How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card, A review

Before I dive into this review, let's take a moment to collect ourselves.  The American nation has been horrified at the events of this week (The Boston Marathon Massacre - a title that hearkens back to our revolutionary days - and then the MIT shooting last night and continued manhunt today).  There will be a lot of people looking for answers, faith-shaken to the core.  As writers we all seek to make sense of the world around us by writing stories.  If the jumbled cast of characters in our own minds can sort things out and reach some sort of satisfying conclusion, then maybe humanity has a chance after all.  Arguably this has always been the function of the story teller.  But how can we order our stories with such atrocities swirling about us?  This is where poetry comes in.  Novels make people think, but the immediacy of poems delivers emotion.  Share poems with each other, write a poem or two, then get back to what you do best: writing stories.

Glancing at the title, you, being observant as well as clever, noticed that this is a genre-specific craft book.  While that might be a turn-off to some, there is one section that I recommend to ANY writer: around page 120, there is a section on how to train someone to read your stories.  Card's maxim from his days as a playwright is "The audience never lies."  So you need to find someone that is willing to just read your story and tell you where characters get too similar or things get boring.  There's a bit more to it than that, but this is a really useful resource.  As a non-SF&F writer, this is not a must-have book, so check it out from your library (Inter-library loan is a valuable resource).  Non-SF&F writers, class dismissed.

The rest of us: get ready for some valuable advice not just on how to write better but on how to cope with the realities of living as a writer.

Some writers have labeled Science Fiction and Fantasy (a twin genre with serious boundaries between the two, as I'll cover later) as the "Ghetto" of the writing industry.  Once you're lumped there, you're stuck for good.  The face of the current publishing industry in changing and magical elements (often called magical realism) are fairly normal now, so I wager that it's possible to break out of the "Ghetto," but even if you can't do it under your own name - well, that' s what pen names are for.

Card opens his book on the differences between Fantasy and SF, namely feudal-style buildings versus plastic and rivets.  Obviously there's a bit more to that, but that's the kernel of the idea.

The next 3 Chapters are based around what can be the most confusing part of writing SF&F: world-building, story construction, and writing well (with a special emphasis on exposition).
We all love world-building, otherwise we wouldn't be writing - or at least we wouldn't be writing SF&F.  We'd write literary fiction or thrillers.  Because of this love, the process of world-building is a bit dangerous for us.  Tolkien invented something like eleven languages for his world, but then he was a linguaphile.  Each of us has our own niche that really draws us in during this phase.  Unfortunately, Card doesn't have an answer for when enough is enough - so you still have to answer that yourself, BUT! he does have a really useful rubric for keeping in mind how each decision impacts everything else in your world.
Story construction:  If you're mostly a world builder, then choosing the viewpoint character will likely be the hardest part.  The best question Card asks here is "Who hurts the most?"  That person is the one you want for your protagonist, but not necessarily the viewpoint character (remember The Great Gatsby?).  Readers read to worry.  So that ought to be the guiding principle for viewpoint characters.  Who will see the really important events in your world?  Who will show the reader what to care about?
EXPOSITION - unlike capital letters - can be deadly dull.  To really see how exposition is handled well, I recommend reading thrillers.  In order to be an effective thriller writer, one has to give the reader just enough information to know what's going on and guess what might happen - but never a drop more than that and never less.  Less is cheating, more is stultifying.  In this chapter Card also has some hard hitting advice on how to read with an eye to revising and tightening your own story.

The last chapter talks about the realities of the writing life: the late royalties checks, the rejected manuscripts (yes, even after previous publication), the fluctuation of publisher advances.  And mor great advice on the business of writing.

In short, as an SF&F writer, this is a must-have book.  Sit at the feet of a master and learn. Then get back to your own projects.

How to Write a Damn Good Novel, A Review

All right ladies and gents, I promised you a review of a craft book that will kick your writing in the balls or punch it in the ovaries.  James N. Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel IS that craft book - just in case a curse in the title wasn't an indication of that.

This is a great book filled with information that will help you really see whether you have the perspective it takes to be a writer.  Frey opens with a segment on subspecies Homo Fictus, a term he uses to explain why fictional characters CANNOT be real people.  My favorite little segment on the Homo Fictus explains why your heroine should never, ever, ever be the "idiot in the attic."  Homo Fictus always behaves up to their maximum potential - never beyond, never beneath.  So, your teenage babysitter armed with a flashlight and an ever-present cell phone will not in fact storm the serial killer's lair in the attic.  She'll call the cops and get the heck out of Dodge.

