Writing In Medias Res

A Core Concept of Psychology

2012-03-02T15:52:00.000+02:00

Psychology is a huge subject with a lot of different fields of study (like social psychology, personality psychology etc.). However, there is a basic concept that is relatively easy and can help a lot in your psycho-analysis of people.

Source

People leak.

People, in most cases, reveal their thoughts by doing things they are sometimes not even aware of. Say, lying. People who lie often touch their ears, nose or mouth after or during a lie. Mostly, they aren’t even aware that they’re doing it. You can also get an idea of the person’s state of mind and feeling of social hierarchy by what he or she is doing. If you feel threatened, you will make yourself smaller by holding your limbs closer to your body. Also, you’ll likely lower your chin or raise your shoulders and put objects between you and your supposed opponent (even something as small as a glass). You are doing this to protect yourself if the situation comes to a fight (even if it is a situation which would never go there, your body still reacts in this way to a perceived “danger”).

If you’re feeling superior, you will be relaxed (i.e. leaning back, with relaxed shoulders and loose muscles etc.) and likely you will expose your throat to show that you are not afraid.

There is a whole range of studies on this very subject, including micro-expressions and other body language things. However, the main point to remember is that minor behaviour is very often key clues in what a person is thinking. Look especially at the eyes, the face and the extremities (i.e. feet and hands). You can figure out what a person is thinking not by what you know, but by what he's telling you.

The Benefits of Being a Writer

2012-02-29T15:20:00.000+02:00

Source

Every job has its perks, like free food, a nice view, or the opportunity to drive nice cars. Being a writer is generally a lonely and hard job, but there are numerous benefits that are often overlooked. Here are some of them:

1) Staring out the window is part of the job description.

There might be some people who would object to this, but it’s true in the strictest sense.

2) If you zone out during a conversation, you have a valid excuse.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Oh, uh, sorry, I was working.”

3) You’re a good liar.

Maybe not always a benefit, but studies have shown that creative people lie more often and much better.

4) Verbal battles are easily won.

You have a bigger vocabulary and a way with words. Who can really beat you? You’re basically bringing a bazooka to a twig fight in most cases.

“That’s story’s about as likely as Twinkie-trees blowing with the artic wind in Kentucky.”

5) If there’s someone you don’t like, you can make him a redshirt in your story.

There are actual legal repercussions for basing characters on people though, so make it recognisable only to you.

6) If the real world gets too much, you can just think up another one.

Hamlet said, “To be, or not to be.” But he forgot to add, “or to be somewhere else”.

Quotation of the Week

2012-02-27T14:32:00.002+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

‎"I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevsky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvellous." - Saul Bellow

Bellow, a Canadian-born Jewish American, was awarded the Pulitzer, Nobel Prize for Literature and the National Medal of Arts for his literature. His best-known works include Henderson the Rain King, Seize the Day, and Ravelstein. He often quoted and referenced to Marcel Proust and Henry James in his work.

The If Sentence

2012-02-24T19:45:00.000+02:00

Source

If you have done any programming whatsoever, you should have the basic knowledge of the if sentence, possibly the single most important command that a computer possesses. If you don’t know it, fear not, for I am here to enlighten you.

First, some theory. The basis of AI is essentially if sentences (okay, it’s not nearly that simple, but it’s an important building block). If this situation happens, react in this manner. Therefore, knowing the if sentence will enable basic AI.

The basic syntax for an if sentence is : if <the condition> = <the result> then <command>

Now, an example. Say you’re writing in Quick Basic (the only language I know deeply). You are told to write a program in which a name and password is checked, a basic version would be this (everything after //s is comments by me and would not be read by the program):

Print “Please input your name and then your password:” //this puts the text in the quotes on the screen

input name$ //This is simply a command that prompts the user to type something and then records the letters in the variable name$

input password$ //same as above

if name$ = “Jake” and password$ = “ender” then print “You gave the correct name and password!” // this checks whether the variable name$ contains the text “Jake” and if at the same time password$ contains “ender”. When both these are true, the command print “…” is performed.

And that’s that!

There are more advanced things like “else” and nested ifs, but that’s for later.

3 Ways to Harness Your Power as a Writer

2012-02-22T18:42:00.001+02:00

As a writer, you have a power that few other people have. You are a controller of minds and emotion. Here are three ways in which you can harness that power:

Make your readers cry

Livia Blackburne did an awesome post about this a while back. In short, you need familiarity with the character for whom is to be cried. You’ll be hard-pressed to get readers to cry on page one. First, the reader must learn to care for the character and then to make them cry. Check out the post for details.

A way to harness this is by changing the chronological order of your story. Don’t start with the death of a loved one. Start after the death and reveal bits of information until you crescendo with the big emotional death scene. (Better yet, read Livia’s post)

Make your readers miss appointments

Donald Maass says that the thing that keeps people turning the pages is tension. That’s what makes them forget to walk the dog and miss appointments. As horrible as that sounds, that’s exactly what you want to happen.

A way to harness the tension is by posing knowledge gaps. The gap drives people crazy if they care about the subject. So reel them in and then leave them hanging to keep them turning the pages. Don’t let them have all the answers until they get to “The End”.

Make your readers think

A good book, like a good movie, stays in your mind for a long time after you’ve finished it. You’ll know what I mean if you can remember the thrum in your head as thoughts about the book or movie was flying around in your brain. No matter how insignificant the thoughts may seem, they grabbed you and that means that the writer did something right.

Things that are relevant to you are always noted first and remembered best, so the way to make your readers think is by making use of universal themes. Emotion is always a winner. E.g. Brothers reunited after a long struggle, or on the other side of the spectrum, the horror that isolation makes a person do. Also, leaving the reader with a question will make use of the knowledge gap and leave them thinking, e.g. should there be limits to where science goes?, or does that madness lurk in everyone’s mind?

Strangely enough, making people degenerate socially, cry and endlessly obsess does not put you in their bad books, but rather entices them more. Why is that? That’s another topic entirely.

Quotation of the Week

2012-02-20T14:55:00.001+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers." - H.L. Mencken

Mencken, born and deceased in Baltimore, Maryland, was a German American writer, journalist, critic and scholar. He is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20^th century, earning him the nickname “Sage of Baltimore”. Mencken was also the man behind the bathtub hoax, in which a fictitious history of the bathtub was printed in New York Evening Mail in 1917.

The Trolley Problem

2012-02-17T17:29:00.001+02:00

There is a school of thought called ethics, which deals in moral standards and such of human beings. Within this basis, there is a thought experiment called the Trolley Problem. Herewith the experiment from Wikipedia:

Suppose that a judge or magistrate is faced with rioters demanding that a culprit be found for a certain crime and threatening otherwise to take their own bloody revenge on a particular section of the community. The real culprit being unknown, the judge sees himself as able to prevent the bloodshed only by framing some innocent person and having him executed. Beside this example is placed another in which a pilot whose aeroplane is about to crash is deciding whether to steer from a more to a less inhabited area. To make the parallel as close as possible it may rather be supposed that he is the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track he enters is bound to be killed. In the case of the riots the mob have five hostages, so that in both the exchange is supposed to be one man's life for the lives of five.

There are a few variations (ranging from pushing a villain in front of the trolley to stop it and having the one person be your own mother), but they are all based off this one.

What makes this so interesting is that it is a dilemma in total. There is no right answer. Either you kill one person or you kill five people. Regardless, you kill someone.

So the question is, do you choose the lesser of two evils, or do you stand back and watch it happen. Someone said once, all that is needed for the world to end up in chaos (or evil, or something of the sort) is for good men to stand by and do nothing.

There is a movie called Unthinkable that deals with another dilemma called the ticking time bomb. In the thought experiment, a hypothetic terrorist has planted a bomb which will kill thousands of people and he has been captured. The question is, can he be tortured so that thousands of lives can be spared? I.e. can you commit evil to prevent greater evil?

In the movie,

SPOILERS HERE

the specialist interrogator eventually calls in the terrorist’s small children and threatens to torture them in order to get the location of the bomb. In the end, the FBI agent calls the torture off, even though the possibility of a last bomb is probable. Thus, she chooses to avoid committing an evil to prevent a greater evil.

SPOILERS END

In this moral dilemma, what would you do? No matter how many times I think about it, I don’t know how to solve the trolley problem, because I can’t sacrifice the one person. What is the right answer? Is there one?

When Want to Becomes Have to

2012-02-15T15:30:00.000+02:00

Pressure makes diamonds, or so the saying goes. But here is an interesting fact: pressure also leads to declining performance.

Let me give you a scenario which is applicable to me and might be applicable to you. Let’s say I have no job and rent that needs to be paid. I have no skills (other than writing fiction) and/or contacts and can get no job. I decide that I can sell short stories for a living. What happens to my stories? They never get written or they are crap. What happens to my motivation? It declines steadily until I dread the return to the empty screen.

Writing is supposed to be fun. Not all the time, but it should at least have the capacity to excite you from time to time. If this is not the case, one of two things is happening.

One, you don’t like writing. Two, you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. Pressure you can’t handle.

If your next day’s meal depends on how good your story is, it is likely that it’ll break away some of the allure of writing. This is a hard subject to accurately determine, since each person’s level of stress-handling is different, but the fact remains. If you have to, you have less inclination to want to.

When you do this for a living, how do you counterbalance that problem? You drop the importance scale a bit. Stephen King says that if getting your kid to baseball practice is just as important as finishing your draft, there’s a lot less pressure. Make sure you find time to write, but don’t make it so important that you can’t fit anything else in.

You need a bit of pressure and challenge (say, a wordcount for the week), but when I want to becomes I have to, there is a problem you should look at.

Quotation of the Week

2012-02-13T16:18:00.001+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand." C. Day-Lewis

Cecil Day-Lewis (aka Nicholas Blake when he wrote mysteries) was an Irish poet. He wrote 22 novels under his pen name and published more than nine poetry collections. His children include an actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, and a television chef, Tamasin Day-Lewis. Another of his children, Sean Day-Lewis, wrote his autobiography, C. Day-Lewis: An English Literary Life.

Reading Frames

2012-02-10T17:05:00.000+02:00

Herewith a small excerpt from The Book Thief’s The Standover Man.

All my life,

I’ve been scared of

of men standing over me.

If all went as planned, you did not spot anything strange. Now, read it out loud. You’ll immediately spot the error. (There is a chance you’ll just see it from the start, but eh, you get the drift.)

Source

This is a method that works extremely well. The mind works in wondrous ways when reading, if you haven’t noticed already. A while back, I made a post about the speed of reading which included three ways in which the human mind reads. I think the whole language method is applicable here. Or maybe it is something else entirely.

Back in the day when I programmed in QBasic, the animated sprites I made for my games consisted out of maybe three frames. For argument’s sake, let’s say it was a guy swinging a sword. The animation frames would go a little something like this : | / _ (First a vertical line, then a diagonal and then a flat one, each representing a different position of the sword.)

When show all three after each other, I get an animation that looks like the swinging of a sword, even though the eye works at a lot more than 3 (maybe six) frames a second. As you (should) know, the mind fills in the blanks and makes it a smooth transition.

I think the same works with reading too. When the mind sees two “of”s after each other, it realises the typo and presents you with the correct sentence instead of the one with the error. But when you read aloud, you read each word separately (Phonics or Holistic word recognition) and then you spot the mistake.

So in conclusion, when you finish the final draft of your story, read it out loud to catch all the errors.

Side Note : Somewhere today I read aloud. The sentence was “one at a time” but I somehow changed it to “one by one”. The two have a similar meaning, so maybe it was my mind that replaced the slightly harder to say sentence with the easier synonym…

What Your Handwriting Says About You

2012-02-08T18:19:00.000+02:00

Graphology is a pseudoscience with a few avid followers and a few avid rejecters, in which handwriting is analysed to determine personality. Thus far, it is not considered to be a valid source of personality profiling. Though I’m not sure of its validity, graphology looked interesting, so I looked up the basics.

Hemingway's handwriting. Source

Pressure

The amount of pressure applied while writing apparently indicates the emotional energy of the writer. The more pressure is applied, the more vitality and mental endurance they have. Ergo, they can put a lot of energy into tasks without completely draining themselves and are mostly successful. On the other side of the range, someone who applies little pressure doesn’t have so much energy and tends to avoid emotionally draining events.

Slant

The slant of the writer’s letters indicates the response to emotion. If the letters slant right (/), the writer reacts strongly to emotion, i.e. heart rules mind. If the letters are vertical (|), the writer does not react to emotion easily, i.e. mind rules heart. If the letters slant left (\) the writer shows no emotions.

Base Line

If sentences slant upwards as they proceed (this only works on unlined paper), it could mean a generally upbeat or optimistic nature of the writer, while a downwards slant could mean a generally down or pessimistic outlook. Very straight lines could mean that the writer is overly disciplined or tense.

Apparently, these things can differ depending on the mood of the person as well, so for an accurate analysis, a series of writings over a period of time is required.

There are other things like spacing and size, but for now, this is it. What does your handwriting say about you? (And is it even remotely accurate?)

For more info on this, go here. It is also the source for my post.

Quotation of the Week

2012-02-06T15:35:00.002+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightening." - James Dickey

Dickey was an American poet that was born in 1923 and passed away in 1997. He was a teacher for a while, then went to the Air Force for two years. Later, he went into advertising, notably working for Coca-Cola and Lays Potato chips. He published his first poetry book, Into the Stone and Other Poems, in 1960.

Us vs Them

2012-02-03T17:38:00.000+02:00

Grouping occurs when similarities or differences are noted.

One study showed that people are more likely to go sit next to someone with the same haircolour as them if they come into a room full of people looking for a seat.

The human nervous system works by appraising things and then deciding if they are a threat or not (or at least, one theory suggests that). When looking at something, you automatically categorise it as either the same as you or different. First, human or not human. If human, then it is categorised as either the same or different. If you look at survival way back when, people different from you will probably be out to kill you, since they will likely be part of a different tribe.

There was a study done where a class of children were treated differently according to their eye colour. The blue eyes were often rewarded while the rest were treated worse. The children were under 10 years. Very soon, the kids with the different coloured eyes formed a group and those with the blue eyes grouped and already formed a strong Us vs Them mindset.

Even children as young as that form groups according to circumstances. There is a natural tendency to treat people who differ from you differently. Ergo, the birth of racism.

In the end, there are two main things that can happen within a community if two different cultures are mixed together. Either the minority will be consumed and converted by the majority, or the two cultures will essentially segregate and deal mainly with their own kind (okay, three, the two cultures can combine and form a new culture, which is probably the best solution).

How many times are you grouping every day? How many times do you classify someone as part of “Us” or a part of “Them” without realising it?

