<![CDATA[Mark Andrew Edwards

<![CDATA[Mark Andrew Edwards - Markblog]]>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:15:04 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Worldbuilding in short stories]]>Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:58:03 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/worldbuilding-in-short-stories.html
One of the hardest things to do is to build a new world in five thousand words or less.

Worldbuilding in general is hard to do, even in a novel. You have to bring your reader into a new world and make it real to them. The more different the characters and the setting are from our 21st century Western world, the harder it is for many readers to make the jump.

But at least in a novel, you have space. You can build the world a bit at a time. In a short story, every sentence counts. You have to do a lot, but not too much too fast, in a short amount of time. Because in addition to building your world, you also have to tell a story. And that can be a tricky thing to do in short fiction.

A lot of writers will take the easy way out (myself included) by setting their short stories in the modern world or at least a world that is easy recognizeable. We lean on tropes we understand: knights, magic spells, fairies, monsters under the bed. But let’s say you want to do something different, you want to tell a real secondary-world fantasy or science fiction story and you need to do it by making it under a specific word count.

Here are some things to watch out for and some things you need to do.

Gotchas: These are problems I’ve had and that I’ve read when critiquing other people (not just Wordslingers but in other groups or online as well).

1.       Too much slang, too soon. By this, I mean, too much made-up jargon. These can be unfamiliar character names or go all the way into world-specific philosophies, religions and alien concepts. Often you’ll get a bunch of strange words dumped on you up front in the story as the author tries to build the world before your eyes, before the story truly starts. This is a serious bump for a lot of readers, especially casual readers. Hard-core Fantasy and Sci-fi fans are somewhat inoculated to strange words. But that doesn’t mean you can get away with it. If you have more than one strange word per page, it may bump people out of your story.*

2.       Building the world instead of telling the story. This is an easy mistake to make. You can spend so much time in exposition, explaining what’s going on, that you forget to tell the story. Exposition bogs down the pace of your story. But at the same time, infodumps about things that never were and may never be are one of the joys of fantasy/sci-fi. The key is the placement. Get the story started, then tell us the history of the do-hickey of power.

3.       Not telling us what we need to know. The world in your authorial mind is much more real than what ends up on the page. As a result, you may be making assumptions about what your reader knows, especially if you are the only person reading your work before sending it out into the great big world. This is where a critique group is critical. You need someone who doesn’t have your brain to look over your story and see where they get confused. But you can avoid a lot of problems by only telling us what we NEED to know to advance the story. There are lots of ‘cool stuff’ in your head that you want people to see but they all need to advance the story, otherwise, sorry, you need to cut it. Include all the relevant facts but don’t tell us too much. See? Hard, isn’t it?

Ok, let’s see about what you should do instead of what you shouldn’t.

1.       Signal right away that ‘things are not like home’. This is useful because it sets expectations and lets the reader know they need to suspend disbelief. If your story is sci-fi, but something that doesn’t exist yet in your opening paragraph. If you are writing fantasy, try using titles or kingdom names in your opening paragraph. (just as examples, I’m sure you can do this more elegantly)

2.       Start by anchoring them to something familiar. Give us a point of reference before you start building your world. Start with the similarities, then when you show us how things are different, you can accomplish more with less. Let me try an example: Most people get married, one husband, one wife. If you start off introducing someone and their spouse, that grounds us. Then if you introduce a concubine or second-wife or triad-male, you are telling us about how the world is different but you did it starting from a common point of reference. Use universal problems, common emotions, the more familiar elements you can use in your story, the more they’ll be able to identify with it even when you toss in aliens or orcs.

3.       Ease in the world-specific words and slang. Using an unfamiliar word is a good way to signal what kind of story you’re telling. But start slow. Choose made-up words that are significant to the story, not just different for the sake of being different. And, again, space the strangeness out. Try to keep it to one new word per page or per two pages, if you can. You want to hook your readers, not use strange bait.

4.       Know your story, your conflict and your stakes. If you need to, start out with a one-paragraph description of your story with none of the fantastic elements. Know the story first, know the conflicts. A short story is about one thing, one concept, one twist. More than that, and you’re into novella or novel territory, which is a whole ‘nother kettle of geeblefish. Think of this as a rehearsal, all your actors are in street clothes, learning their part. Then, once you have the story clear in your head, dress them up. Paint the scenery. Bring in the props. That doesn’t mean the props and scenery and costume isn’t important, it is. The fantastic elements of a fantasy or sci-fi story should be the key to your story. In fact, without them, you should have no story.**

*I’ve heard that more than 1 made up word per story is too much but I’m not sure that’s correct.

