Let's Talk About Sex

Show of hands, who likes to bone? Bang? Go heels to Jesus? Intercourse? Everyone does. If you haven't raised your hand, you're either embarrassed to be reading this in a room full of people or you, yourself, are full of shit. Sex so thoroughly dominates our culture that I have, in the past, taken bets to see if someone could give me any aspect of society I couldn't resolve to sex. That isn't a bad thing. Biologically, we're programmed for sex. Tons of other things too, sure, but in a society where we no longer have to worry about hunting for food or building shelter or finding a watering hole where lions don't hang out, the only basic need that isn't, in essence, provided for us from the womb is the need to reproduce.

So sex is this natural thing, and its fantastic. Understandably there are people who refrain from the actual act for various reasons from religion to trauma, but sex has still impacted their lives in such a profound way that they abstain from it. I feel that novels are like that.

See, movies include sex. They, in fact, don't even usually make that big of a deal about it anymore. Paintings have depicted sexual acts for, oh, about a million years (citation needed). Poems can range from the unbelievably passionate to the unbelievably debaucherous (and that's just Walt Whitman). Hell, sculptures of people fucking have existed for centuries. So where's all the sex in novels? If they can film a sex scene for professional wrestling, why can't we have a little?

I know, Romance novels include tons of sex. And I've even seen the occasional thriller with a sex scene. You know who doesn't? Fantasy. Science fiction. Honestly, of all the books I've ever read, I recall two sex scenes (and both were very well done) in all of the annals of fantasy history. Both in the last fifteen years. The first was in Stephen King's Dark Tower series (there are actually a few clips in the entire series, but the scene that stands out is the Gunslinger giving it to a demon) and the second was in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time.

I make no secret of my affinity for sex, both in life and in art. So my fiction tends to include quite a bit of it, but the difference between a well-written scene and a poorly written scene is the difference between tasteful nude photography and pictures of a girl getting gangbanged by a soccer team. Here's an example of sex:

The sprawling, four-posted bed boasted a canopy of black that gave it a sensuously dark appeal and the cherrywood furnishings were further testament to her richness of taste. The double doors clicked shut behind him and he watched as Kiena shrugged from her shoulders. The gown tumbled down the length of her body slowly, reluctantly leaving her skin and revealing the woman beneath. She turned her head, glancing over her shoulder at him and he reacted. He lunged for her like a caged thing, hungry with passion. His arms encircled her waist, turning her toward him and lifting her at the same time. His lips found hers and though the coiled tension in his body was sufficient to crush her in his grasp, his touch was gentle. His skin felt afire and the dull ache that had accompanied him through the long months of separation became a searing, unbearable need. She fumbled with his shirt and finally gave in and tore it off him. She cast the ruined cloth away and raked her fingernails down his broad chest. In the carnage his boots found their way free of his feet and he hardly heard them fall heavily to the floor while she worked on the rest of him.

She wrapped one hand, like hot silk, around him and tugged. She guided him toward her and he threw back his head when she enveloped him. They tensed together, soundless cries rising from their lips when he penetrated her. Hyleth toppled forward, bearing his lover down with him and they crashed onto the bed like two celestial dancers falling to earth. She panted, crying out his name as her fingers wound in his hair. He arched his back, the fine toned muscles conducting their own intricate dance beneath the thick cover of his flesh. Hyleth drove himself into her with an urgency like nothing he had felt before and she raised her hips to meet him. Snared, his eyes rolled back into his head for a moment and he was nearly overcome. The knight mastered himself and looked down into her fiery blue eyes. He brought his mouth to hers, silencing her outcries of pleasure with a single, gentle kiss. She shuddered and rode the violent, ecstatic wave of her climax. Kiena bit down on his lower lip, and Hyleth relinquished the last shred of control he had thus far maintained. His body tensed and relaxed spasmodically and he collapsed half beside her and half atop her.

This is a rough scene, from an early chapter of For Glory, but the point I want to make is that nowhere does this become what I'd call explicit. In fact, the word penis doesn't even appear (much less things like dong or spunk cannon). It remains descriptive without being gratuitous. On those merits alone, perhaps it shouldn't be included in a novel. Obviously superfluous words and scenes are things to be avoided. However, I think it does serve a purpose, which is why I'm inclined to leave it in the narration. This is a very descriptive, very physical way to show the reader that these two characters have feelings for one another. In this case, those feelings are translated through raw lust, and the scene needs some work to actually convey the emotion underneath, but it does exist.