Too Much Time

2012-02-01T18:56:00.000+02:00

If you’re a writer and you don’t have a big sum of money in your bank account from a lotto win or sell enough books to cover the bills, chances are that you have to work for a living (or raise kids, which is, from what I’ve heard, more work than work).

Probably, if you fit into the above category, you’ve wished more than once that you had more time to write (rather than squeezing in some writing time before you go to bed or on your way to work). As someone who’s had that, let me tell you, it’s not as wondrous as it may seem.

Before I go on with that, let me ask you this. What would you say is the most important habit of a creative?

The answer of many (and a common agreement, I think) is solitude. The ability to seclude yourself and use that time to reach into yourself and pull something out. Being alone makes you think. Maybe another important aspect is that you should be doing nothing. A writer once said that you should spend four hours every day either writing or doing nothing (writhing on the floor counts as that, apparently). You need time to think.

I’m sure you’ve all noticed that grieving people often like doing things in order to stop thinking about things. You, as a creative, need to do the opposite.

Now, to my other point. I spent around a year trying to find a job while studying part time. The idea was to write during this gap of time. I did. Write, I mean. But it was hard. I struggled to find good ideas and spent hours pacing. At the end of the day, I would have maybe 1500 words. Which is not bad, but in my mind, because I’ve spent an alleged 8+ hours on it, it was pretty bad.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a professional writer who spends all day writing (except maybe John Creasy). They use a part of the day (say, morning ‘till noon) to write, and the rest to answer mail, play with the kids and/or read.

When you have too much solitude, the silence becomes deafening, and you can’t hear a thing the world/your muse/your imagination is trying to tell you.

Ever since I’ve gotten a job, I’ve been pretty busy, between that and studying (and maintaining my three weekly blog posts), I haven’t had much time to write. But ideas flow more freely and everything seems better to me.

When your mind is spinning with ideas and experiences, your solitude has meaning. If I can make an allegory, weekends don’t have the same yay-factor when you don’t have to go to work or school during the five weekdays.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think it makes sense.

Quotation of the Week

2012-01-30T14:37:00.002+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators." - Olin Miller

For some reason, I can’t find information on this guy, even though his quotes are on a billion different sites. But this quote was just too cool not to put up here, so there.

The Mob Mask

2012-01-27T15:42:00.000+02:00

"Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in." Source

In 2001, a woman contemplated jumping off a bridge. During these moments, traffic was held up and motorists started yelling for her to jump. She did.

Horrible, no? Well what if I told you that, were you there, you might have yelled “Jump!” with them?

During Halloween (in USA anyway), people like to dress up. They put on costumes and, for one night, shed their identity to become someone else. But with costumes come an interesting twist. While wearing the costume, you make yourself more anonymous. By increasing your anonymity, you lower your inhibitions.

An experiment let children play games while either in costume or not. Some of the games were competitive and not aggressive, with others were, such as extracting a beanbag from a tube. During the time they wore costumes, the children played the more aggressive games twice as much as they did when they were unmasked.

Putting on a mask is not the only way to achieve this kind of anonymity. When people gather in groups, something happens to the individuals. Deindividuation. What this means is that people start to lose sense of who they are, and what they stand for. Your own right and wrong dissolves and is replaced by the group’s right and wrong. You are essentially putting on the mask of the group, and shedding your identity and replacing it with ‘member of <group>’.

Three factors contribute to this effect. First, anonymity. If the entire group is wearing masks or standing in darkness, the effect becomes that much more devastating. In another experiment, a group of kids with Halloween costumes are told to take only one piece of candy, and then the researcher left them alone. Sometimes they were asked for their names. When identified, being in a group increased the likelihood of them breaking the rules a little (from 10 to 20 per cent), while the incognito kids had a big jump in breaking rules when they were in a group (from 20 to 60 per cent).

Second is group size. The bigger the group, the more anonymous the individual, the greater the effect. Third is arousal. Listening to a moving speech, chanting, singing or other ritual-like activities can stir this in you. Anything that grabs your attention and holds it. The pressure builds and builds until you lose your sense of self and merge with the group.

Being in a mob is like being possessed by something other than your own mind. Afterwards, people will be ashamed or even horrified by what they did, as if they didn’t choose it. (In a sense, they didn’t.)

I don’t know if I would have yelled at that woman to jump. I certainly hope not. But mob psychology is a powerful thing. Terrifying, in fact.

Two books that contain good examples of this phenomenon are Xenocide by Orson Scott Card and Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I got most of my information here.

Don't Let Your Cup Overflow

2012-01-25T16:08:00.000+02:00

In a book by Lloyd Alexander (The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen), someone says, “You must know nothing before you can learn something, and be empty before you can be filled.” Are you empty? Should you be?

Often when I’m in the middle of writing a story, I will learn something or get an opportunity to learn about something (say, tips on how to make your dialogue better, or exercises to improve your description). When this happens, I freeze. I have a moment where I consider scrapping my entire project and starting over when I’ve learned the said something. Sadly, after this moment, I usually go, “Self, you are right”.

Why? Because I don’t want to waste the idea.

If I wait like my subconscious wants me to, I will be able to use the idea (which I believe is pretty good) when I’m better and thus have an actual use for it. If I write the story now, I will use up the idea on a mediocre substructure. If you will, I don’t want to put my new wine into old wineskins.

That kind of reasoning is based on one assumption or maybe even a fear. That there is a scarcity of ideas, and that nothing should be wasted. While this is good advice for most things, ideas aren’t one of them.

Ideas are a scarce as sun in South Africa. Ideas are everywhere. Someone once said that everyone walks past a thousand story ideas every day, and that the good writers see maybe five. But I think if you don’t let go of the ideas you’re keeping for later, you’ll be so preoccupied that you don’t see any new ones (which then aggravates the condition and starts a perpetual cycle).

Don’t save your best for later. Never hold back on what you can give.

Empty everything on the page, and more will come to take its place.

Quotation of the Week

2012-01-23T15:17:00.001+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"Before you begin to write a sentence, imagine the scene you want to paint with your words. Imagine that you are the character and feel what the character feels. Smell what the character smells, and hear with that character’s ears. For an instant, before you begin to write, see and feel what you want the reader to see and feel." - Othello Bach

There isn’t an article of Othello Bach on Wikipedia that I could find. But I found a website of an author/songwriter, so I assume this is the same person.

Othello Bach is an author of three novels (the first being the bestselling House of Secrets). She then turned to writing children’s books. Her most famous is Whoever heard of a Fird? She is also a certified hypnotherapist.

The Ten Happiest Jobs

2012-01-20T14:34:00.000+02:00

Somewhere near the end of 2011 (I think) Forbes released a study of the 10 happiest jobs. Herewith the list in order of happiness.

1. Clergy

2. Firefighters

3. Physical Therapists

4. Authors

5. Special Education Teachers

6. Teachers

7. Artists

8. Psychologists

9. Financial Services Sales Agents

10. Operating Engineers

Six out of the ten make very small amounts of money. With the exception of Financial Services Sales Agents (??) and Operating Engineers, all these jobs have to do with art or helping people.

The average human spends 97 760 hours working (taken for an 8 hour, five day work week from 18-65). So I think one should take care in picking what to spend almost 100k hours on.

I am really lucky to have the possibility of working for a living as an author. Those that already do are lucky too, even if they only scrape over the top of the budget. All the other jobs on the list too (except maybe Financial Services Sales Agents).

Given the choice between happiness paired with poverty and medium-happiness paired with money, there is no contest for me. A few years ago, I might have wavered or argued that money would make me happy, but not anymore.

If you had that choice, which would you choose? (Then again, if you’re an aspiring or published novelist, you already chose, didn’t you?)

Branch Out

2012-01-18T15:13:00.000+02:00

Source

I remember that Livia Blackburne once explained in an interview that there are two paths of thinking, the deliberate path and I think the spontaneous path. The deliberate path is when you focus your mind on something (i.e. sitting in front of the blank page) and the spontaneous is when you don’t focus on anything specific (i.e. performing an automated skill like showering).

In the same manner, there are also two approaches to thinking called convergent and divergent thinking (whether there is a link with the paths, I don’t know, but probably).

Convergent thinking limits options, i.e. taking available options and whittling them down to one. E.g. Choosing a colour for a wall from a catalogue. You cut out any colours you don’t want until you find one that you do. All your thoughts converge on one location.

Divergent thinking expands options. E.g. Choosing what to do with your wall. You churn out the maximum number of possibilities. All your thoughts move away from one location (you could paint it, or draw on it, or plaster it with pages from the Lord of the Rings).

As you might have guessed, creativity is divergent thinking. Thinking outside the box. Though the convergent path is important in some instances, thinking of a story is not one of them.

It is very easy to fall into convergent thinking. The problem is that you are only using available ideas instead of creating new ones. To be a divergent thinker, you must put your mind to it.

However, there are a lot of times when we get stuck in convergent thinking (which is possibly one of the causes of the so called “writer’s block”). If you’re in there, try branching out.

By branching out, I mean change your medium. Write poetry (like a lot of novelists do). Change from novel to short story for one tale. Paint. Write the storyboard for an indie RPG. Knit. Whittle wood.

Branching out forces your perspective to shift and your mind to start thinking divergently (because you have no or little ideas to limit).

Paint, even if you can’t.

Quotation of the Week

2012-01-16T14:20:00.002+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"Every writer I know has trouble writing." - Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was a satirical writer who authored 7 novels, a number of short stories, 3 plays and 3 screenplays. He is most famously known for his novel Catch-22, the story of a group of US servicemen. The title has since evolved into a phrase to describe a no win situation where no matter which choice you make, you end up with the same negative outcome. The example used in the book goes like this: To get sent back home (from the war), you need to be insane and ask to be sent home. But if you ask to be sent home, you’re not insane, because only sane people would ask to be sent away from war (i.e. to a place where people aren’t shooting at you). But if you don’t ask, you can’t get sent home. Therefore, no matter what you do, you have to stay in service.

Why Willpower Wanes

2012-01-13T16:03:00.000+02:00

Source

Ever wonder why sometimes you cannot avoid giving into temptations? Or why shops always put the candy/chocolate near the checkout?

Willpower is like a mental muscle. It tires and it grows. In simple terms, willpower depletes with use and gets stronger the more you use it.

Ergo, if you are tempted multiple times throughout the day, you will most likely give in eventually. More importantly, if you spent the day resisting temptations and then come to another, you’ll have a hard time resisting it.

Let’s say you spend the first half of the day at home and there is leftover cake that you wanted to save for later. But you really want to eat it now. Therefore, every time you walk past, you’ll be depleting some willpower by resisting the temptation. Now, say you go to work for the other half of the day (after having successfully not eaten the cake) and your boss is away, leaving you alone. It is Friday and it’s half an hour before your normal leaving time. No one will notice that you’re gone. Because of your depleted willpower, you give in and go home. However, if the cake hadn’t been at your house, you would probably have been able to resist the temptation to leave work early.

Now, more interestingly, making decisions also drains willpower. Or rather, excluding options (by choosing others) take willpower because people don’t like losing options. Regardless, this affects how people make decisions. Like, say, the supermarket candy. They put it at the checkout, after people made a lot of decisions, thereby lowering their ability to resist taking a chocolate.

Like You

2012-01-11T15:24:00.000+02:00

Source

I very recently read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and one of the characters said something that was, to me, very interesting, so I decided to make a post of it (also, I’m very lazy today).

Here’s the quote:

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

I talked before about leaving behind a legacy, and this sort of adds to the point. When you create something, make something that’s like you when you take your hands away, you’re leaving yourself there.

If you’re lucky, that part of you will spread into the world and build and grow until it has become a part of society (e.g. Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein).

But even if you’re not lucky and all you made was one shoe, you will still be living in the world for longer than you would have (except if someone burns it to ashes).

Quotation of the Week

2012-01-09T15:54:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live." - Theodor Adorno

Adorno was a German philosopher, sociologist and musicologist. He is known especially for his critical theory of society. He was born in 1903 in Germany and he passed away in 1969 in Switzerland. Around 1932, Adorno was exiled by the Nazi regime because he was not an Aryan. Presumably he said the above quote while in exile.

Let Your Nose Do the Leading

2012-01-06T14:04:00.000+02:00

Memory and sensory perception go hand in hand. If you think of something that had happened to you in the past, you’ll likely recall the sensory experience, i.e. sights, sounds and smells. Though we are primarily visual-based beings, the sense that is most connected to memory is the sense of smell.

Apparently, the olfactory system detects an odour in your nose, then sends the signal to your olfactory bulbs which then sends it to the rest of the brain, but first the limbic system and in particular the amygdala—the part of the brain involved most in emotion.

A study done showed that the amygdala lighted up more when a nostalgic smell was presented to a participant than when they presented the object as a visual. I.e. the smell made the participants more nostalgic that the sight.

Let me give you a clearer example. I don’t like soup. Especially not chicken soup. Every time I smell it, I feel sick. I can’t remember whether I was given this soup when I was sick or if I just made that connection after watching too much television. Regardless, I can make this connection even before realising what it is I’m smelling. I.e. I smell something and start to feel sick. What is that? I might ask. Chicken soup.

There will be certain smells that you will associate with certain things, be it Old Spice with your father or ginger bread cookies with your grandma’s kitchen. And nothing will succeed more in bringing back the memories and feelings than smelling that thing again.

Make a Plan (Not Excuses)

2012-01-04T14:07:00.000+02:00

This is my first (if you don’t count the quotation on Monday) post of the year and today I’m going to talk about excuses. This may or may not be familiar, but I think it is a fairly common problem (especially with writers).

It is a form of procrastination and it took up a hell of a lot of time for me in the beginning of last year. I made excuses.

There is a saying in Afrikaans that goes like this: ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan. It translates to “A farmer makes a plan.” (I don’t think the farmer part is there to specifically point out farmers, but rather because the majority of the Afrikaans speaking people at the time this saying was created relied on farming as their source of living. And it became a sort of an unfortunate nickname for Afrikaans people.)

Anyway, what it means is that there is an alternative plan can be made. In one word, adapt. If something goes wrong, find a way to fix it. Make use of what you have to fix the problem. I’m not sure what the American or UK equivalent is, but I’m sure the Great Depression folks followed this philosophy.

Back to writing, I often made excuses as to why I couldn’t write. For example, in my brief stint as a plot-card-guy, I didn’t want to start until I got cards that were the EXACT right size. I could’ve written on pieces of paper or post-it notes, but I wanted it to be perfect before I began, and that really slowed me down. (Eventually I got over myself and wrote on post-its.)

