Setting the Scene (Get me in the mood baby, ooh yeah!)

Sarah's offered quite a lot about remembering that there's someone on the other end of the book, and way to keep that person reading. I'm going to look at one specific part of that: the scene-setting and cuing in it offers.

How many times have you read something where the author switched track on you, and the book turned into something you weren't expecting when you started it? And how often has it irritated rather than delighted you? Yeah. I thought so. See, we're so attuned to what a story should be, we can pick up - subconsciously at least - what a story is about from very little.

Take for instance the opening to Pratchett's The Color of Magic - In a distant and secondhand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly. That one sentence is enough to cue readers in to several things: we're not in Kansas anymore, and it's not going to be reality as normal. Oh, and it's almost for sure fantasy. Comic fantasy.

It might not register at the conscious level, but we're primed for laughter.

Of course, this is Pratchett, and even Pratchett of nearly thirty years ago stands head, shoulders and quite a bit more over every other author alive today (although in my not at all humble opinion both Dave and Sarah are climbing that particular mountain at speed).

So how do we lesser lights set the scene? There's a few things to consider.

First up, and possibly most important, each genre and subgenre has its own distinctive 'feel' and tropes. Standard practice in a cozy is utterly verboten in splatterpunk horror, and so forth. The mood we set has much the same effect as a movie soundtrack - more or less invisible (or it should be) but puts the reader's emotions where we want them. Yes, it's manipulative. We're playing with people's minds because they want us to. If they don't like us hitting their emotional buttons, they don't have to buy our books. Next question? Good.

Okay. I got bitten by this not long ago, in a crit group looking at the opening of my current work in progress. The piece is typically Kate-weird, meaning it doesn't quite fit into any nice, neat slots. It's more or less space opera, but it's also got elements of erotica, in that quite a bit of the plot is carried by and depends on sex. Specifically, somewhat kinky sexual practices that aren't so much as hinted at in the start of the book. The advice I got, not suprisingly, was that I need to have the sex up front so that it's not picked up by someone who reads the opening and thinks it's okay for young teens. Or, for that matter, so editor X doesn't start reading thinking "light-hearted space opera, a bit of a romp", get to the sex, and have his, her, or its brain explode.

Attractive as the notion of making peoples' heads explode might be, it's really not a good idea to do that to people you want to give you money, so... I need to put sex up front, preferably in a way that foreshadows the kind of sex that happens later on (especially since said sex is emphatically not garden variety vanilla). What I start with now says "lightweight space opera, with humor".

As to how you do it, it's all in the power of words. English has a phenomenal number of synonyms, most of them with very different emotional/atmospheric connotations. Let's take, for the sake of example, sex. We all know what's involved. Call it making love, and it becomes a much more intimate act. Or take desire, longing, yen, urge, obsession, need - they all mean more or less the same thing, but the flavor varies. A lounge, a sofa, a Chesterfield... Curtains, drapes. And I haven't even gotten out of the common words.

For science fiction, probably the most common trick is faux tech-ese and using technical terms instead of the normal "earthbound" words. Epic fantasy and sword and sorcery often go the other way, using archaic forms of common words - sparingly. Urban fantasy generally maintains a conversational, smartass tone and uses a lot of not-quite-slang, enough to make it sound cool (or whatever the designated word for that is these days) without being so cutting edge it dates the book between the time it's written and the time it's published (For an example that dates a book, read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then tell me you don't see late 70s written all over it). Horror of course pulls all the stops out: cognitive dissonance, bleak or grim descriptors, and every possible trick in the writer's vocabulary to make the whole thing bode. An excellent guide to the process is Stephen King's Danse Macabre, containing the famous quote about terror, horror, and gross-out. A good thumbnail distinction here is that terror is being in an iffy situation and realizing your buddy is missing. Horror is finding your buddy in a closet - and he's not alive. Gross-out is when the alien or monster comes out of his chest, usually featuring loving description of the effects. The word 'glistening' gets used a lot, even when there shouldn't be enough light for anything to glisten. As a general rule, if you're wanting to scare your readers, aim for terror. Drop to horror only if you can't manage terror. And gross-out is the last resort. (Yes, Stephen King said approximately that, and yes, he will go for the gross-out if he can't make terror or horror happen).

Let's have a few samples of story openings that do a good job of setting the scene. Short or long, yours or someone else's (if it's someone else's, please acknowledge the author). No more than a couple of lines - most of the good ones don't need more than that.