Too often we're told two characters are attracted to one another. Or that they're in love. I want to see that for myself, I want my readers to see that for themselves. Dialogue is great, internal monologue is great. Action is better. Combining those three things, that is how a writer effectively conveys emotion.

Obviously, sex scenes aren't mandatory and they aren't a substitute for good storytelling. They are a tool, like anything else. There is absolutely a line between effective use and over saturation.  In fiction, they should be used sparingly but, if it fits in the context of the story, they should be used. That is up to your discretion as a writer. I'm just here to encourage. 

I've included two actual scenes in this novel, two scenes in hundreds of thousands of words. I've alluded to others, using the same tricks that fantasy writers have been using for decades, but I included two scenes written in all their glory. Both of them include different characters, different environments, and different circumstances. One is toward the beginning of the novel, in the first act (which is a trend I'm noticing in my writing) and the other is toward the end of the second act. One is meant to convey love, passion, a carelessness that introduces readers to the state of this world. The other is an act of lust, an infatuation, two people clinging to one another in a time of unimaginable darkness.

I've always felt that leaving sex out of a story, or intentionally stepping over it, somehow lessened the impact on those relationships. Maybe that's just me being a pervert, but I encourage you to try it. It may just be that it suits you, and  that, after all, is the whole point.

Deviantly Yours,

-S.R.

The Importance of Discipline

Today, I watched The Pacifier. It was on, don't judge me. If you haven't seen it, the premise is basically the same as Kindergarden Cop or that movie where Jackie Chan did exactly the same thing. Vin Diesel is a badass Navy SEAL and then, in the course of his mission, ends up protecting/babysitting a group of troublesome kids from an upper-middle class white family. The thing that stuck out to me about this movie, and the reason I bring it up now, is that Diesel's character approaches a number of issues from the kids' behavior to directing an amateur production of The Sound of Music (seriously) with the same solution: needs more discipline. This is used to humorous effect, what with the kids crawling on their bellies and doing drills and shooting Taliban insurgents (I may have made one of those up).

I think that applies to writers. The real key, the real work of writing, is self-discipline.

I'm not harping here. I'm not the most disciplined person. I'm overweight and I eat poorly. I was in the best shape of my life at sixteen, when I had a football coach shouting at me through drills and weight training. Not to say I didn't enjoy those things. I still do, in fact, but I need constant support or I just...stop. I've struggled with smoking and other, less savory things, in life. All a lack of self-discilpine. Don't feel bad for me, though, that isn't the point. The point is, you need discipline.

In King's On Writing, he gives an example of his own method. He writes two thousand words every day. If he finishes something, he sets it aside and starts something new. If he is halfway through a sentence, he stops and leaves himself a note so he knows where to pick up the next day. He allows, of course, that every writer will have a different method and that what works for him may not work for someone else, but look at his body of work and tell yourself that discipline didn't have anything to do with it.

Not the quality of his work, mind you. I'm talking quantity. The quality of any writer's work has a lot to do with the amount of time they dedicate to writing, but it also requires raw talent. I don't want to discuss that here. Not in-depth. Suffice to say, discipline and raw talent will take you far. But raw talent without discipline? Good luck.

Ideally, you should write every day. Right now, I'm in a fortuitous position that makes that fairly easy. I'm unemployed. Not a bad thing to be, not when you're trying to get your writing off the ground (not a good thing either, naturally, don't get fired just so you can have time to write). Now, should you write for four hours? That's up to you. The amount of time you have to dedicate to writing will vary with your obligations and your lifetsyle. The important thing is to dedicate that time. Buckle down and make yourself do it. Have a free half hour between class and soccer practice? Boom, write. Have a three hour break between jobs? Boom, write.

One thing about our society is that most of us that are trying to juggle a thousand things, have a fairly regular schedule. That makes finding time to write a little easier. You know when you have to be at work, at school, grocery shopping, doing laundry, orbiting the earth in a hot air balloon, whatever. Your life is your own. I'm just saying that if you want to make it, you have to work on your writing.

I don't schedule myself these days. I used to, back when I was in school or when I had to write around a job. I'd schedule my writing time and it was tough to stick to, but I did it. I wrote for two hours some days, forty-five minutes other days. It varied based on the day of the week, but I always made room for it. Now, well, things are a bit different.

These days I get up around mid-morning, straighten up the apartment, walk the dog, check my e-mail and spend a few hours loitering about on the internet or playing Skyrim. Some days I go and do odd jobs or visit my parents. Once the hottest part of the day is gone, I sit at my desk in this little nook in my livingroom, beside a grand window that looks out over the yard and a copse of trees behind the building and spend my evenings writing. Some days I get to it earlier, other days I don't get into the meat of my writing until the sun has gone down, but I spend at least two hours writing every day.