By far the meat of the book focuses on the integral parts of storytelling, with special emphasis on how to create sympathetic characters by manipulating the opening situations and thus the reader's emotions.  To really hook a reader you, as the author, have to give the reader someone with whom they connect.  That doesn't mean your character has to be likable; look at Scrooge.  Dickens wants Scrooge to be loathed, and no one will contest that Dickens succeeded - otherwise why would "Scrooge" still be an insult over a century later?

The book ends with a rubric on how to assess one's writing groups.  This rubric was especially helpful to me, because I had just moved 1300 miles and had fallen in with a new writing group, a group that could have quickly damned my own push for writing mastery.  These writers had no negative comments to say about anything someone else brought in - in short this was a "fluff" group.  Unless you need a group to keep you coming back to the page (accountability is important for everyone), then the only group worth joining is one that will tear your work apart.  Frey calls these groups "destructive" but the fact is they're just serious about their craft.  If you don't have the guts to keep bringing in a piece for repeated stripping down and whipping, then you won't get any better.  This is also a good place to practice separating your self from your art.  You are not your novel, your novel is not your child, etc.  Your novel is a piece of work.  If a carpenter got upset at someone for criticizing a rickety table, do you think s/he'd ever make a dime?  Of course not.

This is my second favorite book on craft, and one that I cannot recommend highly enough.  Go out, buy it, read it, and if you don't feel that you're a better writer for it, leave a comment and I'll provide my e-mail address for your strongly-worded hate mail.

As always, thanks for reading.  Now get back to writing.

The Morning After

20. February 2013

            Today’s story

The Morning After

            The morning broke like a borrowed china plate – or at least that’s what Nick’s head felt like.  Cold pavement stretched and slithered in to his left; the sky throbbed to his right, but he couldn’t see any skittering pieces of his head.  Slowly, he righted the world.  The pavement fell away, the set itself under his bare feet.  Sirens wailed in the distance – his feet leapt forward to run, but he stumbled and crashed into a green garbage bin.  Glass chimed as the bin rolled forward.  Nick gripped it to steady himself, then blinked hard.  The wails passed by the end of the alley like black and white banshees.  The pavement twitched once more then died and lay flat. 

            Nick held a hand against his head.  His eyes traced down the sleeves – but… there were no sleeves.  In fact, his feet weren’t just bare, all of him was.  One thought crawled across his brain, which he was sure would leak out his ears at any moment, and the thought was this: “What the hell happened last night?” 

TURN AROUND. 

            Nick turned around, and he saw someone else lying in the alley, but they were fully clothed in a red hoodie – wait.  That was his hoodie!  He walked over and poked the guy with his toe.  “Hey!” Poke.  “Hey, chum, that’s my hoodie.” His next poke was arrested by a sudden realization:  those were his jeans, too, or at least his belt.  When he leaned forward to rummage through the pockets, his hand brushed against the man’s face.  The skin was cold, and come to think of it, the lips had a blue tinge to them. 

            Nick shouted, “Hey, hey somebody!   This guy’s dead back here!  He’s dead, and he’s wearing…”  Nick stopped.  He was going to say, “wearing my clothes,” but he considered that might be suspicious.  “I mean, here I am, naked as the day I was born –”

AND NAKED YOU SHALL RETURN.

“–and this… this stiff is wearing my clothes.  What will the police make of that?”  Nick was sure what the psychiatrist would make of it: something Freudian no doubt about that.  It was then he decided that he needed to get out of there – and fast.  Without pausing to consider the odds of a naked white boy getting across town without being noticed, Nick charged out of the alley – and spilled into a black horse drawn carriage.  The door closed behind him, and the carriage lumbered forward.  Nick pounded on the upholstered door, causing the lantern to swing wildly.  Each time his fist hit the door, a bell sounded in the distance, reverberating like a hammer hitting a nail. 

STOP HITTING THE DOOR, NICK.

            Nick planted his feet on the other door and slammed his shoulder against the upholstery.  The door flew open, leaving Nick half-hanging out of the carriage – by virtue of his flailing hand catching the door rail – Chicago falling away beneath him, further and further.  His arm groaned, his fingers ached.  Sweat slicked his grip on the brass rail.  The carriage turned, Nick spilled out the door.  He was going to fall! 

