Some of you may have seen me going, "I have exciting secret news" last week. At this point I can tell you what it is. My novelette, "Cold Words," (Analog, Oct. 2009) has been selected for inclusion in Analog's very first Kindle anthology: Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales from Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2000-2010!
I'm thrilled at this. I was very proud of "Cold Words" and love my protagonist, Rulii - in fact, I've been thinking for some time about how to do a sequel to this story. I read a part of "Cold Words" aloud at Westercon, and was asked whether it had been anthologized... at the time I had to say no, but no longer! I will let you all know as soon as I learn more about the publication date.
Showing posts with label Cold Words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cold Words. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Some thoughts on story endings
I was thinking about story endings - basically, for two reasons. First, I have been taking a break from writing my novel for a few weeks because I felt like the ending wasn't lining up strongly enough, and second, because I just finished a short story. And then after I'd submitted it for critique, grabbed it back for some last minute edits to the ending.
I have a tendency to rush endings in first draft. I'm sure people get my story drafts and say, "I'd better take a close look at the ending." I think this is because it takes me so long to write a story that by the time I reach the end I'm going, "get me to the end of this thing!!!" This means, of course, that I do twice as much work on it in the revisions stage.
I'm an outliner, so I generally have a basic idea of what needs to happen for my ending. My Allied Systems stories are puzzle stories, so at a certain point somebody has to go "aha!" Aha moments can happen at any point in a story, but in these stories the aha moment is usually at the climax. I don't mind if readers figure out the solution before my characters, but it's ideal if they arrive there at roughly the same time, so I have to take the puzzle pieces and distribute them through the story, with the last couple arriving right at the end. I then have to make sure that the aha character doesn't sit down and explain at length the solution to the puzzle, because that would be - well, annoying. I'm not writing Sherlock Holmes here. The most important way for me to get around that is to make sure I'm considering the emotional impact of the puzzle solution. In my current story, the solution to the puzzle does not make Adrian Preston very happy at all - so when I went back to tweak it, I changed the aha moment from an explanation to a questioning sequence. Less like "and here's how it works, folks" and more like "oh, darn, can it really work like this? Let's test..."
I also like to make sure that every major character has something to contribute to the ending. Otherwise my readers would be sitting there going "what happened to Lydia?" The core protagonist (Adrian) has to be the one making the major moves - in this case, solving the linguistic and cultural mystery - but because his relationship with his wife Qing has been at issue, the ending has to bring her together with him - and because Lydia the activist friend was the one who started the worst of the trouble, she really has to bring something of value to the end solution so we don't feel angry with her. In the case of this story, "The Liars," she causes something of a revolution, and I think it's deserved.
The question of the core protagonist making the major moves to bring about the ending of the story is a really critical one. I'll say it again: the core protagonist must be the one to solve the problem and cause the ending. This was one of the things I felt was missing in the outline for the novel ending I had planned. I knew that Tagret brought about the final twist at the end, but I had a feeling that he wasn't really behaving as an actor/agent driving the story toward its conclusion in sections leading up to that twist. This had bells of alarm going off in my head until I took a step back and was able to re-outline.
Here's the thing. I've seen this happen even in otherwise fantastic published books, where the author's desire to make the ending MEGA HUGE ends up causing the protagonist to get pushed to one side in his/her significance to the events of the ending. And while the ending remains mega huge, I find its emotional significance to a reader is diminished by this. In the case of trilogies I've read, the constant need to up the stakes in each book makes the problem of sidelining the protagonist even trickier as the end of the first, the second, the third book comes along. I was working with Janice Hardy on Darkfall some months ago, and I remember having this very conversation with her, because her initial draft had drifted off of Nya as its primary driver when it reached the end. Needless to say, she and I and other critiquers put our heads to this problem rather assiduously, and ended up with a better solution that kept Nya right at the center of things (while still satisfying the need for mega huge).
In the case of Tagret in "For Love, For Power," I knew where and how he would take action to achieve the love he was seeking, but I hadn't yet grasped precisely what the piece of power was that he would wield in order to bring about the events of the ending. (I suppose you can see the pattern here: every major character in this novel has both a love arc and a power arc.) Once I realized that he had a piece of knowledge about his brother's weaknesses that no one else possessed, I saw how he could use that against his brother in an escalating sequence that would get us to the climax of the story.
I always like to feel that at the end of a story, each major character gets something he/she "deserves." It's the way we like to see the hero(ine) triumph and the bad guy get his/her comeuppance. When you've got more than one major character, you should consider how to fit into the climax something that each one specially deserves. A character who has been defined by a relationship with family through the book should have some family-related personal twist at the end. A character who has struggled with a dependence on someone or something else should be able to achieve a change of some sort in that dependence (as when Rulii was partially liberated from his addiction at the end of "Cold Words"). A character who has been filled with hate and had to act against his own worse judgment through the whole story should be able to achieve a resolution that changes the nature of that hate (for better or worse!) at the end. Paying attention to this sort of detail for each character will make the ending more resonant and satisfying for readers.
It's something to think about.
I have a tendency to rush endings in first draft. I'm sure people get my story drafts and say, "I'd better take a close look at the ending." I think this is because it takes me so long to write a story that by the time I reach the end I'm going, "get me to the end of this thing!!!" This means, of course, that I do twice as much work on it in the revisions stage.
I'm an outliner, so I generally have a basic idea of what needs to happen for my ending. My Allied Systems stories are puzzle stories, so at a certain point somebody has to go "aha!" Aha moments can happen at any point in a story, but in these stories the aha moment is usually at the climax. I don't mind if readers figure out the solution before my characters, but it's ideal if they arrive there at roughly the same time, so I have to take the puzzle pieces and distribute them through the story, with the last couple arriving right at the end. I then have to make sure that the aha character doesn't sit down and explain at length the solution to the puzzle, because that would be - well, annoying. I'm not writing Sherlock Holmes here. The most important way for me to get around that is to make sure I'm considering the emotional impact of the puzzle solution. In my current story, the solution to the puzzle does not make Adrian Preston very happy at all - so when I went back to tweak it, I changed the aha moment from an explanation to a questioning sequence. Less like "and here's how it works, folks" and more like "oh, darn, can it really work like this? Let's test..."
I also like to make sure that every major character has something to contribute to the ending. Otherwise my readers would be sitting there going "what happened to Lydia?" The core protagonist (Adrian) has to be the one making the major moves - in this case, solving the linguistic and cultural mystery - but because his relationship with his wife Qing has been at issue, the ending has to bring her together with him - and because Lydia the activist friend was the one who started the worst of the trouble, she really has to bring something of value to the end solution so we don't feel angry with her. In the case of this story, "The Liars," she causes something of a revolution, and I think it's deserved.
The question of the core protagonist making the major moves to bring about the ending of the story is a really critical one. I'll say it again: the core protagonist must be the one to solve the problem and cause the ending. This was one of the things I felt was missing in the outline for the novel ending I had planned. I knew that Tagret brought about the final twist at the end, but I had a feeling that he wasn't really behaving as an actor/agent driving the story toward its conclusion in sections leading up to that twist. This had bells of alarm going off in my head until I took a step back and was able to re-outline.
Here's the thing. I've seen this happen even in otherwise fantastic published books, where the author's desire to make the ending MEGA HUGE ends up causing the protagonist to get pushed to one side in his/her significance to the events of the ending. And while the ending remains mega huge, I find its emotional significance to a reader is diminished by this. In the case of trilogies I've read, the constant need to up the stakes in each book makes the problem of sidelining the protagonist even trickier as the end of the first, the second, the third book comes along. I was working with Janice Hardy on Darkfall some months ago, and I remember having this very conversation with her, because her initial draft had drifted off of Nya as its primary driver when it reached the end. Needless to say, she and I and other critiquers put our heads to this problem rather assiduously, and ended up with a better solution that kept Nya right at the center of things (while still satisfying the need for mega huge).
In the case of Tagret in "For Love, For Power," I knew where and how he would take action to achieve the love he was seeking, but I hadn't yet grasped precisely what the piece of power was that he would wield in order to bring about the events of the ending. (I suppose you can see the pattern here: every major character in this novel has both a love arc and a power arc.) Once I realized that he had a piece of knowledge about his brother's weaknesses that no one else possessed, I saw how he could use that against his brother in an escalating sequence that would get us to the climax of the story.
I always like to feel that at the end of a story, each major character gets something he/she "deserves." It's the way we like to see the hero(ine) triumph and the bad guy get his/her comeuppance. When you've got more than one major character, you should consider how to fit into the climax something that each one specially deserves. A character who has been defined by a relationship with family through the book should have some family-related personal twist at the end. A character who has struggled with a dependence on someone or something else should be able to achieve a change of some sort in that dependence (as when Rulii was partially liberated from his addiction at the end of "Cold Words"). A character who has been filled with hate and had to act against his own worse judgment through the whole story should be able to achieve a resolution that changes the nature of that hate (for better or worse!) at the end. Paying attention to this sort of detail for each character will make the ending more resonant and satisfying for readers.
It's something to think about.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Alien Language: an introduction to Aurrel
I had a question over in one of my posts on Science In My Fiction asking whether I'd ever done an in-depth description of one of my languages here on the blog, and in fact I hadn't! So I thought I'd take some time to discuss Aurrel, the language that appeared in my Analog Oct. 2009 novelette, "Cold Words."