I split my time a little unevenly. I spend most of it working on new projects. The blogs or Skyborn, mostly, get my attention just about every day. I try to devote a half hour of most days to the edits I'm working on. I'm sure as I progress into the story I'll run into problems that take some time to work out in my head and, while I work on those, I'll devote more time to Star Rider or Eve.

Just to give you an idea of the difference that little bit of discipline makes, when I started writing the first draft of Eve of the Dragonspeaker I was in seventh grade. I didn't finish it until I graduated from high school. Now, allowing for a few re-writes and mishaps, I'd say it took me more than five years to write a single draft. I finished the second draft my sophmore year of college. That's another three years. So two drafts, each about 300,000 words, and it took me more than eight years.

I started For Glory that same year and finished it two months ago. So three years and roughly 500,000 words. See the difference?

More importantly, I started this current project about three weeks ago. I've already written about twenty pages of notes for Skyborn, the first three chapters, and every single post on this blog. AND (but wait, there's more!) I've edited the first two chapters each of Eve and Star Rider.

All the difference is in the details, you see?

Now the most common argument you'll hear from writers when you tell them they need to be more disciplined is some bullshit about not being able to force creativity. They want to give you the idea that their ability to write (or paint or anything) is some cosmic force that can't be stifled by foolish mortal concepts like schedules.

Give me a break. Look, I know you can't force yourself to have ideas. I know that. But if you're passionate about a project (and you'd better be) you won't have to. See, you're not forcing creativity. You're channeling it. Rather than random flashes of inspiration, conditioning yourself this way will help you turn those floods into a steady stream. Sure, you'll still get the occasional crushing wave of ideas, but you can handle them if you've taught yourself to write daily.

Some days will be hard, but if you're suffering with Writer's Block, (and you won't suffer nearly as much once you get disciplined, trust me) on one project then move onto another. The key isn't to force yourself into a linear path. You can juggle as many projects as you like, and move from one to the next at your leisure.

I don't care what you write, as long as you write every day.

Devotedly Yours,
-S.R.

The Dreaditorial Process (Part 2)

Turns out, I'm a man of my word. It's been long awaited (by exactly two of you, I'm sure, for about five days) but this is the first official update on the dreaded editing (get it!?) of both Eve of the Dragonspeaker and Star Rider. At the lovely and talented Friday's suggestion, I've decided to start with a chapter by chapter edit. I like this idea for both pieces for a number of reasons.

Firstly, with Eve, I never actually took any notes. As a consequence, I expect the story to be just littered with issues. Plot holes, continuity problems, all manner of things that are going to collectively kick me right in the testicles. However, the actual set-up of the novel and the way it flows between chapters is excellent. Each chapter, at least for the first dozen or so, is set in a different area. Think of it as instances in World of Warcraft. Each of these locations exists, for the duration of the chapter, as a completely separate entity from the rest of the world. So I can shape that world, Khilanth, as I choose. Likewise, this means I can take notes on both the edits I need to make and some general things like character appearances and geography. I've separated these notes into various categories (and different documents as well as folders) to keep them organized and easily accessible.

Since Eve was written entirely in a single Word Document (rookie mistake), I'm splitting the chapters off one at a time as I go through them. This way, I can quickly reference something that happened in a chapter rather than trying to slough back through hundreds of thousands of words. The documents don't actually take up much of my already limited memory, which is great. Additionally, this leaves me with the original text, the notes on what changes I think should be made, and the text after I made the changes. So for me, being a narcissist and also demanding instant gratification, I can actually see my progress and my swollen ego will continue to bask in its own awesome glory.

Now, before I move onto Star Rider I should note that the best way I find to do this kind of editing is to read the entire chapter before you start making any changes. If you absolutely have to do something, write your notes on the first read-through but don't actually change anything. On the second read, go ahead and make the most glaringly obvious changes, and note them. Then go through with your nit-pickiest comb and make the final touches (on this draft). Just flying through it once might help you with the general structure of the story but, trust me, you're going to miss a ton of seemingly minor issues that will haunt you later like that octogenarian fisherman you hit with your car two summers ago and dumped in the ocean. Little aside- that's how you avoid copyright laws.

I liked the idea of using this method on Star Rider because the guy who wrote it the first time is a douchebag. By douchebag I mean, Star Rider reads like a mixture of screenplay and novella, except it randomly changes verb tense and is 400,000 words long. The traditional chapter structure is missing, is what I mean. So I've had to change my approach somewhat.

