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Back from Rainforest Writers Village

March 18, 2013 By

… and finally on the upswing from flu/bronchitis/whooping cough, whatever circle of hell I’ve been living or dying in this past week.

Rainforest was fabulous, as it is. Patrick does a bang-up job organizing. The company is wonderful, and I loved seeing so many friendly faces and being able to converse for bouts longer than 140 characters. The trail running was so great that I went every day.

In addition to plenty of writing time, there were optional talks by pros. Here are some tidbits of advice I picked up:

  • A strong character is individual, plausible, and active ~ Nancy Kress
  • Inconsistency and lack of detail are the two most common worldbuilding problems. Politics, technology, geography, and economics need to be worked out in advance, in broad strokes at least. Details can be incorporated in later drafts. On second draft, focus on consistency and vividness. Show your characters interacting with the worldbuilding. In the beginning, it’s more important to be interesting than clear. ~ Nancy Kress
  • Write to two themed anthologies, the second deadline about three months after the first. This keeps you from writing to the center of any theme, and your story is more appealing, more fresh, as a result. Also, write to the word count that intersects both calls. ~ Mae Empson
  • Give yourself the opportunity to be both mean and kind to yourself ~ Mark Teppo
  • If you’re unhappy with your tale, or stuck, it may be a symptom that your story and plot have diverged. When this happens, you have to decide which is most important to you to keep as is. When you know that, you can test the secondary elements in the tale to see if there’s an adjustment that both fixes the problem and makes you happy. If doesn’t work, try to put your finger on the point where the tale broke, and see, with the benefit of hindsight, if there’s any wiggle room there. Tweak non-load-bearing plot elements to make it work the way you want. Note, there may not be a solution. And maybe there doesn’t have to be, if your plot is so hell-on-wheels that people will love it regardless. ~ Susan Matthews (2012, because I found last year’s notes)
  • Outlining can be a progression of questions. What does the character want and need? What happens next, why is this happening, what do they want? Whether or not the character gets what they want can have four outcomes: Yes, but; No, and; Yes; No. The first two make things worse and sets up new questions. The second two are endings, happy and sad, respectively. ~ Mary Robinette Kowal (2012, because I found last year’s notes). See also Wendy Wagner’s Inkpunks post and Episode 7.50 of Writing Excuses.

But that’s just Rainforest. There was also Kelly’s visit to Seattle (Fly Moon Royalty, Ravenna Woods, The Local Strangers, and Kithkin at a funky little art gallery in So-Do; some of my favorite watering holes like Fremont Brewery and Chuck’s Hop Shop), and my 24-hour academic bender in Boulder (the talk went really well, still waiting to hear back about the postdoc), and meeting up with Phoebe, who was in the neighborhood for her own writer’s retreat. Which was wonderful and random. We had teriyaki.

Related Posts

Quiet time in the Rainforest
Away at the Rainforest Writers Village

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Quick start guide to beta reading

February 16, 2013 By

In the last seven minutes of the sixth episode of The Story Board, Mary Robinette Kowal and Patrick Rothfuss talk about beta readers. It struck me as a useful, straightforward approach, and I wanted to draw attention to it:

Fast forward to 1:05. What I like about Mary’s advice is how simple it is. She asks readers to note the following: (1) things that bored them, (2) things that confused them, (3) things they did not believe, (4) things they thought were cool. Plus any stream-of-consciousness comments. That’s it.

Mary refers to this as Orson Scott Card’s Wise Reader approach (p. 121-124, How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy). Card also includes questions such as: What did you think about such-and-such character? What do you think will happen next? For a fragment of the novel, the answer to the second question tells you how you’re doing in terms of foreshadowing, setting up tension, and predictability.

Card (and Mary and Patrick) emphasizes that beta readers are first and foremost readers; whether or not they are themselves writers is somewhat beside the point. Reader reactions are valid because they are reporting their honest experience of the work.

I’m fascinated by the topic because I exchange beta reads with my fellow writers, and I spend a lot of time thinking about what kind of feedback is most useful. If you want more awesome writing advice from Mary (along with Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells), I highly recommend the podcast Writing Excuses. I’ve been listening to the podcast since its inception, long before Mary joined the crew, and find it to be a valuable resource.

Related posts

Ten tips to a valuable beta read by author Corrine Jackson

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2012: The year in numbers

January 1, 2013 By

What are your goals for 2013?

What are your goals for 2013?

1 novel completed
1 (other) novel begun
5 short stories written
46 short stories submitted
2 short stories accepted (both from 2011)
48 short stories critiqued for others
1 novel beta-read
50 books read
43 blog posts written
4 conventions/workshops attended: Rainforest Writers Village, Potlatch 21, Locus Awards, Norwescon

Published in 2012:

  • “Feed the Meter” ~ 600 words, surrealism. Appeared in Comets and Criminals, May 2012.

Goals

Last year’s goals were to query agents with my YA science fiction novel, to start a new novel, and to write 12 short stories. The first two I accomplished, and then some: I have a zeroth draft (i.e. a very rough 50k, not yet fit for readers) of a space opera written. Progress on that novel came at the expense of short stories. I wrote 5, so a 42% success rate.