My point is that we often try to find crutches to support our writing. Like saying that you’ll write later when you can afford to buy Scrivener. But the actual fact is that you don’t need it. Stephen King wrote his first stories with a drum print for which he had to buy stencils at 19 cents apiece. Hemingway wrote on paper and on a typewriter (apparently he wrote descriptions longhand and dialogue with a typewriter).

If you have fancy things and they help you, great. If you don’t, maak ‘n plan, make a plan.

Don’t make excuses not to write. Write.

Quotation of the Week

2012-01-02T12:21:00.002+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"A book should serve as an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us."- Franz Kafka

Kafka was a German-speaking writer in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds (he passed away in 1924). He is most known for his novels The Trial (Der Prozeß) and The Castle (Das Schloß). Apparently he was also the founder of the genre magic surrealism. He made use of a characteristic in German to have very long sentences that sometimes filled an entire page.

The End (Of the Year)

2011-12-30T10:46:00.000+02:00

Source

It’s nearly the end of the year. I began this blog somewhere along the lines of one year ago, back when I had no clue what I was doing (now I have a twinkle of a clue, but it keeps hiding behind the freezer).

I cannot believe how many things I’ve learned during this time. Here is a little list of the most important things (regarding writing):

1) I don’t need a publisher to approve my work. I defended against this point furiously until I finally came to the realisation that I was wrong. A publisher is a business and they are in the business of repeating past success and can therefore not be trusted to approve the validity of a new work that stretches borders. I learned to write for more for myself (though you never really write only for yourself) and less for the publishers.

2) I’ve been struggling along in the lines of describing things too much and too little, but I finally found a perfect middle in which things make sense for me. Describe only what is different.

3) Revision was always an oddly-shaped cloud hanging over me. This year I’ve finally figured out the point. Revising isn’t about fixing little mistakes. It’s about finding the things you want said and saying it. Putting in motivation and changing things until they work. Revising is about finding your true story. After realising this, I could finally figure out the meaning behind ‘the first draft is always crappy’. Characters and motivations can be added and removed at will. Nothing is set in stone.

4) Writing and living goes hand in hand. What you write comes from experiences, so you can’t just sit in a room with a notebook. You must live and experience the world to be able to describe it to others who sit in a room with a book.

5) Writing is not about money. This should seem obvious, but at the beginning of the year, the notion that I could become stinking rich was very ripe in my head. Not a “I’m definitely going to be rich!” notion, but a “Maybe I’ll write a best-seller and become rich”. But somewhere along the line, I realised that writing for a living will probably (almost certainly) be a life of poverty and scraping just enough money to make the rent of a sloppy apartment in a bad neighbourhood and maybe even a day job. And I don’t care. I accept that and I embrace that. I will write for next to nothing, but I will do what I love for the rest of my life.

Finally, and most importantly, 6) There are no rules. Every single best-selling author has other advice. Follow your gut and hope for the best.

That’s all. Happy new year to all of you.

By the way, my most popular post by far is my explanation of how binary works. Guess I disappointed (or educated) quite a few people who were looking for computer-y information.

Christmas and Some Fiction

2011-12-21T10:24:00.000+02:00

Source

It’s almost Christmas.

I probably won’t post Friday, and maybe a few days next week too, but chances are that I’ll resume my posting before the end of the month.

Meanwhile, I need to write my story for the Lit Lab’s Variations on a Theme. Only 10 days to go before the deadline.

Since I have no big post today, here is an awesome Christmas-themed story for you to read. The Gift of the Magi by O.Henry.

Merry Christmas, all.

Quotation of the Week

2011-12-19T09:33:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"“The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.” - John le Carré

John le Carré is a British writer of spy novels. He was born as David John Moore Cornwell and started writing under the pseudonym while working for the British intelligence services MI5 and MI6. He was ranked as one of the “50 greatest British writers since 1945” by The Times in 2008. His third novel is the famous The Spy Who Came in from the Cold which became an international bestseller and was later adapted into a movie. (Wikipedia)

(Quote via @TheBookDoctors)

The Automated Learning has You

2011-12-16T15:14:00.000+02:00

Source

One of these days, we might have automated learning on our doorsteps. Imagine just plugging in the Spanish module and learning a new language in a few hours.

Boston University and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Japan are working on a way to improve visual tasks through use of an fMRI. The idea is to induce brain activity that is the same as known state and thereby carrying over proficiency.

In other words, the visual cortex of a human brain is able to learn through perception. They use decoded fMRI neurofeedback to let certain areas of the brain activate so that it matches the activation pattern on a specific area of interest. Repeating the activation patterns was shown to increase the visual performance.

What’s interesting is that the subjects didn’t even have to be aware of what they were learning.

Currently the method only seems to work with visual perceptual learning, but the future might hold ways to teach motor skills victims of accidents, or automated learning.

While this is both bright and shiny, the potential problems with it are great. Think about it. It will allow anyone to learn anything without any effort at all. So for one thing, people will all be same. And another thing to think about is the problem with learning something without working hard. Just getting a skill without any work will make you use it irresponsibly. The hard work and persistence it takes to learn a skill is in itself training for you to use it responsibly. Just think of what would happen if anyone could learn how to build a hydrogen bomb in an hour. Or how to shoot properly with a gun. The instant-gratification age has already broken down the sense of responsibility in people. Instant skills could make it even worse.

But it would be freakin’ cool.

A Cause to Create

2011-12-14T16:46:00.000+02:00

Source. Copyright Atlus

Why do writers write, painters paint and sculptors sculpt (etc.)?

I’m going to take writing as an example here (apply different terms for different professions).

Why does a writer spend months (if not years) writing a 60k word book and perfecting every sentence and word until it reads as smoothly as a licked popsicle and sparkles like a piece of metal which is also sparkly?

Certainly not for the pay. If that is the reason, a lot of people are going to be disappointed and/or starving. The chances of you being a big success (I mean J.K. Rowling success) is virtually zero. Only a small amount of people make huge success. Ergo, money cannot be the motivation unless there are no sharp tools in the shed.

The same logic applies to fame, so it’s not that either. What other reason could there be?

A lot of writers say that they have a compulsion to write. They become fidgety when they don’t. Carlos Fuentes once said that you write in order to stall death, like Scheherazade told stories. Others do it because they have no other way to communicate what they want to.

But that still does not answer the question. It is all too specific. There must be a universal reason that pools all the writers together that makes them sweat blood and ink to create something that will have gained them no visible benefit.

Art originated as a way to convey a truth in an entertaining manner. But after that? Past necessity? What drives artists to create things?

We write for the same reason we read. We want to solve the unsolved puzzle, see what is unseen, find meaning in every situation. Art lets us see inside all the cracks which are hidden in reality. And the creators have the best seat.

But still that does not answer our question entirely. There is more to creating something than to simply see it yourself. A writer wants the story to be read. No matter what they say, writers cannot only write for themselves.

In the end, art is about communication. Why do we tell jokes? Why do we share an interesting titbit of information? To bond with whomever we’re telling it to. To let them be as interested/amused as we were. The same with stories. You share a story to entertain others. To gain their approval.

When we break it down to the basic principles, we write because we want to make other people happy (a pretty common human behaviour).

If we take this in conjunction with our other reason, I think we have a good answer. Why do we write? Why do we create?

Because we want to entertain other people by letting them see how we solved the puzzle so that the findings can amaze them as much as it amazed us.

Quotation of the Week

2011-12-12T14:37:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip." ~Elmore Leonard

Leonard is an American writer of novels and screenplays. He started off by writing Westerns in the 1950s, but later branched into suspense and crime novels. He has been noted for his excellent dialogue and realistic writing. Apparently he also tweaks his grammar a bit for the purpose of speeding his story along. Some of his best known works are Hombre, Out of Sight and Get Shorty. A few of his short stories have been made into films as well as a TV series (these include 3:10 to Yuma and Justified). (Wikipedia)

(Quote via @RobCornellBooks)

Paperback vs Hardcover

2011-12-09T14:57:00.000+02:00

In my collection of books (which isn’t very big, but I’m working on it), I only have one hardcover book. And this isn’t by accident.

From what I can tell (correct me if I’m wrong), hardcovers are usually released first for a year or so after which the paperback follows. Apparently this is to promote the author since a new book will be out soon. Or something of the sort.

When I look for books, I look for paperbacks. This means that I will often have to wait around a year to get a newly released book because it came out in hardcover first. This is somewhat annoying, but it beats the alternative.

Hardcover books, for me, are extremely bulky and clumsy. They’re heavy to hold and hard to handle with only one hand (which I do often with books I read) and they’re generally bigger which also adds to the previous two points.

Now I haven’t really had a lot of books for very long (gasp, I know) since I was a heavy library goer, but it seems (and logically follows) that paperbacks wear down quicker than hardcovers and thus will not last nearly as long. While I’ll cling to the belief that proper care (and very little rereading) will keep them in good condition, that is a significant advantage the hardcovers have.

But even so, I prefer comfortableness over long-lasting-ness and I’ll be in the paperback camp for a long while yet.

I want to know, which do you prefer, paperback or hardcover?

Planting Peanuts

2011-12-07T15:59:00.001+02:00

One day (I’m thinking almost a year ago), a person took upon himself the responsibility of growing a plant. There happens to be some raw peanuts lying around, so he decides that he will plant them and speedily proceeds to the internet for some research on how he should go about this.

Some hours later, he gathers some courage and plops two peanuts into a pot. From there, he waters the patch of ground for a week or two and finally his patience pays off. A small green tuft of plant appeared. In fact, two!

As they grow, he notices that one is stronger than the other, so he dismisses the weaker one (though it still gets water since it’s in the same pot). Some weeks later, the stronger plant halts in its growth while the weaker one shoots past it.

The originally weaker plant makes one very long stem that eventually grows outside the pot and smears up against the window for more sunlight.

After a while, he decides that the plants aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, so he takes them out and plants a new peanut. He reads somewhere that the peanut should not get water for the first few days (to make it hardier), so he leaves it. After a while, he starts giving it water, but even after two weeks, nothing comes out, so he goes back to the growing board.

Finally, the person plants another peanut. This one he makes sure does not dry out too much and does not get too much water. In fact, he thinks he does everything correctly. A plant sprouts and it grows in multiple shoots. The person is happy with the result and lets it grow for a month or two. The plant splays out over the pot and a part of the window sill, nothing like the pictures on the internet, but he braves on, hoping it will eventually right itself.

This is a peanut plant. (Source)

This is my (if you haven’t guessed, I am the unnamed person in the above story) peanut plant.

It doesn’t seem to be even the same species. In fact, my guess is that it’s a weed of some kind. Regardless, it is green and it owes its life to me.

This above scenario is often true of my writing as well as my gardening. I start off with enthusiasm and plant my story. As it grows, certain parts of the plot seem like they’re important, but then somewhere along the line another part takes the spotlight. And then, even if it grows, it seems empty, so I start it over. This one doesn’t even get past the planning phase.

Finally, I begin the story again. It begins great with complexity and a lot of good things, but by the time I get to the end, it isn’t anything like I envisioned it to be.

A lot of times (in fact, most of the time) people who create can’t replicate the things in their head accurately in reality. It is always better in the envisioning phase.

But even so, you have a story and it works. It flows and you’re happy with it, even though it’s not exactly what you wanted. Maybe you can fix it with some heavy editing, or maybe not. Regardless, you’re proud, because you made it, and it grows.

Quotation of the Week

2011-12-05T15:37:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'" - George Bernard Shaw

Shaw was an Irish playwright as well as a socialist. He wrote speeches and brochures for the Fabian society in an attempt to further their causes (i.e. equal rights for men and women and helping the working classes get out from under abuse). His great passion was for drama (though he wrote a few novels and short stories) and he is best known for Pygmalion which he adapted for screen later and after that was made into a movie, My Fair Lady. Shaw is the only person to have won both the Nobel prize for Literature and an Oscar. (Wikipedia)

Read Speed

2011-12-02T15:55:00.000+02:00

Source

I am a pretty slow reader. But what determines the speed at which I read?

Science Daily posted this article in 2007 in which they discuss the different factors that affect reading speed. I’ll do a quick breakdown for you.

1) Phonics

With this, you recognise words by decoding them letter by letter. In other words, it’s the combination of letters that allow you to recognise it.

2) Holistic Word Recognition

With this, you recognise words by their shape. Basically, your mind will already start recognising the word “and” just by the flat and then up shape it has. (I’m guessing that most people will then confirm their suspicion, unconsciously, by turning to phonics.)

3) Whole Language

This one lets you know the meaning of a word by the sentence’s context. As far as I understand, this means that you can guess a word in a sentence by relying on the rest of the words in it. I’m thinking it works much the same way as figuring out the meaning of a word you don’t know. The rest of the sentence (as well as the bigger context) gives you a hint at what word/meaning it is. (You’d probably go back to a lower order method to confirm again.)

These three factors affect how fast you read. Interestingly enough, they work separate from each other. Each makes contributions to the overall speed on its own.

With the little that I know of speed-reading, I would guess that the higher up the order you go, the faster you read. With speed reading, you often skip words because you already know what they are (i.e. “and”, “then”, etc.). It works basically the same as Whole Language. Also, when you recognise a word by its shape, you have no need to read it. You know what it is and move on.

You lose speed when you read every word, but unless you have a very good database of words in your head so that you can recognise words without error, you’ll probably make some mistakes if you read at a complete Whole Language level (which is probably not entirely possible).

Copying Creativity

2011-11-30T15:33:00.000+02:00

Source. Copyright Nintendo

Yesterday I read this article that someone on Twitter linked to. For those who don’t want to click through, it’s titled “Can Anyone Be a Novelist?”. In short, it tells of how certain qualities are needed in order for one to be a novelist. The blogger says that anyone who can type and have an understanding of the language they’re writing in can write a book. But it won’t necessarily be a good book.

He goes further to say that two types of talent are needed to write a good book, namely the means to communicate effectively (string coherent and intriguing sentences together) and imagination. He says:

"To create good novels an author must be able to come up with new stories, settings, characters so the reader will be drawn in and held captive, not feel as though they’re reading a re-hash of some other story they’ve read. This cannot be learned: creativity is inborn."

That last sentence is the topic of my post.

Let me start at the beginning. I’m sort of a copier. When I was little, I did everything other people did instead of being myself. At some point I realised this and swung entirely in the reverse. So when I got out of school, I had an interest in the same line of work my brother was studying to, but in a courageous effort to avoid copying him, I swung in another direction and started studying accounting. Eventually I dropped that and started in the writing direction.

Which brings us to the present. Through a series of similar events as the above, I have begun being terrified that I’m doing the wrong thing. I.e. that I started something (like the accounting) that I don’t like or am good at, but which I’ve convinced myself is what I should do. Basically, I worry that I might be lying to myself.

