National No Writing Month

Wow.  I've been gone for a while...

So, many of you will know that for a large number of writers, November was NaNoWriMo: "National Novel Writing Month".  Basically, you set strict word count goals so that during the month of November you write a full (first draft of a) novel.

Pretty cool.  I did my own NaNoWriMo: "National No Writing Month".

Why was that?  A bunch of reasons.  I work retail (managing a shoe department) and the Christmas season is a very busy one, leaving me with little time and energy to devote to my writing.

In addition to that... well, I don't want to get into it too much here, but I'm American and early November saw a major event occur that didn't put me in a good mental state for the next few weeks.  I stayed away from all social media for a while, just to avoid dealing with people and their ways.

You guys know what I'm talking about.

As of now, I still don't have the time or energy to put in any serious writing, but I am going through my notes for The Sleepwar Saga Book 2, soaking up all of the details again.  And I'm steeling myself for a more hard-nosed writing schedule at the beginning of the new year.

If I do this right, I could have a (very rough!) first draft by the end of February no problem.  (But, knowing me, I won't - and the end of March will be the earliest.)  Then comes the real work of rewriting.  Yeuch.

But have no fear: I haven't vanished off the face of the Earth!  And with any luck, I will come out the other side of Christmas refreshed and ready to write better than ever before.

I'll believe that when I see it...

My Journey to Self-Publishing

How does one get started on self-publishing?  Well, I'm sure there are many different paths to that.  Sit down around the campfire, folks, and hearken to my own tale.

It all started with reading; it usually does.

Unfortunately, I shall have to be somewhat vague here as there is still the possibility of something happening with this property, but suffice for now to say that there was an incredibly fun series that I was a big fan of.  It was a pulp-style, 70s-set, series of e-book-only novellas starring an entertaining character in a crazy world where it seemed like anything could happen.

They were fantastic, and a lot of fun, but unfortunately a lack of interest caused the series to come to a close eventually.  This disappointed me, but it was not unforeseen.  A niche product like that will be limited in its appeal, but if it - by chance - finds that target audience then it can really take off.  This one didn't (quite).

Some time later, I (who have always been a writer since my youth, even if I had never sought out publishing in any way before) contacted the creator of this series and wondered if he would be amenable to me sending a spec manuscript over to him.  I knew the likelihood of the character making a return was low, but I figured I may as well give it a shot - I had a couple of vague ideas for what I would like to do if given the chance.

To my surprise, the creator messaged me, saying that he was actually considering a hardcopy collected version of the stories, and would like some new novellas to be included so as to make the paper version appealing even to those who already owned the stories electronically.  And he was willing to take a look at my submission!

Energized by the possibility of being published even by a small press like this one (especially one whose works I had been such a fan of) I set to writing straight away, using the concept that most interested me out of the few I had conceived.  I finished a 20,000 word story quite quickly, and sent this first draft off to the man in charge.

And this is where things fell apart.  For various reasons, the project was now not a priority in any way - and although he was enthusiastic about the parts of my story that he read, he never finished it or got back to me with any notes.  The book was dead in the water, and took my story with it.

(Or so it seemed: there remains the possibility - I am told - that the book could still happen, so watch this space for news.)

I had fun writing it, though.  A lot of fun.  Indeed, I had so many ideas for subsequent stories in this property that I would have loved to have taken over publishing the stories myself - even at a schedule of one novella per month (I thought).  Despite having had a couple of ideas for novels in my head for a few years (which will be written... eventually) I had never seriously tried to write something for publishing.  Or self-publishing.  But now...

The existing IP was something out of my hands; I knew this.  But what if I invented my own pulp novella series, that I could put out there myself.  Would such a thing be possible?

Indeed it was (a quick bit of internet searching later on showed me) and I spent the idle hours of one day at my job thinking about the possibilities.  Immediately, my love of old-fashioned pulp SF made me think of a concept involving a Victorian gentleman having adventures in outer space.  Perhaps it could be called Josiah Kensington: Space Adventurer?  Or maybe The Star Journeys of Dr Jeremiah Fotherington-Smythe?

Very quickly, this became The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe, and I set about giving myself a target of 18,000-22,000 words per story, at a rate of one per month.  I would give it six months to have a chance of catching on, of finding an audience, and if after that it was going nowhere then I would end it.

Anyway, fast forward to six months later (during which I had also written a couple of other novellas or short stories) I completed the series with Book 6: "The Free World".  As expected, it had not found its audience and, much as I adored the character and his world, I wrapped up the story.  I had ideas about where the story could go later on, should it unexpectedly find a late following, but for now it was done.  (A paperback and eBook collected version was later released.)

Quite disheartened, I decided to treat all of the previous time as warm-up.  Like it didn't happen.  I wanted not to think of that as wasted effort, but instead as little more than rehearsal.  The real writing, the real career, would start now.

