Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Building Boxes Outside the Box

(So, you’re going to ask your computer, “Is this about writing at all?” Yes, yes it is. Eventually.)

Here’s an update for you: 2 months and 22 days after losing my ground floor to flood damage, I am finally back in my office complete with an actual desk and internet connection. My walls are now green (Georgian Green, says the wife) and the floor is waterproof tile rather than hardwood, but on the whole, it’s an improvement rather than an alien and lifeless place as my paranoid brain had set it up to be.

I scored a bonus when we decided (since the two of us now occupy this room) that built-in bookshelves were needed. I have been using whatever I could find and/or recycle to store my books and all the other crap I collect. For years now I have been saving wood from the library being dismantled at my old station. It was stockpiled in the shed and garage. I stubbornly stood by my idea of “someday” building “some” proper shelves.

Let me say for the record: I’m good with the ideas - I’m even good with the design and planning, but a carpenter I am not. So I hire this fellow. His name is Richard, and I’ve had him in countless times before.

Richard is foul-mouthed and drinks all day, but he’s good and quick and cheap, three things I like in a carpenter. He and I have argued about the details and requirements of every single project. We also squabble about price, before, during and after, even when I get him to commit in writing. But, having learned the code words for getting his cooperation, I have to hand the man some respect. He works hard. I think I nearly killed him this time, though.

“What do you mean you want them all inset?” he says to me halfway through the project.

“I want you to router the uprights,” says I.

Now, the idea here is to have shelving that does not have those interfering support brackets below and perfect foot-by-foot cubes above waist level. My design accounted for the weight of books, the thickness of the wood and the dimensions of the room. I’m pretty thorough.

So we have this battle of wills while he tells me he’s the expert and I tell him how I came to my design formula using what I had seen in other shelving, weight dispersal and pounds-per-inch strength of the wood, etc.. The end result was a compromise where the long shelving at the bottom got little wooden brackets (damn!) and my cubes were properly routed.

What does any of this have to do with writing SF?

Well, I’m not a scientist any more than I’m a carpenter. I am, though, a person who does not shy away from talking to scientists, engineers et al in my quest to test the elements of my stories. I do not want to write science fantasy per se.

If you read my “Betrayed By God” bits, you might argue with that, and maybe you would be right in a sense. But I see a difference in peppering SF with religious and spiritual elements and simply relying on scientific gobbledygook to move a story.

Man, I feel like a hypocrite! I think back on the pieces of story I let “be” for the sake of getting on with the task and can’t help but cringe. But even there, I am not building it in, just leaving it alone until I go back and clean it up with something better. Those little things are like placeholders for what I still have to research.

What’s more, some of the things that come through stories like “Betrayed” are supposed to be fantastical rather than factual. It doesn’t bother me to write it in. I like fairytales and legends. Does it have a place in SF? I dunno. Part of this story is a challenge to clinging to any single paradigm at all, scientific or otherwise. All we ever do as a species is the same as all any species ever does, which is comprehend existence to the degree with which we are able. Just because we can hang all our formulas out in a row, just because they work, even consistently, does not make them the only possible truths no matter how much we wish it were so.

I’m laughing as I write this. I’m thinking of Joe, an engineering student who has just graduated this year. For the past three years or so we engaged in some interesting and heated debates on all kinds of topics. The one thing that was a constant for him was the fact that he – and whatever textbook he had just read – was absolutely correct, and anybody who disagreed with him was just not intelligent enough to understand their errors.

Of course, over the years, his theories changed. He came to conclusions he argued against earlier. At that point (because, of course, I would remind him), he would say his old self was naïve…like me. What I never told him, was that the most fascinating thing about him was how he thought. It was ten times as interesting as what he thought about. I was also interested in his perceptions of me. He sought me out for debate. He brought me interesting items and theories. But he always made it clear that he considered me a less intelligent, but curious enough, spectator to his performances.

I used him too, of course. I bounced ideas off of him. I gave him scenarios to test against what he had studied. Some of the stuff that made it through those debates appears in book two of the story I’m working on.

I’m trying not to pressure myself too hard to be solid in theory rather than true to the story. It’s grist for another blog post, but how ships travel in my universe, and how fast they travel is something of an issue with me. Consider the fact that they DO travel between stars within a few months my placeholder for how they do it. If I conceded the limitations based on the current scientific paradigms, my characters would all just stay onworld.

Whatever. The end result of all this will no doubt make scientists raise their eyebrows as high as Carpenter Richard and Engineer Joe. Heck, it is just story, after all. I’m not publishing for peer review. But what I want from it is a vision I can defend with some kind of confidence. In the end, I want it to work. I have faith that such things can happen with my ideas. Hell, the shelves turned out great.

Posted by Tristis Ward 2008-07-23 04:10:23

Saturday, July 12, 2008
Is it a comic?

I really like comic books. I like the way they tell stories.