So when I read something like the post I mentioned above, I start to wonder. Do I have this creativity? Then I notice that I copy a lot of things and from there things get out of hand I and start to doubt myself (never mind the inclination to copy other people that is already ingrained in me).

That is probably the thing that terrifies me the most. What if I’m not supposed to be a writer, i.e. what if I don’t have the necessary requirements to be a writer? What if I’m wasting my time doing something I’ll never be able to do (well)?

Most writers report being born with a pen in hand and writing since they could put a pencil to paper. Me? I wrote a bit of scraps here and there, but never really dabbled in it.

How do you know when writing is supposed to be hard and when it’s supposed to be easy? It seems to be always hard for me.

But I will just go on. I will remind myself that stories (rather than specifically writing) were a part of me from early on. Maybe I’ll never be a great writer, but then at least I’ll die trying.

Quotation of the Week

2011-11-28T17:01:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

“If you think in pictures, write. If you think in words, paint.” ~ Frank O'Hara

O’Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He had at least seven books under his belt (most of which were poetry). He was forty when he died in 1966. Quite a few books with his work in were published after his death and there were also a lot of books about him. He was a member of the New York School of Poetry. (Wikipedia)

Unrelated Friday

2011-11-25T16:51:00.001+02:00

I couldn’t think of anything to say today, so this isn’t going to be a very long post.

Source. Copyright Capcom.

First off, happy Thanksgiving to any Americans who happen to be reading this.

If you haven’t heard, Anne McCaffrey passed away on Monday. Her stories will always have a place in the recesses of my mind and though she didn’t know me, I came to know her through her books and I’m glad for that.

It was Davin Malasarn’s birthday on the 16^th, I think, and J.C. Martin’s on the 23^rd. I’d like to say happy birthday to both of those awesome people. On a similar note, J.C. is holding a contest on her blog that has a bucket-load of prizes, so hop over there and join in.

Finally, the Intern has revealed her secret identity! If you haven’t heard, here is a link to the blog post doing the revealing. She landed a publishing deal, and therefore shed her anonymity.

That’s all from me. Enjoy your weekend.

McCaffrey has gone Between

2011-11-23T14:57:00.000+02:00

On 21 November 2011, the legendary science fiction and fantasy author, Anne McCaffrey passed away.

I remember reading her Pern books in my mid-teens. They were the first series I seriously began to read, and also one of my early looks into science fiction and fantasy which are now my most read/written genres.

Her first novel, Restoree, was published in 1967 and told the story of a woman who was intelligent and acted on her own, unlike most heroines in the science fiction of those times.

McCaffrey won both a Hugo and a Nebula award (and was the first woman who accomplished that) for the Pern novella Weyr Search in 1967 and Dragonrider in 1969 respectively.

The Pern novels were by far her most notable work, telling the story of a colony of humans who crash-land on the planet, Pern, and eventually learn to ride dragons in order to fight off Thread, a mycorrhizoid spore, that periodically rains down on the planet.

Though the Pern novels are the most known, her personal favourite was The Ship Who Sang, a story about Helva, who was severely disabled at birth but because of her exceptional brain was allowed to become a shell person, someone who is infused with a ship and acts as its pilot.

Anne McCaffrey was a brilliant writer and person, and I’m sure she will be widely missed. I’ll leave you with the advice she gave an aspiring writer on her blog:

First — keep reading. Writers are readers. Writers are also people who can’t not write.

Second, follow Heinlein’s rules for getting published:

1. Write it.

2. Finish it.

3. Send it out.

4. Keep sending it out until someone sends you a check.

There are variations on that, but that’s basically what works.

~ Anne McCaffrey

Quotation of the Week

2011-11-21T14:49:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"We should be taught not to wait for inspiration ... Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action." - F Tibolt

Tibolt was, as far as I can see, not a fiction writer, but his words are applicable to us all. In 1981, when he was 84, he wrote a book called A Touch of Greatness, a non-fiction book on how to get success in one’s life. It was often compared to Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. After a time of studying the methods and habits of successful people, he made a self-help course and later expanded it to include things like public speaking, salesmanship and the art of living. He passed away in 1989 at age 92.

(I found the quotation via @JaneFriedman on Twitter.)

The Three Walls that Block your Way

2011-11-18T16:04:00.000+02:00

Source. Copyright Activision

We all want to get somewhere. Achieve something (even if it’s only the opportunity to achieve nothing). As writers, most of us have a similar goal: Getting published, being widely read, being read by people who understand our work, etc. The problem is that most of us never reach that goal because of a multitude of reasons. Here are three points that stand in our way (there are more, but I think these ones are primary):

Prejudice

A lot of unpublished (or even just less successful) writers, including me, often avoid telling people what they do. It’s because writing is not often seen as a “real job”, unless you’re selling books by the million. For that reason, you limit yourself and your ability because you don’t even believe in your cause. If you don’t tell people you’re a writer, you’re telling your mind that you’re not a writer.

That impedes your progress as a writer because you’re still trying to convince yourself that you are “allowed” to do this. In the end, it’s not the prejudices other people have against writers, but the prejudices you have.

Preconception

A lot of people start out with the image of a writer being a dude in an office, smoking a cigar and wearing a tweed jacket (or is that a private investigator?), or whatever other image they have (maybe sitting in a café). But the reality doesn’t often pan out to be this way and I think a lot of people are disappointed, either thinking that writing isn’t so cool after all, or deciding that they’re not good enough to write, or maybe that they can’t write while in their specific circumstances.

Either way, they give up and don’t make it, because they allowed their preconceptions of the job (yes, job) to get in the way of acceptance of whatever it is that’s bothering them. The world will likely turn out differently than you imagine, but the trick is just to hang on until it evens out again.

Pride

While you keep your pride intact, the chances are pretty slim that you’ll actually get anywhere. Why? Because pride doesn’t allow you to make mistakes. And the only way to grow is to take risks, and that invariably leads to mistakes. Ergo, your pride stops you from growing.

As a writer, you might continue polishing that manuscript, but never take a leap and ship it, or you might get to the end of your first draft and see the problems, then decide that it was just a dummy run and throw it away, beginning from scratch. Or maybe you just refuse to learn new ways to write because you know your method works and don’t want to try something that might break it.

---

In these three things, your way to the end you want is blocked. You have to break down each to reach your goal. I’ve certainly entertained all of these at least once (and some probably still), but it’s time to let go.

If you go on and push through, you’ll find new heights where new challenges await, but that’s just all part of the fun, isn’t it?

Up for the Test

2011-11-16T09:51:00.000+02:00

A while back, I made a post that included instructions to write in short bursts. Sadly, I had completely been ignoring it (and it’s actually pretty good advice).

See, I often sit in front of the glowing screen for a few hours and then manage to get seven words. After a few times of this, I say to myself, ‘Self, I am disappoint.’ The first draft is supposed to be quick(ish). With the start of NaNoWriMo (which I do in order to force myself to write a first draft faster, and they have a cool word count stat thingie), I decided to improve on my seven words in three hours speed. But first, I had to get a more accurate recording of how many words I actually wrote in three hours. Not having three hours, I decided to time myself for thirty minutes and see how many words I could get.

Challenge accepted.

So I smashed out as many words as I could, my only criteria being that they had to be parts of coherent sentences and that they had to be vaguely part of the story. In the end I got seven hundred and forty three. Which is more than I usually do in an hour. This presented the problem that often occurs with me. I always perform better in tests (even if I’m the only one present) than I do normally. I.e. I can never do one of those monkey puzzle tests where they tell you your personality type, because I try to figure out which one of the options will lead me to the result that I want. Ergo, they are never accurate.

So I redid the test, this time for ten minutes. Three hundred words. That means nine hundred in thirty minutes. I did even better.

With several more tests, I came to this conclusion. I consistently performed better when put under a time limit, whether my own or not, than when I just wrote with no time limit in mind. Also (to a point), the less time I have, the better I perform. Ergo, I must conclude that writing in short self-timed bursts are most effective for me, even if I have a three hour gap open in which to write.

The point? Use your weaknesses to your advantage. Mine is that I (for some reason) want to impress myself. I use that by letting myself test myself. If you have the need to impress your second cousin twice removed, tell him that you’re going to write 50 000 words in a month. If you like impressing your cat, let her sit on your lap and continually report your progress.

Quotation of the Week

2011-11-14T15:11:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft—then you can add all the genius you like." - Phyllis A. Whitney

Whitney was an American writer of the mystery genre. She is the author of 73 written over the span of 56 years. She published her first novel, A Place for Ann, in 1941, when she was 38, and her last, Amethyst Dreams, in 1997 when she was 94 years old. She died of pneumonia in 2008, aged 104. (Wikipedia) (Official Website)

(I found the quotation via @TheBookDoctors on Twitter.)

Neuron See, Neuron Do

2011-11-11T09:47:00.000+02:00

You have the ability to read minds (sort of).

How, you ask? Well, I’ll get to that later. First, let me tell you a story.

In the early 1990s, there was a group of researchers. They were in the process of doing a few studies on macaque monkeys to monitor their brain activity (via implanted electrodes) when they performed various motor functions. One of these was the clutching of food.

One day, one of the researchers was busy in the lab checking the screens for the neuron activity. He was hungry though, so he picked up the sandwich he had brought with him. But before he could take a bite, he made an interesting discovery. The monkeys’ neurons had fired when they had watched him pick up the food. The same neurons that fired when they themselves picked up food.

Mirror neurons. These little fellows are a select group of neurons that fires both when you perform an action and when you watch someone else perform the action.

Through this effect, we (and apparently monkeys) are able to feel what other people feel. We simulate the same situation in our head if we see someone else perform an action. But more than just the physical aspect, we feel the intention and emotional aspects as well. Better known as empathy.

Empathy allows us to feel the same as another person. When you see someone smile, your mirror neurons for smiling fires and you also feel the feeling that you connect to smiling, i.e. being happy.

Studies done also concluded that we can judge intentions via mirror neurons. For example, we are able to discern between someone picking up a cup with the purpose of drinking from it and someone picking up a cup to clear the table, as opposed to just having a feeling for clutching cup. Therefore, you can, by watching someone’s actions, get a feeling of what they’re thinking, i.e. mind reading.

As a last note, I have often observed in myself that I change into to what I am exposed to, to an extent. For example, I’m currently reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, which is a pretty old book. If I read it just before writing, my style, or voice if you will, changes to fit in with Shelly’s. I find myself using old sentence structures and words that had fallen from use (i.e. I almost used the *cough*adverb*cough* gaily, which has so many other connotations these days that it is not in use in the way of happy any more).

So I’m wondering, do mirror neurons have the same effect during reading as it does during observing? And that poses another question. Do our mirror neurons for smiling fire when we read about someone smiling?

Perhaps, if the writer is good enough, we see the image of a smile so clearly that we are, in fact, observing it.

(Source of info and more thorough explanation here)

The More Things Change, the More they Stay the Same

2011-11-09T11:33:00.000+02:00

Source Copyright Square-Enix

E-book (or is it ebook? or eBook?) sales are on the rise. No doubt, this is causing self-publishing to become an ever more intimidating presence while the publishers are scrambling to stay in the game. Are publishers on their way out to make way for the new and hip self-publishing?

Allow me to insert and inspect a hypothetical situation here.

Let’s say, in about thirty to forty years, no more physical books are sold. And more than that, there are no more publishers, and every author self-publishes their books.

That would mean that the market opened for more people (what with no “gatekeepers”). The editors, book designers and marketers that worked for the publishers before will probably have gone into the freelancing business, selling their services for the self-publishing authors (or flipping burgers if business is tough). There will be a massive amount of books released every day, of which most will be pretty bad (see my next point). A lot of people will either have no money or just not feel like it and therefore refrain from hiring an editor or book designer.

Let’s look at the cost of self-publishing an e-book.* Say $400 for a book designer and $400 for a proper editor. You can buy an ISBN for $100 via Lulu.com. Then comes the marketing and promotion. Let’s be very conservative and say good marketing would cost $500. So, adding it up, you come to $1400 to self-publish. But let’s be reasonable, giving competitive prices, the prices could come down to $1200 or so. And maybe the marketers, book designers and editors even join forces and start a company that does all three in a package deal. So let’s say that brings the price down to $1000.

With that in mind, there would be little chance for a budding author to publish a book unless he’s got a well-paying job (Stephen King and his wife worked for minimum wage and struggled to make ends meet, so they didn’t have a thousand dollars to spend on publishing a book) or financial backing. So maybe a rich businessman sees the manuscript of a friend and agrees to pay his publishing costs in exchange for a return on whatever the author makes. I.e. Royalties.

After this happened, someone might see an opportunity and make a company that connects financial backers to authors (with a small usage fee, of course). Some rich people think that it could be a good investment, but know nothing about books, so they hire an editor/ex-literary agent/old man who reads a lot to tell them if the book is worth investing in. Because they are desperate to be published, the budding authors send their manuscripts to the financial backers to be scrutinised by the literary experts and given a place in the world via the financial backer’s money. Maybe the rich man sees another opportunity, calling his old friends, the marketer, the editor and the book designer to join his team. Together, they form a company and they decide to call themselves a publisher.

In another part of the world, a woman sees the opportunity to make money. There are so many books out there, and people don’t know what to buy, so she decides that she will get a team who will read books and review them, making a list of good books. People stream to the website to avoid buying yet another badly written book.

The publishers see this and notice that the woman and her team often miss some of the books they publish and thus create a loss in sales. To fix this, the publisher asks to get a certification of sorts for all their books so that it is automatically a part of the list (for a fee, of course). Because of the brilliant editor and all the good books they had published in the past, the woman agrees and puts an entry on her site that says, all books by Publisher X.

End of hypothetical situation.

Though the sequence of events is a bit unlikely, the core of it remains. You cannot have anarchy in publishing (except for already well-known authors of course). It will always be a business and there will always be people who need money and people who have money. Any change in the publishing industry will circle back to a new version of the same thing.

The same equilibrium, but at another level.

* These prices are based on present currency values, so ignore the possible changes in monetary value that may or may not occur.

Quotation of the Week

2011-11-07T08:10:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon." - E.L. Doctorow

Doctorow is an American author of Russian-Jewish descent with 11 novels under his belt. He was a book editor working with authors like Ian Fleming. He left his position as editor to start writing in 1969. His most famous works include The Book of Daniel, Ragtime and World’s Fair. He is a descendant of the Russian general Dmitry Dokhturov. (Wikipedia)

(I found the quotation via @TheBookDoctors on Twitter.)