Whenever I start designing a new language, I look for one critical feature that will make the language unique, and work outward from there. For Aurrel, the critical feature was non-reciprocal status language. Thus, in any conversation between two Aurrel people, one of them will speak one dialect and one another: the one of lower status will use Warm words as a sign of self-lowering and respect, and the one of higher status will use Cold words as a recognition of his/her right to dominate the other speaker. This is a form of politeness (pragmatics).
This of course requires that people always know which of them has the higher rank. The next language-building task then became differentiating the two dialects in a way that readers would be able to recognize. I didn't want to use phonology or morphology, because those would be too far under the radar for most readers. I wanted to minimize the number of actual alien words used in the story so as to maximize comprehension for readers! So I chose the discourse/sentence function level - let me explain.
Linguists will often talk about "speech acts," or what one is trying to accomplish with the things that one says. Some classic examples are requests and commands, which are accomplished simply by speaking them. "Go to bed!" "May I have that pencil?" Pronouncements and declarations are another example: "I now pronounce you husband and wife." "I hereby declare this park open." For Aurrel Warm words, these things are accomplished just as we would do them in English, without special marking. In Cold words, by contrast, each sentence (or series of sentences of the same function) has to be marked at the beginning with a word that indicates what kind of action will follow. Here are some examples.
Bow-bow: do as I say! Now, given that the Aurrel are wolflike people, this does tend to evoke "bow-wow," but in fact it's a command marker, which commands the other person to bow to them.
Bel-belly: I don't mean to anger you. When dogs or wolves want to show extreme submission, they show their bellies, so I chose this word to mark acts of submission. You may notice that this marker is redundant with the use of Warm words... However, the Aurrel have a special rule that Warm words must not be used in the presence of the Majesty - so in audiences with him, one would hear this marker a lot.
Sniff-sniff: what did you say? I decided that a curious wolf's sniffing would be used to mark questions.
I designed these markers intentionally to be repetitive: specifically, to duplicate the first syllable. Reduplication is often seen in morphology (word endings etc). Since my Cold words speakers had originally been tundra hunters, I reasoned that this style of speech would be consistent with having to communicate on the run. First you'd want to get the person's attention with a short bark, and then give a hint for what you were about to say, then say it when you were sure they were listening. In this way, a concept of general language evolution helped me to decide how to develop specific features of the language on the word level.
The Cold Words reduplication also extends to names of people and places.
This brings me to phonology. I designed the Aurrel phonology on the basis of the idea that these people had mouths like wolves. The language has no unvoiced sounds, like p/t/k/s/f. Thus, all sounds are voiced, like b/d/g/z/v. This wouldn't be a requirement for a people with wolf mouths, but I felt it was consistent with wolf howls as a language feature. I also felt that, with their long tongues, they would have multiple versions of L and R. Since there was no way for me actually to render the sounds I imagined (unlike in a film!), I used very small differences in spelling to mark them. Thus:
Whenever I start designing a new language, I look for one critical feature that will make the language unique, and work outward from there. For Aurrel, the critical feature was non-reciprocal status language. Thus, in any conversation between two Aurrel people, one of them will speak one dialect and one another: the one of lower status will use Warm words as a sign of self-lowering and respect, and the one of higher status will use Cold words as a recognition of his/her right to dominate the other speaker. This is a form of politeness (pragmatics).
Higher status: Cold words -><-Warm words: Lower status
This of course requires that people always know which of them has the higher rank. The next language-building task then became differentiating the two dialects in a way that readers would be able to recognize. I didn't want to use phonology or morphology, because those would be too far under the radar for most readers. I wanted to minimize the number of actual alien words used in the story so as to maximize comprehension for readers! So I chose the discourse/sentence function level - let me explain.
Linguists will often talk about "speech acts," or what one is trying to accomplish with the things that one says. Some classic examples are requests and commands, which are accomplished simply by speaking them. "Go to bed!" "May I have that pencil?" Pronouncements and declarations are another example: "I now pronounce you husband and wife." "I hereby declare this park open." For Aurrel Warm words, these things are accomplished just as we would do them in English, without special marking. In Cold words, by contrast, each sentence (or series of sentences of the same function) has to be marked at the beginning with a word that indicates what kind of action will follow. Here are some examples.
Bow-bow: do as I say! Now, given that the Aurrel are wolflike people, this does tend to evoke "bow-wow," but in fact it's a command marker, which commands the other person to bow to them.
Bel-belly: I don't mean to anger you. When dogs or wolves want to show extreme submission, they show their bellies, so I chose this word to mark acts of submission. You may notice that this marker is redundant with the use of Warm words... However, the Aurrel have a special rule that Warm words must not be used in the presence of the Majesty - so in audiences with him, one would hear this marker a lot.
Sniff-sniff: what did you say? I decided that a curious wolf's sniffing would be used to mark questions.
I designed these markers intentionally to be repetitive: specifically, to duplicate the first syllable. Reduplication is often seen in morphology (word endings etc). Since my Cold words speakers had originally been tundra hunters, I reasoned that this style of speech would be consistent with having to communicate on the run. First you'd want to get the person's attention with a short bark, and then give a hint for what you were about to say, then say it when you were sure they were listening. In this way, a concept of general language evolution helped me to decide how to develop specific features of the language on the word level.
The Cold Words reduplication also extends to names of people and places.
- Rulii (Warm words) => Ru-rulii (Cold words) the main character
- Aurru (Warm words) => Au-aurru (Cold words) the planet
Aurr-u
Aurr-el
Aurr-el
This brings me to phonology. I designed the Aurrel phonology on the basis of the idea that these people had mouths like wolves. The language has no unvoiced sounds, like p/t/k/s/f. Thus, all sounds are voiced, like b/d/g/z/v. This wouldn't be a requirement for a people with wolf mouths, but I felt it was consistent with wolf howls as a language feature. I also felt that, with their long tongues, they would have multiple versions of L and R. Since there was no way for me actually to render the sounds I imagined (unlike in a film!), I used very small differences in spelling to mark them. Thus:
"rr" is not the same sound as "r"
"ll" is not the same sound as "l"
"ll" is not the same sound as "l"
I also expanded the language's fricatives. These are sounds like "v" and "z" (and "s" and "f" and "th", though these don't occur in Aurrel). In addition to V and Z, therefore, I gave them a fricative version of g, which I spelled "gh."
the stop "b" corresponds to the fricative "v" (lips)
the stop "d" corresponds to the fricative "z" (alveolar)
the stop "g" corresponds to the fricative "gh" (velar)
the stop "d" corresponds to the fricative "z" (alveolar)
the stop "g" corresponds to the fricative "gh" (velar)
At this point, I will ask you for fun's sake to imagine the pronunciation of this word:
gharralli (a small fierce toothy animal similar to a weasel)
In fact, when asked to pronounce Aurrel accurately myself, I feel rather nervous about it, because it does sound quite dramatically throaty! I'm afraid I would need more practice to get over the nervousness.
There are only a few more things which deserve mention here. I didn't do much designing of Aurrel syntax because the story had no need for complete sentences rendered entirely in Aurrel (as opposed to English). However, I did play with something called subcategorization. When we use certain verbs, we expect certain other structures to follow them:
Lastly, I did a lot of work on semantics. Using words like "puphood" instead of "childhood" is relatively simple. Naturally, a person born in the same litter is a "littermate" - but as a result of that, the word "mate" for a lover sounded odd, so I switched it to "consort."
However, there were a few more major semantic issues that came up in the story.
The first is that Aurrel has no word for "friend." The Aurrel have two major opposing concepts in their society: interdependence, and rank. "Friend" doesn't fit into this system because it implies interdependence without requiring a rank relationship. Thus, the names for relationships are somewhat different. A "huntmate" is a person involved in pursuing the same activity or project as oneself, but is not necessarily close. This is contrasted with the relationships of "littermate" and "consort" which are considered to be "skin-close," where interdependence is so strong that rank has little influence (none, in intimate situations).
The second is that the hunt is what I call an organizing metaphor for Aurrel life (much as the journey is for us). Pursuing a goal is equated with hunting. The goal itself is the "quarry." If a huntmate suddenly stops helping you toward your goal and tries to take the project in a different direction, they'd say he had "lost pace with you." These examples are extensive and can be found all over the language.
The third (and last, for this post) is the contrast between Warm and Cold. Warm is seen as comforting and intimate, but also as lowly. Cold is cruel, but also valuable and exalted. The Majesty's mark of rank is glass beads coated on the inside with silver, called silver-glass or "royal ice." Rulii calls the human character "warm" at one point in the story, but then feels obliged to add, "no insult, but from my Lowland heart." There are two Aurrel races: one heavy furred, the tundra hunter group, and one downy-furred, the Lowland group. The insulting/exalting characteristics of warm and cold came about when the tundra folk conquered the Lowlanders, and everything about warmth came to be associated with baseness and submission. The language gradually then developed in such a way that the tundra dialect became Cold words, or dominator's words, and the Lowland dialect became Warm words, or submissive words.
I hope that gives you an idea of how Aurrel works, and the different things I considered as I was designing it - and perhaps also helps you think through one version of the process you might take to develop your own alien language. There's a good basic description of this process by Megs over at Rabia Gale's blog today, for an additional perspective on the matter!
There are only a few more things which deserve mention here. I didn't do much designing of Aurrel syntax because the story had no need for complete sentences rendered entirely in Aurrel (as opposed to English). However, I did play with something called subcategorization. When we use certain verbs, we expect certain other structures to follow them:
He appears nervous.
He shows signs of being nervous.
It reminds me of my indigent childhood.
It drags me down with memories of my indigent childhood.
I deliberately switched some of these around. In Aurrel, you would say,He shows signs of being nervous.