To begin with, I'm converting it manually from handwritten on aging yellow notebook paper from the 1970s, to a flashy Word Document. Typing something word-for-word isn't among my strengths. It is tedious and boring and it makes me murderously angry. So as I work with the story, I'm structuring it by chapter, then noting and editing each chapter before moving onto the next. This way, I build it from the ground up and it allows me to more seamlessly blend new ideas into the story, while I fix the old, inherent issues.

Actually, that's most of the reason I went with this method for Star Rider. It made structuring the story much more simple and, although I explored where ideas come from earlier today in this entry I think its relevant here as well, the more I structured it and found where I needed to tweak things the more ideas I was flooded with for how this story can really work regardless of the extra effort it takes to update it.

So, to surmise everything I've just said, I've officially started editing both pieces and the method I chose has made it remarkably smooth. Once I've done the chapter-by-chapter edits, my idea is to do a complete read-through of the novels and then, with luck, hand them off to a few incredible readers for some additional feedback before sending them off for publication. I should take a picture of the sheer number of submission envelopes I own just for that purpose. Maybe I will, for next time.

Yes, there will be a next time. After all, I'm a man of my word.

Dreadfully Yours,
-S.R.

Mommy, Where Do Plots Come From?

I've read a number of interviews with writers, from all parts of the writing world, and one of the most common questions I've seen is (and I'm paraphrasing) "Where do you get your ideas?" Now, I hate to keep going back to the same wells, but in this case I feel that its too good to pass up, so I won't. In the introduction to his Dark Tower series, specifically The Gunslinger, Stephen King says that most of what writers say about their own work (he's talking about introductions, I'm applying it more generally) is bullshit. The truth is, some questions like this don't actually have answers.

For instance, I could say that the original idea for Skyborn came from an Amon Amarth song, but that wouldn't be true. Varyags of Miklagaard did give me an idea. A group of northern warriors under an honor contract to defend the emperor of a southern land. And Nightfall by Blind Guardian gave me the idea that the central character should be one of these warriors, and that the emperor should die. And Courtney gave me the idea that this character should be a woman.

So, alright, I have a bunch of small ideas, but how do they come together? How do they coalesce into a plot? How do I take a female warrior in service to the emperor, an emperor who is murdered at some point, and create a story out of it?

Beats me.

I think the way ideas form, at least initially, is one of the great mysteries of art. I've seen lyrics and poems and all manner of ideas that arose from people I know very well that, frankly, I would never have thought of myself. How'd they come up with that? Nobody knows, dude. I think the way ideas come to a writer seemingly from the ether is one of the great mysteries that still exist in art.

That's where the real magic of it lies.

Sure, you can trace back the genesis of some of those ideas. And then some of them just crash into you. I wrote an entire novel that sets the stage for Eve of the Dragonspeaker about six years after I started it. I was driving back to North Carolina from Christmas break and I got bombarded with one thing after another. I had to pull over and start writing it down just so I could think clearly enough to keep driving down I-95. On the other hand, I'm toying with this idea to make all the chapter titles in Skyborn rock-n-roll or metal songs. I've been fielding this idea for a while and since Skyborn was originally brought to mind by music, and I've thought a great deal about music and how it influences my writing, it seems like a good project to try.

Let's go back to that Prologue story though. I can remember the flood of ideas washing over me, plot details and characters. I knew immediately it was going to be the Empire Strikes Back of that series (there are probably 12 novels worth of plots for that world just swimming around in my brain and notes. My brainnotes), it was going to be terribly dark. I remember a classmate's advice from my first year in college to "kill everyone and leave no room for a sequel". Good advice. Except there are twelve sequels. So, in a way, I wanted to write this as an exercise to prove a point. I'm not sure now what that point was (that fantasy novels always inspire sequels?) but I'm certain at 20 years old it seemed like a good one.

Anyway, moving on.

So I have this idea for a novel where everyone dies that sets the stage for the actual series (something like Robert Jordan's New Spring and how it sets up his Wheel of Time series, only with more means-spirited character killing on my part) and no idea where it came from. But, once that idea shows up, a thousand others come raining out of nothingness like its fucking Space Invaders. Why? Why does one idea (not even necessarily a big one) suddenly open up the flood like a levy in New Orleans?

And why can it be after such a length of time? I haven't looked at or thought about Eve of the Dragonspeaker in three or four years. And yet, randomly, I'll have a spark of inspiration that I just have to jot down because I've suddenly just fixed a plot hole in that novel.