How We Justify Choice

2011-11-04T10:41:00.000+02:00

We rationalize. Say, a man stole something. His conscience will haunt him, but he will try to counter it with a rationalization. Moreover for smaller things. Say, you’re on a diet. You see a piece of cake. If you are inclined to eat it, your mind will come up with all sorts of rationalizations to explain why you can make an exception.

In the same way, we rationalize when we find ourselves in bad situations we can’t get out of. The human mind defends itself in this way. When you can’t fight against it, why bother? You’ll fight only if you believe that you have a way out (incidentally, if there is a way out, you’ll want the better situation even more, making you fight harder for it).

If you take an example, divorce rates. In the early 1900s, I’d bet there wasn’t even close to the amount of divorces as there is now. (7% in 1900 and 50% in 1998) Why? Because divorce was not much of an option back then. But more than that, how many old couples are unhappy in their marriages? I can’t get statistics about that, but I’d wager it isn’t much. Young couples? Plenty. Why? Because they now have a way out.

There was a study done (can’t find it now) where people were given a choice of painting they could take home. To one group was said that they could exchange their paintings the following week if they wanted to, while the other was told that their choice was final. The next week, both groups were told that they could exchange their paintings. The second group that had believed their choice was final ended up exchanging less than the first group.

When you made your choice and know there is no way out, your mind will rationalize that it was the best pick anyway.

Another example is the phrase, “Fake it ‘til you make it”. If you pretend to be something, you will eventually become it. Why? You guessed it, you rationalize. If you pretend to be an accountant for two years with no specific purpose, your mind will be asking, “Why am I doing all this if I don’t like it?” Not wanting to look stupid, it then concludes that you do like it. Unless you have a very strong dislike for it or another reason as to why you’re pretending that can be used to rationalize, you will begin to like it.

And finally, an example from Abe Lincoln. Apparently, he had an enemy at one point who he wanted to make a friend (who needs more enemies, I suppose). To do that, he called up the man and asked him a favour (to borrow a book, I think). The man was so flattered that he lent Lincoln the book. His mind was whirring in the “Why did I do a favour for Lincoln if he’s my enemy?” area, and concluded that Lincoln is his friend and so started a long and bountiful friendship.

Of Hitler and Overthinking

2011-11-02T11:25:00.000+02:00

Source. Copyright Westwood

You know that saying (I think it’s a saying, anyway) pressure makes diamonds? Well, let’s just say that I’m not carbon (well, actually…). What I’m saying is that I don’t do so well under pressure. It’s not that I break down and hide under tables. When I find myself under pressure, my perfectionism kicks in and I overthink, leading to a horrible product.

I remember that my Afrikaans teacher in high school gave us an assignment to write a story about one of several topics, one being something along the lines of “Die monster wat hom jaag” (the monster that chases him). I thought about it a bit and came up with a possible concept. So I asked my teacher if I could make the monster in the theme be kleptomania (the irresistible compulsion to steal things) and thus make the story about a man fighting against his disorder. She seemed delighted at my idea and said that she looked forward to reading it.

We got time to prepare (and outline) for a few days beforehand. After creating an expectation of delivering a good product, I started researching (this was for a 300 word story). I looked all sorts of things up and overthought every possible aspect of the story that I possibly could. I ended up with a lame attempt that included a German kleptomaniac that just sat there and thought and eventually killed himself in the exact (read, EXACT) way Hitler killed himself (why Hitler? I have no idea). Basically, nothing happened and it was very lame. I got a mediocre grade and to this day, I feel like a moron for handing in such a piece of trash after creating an expectation of something great.

In another class, we got an assignment for a story that we had to complete in one period (maybe, but regardless, I didn’t plan it at all). I wrote something and gave it in and got a good grade and some encouraging comments from the teacher.

In the first example, I had pressure to create something great and a long time to think about it and in the second one, I had pressure in the amount of time I had and had created no expectations as to how good it would be.

Don’t overthink it.

Back in 2009, I took my first step in becoming a writer by signing up for NaNoWriMo. Against all odds, I somehow finished 50k words in a month. I was surprised and relieved. I didn’t think I would be able to write a novel length manuscript. I just didn’t have the will. But I proved myself wrong.

Because of the reasonably short timeframe, there was no time to overthink anything. My fake novel had so many plotholes in it that it looked like a South African road, but it was done and it didn’t stink (too much) for a first draft.

This is not about outlining and (as Donald Maass calls it) organic writing. This is about worrying too much about getting the finer points right. The correct shade of blue the police cruiser should be, the number of switches a pilot has to flip to start a Cessna’s engine. The best way to symbolically make a reference to Hitler. Leave all that for later. That’s what revision is for. First you write your draft. Your first draft, or as some call it, your zero draft. It will kind of suck, and it might be wrong on the procedures a detective has to follow, but at least it won’t be boring—and that is a pretty good start.

Quotation of the Week

2011-10-31T09:06:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

"Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed." - Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is a quite famous American writer. He is often called a science fiction author, but he himself does not agree with the categorisation. Most famous for his novel, Fahrenheit 451, he is also the author of 10 other novels (some of which are loosely connected short stories) and his short stories have appeared in many collections. He also wrote a few plays and some non-fiction, including Zen in the Art of Writing. He got married in 1947 and never got a driver’s licence. (Wikipedia)

(I found the quotation via @TheBookDoctors on Twitter.)

Tips on Scaling the NaNo-Mountain

2011-10-28T14:10:00.000+02:00

Source. Copyright Nintendo

Since NaNoWriMo is around the corner (that’s four days if you’re counting), I thought I’d do a vaguely NaNo-themed post today.

I think one of the biggest problems (and functions) of NaNoWriMo is the consistency at which you are forced to write. That’s 1667 words a day. If you take into consideration that Stephen King reportedly writes 2000 words a day, you’ll note that it’s quite a lot.

So, how do you keep up such a consistency? Here are some pointers I’ve picked up in the past:

1) Begin writing. In Stephen King’s words, “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” Just force yourself to write that first sentence or two, and the rest will come easier.

2) Learn how to write in short bursts. This is especially applicable to people with long hours at work, holiday preparations to make, and a family that needs a lot of attention. Teach yourself that you don’t need two hours free time to write. You can squeeze in a paragraph in the ten minutes the spaghetti takes to cook. (In fact, this works wonders either way, since you’ll probably stop in the middle of a thought, making starting off again much easier.)

3) Set smaller goals. Use a trick they use for running. To run a long distance, set up a series of short distances. When you run, aim for your target (that can be anything from one metre to twenty kilometres away, depending on your fitness level), telling yourself “Okay, I’ll just run up to that point” and then when you get there, move on to the next point, making the entire distance that way. It sounds crazy, but it works. When writing, set smaller goals like 500 words. It’s a lot easier to achieve. It will not only motivate you more (by finishing of goals), but it will be easier to start if you don’t have such a mountain ahead of you. (“Just 200 words more…”)

4) Tell a lot of people about your effort. You ego will help you here. By telling people that you’re going to write 1667 words a day, you set up an expectation. If you don’t finish because you were playing solitaire, you’re going to feel mighty stupid when someone asks how far you are.

That’s all from me. Check out this post by Mood if you’ve always wanted to do an outline but it never seemed to work. (Though it’s probably a bit late to start an outline now.)

No Choice in Voice

2011-10-26T12:14:00.000+02:00

Source (copyright Square Enix)

Ah, voice. The little Pandora’s box of the writing world. Few people actually completely understands the concept, but everyone agrees that it is important (well, I’m sure not everybody, but most).

The first taste I had of voice was that it was simply the way you wrote. I.e. the way you project yourself. You don’t speak like everyone else, so you probably don’t write like anyone else either. That’s why people tell you that voice develops by itself as you write. Because as you go on, you will eventually stop trying to say something in a certain way and just say something. That is your voice.

So I always had a little bit of trouble with this, because my native tongue is Afrikaans and not English (I have a similar problem with that piece of advice for better dialogue where you listen to how other people speak; Most people I am able to overhear is talking a language other than English). My thoughts and speech all comes out in Afrikaans, normally, so how could I naturally project my voice in English?

I recently read about voice in Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel. Here is what he said:

“(Voice is) not only a unique way of putting words together, but a unique sensibility, a distinctive way of looking at the world, an outlook that enriches an author’s oeuvre(*).”

So I might be saved yet. The way you look at things and experience them is your voice. Your outlook, your expectations. All of these are you and you are your voice.

Some time back, I wrote about different characters with different voices. When you write (from a point of view that includes the character, i.e. not distant 3^rd person), the character whose POV you’re in will be a lens through which you put your voice. Therefore, although every character is different and will see the world different, your own views will invariably dribble into the narrative so that your voice will still ring clear.

Your voice is you. Your character has a voice of his own. The combination of the two is the mask that you put on when you face the world in order to tell your story.

* I had no clue what this word meant, so in case you didn’t either, here is a definition.

oeu·vre/ˈœvrə/

Noun: 1. The works of a painter, composer, or author regarded collectively: "the complete oeuvre of Mozart".

2. A work of art, music, or literature.

Quotation of the Week

2011-10-24T10:03:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” - Elbert Hubbard

Elbert Hubbard was an American writer who lived in the second half of the 19^th century and the early nineteen hundreds. He was also an artist, philosopher and publisher. He is best known for his contribution to the Arts and Crafts Movement. His most notable works include a nine-volume work titled Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great. (Wikipedia)

(I found the quotation via @TheBookDoctors on Twitter.)

Distractions (The Internet is Making us Dumber)

2011-10-21T09:10:00.000+02:00

Last time, I talked about the rise of the instant-gratification age. With it came the need for people to be constantly engaged in something. Everything needs to be now. In the same line of thought, it is possible that the internet is making us dumber.

Humans have the basic instinct to get distracted. That is our default state. While this is very useful in situations where we need to look out for constant danger, it impedes our ability to concentrate on a task.

Nicholas Carr is of the opinion that the usage of the internet is training our brains to think more widely and less deeply. Reading a webpage filled with hyperlinks, or a stream of short Twitter messages distracts our minds. Increasing the speed at which we find information seems to be becoming more important than understanding it. We are sort of skimming all the time, instead of just using skimming to find information worth reading.

Most people would recommend blog posts to be around 250 to 400 words long. Any longer than that, and you will lose readers. This is not untrue. I’ve often skipped posts (or at least postponed it) because it would take too long to read the entire thing. Short bursts of information are easier to digest and take up a lot less time. Since we are so inclined to do everything quickly, we give up on long, time-consuming tasks and rather turn to things like Facebook and Twitter that gives us a slew of short information bursts. There are a lot of blogs that go over that word limit, but they seem to be dwindling from what I’ve seen.

The internet (and other distracting media) does have its benefits (besides the obvious). It increases the speed at which we process things and keep track of them. Nicholas Carr says that it can increase our ability to monitor a lot of signals at once, like a pilot or surgeon does.

Directly opposed to the internet that spreads our attention to multiple points, our own trade as writers, books, focuses attention into one spot. But even they have been affected by the speed change that society has undergone. Readers demand more immediacy and less content that does not contribute directly to the story.

Do short blog posts and the internet as a whole make us dumber? Not really. But we are in the process of sacrificing depth in order to get speed and width. Carr mentions a Roman philosopher who said, “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.” It might be the very cliff over which we are currently standing.

The Pages of the Ages

2011-10-19T11:08:00.000+02:00

Times have changed, and with it, the people. Nowadays, we live in an age of instant-gratification, where we expect the things we want in the smallest amount of time possible. Fast food, the internet, the new best super lose your weight in two days diets, etc. As Queen said, we want it all and we want it now.

With this change in attention span, writers had to adapt to stay alive. Where in the olden days we were allowed to start with backstory, it is now recommended that we start with a hook and action.

To illustrate, I’m going to quote the first paragraph or so of four books. Dracula, by Bram Stoker, first published in 1897. Dune, by Frank Herbert, first published in 1965. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, first published in 1985. And finally, The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, first published in 2008. (Publication dates via Wikipedia)

Dracula

3 May. Bistritz.—Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.

The story is told through a series of journal entries. The opening paragraph gives us a summary of where Harker had gone, and a little trivia (i.e. the train that was late). In fact, there is little to no hook. The only question that could arise from that paragraph is where Harker is going.

Dune

In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, the old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.

It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Artreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.

(There is a quoted paragraph from a scripture of the Dune world before this paragraph, but it is not really a part of the story, so I left it out.) We are given a place and an action (going to Arrakis) like in Dracula, but in the very first paragraph, there is already a question. Why is an old crone coming to visit Paul’s mother? And who is she that she can visit someone in the castle?

Ender’s Game

“I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one. Or at least as close as we’re going to get.”

“That’s what you said about the brother.”

“The brother tested out impossible. For other reasons. Nothing to do with his ability.”

“Same with the sister. And there are doubts about him. He’s too malleable. Too willing to submerge himself in someone else’s will.”

We start off with detached dialogue. We don’t know who’s speaking (note that this is something writers are usually warned not to do). There is no place described, but numerous questions raised. What will the “he” do, for which he is the one? How did the speaker listen through his ears and see through his eyes? Why was the brother rejected? Why was the sister rejected?

The Hunger Games

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This was the day of the reaping.

We begin with Katniss waking up (another alleged no-no) and looking for her sister Prim. We get a feeling of poverty (“rough canvas” and the fact that they have to share a bed). Then at a quick pace, we get a huge question. What is the reaping? More so, we get a feeling of tension because the reaping would give Prim nightmares.

As you see, in progression from 1897 to 2008, the questions start to rise earlier and involve bigger things. In the first few paragraphs, Dracula has no real questions, Dune raises one mildly interesting one, Ender’s Game raises a few mildly interesting ones (though Card quickly throws in a big one a few lines later), and then The Hunger Games give us a tension-filled question.

Since there are many instant-gratification sources in this age, (i.e. television, internet) we need to convince readers to keep reading. In 1897, reading was probably the easy entertainment (except maybe for super-literary pieces), so they didn’t need so much constant tension. Today, the written word has to contend with moving pictures, and tension (i.e. questions) is the only way to achieve that.

The point of this overly long post is that you have to keep your audience in mind when writing (and taking writing advice). If Bram Stoker gave you advice about putting in backstory to ground the readers or something, you have to remember that you’re not living in 1897. So unless you write for time-travellers from the late eighteen hundreds, you have to pile on tension and keep it going ‘til the end.

Quotation of the Week

2011-10-17T08:21:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.” - Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was a science-fiction author of over 500 books. He also wrote countless short stories. He was the original creator of robotics, including the three laws of robotics which achieved a great deal of popularity. He is considered to be one of the “Big Three”, masters of hard science fiction, the other two being Arthur C. Clarke (author of 2001: A Space Odyssey) and Robert A. Heinlein (author of Stranger in a Strange Land).