            Suddenly, something grabbed him by the back of the neck.  The fingers felt rough, like fine sand paper. 

YOU CANNOT GO BACK. 

            Nick turned to look at what grabbed him, but he just saw a flash of black cloak, then he was shoved back into the lantern-lit carriage and the door slammed shut.  On his back, panting, two words caught his attention.  There were etched into the dark wooden roof with some silvery metal.  “Death Express.”  

Thirty-Seven Hours

11. February 2013

            Today’s story is because of a request for something a bit more… uplifting than implied suicide or broken-hearted teenagers.  So here’s a short thriller with a happy ending(?) or so I claim.  Anyway, hopefully you get some chills out of it at the very least. 

            This is partly inspired by the Gothic tradition of ETA Hoffman.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Gothic tradition, it doesn't mean that his stories only wore black or painted their faces with make-up.  Around the turn of the twentieth century, science had explained enough of the world to sort of debunk fairy tales, so a few writers decided to re-instill the fear of fairy tales.  ETA Hoffman was one of the foremost, setting stories in Germanic regions that tended to be heavily wooded and have long histories of mysticism and barbarism (werewolves and shamans).  Edgar Allan Poe was credited with transposing this new form to the New World (American Gothic). Cheers and thanks for reading. 

Thirty-Seven Hours

by Heydon Hensley

That was what they said: thirty-seven hours and ten tons of rock.  But it was longer – it must have been.  Or time doesn’t exist in Hell.  Trapped beneath an entire mountain, the smell of coal climbing into his nostrils and burrowing into his skin.  Occasionally, another miner would moan somewhere – out there – away from him, away from his wall of stone, or they’d claw towards him, nails scratching, scratching against the stone like skeletal fingers.  Then the rubble would shift, and everyone would scream, and the coal would carry the cry halfway to hell, before the cry was too exhausted to continue and just stopped – before he got too exhausted. 

            It wasn’t so bad, not really.  Just the scratching, the scratching like some servant of the Metal Queen, clawing up from the deeps to pull him down, to drag him into the deep, broken leg dangling behind.  He wasn’t sure his leg would come with him.  It burned like a coal fire, slow and hot enough to melt steel.  The pain was good, he told himself, it meant he’d keep the leg.  If he didn’t move then no one would be able to find him, he’d be safe – and closed his eyes so the darkness couldn’t crawl in, take him over, spread out over his skin like the coal –

           

            He screamed.  Monitors and nurses sang a chorus of expletives like a refrain.  The white room, sterile light, white sheets sank beneath a cloud of smoke – then he was back. 

            Back, with the scratching, always scratching further down the tunnel, clawing its way closer in the pitch, like a dragging pick or hungry fingers.  He couldn’t scream – had to stay still – had to hide, the slightest whisper of noise, and it would find him – drag him away to forget the sun.  Sweat slid down his nose, dripped off and hit his belt buckle.  Plop. It echoed down the long throat, he could almost see it.  The walls coruscating to force him down into the stomach – into the deep, to the cold, to forget – to forget the warmth of his wife, the sun –

            A warm hand touched his cheek.  Warm and soft.  The sweat seemed to disappear.  For a moment his fears eased, the scratching paused, held back by this soft hand.  Murmurs drifted through the coal smoke.  “He’s going to… not uncommon… post-traumatic stress… keep him sedated…”

            “His leg?” A voice touched with sunlight. 

            His leg felt light, it almost didn’t hurt – almost.  So it was there, it had to be there.  This warm hand and sunlit voice kept his leg attached, kept the scratching at bay.  He just needed to hear that voice, to let it crawl into him and chase out the black, the scratching deep.  

Immortal Roses

8. February 2013

I’ve been reading Four Quartets by T.S. Elliot, which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone with an interest or knowledge in Quantum Theory, or temporal philosophy, or just straight out beautiful, compressed prose.   It was recommended to me by a Physics professor friend of mine.  If you haven’t read poetry before, then just remember to take it slow.  Just like a question on a test, you won’t get the whole answer without going back over the problem to verify your accuracy.  Unlike a test, the answer you get will change depending on where you are in your life when you read the poem. 

Anyway, here’s the story for today.  It’s the shortest one so far.  Hopefully it’s also the best. 

