A Brief Piece on Double-Dipping Description

I've written posts before about my philosophy for description in stories, but it's been quite a while, and I can't recall how much ground I have covered.  My use of description is counter to that of many works of modernism.  Rather than taking up long paragraphs detailing the appearance of the setting and characters and giving sensory details to accompany those, I try to make my descriptions as short, tight, and potent as possible.  I frequently "double-dip" with my sentences.

Henry's chestnut hair matched the parlor wallpaper, aluminum tracery included.

This sentence came to me while I was thinking on this subject a few minutes ago.  It's not my favorite sentence, and I don't believe I'll be using it in a story, but I think it should work well to illustrate my concept of "double-dipping."

Without any other context, this sentence tells us several things about the story in which it hypothetically resides.  First, there is a character named Henry.  This character has chestnut hair, though that probably isn't integral to the story (and I often omit such details).  This scene takes place in a parlor, and that parlor has chestnut wallpaper with aluminum tracery.  Perhaps the wallpaper even mimics the wave of Henry's hair or the lack thereof in its pattern.  That's up to a reader's imagination.  What is important here, though some readers may miss it, is that his hair is graying.  Henry could be anywhere from forty to seventy-five with such a description, but he is "aging" in any case.  First sentences will always give a lot of information to a reader, yet this sentence gives more than the typical sentence you will find, I think.  I don't "double-dip" (that is, describe character and setting at the same time) with every sentence of description that I write, but I do use this tool frequently.

Style (Poetry Edition)

Alright, so I haven't written much on the subject of poetry on this blog.  There are two poems available for reading on here that are marked with the "Poetry" tag.  They aren't my best.  I can't say that they are my worst either, unfortunately.

I wrote several poem drafts for my Intro to Creative Writing class last Fall.  Two of those became polished poems for my portfolio.  I revised a poem that I had written on a whim toward the middle of the semester to take the third and final slot in the portfolio.  The three poems earned me a 98%.  All three were later accepted by my school's literary magazine and published in print.  While the three poems cover widely different subjects, I have noticed some similarities that seem to be becoming aspects of my own personal style as a poet.

I've written two poem drafts in the last week, and I dug up a short poem that I wrote within the last few months that I think shows some promise.  Those three poems also share some similarities with the three from my portfolio.

The first aspect of my poetic writing style seems to be: short lines.  Many of my lines in these six poems have contained three or four lines, some with one or two words.  Only a handful have five.  I believe there was only about one six-word line and one seven-word line.  Looking at other poems in this year's edition of Backroads (my school's lit mag), my lines are characteristically short and fast.  One poem from the 2016 edition had similar line lengths, and about two from the 2015 edition followed suit.  I don't mean to make any comment on line length from this.  Different line lengths work not only for different poets, but also for different poems.  I find it interesting though that the style that I've been developing is somewhat peculiar.

The second aspect of my style that I've noticed is: stark images.  Some of my thought process on this subject may be bias.  I can obviously see the images well because I wrote the poems and carried the images in my head.  But I do think that there is some truth to my analysis.  I like to use words that either illicit physical impressions or visual photographs.  My images are not always concrete (as in rendering in the same way to everyone), but they are images that can be felt or seen without much straining.  I use metaphors as much as the next guy/girl, yet I try to make my metaphors as "seeable" and "feelable" as possible.

The last aspect of my style does not appear in all of my poems, but does seem to be developing.  It is a tendency to stretch out the last part of my poems.  I like to close with a long comment on the subject that the poem has been dealing with.  These comments are not precisely my own.  They are born out of the poem in question.  One of my poems in particular expresses an idea that I do not believe in, but that I thought could be used in a good poem.  I'm not sure that I like the "dishonesty" of it.  I must admit though that I did find it very interesting, and the full poem could be interpreted as satire if stretched enough.

These aspects to my style may very well change in coming months and years.  I haven't developed very far as a poet quite yet.  But I think, for now, that I enjoy this writing style and will continue using it when appropriate.

What SFF Can Do With Theme

Science fiction and fantasy can do things that other genres cannot.  I've talked about it before in posts such as this one.  Today I'd like to talk about what SFF can do with theme.

I've always been skeptical of theme.  I think "message fiction" is very hard to do well, especially in the written word.  Television shows like Boy Meets World do it justice, I think, but few stories have been able to work such subtleties into an engaging narrative, Aesop's fables and parables aside.  I like general themes that don't wish to answer a question.  Think "Good vs. Evil" and "Identity."  These sorts of themes have little to no "call to action."  They only wish to broaden your perception of something, to make your question your thinking.

In his novella The Emperor's Soul, Brandon Sanderson deals with the concept of race; however, rather than dealing with the issue in real-life terms, he evaluates the theme from an exterior position.  There is no direct parallel between the racism faced by the protagonist Shai and racism in the real world.  Sure, it is similar in places, but there is a blend of multiple issues regarding race relations that could not be addressed in a story not set in a world removed from our own.

Is it wrong to exterminate an entire sentient species just because that species is trying to kill your own?  This is the philosophical question asked by Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and its sequels, especially Speaker for the Dead.  Only SFF stories can delve into this sort of question.  As far as we know, there aren't any of sentient species in existence, so any story possessing such creatures would automatically be fantasy or science fiction (or horror, I suppose, though it would be a blend with SFF).

