Shocked probably. Maybe irked. Moved, I think.
But I guarantee you this.
I would be uncomfortable with Things as They Are.
Showing posts with label The craft of fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The craft of fiction. Show all posts
Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules for Writing
Were I to have the privilege of sitting somewhere in time past and listening to Kurt Vonnegut, I'm sure I would leave unsettled.
Shocked probably. Maybe irked. Moved, I think.
But I guarantee you this.
I would be uncomfortable with Things as They Are.
Shocked probably. Maybe irked. Moved, I think.
But I guarantee you this.
I would be uncomfortable with Things as They Are.
Spelunking Speculative Fiction: Dystopian
'Ello loves. Today we get to talk with one of my (Erynn's) crit partners. She also happens to be the best Deep POV writer and just one of the coolest people I know. Her series, Haven Seekers, is set in a dystopian future that is frighteningly similar to our own world. Well, why don't I just let her tell you about it? And be sure to read to the end to find out how to win a free book.
Thanks for stopping by, Amanda. Can you tell us about Haven Seekers and your storyworld?
Haven
Seekers will be a four-book dystopian series. In the Haven Seekers storyworld,
the government has seized control of the church. Bibles have been retranslated.
Churches agree to teach only from the retranslated Bible or are closed. The
dystopian world is represented well by the bleak sky and dilapidated farmhouse
on the cover of the first book, Seek and Hide (and the second, Found and Lost, just came out on February 15!) Here, freedom and truth are decaying like
this house. My main character is Marcus Brenner, a new Christian who will do
anything to protect his Christian friends from imprisonment.
What
came to you first, the story, the world, or the characters?
For
me, it’s always the characters. I knew Marcus and Lee very well before I had
any idea what to do with them. I eventually figured out they were fighting in a
war or resistance, like the Underground Railroad, World War II France … except they were
modern characters with modern perspectives. My only option seemed to be
creating my own world. So I’m very much an accidental spec writer.
What
are the advantages and challenges of creating a storyworld that's so similar
to ours?
There’s
certainly less storyworld work for me than for someone writing a space opera.
All I’m really doing is exaggerating current issues. There’s a challenge in
doing this because it’s possible some readers will see the premise as
agenda-driven and therefore never read it. But my purpose is only to ask “what
if?” and then push it a little further and a little further until the stakes
are high enough to make (hopefully) compelling fiction.
Tell
us about your NEXT project. Where does it fit in the spectrum, and how is your
process different?
My
next project still exists only in my head and a few pages of notes. It would be
considered science fiction, probably light science fiction, since it has a
contemporary setting. So far, the process is the same. I’m getting to know my
main character before I start drafting. At least I already know my genre this
time, thanks to his secret.
Ooooh! Intriguing. What
do you love most about speculative fiction?
It’s
possible I will never write anything else. I love spec as long as it’s
character-driven (I’ll read any genre if the story is character-driven). I love
how spec’s storyworlds offer such extreme playgrounds for humanity—our nobility
and evil, our reason and emotion. And having to learn new story “rules” can be
fun and challenging and often engages me before I’ve had time to connect to the
characters.
As a child, Amanda G. Stevens disparaged Mary Poppins and Stuart
Little because they could
never happen. Now, she writes speculative fiction. Holding a Bachelor of
Science degree in English, she has taught literature and composition to
home school students. She lives in Michigan and loves books, film, music, and
white cheddar popcorn.
Spelunking Speculative Fiction: Sci-Fi
Hello, dear readers,
Today I'm thrilled to be hosting one of my favorite (shhh...don't tell the others) clients. Autumn Kalquist is the best-selling author of the Fractured Era series, and today she's going to tell you a little about building a world...in space.
My Defect, Legacy Code, and SunPath (not yet released) series all take place in my “Fractured Era” universe. Each subseries follows the same family lines over the course of nearly one thousand years. In Defect, the world faces the apocalypse. The story follows a group of people called the “Protecteds,” who have been genetically modified for superimmunity by the Infinitek corporation. But their gift comes at a price—the children of the first generation suffer from birth defects. The resulting public scandal forces the Protecteds into camps and into hiding. Infinitek claims the Protecteds need protection, but the truth of what happens in the camps is far more sinister than most know.
Legacy Code takes place 300 years after the events of Defect. The last humans fled Earth during an apocalypse event and are now searching for a better world. They suffer from the same defective genes that plagued the Protecteds. When secrets, civil unrest, and terrorism threaten to tear the fleet apart, humanity is threatened with extinction yet again.