His most famous works include “I, Robot” and “The Bicentennial Man”, both short stories. The latter was later turned into a novel, and then into a film. “I, Robot” is a more famous movie, but the script was not loyal to the short story and the whole theme of robots overthrowing society was in fact exactly the opposite of what Asimov tried to do in his stories. The film contains similarities to two other short stories of Asimov, namely “Robot Dreams” and “Lost Little Robot”. (Wikipedia)

(I found the quotation via @TheBookDoctors on Twitter.)

The Doll

2011-10-14T09:20:00.000+02:00

First up, click here and look at those pictures.

Creepy much? Yeah. My blogger-buddy J.C. Martin has a novelette called The Doll that features the very island (and legend). Creepy dolls, black candles and more. I read it a while ago when J.C. gave it away via her newsletter. If you haven’t had a chance to look at it, you can buy an ebook copy for $0.99 here and $2.99 here.

But there’s more. J.C. has launched a contest on her blog (click here to go there) in which she gives away a bunch of things (including… wait for it… a Kindle Touch – though this is only applicable if The Doll manages to sell 400 copies by November 1st).

I read it quite a while back, so I can’t write a very useful review of it, but I do remember that I quite enjoyed it, and judging by the amount of positive reviews, others did too.

Join the contest on her blog and spread the word. Who knows, maybe someone will win a Kindle.

4 Functions of Revision

2011-10-12T10:40:00.000+02:00

I used to think revision was for fixing problems, and within that mindset lay the majority of my problems with revision.

Maybe I’m not the only one who thought/thinks that, or maybe it’s just one of my ‘aah’ moments (wherein I realise something after some time which has thus far been obvious to everyone else). Regardless, here is my revised (pun intended) list of things revision is for. But the previous one consisted only out of one point, so it wasn’t really a list. So, rather, here is my first list of uses of revision:

Fix problems

When you write a first draft, you’re supposed to spam it down as fast as you can, not stopping for anything (Sort of what NaNoWriMo tries to teach you). Thus, if you come to a point where Pete needs both his arms to escape the lair of the nefarious Lester, but you amputated one of them in an emotional scene back in chapter 5, you’re going to want to go back and fix that.

But the smart people say that you should just make a note of it and go on, as if it’s already been fixed. You can then fix the problem by revising all the parts that need to be different because of Pete’s two arms and the replacement of the amputation scene etc.

Find and strengthen theme

If you like Stephen King’s metaphor of a story being a fossil that you’re uncovering (I do), a theme will emerge during the first draft. (Donald Maass said, “What do you want your reader to think about as they’re reading your novel, or later? That’s your theme.”) In fact, there’ll be quite a few. When you read your first draft, they will occur to you and you can make a note of which ones you like. Then, during revision, you find the parts where your chosen theme is highlighted and highlight it even more (but do it covertly). Then find the parts where other themes are highlighted and tone it down.

Character

With revision, you can look at the different parts of a character’s personality and decide which ones are important. For example, it is crucial that you give the readers a reason to like the protagonist early on, so with revision, you select an attribute that is likable (i.e. loyalty) and see how you can change your first five pages to reflect that attribute. Just so, you can select parts of your character that you want your readers to know about and find ways in which you show them through actions or dialogue or appearance.

You can also introduce new characters to fill a void or merge two existing secondaries to make a stronger character.

Tighten Prose

Stephen King says (and he knows what he’s talking about) that the second draft equals the first draft minus ten per cent. Revision is also a time in which you reduce the mass of your story into more tightly packed pieces.

You take a look at an important sentence and ask yourself, “How can I change this sentence to make it clearer?” You take out scenes that drag and don’t advance your story. You edit scenes that need to be there, but are too slow-paced or too unclear. You take out overzealous adverbs and passive voice that bogs down the action. You put in details that bring the environment alive.

I’ve always wondered how people can say that revision is their favourite part of writing, but now I know. The revision reveals the true story. To continue King’s fossil metaphor, the draft is the shovel that opens the fossil and revision is the small brushes that mark out the details.

Quotation of the Week

2011-10-10T09:01:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” ~Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947

Paul Thomas Mann was a German writer of epic novels and novellas, as well as short stories and essays. He fled to Switzerland after Hitler came to power in 1933. Soon after that, World War II broke out and he moved to America. He eventually returned to Switzerland in 1952. Mann is best known as one of the exponents of the Exlliteratur (the exile writers). Some of his most notable works include The Magic Mountain and Death in Venice. (Wikipedia)

Anatomy of the Sword

2011-10-07T14:39:00.001+02:00

If you write any sort of story that plays off in the medieval and related times, or even in the distant future where technology had to start from scratch (think Terry Brooks’s Shannara series), at some point, there will (hopefully) be mention of a sword. For that reason, I will elaborate on what makes a sword tick and the related terminology.

For starters, here is a handy image (from Wikipedia) that describes all the visible parts of a sword. Know your hilt from your pommel.

Click to enlarge

(Interesting note: The fuller’s main function is to lighten the blade without losing any of its strength. But it is also called by another name, a blood groove, because it allowed a stabbed person’s blood to flow from his wound with the sword still in it.)

Real combat swords have two main qualities that replicas lack. First is the material used to make the sword.

At the start of swordsmithing, the people used bronze. But after discovering iron, they realised that they could use that rather than bronze to make swords easier and in greater quantities (though iron was weaker than bronze). After a time, they figured out that by adding a bit of carbon during the smelting process, they could make steel, a far superior metal in strength and durability (these days, it is commonly referred to as carbon steel).

Traditional swords are made of carbon steel, not stainless steel (the difference is in the chromium content). Which means two things. They rust if not regularly oiled and they have a dull sheen, rather than the mirror-effect of stainless steel (the part in the movies where a hero sees an enemy in the reflection of the blade is heavily exaggerated). Carbon steel is more stiff and hard (i.e. stronger) than stainless, which is the reason it is used for swords (knives are generally made with stainless steel, because the blades are less likely to break/bend because they are so short).

Second, the tang.

The tang is the part of the blade that extends into the grip. Many replica swords have the hilt welded onto the blade, rather than having a tang that extends into it. A full tang means that the tang remains the same thickness as the blade, as opposed to normal tangs that thins into the grip.

A form of tang, called the rat-tailed tang, is also used and sometimes referred to as “full tang” (which in modern days may only refer to the existence of a tang whatsoever), while it is in actual fact only a thin rod welded onto the blade and extending into the grip.

If a tang is not present, or it is a rat-tailed tang, the sword can easily break at the welding point. Therefore, good swordsmiths will always make a tang that is a part of the blade and extends into the grip, threading the end to allow a pommel to be screwed on. (Interesting note: Japanese swordsmiths often put their mark on the tang underneath the grip.)

Now you’ll know a cross-guard from a fuller and a rat-tailed tang from a proper one. (You’ll also be able to make better guesses at which swords are replicas.)

No Pain, No Gain

2011-10-05T11:38:00.000+02:00

Would you pay someone to beat the crap out of you?

Though it’s a bit drastic, that might just be the right way of thinking to reach success.

Everyone has the potential to be great. Whether it is to be a great accountant or a great writer, everyone has something that he or she has the potential to do greatly. The problem is finding that specific “sweet-spot” where all your being intersects.

You can’t be great at something that you hate. You can be good at it, but not great. If you don’t have a passion for your job, you’re not going to strive to become better at it and you will continue to do it in the easiest manner possible.

You get better by living on the edge of your abilities. A landowner can’t expand his borders by remaining safely inside of them. He has to go to the edges and explore the parts he does not know about. Though it might be frightening and dangerous, it is the only way he can get more land.

Just the same, if you sit in the middle, the easy way, and never challenge your abilities, you can’t grow.

Especially in this age, living a comfortable life is pretty common. Having enough money to study a respectable course at university, getting a steady job via a family contact and then simmering until you die someday. You were comfortable and ended a fairly happy person. But did you achieve something? Were you great at something? Did you leave the world better than you found it?

Life is supposed to be hard. Just ask John from Brave New World. If everything is going easy, you’re stagnating. You’re not growing. Make a choice to increase the difficulty in your life instead of decreasing it. You can piddle away at some stories and a WIP novel for years and decide that you will eventually get it right, or you can increase your writing time and work harder on your novel, pounding away at the keys night after night until you get the characters just right and the plot flowing smoothly.

Creep over your borders and see what lies there. What you find there might surprise you.

Quotation of the Week

2011-10-03T13:30:00.000+02:00

Every week, I’ll put up a quotation related to writing or creation and tell you a little bit about the person who said it. I’ll try to vary the speakers as much as possible.

“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those who move easiest have learned to dance.” - Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an English poet that lived in the early eighteenth century. He is famous for his translation of Homer, the author of Iliad and Odyssey. His poems were known to be satirical, such as The Rape of the Lock. (Wikipedia)

(I found the quotation via @TheBookDoctors on Twitter.)

eReader vs Printed Book

2011-09-30T08:53:00.000+02:00

I think I first need to note here that I do not own an eReader, so anything I say may be biased according to that fact.

I recently started reading Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel. As far as I can tell, it was published around 2001, 2002. Inside, Maass says that an e-revolution is unlikely because an ebook does not fill a genuine need. So it could become increasingly popular, but it will not be a revolution (i.e. replace paper books, as the printing press replaced hand-written books).

Thus far, ebooks have done amazingly well, so much in fact that a notable chain bookstore had to close (Borders). Does this mean the end of printed books? My guess would be the same as Maass’s back then. No.

Why? Well, maybe I’m just old fashioned, but here are my reasons.

If I buy something, I want to have physical proof that I have it. I want to be able to hold it in my hand. When I buy an ebook, I get some binary that tells my eReader what to show me. It is stored on the Amazon network and I assume on the reader itself, but I still feel as though I don’t own it. For the same reason, I never buy software that is only available for download. I want a physical copy.

I want to be able to lend/borrow and give my books away. I want to be able to exchange them at a second-hand bookstore. It is definitely coming closer, what with Amazon starting that lend an ebook from your library thing, but currently, it is still lacking. I can’t say to my friend, “Here, read this book, it is awesome!”. Well, I could, but then I’d have to give him my eReader with my entire novel collection on it, and then I’d have nothing to read. There are a lot of readers who like to give books away and see them to new homes. Ebooks make this impossible (at least currently).

I want to be able to read for more than half an hour a day. Kindle says that the battery will last up to a month. Wow, I thought. That’s amazing. It turns out this is only if you put the Wi-Fi off and read half an hour a day. Now, I don’t know about you, but I read for more than half an hour a day. Maybe I just read slower. Anyway, the battery is a problem. Real books don’t run out of power. If there is an apocalypse and after two years you find a book in the rubble, you can still use it. (And apparently trauma to the battery may cause it to explode. Real books do not explode.)

And finally, the cheapest Kindle that I can find in South Africa (there are some other scaly brands, but such ones tend to not work as well) is R 1300 ish. That’s around $ 180. I just don’t have the money for it. Printed books are between R 20 and R 100 ($2.80 and $14.20). That I can afford.

However, with all its downsides, the ebook thing has some useful features that I like.

Number one, I can read a 1000 page book without needing a wrist brace.

Number two, it’s easier and quicker to buy an ebook.

Number three, I can look up words I don’t understand and find passages I want to see again.

But even with these three things, it is simply useful. Not necessary. There is no genuine need for it. If there are enough other people like me, the printed book won’t be dying for some time still.

The Bomb under the Table

2011-09-28T12:27:00.000+02:00

Fear of the unknown is probably one of the most common fears present in humans (maybe all humans?). For example, humans fear death because they don’t know what will happen after (unless you have strong faith), or the dark, because they can’t see if there is something or someone there.

Despite this, humans are also drawn towards the unknown. They do their best to find everything they don’t know. Whether it is to activate adrenaline associated with fear or to curb the fear with knowledge, I don’t know. Regardless, it’s important.

From this fear comes suspense. Suspense is the anxiety that comes from belief of the imminent revelation of an unknown outcome. For some reason (maybe our brains’ need for closure), we want to know what happens. What the outcome will be. If we take away the unknown, is the suspense defunct? Somewhat, but not really. As to why, my guess would be that our brains interpret the outcome as an unsure outcome every time around. Maybe we subconsciously believe that a different outcome is somehow possible.

Anyway, there are two main types of suspense that appear in fiction (that I can remember at time of print):

The suspense that can be described by the following scenario. “Alfred Hitchcock was asked to define suspense. He told the interviewer to imagine two people sitting at a table at a café. Under the table is a bag. In the bag is a bomb. The characters don’t know that the bomb is there but the viewers do. That, he said, is suspense.” (via Crime Fiction Collective)

The other type is one where the reader knows as much as the character. In the bomb scenario, the character might have gotten a threat and nervously looks around while talking to a man who he shouldn’t have been talking to.

If I can paraphrase David Baboulene here, it’s all about subtext. To create suspense, someone has to know more than someone else. Either the reader and the villain knows there’s a bomb and the hero doesn’t, or the villain knows there’s a bomb and the reader and hero don’t.

However, the most important part of suspense (or tension) is that the reader must care about the outcome. Humans want to know the unknown, but there are so many unknowns that they prioritise them. If they don’t care about your characters, they won’t care about the outcome, and the book, to paraphrase James Scott Bell, will be left behind unread in the train.

Rehab for Explainers

2011-09-26T11:31:00.000+02:00

As writers, it is important that we create words that a reader will understand. If we don’t, we lose the reader to confusion and we don’t want that.

However, to counter this, a lot of writers over steer. From this common over explanation came the phrase, “Resist the Urge to Explain”, or its acronym, RUE.

A big part of RUE is showing versus telling. Telling is explaining while showing is letting the reader make their own conclusions. This includes things like Swifties and telling of emotions (John was angry).

It mainly has to do with explaining things that are unnecessary (John jumped over the fence. He was now inside the compound.). Repeating information that was already given or explaining things that were implied earlier on is slowing down everything for no reason. You have to be subtle in your explanations (this includes people telling one another the things you’re trying to explain).

Another common place where writers over explain is character motivations. If you feel the need to jump in and explain why the character is acting a certain way, your character isn’t defined enough (John picked up the money and took it to the man who dropped it because he was too honest to keep it.). Before the event happens, your reader should already know what kind of a person your character is. Or other times, the motivation will be obvious and there’ll be no need to explain it (John gave one look at the rotting corpse and threw up, because he felt sick after seeing those maggots coming out of the man’s mouth.)

The basic principle behind RUE is that your readers aren’t stupid. They can figure out that John is in the compound if he jumped over the fence or that Peter laughs because the joke was funny.

