Just to let you know that I’ve finally get my arse into gear and you can now find a link to Angeline of the Woods on the Stories page, as well as a link to the Hebrew translation of Of Mice and Journeymen. About bloody time, eh?
Quick Update
August 21st, 2011 Posted in Writing
A long, long time ago, I wrote this post about Angeline of the Woods. I felt as if I levelled up while writing Angeline, as if my ability to tell a story finally clicked into place (telling a story well is, of course, another level entirely). It’s such a pleasure to see it among the fantastic fiction of Theaker’s Quarterly #36 (available free to download in a pleasing variety of formats).
Feathers is a character I’ve written for outside of Angeline, and one I’ll write for in future. He’s a bit stuffy and stoic, but also has a wonderful love for people that means he’s always going to be trying to fix someone’s problems. And Pace and Wander’s dimension manipulating experiments mean that he can always find someone with problems that need fixing. It gives me the chance to explore strange new worlds with the familiarity of a recurring character and framing device.
But Feathers is difficult to write for. He’s middle-class, educated, able-bodied, white, male… And he’s inviting himself into other people’s lives and solving their problems. Given that I’m interested in exploring different cultures, different beliefs, different psychologies and anything else outside my own life, it’s a problem.
What I really want to avoid is my dominant culture male coming into the world and lives of non-dominant culture individuals, and solving all the problems they can’t solve themselves. On the other hand, Feathers’ involvement in the resolution needs to be integral otherwise there’s no point in having him in the story. It’s a very thin line.
I tried to walk that line in Angeline. Feathers steps into the situation with the intention of saving his own life and to hell with anything else. However, the more he runs around trying to make everyone dance to his tune, the more he forgets why he went there. He ends up trying to solve everyone else’s problems and forgets about his own. In the end, he stands on the docks before Nickolai’s small flotilla of ships, and dares them to defy him.
Even if Feathers’ plan was flawless, Ingle has ideas of her own and no desire what-so-ever to take a back seat to anyone. Like Feathers, she takes the situation she finds herself in and tries to manipulate it to her advantage, to her own idea of how the story should end. Feathers is at first a nuisance and then a useful tool, providing a distraction while she deals with Nickolai’s ships.
As Ingle and Nickolai stand on the docks and lock eyes, the creaking of the ships and stares of the entire town in the background, they speak for themselves and decide their own fates. They follow the morals and desires they had been following long before Feathers appeared in their lives.
I’m slowly piecing together another Feathers story and so I’m very conscious of the potential troubles. Any person he meets is going to need a very good reason to change their mind about something important to them, and a speech and pretty smile from someone they’ve only known a few days isn’t even close to being enough. A lot of the time, someone they’ve only known a few days sacrificing their own life isn’t enough. Feathers is going to be largely clueless when it comes to the local geography and society; foraging for food, finding safe havens, knowing who to talk to, deciphering codes and any kind of local history are all knowledge and skills he’s going to have to rely on a native to supply. And if there’s a way to solve the problem that’s obvious and available to an almost stranger, it’s probably been tried many, many times before the stranger ever turned up.
What I need to remember, I think, is one of the golden rules of writing: Every character thinks that they’re the centre of the story.
Feathers is going to cause as many problems as he solves, if he’s lucky. He’s never going to be the hero of the hour, but he’s going to be around when things happen. He’s just as human as the rest of us, and so are all the people meets.
Just to let all you good people of the Internet know, I shall be without a connection for a period of time
See, I’m moving house and that means getting a connection set up for the new place. I’m sure you can all appreciate that’s never the easiest thing in the world.
So, until I’m back in the real world, I hope you all have a wonderful time. When I come back, expect posts about my new Kindle and Angeline of the Woods, which is now out in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #36!
Oh, and one last thing:
What I’ve Learned About How to Write in the Last Twelve Months
December 21st, 2010 Posted in Writing
Today being Yule, it seems like a good time to see if I’ve learned anything about writing during 2010.
