 2014 16:38

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Maybe? The best resource is reading a lot of books and talking to people who read a lot of books.

# ¿ May 27, 2014 23:14

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

You need to be brutal and clear-headed. What's absolutely necessary in order to convey the thrust of your story?

I used http://queryshark.blogspot.com/ as a model when writing my own query and my synopsis. Spend a while absorbing it - both the criticism she gives and the qualities of the queries she likes.

# ¿ May 29, 2014 17:50

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

All I can say is that the same lessons I took away from those query letters were useful in chopping my synopsis down and keeping it coherent.

# ¿ May 29, 2014 18:57

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Entenzahn posted:

seb and systran, thanks so much!

Don't know if this thread is the right platform for that kind of question, but can I even do that living in Middle Europe? I thought this business still operated mostly on oldschool mail. Can you publish internationally through the web now?

The business runs on email. Anybody locked into paper submissions only is a dinosaur.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2014 18:28

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I know this will sound like an absurdly nice problem to have, but it's really bothering me. I have my first story in an anthology coming up, written by invitation. I'll be alongside a bunch of authors I really respect. The problem is that the story's just dreadful. I reread it for proofs and I can't stand it at all.

I don't think it's just the usual self-conscious preciousness writers have, either; it really is a pretty unsuccessful piece of fiction on nearly every level.

I don't know what to do. I'm going to be ashamed to see it, and odds are it'll be the worst piece in the anthology by a good margin. But I don't want to pull it - it's a sale, and I'd be inconveniencing the editor hugely if I pulled out now. I might be able to pull out a heroic rewrite at the last minute, but it's so very late.

I apologize again for what must seem like a lot of angst about a good thing, but it's eating me up.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 07:35

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

sebmojo posted:

You seem a really nice guy Battuta, and I'm sure you don't mean it that way, but that is a total humblebrag. Talk to the editor: that is their job, after all. If they agree they can help fix it, if they don't; well, it's their anthology.

I'm sure it sounds that way, but it feels like one of these social terror dreams where you realize you're conducting the orchestra with no pants. Nobody wants to be the standout bad story, especially not if it's your first appearance in an anthology.

I've already spoken to the editor, and I suppose we'll see what can be done.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 15:52

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Sithsaber posted:

What are your opinions on editors? Can you dump entire chapters on them or is that ghost writing?

Editors don't write poo poo for you. You're not paying them, after all!

# ¿ Jun 28, 2014 06:37

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

That passage works totally fine with a comma too. Your call.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2014 16:24

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I lose the will to write the instant I get a contract, apparently.

My last big attempt was crushingly unproductive and I slumped into trite-as-gently caress writer depression. I think I'm going to need to rearrange some life poo poo if I want to get this done.

I don't know why writing a few drat words is so stupidly hard sometimes. It's frustrating beyond belief when the only barrier between you and a happy, fulfilling block of a couple thousand words is your inability to pay attention and do it.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 07:39

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Sithsaber posted:

Do we have to add an extra step before introducing minority protagonists? I've heard that the reader tends to project themselves into and identify with traditional conventions like white leads, and that not going with an ethnic name or behavior right off the bat can lead the reader to be jarred by what to them is a out of nowhere ethnicity reveal/ identification of the character they invested in with "the other" outliers.

Okay, so what you are kind of awkwardly fumbling around here is a problem called 'the unmarked state'. Readers will often assume that if you don't specify a character's race/gender/sexual orientation/whatever, it is the default (whatever their default may be). This is a pretty basic trait of human cognition. You can get around this issue without being a shithead by finding appropriate, understated, contextually appropriate ways to mark these states for your characters. You should try to be even-handed about this. Don't leave your white characters unmarked and point out other races, for instance; that's just driving home the racial default.

If you think that 'an ethnic name or behavior' is something you should...I don't even know what you mean by that, or how to explain why it's a terrible idea. It's a terrible idea. Are you asking whether all your characters need to confirm to crude ethnic stereotypes so readers won't be surprised to learn they aren't white? No. Jesus, treat your characters as people, do good research on other cultures and religions, allow your characters to act like real people from real places, be respectful and sensitive and don't use other peoples' heritage as a cheap 'exotic' thrill in your work. Like Nika said, read decent books, examine how they do it. Make sure they're actually decent, though, since a lot of authors really gently caress this stuff up.

A good story should provide a lot of respectful, effective ways to explain who a character is and where they come from without staring in a mirror or infodumping a biography.

Please don't call things 'ethnic', gently caress.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jul 14, 2014

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 06:02

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I totally respect your right to feel ostracized, but I'm not sure I understand how that connects to the question you're asking. You shouldn't feel like you have to pigeonhole your characters to please readers. Have you read Junot Diaz? I think he's very good at handling stuff like this in his writing. He illustrates a lot of the attitudes his characters negotiate (and hold) without coming right out and explaining things.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 06:14

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

If your character's name doesn't convey the information up front, you can always just say it. Sometimes dancing around and trying to do it indirectly is pretty awkward. I know that must sound really disjointed from my advice above - I wish I had an example of someone doing it really well to show you.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 06:31

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

My critique's not withdrawn. I'm not going to lecture you on how to experience race, but people of all backgrounds end up writing badly about the topic.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jul 15, 2014

# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 04:43

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Benjanun Sriduangkaew is a super cool recent-breakout science fiction writer. Thai was her first language, and the way she describes it, they don't really handle tense in the same way, so she favors present and thinks the stigma against it is quite silly.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 07:20

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

At least in SF/F short fiction, present tense will sell fine.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 18:15

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

You don't! I suspect you could sell something like that as your very first.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2014 03:45

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

The biggest obstacle is writing it. World building is easy and endless and often sterile. Write!

# ¿ Jul 27, 2014 23:44

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 06:27

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I don't think anybody in SF/F cares about them any more. Can't speak to other fields.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 22:50

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