Considering Writers' Conferences

I've been contemplating attending a writers' conference for a while. Such events come in many flavors (general, genre-related, writers' retreats, etc.), so it's important to define your goals and select the conference that's best able to meet your needs.

I'm in the market for a general or SF/Fantasy-focused event where I can meet agents (a method proven by several successful authors) and editors (workshops and panel discussions are valuable, but I'm mainly focused on networking). Having limited funds, I'm not looking to travel far.

The most promising event I've found within these criteria is the Chicago Writers Conference. It's not till September, but one can't start planning too early. I don't know if I'll go this year. Registration is $200.00, and that's without travel and lodging expenses. I'll keep you posted as the situation unfolds.

Count to a Trillion

I just finished John C. Wright's science fiction novel Count to a Trillion. Having wished to read The Hermetic Millennia, I was advised to pick up the preceding novel first. I'm glad I did.

Count to a Trillion introduces Menelaus Illation Montrose, a lawyer specializing in "out of court settlements" based on Spanish dueling traditions revived by beleaguered landowners to circumvent confiscatory twenty-third century property laws.

Montrose's mathematical genius allows him to thrive in a Texas--devastated by germ warfare, depopulation, and governmental collapse--where duels are decided by the sophistication of each duelist's pre-programmed bullets. (Wright describes the evolutionary weapons escalation that produced his future setting's nine-pound, foot long pistols in highly creative detail.)

Fate seemingly intervenes when Montrose is approached by the organizers of mankind's first voyage to another star. The protagonist, who grew up idolizing (to him) ancient Star Trek cartoons, becomes obsessed with deciphering the (to humans) unintelligible glyphs covering the alien monument found in orbit around an antimatter star. To this end, he takes matters into his own hands by injecting himself with an experimental drug based in part on the monument's own undeciphered calculus. The process increases Montrose's intelligence to superhuman levels but also plunges him into raving, finger-biting depths of madness.

And then the story starts.

Combining a grand vision of human destiny reminiscent of Frank Herbert's Dune and technological savvy to rival William Gibson (plus rustic humor and truly sympathetic characters often missing from both), Count to a Trillion comes highly recommended.

Souldancer Deleted Scene: Forging the White Sword

            The sun was falling below the Edge of the World when a vision appeared to Aber Lico. The blacksmith sat on his doorstep looking east toward town and watched as a strange figure walked out of a heat haze a few hundred yards away.

            More details surfaced as the stranger approached. He wore a black shirt under a ragged tan jacket with matching pants. A mane of shock white hair crowned his head.

            Lico stood and gripped one of the rough porch beams. “I’m closed for the night,” he called out.

            The stranger either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He steadily advanced to stand at the foot of the stairs. His skin was ashen; almost grey, and his eyes were an odd yellow-green.

“I need a forge,” he said in a rigid, unfamiliar accent.

            “I told you,” Lico said. “Shop’s closed.”

            The grey man stared into the house that also held Lico’s workshop. “This is where the blade was Worked,” he said. Then he walked past the blacksmith and into his home.

            “Wait!” Lico shouted over his family’s startled cries. “I make pins and hinges; not swords!” The smith followed his unwelcome visitor through his house to the forge, besieging him with curses.

With his wife and children huddled in the doorway, Lico seized a stout hammer and approached the man who’d invaded his home.

            “I don’t know where you’re from,” the blacksmith said, “but you’d best return there.”

            Ignoring his unwilling host, the stranger set about stoking the coals.

            “Stop him, Aber,” urged the blacksmith’s wife. “He’s like to burn the house down!”

            Gritting his teeth, Lico hefted the hammer and brought it down upon the stranger’s back. He felt the impact running up the shaft and heard a sickening crunch. The intruder fell to his knees but started crawling toward the forge.

            The smith swung again with far less reluctance. The blow knocked the stranger flat, but he dragged himself along the plank floor.

            Lico brought the hammer up again and let it fall with a savage cry. He swung again and again, only stopping when the broken and bloody form on his floor lay still.

            The considered informing the city guard. Instead he dragged the body to the Edge of the World and cast it over the smoking precipice.

 

            It was pitch black when Lico woke, panting and soaked with sweat, to the sound of ringing metal.

He started when his wife grabbed his arm.

“What is that?” she whispered.

            “It’s coming from the shop,” the blacksmith said. The rhythmic sound of metal striking metal continued for several moments before Lico found the courage to rise from bed. Lighting a lamp, he crept toward the workshop.

