The process of writing is, well, a process. It goes for a while, then—it either goes on, or it requires the writer go back and regularize the spellings, or in some cases the names people have, or in some cases give the story the benefit of what the writer learned on page 30….
So I’m letting you in on something most writers don’t like to have loose in the world—but I’m old at this, I am not easily embarrassed, and I thought it would be a really good answer to ‘how I write’ for some, and perhaps an interesting insight into the process for others, and well, third, I hope it now has some more focus and pacing… There is now version 1, which is what’s been up there, and still is. And now there’s version 2…which shows you what happens when I edit my own stuff. I don’t write perfect stuff. I don’t try to. Then I edit. And I throw more stuff in. There’s no limit to the number of times I edit. I’ll edit till I’m happy with the total.
So, go to Closed Circle: if you don’t have it bookmarked by now, bookmark it…and go to the Book Store tab on the top row. And in the dropdowns you will see Freebies offered. Go to freebies, and go down the list. It’s there.
And rummage around while you’re there: the CC site is always changing: we now have the CC Bazaar, which is our Cafe Press Storefront—and we have rearranged the furniture a little. Since this goes on constantly, I have no idea when we changed what…but we did.
You’ll also note we’re trying a new download method ONLY for freebies, because we don’t need the regular froo-frah that it puts you to: just click the Download Now on both, if you’ve never gotten the first one, or on version 2 if you already have the first one.
Have fun.
Dear CJ,
I have a serious writing question that hopefully you or someone here can help me with. I was looking for and opportunity to ask it and this seems as good of time as any.
My question is about tense. I find myself shifting tenses between chapters as I write my tale.
For action based chapters I shift to present tense to make the reader feel they are apart of the action. Kind of the blow by blow approach like a sporting event.
For flash backs and visions I write them in first person to make them seem more real.
For general narration and dialog I use the typical past or slightly past tense. I tend to write without emotion and just put the facts and events out there for the reader to draw conclusions.
Is this acceptable in fantasy writing? I have tried to break myself of this habit, but keep doing unintentionally, because it feels so natural to me and my type of story telling.
I looked all over the net and through books I have read, but really haven’t found anything comparable to my style approach or a definitive answer to this.
I am not a writer at all. but this sounds like some contemporary novels I have read. the only thing is to make sure the reader knows where, when and who …. maybe some kind of indication as a title or subtitle when you change – I am reading Iain Banks’ Transitions at the moment, and he has lots of different voices, each has their own sub-heading – not that it isn’t a fairly confusing book all the same as these voices change identity and you have to keep track of them!
Sometimes you can sell an idiosyncratic or unique style: it does limit readership, because of the people who will buy it, some will like it and some will not. The same with potential editors. If you do it smoothly, however, I’m not going to say never. Just consider that anything that gets between the reader and your work is a potential problem.
I have only had two professional reviews, Jane was one. And to be honest they were way too nice to me. As a novice at this type of writing I expected to be torn limb from limb. So I hope that means I’m doing something right. Jane’s comment was my writing was very “mature” which was enigmatic, but encouraging.
I read it out-loud after each chapter, then play the tape back and it seems to work. The closest style to mine I have found would be Gene Wolfe’s, but I don’t write in first-person like he does.
As for selling, I am not going for wide audience appeal. I tend to take social issues and put them in a fantasy setting in hopes people will notice them more in their own…
I am going for something lasting, not profitable. So I know I have a hard sell for most publishers. Right now it’s just been about getting it on paper, then I will worry about tweaking and marketing.
Thanks for your input,
Doug
Well, if you do a little web-designing, and weave your site around your story, plus do a little promotion, you might find your market online. It’s the front end of a trend, so a little lonely at present, but hey, invent your way through it. That’s one way. If you want that book on the shelf there’s always print-on-demand.
Gene Wolfe is a great example of an idiosyncratic style…and he makes it work.
