I Don't Write Longer

I write short, because I read short.
I write the story, not the length.
The writer rewrites first to be reread forever.

END OF POST

There, that should keep my average post length down. Oh, fine...

By "Writing Longer", I mean to say writing longer than the story requires. To be more blunt, padding the story. I hate that. To use a Fantasy example, I like "The Hobbit" but hate "The Lord of the Rings". To use a Science Fiction example...well, the only book I can remember thinking "That was too long!" instead of merely "That wasn't that good" was "Revelation Space" (Alastair Reynolds). Science Fiction is usually pretty good about brevity. So, that's good for me.

The methods I used for coming up with writing ideas keep me from writing longer.

I use three* methods, from most common to least common:

Come up with an interesting character 
or a group of characters. End the story when they're no longer interesting

Generate a pile of images
and derive the characters and story by stringing them together. End the story when all the images are gone and you've got at least one round character.

Write a really good opening 
and see what happens next (or what happened before) AKA Discovery Writing. End the story when you discover the ending, then cut out the rambling bits.

*Write while Drinking, et al. 
Not really a method, per se, but sometimes it works. And it's always fun. In the morning over coffee, ruthlessly cut what you wrote down to the 10% core of good stuff.

Do not edit while drunk.

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I assume this is what our Speculative ravings will look like to one of the more positive futures.

I could care less, because without speculation, the future will almost certainly be negative. If it isn't already. I suppose it's rather sad that my great hopes for the Future are Time Travel and Multiple Dimensions.

Of course, my greatest hope for the future is for me to have one.

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250 words? Yes
Short Story "Kritarchy" - finished, simmering
Short Story "The Language of Ice Cubes" - final check
- - - -
Reading - ?

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That's Not How I Talk!

I look at speech patterns as the writer's wardrobe department. Sure, Mark Twain could have spent a page describing Huck, but the reader won't remember the color of his eyes the next chapter over, but he will remember how Huck sounds because, well, he's always hearing it. This isn't Television, nobody notices if your character is wearing a purple sash.

Let's speak of dialect, pidgin, other languages, and just plain talkin' funny in fiction.

My thesis text, as it so often is, would be "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Mark Twain), a more or less careful transcription of a hodge-podge of local dialects. You know it works when there are whole pages, maybe whole chapters with Huck and Jim talking without any dialog tags (Huck said, Jim said). The same, lesser or greater, is true of other characters in the book (notably the feuding families and the educated Man who scares off the lynch mob in Chapter XXII). 

So how can I get myself some distinctive character voice and reduce tag clutter?

Because I've studied up on some of the dialects and creole languages of America (for example: Gullah) I know that I am unqualified. It would become "eye language", i.e. "Eye likes yer pop-gun, thar, cherroot", and be ridiculous. So that's out.

Fortunately, for the most part I'm writing fiction set in the modern day or in a speculative near future, so I can base speech patterns off of what I hear. Often do I hear a nifty turn of phrase and extrapolate a working grammar and vocabulary out of it for a character. Just another reason to carry around a notebook.

I can fabricate it outright, informed by my knowledge of linguistics and descriptivist bent. So be it, in moderation. The book "Lived Too Long To Die" has a lot of characters, and some of them have a 'projected accent'. Yes, that's the fancy term I'm going to use.

Best of all, of course, would be incorporating languages and dialects I actually happen to be familiar with into a story. My most successful attempt of that thus far has been my short story "Moving In, Moving On" in which I weave together three languages (English, Thai, Lao) and an accurate pidgin (Thai-English) based on the character and the situation. It's a bit of flavor to the story, and sometimes a trilingual bonus.

The main point, though, is to use it in moderation and only when it enhances the character. Because if you go crazy with it, folk'll yell the title of this post at you.

By the way: the title of this post is direct from a reader, so shout-out to you-know-who, and thanks as always for your comments!

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Argh, you've landed your Hindenburg spacecraft in my jungle and now you're trying to eat me sideways with your weird globe-heads. Stop doing that!

Or, wait, is that my spaceship and I've just landed in your garden and you're gently remonstrating me? Sorry, natives, this'll teach you to mess with Earth.

Alternatively, we're fighting over the first space vessel to land on this jungle planet we've all been marooned on for the last two years. It's like that Star Trek episode or the reality TV show that should have been a spin-off.

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2000 Words? Yes
Short Story "Kritarchy" - almost finished
Book "Lived Too Long To Die" - in progress, approaching the Middle.
- - - -
Reading - ?

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This Blog Is...

What this blog is is a Personal Challenge: a Vow (if you will).

It has always been my assumption that the only way for me to get better at something is to dive into it and engage in trial and error. I need to learn how to do basic Internet things - image hosting, blog hosting, podcasting, html, feeds. A lot of those categories include Unknown Unknown skills which I'd only discover I'd need to figure out when I have to do it. So I started this blog as a sandbox so that everybody could watch me fail.

That's why it's updated every day, instead of the (probably) more advisable 3 to 4 times a week. I want more room for trial-and-error, more room for spectacular failures leading to improvement and surprising successes leading to confidence. After a few hundred post-days (365 max), I'll revert to a more regular schedule. Unless I start a webcomic or something.

The topic of the blog will always be limited to Writing, Craft and Business. There'll be no political opinion, no personal life, no travel tips. I'm a speculative fiction writer, so there may be discussion of Political Philosophy, but nothing I write along those lines should be considered my actual opinion. 

I follow the blog stats using Google Analytics and am seeing a slow but steady increase so I might be doing something right, but the only stat I put real value in is "# of Comments". When I see the 0 Comments sign on a post, I am sad.

Thanks for reading, and we'll get back to the good stuff soon!

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If this picture makes you shudder with sheer bored terror, you'll know why I'm always on the look-out for willing Alpha Readers to avoid such a fate. That is to say, somebody who is willing to look at completed works that I've written and give their feelings. I am, of course, willing to reciprocate.

If that's your thing, shoot me an e-mail.

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250 words? Yes

Short Story "Kritarchy" - in progress

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Reading - ?

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