While I can appreciate all kinds of comics, the ones I really like are those with richly detailed art and “alternative” story lines. I'd like to say I have standards when it comes to plot, but I think I'm moved by more atmospheric cues than good lit. The more time the artist takes to draw in all the little bits and pieces of a world, the more I’m hooked.

Man, what does that mean? I sound like everybody else there. What am I trying to say?

It’s not really about how much is drawn in a panel (although that’s part of it), I love “Sin City,” and it is full of shadow – but really the detail is still there. It’s just that, instead of finely detailed panels, it’s present over several panels like a spotlight moving around. I don’t have a lot of Manga, but I appreciate what I do buy, I think, for the stunning detail of some of the panels. I could go on, but I’ve made my point: world-building for me is in the details.

So, in comics, you get these (sometimes) highly detailed moments in panels where the books on the guy’s bookshelf have names and the lampshade is a certain style that fits his age and society and there’s a mouse on the floor in the corner which has nothing at all to do with the story, but is just a part of the world. In that moment a fraction of dialogue is revealed, faces are emotive, bodies are in motion or still like the snapshot of life that it is. There is a small direct narrative in a little yellow box, and the larger narrative of the art, and then it stops.

The next moment begins with a new panel. There can be a new angle (mostly) a close-up on a face, whatever, but it is also (hopefully) highly detailed and filled with little things that make up a world and a character. The reader moves from detailed moment to detailed moment, accepting scene changes and character changes and even dives into different subplots that begin and end at staggered times. It’s like hopscotch reading: jump, land, get immersed, then jump again.

So, now, I’m writing this book. I did not set out specifically to follow the idea of comic book storytelling, but I think it just might be doing that, anyway. Sure, I can tidy that up on the rewrite, bring it all in line and make a novel out of it, but I want to think about this for a bit. The freedom I have in not being a published author with an established presence and an editor is that I can shift gears on format (not that I’m hankering for such “freedom” into my old age).

I was describing some of the stories to a friend over the phone (he made the mistake of asking what I was doing. Silly Alan) and he suggested I pitch it as a TV series. Writing for TV seems overly stressful to me. What little I learned of the process so far has not inspired me to put on that yoke. There’s less creative control than with books – in fact, some absolute messing about with characters and plots – and no guarantees the story will get fully told before it’s yanked. If Joss Whedon’s Firefly didn’t make it, I don’t know how mine could.

But Alan had a point. My very complicated, ensemble-cast story is also very episodic. It could be even more so were I not leaving out superfluous subplots for the sake of keeping the length within sane parameters. What’s more, the world it comes from is full of intertwining plots and ongoing stories.

If not a TV show, it could be a comic book. Does that matter? A little bit, I guess; enough that I wish I were a better (even passable) artist. If it is about submitting to a publisher, which I like to think I will do at some point, the kind of publisher (the kind of media) is important. If I were to change it to a comic, I don’t need to fret and fuss so much about my prose…or perhaps I do. Oh, worse: if it were to be a comic book, that would mean dismantling the prose altogether. In which direction am I wasting time here?

This is exactly the kind of debate with myself that stops me mid-project over and over again. In fact, that might be what this whole comic question is all about.

I started this year-off experiment to write a novel. It switched to SF novel. I’ve tinkered with no less than three stage plays. I have a letterer working on (but on hold due to the flood) an old comic series. I am halfway through an edit for resubmission on (god help me) aromance novel. I’ve left my “explorations” webpage unattended to do all this - but keep shooting new building sites. And now I’m thinking of converting the work I did manage to do into a form that requires a complete overhaul.

Congratulations. You’ve just had a peek into my psyche and got to witness one of the reasons I have so many half-completed creations in my office. Screw that. I’m going to have to keep writing the way I have been and worry about this later – when I have a completed story done.

Posted by Tristis Ward 2008-07-12 00:08:39

Friday, June 27, 2008
Just because it’s fun for you, Tristis, doesn’t make it fun for the rest of us.

As an unpublished writer, I’m used to rewriting without the feedback. It’s easy: Take the scene I really had fun writing, clean it up and make it better; then maybe do that again; and again one last shot. Ta-Da! Happy with myself.

Putting stories up on this site means that I get some responses, either in ratings or reader hits (not comments, no never those). I’m not sure what it really means to have hits on my stories, but as long as I keep getting them, I’ll keep putting something up. The ratings are a little more information.

Somebody thought “Carol 1” sucked. Nobody else posted that rating, so I take it to be that the story was not “bad” so much as not to somebody’s taste.

The same cannot be said for “Carol 6” (or as I like to call it “Carol and the Caveman”). For me, this was just a fun little romp. I knew it was rough, but what the heck?

Then I got the first one-planet rating. “Hmm,” says I. “Is it too rough?”

I read it to my wife. She got confused. She thought there were several “bad guys” due to my narration having different terms for the caveman. But she’s an accountant, and therefore her abilities as a reader of SF are suspect.

I read it to my creative-typesinger-songwriter friend. She got confused. She said the tone of voice threw her off. She also said she lost track of what was happening. She said some other things, but it was late, and I was already thinking about how it would completely lose its true-crime flavour if I lost the Sheriff’s commentary in the narration.