Looking for something that could theoretically be commercial but that I would still be just as in love with, I devised a series of Young Adult novels called The Sleepwar Saga.  In it, a group of six teenagers who don't know each other would find that, when they slept, they were together in another part of the country.  Fighting evil, questioning their reality, learning to work together.

It took some 8 months before the final draft of Straw Soldiers was ready, but it is the work I am most proud of, and I'm ecstatic about it and the rest of the series to come.  Whether this find its audience or not I cannot yet say, but even if it does not I will be thrilled to write the rest of the installments, so in love am I with this series and these characters.

Other books fight for idea space in my head, however.  There's the fun Lawyers vs Zombies: The Legal Dead which I can't quite forget about, ever.  The Universe Device was actually plotted out to a great degree and ready to be written, until I decided that I needed more novels under my belt before I could attempt that one.  (The structure is more complex than I feel I can do justice to yet.)

I also have a Christian thriller in mind, a sci-fi murder mystery, and a few horror shorts that I began but lost track of when I didn't feel I was quite hitting the mark.  (I'll get back to them later.)

I love writing.  I love self-publishing.  I hope someday I can focus on it as a career, instead of that thing that takes up all of my time when I'm not at my "real" job.

But it never would have happened if I hadn't been inspired to contact the creator of a book series I loved and asked about writing for his characters.  I'm so glad I did.



Some links for people looking into self-publishing:
Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing
CreateSpace for the paperback version
Draft2Digital or Smashwords (which I haven't used, but are important if you don't want to be Kindle-exclusive)

Defining Characters by Groups

A little trick I taught myself when writing screenplays was not to rely on defining a character as himself or herself, but to define each person in relation to the others.

To some extent, this applies to prose as well - not as much to POV characters as to others, but even then it can be helpful.

But let me back up a little.

In print, the reader has access to the POV characters' innermost thoughts and feelings. What this means is that it is not only their actions that define them, but what goes on inside their heads.

On screen, this is not so.  Nor is it for characters on the page whose thoughts the reader is not privy to.  What does this mean for the writer?  Allow me to explain my thoughts.

No matter what work you put into a character's design - their backstory - what matters to the reader is what they see.  If the things you invented do not impact the story, the reader sees none of it and your detailed character bio results in nothing but a 2D stereotype that the eye merely glances over and forgets.

An example: your main characters stop at a sandwich shop three days a week for lunch.  You have a beautiful bio drawn up for the guy behind the counter.  He fought in Operation: Iraqi Freedom - two tours - but when he came back he was a changed man, tortured, haunted, and his wife left him.  Since then, he has become a Buddhist and is seeking inner peace and enlightenment.  His father back in Idaho is dying of cancer, but the sandwich man can't leave his job to go and take care of Dad because he needs the money.

How does this manifest on the page?  "Here's your sandwiches, ladies.  Enjoy!"

That's it.  None of the backstory you devised, the intricate personality you worked out in detail, shows itself to the reader, because the story being told has nothing to do with any of it.  In practical terms, he is not any of those things in your bio: he's just the guy who says, "Enjoy."

So what if you define him in relation to other characters.  Maybe he's like the Soup Nazi and is combative with your leads.  Or perhaps he owns the sandwich place with his sister who is a flake and sleeping on his couch, and so every time we are in the sandwich shop there is some nice conflict happening between them.

Even if it's just a little color, it is something.  He's no longer just the guy who hands your MCs their sandwiches; he is a character.

Your other characters can benefit too; it doesn't have to be just bit-parters.  If you have decided that Jack's younger brother was bitten by a poisonous spider and almost died while vacationing in Brazil, unless your plot is about spiders then the most we will see (unless you shoehorn in some dialogue to explain it - which is itself problematic) is Jack staring suspiciously at a spider in the corner of the room.  Not compelling drama.

So start again.  Make Jack a control freak, and Betty a free spirit who is offended by structure.  Together they spark, and will create drama simply from the way they respond to every situation.  This particular example is a cliche, but there's a reason for that: it's a good one.

The point, though, is that while backstory is not a bad thing, if it doesn't show up on the page then it isn't a good thing either.  Define your characters against one another, make it so that the way they behave is in direct contrast to everyone else.  How they respond should not only be about the events of their past, but about how other characters will respond to the same stimuli.

If you want drama, if you want entertaining characters, if you want depth, then that bio sheet alone is probably worthless.  Think about they way every character relates to, and contrasts with, the others.  Know their alliances, their clashes, their romances.  Define the group together, so you know they complement and contrast.

Make good drama that doesn't just exist in theory.  Then write it.