            The orange-red light of live coals bent and magnified ordinary objects into hellish shadows. A lone figure stood at the forge. His right hand rose and fell in a familiar motion that turned Lico’s stomach. The small silversmith’s hammer sounded clear, chiming notes.

            “What are you doing?” asked the smith, his voice trembling. “Who are you?”

            The delicate hammer rang once more and stopped. The figure turned, revealing a bloody ruin of a face, and gazed at Lico with one yellow-green eye.

            The blacksmith ran to his children and found that his screams had already woken them. Hastily loading his family into their wagon, he raced through the night toward Highwater.

 

            When Lico returned after dawn with the city guard, the stranger was gone. All that remained to mark his presence were a few lumps of slag. Boasting a mirrored sheen, the impossibly light metal cast purple reflections in its white surface.

Touring the Sorcerer's House

The Sorcerer's House by Gene Wolfe comes highly reviewed by both Neil Gaiman and John C. Wright, so there's little I can add of any critical merit. I will say that I deeply enjoyed the book.

Wolfe makes the bold and unorthodox choice to structure his novel in epistolary form (a series of letters between protagonist Bax Dunn and his colorful cast of family and friends). Since The Sorcerer's House is, among other things, a mystery, this approach serves the narrative well; causing enough chronological uncertainty and giving the author good reason to omit enough information to keep readers on their toes.

The symbolism is thick and rich here: especially the theme of objects, events, and people coming in twos. I dimly suspected that the whole book has a dualistic structure on my first reading, but I'll have to read it again to be sure.

All is certainly not as it seems. The main character immediately establishes himself as an unreliable narrator: a con man recently released from prison who nonetheless holds multiple advanced degrees and conducts himself in a cordial, erudite manner.

The novel's tone is generally tongue-in-cheek and understated, though there are certainly moments of genuine pathos and surreal horror. The Sorcerer's House is urban fantasy/gothic mystery with a heart. Don't go in expecting a parable on contemporary issues or a hero dispensing justice. This tale is told for its own sake--the best reason of all.

Breaking the Law

I want to be a writer; therefore I write. Because I want to be a good writer, I read books (though not as many as I should), seek advice from other writers, and study writing techniques. These two pursuits often overlap, resulting in blog posts about guidelines for writing fiction.

Writing about the rules of fiction helps me to learn them. Hopefully my readers learn something too, or at least suffer no harm from my amateurish pontificating. In any event, my aim is not to dictate a set of immutable laws governing all literature. After all, I'm still learning. Like jazz musicians, the real fun only starts when you know the rules well enough to start breaking them.

If that's the case, why not ignore the rules from the beginning? Why bother learning them at all? The answer is that there's a significant difference between writing with hamfisted ignorance or lazy disregard for literary conventions and purposefully tweaking the rules in entertaining ways.

Let me illustrate my point by returning to that tried and true well of storytelling excellence: Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight. The film breaks a major rule of characterization and begins doing so immediately by never explaining the Joker's back story (a few self-professed origins are given but cannot be trusted for obvious reasons). Antagonists 101 states that the main villain must be fully fleshed out. The audience must understand the character and his motivations in order to identify with him and thus find meaning in his villainy.

Nolan directly transgresses this rule. Instead of a complex three-dimensional antagonist, he gives us a demonic agent of chaos with no personality beyond the scope of his crimes. It shouldn't work, yet it does--and brilliantly--because the director (and writers and actor) know how to break the rules.

Lesser artists would've wound up with a mustache-twirling cardboard cutout who ties women to train tracks. Ledger's Joker can get away with doing evil for evil's sake because his character is a walking commentary on breaking rules. He straddles the line between a human villain with intelligible motives and a destructive force of nature (as made explicit by Alfred's "Some men just want to watch the world burn" speech). That shift puts the conflict on a whole other level.

When the movie version of an "unfilmable" book earns critical praise, it's often because the filmmakers took advantage of the project's stigma to subvert movie and literary storytelling conventions. In fiction, one of the best ways to entertain an audience is to do the unexpected. Learning the rules your art relies on and then creatively breaking them usually catches people off guard.

What are some other books, films, etc. that defied conventions with entertaining results?

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

An agent I queried asked for the first five pages of the Nethereal manuscript last week. The pages were rejected in a frank and highly professional manner. The gesture is highly appreciated.

I went into Heinlein phase five bracing myself to face criticism. I conditioned myself as best I could to take negative comments with an open mind, revise the book if they made sense and ignore them if they didn't. Funny thing: There really hasn't been any criticism to speak of. The most common replies I've gotten have been: A) nothing and B) form letters. The two or three personalized responses all amount to, "Your premise and execution are fine, but it's not what we're looking for."