** At least according to our learned elders. I’ve heard, time and again, that if you can take the sci-fi element out and you still have a story, you haven’t written ‘Real’ science fiction. To that I say ‘Pppppthhhh’. Story is story. Fantasy and Science fiction is question of props, scenery and costuming.

]]><![CDATA[Decide, already!]]>Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:03:12 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/decide-already.htmlThere is a saying, “Great is the enemy of the Good”. Or in other words, perfectionism had better be its own reward, cuz it sure gets in the way of getting things done. In the military, the thinking is, ‘better a bad decision made decisively and a good decision made too late’. Time is of the essence in battle, more than anything else.*

My point is, that making a decision and then trying to execute on that decision is much more important than trying for the ‘right thing’. For example, my Mad Scientist short story was going along quite swimmingly, I was having fun reading and writing it. Usually a good sign. But around the 3.5k mark, I started dithering.

I couldn’t decide if I should end it right at 4k words with a humorous denouement or if I should expand the story, swing for the fences (probably 7k words) and make the story darker and more disturbing. I literally couldn’t seem to decide and the story just sat there, unfinished.

Then during my weekend editing class, I had a revelation: It’s up to me to make the decision. And it doesn’t matter WHAT I decide. I just needed to make a decision and then follow through and try to do it well.

I know, I know. Obvious. Mark “Kooky Pants” Edwards took HOW long to figure this out?

Sigh. All I can say is that I may have started over-analyzing things. This might be an occupational hazard for a want-to-be author. Too many books on writing, too many classes, too much advice. It was easier, simpler before I knew all the rules. I just WROTE Smooth Running. Sure, it has flaws, but it’s a spanking good read. So to speak.

It is up to us. We’re the writer. No one can make these decisions for us: what to write about, how to end it, how to characterize someone, what is your story theme. All critique partners can do is help us by pointing out when the decisions we made didn’t work for them. That’s all.

We’re the writers. We have the freedom and the responsibility to do the writing, to make the decisions.

So. Final thought, don’t worry about the decision you’re trying to make. Just make it, choose something, then write the heck out of it, go full bore, commit to the decision once it’s made. Don’t wait, don’t dither, don’t freeze. Decide and move on.

There are so many more stories than we have time to write. Keep writing.

*Going to stop that there before I get off on a tangent about OODA loops and Col. Boyd.

]]><![CDATA[Misunderstandings]]>Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:37:29 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/misunderstandings.htmlComedy and tragedy are both forged out of misunderstandings. Irony grows out of a character misunderstanding something the reader sees clearly. When they’re done right, they make us emphasize with the main character, all but shouting at them to go back and ask more questions. When they’re done wrong, you get your typical Hollywood RomCom.

So how do you work them? Well, I’m still feeling my way through this but let me pass along what I’m thinking.

First, establish your character’s mindset. If your protagonist has a poor physical self-image, start with that. Make it clear how your character feels about whatever issue is going to be misunderstood.

Second, know the mindset of the other person. If this is situation based, make sure you know all sides of the scenario. You don’t need to show the reader the other side of the misunderstood person or situation at the time it occurs, though. Some pretty good stories use the revelation of the misunderstanding to resolve the plot thread or story. But you need to have both sides clear in your head.

Third is the set up. Set the stage for the scene. Since you know the characters and you know the situation, see if you can signal what’s going to happen. Leave little breadcrumbs that will alert an attentive reader to what’s to come or that will seem clear in retrospect. Build anticipation. This works really well with 3rd person, multiple POV stories.

Forth is the crisis point*. This is the moment of the misunderstanding. If you know your character and shown their mindset, if you know the mindset of the other person, the misunderstanding will seem completely reasonable. That is the key. The misunderstanding must be completely understandable. So to speak. If you are revealing the truth of the situation to the reader at the crisis point, this is where you can start building the pressure of irony. Make sure you’re doing so deliberately.

Fifth is where the character is living with the consequences of the misunderstanding.   Every action they take after that crisis point is built on bad information. This can be a very long sequence, leading to ultimate tragedy or it can be short, as in a comedy. The point is the misunderstanding raises the tension of every scene after it. If the misunderstanding happens early in, say, a novel and is not resolved until the end of the book, make sure that you are reminding the reader. This is especially important if the reader isn’t explicitly told what the misunderstanding is. You want to keep the tension going and you don’t want you resolution to come out of nowhere.

Last is the resolution of the misunderstanding. It does not have to be revealed to the character but it does need to be clear to the reader what the misunderstanding was. This is your moment of catharsis, for the reader and for the character as well, perhaps.

