Paksworld

Since there’s interest, here’s another post on writing stories.    One perennial question (less here than elsewhere) is “Which came first, plot or character?”  It also emerges as “Is this plot-driven or character-driven?”  Another variation is “Do you get the idea first, or a character?”    In other words, “We know you can’t get a chicken from an omelet, but did this omelet start with the egg or the chicken that laid it?  And what part does the heat play, and  the frying pan?”

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No, this isn’t about backing up your work on another device or keeping a printout.   (Though that kind of backup is vital if you work on a computer.)   This is about one way to diagnose and fix a problem you have while writing, and it’s related (no surprise) to the problem you might have untangling yarn.

When your yarn (or story) has gotten itself in a tangle, you can either keep pulling forward, on the grounds that it will sort itself out (and sometimes it does, when you’re pulling yarn from the inside of a ball–the entire guts of the ball may come out, or just a small bit that the yarn has looped around)  or you can work backwards from the tangle to find that loop or knot and pick it loose.  This post is about the backing-up kind of fix. Read the rest of this entry »

Periodically there are online discussions (and arguments) about what constitutes epic fantasy, who can and can’t write epic fantasy, which books are or are not epic fantasy, why someone should (or should not) write or try to write epic fantasy, what settings work or don’t work for epic fantasy, etc.   Given my writing schedule, I usually hear about these weeks to months after they appear and far too late to add my two (hundred and thirty seven) cents to the discussion.   But a recent one (October of this year) in another venue, that I happened across by following links on Twitter about something else (you know how Twitter links jump topics, right?  It’s how I ended up following a bunch of shepherds in the UK) drove me to comment even though I was very late to the party.   It was a sensible, thoughtful, interesting discussion, and I thought I had something to add to it.

It also led me to think more analytically about my own thoughts on epic fantasy.    And here they are. Read the rest of this entry »

The current story’s day or two in structural revision has made huge changes in its organization and now has it on an open track to completion as a story of approximately (after some cutting) the right length.    It’s an interesting example of the kinds of decisions writers make when something doesn’t run easily the first time.  Read the rest of this entry »

I may have mentioned in some comment or other that I had an Incident With Bicycle and Pickup last weekend.   I am lucky to be a) alive and b) whole and–barring a somewhat unhappy neck and some fairly impressive bruises–recovered.   The incident was my fault;  though I knew that was an almost-blind turn into a very narrow lane, and that large pickups lived on the connecting street, I failed to adhere to the ABCs of safety: ALWAYS  Be Careful, not “Nearly Always Be Careful…”  Read the rest of this entry »

Story #2, of the new Paksworld stories, the “lightning strikes” post,  is one of those “out of the blue/accidental hits” stories.   Here’s the article I found that started it all:   “The Ghost Cavalry of Gondole.”  Right off the bat, the title begs for a story.   Reading the article and bring up all the pictures…skin-tingling stuff.  It belonged in Paksworld.  It felt right for Paksworld.  But right as background does not make a story…a big fancy gravesite (a real one) is a fact, not a story.

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One advantage the writer has–if she gets her copy ahead of time enough–is that she can see and weep over the remaining errors before being clobbered with them by a reader.     Because a writer reading her own work when it’s hot off the press reads like a nitpicker, not an enthusiast.    Little prayers puff out of her brain: “Oh, please don’t let anyone tell me about this the first week–or tell anyone else, either.”   And, if she’s lucky, there are moments of “Yes…that worked…good…uh-huh…and that…yeah, this whole chapter’s fine.”  Read the rest of this entry »

The hierarchy of writing-research starts with personal experience.    If you have ever cooked a meal,  mucked out a stall,  driven a car, or fallen out of a tree, you have a wealth of sensory inputs as well as intellectual understanding of those experiences available to use in a story.   You know, in the most direct way, what it’s like.

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After multiple false starts, the braid is well on its way…and it gets easier as it goes along.    It would have been nice to be here a month ago…no, two months ago…but all the braids back then tangled into impenetrable knots.   And all because I kept starting at the wrong point.    If you mistake the beginning,  nothing else fits.

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Anyone who’s taken a journalism class, or written for a newspaper, is familiar with the “Five Ws” which–canonically–are supposed to be at the head of the story.   Also with “inverted triangle” structure.    Most of the time, novel structure is not the same, but keeping readers oriented to person, place, and time is–for most, not all–important.   Even more important–though hidden from readers–is keeping the writer oriented to the Five Ws (and more.)

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