Book review: "The Martian Girl"

The Martian Girl
by Paul Magrs
(Firefly Press)


Let me get this out of the way first: it's not quite as good as "Lost on Mars" was.

But given that I rated them both 4 stars on Goodreads, there's obviously not much in it.

Like the first book, it's quite episodic and doesn't feel like the plot really gets going until rather late in.  The first 50% or so of this book is kind of picking up the pieces of "Lost on Mars" and reshuffling them to get to the place this book needs them to be.

Most of this part is still good reading - although I found the ambivalent way the novel treats Professor Swiftnick to be somewhat disorienting.  At one point, it appears as though we're going to be expected to suddenly treat Swiftnick as a friendly character - though this is soon negated again.  It's probably just bad reading on my part, but it feels to me as if Paul Magrs momentarily gets lost in recreating the feel of certain other books and places the character in a role unsuited to him for a brief time.

That quibble aside (and it's a minor one) this is a very enjoyable book from start to finish.  I don't feel it has the strength of the early portions of "Lost on Mars" which had a very nice "Little House on the Martian Prairie" feel - but neither does it have the wrenching quality of that book's episodic format.

This still follows the same storybook format of a series of differentiated adventures, but somehow the whole feels somewhat more "tied together" than before.  To me, "Lost on Mars" somehow only felt as though it had arrived at the real story it was telling when Lora made it to the City Inside.

That location is where we pick up in "The Martian Girl", and remain for the first half of the book.  Even though it still takes a goodly while for this book to wind up at the next phase of the adventure, it is so breezy and fun to read that you'll never feel like the time spent is too long.  Indeed, I could have remained in the City Inside for the entire book and never felt cheated.

But that's not what this series is doing.  No, as I stated earlier, the kind of storybook, episodic format keeps us always rolling along to the next set of circumstances - and here there is a distinctly more pronounced L Frank Baum air to the whole thing than I recall from the first book.  Whether this comparison is intended or the product of my own reading preferences is of no consequence; the similarity is there (for me, at least) and is something I appreciated.

It's a necessity of any sequel, but I felt slightly let down at the fact that some of the odd occurrences in "Lost on Mars" are given explanations here (or at least a hint in that direction) which dilutes the impact of them rather - but only in the way that Poirot revealing the murderer will always be vaguely less compelling than the investigation to undercover him in the first place.

Lora's world is still zany, enthralling and well-drawn, and most of the characters refuse to remain as they are, instead developing as the story goes on.  Plenty of mystery is still left regarding events and people from the first book, and although I am eager to discover the truth I am happy to wait while I enjoy the desire for eventual enlightenment.  There's so much still to find out, things that will no doubt alter the way we understand the world of this Mars.

And Lora herself still has room to grow, to become the woman it seems she is likely to be.

Oh - Barbra the Vending Machine finally made it into the story here.  I was hoping it wouldn't take her long...

Buy the e-book on Amazon US

99c sale!

September 15-19

"Straw Soldiers" Kindle edition is on sale for:


99c from the Amazon US store

99p from the Amazon UK store



Pick it up, before this sale ends!

Perfection Minus One

Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott once wrote an article called "Crap Plus One".

In it, they expounded that one of the problems with screenwriters trying to make it in the industry is seeing a terrible movie that got made, and thinking: "Well, I can do better than that!"

The problem is that a bad movie can happen for many reasons, but Hollywood is filled with amazing unmade scripts, and anyone aiming for the level of "crap plus one" will end up with a massively substandard script that will get them nowhere.

The same is true for self-publishers like me.  It is so easy to see a bunch of lousy indie books that have had unexpected success, and to think: "Well, I can do better than that!"

Success happens for a bunch of coincidental and unfathomable reasons.  Sure, it is very possible for a bad book to make a lot of money.  But more often than not (much more often) a bad book will just sit there making nothing very much at all.

You need to aim for the best you can possibly manage.  Only by writing a truly excellent book can you be reasonably in with a shot at hitting that magic cross-section of quality and marketability and chance that creates the hit novel.

But (and here's where I get controversial) there's just as much of a problem the other way.  Aiming for "perfection minus one" will lead to nothing but frustration and eventually giving up.  Unless you're a truly gifted author of the like the world rarely sees, your work will never live up to the standard you demand of yourself if you want "perfection minus one".

The number one reason for my despondency and desire to pack it all in is my failure to write prose the way Vladimir Nabokov did.  Or to create whimsical characters as well as Paul Magrs does.  Or construct immersive, enthralling worlds the way George R.R. Martin does.

I can't do it.  I want to, but it doesn't happen.  And when I refuse to accept anything less than the soaring standards of the world's best writers, I become so fed up with the level of my own talent that I almost decide to just give it all up.  Do something else, something less demanding.  Something where I don't feel like such a freaking failure every single day.