SunPath takes place 500 years after the events of Legacy Code and reveals what happened to humanity and the family lines followed in Defect and Legacy Code.
What drew you to this genre in the first place?
I loved epic fantasy growing up, and I didn’t learn to love science fiction until my husband introduced me to the Mass Effect video game. I became addicted to sci-fi, playing every game and watching every good show. But I didn’t find many books that I connected with. I like character-driven stories, not stories that focus too much on space battles and tech.
I wrote SunPath first, and it was inspired by a snippet of an idea I had. As I rewrote that book, I started wondering how this society came to be, so I decided to go back and write the prequel stories first. A lot of my friends say they don’t like science fiction for the same reasons I used to cite. So my goal has always been to write character-driven stories that have a nice balance of world-building, tech, and relationships and that won’t overwhelm my readers with tech-focused infodumps.
I loved epic fantasy because of the complex relationships between characters, the fantastic worlds, the epic scope, and the love, betrayal, and intrigue. I sometimes say I’m writing “epic science fiction” because space opera is probably the closest subgenre label for what I’m writing, and I’m not sure it fits.
How do you build a world that's both familiar and unique?
A lot of what I’ve created in Fractured Era could actually happen. It’s based on what’s happening with the environment, with genetic engineering, and with other cutting edge technologies. I do take creative license, of course, but I look at the societies I create and base them on what we know about human behavior. For instance, in Legacy Code, I have a fleet where people die by their early 50s, and half of all babies have the Defect because of the defective genes the Protecteds were burdened with.
It makes sense that in such a society people would marry young, that the population would be carefully managed, and that on a fleet with few resources, defective pregnancies wouldn’t be permitted to come to term. And so in this society, they refrain from thinking of a baby as a human until later in the pregnancy, because it helps them deal with their reality. In this world, it makes sense that adulthood starts early (as it did on Earth when human life expectancies were short) and that teens would be expected to marry (pair).
Infinitek built the fleet, and their infinity symbol logo has taken on almost spiritual connotations in the 300 years since the fleet left Earth. The original colonists were from every faith and corner of the globe, and people mostly believe the “old gods” died the day they left Earth. But there are people in the sublevels of every ship who hold tightly to the belief that their adherence to the strict social structure and their sacrifice and suffering mean something. That if they work hard enough, someday the old gods will lead them to a better world. The plot is tightly linked to the unique challenges the fleet faces and the beliefs they hold. The world and the stories may be different, but humanity stays the same.
How do you handle creating new terminology?
I like to use Greek and Latin roots or combine terms people would recognize so they can easily guess what a new term means. For instance, I use “helio” (greek: “sun”) for a floating globe used as personal light source and for growing crops aboard the fleet. There’s a “genscanner” in Legacy Code that scans a fetus for the genetic defect. I like to keep it simple. I never want the language I choose to get in the way of the story.
You write songs for your books, right? How did that come about?
I’m a singer, and when I was writing SunPath, my character listened to a song she found in a file called “Songs and Stories from the Fleet.” The lyrics were about life in the fleet 500 years ago, yet mirrored her current situation perfectly. Honestly, this song made me wonder about the past and ended up being the reason I went back and wrote Legacy Code first.
I found a local music producer, Freya Wolfe, with the intention to get back into the studio for fun to record this song. But we really hit it off and have been working together ever since. I consider “Better World” to be the theme song of the Legacy Code series now.
What are your favorite tools for world-building and keeping track of world details?
At the most basic level, I like to use Pinterest, and my real life pinboard for inspiration. I find pictures of my characters and scenes from their world, and sometimes I look at gorgeous fantasy art or tech blogs for ideas for my sci-fi.
I use Aeon Timeline to keep track of when the events in my world take place. It takes a bit of work, and it’s something I need to update, but so far I’ve been using it for really major world events. It’s also great for keeping track of when things were invented or when characters were born (and died).
I currently have a document that is probably 40,000 words and has all the details of my world, but that’s less than ideal. A private, personal wiki is a great way to organize all of this, but it does take time to maintain. I have an ongoing shared-world project with another author, and we try to keep our wiki updated so we can easily look up character and world details.
****Legacy Code is FREE right now for a limited time only, and Paragon (Legacy Code #2) is only $0.99! Snag 'em while they're hot!
Spelunking Speculative Fiction: Fantasy
Speculative Fiction. That’s a broad term, baby. It’s
cavernous.
Let’s explore it, map it out just enough to be amazed.
Its scope is enormous. Spec-fic includes sci-fi elements but
still falls outside the genre. Throw in your futuristic gadgets, new species
and races, monsters, magical abilities, and you’re getting somewhere. Rife with peril and possibility, virtue and vulnerability, imagery and inspiration, spec-fic appeals to all kinds of people. Readers can—quite literally—get lost in another world.
