Father's Day Open Floor

Let me start by wishing all the fathers out there a Happy Father's Day. May there be lots of hugs and pampering for you today and not too many ugly ties and shirts you'd never be caught dead in but for the fact your darling daughter or son gave it to you.

Now for the blog, or the lack of a blog, today. I swear when folks talk about computer viruses, they don't know the half of it. Somehow, I've caught whatever Sarah has had...and that's hard since there are whole states between where she lives and where I do. Of course, she says she caught it from Dave and we won't begin to count how many states, an ocean and countries separate the two of them. Any way, I'm sick and have been all weekend. So I'm going to open the floor to you guys. Any writing related questions you have, toss them into the comments section and we'll do our best to answer. If you want to post the first paragraph of a work in progress for critique, do it -- but one paragraph only and NOT the paragraph you are submitting for yesterday's challenge. Next week, I'll get back to the news around the internet. But for now, I'm crawling back into bed to sleep some more. Maybe then I'll feel human.

Update: I just found this story in one of the local papers and want to post it as a cautionary tale for everyone who might be considering the self-publication road. It hit all my hot buttons because kids are involved. Basically, a group of kids at a local middle school wrote a book and, with the help of their teacher, school and parents, raised the $2,000 needed to print the book. This included securing the ISBN for the book as well. I'll let you read the article, but it doesn't have a happy ending. These creative kids and all who supported them were taken. Your thoughts?

The floor is yours. Have fun!

Beginnings

Write an opening paragraph that includes the following:

• a guillotine,
• a ray gun
• a pink feather boa
• at least one stiletto heel
• a gnome
• and a flea

The person who makes it the most engaging and who makes us want to read the story will get a copy of Sarah's book of his choice (including DOITD) and a copy of Dave's book, Dragon Ring.

Remember, one paragraph only. Grab us and make us beg for more. The winner will be announced next Saturday. Good luck and get writing!

How Much is Enough?

Re-reading some old favourites lately, I have been struck by the differences in the degree of description. One of the books was so spare that little more than a single line was offered to describe new characters on introduction, and then only a repeat of this key image when they appeared at other times (yes the exact same one, over and over). Balance is everything - but I like a little more than this.


I guess 'less is more' is often a good rule to follow. The problem is things like that can be very hard to judge. This particular author had removed a lot of the casual description and attribution you might find between dialogue. That's fine from the PoV of the author, but what seems alive and accented to the peculiar viewpoint and personality of the character within the author's mind can read very flat indeed to an objective reader. In this case I found that the scenes dominated with dialogue offered me very little. I could not tell from the dialogue whether the character was being sharp, dim, sarcastic, excited or whatever - and there was not enough else to propel the story.


I know that very clever writers can manage to convey all this personality through the dialogue itself in the absence of all but the most minimal attribution.


For myself, I am very tolerant of description. I like to get atmosphere. I like to get a direct line to what the character is feeling. What starts to gripe me is long backstory infills on the geopolitical setting, or scenes that seem to have no point - except the fact that I am supposed to be in so in love with the character I really want to see them walk through the docks for two pages.

So what are your thoughts? How much description is enough? And how do you tell? Is it even possible, or do we all need a savvy test reader?

Diary of Character Growth

Last week I posted about the story seed I'd been infested with. This week's post is kind of a diary of the things that have emerged since then - mostly character, which is usually the first or second thing I 'get', although there are likely to be other bits of world building and assorted strangeness as well. What I end up with on plot at this stage is usually a starting scenario and what the basic plot and main subplot are likely to be about.

Thursday: Characters begin to emerge. Two of them, one male, one female. Definite sense of a romance subplot. He insists his name is Alvar Seraph, which is... somewhat ridiculous. Arguments over the name begin. She is Millie - possibly short for Amelia or Millicent, although she's being rather close about that.

He's noble and might be willing to accept "Alvar" as a noble title rather than his actual name. It's got to be there, though. Yes, it's weird, but characters will not cooperate for me if I don't have their names right. Long white-blond hair, dark blue eyes - the kind that look like they could be black until you get close - carries a sword-cane. Early twenties, but has had responsibility for a whole lot of things since 14 or 15. His manner isn't so much arrogance as assurance: yes, he really is that good.