Ben Burtt, sound designer and sometime editor of the Star Wars movies had a saying posted at his work area: "Films aren't released, they escape."  A movie is never 'done'.  It is put out into theaters only because the release date is up and the filmmakers have no other choice.  They would fiddle with it endlessly if given half a chance.

Aim for the best that you personally can possibly do.  Accept your limits - strive to break them - and don't hate yourself when you fail to live up to impossible standards.  Improve every day.  Reach for the sky; just stay grounded.

Be amazing.  But know that you will never be the best, and that's okay.  'Great' is a lot better than 'decent' - even if it isn't quite 'perfect'.

Memorable Supporting Characters

I don't mean necessarily your host of secondary characters.  Sure, you want them to be memorable and full of personality too, but this article is about something else.

I'm talking about the little guys.  The two-liners.  The people that fill out the world your protagonist inhabits.  In most cases, you're going to have a lot of bit-parters who don't have much to say.  But if none of them are interesting to read about, all of those small lines here and there add up to an awful lot of space being filled up by stuff that nobody cares about.

And it's not even a matter of creating a fleshed-out role for each of these either.  Let's face it: no matter how detailed a bio sheet you create for these guys, if the person just sits in an office and contributes an expository line once every hundred pages, that background you invented for them just isn't going to come across to the reader.  At all.

Something I've been thinking about lately are colorful characters in some of my favorite TV shows that were invented just to be these amusing bit-part characters who instantly draw your attention even if they have only one line of dialogue (or no lines).

I think about Starburns on Community.  Just a guy who shaves his sideburns into star-shapes to give himself a visual hook.  Nothing else, but he became a recurring guest character just on the strength of the kooky appeal of this gimmick.

Or the first full-length episode of Nickelodeon classic The Adventures of Pete & Pete.  One of the Petes encounters an antagonistic bully by the name of "Open Face", who only eats open-faced sandwiches.  His cohorts with the meager dialogue include "Gravy Breath" and "Butt-Stripe" (whose bike saddle leaves an identifiable mark).

These are the kind of quirky, colorful extras that can really bring your story to life.  I'm not saying your Steve Jacobs and Jill Watsons have no place - but when all of your characters are such lifeless, dull creations, much of the story's atmosphere is robbed of color.

So yeah.  Why not have that man who points your protagonist in the right direction be a purple-haired punk in an Edwardian suit?  Why not have that office co-worker be nicknamed "The Voice" because she spends all day rehearsing to herself for that reality-show audition she has coming up?  A kid with a raccoon for a pet, a man who only wears fur coats, a teenage girl who only wears teal...

Be creative.  Let your minor characters pack a quick punch.  Fill out your world with people that lend it life, not a thin fog of characterless line-feeders.

Entertainment is your job, writers.  Do that!

Book 2: The Difficult Second Album

Just as with musicians, the sophomore release is in some ways the hardest.

It's partly the artist to blame, and partly the audience.  The first book/album is the culmination of possibly years of creative percolating.  After that, it's time to just get the next product in the assembly line out, and it's likely to be a letdown.

Why is the audience to blame?  Well, in some ways the expectation of something just as amazing as the first installment is impossible to meet.  The consumer is not privy to the long history that first work had prior to its release, and can't fully accept that the sequel is simply not going to have the same creative weight behind it.

But let's face it: it's mostly on us.  The writer, the musician, the movie director.  If we experience the old Sophomore Slump it's because we haven't put the work in that we needed to.

Yeah, it's difficult.  You want any second installment to be the same, but different.  In exactly the right ratio.

It's very easy to make the second book too similar to the first.  I call this the "Chamber of Secrets" effect.  An installment that serves only to reinforce what the author intends to be the "pattern" of the series, and not to add anything artistically new to the pot.  It has a purpose - to say "this is what the series is" - but to the reader this is merely dead space.

And yet, going the other way is even worse.  When the second book is too different to the first, the series loses all cohesion and you lose all of the readers who wanted more of the kind of thing they liked so much about that initial book.

There's a line there.  A very narrow, fuzzy, hard-to-find line.  And that's where I'm walking right now, plotting and inventing, trying my darndest to pull the story of Book 2 out of the mire of swirling possibilities it exists in currently.

If you fail at the second lap, you've lost the race.  This is no time to get complacent.  This, right here, this is the biggest challenge.  And I have to be ready for it.

Putting Together the Puzzle Pieces

I've talked before about being a "Plotter".  I don't write without knowing everything that's going to happen in the story (but leaving room for surprises to happen along the way).

So what does that look like?  Well, for me, in many ways it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

First, you have to decide what difficulty level you're going for, what length of project.  Is it a 200-piece puzzle, or a 550-piece?  Then: is it the picture of puppies, the sailboat, or the bridge of the Enterprise?

