Nothing New Under The Sun

Posted under Growing as a writer, Methods of writing, Sci-Fi, Story Structure on August 23rd, 2014 by

So I was explaining the Really Cool Idea I had for a story structure to my writing group.

“I haven’t seen anything like it before,” I said. “It just seems to fit with the story I’m trying to tell. This is how I wanna do it-”

insert long-winded and overly verbose explanation with copious hand gestures here

“Oh!” they said. “Just like Dracula and Lady Susan and-”

“No,” I said, somewhat annoyed. “Mine is different. It’s sci-fi.”

“Oh, like Frankenstein!”

This required a pause for rueful contemplation. At last, I was forced to admit that yes, it had been done before. I felt like kicking something. It was my brand new bright shiny idea. How dare Jane Austen et al use it before I did?

 

I’m going to do it that way anyway. For starters, it’s a great structure. Also, my twist on it is still just slightly different. And let’s face it, there isn’t an idea out there that hasn’t been done and done over time and time again. It’s just a matter of who did it best, really. In writing, as in all life, there is nothing new under the sun: variations upon a theme are all we have to work with.

Favourite Authors: Patricia C. Wrede

Posted under Favourite Authors, Growing as a writer on July 19th, 2014 by

I have a Top Three favourite authors.  By necessity it is a fluid top three: how else could I fit in Diana Wynne Jones, Patricia C. Wrede, Steven Brust, Jane Austen, Terry Pratchett, Kate Stradling, Alexadre Dumas, Lloyd Alexander, Lillian Beckwith, Gail Carson Levine, Robert Louis Stevenson and so on?  It crosses most genres (though you might have noticed a decided tendency toward fantasy) and quite a few centuries as well.

Patricia C. Wrede has been part of the Top Three since before I even knew I had a Top Three.  As far as I recall, the first book of hers that I read was the last of the Enchanted Forest Quartet: Talking To Dragons.  I picked it up at my local library one day, enchanted by the gorgeous watercolour cover that was all muted greens and greys until it got to Shiara’s flaming hair, and added it to my already high stack of books.  That was in Queensland, when you could still check out fifteen books at a time, and I always had a full card.

I loved the way Patricia Wrede bent her fractured fairy-tales, imbuing Daystar with a kind of practical wisdom learned by rote from his mother Cimorene; and I loved watching Shiara’s bursts of temper that derailed the good his manners had achieved.  I loved the stupid yet clever princess, who was determined to ensnare a man.  I didn’t yet know about the thing called Worldbuilding, but I was already beginning to appreciate it.

I found Dealing with Dragons a year or so later, a cheap paperback with a really bad cover, sitting on the shelf at an opshop.  It wasn’t until after I read it that I began to remember names and situations, and to wonder where I had heard them before.  After that, it was back to the library to scroll through the microfiche in search of more books by Patricia Wrede.

There are so many good things to say about Patrica C. Wrede.  So much I could go on and on about.  Her characters.  Her world-building.  Her wonderfully wacky situations.  From her Enchanted Forest quartet to her Mairlon the Magician, and from Sorcery and Cecelia to the Lyra Chronicles, I’ve loved almost everything she’s written.  At the moment, my favourite among her books wavers between Mairelon the Magician and The Raven Ring.

Mairelon is a favourite almost purely because of well, Mairelon.  And Kim.  And Hunch.  And the fact that it’s set in a kind of regency England that emulates the best of Georgette Heyer’s regency England.  It’s pure, madcap amusement.

The Raven Ring is a favourite because of much better reasons.  I still love the characters: in fact, I love them more than almost any other of Patricia Wrede’s characters.  But added to that love is the appreciation I have for her worldbuilding in this particular book.  In her Frontier Magic chronicles, I felt that Patricia Wrede focused on worldbuilding to the detriment of her characters.  They’re a wonderful study in worldbuilding, and I do sincerely like them, but I feel that the characters and plot have suffered as a consequence of the extensive focus on world and system. There’s no such division in The Raven Ring.  The characters are drawn finely (Eleret and Karvonen have stayed with me for far longer than most other characters), and the world is a richly layered one with all its own colloquialisms, customs, ways of life, and hierarchies.  It has just the right amount of everything.

Added to my admiration for her work is my appreciation for Patricia Wrede’s writing advice, which came at a time when I was wondering if anyone else thought about writing in just the same way that I did.  I stumbled upon her blog one day and found that she was saying things I had just begun to learn by myself.  It was a huge encouragement. Since then, I’ve begun to regard her as something of a writer’s writer: she, more than any other writer I know, has influenced my writing by both word and example.  In short, she’s everything a favourite author should be.

If you want to check her out for yourself, her blog is called Six Impossible Things, and her books are available well, everywhere.

Look, Ma! I’m Makin’ A Movie!

Posted under Growing as a writer, Movies, New Things!, Screenplays on June 21st, 2014 by

Look, Ma!  I’m makin’ a movie!

Well, I’m writing a screenplay, anyway.  Close enough?