Susan Palwick's novelette "Hhasalin" from the September/October 2013 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction combines these two themes in an interesting way.  (I'm going to spoil the story for you, so if you'd like to read it first, I would recommend going no further.  It's an excellent tale.)  Unlike Ender's Game, this story is written from the POV of a member of the sentient species that was wiped out (though not completely, same as [spoiler alert] in Ender's Game).  Lhosi is a shaper.  Her race's planet has been invaded by humans.  The shapers fought back valiantly, but the clever humans developed a virus to eliminate their ability to shape (that is, fashion objects out of shapestone using a magical technique).  With their magic lost, the shapers were defeated.  The humans had only meant to cripple the shapers, yet in the process they inadvertently caused great illness to the native race.  Some of the shapers are immune.  Most have died out.  Their only consolations are that the virus left the shapers with an inkling of their abilities still intact and that some human families have been compassionate enough to take in orphaned shapers like Lhosi.  Lhosi herself is not subjected to a vast amount of racism, but the racism that she does face—and the greater racism faced by her race as a whole—is distinct from racism experienced in our world.  Even so, this racism is applicable to the theme of racism as it applies to our everyday lives.  The destruction of the shaper race was not intended by the humans, at least not on paper.  Some of the characters, especially the doctor character who pops in from time to time, are very sympathetic.  This is a different take on the question asked by Ender's Game and an interesting one.

Many of these sorts of themes can be explored by science fiction and fantasy.  There is no direct application for these themes in our lives; I don't think there needs to be.  The beauty of these themes, for me, is that they simply allow us to think from a genuine, neutral perspective about important issues.  Politics can be stripped in large part from these themes, making them more easily digested by people of all walks of life.  Other genres have a much harder time generating these perspectives.

Genre Hopping

Highbrow literary types annoy me.  Actually, they don't even need to be highbrow.  I suppose I'm a hypocrite in some ways with how I treat the literary form of prose, but if proponents of literary writing back off from dissing genre writing I'll be happy to do the same.  Their arguments are archaic and ignorant to what knowledge of the craft good genre fiction writers possess.  Excluding the classics, they don't even have sufficient readers to back them up.

I was thinking of an example to use in an argument supporting speculative fiction ideals and came up with "a wizard casts a spell on a tree."  Yes, that does place the ball in my court, doesn't it?  I still think the comparison can work though.

Here's my spec fic writer version:

Uleria deadpanned his chant, eyes glazing over the twisted network of willow branches.  The needles swayed under his power.  He closed his hand tight and hissed.  The whole of the tree blazed into a blue-hot inferno, brighter than the gray-blue sky of the evening.

Here's my literary writer version:

Uleria cast his words flat as one might throw a discus.  His arcane energy bristled on his lips.  The tall willow tree before him threw up a dozen terrified arms.  Unable to flee, it danced, its shimmering akin to the rain of sequins on the dress of a gyrating woman.  Uleria clenched his worn ebony fist and hissed.  A blanket of blue-eyed flames enveloped the forsaken tree.  Beside it the evening sky was dull.

This post will inevitably fail to prove my point perfectly since I'm not all too learned in the literary ways.  It would probably do better if I were to ask someone who writes in the literary style to compose a paragraph based upon "a wizard casts a spell on a tree" and use that rather than my version.  But I'm actually writing a blog post and I want to try to make my point as best I can alone, right now, before I can delay it.

Every sentence from the original version has more than one purpose.  The first part of the first sentence establishes Uleria as a character and shows an action.  The second part gives away a tiny detail about the nature of what Uleria is doing and/or how he is doing it (thus character detail), and it gives a description of the tree that evokes a stark image in very few words.  The second sentence shows a consequence of Uleria's action with another image of the tree, emphasizing the cause to the effect.  It is shorter than the first sentence to give balance.  The third sentence reveals a pair of actions in an abrupt manner, both because they don't need to be embellished and because a second shorter sentence here compliments the flow of the paragraph as a whole.  The fourth sentence shows a further consequence to the action with precise language, giving a clear picture of not only the tree, but the sky as well.  The sentence also reveals the time of day of this event.  In this paragraph, point-of-view is emphasized.  The camera lens is focused on what Uleria is focused on.

The second version is thirty words longer than the first (seventy-four words vs. forty-four words) without actually revealing anything extra.  It brings a variety of images to mind with figurative language and may stimulate the senses more than the original version, but those images distract from the story.  The sentences are given a length based not so much on flow as on how long it takes to draw up an image.  In this paragraph, point-of-view is abandoned in favor of an artistic narrator.

Is there a place for literary writing?  Certainly.  If you like it, you like it.  But I simply don't understand how some people can feel there is no place for genre writing that doesn't try to emulate literary methods.  Maybe you have to learn from a genre writer to appreciate the art that is genre writing.  Maybe the two art forms aren't even siblings, but only cousins, only one of which the average reader may favor.  I cannot say for sure.

What is a Drabble and How Do You Craft One?