I wish I had the answers. I truly do. I think its one of Stephen King's "tools", that ability to have an idea strike you like a meteorite. But it should give you hope, if you're struggling with a novel of your own (or anything creative, really) and just haven't figured it all out yet. One day, randomly, it will hit you. Where'd it come from? Better off asking where babies came from, sugar.

Quizzically Yours,
-S.R.

The Dreaditorial Process

I don't like to edit my work. In fact, I don't do it. I write poems once and, although I frequently read over them, I will not edit them. On the exceedingly rare occasion that I make a change, it is usually at the suggestion of someone that has read the poem. Even more seldom, I will make the change solely on my own but even this can hardly be called editing. The same is true with blogs. Or news articles. Or essays or college papers. I wrote them, once, and rarely ever touched them again.

It is something of a gift, I suppose (and humbly so) that I can most often compose these things fully with very little editing. I attribute that mostly to my forethought. Nothing ever goes down on paper stream-of-conscious. I have an idea and I work on that idea for some time. With poems (and the reason my poetry tends to run fairly short) I typically get them fully-formed and I'll play around with the actual verse and line structures as I write. With blogs and other sorts of extrapolative writing, I tend to wait until I have a fair idea of what I'm going to say before I sit down to start writing. Occasionally I'll even leave off if I run out of steam before I've reached any meaningful conclusion.

The rest of that gift I attribute to my massive brain, but that's neither here nor there. (Seriously, guys, its just, its so big, you don't even know.)

The point is, that my issue in writing lies with the editing that is inherently involved. Sure, those essays all got high marks and the poems are typically well-received and even the blogs (although I've noticed the occasional grammatical error and gone back to fix it) are mostly solid on the first try. Even that doesn't mean they don't deserve editing. Perhaps they don't need editing (but then, I've seen a few of my older blog posts that could use more than a fine-toothed comb), but they would very likely benefit from it.

The big issue then, of course, is novel-length fiction. For the sake of brevity we'll include novella-length and short stories in there as well (I'm not prone to them because I'm long winded, but the one promising short story I have has a number of kinks to work out). When it comes to writing novels, especially when you don't take any notes or do any meaningful planning (as was the case with my work for so long) you're bound to have glaring inconsistencies, scenes that plain don't work, issues with voice and continuity and a slew of other problems, catastrophic and mundane, that make the work, shall we say, less than polished.

Its worthy of note that I enjoy editing, commenting, collaborating, and critiquing material that isn't my own. I feel that the process is very informative, very helpful, and I'm as grateful to the people that ask for my opinions (or proofreading services) on their own work as the people who offer their services to mine. I simply can't be bothered to read and edit my own material.

I'm changing that. Slowly.

In his book On Writing, Stephen King suggests (and I've read and seen and heard it in countless places since finishing that fine book) that when you complete something, be it a novel or a haiku, to set it aside and work on something different for a period of time. Don't look at it, don't think on it (at least, not intentionally), don't focus on it. Let your mind become engrossed in another project. Only after you have some distance from that work, should you go back and explore it. I like this idea. I like it a lot.

For me, the process has always gone one of two ways: Either I'm so pleased with what I've just read that I overlook the things that need work and puff myself up about how great I am, or, I find so many unbelievable shortcomings that I start over from scratch (once again, not taking notes or planning) and re-write the entire thing. My first novel, Eve of the Dragonspeaker, has been re-written half a dozen times in the ten-ish years since I started writing it. That's 300,000 plus words. Re-written at least six times. Holy shit. What a waste, right? So I finished it, back in college, and I haven't looked at it since. I picked up poetry and blogging, I finished another novel (called For Glory because I'm awful with titles) and finished that before moving onto this current project, both the new blog and Skyborn, the new novel (which has a fucking awesome title).

I decided that, in conjunction with using this blog to run on and on about writing and all the wonderful things that come with exploring myself as a writer and the world of a new novel and the work of people I associate with, that I'd use it to help my editorial process. In the meantime, I also took on a little side project. And by little, I mean enormous and by "in the meantime" I mean I agreed to do it a decade ago and have finally gotten around to tackling it.

Its called Star Rider (Or maybe Starrider), and its this brilliant sci-fi epic my father wrote over a period of time that started in the early to mid-70s and underwent re-writes and catastrophes and idea-spawning until...this morning. So far.