It reminds me of my indigent childhood.
It drags me down with memories of my indigent childhood.
He shows nervous.
It drags of my indigent puphood.
What was great about this for my purposes was that it felt very alien, yet was pretty comprehensible in context.It drags of my indigent puphood.
Lastly, I did a lot of work on semantics. Using words like "puphood" instead of "childhood" is relatively simple. Naturally, a person born in the same litter is a "littermate" - but as a result of that, the word "mate" for a lover sounded odd, so I switched it to "consort."
However, there were a few more major semantic issues that came up in the story.
The first is that Aurrel has no word for "friend." The Aurrel have two major opposing concepts in their society: interdependence, and rank. "Friend" doesn't fit into this system because it implies interdependence without requiring a rank relationship. Thus, the names for relationships are somewhat different. A "huntmate" is a person involved in pursuing the same activity or project as oneself, but is not necessarily close. This is contrasted with the relationships of "littermate" and "consort" which are considered to be "skin-close," where interdependence is so strong that rank has little influence (none, in intimate situations).
The second is that the hunt is what I call an organizing metaphor for Aurrel life (much as the journey is for us). Pursuing a goal is equated with hunting. The goal itself is the "quarry." If a huntmate suddenly stops helping you toward your goal and tries to take the project in a different direction, they'd say he had "lost pace with you." These examples are extensive and can be found all over the language.
The third (and last, for this post) is the contrast between Warm and Cold. Warm is seen as comforting and intimate, but also as lowly. Cold is cruel, but also valuable and exalted. The Majesty's mark of rank is glass beads coated on the inside with silver, called silver-glass or "royal ice." Rulii calls the human character "warm" at one point in the story, but then feels obliged to add, "no insult, but from my Lowland heart." There are two Aurrel races: one heavy furred, the tundra hunter group, and one downy-furred, the Lowland group. The insulting/exalting characteristics of warm and cold came about when the tundra folk conquered the Lowlanders, and everything about warmth came to be associated with baseness and submission. The language gradually then developed in such a way that the tundra dialect became Cold words, or dominator's words, and the Lowland dialect became Warm words, or submissive words.
I hope that gives you an idea of how Aurrel works, and the different things I considered as I was designing it - and perhaps also helps you think through one version of the process you might take to develop your own alien language. There's a good basic description of this process by Megs over at Rabia Gale's blog today, for an additional perspective on the matter!
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Do I have a story?
I have a story. This is not the same thing as saying, "I have an idea." In my particular case, I've been searching for this story for a while because numerous people had asked me to write it. "Write a sequel to Cold Words," they said. Easier said than done.
My linguistics stories are like puzzles, with lots of complicated interlocking parts, so as a result I feel I have to know where they are going or I can't even start. "Cold Words" was like this. The idea of writing a sequel had several advantages over starting from scratch:
1. I wouldn't have to design a world with aliens.
2. I wouldn't need an entirely new main character.
3. I wouldn't need an entirely new alien language and an entirely new voice.
All of this is an incredible time-saver. But as many who have tried to write sequels probably know, there are also some serious disadvantages.
1. Any subject of a major revelation in story one has to be a starting premise for story two. You need to inform readers of the "secret" (or former secret) in case they haven't read the prequel, but it can't be the point, or the story will just be covering the same ground.
2. Having a world and a character, and even quite a clear sense of chronology and what would have happened after the first story ended, does not mean you have a story.
This number 2 can effectively stop me in my tracks, because until I have a story, I won't start writing (this is not the case for all writers!). I might also remark, of course, that the lack of a story hasn't stopped many sequel-makers, at least in the case of certain movies I have watched.
What is a story? I'll sum it up this way:
Character X discovers Y and must accomplish Z before A happens or else B.
This rather closely resembles the elevator pitch for a novel. It distills story essence down to its bare bones.
In my case, I've been gathering elements that I like - Rulii and his dependency on humans, his relationship with Parker - and questions that people have asked me - about gender relations among the Aurrel, etc - and trying to fit them together. At last I've gotten somewhere. I don't want to spoil any surprises, so I'll just say that Character X is still Rulii, Y involves Parker, Z involves Parker and an Aurrel Female, and B has to do with human presence on Aurru. It's always good to ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that could happen to my character now?" and try to have it stand in that B position. That makes for a much more exciting story.
In fact, it's good to ask whether you have a story even if it's not a sequel, though sequels are probably more prone to the lack-of-story problem. Giving your character goals and stakes makes everything more exciting.
My linguistics stories are like puzzles, with lots of complicated interlocking parts, so as a result I feel I have to know where they are going or I can't even start. "Cold Words" was like this. The idea of writing a sequel had several advantages over starting from scratch:
1. I wouldn't have to design a world with aliens.
2. I wouldn't need an entirely new main character.
3. I wouldn't need an entirely new alien language and an entirely new voice.
All of this is an incredible time-saver. But as many who have tried to write sequels probably know, there are also some serious disadvantages.
1. Any subject of a major revelation in story one has to be a starting premise for story two. You need to inform readers of the "secret" (or former secret) in case they haven't read the prequel, but it can't be the point, or the story will just be covering the same ground.
2. Having a world and a character, and even quite a clear sense of chronology and what would have happened after the first story ended, does not mean you have a story.
This number 2 can effectively stop me in my tracks, because until I have a story, I won't start writing (this is not the case for all writers!). I might also remark, of course, that the lack of a story hasn't stopped many sequel-makers, at least in the case of certain movies I have watched.
What is a story? I'll sum it up this way:
Character X discovers Y and must accomplish Z before A happens or else B.
This rather closely resembles the elevator pitch for a novel. It distills story essence down to its bare bones.
In my case, I've been gathering elements that I like - Rulii and his dependency on humans, his relationship with Parker - and questions that people have asked me - about gender relations among the Aurrel, etc - and trying to fit them together. At last I've gotten somewhere. I don't want to spoil any surprises, so I'll just say that Character X is still Rulii, Y involves Parker, Z involves Parker and an Aurrel Female, and B has to do with human presence on Aurru. It's always good to ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that could happen to my character now?" and try to have it stand in that B position. That makes for a much more exciting story.
In fact, it's good to ask whether you have a story even if it's not a sequel, though sequels are probably more prone to the lack-of-story problem. Giving your character goals and stakes makes everything more exciting.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Inherent Contradictions in Character
Everybody has inherent contradictions in their personality. The minor ones may barely be enough to make us hesitate in a decision. Major ones may lead to internal conflicts that haunt us constantly. Because this is something that is so terribly common in real people, it makes for very strong reactions when I read fiction.
I admit it: whenever I run across a character who appears to have no inherent contradictions, I tend to demote them on a subconscious level. If it's a minor character, I start thinking they're just window dressing. Even if it's a major character, I suddenly find them much less interesting. I hate to say it, but Baron Harkonnen of Dune was like this for me. Bad for bad's sake, ho hum. A being of pure evil is more of a fable-like creature, or devil archetype. I was glad that Sauron never took on human form in The Lord of the Rings, because as a being of pure evil he belonged where he was, offstage, trying to create conflicts in and among all the others.
I remember as a kid playing this game we called "Monsters" but what was really a free-form precursor to live action role-play. Each of us got to make a character, and each of us got one power and one weakness. People who refused to pick a weakness didn't get to play.
Now, I'm not saying every character in a story has to have a "weakness," per se - but contradictions are more complex than that.
Take Nya in Janice Hardy's The Shifter - Nya has a strong sense of family and solid morals, but her greatest power just happens to conflict directly with those morals. Janice turns that contradiction into a fabulous conflict when Nya has to use her power to save her sister.
Rulii in "Cold Words" depends for his social progress on his ability to fight and negotiate. However, neither of these skills will help him if he's ever seen to shiver with cold. He uses molri to stop his shivering - but his addiction to it has adverse effects on his personality, making it harder for him to fight and negotiate. In addition to which, if anyone finds out about his molri addiction, he'll be put to death. The base condition for his success puts him at risk of failure, which leads to more interesting conflicts.
Nekantor in "The Eminence's Match" is an evil ruler, and not just because he was brought up that way. He suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, which serves as his own sort of internal contradiction. The disorder makes him endlessly demanding (a typical evil ruler characteristic). It gives him advantageous skills for managing political conflicts, but simultaneously wears him down and makes him vulnerable.
I picked these three characters because each one has a single characteristic which lies at the heart of their internal contradiction - Nya's shifting power, Rulii's drug dependency, and Nekantor's obsessive-compulsive disorder.
There are of course other ways you can approach this - giving a character a backstory which gives them internal conflict, for example. I think immediately of the character of Zuko in Avatar: the Last Airbender, who embodies the conflict between good and evil in part as a result of the conflict he's witnessed between his powerful father and the mother whom he loved best.
Whether good guy or bad guy, main character or subordinate character, your character will gain dimension from inherent contradictions. Keep an eye out for opportunities to develop them, because it will do wonders for your story.
I admit it: whenever I run across a character who appears to have no inherent contradictions, I tend to demote them on a subconscious level. If it's a minor character, I start thinking they're just window dressing. Even if it's a major character, I suddenly find them much less interesting. I hate to say it, but Baron Harkonnen of Dune was like this for me. Bad for bad's sake, ho hum. A being of pure evil is more of a fable-like creature, or devil archetype. I was glad that Sauron never took on human form in The Lord of the Rings, because as a being of pure evil he belonged where he was, offstage, trying to create conflicts in and among all the others.