It's nearly impossible to write a drabble.  Why?  Well, a drabble is a story built from exactly 100 words.  Crafting a drabble is therefore difficult, but altogether doable.  Trying to write a drabble is a lot more difficult.  Allow me to explain.

If you'd like to experiment with the literary form that is the drabble, my first advice to you is to not try to write a drabble.  Taking an idea and drafting it in exactly 100 words is a highly restrictive task that compromises the fabric of the story you are trying to tell.  The first step in crafting a drabble is to find an idea that you believe can terminate in 100 words.  This may take some practice.  If you aren't familiar with writing flash fiction, you may find yourself taking your story idea and turning it into something many times longer than a drabble.  That's perfectly fine, if your goal is simply to write a story and to have fun doing so.  Coming up with a drabble idea is quite difficult and not fully predictable.

The second step in crafting a drabble is to write a story based upon your idea.  If you want to make an outline you can, but for something this small, an outline only compresses the freedom of your writing.  It doesn't matter how long your first draft ends up, though any longer than 200 words and you'll have your work cut out for you.

After you have your first draft of your story, which probably isn't a drabble, but could be, the next step is to add or cut words until the story is within a few words of your goal of 100.  So far as I remember, I've only actually finished a story in less than 100 words while attempting to craft a drabble on a single occasion.  Normally, you will end up with more than 100 words and have to cut.  For the rest of this post, I will use my story "One Test Remains" as an example.

I wrote "One Test Remains" at a musical practice one day, with a pencil in a notebook.  It finished out at 124 words, not all that bad.  The same notebook contains the first drafts to two of my other stories, "Once and For All" and "An Ancient Beverage."  Those stories finished at 139 words and 127 words respectively.  When I went to type up "One Test Remains," I tried to get it as close to 100 words with basic cuts as possible.  (For "An Ancient Beverage," I actually rewrote the story to 106 words directly in my notebook.)

Here is what the first draft of "One Test Remains" looked like:

     Phillip dropped to his knees.  The iron head of a throwing ax arced over his skull, rending a patch of thin grey hair from his scalp.

     “Good work,” Commander Jean said.  He strode past Phillip and pulled his ax from the grass.

    “Am I a sage yet?” Phillip asked.  His wrinkled cheeks rippled.

     Jean consulted a long sheet of oiled calfskin.  “One test remains.”

     “And that is?”

     An ancient man, his skin dripping from bony limbs, hobbled onto the green from the barrack.  A green orb was etched below his right eye.

     “Him,” Jean said.  He frowned.  “You must kill the Elder in order to become a sage.”

     Phillip’s mouth went arid.  “Father.”  A sphere of blue flame erupted from his palm.  “Forgive me.”

It's a pretty tight first draft.  However, when you write a drabble, you have to cut everything that can be assumed and every adjective that doesn't matter to the story.

This is what the final draft looks like:

     A throwing ax arced over Phillip’s skull, rending a patch of thin hair from his scalp.

     “Good dodgery,” Commander Jean said.  He strode to his ax.

    Phillip’s weathered cheeks rippled.  “Am I a sage yet?”

     Jean consulted a sheet of oiled parchment.  “One test remains.”

     “And that is?”

     An ancient man, skin dripping from bony limbs, hobbled onto the green from the barrack.  An orb was etched below his right eye.

     Jean frowned.  “You must kill the Elder in order to become a sage.”

     Phillip’s mouth went arid.  “Father.”  A sphere of blue flame erupted from his palm.  “Forgive me.”

As you can see, they're quite similar, the second one just has as few descriptive words as possible.  You get all of the story and its associated flavor but almost nothing else.  That's what drabbles are for.  They allow you to infer a huge story through the reading of a microscopic story.  Most adjectives can be deleted.  An action can be replaced by a change in dialogue.  Any word that isn't required by the story can be removed.

I don't have an intermediate step to show, but often when writing a drabble one round of editing won't get the story to exactly 100 words.  In that case, give the story a second pass and really focus on exactly what the story is trying to do.  Often, the essence of the story is at the very end, for drabbles.  In this case, it's the reveal that to become a sage, Phillip must kill his father and that he is willing to do so.  This implies a larger story, one set in a world in which patricide is not nearly as taboo as it is in ours.  It also allows readers to wonder what sort of person Phillip is.  The 84 words leading up to the final paragraph allow the final 16 words to have an impact.

Crafting drabbles isn't easy and crafting good drabbles is even harder.  I've written about nineteen drabbles, three of which I expanded beyond 100 words (such as "Thought He Looked Familiar").  Of the sixteen stories that remain drabbles, I only consider nine of them to be good, as compared to my full pool of work.  Three of them were published by SpeckLit.com, where I was paid the minimum professional rate of the time.  If you'd like to read some drabbles before you attempt to craft them, I definitely recommend reading some of those to be found at SpeckLit.com.

3rd-Person POV

First off, I would like to make a shameless plug for my second story up at QuarterReads.com, “You’re Worth It.” The story is 1,358 words by Microsoft’s count, above average length for your quarter. It is a young adult romance story at heart, with sci-fi elements amplifying the conflict and seasoning the story overall. If you aren’t already signed up for QuarterReads.com and you like reading stories that are 2,000 words or less, you really ought to try it. The cost is $5 for 25 reads, usable for any story up on the site. There are a load of gems at QuarterReads from the likes of Amanda C. Davis, Cat Rambo, Ken Liu, and Alex Shvartsman.