Immortal Roses

by Heydon Hensley

            In the rose garden, sun streaming between the knit blanket of clouds, T.S. Elliot came to him.  “That which is only living/ can only die. Words, after speech, reach/ into the silence.”  Somehow these words comforted him, as he cupped a scarlet rose in one hand and snipped the stem, just below the throat.  Like this rose, he was only living, could only die, but see how beautiful the rose was in death: head full of crimson, youthful, green arms still frolicking, still reaching for the sun.  Surely this was better than growing – blooming too much – into a flatness, only to drop beauty petal by petal until, naked, freezing in the winter and dying, withered, ugly, detested.  But see how, chopped from the rest, it stands out – vibrant always in the mind.  No one would remember it drooping, being thrown out.  The vigor, the vibrance – these would be remembered and in the remembrance, achieve immortality. 

            If a rose could achieve immortality in death, then how much more so himself?  Yes, certainly.  If that which lives, dies, then that which dies while life still burns brightly… These wrist – his stem… what a trifle to pay for immortal youth, vigor. 

            He reached down and snipped another rose.  

The Diary

6. Feb 2013

So this piece of flash fiction was inspired by a fabulous piece by Elizabeth Talent called, “No One’s a Mystery.”  If you haven’t read it, then do yourself a favor and fix that.  The whole piece is around 300 words long (maybe less).  The compression and tight prose really blur the lines between fiction and poetry. 

The rest of this month, I'll be working with Flash Fiction for a few reasons, 1) it will eat up less of your time, 2) it will eat up less of my time, and 3) flash fiction teaches a great deal about the economy of words, and the importance of subtext which allows the story to unfold off the page.  

Perhaps the most concise piece of flash fiction comes from Hemingway (allegedly, anyway).  

"For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn."  

Enough history.  Here's the story.  I hope you enjoy it. 

The Diary

by Heydon Hensley

            The diary he had given her felt heavy as a dime in her palm.  She turned it over, remembering the truck, his hand forcing her down while his wife’s Cadillac sped by. 

            How does one address a diary?  It had no feelings, not empty as it was. 

            “Dear Self,” she wrote, but she mumbled, “I guess.” 

            I have to do it today.  For three weeks, I’ve told myself that I would do it, but today – today I’m so in love that I’m sick.  Kirk won’t leave his wife for me.  Who was I ever to hope that such a great man would want me?  Over our three years together, I’d hoped, but – I still feel all tingly every time I remember our first time together.  Every sixteen year old deserves such a great man her first time.  Kirk makes me so happy, I just want to burst.  That’s the hardest thing.  I can’t tell anybody about how happy I am.  I suggested it to Kirk once, and he cuffed me.  Not hard, you know, not mean, just stern. 

            But that’s why I have to do it – to end things with him.  I just love him too much to risk hurting him.  He says people wouldn’t understand if they knew.  What’s not to understand?  Love doesn’t discriminate over ages, and my love for him would make me ten times the wife he’s currently got.  I can cook and clean as good as anybody!  That’s just me hoping, reaching for what can’t be mine, what I don’t deserve.  I’ll sneak out tonight to be with him one last time.  His truck’s always so warm at night.  Maybe I’ll show him what I wrote.  He’ll be glad I’m using his present.

            Love Always.

National Undergrad Lit Conference

Howdy folks,
I got back from NULC (National Undergraduate Literature Conference) a couple weeks ago. It was amazing to get the opportunity to hang out with so many serious writers. It was also gratifying to know that I blew all of the non-serious writers out of the water. There were a few people that went simply to be able to say they went.
No joke, one girl had a two page story about a dog, from a dog's perspective, about not having food or water for almost a week. There were a few problems with the story logistically, but the one that stood out in the minds of my group was the lacking conflict. What pray tell, makes a short story except a conflict? Without a conflict there is no story. On the bright side, Chenoa, a woman from my group, got to finish her entire story because of the extra time.
This was my first time reading any of my prose aloud. It's a fairly unsettling experience. Although, I must admit that I still find reading my own poetry aloud much more jarring. Poetry is a much more direct window into the soul than prose. It's almost impossible to write poetry outside of one's own experience, while my prose is almost entirely outside of my experience (obviously, people must be based on people, whom I've actually met).
My sister totally rocked her poetry reading. I'm ridiculously proud of how well she did. Her tone and attitude was spot on for her pieces.