Here's one or two of mine, just to kick things off:

There are times when being a Quality Assurance Mage sucks. The silvery gray spell-ball on my desk told me today was one of them. Fantasy, rather whimsical, may or may not be urban. From my short story A Spell of Quality in Misspelled. This sale was an invitation, so I didn't need to have the higher standards that anything going through regular slush has to have.

The great looms stood silent, strands of Scylla-silk glimmering in semi-darkness above the completed weaves. Air heavy with the acrid tension of electrical discharge sparked and crackled with each of my cautious steps. Science fiction, fairly dark. The use of words like "heavy" and "silent" suggests that this isn't going to be a particularly fluffy piece (accurately, as it happens). This is the opening of my short story Choice of the Oracles in Fate Fantastic - another sale by invitation.

Another convention, another con hotel. After a while, they blur together into an indistinguishable mass of faux-elegance and bizarrely costumed fans. This is the opening of ConVent a novel which - alas - remains homeless. The setting is pretty obvious, and the tone suggests urban fantasy. Anyone who's ever seen photos of a busy science fiction convention can see the scene. So, for that matter can a heck of a lot of people who haven't been to one - because I've played on the stereotypes of science fiction fans with this opening.

What are some of your examples?

In order to lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative

...it helps if you've been there. Since there are no tours to Tasmarin, or Elizabethan England - particularly the versions with elves, demons and magic - not even a Slow Train to Arcturus, we've got to make it feel like we've taken that journey.

That means artistic verisimilitude, better known in writing circles as the telling detail or Heinleining. Sarah's posted about this a few times, particularly how the one right detail can bring a huge amount of extra "baggage" with it, filling in great big chunks of world-building without anyone knowing you're doing it. It's knowing what the right detail is that's the interesting part.

I've spent a good chunk of the last couple of years focusing on getting the details in and making my writing feel real, because I have a sad tendency to drift towards the curse of talking heads in empty rooms. The way I did this - which I'm offering for discussion, analysis, whatever - was before I started a scene, I'd think about what information needed to go in, where this was happening (what it looked like, smelled like, warm cold or neutral temperature), what was happening to whom and what they thought and felt about it. Then I wrote it. And often micro-edited as I worked to get the right details in.

Then the latest brightshinyhappynew novel dropped in (the epic fantasy with vampires - who are not sparkly) and made me write enough of it to build a clear link to the world and the characters. And I realized to my considerable shock that the Heinleining was happening more or less without conscious input from me. I wasn't working to make the environment real and solid, it was just happening.

So, just to show the evolution, I'm going to splat a bunch of openings in - from the earliest to the most recent, one or two paragraphs apiece. The earliest was written about 2 years ago, give or take. The first two are finished, then there's 60k, 50k, 10k (I chose to write that much then outline it for a proposal) and 20k. Now that I've got the outline done for the steampunk, I'm going back to the space opera to finish it. ConSensual, alas, will need to wait until ConVent finds a home.

And ConVent, naturally enough, starts this set of openings.

Another convention, another con hotel. After a while, they blur together into an indistinguishable mass of faux-elegance and bizarrely costumed fans. I usually go in what you could call Olde Worlde Vampire - three piece suit, John Lennon glasses, cane with a pewter wolf-head topper. Take Gary Oldman in that appalling Dracula movie, and you have the basic idea, except I wear black and my hair is darker. And short.

About 6 months later, I wrote the opening of Impaler. This one is a little different because it starts with Vlad explaining himself, so the grounding is in personal rather than in physical details.

Always before battle begins I am possessed by the need for solitude and prayer. It is a curious thing, for I have never fought as merely another knight. I first ruled men at the tender age of eighteen, when the old Ottoman Sultan Murad and his son Mehmed still thought I could be a Turk puppet.

The next opening, for ConSensual, I wrote early this year. This one is about 60k of probably 90-100k done, but until ConVent finds a home or the characters wake up and start nagging, it'll probably stay where it is.

Nothing says you've left normal reality like walking into a hotel lobby and seeing a Clone Trooper chatting with a Sith Lord. The sign on the back of the Clone Trooper's armor, 'Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies. Tonight. Room 1226', was really just corroborating evidence.

The next of the partials, Long Haul, is at about 50k and was started around mid-year.