She's a street brat. Mama was a whore, and died of her pimp getting pissy. She figures begging, picking pockets and running whatever errands she can get paid for - and pretending to be a boy - is safer.

Okay, so we've got a massive social differential here. Fine. Possibly a Pygmalion aspect.
There's some bioengineering way back - probably from Earth for the spaceship crew, although no-one in story-now knows anything about it. They see an inheritable gift which allows the person who has it to feel the workings and effectiveness of machinery. They 'know' when everything is going well, when something needs maintenance, and when something is going to break. They need training to be able to consciously focus on the gift, and to actually do something about what they feel. They're in two classes: Mechanics can diagnose and fix when told what to do. Engineers can do all that as well as design new machines. Both groups are highly regarded.

He is - of course - an Engineer as well as a nobleman. She has the gift but was never talent-scouted even though the Imperial Academy of Mechanics and Engineering is supposed to find everyone with the gift and train them up: well-maintained machinery is essential to their survival, especially the dampers that keep volcanos from developing in the middle of the cities and the steam turbines that provide power to the cities - powered by diverting water into the volcanic regions to generate said steam.

Opening involves her sensing before he does that a set of dampers under a busy square is about to go, realizing he's got the gift and is more likely to get people out of the way than she is. She'd run away after that, only he's not letting anyone that talented get away from the Academy. The dampers go, but his orders prevent any deaths when a rift opens up across the middle of the square.

He drags her to the Academy - thinking she's the boy she looks like - and goes to arrange a team of Engineers to upgrade the dampers.

Friday: Okay, I was wrong. Milord Alvar is definitely an arrogant sod. Millie is an imp. Sarcastic, self-assured the way street-brats can be (think Gavroche from Les Mis the musical). She's going to cause chaos in the Academy, especially since the Dean of Admissions is one of those unsackable incompetents who gets shuffled to where he can do least damage. Said Dean has problems with well-born girls having the gift, thinks that low class boys who've got it must have got it from a noble ancestor somewhere, and can't possibly learn to be Engineers, and as for low class girls, well they must only be after one thing.

The Academy Arch-Chancellor is one of your ineffectual avuncular types, and really hasn't got a clue how to run things. He's there because he was the most senior staff member when the previous Arch-Chancellor died. Negotiating Imperial political appointments and talented students from the full social range is beyond him. He'd much rather be buried in designs for new mecs.

Social structure/culture is probably most like the British Empire towards the late 1800s, although the colonies have rather more representation than they ever did in the Brit Empire. At this point I think the story is entirely within the capital city (I don't have a name for that yet), but there is a much larger world out there. The Nightside barbarians are a constant threat to the outlying colonies. I'm not sure what/who they are yet, except that it's rather more than just 'barbarians'. I know that at least some of them are exiles and descendants of exiles.

And the little light-bulb just went on to inform me that Milord Alvar and Millie are going to be exiled by the end of this - hence book 2, Nightside.

Weekend: Conflating all of the weekend's news into one piece...

Milord Alvar is still being unfriendly about his name. Millie is a brat. She managed to give all the stick-in-the-mud types collective conniptions in very short order and ends up being taught by Milord Alvar who is amused by her antics rather than horrified - I'm not sure why he finds her amusing, but I imagine I'll find out eventually.

The ending of book 1 involves the Crown Prince, who is the grandson of the Emperor and a nasty piece of work. I'm not sure yet what he's into/up to, but at minimum there's slavery (which is supposedly outlawed) and attempting to arrange granddaddy's murder so he can have the throne. I'm not sure why he ends up crossing swords with Milord Alvar and Millie, but he does, and he dies in a spectacularly ugly fashion - which is why they end up more or less exiled (as in, they're not sure they'd get a fair trial and decide that discretion is the better part of survival).

Monday: His Imperial Majesty is getting to the end of a long life, and outlived all his children. He's still mentally with it, enough that he's got his heir tied up in layers of bureaucracy and is quietly looking for a way junior can have an unfortunate accident. That's not a problem. The problem is that it's kind of difficult to classify "sword cut from navel to chin" as an accident - which means he has to try and convict the culprit.