Writing goals for 2013

  • Finish (first draft, beta readers, revisions) the space opera novel.
  • Attend a non-local con.
  • Develop an awesome idea for a new novel.
  • Write at least one short story.

All of this may be overly ambitious, as other life goals for 2013 include defending my Ph.D. dissertation, finding a new job, and probably moving across a significant chunk of the country. But this is what I’d like to accomplish writing-wise in 2013, and I’ll try not to be too hard on myself if it doesn’t pan out.

Happy new year, folks.

Related posts:
Best books read in 2012
2011: The year in numbers

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A drop in the bucket

November 6, 2012 By

I’ll admit I’ve never been terribly sympathetic when people complain over lack of writing time. Everyone struggles with time management and figuring out how to create in spite of other commitments. Just as devilish are the self-defeating insecurities–because if you don’t write, then you can’t suck at it. But there’s no fairy dust that will grant you 28 hours in a day (unless there is, in which case, email me), and I suspect that in most cases you just have to get over it and get the job done. However while I would love to be tough love all the time, I’ve been stretched thinner than usual myself lately, and thought I would share some of my strategies for producing words when free time is hard to come by.

Nothing that I’m about to say hasn’t been said before, mind you. Most notably, Cory Doctorow pointed out that 250 words per day makes a novel in one year. What follows is more a personal account of my own experience over the past couple of months.

Lately, all I can manage most nights is a couple hundred words. They’re not even good, polished words, they’re expository as all hell. I used to think this was such little progress as to not even be worth it, that if I didn’t have several hours and at least 1k words to show for myself after the fact, then why bother? I think my resistance was partly because it takes a while for me to sink into writing. I love tunnel vision. I hate interruptions. A half hour of writing doesn’t feel particularly good.

I’ve changed my tune somewhat. Or maybe it’s better to say I’ve come up with a hybrid model.

Each of those all-too-short writing sessions represents time spent thinking about my story, and they accumulate to make me immensely more productive when I do finally have a sizable chunk of writing time, say on the weekend. It’s all about momentum. Instead of being confronted by a blank screen come Saturday, I have scenes roughly sketched out. I can get to work without hemming and hawing, because I know where I am in the story! I’ve managed to consistently pull in 5-6k per week using this method, which I’m quite proud of. Sure the draft suffers from rough draft-itis and I’m mortified to think about putting my crit group through it. But I’m writing and am halfway through a new novel, in spite of everything else going on in my life. That feels pretty good.

Philosophically, this approach reminds me of Rachel Aaron’s blog post, “How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day”. Obviously, I’m not nearly as productive as Aaron, but the point is that knowing what you’re going to write ahead of time is a powerful tool. (Also, I highly recommend reading her post; it’s seriously inspiring.)

Maybe something like this will work for you too. The trick for me was to set aside a half hour each night to do nothing but think about story and jot notes. Then see how much you can get done in a weekend.

Happy word-making!

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Musings on point of view

September 16, 2012 By

The Internet is full of champions for first person point-of-view, and a fair bit of insistence that no YA book in third person will ever get published*. To be clear, I get that first person has an immediacy to it that is particularly appealing to YA audiences and lends itself to “voice-y” writing. All of that is awesome, and I think it’s great to have all the POVs (even 3rd omniscient!) in books. Variety is a good thing. I just wanted to take a moment to share what I love about third person limited.

Third person provides by far the most immersive reading experience for me, personally. When reading in third, I can imagine myself in the narrative, seeing the story through the protagonist’s eyes. On the other hand, when the protagonist is “I”, it’s not me. It’s someone talking to me. The character is vividly themselves, and that unavoidable not-me-ness is itself a barrier for putting myself in the story. Along the same lines, I find an irritating or angsty character to be extra irritating in first person because the voice is so strong. My hypothesis is that third is more immersive into the world and/or external conflict, while first has the ability to really showcase a great character. Though if an entire cast of characters is fascinating, I think that also swings towards third person. POV says something about scope and focus, and I wonder if my preference was influenced by reading a ton of epic fantasy as a kind.

To be honest, I’m also not someone who sees a great divide between so-called character-driven and plot-driven fiction. I subscribe to the philosophy that character in conflict IS story. So perhaps the tradeoff between first and third person is more about where you fall on the spectrum of immediacy to immersivity.

Just thinking aloud here.

In other news, I finished watching season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer this weekend. I was thrilled by the penultimate episode, and the promise that Giles was going to go postal on Willow. But what really struck me about the finale was Xander’s Samwise Gamgee moment, in which his loyalty superpower saves the day. And how not so many episodes ago, he left Anya at the alter–a loyalty low-point. Nice reversal. I had a lot of fun recasting this entire season in terms of Xander’s arc.

And finally, word count metrics!

I didn’t exactly hit my goal of 6k words this week, but I’m within 40 words, which I’m not going to sweat.

* Post updated with footnote for clarity: all the books I just linked are indeed YA told in 3rd person POV.

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