In 2009, Of Mice and Journeymen, Mind Games and Professor Wincheart’s Radioactive Roadshow all found homes. That was from a total of eight submissions, according to my spreadsheet.
In 2010, Angeline of the Woods, Buckets of Light and Symphonie Magnifique have found homes, with Commodore Horitio Paul Neslon and the Clockwork Ghost making it onto the shortlist, which will be looked at in January. That’s out of at least 24 submissions (I say ‘at least’, because I lost the datastick with my spreadsheet on for a couple of months, so some subs aren’t on there). And, not to forget of course, Of Mice and Journeymen was translated into Hebrew.
Percentage-wise, 2009 would seem to be a better year. But. Buckets of Light and Symphonie Magnifique have (or will) both earned me money, as will Nelson and the Clockwork Ghost if it gets selected. And Angeline is going to be in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, which isn’t exactly a new and untested venue.
And also, of course, the stats mean that I’ve produced more work that I’ve considered submission quality, which is very definitely a good thing. I think I’m a better writer now than I was at the beginning of the year.
Speaking of being a better writer, here’s what I’ve learned over the past year:
1) If you’re cutting to get a story into a particular word count, the story isn’t going to work.
Narratives and prose need a bit of space to stretch and breath. If every single sentence is as taut as a drum skin, then the prose is going to feel bitty and under-developed. Like a good roasting joint, stories need a bit of fat on them to make them juicy and succulent.
2) It’s okay to let your main characters grandstand.
A short story isn’t a democracy and every character doesn’t need to get equal billing. If you’ve got a character who wants to steal the show, then let them. Give them the best lines, indulge their fancies and let them control the flow of the prose. If the character is compelling, then the reader will want to see them in the spotlight. But remember to kick the character up the backside at least once–no one likes a smart arse.
3) If it ain’t got that swing….
Plotting and writing a story should make you excited. It should make you smirk and grin and wonder if you’re being too self-indulgent in writing it. The whole narrative should have a spark, a life of its own. If you can’t find that spark–no matter how deeply buried it might be some times–then the story isn’t going to work. You need to be able to dance with your narrative, so if it ain’t got that swing, it don’t mean a thing.
4) Writing is part inspiration, part meticulous planning and part stumbling around in the dark and hoping you can fix it in the edit.
Creating a narrative is far more like gardening than engineering. Just like you need to know when to plant your seeds, when and how much to water them, what kind of soil they need to grow, how to keep the slugs off and everything else, your narrative needs the definitions, boundaries and structure which research and planning provides. But the ideas, the characters and the world are going to want to grow in a particular way and although you can guide them and prune them, if you try and constrict and force them you’re going to kill them. So having your character explain how they make their coffee in the morning because that’s what they want to talk about is fine. Spending a page talking about the migratory patterns of imaginary birds is fine. These things may not be part of The Plot, but they’re part of the story. If they’re not part of the story you’re trying to tell, then snip them off in the edit. But they may be part of the story you’re writing, even though you didn’t plan on them being there.
5) If you reach for the first character you find, you’ll find yourself.
This is one of the upshots of all my learning about power and privilege for the last year. Inside your head there’s this vast wall of expectations, built up by your personal experiences, prejudices, social conditioning and desire to see things which are familiar. It tricks us by being translucent, invisibly changing what we see in the world. If you try and create a story or a character or a world without pushing through the wall, you’ll have something which is little more than a replica of yourself. Unless you’re someone supremely spectacular, that’s not going to be particularly interesting for other people to read. People want to see themselves, not you, in fiction.
So, what can I hope for in 2011? Realistically, to keep on learning. Less realistically, a major book deal, to build my own house and start pre-production on my first feature film.. or maybe TV series, I’m kind of easy. Hey, sensible expectations are boring.
Happy Winterval all! As my dad says, ‘Tis the season for over-indulgence. Whatever you’re doing, enjoy it and share it!
