I’m sure no one at this point in my career is beating down my door to learn my methods, but I think a brief discussion is warranted, if only to crystallize my own thoughts.

Trained as a scientist, I typically plot most items in my writing. I know the high points of the plot, the main characters, the setting (sometimes in stupid detail), and the ending. The details may evolve slowly, but the pieces are mostly there before I even start writing. If I don’t plan well, then I end up drifting sort of aimlessly. My voice suffers without a concrete outline; my prose isn’t as tight, and I am easily drawn into tangents.

The caveat to this is that sometimes character interactions are forced. I know that Character X must do Y to Character Z, and that creates a certain degree of artifice. If I were to allow them to interact naturally, to put them in the world and see what happens, then it might serve my craft a little better.

To do that sort of thing is what George R. R. Martin calls “gardening.” Plant characters in a fully-realized world and see where they go and what they do. How do they react? If you’re good at keeping interactions consistent, if you really grok people and what makes them tick, then your fiction can feel more authentic. The problem is that you must maintain your focus, and be willing to to excise cancerous growths from your manuscript before they consume valuable editing time. This is also, unfortunately, the reason why I believe A Dance with Dragons has taken so long for Martin to complete.

I decided to try an experiment. I’ve written several sketches over the past six months with no pre-planned plot safety net. (Say that three times fast!) I was curious to see where they took me, and what stood out about each one.  I ended up with a story that has been rejected three times (one with a personalized!), a Firefly pastiche (but with great character interaction), and a little novella that is turning into something reminiscent of S. M. Stirling and Allen Steele. In nearly every case (whether I’ve got a plot that’s worth a damn or not), the dialog is better, the character interactions are more natural, and there is a depth of emotion that wasn’t present in my writing before.

The trick then, is to marry this new-found authenticity with my penchant for world-building and plotting without driving myself mad.

Wish me luck.

I’ve made it to a complete read of my novel (although I still haven’t sold the bastard), so I am at least getting through the initial elimination round.  However, these are some important points to consider as all of us new writers begin new projects without the guidance of an agent/editor. I am particularly guilty of overusing language. In my first pass on editing a draft, I do a search on “ly” and make sure that every adverb carries its weight. If it can be replaced by an active-voice verb that contains description, then that happens every time.

Example:

• She walked silently through the forest. – Adverb use unnecessary.
• She crept through the forest. – Replaced verb/adverb combination with an active, descriptive verb.

Both sentences get the job done, but the second one has “tighter” language and is more evocative. If someone is creeping, you get the sense that they’re avoiding detection. Note that I don’t say that she’s “silently creeping.” In this instance, the adverb is superfluous. There’s a whole wheelbarrow full of connotation in the verb that is doing your work for you. Rather than making sentences that are a mouthful of syllables, you get something simple and meaningful.

Best short story: “The Things” – Peter Watts

Best dramatic presentation, long form: Inception

Best dramatic presentation, short form: “Vincent and the Doctor” – Stephen Moffat, Series 5, Dr. Who; “Brown Betty” – Jeff Pinkner and J. H. Wyman, Season 2, Fringe

Best editor, short form: Neil Clarke, Clarkesworld

Best professional artist: John Picacio

Best semiprozine: Clarkesworld

Best fan writer: Jerry Holkins, Penny Arcade

John W. Campbell award nominee: Dan Wells (author of I Am Not a Serial Killer and member of the “Writing Excuses” podcast).

I was surprised when I saw the news that she had been uninvited as the Guest of Honor for Wiscon.

I did a little digging. It turns out that Wiscon is self-billed as “The World’s Leading Feminist Science Fiction Convention.” (Wow.) Upon further reading, I see that Elizabeth Moon exercised her first amendment rights with a  fairly centrist opinion that was pounced upon by the (extremely vocal) leftist element in the SFF community. Her comments are nothing strange to people in the center of American politics. I’ve heard them in casual conversations around water coolers, at sandwich/burrito counters, at the gym, and before/after business meetings. This is a fairly typical cross-section of people–voters for both Democrats and Republicans, most educated, some not, but all with a similar viewpoint. Yes, I live in Texas, but guess what? I work in a racially diverse town that typically votes Democrat. The brewing argument of “Republican homogeneity” tumbling around in some readers’ minds is not particularly germane.

Was it wise to say anything that might possibly be misconstrued by a reactionary, politically correct organization such as Wiscon? Yes and no. None of us should be afraid to share our well-reasoned thoughts. As long as we, as citizens, understand (and protect!) the right of those who disagree with us to do so, then I say share away. What I cannot abide, and what I am increasingly intolerant of, is the idea that opinions the left doesn’t like are immediately vilified as “racist” or “ignorant.” Elizabeth Moon’s words were neither. That being said (and given the tactics of an increasingly shrill left), she should not be surprised that she was uninvited. There’s an interesting parallel to Newtonian physics here that borders on the ironic.

But the real irony of this situation lies in the fact that an ostensibly feminist organization is finding it necessary to protect the honor of a religion that makes the oppression of women a fundamental tenet of its faith. To do so by uninviting an author who has the courage to call a spade a spade is somewhere between ludicrous and unjust.

Kudos to Elizabeth Moon for sticking to her guns and being both respectful and rational about the situation. If you’d like to show your support for her, the best way to do so is to buy one of her books.