Jack McClatchkey strode through the airlock before the iris finished opening, stepping over the partially retracted lens. He didn't so much as hesitate at what the clean-room -- which served Galway Mining Station as a customs inspection station and extra storage the thirty days of the month there wasn't a ship docked here -- held. It was one of the many things he'd learned from his dad before the old man bought it rigging emergency repairs in an uncharted branch off the wormhole lines. You never let anyone official see you sweat unless you wanted them to think you were scared.

The steampunk, tentatively titled Light Through a Harsh Lens, has about 10k written and a 5k outline - I'm considering sending this as a proposal. This was started mid-yearish. This I think is about when I started to really get the hang of the Heinleining skill.

Soft light from a tinted glass tube lit the Apprentice Day Board. Cleaner and less harsh on the eyes than gaslight, it was one of the many benefits even the newest apprentices of the Society of Artificers enjoyed.

And finally, the brightshinyhappynew! epic fantasy with vampires, Blood Oath, where it all seemed to just click into place. I've written about 20k of this one.

"Where is my son?" Lord Karras s'Daria Ashleon glared around the Great Hall with narrowed eyes, his lips drawn back into a snarl that showed his fangs.

Having reached the point where this happens as I write it, I'm wondering what the next step is going to be. One thing I've worked out is that everyone learns the skills in a different order, and can have several different ones all snap into place more or less at the same time. Maybe it'll be "how to get submissions out" - I'm very bad at that part.

What are some examples of books that show an author building their skills? Sarah's mentioned the differences between the various Heinlein books, and with PTerry's Discworld books there's a clear evolution from Color of Magic through Unseen Academicals. So who else, and what is it that's growing?

Godzilla Attacks Sydney!

Recent reports of a massive dust storm in Australia -- with an 800km storm front and sweeping across thousands of kilometers -- fail to advise that the irradiated dust has drawn an attack on Sydney by the feared Godzilla! The image on the left was sent to our office only moments before the brave soul was incinerated by radioactive flame.

Mothra has been spotted on satellite images, and is moving swiftly toward Brisbane. Scientists fear it is being drawn to the Sunshine State by the scent of radioactive mangoes. The east coast of Australia remains on high alert. . .

OK, well maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but the recent dust storm that blanketed the east coast of Australia (and is heading toward New Zealand) was certainly epic in its proportions (it really was that big). It was the biggest dust storm in 70 years, and dumped more than 75,000 tonnes of dust on Brisbane in one hour. More than one observer reported 'It was like the end of the world' or 'It was like being in a science fiction movie'. The sunset was awesome, the sky as red as Martian dust (Australian desert sands have a high content of iron oxide).

When you see something like that -- really experience it -- it truly is amazing. It got me thinking about settings in books. If only we could channel that experience directly, make the reader feel that same creepy wonder, that otherworldlyness combined with the wake-up-and-look bite of something that is absolutely real.

It also made me realise that we owe it to ourselves as writers, and our readers, to get out there and really experience everything this world has to offer. There are some truly strange and wonderful things out there. It took that massive dust storm to remind myself of that.

So what things have you experienced that have made your head spin? That lifted you out of your own reality? And what writers have inspired similar feelings in you with their sense of setting?

By the way, if you want to see some great images of that dust storm, check out this link: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/gallery/0,23816,5060705-17382,00.html

What's the Best Balance in Conveying a Foreign Setting?

With Sarah still traipsing around Portugal, we've got another guest blogger today. Sean Kinsell thinks of himself as a newbie in fiction writing, not realizing just how good he really is. Sarah, Kate and I are currently aiming our steel-toed boots at him as a means of encouragement for him to finish his first novel. This blog stems, I think, from one of the questions he's asking himself right now as he writes. -- Amanda

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One of the first things you're hit over the head with when you study Japanese literature is how hard it is to translate. That's partially for easily explicable reasons: Japanese and English are structured very differently, and ambiguities and associations are possible in each that are not possible in the other.

But of course with Japanese it goes much further than that. Even more than the rest of East Asia, Japan has a reputation for mystery and paradox that, one is frequently given to understand, the Western mind doesn't have the tools to grasp. That the Japanese have equal difficulty understanding us, despite our reputed forthrightness and literal-mindedness, somehow gets less play. Users of any language (such as writers) rely on shared cultural assumptions that may not obtain for the audience of a translation, and there are times when that barrier is impossible to get around. The problem with a lot of authors who deal with Japanese is that they tend to assume that that barrier is a feature, not a bug. Lots of translations of Japanese literature have a resolutely flat quality; it's supposed, I think, to suggest a placid surface with a lot actually stirring underneath, but it often just comes off affectless.