The dearth of feedback is something I didn't anticipate. I have plans in place to deal with, "Your work is bad, and here's why." Instead I'm left grappling with, "Your project is OK. For someone else. But I don't know who it is."

On further reflection, I believe I'm facing the following difficulties:

It's impossible to sell a manuscript unless the buyer reads the whole thing. Not only can't you judge a book by its cover; you really can't judge it till you've read the last paragraph. Readers may have that luxury, but not people whose jobs depend on acquiring new titles. And yet...

Agents and editors don't have enough time to read every manuscript submitted to them. It's a fact of the busy world we live in: more so for literary agents and acquisitions editors, who receive thousands of submissions a year. These conditions force them into the paradox of judging something piecemeal that can only be fairly evaluated within the context of the whole.

Faced with this Joseph Heller reference, most professional writers advise researching agents and editors' tastes before querying them. A common strategy is to look up agents' recent deals to find out what kind of books they represent. Mining the acknowledgements pages of novels in the same style and genre as yours is often recommended as a good way to find like-minded agents and editors.

I've been following that advice for years, but...

I haven't found anything close enough to my work to identify an agent/editor with similar sensibilities. From one perspective, the fact that I can't find other books like mine is good. Agents and editors often say that they're looking for fresh material. On the other hand, it's bad because people usually stick to what's worked before and don't go too far beyond their established tastes. I know I do that. There are sound logical reasons for playing to one's strengths.

Frankly, I don't want to work with an agent, editor, or publisher who isn't excited about my book. Agents are salespeople (so are writers), and the best salesmen are genuinely passionate about the product. A project has no better friend than an editor who's willing to champion it to the publisher, and a lukewarm publisher is apt to bury a book at the end of the list (or drop it altogether).

The way I see it, I have two options:

1. the Jim Butcher method: which ain't gonna happen, if only because I have too little charm and too great a fear of jail to crash invitation only industry lunches.

2. the black hole: wherein I keep throwing message-laden bottles into the ocean hoping that just the right alignment of circumstances prompts an agent to request a sample based on my query letter, that the partial reading elicits a request for the full manuscript, that the MS convinces the agent to approach an acquisitions editor on my behalf, and that the editor agrees to take on the project.

I might be a timid eccentric, but I'm a very patient timid eccentric.

There Is No Conflict...

...Or at least no conflict worth writing about that ignores certain dramatic conventions. Without conflict there's no story, so here are a few core principles to keep in mind. Thanks to Donald Maass for spelling most of these out.

Emphasize concrete stakes over abstract ones. Even if you're writing a metaphysical narrative, audiences will probably find the solid visible consequences of the story's conflicts more directly accessible than their transcendent implications. By all means give your conflict an ideological dimension, but use symbol and subtext to tie it into your theme. It'll have more impact that way.

Make conflict proximate. This one seems self-evident, but it's good rule to be conscious of. Every conflict should involve the affected characters as closely as possible. This approach heightens tension and ensures high stakes. (Killing characters off-screen is much less traumatic/satisfying than doing it right in front of the audience.)

Make conflict matter. Another common sense rule that's ignored all too often. Conflict is all about the stakes. Battles in which heroes effortlessly mow down cannon fodder are nowhere near as interesting as conflicts that make the protagonist bleed (the blood can be metaphorical, as in victory won at a moral or emotional cost).

Also, conflict should not leave a character back at the status quo. Life is conflict, and life is change.

Create exceptional circumstances. Really interesting conflict removes a character from his comfort zone. Take away the Jedi's lightsaber (or better yet, his access to the Force). If your hero relies on guns, cut off his trigger finger. Make the super scientist contend with a magical threat. By hobbling their strengths, you show what your characters are really made of.

Make conflict difficult. Proceeding from the previous two points, it should be clear that challenging conflict is engaging conflict. Only munchkins enjoy riding roughshod over the opposition, and even they don't much care for reading about someone else doing it. Not every challenge your hero faces should equate to disarming a nuclear device while blindfolded, but none of them should be a cakewalk.

Some beginning writers may chafe at this assertion, but raising the difficulty can and sometimes should extend to letting your characters fail. There are few better teachers than defeat. Just make sure you've thought out the consequences of failure and then stick to them.

Give conflict immediacy. The protagonist's struggles should be immediate in terms of timing and intimacy. Don't let the hero resolve the conflict at his leisure. Start the clock ticking. Make the consequences of failure clear right away (and make them dire). Just as importantly, the source of conflict shouldn't be anonymous or random. Make it personal and direct.

