Monthly Archives: August 2018

Post #36 – The Dearly Departed

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8/30/18

The speculative fiction world already lost at least three well known members this year, and we still have many months to go. First Ursula Le Guin went. Then Gardner Dozois. Most recently Harlan Ellison passed. For those with a morbid curiosity, there have been other genre author passings this year, and Locus maintains an obituaries page.

Some of these you may know, some maybe not. Everyone probably knew of Le Guin. I own The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dipossessed. The psychological depth to these books astounds me to this day.

Let’s also not forget her Earthsea series, most of which I own. The world she created there was so rich and interesting I think it rivaled that created by Tolkien and George R.R. Martin. She could have played in that sandbox for decades with no trouble finding stories to tell. I was sad that she didn’t. I long term goal of mine is to create a world that interesting.

I also knew of Harlan Ellison. His short story, “‘Repent Harlequin,’ said the Ticktock Man,” is a classic. I own it as well.

I was not familiar with Dozois, but his bio reads like I expect mine too if I ever become a better writer. He primarily wrote short stories, with only a couple books spread over a decades long carrier. He spent the end of his carrier as an anthology editor. While I don’t expect I’ll head down that road ever, it makes sense for a short story author to move on to editing collections of short stories. Mike Resnick, the editor of Galaxy’s Edge, has a nice tribute to Dozois in issue 34 (September/October 2018).

So whose next? Mike Resnick noted in one of his recent The Editor’s Word columns for Galaxy’s Edge Magazine how many sci-fi greats are of advanced age, e.g in their 70s or 80s. He calls out Robert Silverberg, who’s 83, as one example. Names I pulled out of a hat include Joe Haldeman, who is 75, Piers Anthony, who is 84, and Alan Dean Foster, who is 72. Resnick himself is 76. Statistically, we could lose any one of these at any moment.

These are major contributors to sci-fi literature, and they will be missed. In the past, when titans of the genre passed, others emerged. Who will emerge now?

They probably already have emerged, and I don’t know it. I don’t have time to read the Nebula and Hugo winners every year, though I assume that’s a good place to start. I really wish I did, since I’d like to win one or both of those.

The only sci-fi author that blew me away in recent years was Dan Simmons with his Hyperion series. Those four books were phenomenal. And he’s primarily a horror writer! The last in that series came out in 1996, and he’s also 70. So neither are very new.

If you know of a more recent sci-fi author I must read, let me know in the comments. I’m looking for those future legends who will fill the void when our current ones depart for the great supermassive black hole in the sky.

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Post #35 – Exposition, My Old Nemesis

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8/23/18

Like any new writer (and maybe any old writer?), I regularly fall prey to the exposition trap, or info dump. I feel I need to set the stage, so I end up writing paragraph after paragraph, if not page after page, of backstory. My first flash fiction piece was 1000 words of exposition.

Not surprisingly, editors haven’t accepted my stories containing lots of exposition. Benjamin Kinney, an editor at Escape Pod, always provides me with one or two sentences of critique when rejected a story. For two such stories, the critique focused on too much exposition bogging the story down.

When I reviewed those stories again, he wasn’t wrong. One began with four pages of exposition, the other a modest two. I revised this latter story to spread out the exposition. A little at the beginning, a little in the next scene, and then the remainder in a third scene. And the story is better for it.

The story with four pages of exposition is more of a hard sci-fi story, and I’m struggle with how to avoid the info dump. Then I saw this article published by Writers Digest.

First, I’m pleased that others recognize how difficult it is to avoid the info dump in sci-fi. When a writer cannot assume a reader knows certain things about a setting or even a people, more exposition is needed for a reader to understand the where, when, how, and who of a story. That’s the problem faced when writing sci-fi. The story often doesn’t take place in the here and now with the usual suspects. It takes place in the future, on a planet in a distant solar system, inhabited by four-armed aliens.

Second, page after page of exposition used to be the norm. I recall many classic sci-fi stories written this way. I remember entire chapters of exposition, and that didn’t bother me. Apparently, that’s not what readers (or is it just the editors?) want to see now. Readers are writers’ customers. If we don’t satisfy our customers, we don’t get published. So now we writers must be more sophisticated with our exposition.

Remember the flash fiction piece I mentioned above that was all exposition? One beta reader pointed out that issue and suggested I expand the story by telling it from the viewpoint of the antagonist, who was mentioned only in passing. That’s what I did, and I’m pleased with where the story went. I even added to that story, which is part of the novella I planned to submit to Tor earlier this month.  Alas, as noted in Post #34, I didn’t quite nail down the ending to that expanded story; so it remains a work in progress.  Once I do, I believe I’ll have a better novella ready for submission somewhere.

I also began revising the story with four pages of exposition.  I took the paragraphs in those pages and spread them, one or two at a time, throughout other scenes.  I haven’t yet cleaned up the flow of those paragraphs.  Right now they read like someone picked them up from elsewhere and dropped them wherever they landed, which is mostly true.  It’s on my to do list, and once again I believe the story will be better for it.

I have a plan for the next time I write a piece with an intricate backstory or complex setting or characters.  I’ll write out the exposition but keep it to the side.  Then, as I draft the story, I’ll drop in pieces of that exposition as I go.  I did something similar when drafting the sequel to the story with four pages of exposition.  Since I already knew the backstory, I could easily insert that in nuggets as I went along drafting the new story.  This technique made writing the sequel much easier.  I hope the same holds true when drafting a completely new piece.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve struggled with how to handle exposition and how you mastered it (or still are working to master it).