Funny enough, every single story of mine that has been published (three stories pro-published by SpeckLit, two stories gathering royalties at QuarterReads, and two stories up “gallery-style” at non-paying MicroHorror.com) was written in 1st-person POV. I don’t have an exact stat, but my guess is that at least two-thirds of all of my stories are written in the 3rd-person. So maybe I’m not quite so qualified to write about 3rd than I am 1st. Oh well. (I actually already have an article about 1st-person narration on this blog, as well as one on how epistolary POV can lead to unreliable narration.)

In middle/high school, only two forms of 3rd-person are generally discussed in depth: limited and omniscient. 3rd-person objective was mentioned once during my sophomore year, but it’s an extremely rare POV and could probably be lumped into a different form of 3rd. I classify 3rd-person stories into five categories: limited, regular omniscient (or simply “omniscient”), head-hopping omniscient (or simply “head-hopping”), cinematic, and narrative. Most people consider the two different omniscient POVs to be one-in-the-same. I do not.

I’ve written about the elder incarnation of 3rd-limited already on this blog, so I’m going to focus on the modern structure of the POV here.  3rd-limited is almost certainly the most-used POV in fantasy and sci-fi novels today (excluding YA). It contains the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of just one character at a time. Who the POV character is can change any time a scene changes. Many novels in this POV have only one or two POV characters, but some contain a dozen or more *cough* Robert Jordan *cough*.

Regular omniscient is difficult to explain. It exists in a gray region between narrative and head-hopping. Usually stories I would consider to be written in the 3rd-person regular omniscient POV are thrown into one of those two. After much debate, I have decided to consider regular omniscient a distinct form of 3rd-person. When 3rd-limited and 3rd-cinematic have been ruled out, you’re left with the other three and possibly a tough decision. If a story looks like narrative but feels like head-hopping, I would consider it regular omniscient. In other words, if it’s clear that the narrator has access to unlimited information and yet spends most of its time inside characters’ heads in a limited-style, the story is regular omniscient. Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein is 3rd-regular omniscient, by my classification.

Dune by Frank Herbert is the classic example of head-hopping. Head-hopping is the same as limited, except the POV character changes constantly within each scene, rather than only switching at a scene break. This is done in order to see inside every important character’s head without losing the intimacy of 3rd-limited. Head-hopping is rare.

Cinematic is the rarest of the 3rd-person forms, as far as prose goes. It is the POV of films. Everything is perceived as if from a camera. No character thoughts are shown. Cinematic is very similar to the objective form. They may even be the same form. I would say that cinematic is “allowed” to have a certain element of voice to it, whereas objective is not. That would be the only major distinction. Cinematic is used almost exclusively for individual scenes because using it for an entire story would rip the humanity inherent in stories of every other POV.

If a story sounds like it could be told around a campfire, it’s probably written in 3rd-narrative. Narrative stories are told by the author or by a character outside the context of the story (though sometimes featured in the story, in the case of a story told in recollection of an event after all important knowledge on the subject has been obtained). There is a separation between characters and readers in narrative. To make up for that, narrative has a lot of freedom as far as voice goes. If the voice of the story is great, it can make up for the lack of intimacy in the form. Novice writers tend to default to narrative. While it’s the simplest form, it is also, in my opinion, the hardest to do well. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction contains many marvelous 3rd-narrative stories (but does not contain exclusively narrative stories).

There’s plenty of room for discussion as far as the 3rd-person POV goes. Some writers may prefer to generalize to two or four forms and that’s perfectly fine. I like to get into the nitty-gritty details to see how each form works. All five forms have their uses, though limited and narrative are definitely the two most commonly used.

Stahl's Keys (a.k.a. Tolkien's Keys)

I was watching The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug yesterday and devised a variant on Chekhov's Gun.  Stahl's Keys (a.k.a. Tolkien's Keys) is the rule that "If a ring of keys is set on a hook, it ought stay there."  Basically, if the narrator observes a character doing something very mundane but still mentions it, there must be some sort of resulting plot point.  You shouldn't note actions that don't matter to the story for one; for two, if you include foreshadowing like this in a story and don't deliver on that foreshadowing, readers are likely to take everything they think is foreshadowing with a grain of salt.  This isn't good, especially for writers who rely on foreshadowed information coming together during the climax and/or resolution of their stories.

Nine Writing Tips

1.  Try using "Yes, but" / "No, and" format to heighten stories' conflicts.

2.  Have a character think about doing something, yet not do it.  Great character-building strategy.

3.  The closer the resolution to your plot lines are to each other, the greater the effect.

4.  Find what your character wants most and watch his emotions as he tries (and continually fails, typically) to get it.

5.  It can be beneficial to set up medium arcs, larger than subplots but a little aside from the main arc (or even an independently-bound chunk of the main arc), to add periodical high-points triumphantly.