Conflict is more than just fighting. I've used mainly physical examples so far because combat is the most readily understood form of conflict. But since conflict is what happens whenever two or more opposing forces vie with each other, the concept admits of many forms. You can have a ritualized or symbolic battle with primarily philosophical stakes. Conflict can even be waged on a purely intellectual, emotional, or spiritual level. Characters needn't trade blows to be in conflict. They just have to be at cross-purposes. In fact, the opposition doesn't have to be a character at all.

To recap: write conflict that is concrete, proximate, meaningful, exceptional, difficult, and immediate. And remember that a character's struggle against his inner demons can be more compelling than a battle scene.

These are just the general guidelines. What do you think makes for an engaging conflict?

There's Always Money in the Banana Stand

Cult tv phenomenon Arrested Development will return on May 26, and the Bluth family's frozen banana stand is making straight its path.

I immediately loved the show when I first saw it on Netflix a couple of years ago. What's that got to do with writing? A lot, actually. Unlike a lot of contemporary comedies, Arrested Development features nuanced characterization and gets most of its laughs from crafted jokes instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator. But those touches aren't the main reason for the show's acclaim.

Arrested Development is noteworthy as a body of writing for mastering self-reflexivity and intertextuality. It's hard to find another narrated tv show whose narrator supplies a host of genuinely funny moments. It does help when the narrator is this guy.

The seminal nature of Arrested Development's first run is well attested by its imitators. It's not uncommon for other networks to copy a successful show's formula. What's odd about this case is that the show in question wasn't exactly successful. It's also hard to point to a single imitator employing a derivative style. Instead, similar postmodern sensibilities have saturated countless series and films in nearly every medium.

I don't claim that Arrested Development was the first tv series to make extensive use of self-referential and intertextual devices. It is, however, the gold standard for postmodern television humor. And although causality is difficult to prove, I've noticed a strong correlation between the show's initial run and a general increase in self-awareness and pop culture references in tv and film.

The Endgame

Despite receiving multiple recommendations from friends and family for years, I delayed reading Ender's Game until just last week. I really wish I'd taken their advice sooner.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is one of those rare books that leaves a deep impression long after the reader turns the last page. While reading it I kept flashing back to my junior year of high school when I developed a voracious sci-fi habit. Back then I mostly turned to Frank Herbert, Timothy Zahn, and Kevin J. Anderson for a fix. I can't help thinking that Ender's Game would have found an honored place on my book shelf.

People who've read my work say it has noticeable Dune influences. I heartily concur. Herbert had the most enduring impact on my storytelling sensibilities during that formative period. I can only speculate about how Card's magnum opus might have shaped my adolescent view of science fiction.

That's not to say that it won't have an effect now. In the last fifteen years I've learned to consciously mine the works of better writers for new techniques. Card's additions to my literary arsenal remain to be seen, but I doubt they'll be negligible.

Have you read Ender's Game? Are you looking forward to (or dreading) the film version? Let us know.

Nethereal Update

It's been a while since I could report movement on the Nethereal project. All the while I've been busy doing my homework and sending out query letters to those literary agents whom I deem best able to represent the book.

All of my queries were met with form rejections or silence (except for one which offered some encouragement). This pattern of responses isn't unusual. Most folks in the publishing industry are so swamped that they don't have time for individualized feedback.

The pattern of rejection was interrupted yesterday when I got a request for sample pages of my manuscript. The agent asking for a look at my material was the first to receive a query letter I'd drafted using a new approach. Correlation isn't necessarily causality, but it's quite a coincidence. I'm inclined to think that my previous query letters didn't sufficiently entice agents to read the manuscript, but that's how we learn.

I'll keep you updated as new information becomes available.

And if the aforesaid agent pops in, thank you for giving me a chance. Thanks also to anyone who's read my work, even if you couldn't make it past page one.

Watch More TV

My search for the new home of compelling narrative may have turned up an answer that I initially overlooked: TV.

Long regarded as a cultural wasteland, television has recently experienced a creative Renaissance. The movement toward superior writing, acting, and production value is being led by cable networks. By lavishing Hollywood blockbuster-sized budgets on their major projects, the likes of HBO, AMC, FX, and Showtime have managed to attract first rate talent.

Every novelist used to dream of getting a movie deal from a major studio. While that aspiration is still valid, TV has emerged as a medium capable of handling the intricacies of more complex narratives. Game of Thrones and Justified have proven that major cable networks can treat an author's work with greater respect and fidelity than the big studios.