For those who don’t know what a screenplay is (one of the guys at my writer’s group asked me this morning); a screenplay is the bones of a movie or tv series, or sometimes even a game.  It’s a script plus a few extra bits, like scene settings or actor instructions, or camera shots/angles.  It’s the beginning of a movie.

I wrote a short story a while ago that I just couldn’t get out of my head.  There were things I knew about the setting and characters that didn’t make it into the short story for the very simple reason that if I’d included them, it wouldn’t have stayed a ‘short’ story.  It was an unusually visual story for me, and it didn’t cease to prod at the corners of my mind when I finished it, unlike every other story/book I’ve written.  I always still love my characters when the story is done, and I’m always fully immersed in the re-writes and editing, but this particular story just seemed to keep growing with scenes and dialog that were increasingly visual.  Then someone from my writer’s group read the story and said: “This should be a movie.”

At first it was just ridiculous thoughts of: “Oooh, this is a great song for the soundtrack!” and “This actor is perfect for George.  Oh, and this one is going to play Ruth.”  Then I started wondering about the form of screenplays: how they’re structured, what they contain, etc.  It didn’t really occur to me that I could write a screenplay, of course; because I’m a writer and don’t you have to be a playwright/screenwriter to do that?  Am I allowed to write a movie?

Well, apparantly I am.  I did my research (ahem.  Well, a full day of furious typing on the google and madly following links, and reading the screenplay for True Grit); found out the correct format (oh boy, are they a pain!); and started writing.

And I can do it.  It’s a different form with different rules, and entirely refreshing.  It’s almost easy, because I know where it’s going and what I have to show to make it work.  It’s just a matter of plugging away until it all done, and then making it as beautiful as I can.  I don’t know that I’ll try and send it out to anyone when it’s done.  Heck, I don’t even really know if I’m doing it properly.  But now that I’ve started, other books have begun with the same siren song . . .

Well, the world really does need a four-hour miniseries of The Count of Monte Cristo, after all.

Walking Home In The Fog

Posted under Growing as a writer on April 23rd, 2014 by

I’m a fiddler.*

Even if I’ve only written a chapter of the manuscript, the next day will see me re-reading, editing, revising.  Fiddling.  Reworking.  Obsessing.  By the time I reach the midway point in a manuscript,** I will have read it in excess of 40 times. Then the MS is finished, and the fun really begins. There’s the line by line edit, where I catch*** all those stupid little grammatical errors; not to mention the glaring errors in spelling. There’s the paragraph to paragraph read, when I try to make sure of continuity and flow. Then there’s the last**** read through to be sure my story structure stands up on its own two feet.  That’s not to mention the time I spend on my characters, making sure that each of them is separate from the others; each with their own personality, voice, quirks, and reactions.

That’s now.

But when I finished my first MS, fiddling aside, I did nothing like that. I did read the MS. In fact, I read it exhaustively, niggling at wrong word choices and bits that just weren’t quite right.  The problem was, 9 times out of 10, I didn’t know what was wrong.  I spent the first few days after finishing the MS in a happy daze, certain that I was the next Austen,***** or Patricia Wrede, or Diana Wynne Jones.  Then I re-read it, and I was just as certain that it was rubbish. I could feel that this paragraph or this sentence didn’t fit, or didn’t sit right, or just plain felt wierd; but I didn’t know what was wrong.  I knew that the characters weren’t right, and that everything felt flat, or too fast, or too slow; and that the conversation that felt so very witty and/or grand when I first wrote it, now seemed somehow not quite so witty or grand.  I just couldn’t put my finger on where it was that I’d gone wrong.  The next few weeks after finishing the MS I spent in a black fug, gloomily certain that I would never be published.

I still get both of those feelings.  The euphoria, the fug.  The difference is, now they’re in moderation because I do know what’s wrong and I do know how to fix it.

It’s the difference between walking home on a clear night and walking home in the fog.  In the fog, you know where home is and you’re pretty sure you know where you are, but the turns are obscured and everything feels just that little bit off.  The familiar parts of the road aren’t familiar in the fog, and you can’t see enough to know if you’ve turned rightly or wrongly.  Then the fog lifts, and suddenly you know exactly where you are, and where home is, and every turn and step of the way there.  You know that in two steps you’ll have to turn left, and that the gate across the field is already open so you won’t need to wrestle with that rusty hinge, and that the neighbour’s dog is outside, so you’ll have to watch out for that irritating burst of barking.

I know more now that I did when I started.  I know about pacing, and structure; I know about characterization and voice; style and flow; a little grammar and a smattering of spelling.  I read a sentence I wrote last night or last week, and I know straight away what’s wrong with it.  I still make mistakes and write flat characters and make a complete mess of continuity,****** but now I know how to fix it.

And that makes all the difference.

*No, really. I play the violin.

**Usually 60,000 words, give or take.

***Alright, so I try to catch ’em.

****Supposedly.

*****Well, I am a writer.  Did you think I bought that imagination at a garage sale?

******That’s what sisters are for.  Right?  Right, Sis?  What’s that?  You say that they didn’t have fluffy towels in the whatever century?  And that gun popped up out of nowhere?

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