I remember as a kid playing this game we called "Monsters" but what was really a free-form precursor to live action role-play. Each of us got to make a character, and each of us got one power and one weakness. People who refused to pick a weakness didn't get to play.
Now, I'm not saying every character in a story has to have a "weakness," per se - but contradictions are more complex than that.
Take Nya in Janice Hardy's The Shifter - Nya has a strong sense of family and solid morals, but her greatest power just happens to conflict directly with those morals. Janice turns that contradiction into a fabulous conflict when Nya has to use her power to save her sister.
Rulii in "Cold Words" depends for his social progress on his ability to fight and negotiate. However, neither of these skills will help him if he's ever seen to shiver with cold. He uses molri to stop his shivering - but his addiction to it has adverse effects on his personality, making it harder for him to fight and negotiate. In addition to which, if anyone finds out about his molri addiction, he'll be put to death. The base condition for his success puts him at risk of failure, which leads to more interesting conflicts.
Nekantor in "The Eminence's Match" is an evil ruler, and not just because he was brought up that way. He suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, which serves as his own sort of internal contradiction. The disorder makes him endlessly demanding (a typical evil ruler characteristic). It gives him advantageous skills for managing political conflicts, but simultaneously wears him down and makes him vulnerable.
I picked these three characters because each one has a single characteristic which lies at the heart of their internal contradiction - Nya's shifting power, Rulii's drug dependency, and Nekantor's obsessive-compulsive disorder.
There are of course other ways you can approach this - giving a character a backstory which gives them internal conflict, for example. I think immediately of the character of Zuko in Avatar: the Last Airbender, who embodies the conflict between good and evil in part as a result of the conflict he's witnessed between his powerful father and the mother whom he loved best.
Whether good guy or bad guy, main character or subordinate character, your character will gain dimension from inherent contradictions. Keep an eye out for opportunities to develop them, because it will do wonders for your story.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Campbell Eligibility
I have just learned that the nominations for Hugo awards close on March 13th, so while it feels to me that I've just left Nebula season, let me remark that "Cold Words" (Analog, Oct. 2009) is eligible for Hugo consideration. Also, because my first professional story, "Let the Word Take Me," appeared in Analog magazine's July/August 2008 issue, I'm in my second year of eligibility for the Campbell Award for best new writer (here is my profile at the site). *Any member of the 2009 or 2010 Worldcon as of the end of January 2010 is eligible to make nominations for the 2010 Hugo Awards and John W. Campbell Award. You don't have to attend Worldcon; you just have to be a member of it. Less expensive Non-attending ("supporting") memberships, which come with all of the rights of membership except actually attending it, are available* (information between the asterisks helpfully provided by Kevin).
For the curious, here are a couple of quotes. I hope they'll inspire you to seek out copies of Analog...
from "Cold Words" (Oct. 2009):
"What is it? Still the problem of Cold words? Someone of Rank among your people must grasp the dominator's tongue, Parker, or Majesty will brand you Barbarians!"
Parker's fur-naked brown face shows embarrassed. "This new negotiator is a more gifted speaker than the last," he says. "Officer Jasmine Hada will speak Cold words well enough not to Warm Majesty's presence inadvertently."
"Then this is news of triumph. We shall have our spaceport!" And all that come with it - so close is the conclusion of my life's hunt!
"Yes, but Hada is too skilled. She even bears the authority to propose terms. Why should the Allied Systems grant Aurru spaceport such importance, if it's only meant to be a way-stop between star territories?" Parker frowns. "I fear some hidden intent of unfairness to the Aurrel people."
My hackles rise. I know much of unfairness, as the only one of Lowland race on the Cold Council - and also of hidden intent. My own is to use this spaceport to bring Human silver to the Lowlands, thus raising my nape-bitten race. If Parker scents true, this Officer Hada could ruin my hunt before its final pace. "When will she take foot in La-larrai City?"
Parker lowers his head. "She comes down by shuttle at the sunset hour. Your presence at her arrival would grant us Cold honor - and we might make sure of her."
from "Let the Word Take Me" (July/August, 2008):
At the border of the village, a hand emerged from the speckled darkness and jerked him off the path into deep shadows.
"David, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
David caught his breath. "Father!"
"If Monroe finds out you've been trespassing...!"
"I know, Father, I'm sorry, I –" How stupid would he sound if he said he'd risked the colony listening for bedtime stories? It wouldn't win him the respect due to a fellow linguist, that's for sure, and Father would say he should have shipped him offworld to college on Erimyno Treaty Colony instead of giving in to all his begging to stay. "I'm sorry."
"Well, never mind."
"So how did it go? Did you get the extension?"
"Damned Systems functionary," Father grunted. "She doesn't care about the years of work we've put in; all she thinks about is Systems resources being wasted on maintaining us here at Garini Base."
David shook his head. "How can anyone say we're wasting resources? We hardly import anything." He shuddered, realizing that 'resources' must mean something else entirely. "Does she mean our defense ships? But she can't take them away – it would be like handing the Garini rainforests over to be shredded by pirates!" And, since the Garini Provisional Colonists had been the first to inform the Systems about Garini's biochemical wealth, it would be their own fault.
#
"The sacred Word is life, or death," she told me. "It binds, it brings bliss or misery. It is the blood of the People, that flows freely in its heart, in the House of Leaves, and the Great Tales like flesh grow from it; outside, the blood and flesh are clothed in small images that give understanding without unleashing the full might of the Word, like scales over the skin."
For the curious, here are a couple of quotes. I hope they'll inspire you to seek out copies of Analog...
from "Cold Words" (Oct. 2009):
"What is it? Still the problem of Cold words? Someone of Rank among your people must grasp the dominator's tongue, Parker, or Majesty will brand you Barbarians!"
Parker's fur-naked brown face shows embarrassed. "This new negotiator is a more gifted speaker than the last," he says. "Officer Jasmine Hada will speak Cold words well enough not to Warm Majesty's presence inadvertently."
"Then this is news of triumph. We shall have our spaceport!" And all that come with it - so close is the conclusion of my life's hunt!
"Yes, but Hada is too skilled. She even bears the authority to propose terms. Why should the Allied Systems grant Aurru spaceport such importance, if it's only meant to be a way-stop between star territories?" Parker frowns. "I fear some hidden intent of unfairness to the Aurrel people."
My hackles rise. I know much of unfairness, as the only one of Lowland race on the Cold Council - and also of hidden intent. My own is to use this spaceport to bring Human silver to the Lowlands, thus raising my nape-bitten race. If Parker scents true, this Officer Hada could ruin my hunt before its final pace. "When will she take foot in La-larrai City?"
Parker lowers his head. "She comes down by shuttle at the sunset hour. Your presence at her arrival would grant us Cold honor - and we might make sure of her."
from "Let the Word Take Me" (July/August, 2008):
At the border of the village, a hand emerged from the speckled darkness and jerked him off the path into deep shadows.
"David, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
David caught his breath. "Father!"
"If Monroe finds out you've been trespassing...!"
"I know, Father, I'm sorry, I –" How stupid would he sound if he said he'd risked the colony listening for bedtime stories? It wouldn't win him the respect due to a fellow linguist, that's for sure, and Father would say he should have shipped him offworld to college on Erimyno Treaty Colony instead of giving in to all his begging to stay. "I'm sorry."
"Well, never mind."
"So how did it go? Did you get the extension?"
"Damned Systems functionary," Father grunted. "She doesn't care about the years of work we've put in; all she thinks about is Systems resources being wasted on maintaining us here at Garini Base."
David shook his head. "How can anyone say we're wasting resources? We hardly import anything." He shuddered, realizing that 'resources' must mean something else entirely. "Does she mean our defense ships? But she can't take them away – it would be like handing the Garini rainforests over to be shredded by pirates!" And, since the Garini Provisional Colonists had been the first to inform the Systems about Garini's biochemical wealth, it would be their own fault.
#
"The sacred Word is life, or death," she told me. "It binds, it brings bliss or misery. It is the blood of the People, that flows freely in its heart, in the House of Leaves, and the Great Tales like flesh grow from it; outside, the blood and flesh are clothed in small images that give understanding without unleashing the full might of the Word, like scales over the skin."
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Inciting Event and Your World - Revisited
I've had a couple of requests to revisit this topic outside the workshop in which it originally occurred, and it relates directly to the idea of beginning stories (as in my last post) so today I'm pulling it out of the archive and re-editing it for your enjoyment.
I've been thinking a bit about inciting events. An inciting event is generally the event that propels you into the main conflict of your story. My friend Janice Hardy mentions it in a great blog post, here (her blog has tons of great information on the process of writing and on getting published). In her words, "The inciting event is the trigger that sets the rest of the story in motion." She treats it separately from the opening scene, but I'm not sure the two are necessarily separate. When trying to hook your reader, it's good to plunge into the inciting event as early as possible. I've spent a lot of time in my writing career working on the question of where to start my stories, and believe me, it can be tricky - but it's worth thinking seriously about.
Where I want to take this topic in a particularly TalkToYoUniverse direction is by linking the inciting event to the issue of worldbuilding. When you're thinking about how to open your story in a science fiction or fantasy context, you have to take into account both your need to hook the reader, and your need to introduce your world.
We all know the dreaded word, infodumping. We all know we want to avoid it. But how do we go about creating a scene where this information doesn't need to be explained? How do we make it so the information is simply evident in the action?
First, use your POV character. Make sure you know the character's background, culture and motivations to the fullest extent possible, so that you can use the character to help you convey information. This is what I call making your world personal. Think about what your characters care about, and what they don't care about - where they are especially attentive or where they have blind spots and weaknesses. All of these things can become your tools, as you can imbue your narration with a dismissive or contemptuous tone, or a bubbly enthusiasm, or what have you.