Trust your readers and trust your writing. If you feel the need to explain something, rather rewrite and get the information in without explaining.

Deception Perception

2011-09-23T11:26:00.000+02:00

Police and other law-related officials have a long history in detecting lies (especially on television and so on). How does it work? Is it as easy as they make it look? In short, no. But read on to see what I mean.

Firstly, the most important part of detecting deception is that you can’t. You can only suspect. To start, you need a baseline, i.e. an idea of how the person acts under normal circumstances. After that, you can then compare his or her behaviour when he/she is being asked a question to the baseline.

There are a few things that stand out as indicating deception.

Expressions

When the expression doesn’t fit the words, deception is taking place, obviously. Therefore, to detect a lie, you have to make sure you know what every expression looks like exactly. For example, most people can’t fake a smile completely. If only the mouth smiles, and the eyes do not scrunch up (and make crow’s feet), the smile is not genuine.

Also, there is a whole department called micro expressions (popularised by Lie to me) that can also guide you. A micro expression is a very quick display of an actual emotion (people have no control over this) which can reveal another emotion as the one that follows it, indicating deception.

Choice of words

Apparently, people use words like “actually” and “never” in ways that can indicate that something’s up. When you use the word “actually”, you are comparing two things, so if the question raised no second option, there is likely deception going on. E.g. “Is your car blue?” could be legitimately answered with “Actually, it’s red.” But if the question is “What colour is your car?” and the answer is “Actually, it’s red,” it indicates that the answerer was comparing it to another colour, possibly the real colour.

The word “never” is often a way of avoiding the issue. “Did you steal the car?” could be answered with “I would never steal a car.” The answerer might be avoiding the answer and never really give a straight denial.

Body Language

People who are lying often try to minimize the space they take up (by keeping their extremities close to themselves) and thus appear less dangerous—a survival instinct that kicks in for the same reason that a polygraph works (lying is directly connected with danger and the person is nervous).

When someone is lying, they tend to touch their facial features—the nose, ears, mouth and eyes. They also subconsciously place objects between themselves and the questioner or turn away from him, also an instinct to protect themselves.

The most important factor to consider when “detecting lies”, is that most of these signs could mean anything. Someone touching his nose could have hay fever and his nose is itching. Someone sitting scrunched might be cold. It’s important to take note of the context and work from a baseline, preferably in the same environment.

I got most of my information here.

Bring out the Box (If you need to)

2011-09-21T09:32:00.000+02:00

When you start up with a story, you often begin with a certain character in mind. However, other times, you focus on the plot first, then put in characters. For me, it is often difficult to come to grips with a character at that point, since he will be simply another actor. It takes time to develop a personality from nothing, so it’s especially problematic in short stories.

To combat this, I like to put my characters into personality archetypes and work from there in order to build up to more solid characters. Otherwise they simply drift along with the story, never really sticking.

As a base, I sometimes just come up with something that fits the role (i.e. a rebellious teenager in a horror story), and other times I use one of the archetypes of several personality tests, like the Myers-Briggs.

Archetypes are usually bad because they put your character into a box and leave him there and then you have a character who is not developing, and a cliché. So the important part of picking an archetype is to build from it, not just lean on it for support. It’s a lot like structure in stories.

If you can make a character without archetypes, do so immediately and joyfully. If, however, you struggle to get a solid mass from your collection of words, consider picking a base, a structure, to help you build them up.

Using archetypes also allows you to deviate easily (since you know exactly who your character is—at least in the beginning) and therefore surprise readers convincingly.

Like adverbs, archetypes should be avoided if possible (except perhaps with minor characters that have two lines of dialogue), but used if necessary. It is especially useful when there are multiple characters in order to differentiate between them and make them memorable, as Orson Scott Card did in Speaker for the Dead.

Should You Play Small?

2011-09-19T12:11:00.000+02:00

Ever since Michelle spoke about her small publisher, I’ve thought about them. Small publishers are, I think, often looked down upon, like an ugly cousin of the big 6.

So I did a bit of digging (okay, more like brushing sand off) and here are some of the pros and cons for small publishers:

Pros

More control

I think the most famous benefit of a small publisher is this. You get more control, thus allowing the author more say in things like the cover, the edits and so forth. Big publishers might not be so flexible.

Bigger chance of acceptance

Not because a small press has lower quality, but because of the number of submissions. If there are fewer submissions, your manuscript will probably get more attention. Plus, small publishers are more likely to help you fix your manuscript up.

Build a backlist

If you want to move to a larger publisher later on, having books published might make it easier to get an agent/publisher than if you’re an unknown writer. This is nowhere close to a guarantee, but maybe that small step up can help.

Sell books for cheaper

This may seem like a con, but new authors will benefit from having cheaper books. People will be more willing to take a chance on you and therefore you have a better chance of building a reader base.

Higher royalties

In counter to the previous point, small publishers will often have a higher royalty percentage for the author.

Can keep books in circulation

Because a lot of the small publishers use a print on demand system, the book will often stay in circulation for longer. A big publisher could pull a book after a few weeks because it wasn’t doing well enough.

Easier to get obscure books published

A lot (all?) of the big publishers want fiction that fits into the categories that sell. A small publisher is more likely to take a chance on that weird novel you wrote that doesn’t seem to fit in any specific category.

Cons

Self-promotion

With a small publisher, chances are that they won’t have a big marketing budget. You’re going to have to do a lot, if not all of the promotion yourself. If you’re anything like me, blowing your own horn is like eating hot aeroplane propellers. This would have been a pretty big drawback, except that these days, unless your Stephen King, you have to market your book anyway, even at the big publishers.

Circulation will be smaller

Bookstores won’t easily buy a lot of books from small publishers, for in case they don’t sell and the publisher can’t buy the books back. Maybe the budget of the publisher is also an issue. However, with the (rapid) growing success of e-books, getting the book into bookstores might not be high priority anymore. Some people (like me) like having an actual book with them, but most conform to the new e-book regime.

Scams

If you publish with one of the big 6, you’re pretty much guaranteed that it’s not a fake company. Little Hamburger Press might not be a real publisher though.

Might get skipped because of your publisher

Some people might see the logo of a little-known publisher and decide not to buy your book, thinking it is bad quality. It used to be the same with self-publishing, but with the rise of this particular publishing method, people are getting over that mindset. However, if a potential reader sees a new writer by an unknown press and a new writer by a big 6 press, chances are that he’ll take the big 6 one.

Conclusion

A small press has a few downsides (less money being an important one, if you plan on living off your writing), but especially in the age of e-books, it is becoming a more and more attractive option and I think one that needs to be seriously considered, instead of simply discarded.

(My information came from here and here. Great information if you’re thinking of going the small press route.)

Walk a Mile in my Muse

2011-09-16T11:49:00.000+02:00

It is often said that walking (or other exercises) can increase, among other things, your creativity. I’ve never been much of a walker, but I thought I’d look into it.

I found several articles that spoke of studies that were done showing that brain deterioration was combatted by walking, cognitive functions were improved, and memory became better after as little as a fifteen minute walk.

The reason for this might be a number of things. Firstly, muscles and the brain have an intricate relationship through the connection of the nerves that send signals to the neurons in the muscles to let them contract. So perhaps excessive usage of the muscles will lead to better communication between the brain and the muscles and thus more stimulation for the neurons in the brain. Secondly, when you exercise, your body releases endorphins and serotonin that is natural pain and stress removers. I’m sure there are a number of other things that could contribute, but I’m no brain scientist.

The question is, of course, does it actually help creativity? Many, many people say that it does. They swear by walking if they have a block. One author, Henry David Thoreau, even said “Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”

The endorphins and serotonin can definitely help, since it can relax us and let us clear our heads of worries about other things—a prime reason for blocks in the first place.

Another important thing is the active meditation involved in exercise. Most people picture a monk sitting cross-legged and humming when they hear the word meditation, but running or walking (or any other exercise) can be meditation too. By concentrating on the exercise or some part of it, you essentially clear the mind of other thoughts and thus the exercise becomes your anchor (sitting meditation often uses a mantra as an anchor; a thought to fix your mind to). Specifically in running, it is somewhat important to control your breathing, so if you count seconds for each breath, you will distract yourself so much that you will essentially be meditating.

Whether it actually improves creativity or not (the consensus seems to be yes), it cannot hurt to try. It’s a healthy habit and getting out and seeing things might not be a bad way to hunt inspiration.

From a Different Perspective

2011-09-14T11:12:00.000+02:00

People (myself included) often have problems writing from the point of view of the opposite gender, and with good reason.

Men and women are wired differently and therefore think differently. In the most basic terms, men think logically and women think empathetically.

Neither of these two types (called male and female brains) is exclusive to either men or women, but they do tend to be generally associated with their respective genders.

Male brains are wired to try and fix things and figure out logical solutions to problems. Female brains are adept at sensing other people’s feelings (which came in handy when they needed to figure out what a baby needed, as it cannot talk) and they excel at languages.

While men seem to isolate language skills in the dominant (usually left) side of the brain, women are usually able to draw those skills from both sides, resulting in a better understanding and usage of language. That is one of the reasons why men tend to speak less than women (according to BBC UK, men speak average 7000 words a day while women speak 20000). Men tend to communicate more through actions (maybe it has something to do with the fact that women can pick up on their feelings).

A simple way of saying it is this: “There are people people, and things people.” (William D. Hamilton)

There is an extreme of each side of the spectrum, i.e. an extreme male brain and an extreme female brain.

Autism is, according to Simon Baron-Cohen, an extreme male brain. People who have it tend to see everything as ‘things’ instead of the people they are. Thus, they view people not as thinking and feeling humans, but rather as machines or systems that can be analysed and understood. It is also interesting to note that eighty per cent of autistics are male.

On the other hand, an extreme female brain, according to Bernard Crespi and Christopher Badcock, is Schizophrenia. They see minds and people in everything. They hear voices where there are none and believe people are conspiring against them when no one is.

Using all this information, one could perhaps get a better perspective of the opposite gender in order to write a convincing character.

For those interested in the differences between male and female brains, here is an article. An article about the extreme male and female brains is here. Finally, see this post (from Writer’s Digest site) that explains a bit about writing from the male perspective.

The Myers-Briggs Personality Types

2011-09-12T22:06:00.000+02:00

The Myers-Briggs Type indicator was originally derived by Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. In turn, they used Carl Jung’s writings in the 1921 book Psychological Types.

These days, it is used to determine what kind of psychological preferences someone has. It was originally used to determine what types of jobs women in World War II could do best and most comfortably, but this was later rebuffed and now it is used only as an indicator for personality.

There are 16 types, denominated by a combination of four letters:

Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I), Sensing (S) or Intuition (N), Thinking (T) or Feeling (F), and Judgement (J) or Perception (P).

Every person is dominant on one side of the four scales and the combination of dominant traits then determines the personality type.

Extraversion or Introversion

People who lean to extraversion focuses on the outside world; things, people, actions. Those who lean to introversion channels their focus inward, reflecting, ideas and beliefs.

Sensing or Intuition

Those with dominance in sensing prefer to deal with facts, details and things that are certain; they trust information gotten from their 5 senses. Those who lean toward intuition like to add meaning to information and find things that aren’t obvious; they listen to their inner voice and trust insight.

Thinking or Feeling

Those who prefer thinking make decisions by using objective logic and an analytical approach, while those who prefer feeling look to their values, the needs of themselves and the other people and beliefs.

Judgement or Perception

Those who prefer judgement want their lives to be stable and decided while those who prefer perception want flexibility and new options.

Each in combination forms a unique personality type. A free test is available here.

I find it useful to divide my characters into personality types if I struggle to differentiate between them. I use it as a base to work from, giving me a clearer image of who this person is.

Write Courageously

2011-09-09T15:12:00.000+02:00

To write courageously means to write honestly and unafraid.

I’ve spoken before about putting a part of yourself in everything you write. Every word you choose shows the world who you are. When you write, you wear a mask of your own making, your voice. Are you putting forth an honest voice?

I’ve often found myself restricting my words. Stopping myself (and my flow of letters) and changing the sentence to something more appropriate. Is that honest? Not really. First write honestly, then edit out that which is inappropriate (for your audience or otherwise).

Secondly, write unafraid. Apparently, one of the main causes of procrastination is the fear of failing at what you’re doing; creating something sub-par. Don’t be afraid of failing. Failing is part of learning and a necessary step. Just write.

Cherish whatever it is that you hope to achieve with your writing (and your life). Don’t back down because it doesn’t fall in the necessary conventions or because you think you might fail. Push on and fight with courage until you reach your goal.

Write, live. Do it honestly. Don’t be afraid. Be courageous in everything you do.

Culture Gap

2011-09-07T06:56:00.000+02:00

While the thumbs-up sign means okay or good in most places, it is an insulting gesture in Greece. With different cultures comes different interpretation of signs, and writers often do not take this into consideration.

When writing fiction, specifically science fiction or fantasy, people tend to make the world exactly like western culture (if they belong to that group anyway). This is most probably not so, and it creates a very good foreign feel if the writer adds culture specific gestures to certain people (for example, people living in isolation on the moon might have formulated gestures tied to the existence on the moon).

Research published by the American Psychological Association suggests that facial expressions are also subject to different interpretations across cultures. A lot of body language depends on culture rather than just human nature.

A lot of gestures and/or expressions come from ancient times and were adopted by the newer ages, even though they aren’t being used for the same purpose. For example, the thumbs-up sign, as far as I know, comes from the Romans, in which Caesar indicated thumbs-up if the gladiator should live and thumbs-down if he should die.

So let’s say the people on our moon used to excavate minerals (until it was banned due to moon instability). It was pretty dark down there and they couldn’t easily get bright light. It was also pretty dangerous due to caves that collapsed, so they would send one guy to check the passages for minerals before they brought the machinery in. This guy, when he saw minerals that needed to be excavated, he would signal his comrades (radio signals didn’t work because of interference by the strange minerals). However, it was dark and dusty, and neither nodding nor thumbs-up could be clearly seen, so he holds his arm in the air for yes and points it down for no. This would eventually seep into society and they might make a smaller version of it (say, a palm up for yes and down for no) and use that instead of nodding (especially if a lot of the population were miners).

So by putting in a small gesture, you can automatically show some history. With it, you let the reader know that he/she is in a foreign place.

The Four Basic Writing Stances : From the Roof

2011-09-05T11:22:00.000+02:00

From the Roof. Source

From the Roof (or Vom Dach in German) is an intimidating stance that is achieved by holding the sword overhead, at a 45 degree angle from the ground. An alternate version of this has the swordsman hold it over one shoulder, since some armours didn’t allow the arms to raise so high.