6.  You learn a lot about characters by how their reactions to the same events differ.

7.  For a successful resolution, build a satisfying framework in the early chapters before the conflict gets hot-'n'-heavy.  Once your characters have been through the wringer--pop--resolution.

8.  In most cases, characters were not born yesterday.  They had lives before the story began.  Use background information to your advantage and make sure you have enough so that your characters don't feel born of the plot.

9.  Weapons break.

Character Development and Time Progression as Plot

I saw a production of the play Driving Miss Daisy today that taught me a new lesson in plot.  Typically, specific events are the basis of plot.  In the case of this play, the plot was fueled by character development and time progression instead.

Character development is important.  It is essential to almost every story above a few thousand words.  When a character changes, the flavor of the story changes.  It might not be a change from chocolate to vanilla, if you will bear my analogy, but rather french vanilla to regular vanilla.  If a story stays the same flavor for too long, readers are likely to check out.  Tweak the flavor of the story enough and you can actually create movement of story.  You can achieve plot with character development.  Some short stories have exclusively character development fueled plots, to varying levels of success.  It's very difficult for a story to have what I would consider an excellent plot without any sort of traditional plotting, unless character development is combined with time progression.

I read a lot of stories that take place over very short periods of time.  Many quick, unique events earn the limelight for a few pages, each of which move the story forward just a little bit.  This is a very common form of traditional plotting.  It works.  When you tell a story that takes place over a long period of time, however, the events tend to take the back seat.  There are important plot elements sprinkled here and there, but many scenes don't matter much in the grand scheme of things, from a traditional plot perspective.  If characters develop over the course of a bunch of these unremarkable scenes, what you get is a different sort of plot.  You get the sense of progression that the concept of plot really boils down to without much plot in the traditional way.

Using time progression and character development in tandem does not sound easy to me.  I like stories that take place over months, not decades.  I'm not opposed to the Driving Miss Daisy type of plot though.  If you can make it work as well as it did in the play, then you have nothing to worry about.

The Various Difficulty Levels of Writing Various Genres

I'm a fantasy writer at heart.  It's probably the genre I'm best at writing, at least in my opinion.  However, it's only the second-easiest genre for me to write.  If I knew two years ago what genre would flow with the greatest ease now, I'd have been amazed.

A lot of science fiction writers have some form of science degree.  I don't even have my high school diploma yet.  On top of that, I haven't read nearly as much sci-fi as I'd like to have.  But I really enjoy the genre, and it isn't a huge pain to write.  My range of subjects is limited without a large amount of research, but I can do enough with the genre with my present knowledge to keep me writing.  Zento is my favorite character to write, so when I write sci-fi I typically use him.  If an idea can't involve Zento or the Zento universe, it's back to Worldbuilding 101.  Luckily, I like worldbuilding.

Horror is a really hard genre for me.  Most of my horror stories come from prompts.  I read almost zero horror, so it makes sense that I don't really understand how to do horror well.  Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes I don't.

I have a lot of fun writing military/war from time to time.  It's not very marketable at short length, but the action is fun.  M/w is only slightly more difficult to write than fantasy.  Character is the hardest to get right.  I use more description in my action scenes and I haven't mastered building character while also giving a lot of flesh to my settings simultaneously.

And now, the moment of truth.  The genre I have the least difficulty writing is (clean) teen romance.  I love how much depth you can put into a story without distracting from the plot at all.  You can build characters and setting at high speeds through commenting on visual details and emotions.  If you know what you're doing, you can do a lot in each sentence.  I don't know that my romance stories are any good (and again, they're clean, so "good" means pretty much the same here as it does for spec fic stories, not what some people would consider "good" for the broader genre), yet they entertain me enough that I shall continue to write them no matter their quality.  My first romance story, which I wrote less than two years ago, was really rough, but it had a rawness of emotion to it that really drew me into the genre and coaxed me into continuing to experiment with it.

How about for you?  What genres are the easiest for you to write?  The hardest?  And what genres do you enjoy writing in the most, even if your purpose is not to sell all those stories?

The Most Motivating Two Paragraphs of Any Fantasy Novel Ever

"Groat looked torn between exultation and despair.  'But we've only got a bunch of old men, sir!  They're pretty spry, I'll grant you, but...well, you've got to learn to walk before you try to run, sir!'

'No!'  Moist's fist thumped the table.  'Never say that, Tolliver!  Never!  Run before you walk!  Fly before you crawl!  Keep moving forward!  You think we should try to get a decent mail service in the city.  I think we should try to send letters anywhere in the world!  Because if we fail, I'd rather fail really hugely.  All or nothing, Mr. Groat!'"

- Going Postal by Sir Terry Prachett

Oh, the Rust and Atrophy

I attempted to write two or three stories in the last month and failed each time.  Only just now did I manage to write words that I'm going to keep, and those are in the form of a 158-word sci-fi flash fic that I probably won't want to talk about a year from now.  It's quite clear to me that I've gone a bit rusty and my writing muscles have already begun to atrophy.  Exhibit A: "White, Rubbery Dragoon Uniform."