Thanks again. I really hate asking writers questions, especially one of your caliber. But you have to learn somehow. I imagine since you have been doing this for a long time, one of the last things you like to do is talk shop.
I work, live, and breath archaeology, and wildland fire, and sometimes it gets very tiresome talking about them to others. So I really appreciate it.
I have one really important suggestion: anybody can rip up someone’s work, which is why I personally don’t like workshops…far harder to say what’s right than what’s wrong. If you’re writing on a high level, you already have points of your work that don’t satisfy you, that you suspect or know could be wrong, but if somebody can write what you do RIGHT and it happens to land on one of your insecure-is-that-ok? spots, then you can shift it from the maybe column to Things People Liked, and that information, that you’re reaching someone, is worth far more to you than another insecurity.
That may be difficult for me. Right now I have a vision in my head and fall way short of conveying it the way I would like on paper. But I am doing the best I can with a lot of heart, soul, and unfocused raw talent.
I don’t bristle at criticism, (I read your horror stories about workshops)I thrive on it. I have been told my entire life what I can’t do and proved my detractors wrong, over and over. I don’t always persevere, but I can sure put up one hell of a fight. Click on my name link you will see what I mean. But by the same token I am one of those people that just can’t take a complement…
FYI–also sent to Jerry Pournelle.
P!=NP
See and
Note that time travel implies P=NP. (See .) FTL implies time travel (the existence of closed time-like curves).
Possibly the point is that a machine restricted to symbolic computational operations cannot produce FTL. I have speculated in the past that the problem AI has in replicating intelligence involves in some way its restriction to computers performing symbolic computation. If the universe is discrete at some level, all computation is symbolic; but if it isn’t, analog computation is essentially different from symbolic computation, and the possibility of FTL might remain open.
So if FTL actually works, it involves something beyond Turing machine computability. Suppose the universe is continuous all the way down, so that analog computation does something no Turing machine can do. Suppose also that life has figured out how to use analog computation to have dialogs with the future and the past and so choose an optimal trajectory through space-time. (In other words, free will is a basic capability of living organisms, and all eukaryotic cells have rudimentary minds.) Finally posit that research into this phenomenon produces time travel without contradictions, but only when a mind controls and guides the process. I wonder what the implications are…
The following links were lost:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/35539144/pnp12pt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem
http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec19.html
There seems to be a problem with the menu on Closed Circle…
I’m not displaying a problem. Can you be explicit as to on what page and looking-for-what you’re having a menu problem? We’ll fix it if we can find it.
I’ve uploaded a screenshot of the problem to
http://drop.io/closedcircle
It’s the same on Firefox and IE.
a) Main menu is vertical, when it looks like it’s intended to be horizontal.
b) Menu sub-items are dropping down vertically along with the main items, leading to items jumping around and making it difficult to use.
c) Highlighting of selected items is confusing due to this behavior.
d) Menu drops over one graphic and behind another.
Weird! Is anybody else getting this? I’ve pushed ‘refresh’ to be sure and am not getting this vertical display. It’s all horizontal. So is Jane.
I’m horizontal!?! For about five hours a night…if I’m lucky!
Seriously, this has me puzzled. When I was fixing the updated theme, it went through a period where it did this on my test site. It involved some php code changes…but I can’t remember what now. I fixed whatever I did and it’s been fine, so I’m not sure it’s related, but I do know the menu can do this. (I know, I should keep careful notes of changes…i figure that’s what WP file compare is for. :D) I’ll look deeper and see if it’s something I did and if I need to reinsert a line of code.
Wait…I think it was when I added the special tab to CafePress…That’s the only time I messed with the menu code. I have a different way to do that now. I’ll see if that doesn’t fix the problem.
Thanks GW!
@Jane: Don’t rely on file compare for everything. That’s only as good as the person who wrote it. And, don’t change the code without making a backup external to WP that you can use to restore if you screw it up.
On the question of tense and person in writing, and of where/how to present your writing, Xenophon, I have a couple of suggestions.