Speculative fiction = imagination.
Enough inventiveness that readers shush the nay-sayers in
their heads, focus on the fantastical elements, and believe. We’ll explore it
all in this series, but today, we’re starting with one of my favorites.
FANTASY.
I’ve just finished editing an incredible fantasy novel, the
first in a series. Aaron Gansky, author
and world-builder extraordinaire, and I had a blast going back and forth on
this one. Think Tron meets the Chronicles of Narnia.
They'd always dreamed of living in the fantasy world they designed. Now, they dream of escaping it.
Near the end of his manuscript, one of Aaron's characters causes
something to happen that blew me away, and I commented with this quote by Leonard S. Marcus.
“Fantasy is storytelling with the beguiling
power to transform the impossible into the imaginable, and to reveal our own 'real' world in a fresh and truth-bearing light.”
He said, “I feel like that quote should be framed.”
I asked him to share his thoughts on it, so without further
ado…
I never intended to write fantasy. I didn't grow up reading The Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time. As a literary genre, it didn't much interest me.
Now, as the first of my fantasy novels is set to release, I find myself an avid fan.
I came to fantasy late in life, and it was really video games that sucked me in. I recall boring my sister to tears while I played Dragon Warrior for hours on end. I loved the quaint villages, the quirky monsters, the experience grind before tackling the final boss in order to save the world.
It was the love for games, then, that pulled me in. But as I began writing, it became painfully obvious I had little experience in the genre. To familiarize myself with it, I consumed fantasy in large quantities. I read The Wheel of Time; I read--dare I say it--Game of Thrones (gasp!); I read The Fellowship of the Ring and just about everything my students recommended to me.
What I found in the pages of fantasy quite surprised me. The impossible became the imaginable. But there was more to it than that.
Buried deep beneath cerulean leaves, beneath soil damp with the blood of elves and dwarves, beneath stone caverns of underground cities, our real world persisted. These elves with pointy ears, and the dwarves with their beards and axes, they were, at times, more human than many of the people I know.
So then, it takes the impossible to become imaginable in order to show us a vision of our "world in a fresh and truth-bearing light."
This is no different than fiction as a whole. Flannery O'Connor talks about this in Mystery and Manners. Sometimes, to paraphrase, we must hyperbolize the faults in our society in order to see the speck of truth we want our readers to see.
Perhaps this is why Lloyd Alexander so sublimely observes, "Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it." We've not known anyone with the terminal greed of "dragon sickness," but then, we have. We've not known anyone with the arrogance of an elf, but then, we have, haven't we? And while they're foreign to us, strange even, they are familiar and understandable.
And don't get me started on the xenophobia of the elves. Or the dwarves. Or the humans. Race discrimination? In fantasy? Really?
As a society, we recognize these. We understand the forbidden love between a human and an elf, an elf and a dwarf, even a hobbit and a human. We understand these, because they are real, because we've seen then, perhaps experienced them.
But fantasy does something else for us. We WANT to experience the world. Not only do we fall in love (or in hate, if you can fall in hate) with the characters, perhaps more than in any other genre, we fall in love with the world. We want to experience a world that is entirely strange, but comfortingly familiar. We want to fear Mordor. And pine for the Shire.
Fantasy at its heart is more than escapism. It's a familiar truth in a new, imaginative skin. It's reality with a fantastic make-up job. It's life sprinkled with pixie dust and Hollywood special effects. It's a miracle pill with a chocolate coating to go down easier. Often, it's the only reality we're willing to swallow. But swallowing it makes us all the more prepared to deal with the ugliness of life when it is upon us.
Aaron
D. Gansky is a novelist, teacher, and writing mentor. He
is the author of the novel The Bargain (2013,
Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas) as well as The Hand of Adonai, a YA Fantasy series. Additionally, he’s written
two short books on the craft of fiction; Firsts in Fiction: First Lines and Write to Be Heard (with Diane Sherlock). To find out more about
his books, visit his book page here. And you won't want to miss his weekly Firsts in Fiction podcast either. Just have a notepad and sense of humor handy.
Now, two final things:
1) A Giveaway. Huzzah! We're EACH giving away a free first chapter edit or--for ACFW writers--a free Genesis entry edit, up to sixteen pages. Just scroll down to our Rafflecopter giveaway and enter to win. You can choose to enter for a critique from Bethany or Erynn, or you can enter both. Click the right arrow to enter for Erynn's critique.