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Post #34 -Novella Submission

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8/16/18

This was the week.  Monday, August 13 was Tor’s deadline for novella submissions.  Followers of this blog know I’ve worked most of the summer on combining three of my unpublished stories into a single novella.  This involved expanding the third such story from a flash fiction piece to a significantly lengthier piece to meet Tor’s minimum length requirement of 20,000 words.  While working on this project, I encountered two issues, which I detailed in Post #31 (involving not submitting my best work) and Post #32 (involving a submissions dilemma).

Well, I resolved both issues by not submitting the novella.  This was a difficult decision, but I believe the right one.  Because of the looming deadline, I sent the finished novella to my beta readers with not much turnaround time.  Two managed to get through the 21,100 words, and both had the same comment—the ending didn’t resolve anything.  In other words, it wasn’t an ending at all.

The interesting part is, I had the same critique.  Often, I need a beta reader to point out a flaw in a work.  This time, I knew the flaw going in.  In order to meet the minimum word count, I had added a scene beyond the ending of the original third story.  I like the added scene, but it opened up an entirely new avenue of the story, which I then didn’t explore.  I was rushing to finish the story, so I’d have time to edit it and send it out to my beta readers.  So the story has no proper ending; it just stops, and my beta readers were left unsatisfied. If they felt that way, there’s no way the editors at Tor would accept it.

That’s when I decided not to submit the novella.  I already had qualms about not submitting my best work, and my beta readers’ comments only solidified those qualms.  This is my longest work to date, and I want to do it right.  I want to have the best chance at cracking the pinnacle of sci-fi publishing.

So, I have a new plan.  Initially, I’ll chop off the first of the three stories.  As I expanded the end of the novella, I realized the first part no longer fit.  The story had morphed into something different.  With the first story separated from its sequels, I’ll start submitting that story to markets again as a stand alone piece.

Then, I’ll continue to take the novella wherever the last scene leads.  I haven’t figured out what that entails yet, but I’m excited to find out.  Once I’ve written a proper ending, I’ll see if my beta readers agree.  Hopefully, Tor or another market will be open at that time for novella submissions because mine will be ready to head out the door.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever purposely failed at a writing goal because you knew it was the better way to proceed.

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Post #33 – The Running Plotter

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8/9/18

I’m a plotter. I can’t deny or hide from it. Even when I’m stuck on a plot point and say I’ll write up to that point and see where the story takes me, I still can’t be a pantser. I write to the sticking point and then get no further until I’ve plotted the next part.

When do I plot? Thank you for asking. I don’t sit down and have brainstorming sessions to develop a plot. That sounds like something a professional would do. I don’t have time for that. When I have time to write, I need to write not plot.

Instead, I plot at two other times: when running and when falling asleep. I didn’t develop into a runner until law school and even then I didn’t develop into a decent runner until years later. I’d get through runs in those first years by thinking about things. An early favorite was naming all a band’s albums, like Pink Floyd or Tom Petty.

Now I plot during my runs. I don’t listen to music or podcasts. Those mess with my pace. Plus I think it’s safer to listen to my surroundings. Keeping my mind from wandering is a constant battle, but when it doesn’t, I plot. I’ve come up with some decent plot points. I now find runs almost unbearable when I’m not working on a new piece and therefore don’t have anything to plot. As an alternative, I’m often able to develop a story on the spot. Sometimes I’m not. Recently, it’s been the latter, so I’ve worked on plotting blog posts instead. Got to keep the weekly ideas coming!

The other time I plot is in that netherland of consciousness found between wakefulness and asleep. I use plotting as a sleep aide. No Ambien for me. Thinking about that next plot point usually puts me right to sleep. It doesn’t even matter if I come up with the next plot point or if I remember it when I do. Sleep is it’s own reward. I find when the plot point does come to me, I readily remember it when I turn next to writing that story. It may take me nights, or weeks, but eventually the next plot point works itself out. In the meantime, I sleep soundly.

Let me know in the comments when you plot, if you are a plotter. If you’re a pantser, what do you think about while running and falling asleep?

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Post #32 – Submission Dilemma 2

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8/2/18

I have another submission dilemma. I’ve talked for weeks here about the novella I’m writing for a Tor call for submissions. The submission window closes in mid-August.

The novella consists of three linked stories I wrote over the past year, the last of which I greatly expanded to meet the call’s minimum word count. Before combining and expanding these stories, I had submitted each to various markets. None were accepted.  That’s part of why I decided to go the novella route.

When I made that decision, I stopped submitting those three stories to markets as a rejection came in. The problem is one of the three is still under consideration at a market. It’s been there since the first week of May.

My experience with this market’s response time varies. Twice, this market rejected my submission in under a week, but another time this market took just shy of three months to reject my submission. Was the latter story held for further consideration? I’d like to think so, but the eventual rejection was not a higher tier one according to Rejectionwiki. Now I’m approaching the same three month mark with the story I submitted in May. The Submission Grinder says this market typically has a 24 day response time. (If that’s true, then my stories rejected in under a week must have had something wrong with them. Either they were terrible, or I didn’t follow the submission guidelines.)

Neither the market this short story is at or Tor accepts simultaneous submissions. What do I do if I don’t receive the missing rejection? Do I submit the novella to Tor on the assumption the short story will be rejected? Do I hold off on submitting to Tor and hope it has another call for novellas in the future? Do I submit to Tor and if the short story rejection turns out to be an acceptance, do I withdraw my submission from Tor or hope the short story’s rights revert to me before Tor publishes the novella (which assumes Tor accepts the novella)? In that case, is the novella a reprint? Does it even matter when the short story is about 5500 words of a 21,000 word novella?

Let me know in the comments what you think is my best course of action.

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