welcome to camp telophase

I spent some time yesterday taking notes from the post with an editor's critiques of fantasy novel openings that I linked in yesterday's post.

Looking at my notes, it seems to me that the starting of a fantasy novel (at least in today's fashion, and according to this editor) should focus on a character and an immediate, clear problem, mystery or tension with stakes high enough for the character to get the reader interested or intrigued, then pull the 'camera' out and give a quick overview of the situation and surroundings for context, flavored with the character's emotions. We should learn something unique about the character, world or concept.

Which, honestly, is the opposite of what so many self-pubbed books do. I think they're taking inspiration from movies and comics, which, at least in my memory, tend to start with overall establishing shots, then narrow into the character.
( I analyze the opening minute of Mad Max: Fury Road. Skip if you don't care. Thematic spoilers for the movie and character change. )
Amusingly enough, the famous Mad Max car gets captured quickly and Max never sees it again, IIRC, but its purpose there is dual: the glimpses of how its modified let us know what sort of world this is, and it provides continuity from the previous movies, so we know that this is Max, and to separate him from his prior self/worldview. Triple purposes, which is why it's so big and prominent in the opening.

Not in any particular order. This is just a small selection of the books I've come across or used, and basically all the ones I've read or downloaded from the library at work aren't on here because that's far, far too many to deal with. Links are Amazon affiliate links, for the hell of it.

Books I've used for research or inspiration: ( Read more... )

Books waiting in stacks (physical or digital) for me to get to:( Read more... )

Books I have in sample form on my Kindle to decide whether I want to drop the cash and put them in one of the aforementioned stacks:( Read more... )

I've been watching my brain start to slide into Revisions Mode as I near the end of Deadwater--my plan is to give myself a couple of weeks if I possibly can,* then print it out and read it all together as a book, making notes, before I swing into revising.

*I know months is often recommended, but ADHD. Sorry.

Anyway, I'd really like to play up moments of the sublime, numinous, and eldritch as much as I can, and thus I seek recommendations from you as to prose, fiction or nonfiction, that evokes those feelings in you. (Music and art recs also appreciated, but it's not my primary focus as I'm trying to feed words into my brain for this.)

Sublime, in the general Romantic (not little-r romantic) sense that's embodied in Kaspar David Friedrich's landscapes (7-min video on Friedrich here, article on the sublime in philosophy here), the sense of awe, respect, immanence and maybe even terror at perceiving things greater than yourself (which is why I think the eldritch is part of this). I tend to get it from contemplating deep time, deep space, and the nature writing of Robert MacFarlane, among others.

I also get it from that breed of manga and anime that slowly explores small mysteries, like Mushishi, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and Aqua and Aria (the ones set on a Mars that's terraformed to look like Venice).

The numinous (Wikipedia link) is closely related to the sublime, but for me it seems a little closer to the religious or sacred in that the sense of awe is related to other beings or intelligences, instead of just all things greater than oneself, if that makes sense. The "Piper at the Gates of Dawn," chapter in The Wind in the Willows, Mushishi, Mononoke (the stylized anime, not Princess Mononoke, although PM has its moments of that near the end with the forest spirit). Many parts of the Moomintroll books also have this.

Eldritch is of course on the awe-ful (in the old sense of the term) side of the sublime, and I'm looking for subtle eldritch, not the full-on ZOMG THE SOUL-CRUSHING TERROR, THE TENTACLEs, THE TENTACLES!!! that you get in full-on Lovecraftian pastiche, more the gnawing sense of creep you get when something is not right. While I appreciate T. Kingfisher's The Twisted Ones and the like, I'm looking for stuff that's more like the bits near the beginning, where the MC is just starting to feel things are off, and not the middle and end when the MC is smack in the middle of Weirdland.

Anyway, throwing that out there and seeing what y'all can come up with. Now it's back to the word mines to see how much of this story I can produce today. Woo!

