.:. Another Likely Story

Went to London for the first time last week!  It was really wonderful and I'm already missing it and fruitlessly fantasizing about sending my CV over to UCL.  What, I'm allowed to dream.

1. I pre-gamed for the trip by mainlining as much London urban fantasy as I could*, so I tore through A Madness of Angels and Rivers of London -- which, by the way, Amazon neglected to inform me that a US edition existed, resulting in my ordering a UK copy which resulted in three weeks of shipping, and of course for consistency's sake I had to get the sequel in the UK edition as well.  I picked up a copy of Moon Over Soho in Oxford, along with a really pretty leather bookmark, and I may have ignored some gorgeous scenery in the Cotswolds because I was too busy inhaling the book.  No regrets.  Since I forgot to pick up Whispers Under Ground, so I guess there will be another three-week wait, shaking my fist over here.  (Not only were the books very awesome, they were also helpful for teaching this US resident some vocabulary.  Okay, watching all of BBC Sherlock twice helped, too.)

2. I spent some time idly pondering urban fantasy and its trappings.  As many have noted, Charles de Lint is probably the progenitor of all this, and interestingly, he didn't actually use the big city, which in our times is probably the first setting to come to mind when one speaks of urban fantasy.  Rather he used small towns and colored up their featureless solitude by importing folk tales and deities ... which Neil Gaiman takes on again in American Gods. And then in contrast there is Madness, in which magic is inherent to the city, is born out of the city and its rules, spontaneously generated out of and shaped by urban detritus; the city has now come alive if not aware.  I think it comes from what the writer is relatively more concerned with: the magic or the city?  Madness is all about London; the magic is a lens, a kaleidoscope through which we can turn the city inside out and shatter it into bits and see how it comes back together.  Rivers and American Gods lean towards being more about magic and myth and how they might hold together/tear apart a city or a world.

* Urban fantasy pretty much tells you what the city and the author wish it could be, up to and including the imperfections that make the masterpiece.  As Sabina pointed out, it gives you the dreams of the city, which I find to be much more interesting than anything found in a travel guidebook.

Yes, everyone and their writing group has read this, but whateves, it still deserves my marginal bump to its pagerank.  Originally posted at The Pixar Touch.

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Me: I hate every single word I've ever written.
Writer Friend: Good.  It means you're developing taste.

And she's right, and that's what we were discussing.  There comes a stage between taking levels of Writer where the clouds part but instead of receiving some kind of beautiful vision, what I see instead is ... all my screwups and all the potential pitfalls in front of me.  But I don't actually know how to not screw up, because that's the next level.  There's no way out except punching on through, so yes, I'll just have to write it out, because I want that next level more than anything else.

Comments closed as this post is a reminder to myself, not a complaint.

Quote as found on Diane Duane's blog:

“Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, ‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’ A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

-- C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

"... the Osbourne Brothers' bluegrass classic, 'Rocky Top' [says] in two lines what poets and writers 'Anna Karenina' themselves to death to convey, about a girl who's 'wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop/I still dream about that.'" -- Singer-Songwriter Neko Case.

And that is the kindest, cleverest way I have ever been reminded to cut down on the purple prose a tad.