Tuesday: Well, well. Milord Alvar is in the line of inheritance - distantly, but close enough that if His Imperial Majesty chooses to select an heir rather than appoint his closest male descendant his heir, Milord Alvar is in the running. I think His Majesty hopes that after a suitable absence he can blame junior's death on someone who's already going to die - or already dead - and appoint Alvar his heir. It's not an option that gets used a lot because it causes civil wars: imperial princes tend to get a little upset when they're passed over for the distant cousin they never thought was worth considering.

Wednesday: Weird synchronicity. In the MMORPG I play for decompression I just got to the final world. The 'feel' of it is exactly the feel for this piece - advanced civilization corrupted and dying/dead. Oh, and parts of the cities crumbling into lava. No dragons, though, more's the pity.

Sacred Silence

Years ago, while in a religious retreat – deal with it – they had us pick a sentence out of a box which was supposedly Himself’s gifts to us. This type of thing makes me beyond squirmy, because – well – it seems too touchy-feely for words. And if you’re a believer you believe that however He worked, He that created the sparrow also created the lion and the Yersinia Pestis bacillus. It doesn’t seem the sort of mind simple enough to give you gifts via picking a phrase on paper out of a box.

But we’ll leave theology aside – c’est pas mon metier – and my squirmy discomfort with it. If I didn’t know the organizers couldn’t in any way control who got what sentences, I’d have suspected them of a joke, because the sentence I got said something like “I give you silence, so that in it you can hear His voice.”

If the organizers had done this, it would be justifiable. Those of you who have had the misfortune of meeting me, particularly on a day when I’m caffeinated enough and not sick, know that my tongue runs on wheels. I learned to speak in sentences at one and a half and – according to my mom – never stopped since.

However, recently – as in the last month – I’ve been reminded of how much I need the gift of silence, and how rarely it comes.

The silence I need is internal. I’m one of those people who can’t meditate because it’s never quiet in there and no technicque works to make it silent.

Even before the kids and the career, my head went a mile a minute. This is not a brag. I suspect it’s a form of ADD. Most of the time it sounds rather like the chat in a doctor’s waiting room. “Oh, I wonder how bad this is.” “By the way, on the way home, remember to do groceries.” “The cats threw up in the living room again.” Sometimes there’s more worrisome chatter “my LORD the public debt. How will we survive this?” Or “Haven’t talked to dad in a week, wonder how he’s doing.”

At any given time there’s two or three worries – and often five or six – foremost in my mind, plus the fact that I am for all intents and purposes the household planner on behalf of kids, husband and the house/repairs itself.

So, what does all this have to do with writing? Well... that’s another layer of “chatter”. Someone once asked Nora Roberts what she did between books and she said “Sometimes I get a cup of coffee.” Now, I’m no Nora Roberts who is – for those who haven’t read her – a d*mn fine writer, but I daresay her books are a lot more like each other than mine are. I don’t know if that makes it easier or harder, but I just flipped from a layered, textured 17th century book to a fast moving (if also textured) space opera set around AD 3000. This makes life... interesting. And I’m having trouble focusing on the new book.

What I’ve found is if I try to “force” it my mind runs into the easiest (often very silly) channel. To keep myself “there” I need mental silence for at least a day, and then I “find” the story track. This hasn’t happened yet for this book.

In fact with the last five books, I found to pull it all together I need to physically go away (usually to a hotel) for about a week. The first day is mostly devoted to sleeping/decompressing. Sometimes the second too. By the third day the writing starts.

But doing this is disruptive to me and my family and costs money, which when a book is on spec is hard for me to spend. So...

What are your suggestions? How do you call down peace and silence to your mind, so you can concentrate on writing? Do you have the same problem with the mind that runs on trivia? How have you dealt with it?

Dialogue, it'll make or break your book.

Good dialogue is a pleasure. Bad dialogue can make you cringe.

I have the Prince Bride poster because some of the best dialogue in a movie came from this film. Here's a site with the memorable dialogue.

In the movie business, if the dialogue is bad they say it is 'on the nose'. For a look at dialogue in computer games for secondary characters,see this post. Chris Breault is talking about NPCs (non-player-characters). They jump out, take aim and scream -- 'Die, you capitalist pig!' -- or something similar, before you shoot them.