Having written something at least, good or strange and mediocre, I feel a little better about the decline of my writing abilities.  I really hope I can kick myself into writing more frequently, even though I'm now juggling school as well as various other commitments.  My  fear is that it shall take at least as long for my writing muscles to return to peak fitness as it took for them to decline.  I pray that I underestimate myself.

Fantasy: A Complex Genre

(Note: This post is meant to make my post "Types of Fantasy" from twenty-six months ago disappear from all memory.  I wrote it originally for a dual-credit English Composition class.  Also, sorry for the irregular formatting.)

Many people see the word “fantasy” and have a concrete impression of the genre.  Any singular image for a genre as large as fantasy will leave out a lot.  Fantasy is a very complex genre with many subgenres.  In order to consider fantasy as a whole in any context, one must have knowledge of at least most of those subgenres.

The four most prevalent subgenres of fantasy are epic fantasy, urban fantasy, contemporary fantasy, and heroic fantasy.

Epic fantasy, interchangeably called high fantasy, although some writers consider them separate subgenres, is notable for its massive scope, slow pacing, and high amount of magic.  Lord of the Rings is the most widely-known epic fantasy novel/series.

Urban fantasy is often set in urban areas, although the subgenre has grown to the point that location is not of chief importance.  Urban fantasy crosses real-world society with supernatural society, often fey society.  Mentor/student foils are very common in urban fantasy.  Television shows and novels like Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a “chick kicking butt in leather” are urban fantasy.

Contemporary fantasy is tough to nail down.  The Harry Potter series may be considered contemporary fantasy, although the case can be made that it fits better as urban fantasy.  Contemporary fantasy, like urban, tends to be set in the real world at the current time.  The distinction, typically, is that in contemporary fantasy the fantastical qualities of the world are known to many, while in urban fantasy very few people are aware.

Heroic fantasy, sometimes mislabeled as Sword and Sorcery, is characterized by a heroic protagonist and small or medium-sized scope.  Swords, sorcery, and mythology, typically German or Norse mythology, are often present.  Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories are heroic fantasy.

Regardless of subgenre, any type of fantasy can be labeled “dark fantasy” under certain conditions.  “Dark fantasy” denotes fantasy with qualities of horror fiction or general macabre.  Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Chronicles books are dark fantasy.

Paranormal is the term attached to any genre with basic, but only basic, qualities of fantasy.  Currently, paranormal romance is the most popular form of paranormal fiction.  The Twilight Saga is “paranormal.”  If a work of fiction is “paranormal,” it’s inherently fantasy, although it is probably multiple genres.

There are several subgenres of fantasy that are also subgenres of other genres.  The two most common are steampunk and space opera.

Steampunk is a combination of several genres.  One is fantasy.  Steampunk stories are typically set in the Victorian era, but the technology is different.  As the name may suggest, steam-power is almost always important in steampunk settings.  The most recent remake of The Three Musketeers contains steampunk elements, which in themselves include elements of fantasy, science-fiction, historical fiction, alternate history, romance, and/or horror.

Space opera is where the line between fantasy and science-fiction blurs.  Some consider it fantasy, others science-fiction.  Star Wars and Star Trek are both considered space opera.  Science as we know it is completely disregarded on multiple planets in both settings, which some argue makes space opera a subgenre of fantasy.  The often futuristic settings of space opera stories make them appear to be science-fiction.  To be fair, space opera can be regarded as a subgenre of both science-fiction and fantasy.

Sword and Sorcery is probably the least-respected subgenre of fantasy.  It used to be one of the main fantasy subgenres, but has become a niche genre.  If there are wizards and rogues working together in a story, it is probably Sword and Sorcery.  The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons is the foremost example of Sword and Sorcery.

Low fantasy has low levels of magic.  Sometimes works are classified as low fantasy without containing any magic whatsoever, so long as they have a secondary-world setting.  Low fantasy is fairly rare and the term is rarely used.

Magic realism is sometimes called a subgenre of fantasy and other times considered a genre of its own.  Magic realism is essentially low fantasy with a real-world setting.  Often only one or two fantastical qualities exist in each story.  Writers such as Ray Bradbury experimented a lot with magic realism before science-fiction hit big in the early twentieth century.

With almost a dozen subgenres and distinctions, fantasy covers many different types of stories, some of which barely resemble one another.  All things considered, fantasy is probably the most complex genre out there.

Three Flash Fic Writing Contests

I'm still not back into the swing of things with my writing, so I think I'm going to try going back to the weekly flash fic writing contests I've entered in the past.  There are three such contests that I shall be plugging today.

The Finish That Thought contest, on Ms. Alissa Leonard's blog, starts at 10 p.m. Eastern time each Monday night and extends until the last moment of Tuesday.  It features a first line that you must use for your story and offers an optional Special Challenge.  Stories must be 500 words or less.  I managed Grand Champion status once for this contest.  That story is here.

The Flash! Friday contest is a bit shorter for word count, but a bit larger for participation.  Stories must be between 140 and 160 words and be influenced by a photo prompt and the Dragon's Bidding.  As its name may suggest, the contest runs all day Friday.  The contest is hosted by Rebekah Postupak.  I haven't placed in this contest as of yet.