The story itself is wonderfully creative, its an absolute joy to read, but it has some technical issues. It also has a number of components that could be called nasty things like "copyright infringement" or "plagiarism" or "bullshit science". Those kinks need to be smoothed out and some of the narrative needs a loving, editorial hand and some other things need to be fleshed out to make the story, and its universe, really come alive. Its an incredible beginning, but it needs some significant work.

This project, for me, is sort of a hybrid. It's someone else's work, obviously, but my father and I think enough alike and have had enough discussions about the story in the past few years (and he's given me enough leeway with this) that it almost feels like I've had a hand in creating it. So, here's what I plan to do:

In conjunction with this blog and my other pursuits, I'm writing Skyborn. At the same time, I'm editing Star Rider and, as its been four years since I last saw it, Eve of the Dragonspeaker. Now, if that sounds ambitious or like a ton of work, well, its both of those things. I don't expect it to be a fast process, or an easy one, but its a worthwhile endeavor. What I will do, though, is welcome suggestions.

If you have an idea for how to tackle the tremendous task of editing an entire novel (or two) feel free to hurl them in my direction. Would a full read-through be best, to acclimate myself with the material again? Should I go chapter-by-chapter? Should I consult a therapist first? I'll keep this as a running sub-series on the blog (probably) so feel free to chime in at anytime.

Delightfully, Deliriously Yours,
-S.R.

A Theory on Writing

In college, as part of our graduation requirements (not that I graduated) we were supposed to present on our theory of writing. Its been a few years since I left school, but I've thought of this a great deal lately, as I've started to progress toward making my living by writing. Why do it at all? What is my theory on writing?

In the same vein, I've seen a number of reputable and talented writers lament the state of the business in the past few years. John Marco, whose Eyes of God and Tyrants and Kings trilogies introduced me to the new trend of dark, gritty, realistic epic fantasy and Brian Ruckley (author of the Godless World trilogy) are just two examples of prominent, in my opinion, writers who have talked about the decline in publishing and the lasting effect it has on people who make their living in the business. Both men used it in blog posts, and I'm sure other writers have done so as well (Stephen King has even commented on it, but for the life of me I can't recall where I read it).

The thing is, I'm tired of writers bitching about it.

Publishing is still a multi-billion dollar a year business, just in this country. As with all things, a small number of people (writers, in this case) are taking in most of that profit. Popular misconceptions about novelists run the gamut from starving artists to multi-millionaires. Make no mistake, the Stephen Kings and J.K. Rowlings of the world are very few and far between. Thousands of books, fiction and non-fiction, poetry, short stories, anthologies, and so on, are published every year. Still more magazines, blogs, ezines and newspapers see publication. Of all those people, only about 130 of them actually make a decent living writing (this is based on an estimate I heard from a novelist a few years back). That's an exceptionally small number.

Then again, how many musicians make millions each year? How many corporate-minded individuals? How many chefs? How many people in any field are at the top, both in terms of talent and in terms of income? That's not to say that those who gross the most are also the best, but it draws an interesting comparison.

True, reading does seem to be in a downward trend in this country, at least in terms of our young people, but how much of that is media sensationalizing? How much of that is doomsayers? I know far, far more people who are still avid readers than people who don't read at all for pleasure. There's still money to be made, exposure to be found, success to be pursued.

The key is hard-work and adaptability. See, all art forms change with time. The same styles, concepts, and subjects are not as popular in sculpture or painting or architecture or film or music or poetry or photography or video games today as five or ten or twenty years ago, right? So why are we still approaching novels the same way? True, not all of these forms are necessarily lucrative, but that's wholly dependent upon the artist.

There are still successful people in all of those mediums that can and do make money. But they work hard and they adapt. Pursue every available opportunity, open every door, and work. Art isn't all fun, all creativity and romanticized ideals. Success, regardless of your artistic preferences, abilities, or markets requires work and dedication.

In terms of novels, which is the point here (I write poetry, but I prefer to share that with a small group of people and mostly for my own enjoyment for a variety of reasons) I think the key is adapting.

In terms of fantasy, that's starting to take shape now. For, oh, forty years or so, fantasy has been criticized for being too narrow-minded, too dedicated to its own genre tropes and stereotypes. Too many fantasy writers trying too hard to re-write Tolkien. In the past decade or so, the genre has expanded (as I've mentioned elsewhere) and began to include numerous sub-genres. Fantasy has gotten more gritty and realistic and deviated somewhat from the pure escapism the genre became known for in past years.