In shuffle order, this is the first ten songs of my playlist entitled General Writing:

• Never Alone – Barlow Girl
• Pull Me Under – Dream Theater
• I’m So Sick – Flyleaf
• What I’ve Done – Linkin Park
• Savior – Rise Against
• Schism – Tool
• Nothing Else Matters – Metallica
• Boulevard of Broken Songs – Mashup of Green Day/Oasis/Aerosmith
• Misery Business – Paramore
• Death of Me – Red

I tend to gravitate toward moody, driving rock and female singers. Among my favorite bands right now are Fireflight, The Letter Black, and Red. However, I can’t shake my defining musical choices and taste as a child of the 90′s, so there will also be room for Seattle grunge in my collection. My taste has broadened a bit into heavier, darker rock, but I listen to that primarily for mood.

I also tend to choose music to fit a scene. If it’s a battle, I choose something suitably heavy or martial. If it’s a love scene, I choose something suitably heavy or martial…wait a minute. Scratch that last part.

Characters all have definite themes in my mind. I do try to choose music appropriate to their tone and their situation, but when I write my character notes, I usually have one song in mind.

Old Friend: So…I hear you’re a writer now?
Me: (hesitant) Yes.
OF: Cool. Where are you at in the book store? I want to pick up some of your stuff.
Me: Well…I’m not in the book store yet. I’m trying to get published.
OF: Oh, so you’re not a writer, yet.
Me: I haven’t quit my day job, no, but I am a writer. I write. Every day.
OF: Yeah, but you can’t really say you’re a writer until you get something published, right? I mean, that’s when you get the big money.
Me: Writers don’t make big money.
OF: What? Of course they do. Clive Cussler has dozens of antique cars. Clancy founded a video game empire. They’re living the dream, man.
Me: Even if I get published, I probably can’t quit the day job.
OF: WTF?
Me: Well, yeah. Look–if you write in genre, then your advances are based on what the market will bear. You’re talking about an audience of ten or twenty thousand, tops. Besides, with ebooks, the economy being down, writing isn’t what it used to be.
OF: Dan Brown is rich.
Me: And Dan Brown writes predigested, anti-religious, controversy-generating bullshit. (This is the point where I get frustrated with the conversation.) He uses contrived narrative stops to simulate a sense of pace and style. It’s like a bad action movie, only it has delusions of being this great intellectual mystery.
OF: You’re jealous of Dan Brown, aren’t you?
Me: Totally.

I swear that’s how it went. I’ll let you judge if I got the better of the exchange.

No, seriously.

I wrote in the first person point of view, which is a common mistake for new writers. Point of view is the elephant in the room for many writers, even established ones. It’s something that’s wrong with many novels, but that no one talks about. It’s the little thing that catches you when a narrative is supposedly third person limited omniscient.  It could be that slight drift into another character’s perceptions to make a descriptive jump without a chapter or viewpoint change. It’s insidious, and thus, you think that writing first person point of view will eliminate those problems you can’t quite put your finger on.

The problem with that is that a good first person narrative has to have a driving, relentless pace to work. That’s not to say that it has to be action-packed; it just needs to move logically toward the goal at all times. Another mistake I made as a new writer was to throw action constantly at the reader, mistaking this as a substitute for good pacing. While I adore John Ringo’s A Hymn Before Battle, the last two hundred pages of his book feature so much action that he loses the great pacing that made the novel so readable in the first two acts. Note that this is Ringo’s first published work. His later novels (we won’t mention the Paladin of Shadows series) have mostly alleviated this problem.

You also have to pick the right voice. The narrator must be in a position to see everything that the story needs to move into the conflict and resolution phase. The narrator can be unreliable (a great trick if you can pull it off), but he must be present. His viewpoints and conclusions may be wrong, but the fact that he’s there to provide a lens to the action is essential. If you find that your narrator is off-stage during crucial events or if you must show the thoughts/feelings/internal motivations of another character, then you’ve chosen the wrong framework for your story.

That, in a nutshell, is what happened with Loss of Innocence. Don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot through the course of writing it. It’s the first place that I realized that my writing style is essentially character driven, rather than plot or setting.  It’s the work where I realized that I had to fall in love with all of my characters for one reason or another. If I didn’t love a character (good or bad), then I couldn’t write them effectively.

The book has lain fallow on my hard drive for several years now, but now that I’ve got two solid efforts under my belt, I feel like I can actually attempt fixing it. That brings me to the topic of this post, which is when something is a revision, and when it’s a rewrite.

For me, I realized early in my re-read that the point of view just wasn’t going to cut it. There were too many interesting characters that had a stake in the action; not showing their thoughts was akin to telling a boxer to fight with one hand tied behind his back. I started changing all the first person words/verb tenses to fit a third-person narrative, and it just didn’t work. Part of what I had wanted from the beginning in the story was to tell the horrors of near future war from the perspective of a bright college drop-out. Changing the language cut the heart out of the story and robbed it of intimacy.

That meant I was facing a rewrite. At this point, that also means that there’s just as much effort involved in fixing this novel as there is in starting a new one. I’ve heard in countless seminars that everyone has a first novel that’s just dross sitting in a top drawer somewhere, but the obsessive-compulsive in me (believe me, that’s a real aspect of my personality) demanded that I finish it, and finish it right. The decision was made.

I decided to take the rough outline of the original story, fix a few things that didn’t quite work, and draft the new character perspectives on. My voice has matured over time. I was hammered at Viable Paradise XII, I cut my teeth on revising two novels, and I’ve learned some tricks, especially with dialog. I can finally do the story justice, as well as broaden my portfolio with a military science fiction novel that aspires to be sold, rather than cluttering up the bit bucket on my computer.

I’ll be changing the sidebar to reflect the re-write. I’ll be shooting for roughly the same length, but I’ll put the max word count at 100,000 words for the sake of tracking a goal.