2) Let's do something fun. Angela Ackerman asked one of my favorite questions of all time: If destroying the One Ring were up to you, who would be in YOUR fellowship? Tell us in the comments. One caveat: No all-powerful beings allowed. Flawed characters only.
I never intended to write fantasy. I didn't grow up reading The Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time. As a literary genre, it didn't much interest me.
Now, as the first of my fantasy novels is set to release, I find myself an avid fan.
I came to fantasy late in life, and it was really video games that sucked me in. I recall boring my sister to tears while I played Dragon Warrior for hours on end. I loved the quaint villages, the quirky monsters, the experience grind before tackling the final boss in order to save the world.
It was the love for games, then, that pulled me in. But as I began writing, it became painfully obvious I had little experience in the genre. To familiarize myself with it, I consumed fantasy in large quantities. I read The Wheel of Time; I read--dare I say it--Game of Thrones (gasp!); I read The Fellowship of the Ring and just about everything my students recommended to me.
What I found in the pages of fantasy quite surprised me. The impossible became the imaginable. But there was more to it than that.
Buried deep beneath cerulean leaves, beneath soil damp with the blood of elves and dwarves, beneath stone caverns of underground cities, our real world persisted. These elves with pointy ears, and the dwarves with their beards and axes, they were, at times, more human than many of the people I know.
So then, it takes the impossible to become imaginable in order to show us a vision of our "world in a fresh and truth-bearing light."
This is no different than fiction as a whole. Flannery O'Connor talks about this in Mystery and Manners. Sometimes, to paraphrase, we must hyperbolize the faults in our society in order to see the speck of truth we want our readers to see.
Perhaps this is why Lloyd Alexander so sublimely observes, "Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it." We've not known anyone with the terminal greed of "dragon sickness," but then, we have. We've not known anyone with the arrogance of an elf, but then, we have, haven't we? And while they're foreign to us, strange even, they are familiar and understandable.
And don't get me started on the xenophobia of the elves. Or the dwarves. Or the humans. Race discrimination? In fantasy? Really?
As a society, we recognize these. We understand the forbidden love between a human and an elf, an elf and a dwarf, even a hobbit and a human. We understand these, because they are real, because we've seen then, perhaps experienced them.
But fantasy does something else for us. We WANT to experience the world. Not only do we fall in love (or in hate, if you can fall in hate) with the characters, perhaps more than in any other genre, we fall in love with the world. We want to experience a world that is entirely strange, but comfortingly familiar. We want to fear Mordor. And pine for the Shire.
Fantasy at its heart is more than escapism. It's a familiar truth in a new, imaginative skin. It's reality with a fantastic make-up job. It's life sprinkled with pixie dust and Hollywood special effects. It's a miracle pill with a chocolate coating to go down easier. Often, it's the only reality we're willing to swallow. But swallowing it makes us all the more prepared to deal with the ugliness of life when it is upon us.
Now, two final things:
1) A Giveaway. Huzzah! We're EACH giving away a free first chapter edit or--for ACFW writers--a free Genesis entry edit, up to sixteen pages. Just scroll down to our Rafflecopter giveaway and enter to win. You can choose to enter for a critique from Bethany or Erynn, or you can enter both. Click the right arrow to enter for Erynn's critique.
2) Let's do something fun. Angela Ackerman asked one of my favorite questions of all time: If destroying the One Ring were up to you, who would be in YOUR fellowship? Tell us in the comments. One caveat: No all-powerful beings allowed. Flawed characters only.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Coming Soon: Spelunking the Imagination
'Ello, loves!
Our site is going through a bit of an overhaul at the moment, but that gives you time (mere days, really) to get ready for what's ahead.
Coming up in the next few months are:
Our site is going through a bit of an overhaul at the moment, but that gives you time (mere days, really) to get ready for what's ahead.
Coming up in the next few months are:
- Lyrical Gangsters: Be a Writer Whose Work Sings
- Spelunking the Imagination: Speculative Fiction and Storyworld
- Kurt Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing
- and more from Get Your Grammar Fix(ed)
And with the Spelunking series? Believe me, people. If you need a shot to infuse your imagination, it's coming at you.
We're lining up some guest bloggers who might just blow your metaphorical headlamps off. These peeps know their stuff when it comes to building realistic storyworlds. Whether you write fantasy, sci-fi, gaming, or fairy tales, you won't want to be left in the dark.
Subscribe in the sidebar so you don't miss a single post. And as always, holler at me if there's something you want me to tackle in a Grammar Fix.
Thanks to Trey Ratcliff for the incredible image of the Batu Caves in Malaysia.
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