The reason this was on my mind was something came up in IM gaming the other night. Two characters, very much infatuated with each other, broke up. The Player Character has a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with their appearance. A number of revelations about the Player Characters was made and the other character rejected the Player Character. The misunderstanding was that the Player Character assumed they were being rejected because of their heritage (they are mixed race). That wasn’t the reason but it reinforced the character’s world view of themselves as ugly and tainted.

That got me thinking how powerful a misunderstanding can be and how hard it can be to pull off believably. Shakespeare and heck, the Greeks and Romans (Plautus especially), have been using misunderstandings for comedy and tragedy. I was aware of it, of course. But there were so few that felt reasonable to me. Especially misunderstandings in movies.

Now in comedy, part of the fun is supposed to be knowing the character is misled. But it’s amazing how many time I just felt that the main character was an idiot, not just in comedies but in romantic dramas as well. It occurred to me that the setup was lacking. In the IM gaming, the character’s poor self-image had been long establish, so naturally they interpreted all rejection based on their perceived character flaw.

Now, as usual, I have to see if I can actually apply my overly-simplistic revelation to my own work J

*I don’t mean this in a plot structure way. This is where the character is tested and misunderstands what’s being said or what the truth of their situation is.

]]><![CDATA[More short story follies]]>Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:18:18 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/more-short-story-follies.htmlI had a lot of fun last night working on my Mad Scientist short story. It’s so much fun, it’s in danger of turning into a ‘shaggy dog’ story. I need an ending. The Wife suggests an ending with a lot of bloodshed. Well…YEAH but what kind?

The point of most Mad Scientist stories is to have them hoisted by their own petard. They should be tragedies where they create the circumstances for their own downfall due to their recklessness (or madness/obsession).

Now I could do this with a straightforward ‘devoured-by-their-own-monster’ ending but that feels a little cheap. Too predictable. Of course it would work and be amusing (despite the mayhem, it’s one of the more light-hearted things I’ve written) if Virgil Ther just gets gobbled up. The story would be short-ish (probably 4k words), light but fun.

Or I could go deeper. Make Virgil even more mad, have him completely go off the rails. But here we’re getting into shaggy dog territory. Short stories need to be focused. So I’m leaning towards a predictable, amusing ending rather than something longer.

I think.

The thing is, I rarely know where these short stories are going to end up. Dirty secret and probably why my endings consistently need work. There are a few that I knew the ending before I began: The Island of Lost Gods, Wake Up Call, A Reaping. But for a lot of my short stories, I just sat down and wrote. I discovered the ending as surely as the reader did. This story is a lot like that.

Whew.

Did I really write 28 short stories last April? How the heck did I do that?

Well, just need to keep moving forward. I’m just glad that the juices are flowing and the writing is fun again. That said, I need to get novels edited and out for submission/sale soon. Keep moving forward…

]]><![CDATA[Therium 99!]]>Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:29:15 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/therium-99.htmlDid not have a chance to blog yesterday. I had new hire orientation at Amazon and then I spent the day setting up new work laptop. But I did finally get started on my Mad Scientist story. In it, he uses his new creation, Therium 99 to perfect organ transplants, even across species lines. Naturally, there are some side effects. In my head, he sounds like the Monarch from the Venture Brothers

So far, the Mad Scientist story is amusing me tremendously, so it’s successful at that, at least. I’ll finish it up tonight, I think and then I’ll send it off for the Anthology I’m writing it for. What the heck, if it doesn’t sell there, I’ll send it elsewhere. It is fun to write and to be honest, I needed to write something, finish it and send it out.

Speaking of, yeah, more accountability.=: I didn’t write or submit a story last week. So I’m two weeks behind now. But the good news is, I have some time to catch up now that my interview cycle is done.

I’ve also been giving more thought to my first Epic (huge) fantasy novel. I started outlining it a few years ago and realized that the scope I had in mind was way too big for the level of skill I had then. So I tried to write a few ‘simple’ novels (one of which still managed to sprawl to 140k words). But reading Shelby Foote and Michael Sharra has made me start thinking about it again.

The challenge is to write a secondary world novel that feels as real as the historical fiction and narrative fiction of Sharra and Foote. I don’t want to write a pastiche of an existing war, now covering up WW 2 or the Civil War in fantasy or sci-fi clothing. I want to do something original, utterly fictional but detailed enough that it feels like history, not fantasy.

To do all that, I’ll need to invent a whole lot of characters and history. Luckily I like doing that. I’m leaning towards fantasy, setting this in my Angel Odyssey universe. That means gods and magic, which should also be cool. But I don’t want it to feel too contemporary. The last thing I want is 21st century sensibilities in a 5th century BC sort of world. I’ve read a few historical novels lately that did that and it irritated.