Next comes the tougher, more subtle step: working in the things that the character considers normal. Things that are totally normal, entirely obvious to the character, are not things you want him or her to talk about. Talking about obvious things leads to completely cringe-worthy "As you know, Bob" dialog, and we don't want that.
So here's the question: How can we possibly describe the basic parameters of our worlds, when we know that to our character, so much is entirely unremarkable?
The answer is, use conflict and contrast. I have an example of this done simply and elegantly for a real-world scenario, here.
In fact, there's a beautiful convergence here: the inciting event, the trigger for the core conflict of the novel, very often is all about the precise type of conflict that can let you give out world information.
Here's an example from the drafting stage of my recent story, "Cold Words" (Analog, October 2009). Consider the list of events below and ask yourself which one is the best to use for an opening scene:
1. A Human ambassador inadvertently insults the Majesty of the Aurrel, placing a spaceport negotiation in danger.
2. The native liaison asks the Humans to send away the failed ambassador and get a new one.
3. The Human ambassador comes to the native liaison to tell him that he's worried about the motives of the replacement ambassador.
4. The native liaison goes to the Majesty to report the impending arrival of the replacement ambassador and try to rescue the spaceport negotiation.
I wouldn't choose 1 or 2. Any event that occurs before a significant lull, like waiting for a replacement ambassador to arrive, is less optimal because it will require a time break and reduce forward momentum. Furthermore, even though the incident of insult is interesting, it would be hard for readers to understand without significant previous context - which, if this is the first scene, they can't possibly have.
When I wrote my first draft, I chose 4. The story is told in the point of view of Rulii, the native liaison, and thus the main motivating force in the story is Rulii's desire to complete the spaceport negotiation successfully (for his own secret reasons). Why not start where you see him pressing his suit with the Majesty, a place where he can show his intense desire for success and share it with the reader?
The answer to that question is this: if he's alone with the Majesty, he's in a completely native context where everything is normal. And that means that every piece of normal world information will be really difficult to put in.
So in the end, I chose 3. There's conflict in that scene, because the human ambassador brings a warning that may put the negotiation at even deeper risk. More importantly for this discussion, though, scene #3 puts our native liaison in direct contact with a human. There's conflict, and there's contrast. There are opportunities for the human ambassador to demonstrate his own cultural biases, and for Rulii to remark on them, thus putting his own world forward for readers to explore. Better yet, the sense of contrast continues forward as he goes to see Majesty, because with the human interaction foremost in his mind, Rulii is more likely to remark on the quirky cultural things inherent in their interaction.
So, when you're looking at your own stories, consider the kinds of conflict or contrast opportunities that appear in the opening scene as you've written it, and then ask yourself how you could tune the circumstances of that scene to make your job easier.
Finally, in the spirit of making a world personal, I'm posting a list of eleven questions I've used in two of my workshops. You've probably seen questions like these before, but worldbuilding questions are often phrased in a very impersonal way, and that's not what I'm trying to do here. All of these questions are deliberately phrased to relate directly to a protagonist's view of the world, and participants in my workshops have found it a helpful exercise to answer them using the voice of their POV characters.
Here are the questions:
1. What is my home like? How do I visualize its boundaries?
2. What weather and physical conditions do I consider normal? What do I fear?
3. What kind of topography did I grow up in, and how did it influence my physical condition and my concepts of comfort?
4. In what kind of place do I feel most at home? What shapes and textures give me comfort, or discomfort?
5. Who is in charge here? Do I respect them, fear them, both?
6. How do I show who I am in the way I dress? What is comfortable? Will I endure discomfort for the sake of looking good or looking powerful?
7. Where do the things I own come from? Do I worry about getting more?
8. What is delicious to me? What do I consider unworthy of consumption?
9. What are my most prized possessions? Do I hoard anything? Do I have so much of anything that I care little if I must give it away?
10. Who do I consider to be unlike me? Are their differences charming or alarming?
11. Am I in control of my own actions and the happenings around me? What or whom do I believe in?
I hope you may find this exercise helpful in your writing process.
I've been thinking a bit about inciting events. An inciting event is generally the event that propels you into the main conflict of your story. My friend Janice Hardy mentions it in a great blog post, here (her blog has tons of great information on the process of writing and on getting published). In her words, "The inciting event is the trigger that sets the rest of the story in motion." She treats it separately from the opening scene, but I'm not sure the two are necessarily separate. When trying to hook your reader, it's good to plunge into the inciting event as early as possible. I've spent a lot of time in my writing career working on the question of where to start my stories, and believe me, it can be tricky - but it's worth thinking seriously about.
Where I want to take this topic in a particularly TalkToYoUniverse direction is by linking the inciting event to the issue of worldbuilding. When you're thinking about how to open your story in a science fiction or fantasy context, you have to take into account both your need to hook the reader, and your need to introduce your world.
We all know the dreaded word, infodumping. We all know we want to avoid it. But how do we go about creating a scene where this information doesn't need to be explained? How do we make it so the information is simply evident in the action?
First, use your POV character. Make sure you know the character's background, culture and motivations to the fullest extent possible, so that you can use the character to help you convey information. This is what I call making your world personal. Think about what your characters care about, and what they don't care about - where they are especially attentive or where they have blind spots and weaknesses. All of these things can become your tools, as you can imbue your narration with a dismissive or contemptuous tone, or a bubbly enthusiasm, or what have you.
Next comes the tougher, more subtle step: working in the things that the character considers normal. Things that are totally normal, entirely obvious to the character, are not things you want him or her to talk about. Talking about obvious things leads to completely cringe-worthy "As you know, Bob" dialog, and we don't want that.
So here's the question: How can we possibly describe the basic parameters of our worlds, when we know that to our character, so much is entirely unremarkable?
The answer is, use conflict and contrast. I have an example of this done simply and elegantly for a real-world scenario, here.
In fact, there's a beautiful convergence here: the inciting event, the trigger for the core conflict of the novel, very often is all about the precise type of conflict that can let you give out world information.
Here's an example from the drafting stage of my recent story, "Cold Words" (Analog, October 2009). Consider the list of events below and ask yourself which one is the best to use for an opening scene:
1. A Human ambassador inadvertently insults the Majesty of the Aurrel, placing a spaceport negotiation in danger.
2. The native liaison asks the Humans to send away the failed ambassador and get a new one.
3. The Human ambassador comes to the native liaison to tell him that he's worried about the motives of the replacement ambassador.
4. The native liaison goes to the Majesty to report the impending arrival of the replacement ambassador and try to rescue the spaceport negotiation.
I wouldn't choose 1 or 2. Any event that occurs before a significant lull, like waiting for a replacement ambassador to arrive, is less optimal because it will require a time break and reduce forward momentum. Furthermore, even though the incident of insult is interesting, it would be hard for readers to understand without significant previous context - which, if this is the first scene, they can't possibly have.
When I wrote my first draft, I chose 4. The story is told in the point of view of Rulii, the native liaison, and thus the main motivating force in the story is Rulii's desire to complete the spaceport negotiation successfully (for his own secret reasons). Why not start where you see him pressing his suit with the Majesty, a place where he can show his intense desire for success and share it with the reader?
The answer to that question is this: if he's alone with the Majesty, he's in a completely native context where everything is normal. And that means that every piece of normal world information will be really difficult to put in.
So in the end, I chose 3. There's conflict in that scene, because the human ambassador brings a warning that may put the negotiation at even deeper risk. More importantly for this discussion, though, scene #3 puts our native liaison in direct contact with a human. There's conflict, and there's contrast. There are opportunities for the human ambassador to demonstrate his own cultural biases, and for Rulii to remark on them, thus putting his own world forward for readers to explore. Better yet, the sense of contrast continues forward as he goes to see Majesty, because with the human interaction foremost in his mind, Rulii is more likely to remark on the quirky cultural things inherent in their interaction.
So, when you're looking at your own stories, consider the kinds of conflict or contrast opportunities that appear in the opening scene as you've written it, and then ask yourself how you could tune the circumstances of that scene to make your job easier.
Finally, in the spirit of making a world personal, I'm posting a list of eleven questions I've used in two of my workshops. You've probably seen questions like these before, but worldbuilding questions are often phrased in a very impersonal way, and that's not what I'm trying to do here. All of these questions are deliberately phrased to relate directly to a protagonist's view of the world, and participants in my workshops have found it a helpful exercise to answer them using the voice of their POV characters.
Here are the questions:
1. What is my home like? How do I visualize its boundaries?
2. What weather and physical conditions do I consider normal? What do I fear?
3. What kind of topography did I grow up in, and how did it influence my physical condition and my concepts of comfort?
4. In what kind of place do I feel most at home? What shapes and textures give me comfort, or discomfort?
5. Who is in charge here? Do I respect them, fear them, both?
6. How do I show who I am in the way I dress? What is comfortable? Will I endure discomfort for the sake of looking good or looking powerful?
7. Where do the things I own come from? Do I worry about getting more?
8. What is delicious to me? What do I consider unworthy of consumption?
9. What are my most prized possessions? Do I hoard anything? Do I have so much of anything that I care little if I must give it away?