For a perfect punch of words, the Flash Frenzy contest allows stories up to 360 words in length.  It also utilizes a picture prompt.  Entries must be posted between Saturday at 8 a.m. Eastern time and Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern time.  The contest appears on the blog The Angry Hourglass, run by @LadyHazmat.  My best result in this contest was a three-way tie for runner-up.  That story is here.

Please take some time to participate in any or all of these fun contests, or at least read an entry or two.

Not Writing For Substantial Periods of Time

Besides one scene of straight (maybe one line of description?) dialog, I haven't written any fiction in over two weeks.  I'm starting to regret that and I haven't even sat down to write anything yet.  I'm kind of scared of how visible the rust will be.

Obviously, the solution to going substantial periods of time without writing is to go ahead and write something.  But what to write?  Or should I edit a few things I have laid out for edits to ease myself back in?  I haven't gone so long as to completely forget how to write, but it's longer than I've gone in a good while.

One of the many advantages to flash fiction is that, hopefully, I should be able to get back into the swing of things after a piece or two.  After a couple of hours I should be back into a decent rhythm.  The story/stories may not be up to par, but I don't have to show them to anyone if I don't want to, so it doesn't matter all that much.

Breaking this fiction hiatus is going to be tough.  I should be able to get myself to write something tomorrow, but I'm not sure what I'll do.  Perhaps I'll just do a complete discovery write like I used to before I had so many ideas waiting to be turned into stories.  Those are always fun.

This is a forewarning for myself: don't go this long without writing, you'll let your edge get dull.  And you hardly have an edge to begin with.

Recommended Writing Resource and Anthology: Shadows Beneath

It's late and I completely forgot about posting until just now (about 11:37 PM).  So, I'm going to give you a link to a valuable writing resource/anthology and call it a night.  Buy this and thank me in the morning.

I got the numbered-edition before it sold out.  My copy is numbered 51/200.

Favorite Quotes From the First Third of The Lord of the Rings

"'The worthies of Bree will be discussing it a hundred years hence.'

'I hope so,' said Strider.  Then they all fell silent, and one by one the hobbits dropped off to sleep."

This first quote is perhaps the most mundane of the three I'm going to mention here.  There isn't a whole lot to it.  It's two bits of dialog and a sentence of description.  However, it manages to hide tone brilliantly.  Normally, you don't want to "hide" tone.  That should defeat the point.  In this specific case, it manages to show a facet of Strider that readers need to see early on.  Strider is hopeful, yet still very realistic.  Readers who haven't been exposed to the remainder of the story prior to reading this quote may miss some things about it.  This statement cements the massive, epic scope of The Lord of the Rings.  Strider hopes that "Bree will be discussing it a hundred years hence" because it is quite possible that Bree may be burned to the ground by Sauron within a hundred years.  He knows how dire the situation is and if readers read will incredible care they can know too.

At least, that's what I got out of it.  Maybe I'm just making that all up...

"There came a cold clear dawn at the end of a long stumbling night-march.  The travellers reached a low ridge crowned with ancient holly-trees whose gray-green trunks seemed to have been built out of the very stone of the hills.  Their dark leaves shone and their berries glowed red in the light of the rising sun."

In many places I feel that Tolkien's descriptions in LoTR were too extensive.  I like bare, Orwellian prose.  Here I feel that Papa Tolkien hit a sweet spot.  He managed to create an engaging tone, push the plot forward slightly, and show the setting in very few words.  These setting details are attractive and manage to give us a sense of the landscape as a whole for this scene, all while playing cool tricks with dawn lighting.

"As soon as Frodo swallowed a little of the warm and fragrant liquor he felt a new strength of heart, and the heavy drowsiness left his limbs.  The others also revived and found fresh hope and vigour.  But the snow did not relent.  It whirled about them thicker than ever, and the wind blew louder."

To my knowledge, the concept of "Yes, but"/"No, and" is relatively modern.  This, however, is definitely an old example of its use, on the small scale.  Yes, the cordial of Imladris made Frodo feel better, but, the snow made the magic far less useful.  Gandalf had a quick fix to their problem, as readers would expect, but natural events managed to thwart it somewhat.  Well done, Tolkien.

Liebster Award

RULES
1. List 11 facts about yourself.
2. Answer the 11 questions asked by whoever nominated you.
3. Nominate 9 bloggers with less than 300 followers and leave them a comment saying they've been nominated. (Since just about every blogger in the sphere who qualifies has already been given the Liebster, I'm just going to snip my root from the award-spreading tree.)
4. Ask 11 new questions for your chosen nominees.
5. You cannot re-nominate the blog that nominated you.

11 Facts:
1. "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" is my current favorite hymn.  It is pretty amazing.
2. I have played both soccer and football for my high school (although not both in the same year).
3. I have done some form of extemporaneous speaking in school Forensics every year since 7th grade.
4. I have written over 50 fantasy flash fics (almost all of which are readable on this blog).
5. (Shameless self-promotion) I have three drabbles forthcoming to SpeckLit.com in the relatively-near future.
6. I have red hair and blue eyes.
7. Brandon Sanderson has taught me more than any other teacher I've ever had.
8. I turn 17 in 13 days.
9. I am asking for a feather duster for my birthday.
10. Boy Meets World, House, and Dr. Who are my favorite television programs.  (Hopefully Girl Meets World lives up to its birthright.  The pilot was quite good for a pilot with the target audience it has.)
11. I'm considering the purchase of a mandolin in the near future.