One, you can post your writing on the web or in ebooks. You would want to post a copyright notice with your work, though, to cover your assets. Plenty of beginner and amateur authors do this. They may post at a fiction hosting site or on their own site. The issue then becomes to market your work by telling anyone you know about your stories/poems and site — fan forums are certainly one way, as SF&F fans tend to be readers and watchers and listeners and tend to be willing to try new tech stuff. But pursue pro publication too, naturally, and if you get happily published, your personal author site can then give excerpts, reviews, and publicity, as well as where to buy your books. 😉 There seem to be three ladies here who know how to do that well. 😉
Two, is to the writing itself, whether to shift tense and person, point of view. The best advice is that it must be clear to the reader who is telling the story and any shifts in time or place or speaker / POV character. If that means dateline section heads, such as, Tranquility Base, July 20, 1969, or USS Enterprise A, in the 24th Century, or Battle of Hastings, England, 1066, then that helps the reader. There are so many things that you can do in writing, that it’s hard to say, “oh, you can *never* do that, daahling, it’s against The Rules of English Writing / Grammar.” But good writing needs to key the reader into what is happening, when, and with whom. If it isn’t clear enough, the reader will be confused, or worse, give up. — Do what makes sense for the story and the characters. — If Mark Twain can have Tom and Huck a-tellin’ their story like it was writ and spoke about in them days, then, by golly, you can tell your story how it fits best to tell. — Follow what best tells the story so the reader is caught up and flows along, without getting kicked out of the imaginary world and back into his/her armchair (or bed). — And watch how other writers do it. How do they craft their writing, structure it, get across their points? Try that with some favorite authors and books, and you may see why it works. Don’t be afraid to look at it that way part of the time, and go back at other times and simply immerse yourself in the story for the pleasure of it. Whether it is CJC (and other SF&F writers) or tonight’s newspaper or Shakespeare or the Bible or a pulp magazine or any story whatsoever, the basic idea is to put words on the page that get the reader to forget he/she is sitting there, and lose him-/herself in the story-universe. *That’s* what you’re really after. It is possible, and new writers (me included) have to start somewhere and learn by practice, how to write. Real storytelling talent will show itself beyond technique or proper grammar and spelling, but those sure help to get the message across clearly.
Yup, I completely sidestepped the question. — Only you and your readers can really know whether the shifts you make can be followed in a way that the readers understand and want to keep reading. — Ask beta readers to read your manuscript and critique it. If all you get is “ooh, goodie!” or conversely, a twenty page list of all that’s wrong, neither of those are terribly helpful. (The latter might help some, though.) A useful critique needs to say what works, what doesn’t work, what needs to be rewritten so it works better, and so on. Hearing what was really good, what the beta reader liked, helps you. Hearing what was confusing or what seemed weak or was not understandable helps you. Hearing what was misspelled or poor grammar helps you, if your beta reader or editor understands the level of writing you were aiming at. If you’re going for standard English in the narrative and exposition, and everyday true-to-life speech in the dialogue, that’s one thing. If you’re going for something different, then the beta or editor needs to understand that and adjust remarks to fit.
I hope that helps. — My comments are primarily as someone who has edited fiction on an amateur basis and other kinds of writing, but not for a publication house, on a small business pro basis. I’ve written fiction and poetry as an amateur, and have written (via work) for other people’s advertising materials. So my comments are from those angles, and as a book lover. (And editing-wise, this is totally off the cuff and not well crafted, heheh.)
Thanks for the tips. I have been writing mostly in a vacuum, and have just within the last few months felt I have something worth sharing. I am learning as I go and realize things may change drastically before I’m done and will have to do some serious rewrites to sync everything up when I finish the first draft. I’m around 180+ pages into it right now, shooting for 350-400, or a good cliff hanger stopping point.