Even so, concepts like violence and sex are...glazed over. Action is relegated to small bits of chapters, or so generalized that the impact of it is usually negligible. Strange, in stories that work around huge battles and burgeoning relationships. To some extent this has changed. Robert Jordan and John Marco have depicted violence very convincingly in their fiction, and Jordan even included a short, clipped sex scene.

But why are we avoiding these things? Why not use them artistically, like a well-done nude scene in a film or the infamous sex scene from Mass Effect or artistic nude photography? Why are those mediums any different? I believe that writing should incorporate some of the same ideas that other forms use. Films and games and other mediums have used novels for inspiration and source material for as long as they've existed in conjunction. Storytelling in movies uses the same devices that novels do, the same methods of building tension and conflict, foreshadowing, so on. Why can't novels borrow from film? From photography? Why can't we use sexuality in an artistic way? Or write our violence with the same scope, the same cinematic eye as a film? Why can't we use our dialogue to the same effect that plays do?

My theory on writing is that, in order for novels, or indeed any artform, to survive and continue to be lucrative and influential, they must change and adapt. They must give and take from popular culture, from society, from other mediums, while still retaining their own identities. That's the key for the medium and the artists therein.

So my advice is to forge your own path, use your own style. Write what you know, in point of fact. My poetry, my blogs, my short stories, my general writing is most often rampant with innuendo. I write in a sometimes visceral style, heavily borrowing from my inspiration (usually music, video games, and so on. I've covered that elsewhere). I like very palpable action, detailed sex, exploration, and a grand scope. Done well (and let's face it, when it really comes down to brass tacks I have to think I do it well) these things make for a compelling story.

So, do your thing. Be your own artist. Work hard and adapt.

Yours,
-S.R.

Words of Wisdom

A wise man once told me, "If you can just figure out how to punctuate the fucking dialogue, you'll have a future in writing." I've mentioned those wise words before, on several occasions (once fairly recently on my other blog) and I mention them here because I've been thinking a great deal about both that man and dialogue. The man was author David Jack Bell (Cemetery Girl, The Girl in the Woods, The Condemned), a former professor of mine and one of the two people that have been absolutely central to my development as a writer. I owe a great many people a great many thanks, but DJB has been more influential, I think, than even he realizes.

I go back to that bit of advice, something I've actually saved in the years since and read over any time I start to feel a little too sure of myself because I feel that dialogue is one of the most important, and challenging, aspects of writing fiction. More specifically, I feel that it becomes exponentially more potent to the story and more difficult to do correctly when you add difference of culture and language. Very few fantasy epics (which is what I'm writing) take place where every character speaks the same language with the same accent and the same colloquialisms. Even if you aren't a Tolkien-esque writer that regularly invents entirely new languages for your various races, most fantasy writers have at least created some basic words for elves or dwarves or, as in the case of Richard A. Knaak's Ogre Titans books (written in the Dragonlance universe) ogres.

Using these languages in conjunction with English (or common or whatever its called in the individual work) can be challenging because it requires a certain degree of translation. Knaak's ogres speak almost entirely in his fictional language, but he inserts enough of the common tongue that readers can grasp most (if not all) of what the characters are saying.

I'm using my new novel, Skyborn, as an example here because I've included a number of races and, although I'm not really planning to use too much in terms of foreign language, I do place a heavy emphasis on naming conventions and other language-related devices to differentiate between the various cultures in the world of Garn.

That, I think, is the most important thing about writing good dialogue. It promotes realism. Stylistically, I try to stay out of my character's heads in straight narration. It was, originally, a shortcoming. I wasn't in there enough, but with some cristicism I've started looking into ways to incorporate their internal monologues more, without being too in their heads. Its a balance, but I feel that creative use of dialogue will make up for it while giving the reader a much better idea of who they are as human beings (or elves, or lizardmen, or whatever).

Skyborn is typical of my long fiction in that it encompasses an enormous landmass composed of a bunch of different cultures. I enjoy exploring how those cultures relate to one another and I feel that I've never done that quite as much as I have in this new novel. I think much of my inspiration for that comes from Robert Jordan's amazing Wheel of Time series. Very few writers, contemporary or otherwise, have Jordan's talent for blending cultures and illustrating the way that they relate to one another.

So the reason I'm placing such a huge emphasis on dialogue is that I feel it can build tension between characters, create an idea in the readers' minds about the way cultures and individuals feel and react toward one another. The challenge inherent is using these different language conventions, different cultures, personalities and characteristics to create rich, convincing dialogue (while worrying about pacing, tension, theme, and, somewhat less story-driven but still important, style and punctuation). Done correctly, dialogue can establish cultural and personal barriers, drive narrative, create and resolve conflict and tension, and even broaden a reader's idea of the world by providing background information without the use of a sprawling glossary.