By holding the sword over your head, you gain a lot of power with your strikes. However, it can slow both your parries and attacks because of the momentum you need to generate in order to bring the blade down. The position, however, allows easy transition into the other three stances with a shift of the sword and moving of the feet.

In writing, From the Roof is a versatile but somewhat disordered stance. Though it can certainly act as a stance of its own, I think it often leaks into my writing along with the others. This stance is also, like the Fool, kind of a combination between the Ox and the Plough. With From the Roof, you start out either with an outline or without, depending on how good you know your story. Then, if you get to a point where you struggle, you swap to the other style. Thus, you start out with Ox, then you get to a point where you need some structure, then you swap over to Plough.

This stance shares a lot of advantages and disadvantages with the Fool, but optimises all the areas. However, the trick lies in knowing when to switch. If you swap between the styles too often, or not often enough, then you get all the problems from the first two.

From the Roof is very confusing, and can be pretty useless if you’re good with only Ox or Plough. Also, you’re outline will never be as clear as it could be if you do it throughout the entire story. For both the Fool and From the Roof, you need to know what you’re doing, and more importantly, you have to need it. For most people, just outlining or just winging it is best.

The Different Masks We Wear

2011-09-02T10:48:00.000+02:00

In the introduction of the author’s definitive edition of Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card said something that is very true that I never really implemented in my own fiction.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that every person has different “voices” they use when talking to different people. They change themselves (even if it’s only slightly) to fit in the interaction in which they take part. Essentially, we each have multiple personas; one for each relationship we have (including strangers).

If you look at the psychology of it, I’d guess that it has to do with our need to fit in. Humans are social by nature. If you are in a group of people, or even just in the company of one person, you want the other party to accept you. Your mannerisms, attitude and the like changes to something that you believe will cause them to include you. Ergo, we have a collection of masks hidden in our psyche, and we swop them continually in order to fit the different situations/contexts we find ourselves in.

If you apply this to characters in a story, it is obvious that for every relationship, you’re going to have to develop a persona for your character. If there are three characters in a story, you’re going to need four personas for every character—one for each relationship. One and two, two and three, one and three and when they’re all together.

While this is probably going to be a lot of hard work (especially if you have a lot of characters), I think it’ll add a depth to your character that you wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. And you’ll have a lot of fun doing it.

On another note, we, as writers, have another mask. It’s the persona we assume when we write things down. The smart people call this voice. It’s sort of like a public mask, the one we put on when we speak to the world. The question is this: Will you craft a porcelain mask, or go out in public with a cardboard face?

Why Adverbs are Generally Bad (but Sometimes Good)

2011-08-31T14:39:00.000+02:00

Adverbs to writers are like salt to cooks. If you put in too little, it will come out bland, but if you put in too much, it will be overbearing.

You’ve probably gotten the idea that adverb use is bad, evil or a little like a fungus growing between your toes. This seems to be an often noted lesson for writers. But the fact is, adverbs don’t kill stories. People kill stories.

One might say, if adverbs can make my story look bad, I’d rather just leave them out entirely. But that’s like saying, too much salt can make the food too salty, so I’d rather just leave out the salt. It is a useful tool that can actually help your product, if only you use it correctly.

So why are adverbs bad? Well, there are several occasions which brought up the whole problem in the first place.

The number one reason for this is what they call Swifties. I think it’s named after a writer named Swift who used them a lot.

A Swifty, for those who don’t know, is a dialogue tag modifier. E.g. “Put that down,” John said angrily. You are essentially telling your readers what you should be showing them. So basically, this is the same deal as the show/tell thing. Some occasions demand telling, but most do not. A reason for using a Swifty can be this: If your speaker’s words would make it hard for a reader to figure out what would be obvious if he was hearing it. E.g. “I hate you,” he said happily. However, a Swifty should be a last resort. Try to restructure the words or set the mood so that the happily will be apparent without you saying it.

Another occurrence is the use of weak verbs along with adverbs. For example, John walked quickly to the scene of the crime. By replacing ‘walked quickly’ with ‘hurried’, you say exactly the same thing, only with fewer words. Never say something in two words if you can say it in one. Weak verbs that need to be modified are sort of like passive voice. It’s easy to lose clarity, focus and interest by using them too much. There is a place for them, but if you can help it, don’t put them in.

Adverbs can add clarity to a sentence that would otherwise be difficult to understand, but people often over explain. Readers are, in general, smarter than one thinks and can usually fill in the gaps. When you are certain that it needs to be there, you can joyfully put it in.

The Four Basic Writing Stances : Fool

2011-08-29T13:53:00.000+02:00

The Fool. Source

The Fool (or Alber in German) is a deceptively open stance. You lower the blade, almost touching the floor with its tip, and step back with your one foot. You create the illusion that you are open for attack while you can actually counterattack very efficiently.

With a twist of the hilt, the blade can be brought up to parry, leaving you in a good position to attack. Also, the speed with which you can lift the blade will often be underestimated.

In writing, the Fool is a combination of the Plough and the Ox. You start off without any outline, but when you figure out your characters and see how things play out, you switch to outlining for the middle (which is often a very difficult place for an Ox to be in). But before you get to the end, you switch back to writing without an outline. Therefore, your outline will be everything except the beginning and the end.

The Fool essentially maximises efforts by outlining the part that is hard for the Ox stance and winging the parts that often cause the biggest problems for the Plough stance. By doing this, the Fool gets the advantages of both stances. The story will be well structured and flow naturally, if you do things right.

However, along with the advantages, the Fool also gets the disadvantages. The stance tries to cast away the places where the stances most often fail, but it cannot eliminate all the problems. By winging the beginning, it is possible to set the whole course of the story into a chaotic mess. The beginning gives you the direction, and if you don’t know what’s happening, you will shape the whole story (even with its structured middle) into the wrong thing that might not really get anywhere. Also, the large part in the middle might stagnate and become an article instead of a story.

For people who like both the Ox and the Plough stances, the Fool is a good alternative. It may seem to be a very chaotic method, but it efficiently balances out positives and negatives. If you do it right, you can create a story with a wonderful flow and natural characters, without losing tautness and clarity. If you don’t do it right, you will have a big mess on your hands.

The World of 1s and 0s

2011-08-26T10:22:00.000+02:00

There’s an old joke that goes like this: There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Well, you don’t have to be one of the latter anymore, because today, I’ll show you how it works.

First up, the smallest unit in computer memory is a bit. Eight bits make up one byte. A thousand bytes make up a kilobyte. And so on and so forth.

Every bit contains just one of two possibilities, a 1 or a 0. On or off, if you will. (You’ll notice that on power switches, the “on” side has a little line—this is actually a 1)

One byte, aka 8 bits, can be one of 255 possibilities. Every bit in an 8-bit byte contains a yes/no answer for a different number. Binary works in multiples of 2. Every bit represents 2 to the power of a different number. These numbers, from right to left, are 0 to 7. Thus, the far right number represents 1 (aka 2 to the power of 0) and the far left represents 128 (aka 2 to the power of 7).

Say we have this binary number: 01001101. To work out what number it is, you add all the bits’ values together. In this case, 0 + 64 (2 to the power of 6) + 0 + 0 + 8 (2 to the power of 3) + 4 (2 to the power of 2) + 0 + 1 (2 to the power of 0) = 77.

Normally, when writing binary, you can leave out any leading zeros, since they do not alter the value. The computer doesn’t do that, but humans often do, when writing them down. Ergo, 10 would be 00000010, aka 2.

Congratulations, now you are part of the people who understand binary (hopefully).

Behind a Closed Door

2011-08-24T14:41:00.000+02:00

Every idea is a secret to begin with, even if it only lasts for a few milliseconds. How long should it stay that way if it’s a story idea? At what point is your story ready for public eyes (or ears)?

On the one hand, sharing your story too soon will probably hamper it quite a bit. You’ll be taking on outside influence instead of writing the story. I think Stephen King mentioned that you should always have a closed door period where no one else sees your writing.

However, sometimes I like to share the base idea of my story in order to see if it will work. Many times, I think that the idea is amazing until I say it out loud to someone. Then it sounds full of holes etc. Therefore, it might not be such a bad idea to share the story early, but it’s important that you don’t share too much.

But nowadays, I don’t show any work to anyone until it’s done. Sometimes—very rarely—I might ask an opinion on a small piece of story that needs some explanation. But I think the more I write, the more confident I get in judging my own writing. I sometimes write down my base idea instead of telling it to someone and can get pretty much the same effect from it that way.

So, how soon is too soon? After the first draft? After the second (if you have one)? After revisions? After publication?

Personally, (well, at this point anyway, but I’m prone to changing my opinion) I like to wait until I am completely satisfied with the story (or at least, can’t figure out what’s wrong). If all my revisions and edits are done (in my closed door period) and I’m happy with the result, I’ll give it to someone to read, who will then rip my pretty story apart and leave me to piece it back together (only in a better order this time).

When do you ask for opinions during the writing process? Do you ever?

The Four Basic Writing Stances : Plough

2011-08-22T11:04:00.000+02:00

The Plough. Source

The plough (or Pflug in German) protects very well and allows any attack. This is achieved by holding the hilt of the sword near your middle, next to your hip bone. The sword point should be aimed at the chest or neck of your opponent.

While the plough allows any attack, they will be inherently weaker from the lower point (except maybe a straight thrust). This position is very defensive and leaves most attack points closed or easily closable. Ergo, it is hard to find an opening when someone is in the plough stance.

In writing, the plough is just as defensive. You outline your story far before you begin. You might even go as far as outlining each scene in great detail. You prepare plot events beforehand and see how it plays out before you start writing.

This stance allows for a lot of stability and defence. You will know exactly what will happen next and how everything will end up. You’ll also save some time by having much less revisions and/or rewrites to do than say, the ox. Your character will end up as you intended, the story will be bound together more strongly and it will feel more like a whole. Your story will be very clear.

However, by outlining your story, you could be forcing your characters into plot events before you really know who they are. Therefore, your characters might seem less real and might even make unrealistic decisions (if you didn’t think it out properly). Also, since you decided everything beforehand, the events may seem to happen mechanically.

If you push the outlining too far, your story could end up sounding like a newspaper article rather than a story. However, if you do it right, the plough stance gives your story focus and keeps it going in the right direction. As long as you keep your characters in mind when plotting, your story will have clarity and move deliberately from one point to the next.

Uncovering Your Fossil

2011-08-19T11:51:00.000+02:00

Stephen King says in his book, On Writing, that stories are fossils that must be uncovered. For a more detailed explanation, buy his book (no, seriously, you should) but for now, just know that it means that the story is pre-existing and you are just revealing it (and finding it yourself).

What I really want to talk about here is symbolism and/or theme. I think every person that went through high school got a plateful of it with every English class. All the important stories seem to have symbolism and have some kind of great message to deliver.

One of the reasons that I’ve avoided a lot of classics is because of this. I don’t like symbolism, I like story. Symbolism is for smart people who take the time to study the book for months until they understand the underlying reason for every word the author put there. Or so I thought.

I like King’s theory. He says that symbolism, just like the rest, is in the fossil that is your story. You just have to uncover it. In other words, after you wrote the first draft, you’re likely to see a theme if you read it. Things might stand out to you as symbolism. If you like it, you can expand on those symbols and remove others.

What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to sit and plot my story around the whims of some kind of symbol that I want to convey. I want to tell a story.

So instead, I will uncover the fossil and see if there are any symbols to be found. If so, I might refine them to focus my story a bit. If not, that’s fine too.

How Falling Leads to Flying

2011-08-17T13:50:00.000+02:00

There is a point in the learning of a skill that smart people call a plateau. This is when your skill levels out and you don’t seem to get any better. This is true with every skill you have ever and will ever learn (including cartwheeling, tightrope walking and cleaning under your nails). Once you reach the plateau, you become competent with it and able to do it without much trouble.

This is a good thing in many cases. It allows you to put something on autopilot so that you can concentrate on something else. However, this also stops you from overcoming mediocrity and achieving excellence.

To break this plateau, you’re going to have to put in some effort. One way is to practice deliberately. Say you want to be a better cook. By constantly making food to improve your skill will not help you overcome your plateau. What you have to do is focus on specific things that need improving. Say, your heat control. You must have a goal that you are trying to reach, a specific point you’re trying to improve, rather than just mindlessly repeating the same activity.

Also, you have to take risks. If you’re trying to practice for your mission of paddling across the English Channel with a canoe, doing it in your swimming pool won’t help your efforts much. If you’re doing what you can already do (very well) you’re just wasting your time. Don’t fear the failure that inherently comes with risk. You might get an odd tasting lasagne every now and then, but it is completely worth it.

You can often get by using only mediocre skills and even make money off it. But if you want to reach excellence, you have to better the small stuff. To find a solution, you must first identify the problem. Practising what you’re good at won’t make you better.

Here is a list of problem areas of mine in my writing that I think could use some deliberate practice:

Dialogue – It works and it delivers the speech, but it is often sounds like a bad advertisement.

Description – It works and lets the reader know what certain things look like, but it often reads like a workshop manual.

Characters – They follow events and make decisions, but they are often weakly motivated or just plain uninteresting.

Events – They pull the plot forward, but I mostly rush past them, making them seem like news headlines.

While I might occasionally end up with a character that fights a bad guy to rescue his family, get money to save his farm, take revenge for the death of his brother and do a good deed to redeem his soul all in one, the experience will teach me something and hopefully drive to towards excellence (instead of alcohol).

What are some of the problem areas in your writing? Are you working to improving them?

The Four Basic Writing Stances : Ox

2011-08-15T11:59:00.000+02:00

The Ox. Source

The ox stance (or Ochs in German) provides adequate defence while providing a direct threat. The hilt is held next to and above the head, pointing downward at the opponent’s neck or face.

Because of this, it is not the most stable of stances, but it does allow for a quick attack by means of a straight thrust (which is automatically aimed at one of the opponent’s weakest spots—the face or neck.

When using this stance in writing, you head directly in, not stopping for outlining. This is a very aggressive stance and you play it by going directly for the throat per se, getting to know your characters and developing the story from there.

This stance offers you a great opportunity to get a nice flow and get in touch with the events in the story. Each event is spawned by the last, so each comes spontaneously. If you do it right, your characters will feel more natural because there is little opportunity to “force” them to do things by means of plot.

However, you give up stability. The story you write could easily sway around aimlessly until you just give up (or worse, end it right there and declare it a novel). Also, it leaves a lot of room for not knowing what to write (which often leads to said aimlessness as mentioned above).

The ox is a powerful stance if you know what you’re doing. As long as you revise at the end, you shouldn’t have any glaring plot holes or forgotten events and you will be rewarded with characters that feel natural and a plot that flows smoothly.