Anyway, very much enjoying having my brain turned on again. I can’t wait to see what boils over.

]]><![CDATA[The road ahead]]>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:20:52 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/the-road-ahead.htmlSorry for the day off yesterday, work will intrude sometimes. The editing class I’m taking seems to have really wanged my writing momentum. I have all these ideas for new stories and I have three novels to edit and put out there but I end up spending my spare writing time doing homework for the class.

The good news is, the class won’t go on forever and I am learning bits and pieces that will help me when I get back into the editing rut again. (Sadly, I don’t mean that like the animals do. I’m thinking more like highways.) I have stories I want to write and stories I need to edit but that’s the trade off when you take classes, I suppose.

I’m really looking forward to the writer’s retreat I’m going to in March. A week of nothing but writing? Bliss… I just need to spend some time planning so I can use the time most efficiently. I’m leaning towards the Smooth Running sequel but I could also do the second Angel Odyssey book. I even have a few ideas for the sequel to Mageborn Mechanic. Who knows, maybe this year I’ll write all three.

What I need to do before March is start sketching out the plot and story I want to write. I might try the Snowflake method* again, that worked pretty well for Angel Odyssey. O r I might do a more chapter-based outline, which worked for Mageborn Mechanic. It’ll be good/interesting getting back into a third person, multi-POV writing style again.

The Snowflake method worked well for summarizing what the story is and for telling the plot from the POV of the main and minor characters. Pitches are a lot easier when you start with a single sentence and then expand it out into a paragraph, a page, three pages, etc…

The chapter outline method seemed to work well for thrillers or anything else that relies on structure (if I ever try my hand a writing a Mystery, I’ll probably do the chapter outline again).

Ah, but first, homework tonight and then critiques for Wordslingers and then for Potlatch.

*http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

]]><![CDATA[Writing lean but with a side of gravy]]>Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:24:59 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/writing-lean-but-with-a-side-of-gravy.htmlI end up reading a lot of classics from the past. I don’t know what it is, there’s plenty of fine writers today, but I find myself going back again and again to books that are…I don’t know…proven.    I like reading Hammett and Chandler, their novel and short stories. No one writes like they do, it seems. People call it cliché or treat their style as a mine for parody. Heck, some writers and editors don’t even consider it Noir anymore (what is it with this hysterical NEED to put everything in neat little buckets?) But their stories work, that mix of terse and verbose.

Another favorite from a little further down the line is Westlake, especially his work under his Richard Stark pen name. Man, his Parker novels just tick down like a freight train, lean and mean. I love that.

I’ve been trying to write lean for this past half year or so. My first novel was 125k words, Angel Odyssey was at 140k last time I tried editing it. (Need to do that again, soon) But I got The Mageborn Mechanic in at 50k. Which gets me wondering if it’s TOO lean. The proof of that will be when I get off my hinder and solicit feedback from beta readers, I guess. But I did do a little readthrough last night and found some places for expansion.

Terse writing is like…dialog, I guess. It works but you can’t do page after page of minimalist prose, I don’t think. You need to break it up, just like dialog. For example:

“Hey,” Josh said, as Vidal came into the shared office room.

“What’s up?” Vidal asked.

“Got a report from Ceylon. Doesn’t look good.”

“Oh yeah? How fresh?”

“Forty, give or take. Raw feed is going through Analysis now but I think we’re looking at an Incursion.”

Now do that for page after page. No physical movement, no setting description…it would get dull, reader brains will shut off. We need to vary the pace and length of sentences and vary the level of detail we provide. It doesn’t mean shoveling in exposition willy-nilly, but rather finding a balance.

That’s what I’m wondering about with Mageborn Mechanic, how far over the line am I? Am I too terse? What does my audience NEED to know? What do they want to know?

Sigh. Yeah, I know. The only way to find out is to put in front of people. Rabble.

]]><![CDATA[Update and book review: "Duty, Honor, Country"]]>Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:57:51 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/update-and-book-review-duty-honor-country.htmlHi folks. Sorry for my silence yesterday, fell under the weather. Which is odd, since the weather is glorious for Feburary. In other, better news, I got an offer to work for Amazon full time, which I’m taking with both hands. I’ll still be working on the Kindle Fire and such. This is awesome for me and I fully intent to work on the Kindle Fire with the mindset of a writer and a reader.

Back on to writing, my Write 1, Submit 1 for last week is a failure. I was focused on preparing for my Amazon interview, so I didn’t do a ton of writing. I do have a short story idea and I’ll be tapping out tonight or tomorrow, though. I also need to write my synopsis for The Mageborn Mechanic and send that out.