He says:
'The persona's behavior is generic, so their character must also be generic. That's why these lines usually suck.'

And that's what the problem is with poor dialogue in any medium. If you don't know the character, you fall back on generic archetypes and this shows in bland dialogue.

I find on my first draft of the book there will be patches where the dialogue feels weak. But I know, by the time I get to the end of the book, I'll have grown familiar with the characters (their quirks and blind spots) and the dialogue will come to life. They'll simply refuse to say something, if it isn't true to them.

Here's a snippet of Princess Bride dialogue for you.

Buttercup: You can die too for all I care.
[she pushes him down a high hill]
Man in Black: AS... YOU... WISH.
Buttercup: Oh my sweet Westley what have I done?

When I ask him to do something my husband will sometimes say, 'As you wish'.

So, dialogue. Do you struggle with it? Do you find characters saying things you don't expect?

Bargains

A good bargain of course is where both parties feel they got the best possible deal. If one or other side feels they're being screwed, well, to go back to Adam Smith, it is not in not in the enlightened self-interest of either party. Unfortunately, we dwell in stygian darkness... or so it would seem because it seems that those doing the screwing think it's a great idea and their skills in terms of either common sense or empathy are not very well honed. You see this, of course, in every class of humanity and in every sector of life, but there is a neat linear relationship between the disparity in relative power of the two parties and the inclination to screw the other party. If you live in a country where for example there is monopoly (or a cosy oligopoly as in South Africa) of banks, you can be fairly sure that the bank's little-man-in-the-street client is being screwed 16 ways to breakfast. All he'll ever get out of his bank is flat feet from standing in the queue, and he'll be lucky if they only charge him an extra 20% of the medical bills he gets as a result of their generosity. If competition between many little banks is real and vicious you can be sure that clients are getting a better deal. Of course power remains disproportionately with the bank, so getting a good bargain is unlikely. Anyhow, I'm here to talk about writing and books, not economic philosophy, so let's move on to that subject, with just one relevant addendum: a good bargain is actually to the long term benefit (and in the self-interest) of both parties.

So what got me onto this track? Well, the Wiley saga Amanda posted, and a little letter I got on Friday from the publisher that I sold the African print rights to a teens/YA sf novel I wrote. Contracts are of course something authors have to deal with. There is a sort of inverse square law here: simply - the closer to a good bargain it is, the shorter the document is. So for example the short story contracts I have had from Baen and Tekno are less than a page. They're good, fair contracts, sign them and both parties get a good bargain.

The next rule is: the more legalese the more certain you can be that this is no bargain. When the breakteeth lawyer words arrive, get the vaseline and bend over. The truth is a publishing contract is really quite simple (or at least potentially so). Intrinsically, it contains an agreement for the publisher to use the material for a specific purpose for a specific period, for which they will pay you xyz. You probably need to gaurantee that the material is yours to rent to them (this is what it this is: renting a property) and they probably need to provide some mutually agreed accounting mechanism (if the sum is likely to be large enough to warrant either party giving a damn - with a short it's usually money up front, and that's it. I've had one short pay me a royalty - out of 25. I suspect if I trawled through the rest I would come up with a few more dollars owing to me. Shrug.)

This can very easily fit in half a page of clear text: you have that, you have probably got a good bargain.

The other clear indicator is that the language in any covering letter is neutral. Do you believe and can you trust the that glib bloke on the Telly saying ‘The Best deal! Order now at the low, low price of $230 000 and get one FREE'? Well if you do, you deserve to fall for "Good news" or "I don't think it would be fair to keep you hanging on any longer" (to quote the little letter I got from the South African house I sold the African print rights to YA book I wrote to). Now in the case of the South African house I'm mildly amused because to be frank it's actually a win for me of sorts, because their own legalese and evasions have tripped them up. My hackles went up when I got the ‘let's be considerate and fair part' and I went and had a long look at the very dense legalese contract: They're legally obliged to publish and market the book at their expense ‘within a fair and reasonable time' -- there is no ‘kill'clause (and thus no punitive kill fee) - they baulked at that, so by stating that it isn't fair to keep me hanging on and I am free to look elsewhere, they've stated that they're in breach of contract. If I had money to waste or this was a first-and-only book, well, so long as I don't try and resell the book... I could take them to court and make them print and market it. What this boils down to is that the book was bought by a previous editor, has been handed down to one who doesn't know/like/believe in the value of speculative fiction (ergo she calls the story ‘fantasy'... it's science fiction) and if she can get me to huff off, the company is off the hook. Lesson: do not react in a hurry (or without a lot of thought and circumspection) to any contractual matter. If it sounds like normal business language, consider it carefully. If there is even a hint of ‘we're being nice to you'... back off and get professional advice. Your mum, partner, friends or kids are nice to you. You can be friendly with publishers, but it is a business relationship.