After that is the hardest part: starting.  You see, it's not just a puzzle.  It's a puzzle that has been knocked over.

Because you don't have any of the pieces to begin with.  Here and there on the floor you can see a couple of puzzle pieces, but on their own you have no idea what they are or how they fit into the bigger picture.  But following the trail of pieces leads you to more, and eventually you find the motherload: the stash of all the puzzle pieces somewhere underneath the coach.

Of course, the work isn't over yet.  Oh no.  You have to sort through the pieces, find which goes where - tossing out any pieces that you think belong to another puzzle altogether.

It's hard work, this, but satisfying.  You get to see the picture come together.  And it's a fascinating experience, at times, to find that what you thought was a bird's eye is actually a black shirt button, and that edge piece is really an odd-shaped center-piece.

But once the picture is complete, you can start the actual writing, knowing in full what you're going for, what the actual story is.  Because if a character isn't heading for a specific destination, they really aren't headed anywhere at all.

Right now, in planning Book 2 of The Sleepwar Saga, I'm at the early piece-collecting stage.  I have a handful of disparate segments, but I'm just on the verge of them leading me to the main pile of spilled pieces.

And soon will begin the main planning of the book.  And then, the writing.  I just can't write about the basket of puppies without seeing what the completed jigsaw puzzle looks like in the first place - writing about a few loose puzzle pieces just leaves me with a mess of purposeless prose.

My Struggle With Adverbs

Hello.

My name is Doug, and I am an addict.

It's been four days since my last adverb.  Already I find my fingers itchy, desperate to type that beautiful "-ly" at the end of of a word.

Adverbs are not inherently bad; I know this.  Used in moderation they are descriptive and poetic.  But I know I can never use just one.

Sure, it starts with a "softly" or a "wryly".  But before you know it the adverbs are spilling off of the screen and I wake up in a pile of my own vomit, staring at the page I have written in my stupor:

"Hi there," said Fred breezily.
"Hello," Jennifer replied flatly.
Frowning, Fred delicately inquired, "Is everything okay?"
She sighed.  "I guess," Jennifer answered despondently.

Friends don't let friends abuse adverbs.  I need your help.

It's a struggle, but if I can get through today without an adverb, I know maybe I can do the same again tomorrow.  And then the next day.  And the next.

One sentence at a time, my friends.  One sentence at a time...

Book review: "The Black Archive 6: Ghost Light"

I have decided to occasionally do some reviews of indie or small-press books on this blog.  I will probably only post positive ones, as I see no need to spread the word about bad or mediocre books.

This is Obverse Books' sixth in the series of novella-length analyses of Doctor Who stories.  All of them so far (I haven't yet read Simon Bucher-Jones' "Image of the Fendahl" since I haven't seen the TV story) have been excellent, and Jon Dennis' look at "Ghost Light" is no exception.

Now, it has been about a month or so since I read this book (my life has been busy with other things in the interim, as seen on the blog you are currently visiting) so I can't be as detailed in my review as I would like to be.  A great many of the things I would have commented on after reading have simply been forgotten.

So this review will be a rough overview rather than a blow-by-blow dissection of the book.  I really wanted to get this written sooner, but other events took priority.

My overall summation is that this is a great book that does a fabulous job at analyzing and deconstructing the final piece of 20th century Doctor Who to be shot: "Ghost Light".  However, it is somewhat less of a revelation than other books in this "Black Archive" have been, due only to the fact that so much has been written about the serial in the intervening 27 years that Jon Dennis (despite having many new things to say) must in part be treading well-traveled ground.

One of the things that pleased me about the analysis in this book is that Dennis largely avoids the most common topic of discussion these days when it comes to this serial.  The DVD release revealed that according to the writer and script editor, the exact nature of Josiah and 'Control' was supposed to be that of a biological experiment.  Josiah was the 'Survey' and 'Control' was...  Well, yeah.

Much of the debate about the confusing nature of "Ghost Light" as a televisual story revolves around exactly how clear this fact was to the audience at the time.  ('Not at all' being the correct answer.)  Wisely, Jon Dennis says little or nothing about this, because he seems to recognize that it has absolutely nothing at all to do with the story being told; it is backstory, pure and simple.

That is to say, whether one comprehends the biological or physical function of these characters is irrelevant; we understand their story function completely.  We see that Josiah evolves into what he considers to be the dominant lifeform on the planet, and we see Control (once she is let out of her captivity) follow a similar evolutionary path.

(Yes, I know this is not how evolution works,  It's a story - a metaphor - and I am merely using the terminology presented on screen.)

Because this is almost the only topic debated these days on the subject of "Ghost Light", Jon Dennis avoids it and barely if ever mentions it.  Very wise move.

Onto the first chapter, then: "I Wanted to See How it Works 1: Angels in the Architecture".