I was reading Bob Mayer’s “Duty, Honor, Country” but gave up. That gave me no satisfaction. The book is set just before the Civil war and has U.S. Grant as a main character. This book should have been right up my wheelhouse but it didn’t work for me.

Part of the problem for me was the two fictional characters Bob Mayer inserted into the historical narrative. (there was a third character but he didn’t bug me as much) I didn’t find the two characters sympathetic, which is death for me. I realize the author is trying to create a character arc and a redemption arc or two but it took too long for me. I wasn’t hooked. I also disliked the way the two invented characters ‘stole the thunder’ of real people and real events. Making one of them ‘best buddies’ with Kit Carson was a bridge too far for me.

The author seemed to have definite opinions about the character of historical figures like Fremont and Robert E. Lee. I get that there is a tendency to over-romanticize Lee, especially; but it felt like Lee was written to be a dick. Lee may have been ‘merely human’ but even his worst enemies might have a hard time recognizing him here. The fictional characters also have a sub-plot that wouldn’t have been out of place in Mandingo (Sexual slavery! Incest! Fun for the whole family!), which didn’t help. On the other side, Grant is made a little too saintly, particularly on slavery. From what I recall from his autobiography, he didn't have strong opinions on slavery until the War. The real people are complex enough to make for compelling stories; I don’t see why they needed to be reinterpreted like this.

What did work well for me was the setting at West Point, those scenes felt alive. If the whole novel had been set there, I’d have devoured it, melodrama or not. Spending four years with figures destined to cast a long shadow over the coming war while they were still students would have made for fascinating historical fiction. Likewise, a novel that focused on the Mexican-American war back in the 1840’s would have been another part of history that has been under-told. Or simply focusing on the historical character’s real, compelling stories could have been made fresh and interesting. But that’s not what we have here.

I ended up buying, again, Shelby Foote’s Civil War narrative instead. This time for my Kindle Fire. I also picked up U.S. Grant’s autobiography, along with Sherman’s and Longstreet’s. Again, the real stories are dramatic enough and the people themselves abounded with flaws and contradictions. There’s no reasons to make up new ones. Especially not with the fictional characters created here. I really, really wanted to like this book and it gives me no pleasure to write a negative review of it.

I don't think I can recommend this book. It's competently written, Bob Mayer has talent. But I didn't enjoy his insertion of fictional characters who go on to take an outsized role in history. The price point makes it a fairly painless experiment for me, which is good, but I'd instead suggest people try Foote or MacPherson's narrative histories or the autobiographies of the real actors on

* though he did, indeed, free a slave that had been given to him as a wedding present. I don't recall him freeing his wife's slaves, however.

]]><![CDATA[Synopsis time: Tell me a story]]>Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:43:07 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/synopsis-time-tell-me-a-story.htmlWhen it comes to writing a synopsis, I am clueless. I have submitted Smooth Running to three publishers with three different synopses, same with Angel Odyssey. Each one different, each time, unsure of what I was supposed to write. But I have an idea…

For my editing class, our instructor offered to critique our novel synopsis for us. That’s cool but how do I write a synopsis? Previous advice books and blog posts made it sound like your synopsis should read like the copy from the back of a paperback. I’m here to tell you…that doesn’t seem to be right. At least not according to the Fairwood Writer’s workshop I attended last year. (Not that anyone knows anything*) Previous attempts to sum up the plot of the novels have consistently ballooned up past the three page maximum, even for outlined novels like Angel Odyssey. Some guidelines suggest putting in passages from the book in the synopsis, to give the reader a taste of your writing voice. It’s enough to make me pull out my hair, if I had any hair.

But I’m going to try something new. I’m going to get in character**and see if he can tell me the story. The Mageborn Mechanic might be uniquely suited to this attempt, since it is a thriller and a heck of a lot shorter than my first two novels.

I’m hoping that letting my character narrate the story of the novel will help fix some of the problems I’m having figuring out what to put into a synopsis. I’ll let you know how it goes.

*It seems like there is very little consensus on anything in the writing community as to the ‘right way’ to do anything, except to follow submission guidelines to the letter.

**Simon, to be precise, my protagonist from The Mageborn Mechanic

]]><![CDATA[Still offline]]>Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:16:31 -0800http://markandrewedwards.com/1/post/2012/02/still-offline.htmlHey folks. I'm still offline, writing-wise. I have my Full Time interview at Amazon today. I'm pretty focused on that. Tomorrow, I'll be back on track.

Wish me luck! ]]>