For your delectation I provide you with another snippet of the same letter
"In the light of this, I revisited your contract that was drawn up when [edited out] was in charge of this project. I see that the royalty agreed upon was 17½ %. We are not offering anything like this on current contracts and in the light of the recent recession, I am not sure that if we did publish it we would be able to sell enough copies of your book to make it viable."

Now, dear readers, 17.5% is of NET not of cover price. To run that through the calculators... that's probably somewhere around 8% (which yes, I had to argue them up to). That's about a standard paperback rate, and allows no escalation. There was a slim chance that the book would come out in paperback, so actual fact the net rate should be something like 25% to equal hardcover rates. In other words -- anywhere but in that very small exceptionally asymetric pond -- that's already a very good deal for the publisher.

It's also mildly amusing in that Ms Neweditor assumed the contract was the same as most would-be South African authors gets stiffed with and didn't bother to read the whole thing... or she'd have noticed something that would have given her conniptions. I went into this as an author published in the US with I think 15 contracts at that time. And when we got to a certain part of the negotiations they said ‘we don't' and I simply copied the relevant page of my most recent contract and sent it to them and said ‘with me you do and this is actually normal and how business is done.' Lesson: experience counts. Sometimes you have to get shafted getting it.

You see: According to a friend of mine who is professional illustrator and who knows just about every poor sap-author in this little arena... I am the only South African author she's ever heard of EVER getting an advance - and the advance they paid me - while small by US standards, means that actually the company is going to be substantially worse off not publishing, than publishing. Lesson: always try to get some form of advance (as big as possible), or something enormous in leiu which they stand to lose. It keeps them working on the book, and the more they've spent or risked, the more effort they'll put into getting at least that back. If you can't get an advance (and this may be be true in e-pub), get a clear, short timeline on publication and payment, preferably with a kill-fee. And the rates then go up, up a long, long way.

So long as they're in breach of their contract, I get to keep the advance. Actually, maybe Ms Neweditor may have been smarter than I thought. All she had to do was get me to breach contract and they could ask for it back. But I don't think so.

Now seriously, a book published in my old country would have been vaguely satisfying, especially while I was there. I could have sold quite a lot of copies (almost certainly enough just to my fans to pay the advance), aside from any effort they might have made. It was of course a neat subtle stab in the PC-back of South African political correctness, so it would have had a good social purpose too... On the other hand I've probably earned as much as I was ever likely to from the company. I'll be honest, I got a free coffee cup at their imprint launch and a month or so ago it came to light (the imprint launch BTW had maybe 40 or so staffers, and bunch of guests and the MD left in a brand new merc - someone makes money out of publishing in South Africa, just not the authors) and vaguely wondered if it would ever happen, but I never bothered to fuss about it. They might have made a good thing out of it if they'd tried, but forcing them probably isn't worth it. I've kept the E-rights, and rest of the world print rights bar Africa. I'm hoping to have it out as an e-book before Christmas (this has been on the cards for the last month or so, long before this). So: while I'll let it fester for a few more days I'll probably play the game right back... saying that it is terribly considerate but I'd need a letter revoking all their rights before I could even think about it. And then do nothing of the kind. Trying to resell the Africa print rights is near worthless. World rights are different matter. So are POD rights (which are mine).

Or what do you guys think?
How do you feel about ‘big 6' publishers working in what appears to be a ‘cosy'fashion?
What do you think a contract needs to say?
What are things we need to make a good bargain?
What do both both sides stand to gain?