10. Who do I consider to be unlike me? Are their differences charming or alarming?
11. Am I in control of my own actions and the happenings around me? What or whom do I believe in?
I hope you may find this exercise helpful in your writing process.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Story Focus (with Aliens)
I have a pet peeve about stories with aliens. It's when I read about aliens that are described in loving and extensive detail as incredibly, immeasurably different from humans - and then they have a recognizably human culture. My brain rebels, and I feel I want to apologize to the author for being unable to stay in the story, after this person went to all the trouble to give these creatures the marvelous alien science, the ecology and physiological background. But if I can hardly comprehend the alien physiology, then I feel I should hardly be able to understand their sense of self and culture, either. If I can, there's a problem.
So is the solution to take our lovingly crafted aliens and give them a wildly different culture?
Not necessarily.
In any SF/F story, it's important to consider the information burden you're placing on your reader. It's not that readers can't handle complexity - in fact, SF/F readers are generally unusually receptive to complexity and difference - but if that complexity goes in all directions, then you have a problem. The story seems to be all over the place.
So ask yourself, "What is my story about?"
This isn't an idle question. It's an issue of focus. If your alien's culture is the central issue of the story, as it usually is with my stories, then there's no point in distracting from the cultural issues by making their physiology vastly different. The culture and the physiology have to match, but they needn't match precisely - as long as the two can fit together acceptably, that's all you need. So I personally try to use familiar knowledge sets on the physiological front, and build the culture outward from there with the quirks that I want to focus on.
On the other hand, if alien physiology is the central issue, then you don't really need that much complexity in culture - just make sure that the culture fits the ecology and the physiology and don't worry about delving into complexity. Of course, there are happy mediums on both sides.
I would say that my story, Cold Words, is an example of a story where culture is central and physiology is matched to it, but kept relatively simple. An example of a story that focuses on divergent alien physiology is the story "Doctor Alien" by Rajnar Vajra (Analog Jan/Feb 2009). In that story, there are four different types of aliens, each of which has vastly different physiology - but Vajra keeps his focus. How? By making the whole point be "we know nothing about these guys and their culture." The alien merchants are a mystery - tentacles are involved - and though their behavior is adapted to fit ours in a highly amusing way, they're capable of unpredictable and dangerous behavior and you'd better not cross them because we don't know how they think. Oh, and by the way, they're asking the doctor about the behavior of three other aliens, each one with a vastly divergent physiology. Here, Doctor, figure these guys out because we don't know how they think. It works brilliantly, because the divergences are the point. They are the puzzle that the doctor has to figure out. The story is focused.
Think about this as you're designing a story. Don't necessarily shrink away from making the world as complicated as you want to, but when you go setting a story there, keep the focus small. I have some very complex aliens that I'm working with now (otters!), and while their physiology is otterlike and thus predictable in some respects, they have more than one major cultural thread that can influence their behavior. I tried to put both together into a story and it got out of hand. So I changed the whole scenario, so that both of the threads are present, but only one is the source of the main story conflict. Only one is really at stake. I can save the other one for later.
Think through the focus of each story you write. If you can keep all of its complexities matching up in such a way that they serve the story's main conflict, then your readers will be able to tell, and be able to follow better.
So is the solution to take our lovingly crafted aliens and give them a wildly different culture?
Not necessarily.
In any SF/F story, it's important to consider the information burden you're placing on your reader. It's not that readers can't handle complexity - in fact, SF/F readers are generally unusually receptive to complexity and difference - but if that complexity goes in all directions, then you have a problem. The story seems to be all over the place.
So ask yourself, "What is my story about?"
This isn't an idle question. It's an issue of focus. If your alien's culture is the central issue of the story, as it usually is with my stories, then there's no point in distracting from the cultural issues by making their physiology vastly different. The culture and the physiology have to match, but they needn't match precisely - as long as the two can fit together acceptably, that's all you need. So I personally try to use familiar knowledge sets on the physiological front, and build the culture outward from there with the quirks that I want to focus on.
On the other hand, if alien physiology is the central issue, then you don't really need that much complexity in culture - just make sure that the culture fits the ecology and the physiology and don't worry about delving into complexity. Of course, there are happy mediums on both sides.
I would say that my story, Cold Words, is an example of a story where culture is central and physiology is matched to it, but kept relatively simple. An example of a story that focuses on divergent alien physiology is the story "Doctor Alien" by Rajnar Vajra (Analog Jan/Feb 2009). In that story, there are four different types of aliens, each of which has vastly different physiology - but Vajra keeps his focus. How? By making the whole point be "we know nothing about these guys and their culture." The alien merchants are a mystery - tentacles are involved - and though their behavior is adapted to fit ours in a highly amusing way, they're capable of unpredictable and dangerous behavior and you'd better not cross them because we don't know how they think. Oh, and by the way, they're asking the doctor about the behavior of three other aliens, each one with a vastly divergent physiology. Here, Doctor, figure these guys out because we don't know how they think. It works brilliantly, because the divergences are the point. They are the puzzle that the doctor has to figure out. The story is focused.
Think about this as you're designing a story. Don't necessarily shrink away from making the world as complicated as you want to, but when you go setting a story there, keep the focus small. I have some very complex aliens that I'm working with now (otters!), and while their physiology is otterlike and thus predictable in some respects, they have more than one major cultural thread that can influence their behavior. I tried to put both together into a story and it got out of hand. So I changed the whole scenario, so that both of the threads are present, but only one is the source of the main story conflict. Only one is really at stake. I can save the other one for later.
Think through the focus of each story you write. If you can keep all of its complexities matching up in such a way that they serve the story's main conflict, then your readers will be able to tell, and be able to follow better.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Exciting Review of Cold Words
Today I discovered the following review in Locus magazine, from Gardner Dozois:
"Also good in the October Analog is "Cold Words," by new writer Juliette Wade, a story about a diplomatic mission to an alien planet that's in danger of foundering on the rocks of cultural misunderstandings. Wade does a really good job of creating alien aliens, with their own distinctly non-human psychology and cultural values, and showing how language, the words themselves, can both create barriers and help to tear them down."
I was thrilled to receive good words from such a highly respected reviewer. I have a big smile on my face right now.
"Also good in the October Analog is "Cold Words," by new writer Juliette Wade, a story about a diplomatic mission to an alien planet that's in danger of foundering on the rocks of cultural misunderstandings. Wade does a really good job of creating alien aliens, with their own distinctly non-human psychology and cultural values, and showing how language, the words themselves, can both create barriers and help to tear them down."
I was thrilled to receive good words from such a highly respected reviewer. I have a big smile on my face right now.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
How to find "Cold Words"
I just thought I'd post about how to find my latest story in print, for those of you who'd like to read it.
"Cold Words" is out right now in the October issue of Analog magazine. You can typically find it at Borders or Barnes and Noble if you look in their magazine section. Here are a couple of reviews:
"This is an effective portrayal of the alien from several different points of view–between species, between clans, and between competing interests even among the same groups. Individuals may make friends, yet still see each other as predator and prey."
- Lois Tilton, IROSF
"Standout story of the issue was 'Cold Words.' The aliens were imho perfectly realized -- and realized as individuals -- from the inside out. I did not detect a single false note in the story."
- Michael Flynn, author of The January Dancer
Today's post will be short because I'm still half-asleep with jetlag.
"Cold Words" is out right now in the October issue of Analog magazine. You can typically find it at Borders or Barnes and Noble if you look in their magazine section. Here are a couple of reviews:
"This is an effective portrayal of the alien from several different points of view–between species, between clans, and between competing interests even among the same groups. Individuals may make friends, yet still see each other as predator and prey."
- Lois Tilton, IROSF
"Standout story of the issue was 'Cold Words.' The aliens were imho perfectly realized -- and realized as individuals -- from the inside out. I did not detect a single false note in the story."
- Michael Flynn, author of The January Dancer
Today's post will be short because I'm still half-asleep with jetlag.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Interview up at Dave Steffen's Blog
Dave Steffen has kindly interviewed me in conjunction with the appearance of "Cold Words," which is now on the stands in Analog. If you're curious to see what we talked about, the link is here. Enjoy!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The Puppet Problem
This post is inspired by the Question Box. (If you have a question, this is a great place to put it.) My anonymous Romanian poster says, "the problem is that the protagonist is a female and I seem to have some difficulties in getting the character's pov. Feels a bit artificial, like maneuvering a puppet. I didn't manage to get 'inside.'"
This question makes me think a little of my friends Mary Robinette Kowal and K Richardson - because Mary is a puppeteer, and K is in theater. While I'm not sure precisely what they would say about this topic, I do think the task of getting into writing a character is a lot like the task of acting one.
I personally feel that I need to know a lot about a character in order to write him or her. The amount of what I need to know isn't precisely measurable, and I'm sure that different people feel they need to know different things about their characters. However, I would say that you need to delve deep into a character in order to make him or her feel non-mechanical. What we don't want is for the character to feel author-directed.
So what makes a character feel author-directed? Usually in my experience it's that the character is put into the story for a reason decided by the author, and the author has a lot of ideas about what the character then "has to do" in order to make the story work.
In order for a character to feel organic, that person needs to be self-directed. That means the author should sit down and figure out what that character's cultural viewpoint and backstory is, to the extent that it is relevant to his or her decisions about the actions he or she must take in the plot. The things that we know about our characters show in everything we write about them. If we don't fill them out sufficiently, our own minds and motivations will fill in those subconscious blanks, and that's when the character will start feeling strange.