Narrative is important, the actions and thoughts of characters and the way they affect changes in the story are crucial and they can't be understated, but the dialogue, the dialogue is where the magic really happens. Styles vary, of course, and the actual use of dialogue can be just as important as what is actually being said. Ernest Hemingway's stories, in my opinion, are entirely driven by dialogue. Hemingway uses very little actual narration in his writing, whereas other writers may use comparatively more narration and less speech.

Regardless of style, the dialogue is important. Hemingway relied upon it for the bulk of his storytelling, which makes it crucial, but a writer who uses more narration must still create and utilize dialogue, particularly because of how little speech is present.

The thing to remember is that your characters have their own voices, just as you and your friends have different voices. So before you start writing, when you're working out the kinks of your characters, think of their voices. Get to know them the way you know your friends and you'll know what they're going to say before you ever start writing it. That, to me, is the best way to create believable characters.

Skyborn has a smaller central cast than most novels in the epic fantasy genre, smaller than most of my own pieces, really, with three major protagonists and a single antagonist. The scope of the story, though, and therefore the supporting cast, is much larger. With that in mind, the dialogue issue becomes even more crucial so that those supporting characters don't end up fading into a single, faceless, voiceless amalgamation of background noise. Supporting casts should be just as vital as the central characters, in terms of voice, otherwise what is the point of using them?

There you have it. Just get the dialogue right, and you're on your way to a future in writing.

Yours,
-S.R.

Bid Ye Welcome, Skyborn

So, I've recently started writing this novel. It is a fresh idea, and like all great things, had its genesis in a number of unusual, unsavory, or downright unexpected places. Metal lyrics, dreams, that sort of thing. The reason I want to talk about this particular story (and how it relates to others) is simple change.

See, I usually approach a story, long or short (and they're almost always long) with the same attitude I'd approach a poem, or a blog, or a critical lens essay for this high school kid I know that pays me forty dollars to write him critical lens essays because he thinks I'm a wizard. I just sit down with those ideas jetting around in my brain and I write. I've never done notes ahead of time. No maps. No real world-building. No character ideas. I free-write everything, and typically that works out. I won't put pen to paper for a poem or a blog until the idea has fully formed in my head. I won't work on a novel until I have at least a few of the major plot points worked out in my head.

But its ineffective. Working that way compromises continuity, compromises the integrity of the story. Three hundred pages in, I've forgotten what the protagonists' home looks like. Now I have to sift through three hundred pages to find it. This happens so often I start just winging it, going by memory, and that leads to trouble. I'm a drunk. I don't have a memory to go on.

So I started working on this new story and I elected to do things differently. I drew up a crude map, I played around with creation stories and government set-up. I split up different files for notes on everything from the factions of deities to the different naming traditions between countries. I created a timeline of the world from its creation until the novel's setting. I drafted up approximately 185 different gods and then whittled them down until I had a believable, solid pantheon of around 15-20.

Additionally, I set about working my characters out of the world. I had a small handful of ideas for central protagonists, but they were mostly vague and by devoting so much time to world-building I was able to discover these characters naturally as organic pieces of their world. This, I think, makes them more believable and more interesting. Their story and their world is fascinating, to me, but to convey that sense of wonder and excitement, that's my job. The great thing, is very little of it is difficult. See, these worlds appear without much actual work. Sure, I do a little research on geography, on world history, on  deities from various cultures, both factual and fictional, and when I have this rough draft of a world in mind, it becomes easy to soar through the cosmos until I find the one I want to explore. Then it becomes fleshed out on its own.

All I've done is switch up the process somewhat. So for the last two weeks I've been hammering out this world, working my forge by starlight to craft something wonderful and now that its done, I'm ready to start telling the story of the Skyborn.

My little bit of advice then is that, regardless of how sure you are about something, it pays to do a little bit of preparation beforehand. Put off the good bit until you have all your tools, all your components, and then tackle it wholeheartedly.

I hope you'll join me in this. I'm going to keep this blog as a sort of running blow-by-blow of my process, both with writing this novel and editing the others. I'll try to keep things separated by title so as to make it less confusing. I'm hoping it will help someone, somewhere coalesce their own ideas into something great and avoid some of the pitfalls that I've stumbled into. In return, I hope for some awesome feedback and, just maybe, some personal motivation to really drive me in finishing these projects and publishing them.

So join me.

Or die.

Yours,
-S.R.