A good friend once suggested that a hypothetical live action interpretation of my own fledgling fantasy universe could only be realized on cable. Recognizing the highly premature timing of such considerations (being as yet unpublished, much less having racked up enough sales to justify attention from other media), I will say that writing for TV has long held a certain appeal for me. I'm primarily a visual thinker: a trait that lends itself better to film and TV scripts than novels.

On the other hand, I've heard it said more than once from people who know what they're talking about that you really should have at least one novel under your belt before they'll let you have a shot at TV.

Is television the new home of challenging fiction? What's your opinion?

Middlemen

Can you think of a supporting character from a novel, TV, or film who really resonated with you--perhaps even more than the main character did? It's a weird phenomenon. The protagonist should be our main point of contact with the story. Secondary characters are there to get the far less glamorous jobs done. They're mediators who advance the plot and act as foils for the main character. That's why writers can get away with making second and third tier characters less well-rounded.

Sometimes supporting characters are strong enough to break out of the background and take center stage. I'm not talking about the Kramers and Boba Fetts of the fiction world, though. Today I'll shine a light on two fictitious second-stringers whose quiet excellence in support of mighty deeds goes largely unsung.

Jor-El
Not even being portrayed by the great Marlon Brando in Richard Donner's landmark 1978 Superman has gained the father of Kal-El the public esteem he deserves. I mentioned that supporting characters are mediators. This is the guy who mediated Superman to us. You're welcome.

Lest you accuse Jor-El of being one-note, he has much more to recommend him than being Superman's dad. Possessing a rare combination of intellectual brilliance and humble wisdom, this accomplished scientist eschewed his people's cold, decadent lifestyle for love of family. Failing to convince Krypton's people of their imminent doom despite his best efforts, Jor-El acted on his countercultural paternal love to give his son and a race of aliens he'd never met a chance at survival.

Remember: Jor-El's vision for Kal-El wasn't limited to flying around in a cape rescuing cats from trees. He knew what a potent symbol Superman could become and hoped that humanity would learn from his son's example.

Finrod Felagund
Chances are this name evokes only dim recognition, if any at all. That's a shame because Finrod is one of the greatest characters in Tolkien's legendarium. The Noldorin prince gets comparatively little page time and always serves a supporting role when he does show up, but his heroic pedigree is impossible to deny.

Finrod is Galadriel's brother. Though she gets far more attention in the Tolkien canon, he is far cooler. While the Lady of Lorien stands around giving wise if cryptic counsel, the Lord of Nargothrond goes out and gets things done. Finrod founded his own kingdom after the family tradition, but he didn't rest on his laurels. He went to battle against Morgoth, gave Barahir his ring to seal a life-debt (the one that Aragorn inherits as a major token of his kingship). Finrod makes good on the debt by joining Beren's quest to steal a Silmaril from Morgoth, during which he goes toe-to-toe with Sauron in a wizard's duel and dies killing a werewolf bare-handed.

Like Jor-El, Finrod's true greatness lies in his strong moral center. He's the only Noldor exile who didn't swear Feanor's oath but left Valinor out of loyalty to his friends. Also unlike the others he didn't stain his hands by slaying his own kin. His compassion and diplomacy paved the way for men's acceptance by and eventual alliance with elves. Loyalty defines Finrod, and Middle-Earth is a poorer place without him.

These are just two secondary characters that don't get nearly enough credit. Can you think of any more?

Bad Press

My hometown recently experienced flooding along its riverfront. Businesses and homes in a narrow stretch of downtown were affected. I started getting calls at work from business travelers asking me if the roads into town were passable, and if my workplace was underwater. I wondered why so many people had such an overblown conception of the flood's scale. Then I realized that they'd probably heard about the flood on their local news, either directly or secondhand.

An essay published in the Guardian claims that, like anything else, overconsuming news has detrimental effects.

I started suspecting as much when mainstream coverage of the 9/11 attacks turned into a morbid circus. Over a decade later, most major news outlets seem to have abandoned their original mission to keep people informed about events that affect their daily lives. Instead, stories are chosen and broadcast to elicit maximum anxiety, spread propaganda, and increase profits.

Here are a few questions I always keep in mind when consuming any news story:

How is this information relevant to me?

Is this event geographically or morally proximate to me?

What biases are evident in the reporting?

Who is sponsoring this network/newspaper/web site?

In journalism as in most other human enterprises, the old advice rings true: follow the money.