Here's an example. The character Rulii, in Cold Words, must have difficulty communicating with the human linguist Parker and the human diplomat Hada - but he must not be able to figure out precisely why. In order for this to appear natural, I have to get deeply in touch with the possible factors that may be confusing him. He knows he feels discomfort with Parker when he speaks because Parker is trying to be deferential to him, and he's trying to be deferential to Parker at the same time. That's the surface level. His discomfort is deeper, though, because mutual deference is perceived in his society as a sign of low class, or of extreme intimacy. Because he values Parker, he doesn't want to think of their language as low class, but because he is a Council member in a business relationship with an alien, the idea of intimacy with him makes Rulii very uncomfortable. Furthermore, Parker tries to use an alien term ("friend") to describe their relationship, and the social implications of this are also very troubling to Rulii. When all of these factors come together, Rulii feels very uncomfortable, but enough possible causal factors are present that he can be plausibly confused about which one is the most important.
This is a complex example. However, I'd say to go about creating building blocks for your character's self-animation, you should start simple and let additional complexities suggest themselves (I "discovered" the whole problem with "friend", for example).
Start by considering what you want the character to achieve, and ask yourself whether that is what the character wants to achieve. If it isn't, ask yourself what the character really is trying to achieve, and make sure you have your plot events lined up to push him or her off-course just enough to arrive where you want. Once you know what your character is trying to achieve, ask yourself why.
The harder your character must work to achieve this goal, the more motivations he or she will need in order to justify all that effort. So just wanting to stay alive will work, but it's more powerful if there are also additional personal reasons. Think about what those might be, and try to ground them in something inside the character: a personal motto perhaps, the culture of a group that he or she belongs to, a personal experience with a mentor or during childhood, etc.
I have had the experience of writing a character and having them not do what I wanted them to do. Maybe I'm lucky because my characters do take on lives of their own. But if they're not behaving appropriately, I still have a problem. The moment I try to make them do what I want, they're working for me and not for themselves - they turn into puppets, or bodies, that I have to shove through the motions. Not good.
I know two solutions to a problem like this. One is the one that my friend Janice Hardy often follows: just let the character go where he or she wants to go, and let the story follow. I have a tougher time with this, so I usually go with the second solution: go back and change the nature of the character. If the character is too aggressive, go back and create a background or set of experiences that will temper the character's judgment in the situation you want. Maybe he's aggressive with other men, but his father taught him to protect women and that tempers him in the scene where he needs to be gentler with a female character, for example.
I don't usually interview my characters, but I know many writers who do - or who write a piece from the character's point of view just to let him or her act naturally for a while and help the author feel in touch. That can be a useful piece of preparation, even if you don't actually plan to write the character in first person point of view. I also have a set of questions related to characters and their relationship to the world they grew up in that might be useful, here.
I hope that has shed some light on the topic; I welcome any further comments or questions.
This question makes me think a little of my friends Mary Robinette Kowal and K Richardson - because Mary is a puppeteer, and K is in theater. While I'm not sure precisely what they would say about this topic, I do think the task of getting into writing a character is a lot like the task of acting one.
I personally feel that I need to know a lot about a character in order to write him or her. The amount of what I need to know isn't precisely measurable, and I'm sure that different people feel they need to know different things about their characters. However, I would say that you need to delve deep into a character in order to make him or her feel non-mechanical. What we don't want is for the character to feel author-directed.
So what makes a character feel author-directed? Usually in my experience it's that the character is put into the story for a reason decided by the author, and the author has a lot of ideas about what the character then "has to do" in order to make the story work.
In order for a character to feel organic, that person needs to be self-directed. That means the author should sit down and figure out what that character's cultural viewpoint and backstory is, to the extent that it is relevant to his or her decisions about the actions he or she must take in the plot. The things that we know about our characters show in everything we write about them. If we don't fill them out sufficiently, our own minds and motivations will fill in those subconscious blanks, and that's when the character will start feeling strange.
Here's an example. The character Rulii, in Cold Words, must have difficulty communicating with the human linguist Parker and the human diplomat Hada - but he must not be able to figure out precisely why. In order for this to appear natural, I have to get deeply in touch with the possible factors that may be confusing him. He knows he feels discomfort with Parker when he speaks because Parker is trying to be deferential to him, and he's trying to be deferential to Parker at the same time. That's the surface level. His discomfort is deeper, though, because mutual deference is perceived in his society as a sign of low class, or of extreme intimacy. Because he values Parker, he doesn't want to think of their language as low class, but because he is a Council member in a business relationship with an alien, the idea of intimacy with him makes Rulii very uncomfortable. Furthermore, Parker tries to use an alien term ("friend") to describe their relationship, and the social implications of this are also very troubling to Rulii. When all of these factors come together, Rulii feels very uncomfortable, but enough possible causal factors are present that he can be plausibly confused about which one is the most important.
This is a complex example. However, I'd say to go about creating building blocks for your character's self-animation, you should start simple and let additional complexities suggest themselves (I "discovered" the whole problem with "friend", for example).
Start by considering what you want the character to achieve, and ask yourself whether that is what the character wants to achieve. If it isn't, ask yourself what the character really is trying to achieve, and make sure you have your plot events lined up to push him or her off-course just enough to arrive where you want. Once you know what your character is trying to achieve, ask yourself why.
The harder your character must work to achieve this goal, the more motivations he or she will need in order to justify all that effort. So just wanting to stay alive will work, but it's more powerful if there are also additional personal reasons. Think about what those might be, and try to ground them in something inside the character: a personal motto perhaps, the culture of a group that he or she belongs to, a personal experience with a mentor or during childhood, etc.
I have had the experience of writing a character and having them not do what I wanted them to do. Maybe I'm lucky because my characters do take on lives of their own. But if they're not behaving appropriately, I still have a problem. The moment I try to make them do what I want, they're working for me and not for themselves - they turn into puppets, or bodies, that I have to shove through the motions. Not good.
I know two solutions to a problem like this. One is the one that my friend Janice Hardy often follows: just let the character go where he or she wants to go, and let the story follow. I have a tougher time with this, so I usually go with the second solution: go back and change the nature of the character. If the character is too aggressive, go back and create a background or set of experiences that will temper the character's judgment in the situation you want. Maybe he's aggressive with other men, but his father taught him to protect women and that tempers him in the scene where he needs to be gentler with a female character, for example.
I don't usually interview my characters, but I know many writers who do - or who write a piece from the character's point of view just to let him or her act naturally for a while and help the author feel in touch. That can be a useful piece of preparation, even if you don't actually plan to write the character in first person point of view. I also have a set of questions related to characters and their relationship to the world they grew up in that might be useful, here.
I hope that has shed some light on the topic; I welcome any further comments or questions.
Friday, June 26, 2009
It's official! Cold Words is coming soon...
Here's a little heads-up I just got thanks to Google alerts and Analog magazine: my story, Cold Words, is officially going to be appearing in the October issue. The complete table of contents is available on SFScope, here. I'm excited to be appearing alongside Mike Flynn, Bill Gleason, and Richard A. Lovett. More exciting still, Dr. Stanley Schmidt in the September issue called it "an unusually successful alien viewpoint story."
Look out for Analog's October issue, which will hit the stands and bookstores on July 28. I'm smiling like crazy because this is my second professional publication and I can't wait to see it.
Look out for Analog's October issue, which will hit the stands and bookstores on July 28. I'm smiling like crazy because this is my second professional publication and I can't wait to see it.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Workshop: The Inciting Event and Your World
Hey, everyone. I'm happy to be back home and also completely exhausted from such an exciting weekend. I'm sorry I haven't been able to keep my end of the workshop up so well since the end of last week; anyway, here we go.
I had been thinking a bit about inciting events. An inciting event is generally the event that propels you into the main conflict of your story. My friend Janice Hardy mentions it in a great blog post, here (she's got tons of great information on the process of writing and on getting published, so check it out). In her words, "The inciting event is the trigger that sets the rest of the story in motion." She treats it separately from the opening scene, but I'm not sure the two are necessarily separate. It helps to hook your reader with the inciting event as early as possible. I have spent a lot of time in my writing career working on the question of where to start a story, and believe me, it's tricky - but it's worth thinking seriously about.
So what does this have to do with worldbuilding? Well, when you're thinking about how to open your story, you have to take into account both your need to hook the reader, and your need to introduce your world.
We all know the dreaded word, infodumping. We all know we want to avoid it. But how do we go about creating a scene where this information doesn't need to be explained? How do we make it so the information is simply evident in the action?
First, use your POV character. Make sure you know the character's background, culture and motivations to the fullest extent possible, so that you can use the character to help you convey information. This is what I call making your world personal. It's what I've talked about in comments with Jeanne, and what I hope to take further with each of you as this workshop moves forward.
Okay, so far so good. But as you would certainly be quick to point out to me, characters have blind spots and weaknesses; they have things they just don't care about. Use those things, too, as much as you can. After all, you can use a dismissive or contemptuous tone in your character's narration as well as you can other things.
Here's the harder one: what about things that the character considers normal? Things that are totally normal, entirely obvious to the character, are not things you want him or her to talk about. Talking about obvious things leads to completely cringe-worthy "As you know, Bob" dialog, and we don't want that.
So how can we possibly describe the basic parameters of our worlds, knowing that to our character, so much is entirely unremarkable?
The answer is, use conflict and contrast. I have an example of this done simply and elegantly in the real world, here.
And here's the beautiful convergence I've been leading up to: the inciting event, the beginning of the core conflict of the novel, very often is all about the precise type of conflict that can let you give out world information.
Just so I don't sound totally ungrounded, let me give you an example from my drafting of my forthcoming story, Cold Words. Consider the list of events below and ask yourself which one is the best to use for an opening scene:
1. A Human ambassador inadvertently insults the Majesty of the Aurrel, placing a spaceport negotiation in danger.
2. The native liaison asks the Humans to send away the failed ambassador and get a new one.
3. The Human ambassador comes to the native liaison to tell him that he's worried about the motives of the replacement ambassador.
