Fatty-Fatheads

By Kathleen Sawisky, Esq.

There wasn’t always a sister. Wasn’t always a foil to my main character, to illustrate her alienation from family, her transition as a young girl to a young woman. Then one day I asked myself “What if Natalia has an older sister?” I couldn’t get the concept out of my head, and Beth was born. It was monumentally frustrating on many levels; everything had to be rewritten, and I mean everything. The inclusion of a character who had not existed in the ten, twenty, even thirty previous reincarnations of the story.

I can’t deny it. The addition of Beth has made the story stronger and, more importantly perhaps, made Natalia a more rounded character.

That’s what I’ve always tried to achieve. A richer, more vivid world that my characters and prance merrily around in while simultaneously avoiding numerous explosions, and for a solid three years I thought I had it down to a science. It was only when I turned, maybe 24, 25, when I looked back on my writing and it felt thin, watery. Oh sure, lots happened. Explosions, murder, death, love, gun fights, and just a ridiculously amount of bloodshed. I had it all, but none of it resonated with me. I can’t speak as to what happened or how I mentally flipped the switch to begin the transformation into a rich, carefully detailed world. I assume it has something to do with maturity which, yes, I know, is highly ironic given the number of poop jokes I can level out at a person during an average conversation. Still, something changed. It wasn’t the way I wrote, necessarily, but the way I understood how I wrote things. I can only assume that is a by-product of my own understanding of the world altering. Even at 24, knowing that my writing was flimsy, I couldn’t create the proper voice that reflected my own vision.

Once again, I blame my time at University for educating me on what was going on in my own head. I’m less stubborn now, but more importantly, I think less of my own previous writing. I’m not looking back at what I wrote and thinking to myself, “Ah yes, this is perfect. I am brilliant and all will bow down to me. Bring me the head of Cussler and Frazen on two silver trays so I may kick them about the throne room like a football.” What I haven’t edited is still thin, watery, weak, and the editing process is grueling. Still, just like the addition of Beth as a foil to Natalia, making her a stronger, more vivid character, so too will each and everyone of these changes. The moral of my post? I don’t think any of us can claim we are so perfect that we can claim our writing to be flawless. We need to be willing to take a step back and say, “Hey, I’m acting like a fathead. I’m not THAT good, but with practice, I just might be.”

Unless you are Cussler or Franzen. Those guys will always be fatheads.

The Proof Of The Pudding Is In The Eating

by      Amber P.

Regardless of your ability level or experience, there comes a point where you’ve done all you can to improve  your writing at the moment. Sometimes it’s because you’ve stared at it so many times, it looks too familiar, all soft and worn like your old pants, and you just can’t see it from a distance anymore. Sometimes it’s because you’ve hit the limit of your skills and you’re down to only making equivocal changes, not improving anything. Whatever the reason, it’s come time to get some fresh perspectives.

We have our various ways of getting these extra pairs of eyes, such as real life friends, face to face groups, online critique groups, and beta readers. We have our various processes; some of us like to get feedback while developing everything, some of us wait until it’s as polished as we can get it before any other soul is allowed to see it. At any rate, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.

Today, I thought I’d share some observations on perspectives.

My Characters Have Somewhat Embarrassing Inspirations

by      Amber P.

 

I’ll open this post the same way as last week: my stories don’t have very glorified origins.

My WIP is this ambitious, galaxy-sized plot with all sorts of characters I love, some fun settings, and plenty of twists and turns. It’s pretty much a disaster but I still love it (most days). I love everything about it that isn’t a plot hole, but the elements that really keep me coming back to it are the two main characters and their relationship. When I feel like the whole plot is stupid and I should forget about it and never look back, something reminds me of those two guys and the little soft spot in my heart makes me go back and keep writing for them. You would never suspect that both of them have inspirations almost too embarrassing to talk about.

My Idea Farm

by      Amber P.

 

My story ideas do not have very glorified origins.

I generally have to cobble things together with hammer and nail. I don’t know how other people do it, but the whole idea of “creativity” is something that’s always felt like an ability other people have. I remember having it when I was a child, how I could just come up with things on command and ideas would even pop into my head unbidden. I had all these grand make-believe worlds and stories I could play in and populate with an endless supply of fictional characters. That disappeared a long time ago and has been replaced with the terribly analytical, realistic, critical-thinking scientist in me. The only way I can get stories together now is to construct them from the ground up, and half the time one little “but why?” can bring the whole plot crashing back down.

My lifelong method, if you can call it that, of forming story ideas is basically imagining a scene that I would love to see. If I think of enough scenes, I might be able to find some tenuous link between them, and poof, story. Since starting to write more seriously, that’s grown to also include concepts for characters or societies, which makes the haphazard throw-things-into-a-pot-and-stir style of plotting a little bit easier since I have a few more of the essential pieces of a novel to work with. I’ve started taking some initiative with these little whims of novel pieces, and now have a document titled “Idea Farm,” inside a folder titled “Idea Farm.” It’s where I keep a list of story ingredients that I can consult if I want to cram some new things together or need a bit of extra spice for something that already exists.

Here are some examples from the idea farm. They go from something as well thought out as…

An Alien Sex Scene

by S.A. Spencer

Since I’ve never written a human sex scene, writing an alien one first might be good practice. Who besides me knows how they should react? Reading John Scalzi’s hilarious short story,  How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story inspired me.

My scene isn’t as wild and crazy as Scalzi’s. Because I’ve developed Vaaytirs, a humanoid race in my novel Electric Minds, I had established a few ground rules. For instance monogamy. Kaacey and Looleigh are a couple, expecting twins. After they’re born (not as immature as marsupials) they’ll go into Looleigh’s belly pouch and nurse until too big. With twins, that shouldn’t take long, even though she’s seven feet tall.

Animals on the planet Heka, named after the Egyptian god of magic, are descended from dinosaur -like creatures. Vaaytirs are more primal than the race (Transmuteds) that came from Earth and took over their planet. They see color tones attached to emotional words. Their character voices use extra and different adjectives and adverbs than I usually write, and many of their statements and questions end in “yes?”

The scene’s purpose is not to titillate the reader, but to move the story forward. Looleigh has recently discovered that Kaacey’s great-grandmother is the product of gene manipulation and he is part Transmuted. She hasn’t been able to face him since then, and this interlude is their reconciliation moment. When he enters their bedroom, her first actions are to make the reader think she’s angry.

Would I love to post it here? Yes. Am I too cowardly? Yes. Sorry.

What is your experience with writing human/alien/fae/robot sex/love scenes?

Image from: Scienceblogs.com

 

 

Space, The Final Frontier (and some of Amber’s writing)

By      Amber P.

 

There are a lot of reasons I love science fiction. I don’t think I’ve read a work of science fiction that didn’t have some cool ideas. It’s also pretty common to see interesting commentary on humanity and society. There’s the fun of imagining (or fearing) what the future could be like, what innovations we might make technologically or culturally.

I also just really like space. Particularly, trying to wrap my mind around the unimaginable vastness and just how big things are. Just pause for a minute and think about the space between galactic superclusters. Did you realise that the sun comprises 99.85% of the solar system’s mass? And I’m sure you’ve seen this picture before:

In case it’s too small to see, the sun is, uh, one pixel on that scale.

To quote the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy…

“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”