This chapter is a very insightful look at how "Ghost Light" (again, the last story to be recorded for many a year on Doctor Who) evolved (sorry) with the times, both in relation to the series itself and cinema as a whole.  Dennis shows his working in hypothesizing that this serial is an excellent piece of evidence to show that modern Doctor Who would have wound up more or less the same as it is whether or not it had been taken off the air for 16 years.

Along the way, it takes in the basic inspiration behind this particular serial - even addressing the novel "Lungbarrow" (which ardent Who fans will know is very closely related to this story).

A great introduction for the book, with some intriguing things to say.

"Talent Borrows, Genius Steals: Sampling and Remix Culture" is the second chapter, basically dedicated to exploring the inspirations behind every aspect of "Ghost Light".  It examines the way (and the reasons why) we incorporate existing ideas and works into our current creative output, and is an interesting look at the story's roots.  (Even if it can get a bit listy.)

Chapter 3 is "The Secret Origin of a Haunted House".  It discusses the history of haunted house stories in (and out of) Doctor Who and attempts to analyze what exactly makes a 'haunted house story'.

Dennis then shows the ways "Ghost Light" uses, abuses, and eschews the conventions of the haunted house tale, and what effect the serial appears to be going for.  In general it is a very thought-provoking chapter that might make you look at certain Doctor Who serials in a different way.

Where would fiction be without the old 'mind control' device?  That is the subject of Chapter 4: "Where is My Mind?: Moral Culpability and Mind Control".

It's a nice examination of the reasons why fiction writers (and Doctor Who writers in particular) choose to include the element of mind control in their stories - and the problems that arise in general and in "Ghost Light" specifically.  But it is the research and explanation about real-life mind control that I found most illuminating.

That's not to denigrate the point of the chapter, however, where Jon Dennis has some great insights about the mind control trope which anyone who has an interest in either writing or literary analysis ought to find intriguing.

Chapter 5 ("I Wanted to See How It Works 2: "So Where Precisely is Java?") is basically an examination of one particular plot inconsistency in the serial.  There's nowhere near enough here to justify filling out a whole chapter (and indeed it is a very short one) but it requires enough explanation that it couldn't really be just an aside elsewhere in the text.

(I would have made it an Appendix myself, but it could be argued that an appendix is just a chapter put in an unusual place and therefore the distinction here is a moot one.)

The real meat of this book is in Chapter 6: "Scenes From the Class Struggle in Gabriel Chase: Darwinism, Social Darwinism, and Religion".  It is the longest, most detailed, most political, and most meaty chapter in the book.

It is also the most difficult for me to discuss and summarize - not only because of its complexity and the breadth of its topic, but because the details are more hazy at this distance and I don't wish to misrepresent the book by getting any of its ideas or details wrong.

Dennis in this chapter presents the ideas and history of evolution, and of so-called 'social Darwinism', and the ways they are incorporated and represented by the serial "Ghost Light".  It is a fascinating chapter, and a great look at the main subject of this story that for some reason never really gets the attention and analysis it deserves (in favor of nit-picking the presentation of the story instead).

Finishing up with a chapter called "I Wanted to See How it Works 3: God's Away on Business", the writer basically sums up his experiences researching and writing this work, as well as a final thought on audience reaction to the TV serial.

Jon Dennis is a great fiction writer, and his clever brain and witty asides really make this book a success.  Though I would rate the book 4 stars - rather than the 5 stars many feel it deserves - this really is the side effect of "Ghost Light" being a topic discussed to death over the years, giving it none of the freshness that a monograph on "Rose", "The Massacre" or "The Ambassadors of Death" inherently has.

Strongly recommended for anyone with the slightest intellectual interest in Doctor Who and critical analysis.

Buy the book here

Plotters vs Pantsers: why you shouldn't choose

You shouldn't choose because, of course, "Plotter" is the obviously correct selection.

I kid, but let me back up a bit:  What are these terms?

Writers tend to use these words to describe the two basic types that make up their group.  "Plotters" plan the story out in advance, and write to an outline.  "Pantsers" make it all up on the fly.

So which is better?  This is what I came here to explain: there is no choice.  You don't decide which path to follow; you learn which group you are already in.

It's not about technique, it's about the way you naturally write.

Some will say that Plotters leave no room for inspiration to hit, or that Pantsers hit writer's block and give up too easily.  Neither of these are necessarily (or even often) true.

Let me lay my cards on the table: I'm a Plotter.  And how.  I can't even start writing until I have every last beat of the story figured out.  I just can't do it.  (Or rather, I can't do it well, which is kind of the point.)  If I try to write without a very sophisticated outline, the story just veers off into nowhere and I have to delete vast swathes of text and start again.