4. The native liaison goes to the Majesty to report the impending arrival of the replacement ambassador and try to rescue the spaceport negotiation.
I wouldn't choose 1 or 2. Any event that occurs before a significant lull, like waiting for a replacement ambassador to arrive, is less optimal because it will require a time break and reduce forward momentum. Furthermore, even though the incident of insult is interesting, it would be hard for readers to understand without significant previous context - which, if this is the first scene, they can't possibly have.
When I wrote my first draft, I chose 4. The story is told in the native liaison's point of view, and thus the main motivating force in the story is his desire to complete the spaceport negotiation successfully (for his own secret reasons). Why not start where you see him pressing his suit with the Majesty, a place where he can show his intense desire for success and share it with the reader?
The answer to that question is this: if he's alone with Majesty, he's in a completely native context where everything is normal. And that means that every piece of normal world information will be really difficult to put in.
So in the end, I chose 3. There's conflict there, because the human ambassador brings a warning that may put the negotiation at even deeper risk. More importantly for this discussion, though, scene #3 puts our native liaison in direct contact with a human. There's conflict, and there's contrast. There are opportunities for the human ambassador to demonstrate his own cultural biases, and for the native liaison to remark on them, thus putting his own world forward for readers to explore. Better yet, the sense of contrast continues forward as he goes to see Majesty, because with the human interaction foremost in his mind, the native liaison is more likely to remark on the quirky cultural things inherent in their interaction.
So, please take a look at what you've written for me in this context. Take a look at the kinds of conflict or contrast opportunities that appear in the scene as you've written it, and then ask yourself how you could tune the circumstances of that scene to make your job that much easier. I hope you can each give me some comments on this topic.
Finally, in the spirit of making your world personal, I'd like to get you started on the eleven questions I used in my last worldbuilding workshop. I'll cut straight to the chase, here: I don't want to see you answer the impersonal questions at all, so I'm putting here below only the questions that relate directly to your protagonist's view of the world. I'd like to see your responses by this coming Friday, May 1.
Here are the questions. Please answer them in the voice of your POV character.
1. What is my home like? How do I visualize its boundaries?
2. What weather and physical conditions do I consider normal? What do I fear?
3. What kind of topography did I grow up in, and how did it influence my physical condition and my concepts of comfort?
4. In what kind of place do I feel most at home? What shapes and textures give me comfort, or discomfort?
5. Who is in charge here? Do I respect them, fear them, both?
6. How do I show who I am in the way I dress? What is comfortable? Will I endure discomfort for the sake of looking good or looking powerful?
7. Where do the things I own come from? Do I worry about getting more?
8. What is delicious to me? What do I consider unworthy of consumption?
9. What are my most prized possessions? Do I hoard anything? Do I have so much of anything that I care little if I must give it away?
10. Who do I consider to be unlike me? Are their differences charming or alarming?
11. Am I in control of my own actions and the happenings around me? What or whom do I believe in?
As always, I welcome any questions or comments.
I had been thinking a bit about inciting events. An inciting event is generally the event that propels you into the main conflict of your story. My friend Janice Hardy mentions it in a great blog post, here (she's got tons of great information on the process of writing and on getting published, so check it out). In her words, "The inciting event is the trigger that sets the rest of the story in motion." She treats it separately from the opening scene, but I'm not sure the two are necessarily separate. It helps to hook your reader with the inciting event as early as possible. I have spent a lot of time in my writing career working on the question of where to start a story, and believe me, it's tricky - but it's worth thinking seriously about.
So what does this have to do with worldbuilding? Well, when you're thinking about how to open your story, you have to take into account both your need to hook the reader, and your need to introduce your world.
We all know the dreaded word, infodumping. We all know we want to avoid it. But how do we go about creating a scene where this information doesn't need to be explained? How do we make it so the information is simply evident in the action?
First, use your POV character. Make sure you know the character's background, culture and motivations to the fullest extent possible, so that you can use the character to help you convey information. This is what I call making your world personal. It's what I've talked about in comments with Jeanne, and what I hope to take further with each of you as this workshop moves forward.
Okay, so far so good. But as you would certainly be quick to point out to me, characters have blind spots and weaknesses; they have things they just don't care about. Use those things, too, as much as you can. After all, you can use a dismissive or contemptuous tone in your character's narration as well as you can other things.
Here's the harder one: what about things that the character considers normal? Things that are totally normal, entirely obvious to the character, are not things you want him or her to talk about. Talking about obvious things leads to completely cringe-worthy "As you know, Bob" dialog, and we don't want that.
So how can we possibly describe the basic parameters of our worlds, knowing that to our character, so much is entirely unremarkable?
The answer is, use conflict and contrast. I have an example of this done simply and elegantly in the real world, here.
And here's the beautiful convergence I've been leading up to: the inciting event, the beginning of the core conflict of the novel, very often is all about the precise type of conflict that can let you give out world information.
Just so I don't sound totally ungrounded, let me give you an example from my drafting of my forthcoming story, Cold Words. Consider the list of events below and ask yourself which one is the best to use for an opening scene:
1. A Human ambassador inadvertently insults the Majesty of the Aurrel, placing a spaceport negotiation in danger.
2. The native liaison asks the Humans to send away the failed ambassador and get a new one.
3. The Human ambassador comes to the native liaison to tell him that he's worried about the motives of the replacement ambassador.
4. The native liaison goes to the Majesty to report the impending arrival of the replacement ambassador and try to rescue the spaceport negotiation.
I wouldn't choose 1 or 2. Any event that occurs before a significant lull, like waiting for a replacement ambassador to arrive, is less optimal because it will require a time break and reduce forward momentum. Furthermore, even though the incident of insult is interesting, it would be hard for readers to understand without significant previous context - which, if this is the first scene, they can't possibly have.
When I wrote my first draft, I chose 4. The story is told in the native liaison's point of view, and thus the main motivating force in the story is his desire to complete the spaceport negotiation successfully (for his own secret reasons). Why not start where you see him pressing his suit with the Majesty, a place where he can show his intense desire for success and share it with the reader?
The answer to that question is this: if he's alone with Majesty, he's in a completely native context where everything is normal. And that means that every piece of normal world information will be really difficult to put in.
So in the end, I chose 3. There's conflict there, because the human ambassador brings a warning that may put the negotiation at even deeper risk. More importantly for this discussion, though, scene #3 puts our native liaison in direct contact with a human. There's conflict, and there's contrast. There are opportunities for the human ambassador to demonstrate his own cultural biases, and for the native liaison to remark on them, thus putting his own world forward for readers to explore. Better yet, the sense of contrast continues forward as he goes to see Majesty, because with the human interaction foremost in his mind, the native liaison is more likely to remark on the quirky cultural things inherent in their interaction.
So, please take a look at what you've written for me in this context. Take a look at the kinds of conflict or contrast opportunities that appear in the scene as you've written it, and then ask yourself how you could tune the circumstances of that scene to make your job that much easier. I hope you can each give me some comments on this topic.
Finally, in the spirit of making your world personal, I'd like to get you started on the eleven questions I used in my last worldbuilding workshop. I'll cut straight to the chase, here: I don't want to see you answer the impersonal questions at all, so I'm putting here below only the questions that relate directly to your protagonist's view of the world. I'd like to see your responses by this coming Friday, May 1.
Here are the questions. Please answer them in the voice of your POV character.
1. What is my home like? How do I visualize its boundaries?
2. What weather and physical conditions do I consider normal? What do I fear?
3. What kind of topography did I grow up in, and how did it influence my physical condition and my concepts of comfort?
4. In what kind of place do I feel most at home? What shapes and textures give me comfort, or discomfort?
5. Who is in charge here? Do I respect them, fear them, both?
6. How do I show who I am in the way I dress? What is comfortable? Will I endure discomfort for the sake of looking good or looking powerful?
7. Where do the things I own come from? Do I worry about getting more?
8. What is delicious to me? What do I consider unworthy of consumption?
9. What are my most prized possessions? Do I hoard anything? Do I have so much of anything that I care little if I must give it away?
10. Who do I consider to be unlike me? Are their differences charming or alarming?
11. Am I in control of my own actions and the happenings around me? What or whom do I believe in?
As always, I welcome any questions or comments.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Exciting News!
I'm over the moon this morning, and I thought I'd share.
I just sold my second story to Analog Magazine!!!
Cold Words is a story that features the point of view of an alien dealing with Humans. I built the world and the language from the ground up, so it would probably interest my visitors, and my workshop participants as well. I don't yet know when it will appear, but I'll certainly make an announcement here when I know more.
I've also been giving some thought to when I might run my Language Design workshop, for those of you who are interested. What with the holidays and my writing schedule, I think the beginning of February might be a good time for it. I'll keep you posted, and in the meantime, I'll be posting more musings and Ridiculously Close Looks as you've come to expect.
I just sold my second story to Analog Magazine!!!
Cold Words is a story that features the point of view of an alien dealing with Humans. I built the world and the language from the ground up, so it would probably interest my visitors, and my workshop participants as well. I don't yet know when it will appear, but I'll certainly make an announcement here when I know more.
I've also been giving some thought to when I might run my Language Design workshop, for those of you who are interested. What with the holidays and my writing schedule, I think the beginning of February might be a good time for it. I'll keep you posted, and in the meantime, I'll be posting more musings and Ridiculously Close Looks as you've come to expect.
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