Like most new writers, I am paranoid about people stealing my work, but at the same-time, know I need feedback to improve. There are a couple of example chapters posted on my website http://xenophon.page.tl/Novel-Sample.htm Keep in mind these are earlier drafts and have been polished somewhat since. I think for someone doing this on their own I’m doing pretty well, but I want to do much better before I go for publication. What may be crystal clear to me, may not to most readers.
I am trying very hard to write on three levels at once. 1) where the reader can read it purely for enjoyment. 2) That the reader may learn something while reading or it will hit them later. 3) That the reader may be able to find hidden or deeper meaning out of the the work, whether it’s there or not.
Whether I am able to achieve this remains to be seen, but I’m giving it my best shot. I have a very ambitious work in mind and know that I currently don’t have the skills to pull it off the way I want. But I’m not going to let that stop me, even if I fall short I feel I still may have something worth publishing. Unfortunately, self-promotion is not really in my nature, people like Robert Stanek make me violently ill. So I want to create something that will speak for itself once I get to where I want to be as a writer.
There is a rather nice novel set in Rome, I believe in Nero’s court, which consists of letters (real ones, which we have from antiquity) with the author’s own interpolations. That’s an example of a very different style that succeeds very well. It highlights the intrigues inside the court staff and indicates how Rome’s government managed to survive with an immature lunatic at the helm.
I’d like to read this, do you happen to recall the name, or the author?
I wish I could. It was in the 1970’s or 80’s. I think it was written by a woman, but not McCullough. And I’m not even sure of that. I’m very critical about such fiction, because that was my field of study: I could just about tell you where the interpolations were; and it was fascinating, how well it blended. It involved Nero’s childhood tutor and advisor Seneca…and I’ve scoured the internet trying to turn it up, but no joy.
I love the early novels, like Clarissa, which are all letters. it does work, it (Clarissa) even got me page turning like nobody’s business. I think Xenophon is onto a good thing!
A perfunctory noseing about with the search turns up two female names
Gillian Bradshaw and Mandy Scott along with McCullough. This should
not be considered definitive because Net searches without tightly
bounded parameters scoop up tons of dross along with the minnows
you are looking for. However since there are three female authors
tagged as writing about Nero’s period with A St Germain the vampire
tale in the period as well, it should be possible to dig this one
out of hiding with a little more effort.
What I want to read: The scrolls of Herculaneum and Pompeii which
are still intact can conceivably be read with an MRI type of tech
and converted back into readable text with a comp. It is highly
probable that a substantial bit of history would be exposed that
was carefully purged over the centuries…GRIN
It’s possible to consider our age more enlightened than those old
ones who carefully erased everything they didn’t agree with but I
can’t tell the difference, the mouthpiece organs of power have always
made sure the loudest story is their own.
I’d like to have a look at those scrolls too. A wonderful find.
The only thing that saved us was that a good many monks who did the copying actually couldn’t read what they were copying. They did pretty letters, but understand what they were copying? No.
and to get back on topic, it’s money where the mouth is time.
I’m looking at version 2.
One thing, it might sound good to try to climb down stairs in
the dark while hanging onto a collar of the leader who has no
clue where anything is, but I’d introduce a tiny bit of gloomy
shape into the scene. A wizardly green glowstick would enhance
the haunted house legend and save Das and Casim an early demise
falling down stairs.
😆 I like that. It’s a pesky bit. Casim is pretty small and Das is pretty large, but still, I like your idea.
I got so carried away giving advice earlier that I forgot the main point of this blog post. Mea culpa.
I’ve downloaded the Version 2 .pdf to read, if I can just find/make the time to read it. However, it looks like I’m gaining on some personal work, so things look good for the weekend. (Famous last words….)
CJ,
Thanks for providing this stuff, any insight to writing is very helpful and the reason I originally visited this blog.
The reason I came back, was unlike other blogs I visited yours is truly interactive and I commend you on the effort. You have a nice little community built here that is not full of jerks and boisterous idiots. This is about the only blog I ever visit or comment on.
My apologies for sending your thread in a different direction.
Not a problem. We are nothing if not multifaceted.