For me, a story needs to have a shape.  I don't just put finger to keyboard and see what comes out.  I know what comes out: nonsense.  A story is about progression, about characters following their nature but encountering hiccups and overcoming them and developing in certain precise and entertaining ways.  If you just let them bumble about doing whatever they feel like, it might be believable but it sure as hell won't be entertaining.

Ah, you may well cry, that is what rewriting is for.  And this is true.  Many writers find the story in the redraft stage and get everything into shape then.  Me?  I'd rather do all that pesky rewriting before the writing has actually started.

It's much easier to redraft a "beat sheet", or treatment, than a 90,000 word document.

But have I abandoned all artistic integrity by sticking to an outline?  Have I hamstrung myself, leaving out all sense of inspiration and become a slave to a blueprint that I have bound myself to?

Not at all.  In those cases where things start developing in ways that contradict my outline (and yet seem potentially more interesting than my outline) I see where that takes me and develop a new outline where necessary.  (Or else realize I was right the first time and return to an earlier file which I conveniently saved when I began to deviate.)

Similarly, Pantsers are not necessarily more prone to giving up due to writer's block than Plotters.  We Plotters have the same writer's block - we just experience it earlier (in the planning stages).  Pantsers, in some ways, have a better reason to just plow ahead and see where the story takes them; if a plotter becomes stuck on how to implement his or her outline then it becomes harder to just power through the blockage.

So neither is necessarily beneficial.  There is no reason to choose between the two, based on merit.  What is important is to find out which of the two you are and do so quickly.  The more time you waste following the wrong technique, the harder it will be to write anything half-way decent.

I legitimately do not understand Pantsers.  How is it possible to craft a comprehensible and entertaining story without knowing where everything is leading?  There are so many strands to a novel that I do not see how a writer can cause them to artistically convene and converge in any kind of believable and satisfying manner by doing it on the fly.

And yet it is done.  Again and again, every single day, by artists whose talent is far above my own.  I couldn't do it, that is for sure.  It's not about choosing, it's about discovering.  And I discovered very early in my life that I can only produce a satisfactory story by doing all the donkey work up front.

You may be the opposite.  You may find that any outlining you do results in a mundane and predictable story that satisfies no-one, and the only way to create something of worth is to sit at the keyboard and figure it all out as you go.

It's not a choice; it's an identity.

Twitter account

Hey all.

Just a quick post to say that I have officially joined Twitter!

Yeah, I'm a newb at this, but follow me on the Twits @jdouglasburton for all the news, and whatever random thoughts pop into my head that can be expressed in 140 characters or fewer.

I have a few ideas for blog posts in the coming days, so keep your eyes on this page as well.

Paperback now available!

That's right, Book 1 of The Sleepwar Saga is now available in genuine Dead Tree form!

It's 6"x9" and 264 pages of awesomeness.  And you should buy it today!

$8.99+shipping from Amazon US

£6.99+shipping if you're in the UK

Or, of course, the Kindle e-book version is still available for $2.99 or £2.49 from the links elsewhere on this blog.

Character diversity in fiction

Diversity is important.

Now, I don't believe in tokenism, but I do believe in representation.  As a straight white male, it is all too easy for me to be blind to the way my 'type' is over-represented in fiction.  That most fiction seems to be directly catered to me, to appeal to me, to feature me.

But having diversity among your characters is not only about representation; it's also just good drama.  What your characters look like might not seem superficially important (in text there is no color) but even if all of the characters are white (or black, or Hispanic, or desi) it is important to make each distinct.

Basically, the less variation the characters' cultural and developmental backgrounds, the less inherent drama there is in their interactions.  Why limit yourself?  No matter how well you define your individual characters, if they all share so many of the same characteristics then there is much less scope for clashes.

For me, as a function of where I live, it is easy for me to create a naturally diverse cast.  I simply look at my friends and co-workers and draw from them - as they are from various backgrounds and ethnicities, so will my own characters be.

Especially the teenagers I work with, since the Sleepwar Saga leads are all teens as well.  As I look to real young people I know from which I can extrapolate brand new fictional versions, I naturally will create a diverse group as that is the culture that surrounds me.  Were I still living in some of the more overwhelmingly white areas I have lived in before, perhaps I would have to work that much harder to ensure I created a realistically and entertainingly diverse cast of characters.

That's not to say I always succeed in my efforts.  Only after the fact did I realize that all six of my leads (and the supporting cast of "Straw Soldiers" as well) are cisgendered hetereosexual able-bodied people.  Clearly this is an area I will need to deliberately focus on if I want to be representative (and to mine all resources for inherent drama).

Actually, one of the characters in "Straw Soldiers" is gay, but as it never came up in the text no one will ever know.

What about gender?  More than half of the world's population is female, so why are so few fictional characters female?  Especially in movies and on TV, but books can be just as guilty.

