Science Fiction Writers Workshop

I started this entry quite a while ago but a thread in Absolute Write caused me to focus on it. See the thread at:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=243634

The thread started by asking if SF is still the literature of ideas. I'm paraphrasing of course. There was a lot of good discussion util we come to my response.

This is my second rant on this subject (you can find the earlier one below) but this one includes a graph !!!

There is a lot of discussion about the rules of writing. In fact there is only one. I'll tell you later because telling you now would violate the 'Rule'. The other 'rules' are guidelines, hints, advice, styles or models. They say you have to know the 'rules' before you can break them. Well, breaking a rule incurs penalties. You can use bad grammar and get away with it. You can spell wrong, you can have no plot or have no characters. All these have been done in highly acclaimed works and best sellers. No, the only rule is – write so that the reader keeps reading. That's it. Now go write.

More Stories to More Markets is my motto for 2012. W1S1 was a great help in 2011 but now it is time to step it up a notch. It is hard to get momentum going when you sub a story and then wait. Of course the answer is to have more stories in circulation and when/if it gets rejected then send it to another market. Which brings me to another point which I learned last year - is that the subbing and keeping track of subs is hard. Which market wants what type of story and do I have one sub'ed there already.

Well Nanowrimo is over and I've recovered. Now comes the time to reflect on what I did and didn't do and how all that can help me (and others) in the future. I did learn some stuff. I learned the value (to me) of novel writing software. For the last severnal years I've written shorts and they have gotten shorter. Maybe they followed my memory. But in any case if I'm to write a novel in the future I will need something, software or a good note system to keep track of all that is happening in the novel that is not happening right now.

Don't you just hate it when you've spend some time working on a story and then when it's mostly done you come up with an idea on how to tell it in a much better way.

As usual I'm reading some forum soemwhere on the web and I come across an argument about what is science fiction and what is fantasy and hard vs. soft SF. This brings up Clarke's third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. My tastes tend to be on the harder side but I did enjoy Lord of the Rings way back when and I do follow Butcher's Dresden Files series so I'm not 100% hard core. I have also written a few fantasy stories myself.

I'm reading Robopocalypse: a novel by Daniel H. Wilson. Interesting and I'm enjoying it. I did find/notice two instances of what I would consider poor copy editing. More than a typo but not bad writing. Sort of like, "me and John went..." I'm not sure if that is meant to show the education level of the character but it's not in dialog or first person. In any case it was enough to pop me out of the story, to get me thinking about the writing and not the story.

Every now and then someone in a writing forum asks about prologues. Are the forbidden? Are they a good idea? The replies break down into: prologues suck, I never read them, simply fold the back story into the rest of the novel; or it's part of the book so I read them; or the ever non-helpful, if it works for the story then it's OK.

I'm of the opinion that the author put it in and it may contain information that I would find useful and it's usually a small part of the story so I read it. From a writer's perspective I haven't had an opportunity to need one.

The publishing world is all abuzz about e-publishing vs paper and when or if electronic formats will replace paper. The electronic proponents like to point out the music business and how that is now largely electronic. And with that, all the problems of pirating. The problem with that comparison is that books and music are used quite differently. A book is used like a movie. It will be read/watched once or maybe a few times and in a setting in which you are not doing much else.