And the problem doesn't just come up with translations; literature written in English about Japan often has the same kind of flaws--sing-song prose and would-be profound paradoxes on every page. An example that really stuck in my craw was Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, which opened like this:

Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, “That afternoon when I met so-and-so…was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon.” I expect you might put down your teacup and say, “Well, now, which was it? Was it the best or the worst? Because it can’t possibly have been both!”

Well, of course it can have been both, dear lady. What are you going on about? The conflict between opposing but equally strong forces--moral duties, affections, predilections, desires--animates much of the world's greatest literature. For a novelist to put into the mouth of a narrator the idea that it's only natural not to believe one could hold two opposite feelings simultaneously is a shocking display of bad faith. (And Golden's novel gets far, far worse from there.) But he was writing about Japan, don't you know, so Sayuri's patronizingly patient explanation of why such a thing is possible was considered charming, if not profound. Objecting would be spoiling the Zen.

So my question is…what's the best balance when trying to convey a foreign setting? What authors are good at realizing an exotic setting without being smug about how esoteric it all is? When is it good to sprinkle in foreign words, and when does it become show-offy and jar the reader out of the world of the story?

Your place or mine?

I have etchings. And the sound of a mountain stream out there in the moonlit darkness. Let me take you away...

Okay, still harping away on beginnings (because we all have to start somewhere... even with a cliche sometimes. I have a short that begins. " She awoke with a terrible start. Rubbing her eyes and looking at him again, she had to admit maybe he wasn't that terrible, just a bit homely, and not comfortably old, fat and rich. Not quite what she'd have chosen if she'd been sober the night before. A girl had to begin somewhere... ")

To get back to the point, an author has the difficult task of taking the reader away into the world they create. Sometimes the reader really wants to go. Will fall right in with a cheesy invitation to see etchings, especially if they've loved the author's other books. However the suspension of disbelief, the entry into world we build for them, is usually much harder than that. The start, which will lead us away from the mundane (and safe) is a tricky thing. Yep mostly the reader wants to go... but not if you might be an axe murderer (or the wrong kind of book). I always put it this way: The first few pages of a book have severely overworked words, because they have do so much. They have to pick you up, carry you away to a different place, they have to make you care about the protagonist's fate (want to see them come a cropper is fine too), they have reassure the reader that actually the charming invitation to come to their place is not so you can be dismembered and served with fava beans (which strikes me as odd. What are the bits going to do with those beans?) and also advance the plot.

In summary:

1)hook

2) setting

3) Show type of book (really, readers do not actually like surprises. They wanted an Aga-saga and you gave them horror with Aga-saga start, you'll have to be brilliant to get them to forgive you. They wanted fantasy - and you gave them sf - better hope you had them adoring the book before they figured it out. Yes. I am guilty. I hope readers forgave me. I was young and mislead by an evil companion, me.)

4) Invest emotion in protagonist (love or hate, but care)

5)Move the plot forward.

If you're a best-selling author that readers know will deliver you have some space to do these. If not... the sooner the better. We've talked about hook and somewhat about character.

Let's talk about setting and type of book. Now because these beginning words are multipurpose and overworked (poor things) these too can be part of the hook, part of the magic, part of the character dispay that gets you to care.

"I am a watchdog. My name is Snuff. I live with my master Jack outside of London now. I like Soho very much at night with its smelly fogs and dark streets. It is silent then and we go for long walks. Jack is under a curse from long ago...."

If anyone has any doubts what kind of book this is or what sort of setting they're being drawn into... I can recommend some pills :-)

Or to do it even quicker - "Once the palace of a thousand chambers had overwhelmed Imoshen...."

or this

"The dragon flew above the rage of the elements. Above the tumultuous maelstrom of ocean swirling into the void. Above the sheet lightnings and vortexes of dark energies released as the tower fell, with the vast granite masonry shattering into swirling dust. A fierce delight filled his dragonish heart as he looked down on it."

Ok - let's see some starts that show setting and type. I'll try and offer constructive criticism. And you can see if I get it right. (And sweetlings, the reader is always right. If i don't get it, it's back to the drawing board. Or rather, keyboard. This applies to me, Stephen King or Joe-the-newbie. The reader is write... uh right.)

And which three books did I quote?