I want to be diverse.  I want to be representative.  Not just to ensure that straight white men are not the only (or even primary) type that gets stories written for them, but because when drama is all about the way characters clash and interact, why would any writer remove potential for this by limiting the variation among the core cast?

But while sometimes this comes easily, at other times I realize how far I still have to go if I want to meet my goals.  It's so easy to surround yourself with people like yourself - to write about people like yourself - that you just don't notice how insufficient this representation actually is.

What is 'Young Adult' fiction, exactly?

And why write it?

This is just a question I was thinking about lately, and figured I'd jot down some thoughts.  You see, 'genre' is an interesting concept which so many people seem to get wrong.

Genre doesn't define content; content defines genre.

In other words, no good 'Young Adult' book (since that's the category I'm discussing today) began with the author thinking: "I'd like to write a YA novel.  What elements do I need to put in to make it YA?"

Many writers do, indeed, think like that.  But not the good ones.

Writing YA isn't about taking some of the staples of the genre (dystopian future, strong female protagonist, vampires) and figuring out a plot you can build around them.  This only leads to inferior fiction.  No, instead 'Young Adult' fiction is merely fiction that is about being a young adult.

It's about writing your story in such a way that it is defined by the experience of being a teen (or person of similar age).  Not about featuring teenagers; rather, it is about being a teenager.  The entire subjective experience should be the way an actual young person views and chooses in the world.  This is what makes a YA story, not the plot elements.

So why write YA?  Why is the young adult experience such a popular topic for authors and readers alike?  My guess is that the experience of 'coming of age', of being right at the point in one's life where one is transitioning from dependency to autonomy, is simply the most inherently dramatically rich period to form a story around.

This is a time when emotions are at their height, when the weight of the future first begins to burden a young mind, when the person they will be for the duration of their lives begins to fully take form.  Obviously, this makes for a vast well of story potential to be mined.

And adults - who are actually the main consumers of YA fiction - will connect with the material every bit as powerfully as those who are going through the same experience depicted in the story.  We have all been that age, and any story that properly conjures up the reality of having been that age will bring us older folks back to when we felt the exact same way.

One of my favorite movies is Where the Wild Things Are.  It is based on a young children's book, and is about the experience of being a young child.  But is not for young children.

Oh, there is nothing there that is unsuitable for kids.  I just don't think it caters to them particularly.  It doesn't speak to them in any strong way, because its purpose is to remind us who have left that period behind of exactly what it felt like to be a kid.  What we went through, the way the world treated us.  It reminds us of that time, and helps us relate to those who are currently children.

Kids don't need that.  They're already living it.  It's the rest of us that sometimes need to be reminded of just what a fearsome and difficult time childhood actually is (or can be).

That's what I like about YA, and why I choose to write it.  It is, in a basic way, about being at a time in our lives that defined us, that we struggled through, that we sometimes find it all too easy to forget.

And sometimes it has vampires in it.

Meet Kaz Harper

KASSANDRA "KAZ" HARPER

A 17-year-old high school student from Northern California.

Loves video games, has her own guild in an online MMORPG.  Keeps her head down in school, lucked into some popular friends.  Home life a bit unsteady.

A fairly normal life, all things considered.

Until the night she went to sleep and found herself in a strange forest, with five other kids she had never met before in her life.

It couldn't be real, of course.  Could it?  Especially when a living scarecrow attacked the group from out of nowhere.  Almost like something from one of her video games...

With all Kaz has to deal with at school, at home - in life - the last thing she wants is to become embroiled in some fight against evil for some higher being she never sees.

But then, we can't always get what we want.  And as she learns to work with the other teens, to forge a team of six very different people plunged into this bizarre scenario together, she may just come to understand that if you try, sometimes you might find you get what you need...

Available now for the Kindle at $2.99

Paperback coming soon...

New YA series: The Sleepwar Saga!

Hi guys!

I've been busy for a while, but I'm back!  I decided to revamp the blog and use it for all of my stuff, not just "The Star Travels of Dr. Jeremiah Fothering-Smythe".

Out now is my new YA novel - the first in "The Sleepwar Saga".

It's called "Straw Soldiers", and it is about Kaz Harper, a teenage girl who argues with her family, plays video games, and struggles through school.  Until one night she goes to sleep and finds herself in another part of the country surrounded by five other teens in the same predicament.

Forced to band together to fight against evil, these six strangers will come together as friends, as colleagues, as soldiers in this Sleepwar.

As of now it's only available as a Kindle e-book (the paperback will be out soon) but that's okay!  The Kindle app is free even if you don't own an actual Kindle, and it can be downloaded on most mobile devices - and even your home computer!

$2.99 from Amazon US

£2.49 from Amazon UK

Buy it today!