A couple of people on my DW have been talking about their writing techniques. As I’ve recently left a couple of long comments on Reddit about mine, from the lofty heights of a total of 110,000 words in two years on a third-draft-stage novella and unfinished novel, I’m posting them here. (Mostly because they were to people who were in the same place I was before the switch flipped and I was able to actually produce a coherent story, not because I’m an expert. And I want to keep them for reference as I’ve posted variations of them several times.)

( Read more... )

1. dewline posted this thing on art from Tumblr and, oof, that one cuts deep.

2. While drinking tea and attempting to wake up this morning, I watched a video from Lessons from the Screenplay on scene construction: Gone Girl - Don't Underestimate the Screenwriter (YouTube, 7:06, spoilers if you haven't read the book or seen the movie). He talks about how John Truby, in his The Anatomy of Story (which focuses on constructing stories for screenplays but which I've found useful) says that scenes should be constructed in a manner in which the beginning of the scene frames what the scene is about, then it funnels down to a point, with the most important word or line of dialogue stated last.

Naturally I started to scoff at the "should be," because I am somewhat contrary by nature and "shoulds" always get my dander up, but then...I realized I sort of do this naturally, and this is why: First, as I've known for a long time, I tend to talk in stories, not conversation. I got this from my mother, and we can spend a long time on the phone because we'll just be trading off stories instead of talking talking. This also means I get frustrated in conversations with normal people who talk normally because they don't realize I'm building to a punchline/climax and naturally return dialogue to something I'm saying, which gets frustrating for me because in my mind they're interrupting and screwing up my pacing and in their mind they're carrying on a dialogue. Secondly, as I've always been interested in humor and humor-like structure, I tend to structure my stories so there's a setup, a middle, and a punchline.

And that's, er, framing the scene, funneling it to a point, and stating the most important word or line (or thought, not necessarily dialogue, since I don't do screenplays) last. Er. Um. OKAY THEN.

(NOTE THAT I JUST DID THAT EXACT THING WITH THIS #2 BLOG POST ITEM. UNCONSCIOUSLY, WITHOUT REALIZING IT UNTIL JUST NOW. "Er. Um. OKAY THEN." IMPARTING MY EMOTION AT THIS REALIZATION, WHICH WAS THE POINT OF THE STORY. AAAAARGGGHHHHHH. AND THIS CAPSLOCKING AT YOU COULD BE CONSIDERED A SECONDARY PUNCHLINE. AAARRGGGGH)

(IT'S PUNCHLINES ALL THE WAY DOWN.)

(THAT WAS #3)

3. And another writing thing: I expect there's plenty of narrative tics I have that I don't notice, but I cannot bring myself to write that a character opens their hand for any reason, because Lois McMaster Bujold's characters open their hands CONSTANTLY to show emotion or emphasis and now I'm, like, if I have it happen even one time then I will never be able to unsee it.

And now you will never unsee it then next time you read any Bujold.

4. I have chosen a reward for myself for finishing the Deadwater draft, and it is this: Warriors for a Living: The Experience of the Spanish Infantry during the Italian Wars, 1494-1559. It is an academic small-press book and as such costs $144+shipping (because why would they ship free for a $144 book?!) and it is EXACTLY WHAT I NEED for the early-modern world of soldiers and mercenaries I have created. It explains lots of things about daily life in the Spanish army (which, frankly, is similar to daily life in most European armies at the time, especially since the army is fighting in Italy), and has lots of detail I'd never think of. Such as: captains would embezzle from the Crown by hiring random men to basically say "Here!" when the names of dead soldiers or deserters were called at the roster for pay (when the pay actually caught up to them, which was rare enough). The captain would keep most of that man's pay and pay off the random guy. So you see, useful for details and flavor and backstory, but too expensive to just buy, so REWARD.*



* The library I work at has an ebook version but you can only download a certain number of pages, and they have enough safeguards on it otherwise to make copying it other ways more hassle then it's worth. And I'd rather get the book legitimately anyway, so please don't bother telling me all the ways I can pirate the book.