I don’t have regular access to the internet yet -due to the flood damage of my home -and when I went back online it was only for a few minutes to check email and the reader responses (and change a draft story of Father Bedford to “published”). Four responses. All single planets.

“I know, I know,” says I. “But I’m not going to like it!”

It took me seven or eight stabs at this puppy to get the rewrite happening. And in the end, what worked was starting with a blank file and telling the story again from scratch, first,until I wasthrough the part that seemed to me to be the worst offending – BTW that’s all just guesswork. I don’t really know what sucked, only that sucking is what it was doing.

There were some points that I needed to keep for continuity in the book. There was somephrasing and dialogue that I kept, and the sequence of events during the story remains the same in the rewrite. What is different is the tone. The narration is much less personal, and the POV moves from Carol (sorta) in the present to Deputy Harris (with whom she has a prior relationship) in the past tense to Bernie for the back-story, back to Harris and then shifts to the present tense and Carol.

Enh. It might work.

It’s better to use Harris than the Sheriff for arming Carol. Harris would more easily succumb to Carol’s command and hand over his gun. He would also more easily comprehend that the normal rules do not apply. I don't want him tobe too accepting, though.All these events are taking place in a few days and weeks. Weird should not yet be commonplace.

Do I like this version as much? – It has lost itsmimicry of crime books narrated by police types, and it’s longer, and it’s got action on the part of minor characters instead of highlighting the prowess of Carol, who needs to be more than just a bragging warrior in a teenager’s body.

Still. It does make the armed crime-fighters of Monee look like more than boy scouts in need of adult supervision. It might be more real.

Speaking of that: There is not a lot available through Carol’s perspective in explaining anachronistic hunter/gatherers on the rampage. She does good to give him a scientific category (however off the mark it might be) instead of calling him what she really wanted to: “Captain Caveman”

Posted by Tristis Ward 2008-06-27 22:18:19

Monday, June 16, 2008
Griping and getting a grip on this book

First: I want to explain that it is much easier to post stories than blog entries on this site.

I’m still not moved back into my downstairs (flood damage), so I have to carry the computer to the internet or move the files to my laptop.

You’d think I would choose laptop, wouldn’t you?

Nooooo, no no no. The laptop is a Powerbook 2000. It is a fine computer, but alas, not intel and therefore sans PC (the program Virtual PC is just too big for its memory). Because IE is not available for Mac - at least not my Mac, in order to post to the blog I NEED to be running in PC.

So. To post, I have to start up my virtual PC on the big computer through a program called Parallels. We only have the basic memory with this iMac, and Parallels will only let the PC have a percentage of that, so Windows runs a little slow. Okay, not that slow. But it is slow starting up. Then I have to drag my Mac rtf file into Windows, open it in notepad, save it as text with no code (how the hell do I convince notepad not to call it an rtf when I "save as?" I am constantly having to copy/paste into a new text file!), then copy and paste it into IE. When it’s in there, I have to review it again for waylaid code. It’s a humungous pain in the ass.

Well then. About the book: The first hundred pages are done. This is roughly a third of the book. It is a first draft, but it’s pretty filled out for one (my typical first draft is full of dialogue-only sections), so I don’t expect the page count to be radically different by the second go.

I got me a set of worries around this story:

Are there too many characters?

Are there too many background characters who have too much detail and therefore look like even more characters?

Is there too much angst over the shared lives problem? Is there not enough angst?

Is the pace too slow? – At a third of the way through the book, should people still be popping up with mystery and mayhem all around them?

Should I put in the harder stuff? Should I not?

Have I given away too much about the Wizard? Should it be a mystery, anyway?

Have I neglected Juste and Na’Atal for too long?

Juste was supposed to have a big story all her own, but I keep putting it off. It is dark and violent and completely separate from the other stories. She only connects with the rest in the last third. I’ll probably end up writing her stuff in big batches. Once she gets going she can be as fun as Carol and Cecan to write. Of course, if I put in the detail of her story, I am going to really beef up the book. First, this hundred-page point would be at about 150. The book could get to 400 pages.

Am I still writing a book?

I keep thinking this would make a better comic.

Decisive aren’t I? Maybe it’s because it is 1:30 in the morning. I need some sleep. First, though, I have to post this. The crack-filler guy is going to be here in the morning and I don’t dare run the computer at all until the dust settles. Good night.

Posted by Tristis Ward 2008-06-16 06:56:38

Saturday, June 7, 2008
Grit or Action?

My poor warrior Carol seems to have lost her uniform. She’s got no weapons and she’s suddenly sixteen. Being a hero is hard sometimes.

Take this little adventure she is about to have. I started writing a joining scene (getting my girl there from point "lost" to point "saving the world"), but it exploded onto my keyboard the first day I trieditand did not let up until my fingers were in knots.

Posted by Tristis Ward 2008-06-07 05:11:36