Questions for me to answer:
1. What is your least favourite book genre?
First of all, there's no "u" in favorite.  :p  To answer the question, I'm going to go with erotica, because I simply refuse to read it.
2. What is your least favourite colour?
I've never given this a whole lot of thought.  I suppose pink.
3. Pick one character (from anywhere, book, tv, movie, etc.) for each of these: snog, marry, avoid.
Since snog is a British/Australian term, I'll go with Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series.  I'm wracking my brain to think of some overtly-Christian girl to "marry," but I can't think of many off the top of my head, so I'm going to go with Topanga Lawrence from Boy Meets World based upon all of her other amiable personality traits.  Avoid?  I guess Foreman from Dan Well's Mr. Monster.
4. Your favourite television programme from your childhood?
Winnie-the-Pooh
5. Was there a character from a kids show you were legitimately afraid of?
There was one frame from an episode or movie in the Winnie-the-Pooh "franchise" in which Piglet was drawn in such a way that it was pretty terrifying, as funny as that sounds.
6. What fruit do you consume most frequently?
(These questions are really hard.)  I'm really not sure.  Apples, red/purple grapes, or peaches probably.
7. Would you rather be able to do a backflip or stand on your head?
Backflips are cool.
8. Can you do a backflip or stand on your head?
I suppose I'm probably physically-able to do both, but I'd rather not try.
9. What style(s) of dance have you had lessons for? (They don't have to have been serious lessons.)
Musical-style, if that counts.  (I was in my high school's production of Damn Yankees.)
10. Which of your own characters are you most proud of having created?
Zento
11. Would you rather live in Westeros and the Free Cities, Middle Earth, or Narnia?
I guess Narnia.

Diversity in the Written Word

I'm taking on the behemoth today: diversity in the written word.  Why am I walking this tightrope?  Partially because I'd like to share my thoughts on the subject and partially because I'd like to hear others' thoughts on specific questions.

I'm a month shy of seventeen years of age, have very pale skin, red hair, the majority of a beard, and both of my parents (still married to each other).  I'm a fairly traditional Protestant who firmly believes in Matthew 5:28 (which basically boils down to "asexual until marriage").

In the world of SFF, I'm fairly standard.  However, my hair color makes me a sort-of-kind-of-but-not-really minority.  The amount of characters specifically described as having red hair is probably a tiny bit lower than the number of red-haired people in the world.  Do I feel that that's a problem?  No.  Can I relate to Rand Al'Thor better because we share a hair color?  Not at all.  Then again, not many people are complaining about diversity of hair color.

Many are complaining about diversity of skin color.  I have mixed opinions on this.  I don't think, unless there's a story reason, the skin color of the characters matters.  Most of the characters I write can be any color you want them to be.  I almost never specify.  Should there be more characters who specifically have skin tones reminiscent of Africans, Asians, South Americans, Aboriginals, etc?  I'm going to ask you that question rather than trying to answer it myself.

Culture is a tough point.  It's extremely easy to do it wrong, so my inclination is to tell people that if they are of a non-American culture, if they wish to read fiction of their culture they ought to read fiction written in their ancestral homeland.  This, of course, may lead them to have to learn a completely new language.  I hope that if those readers are fully interested in their ancestral culture that they would be okay with that, but I'm sure that's not always true.  I write mostly northern European culture in my stories.  Should I expand the cultures that I explore through my writing?  A little bit wouldn't hurt, although I'd like to do a good bit of research if I'm going to try to "do it right."  If you can't find any books featuring the culture that you feel most attached to or at home with, encourage others with similar feelings to write.  My guess is that you'll enjoy those books more than the ones that I would end up writing after reading up on foreign cultures.

Now for gender diversity.  As far as I can tell, women in SFF tend to write more YA than adult.  While the number of SFF writers of either gender appears to me to be about the same, men write a decent majority of adult.  However, male protagonists dominate across the board.  My guess is that this is because men tend to write mostly males and women tend to write both males and females.  My proceeding guess is that this is because women take offense to female characters who they feel are written poorly, whereas men don't mention it often.  It would take a while for me to figure out what the exact percentage is, but I estimate that about 25% of my stories have a female protagonist.  Do I feel compelled to write more female characters in light of recent discussion?  A little bit.  I would appreciate if when I write female characters "wrong" that females would then tell me, straight to me, so that I could improve them.  Still, I encourage writers to write characters based upon their stories.  If for some reason a character of a certain gender wouldn't allow you to write the story you want to right, don't feel bad.

Regarding all of this, please don't gut someone because you feel they misrepresented a culture, gender, etc. if they made a reasonable effort to not do so.  If you tell them what you felt they did wrong, politely, I'm sure many of them would be happy to do better next time, especially if it meant a more happy reader-base.

As far as the real-world portion of this concept goes, I'm a little leery of it.  Some magazines are giving priority to minorities.  Should they not do this?  They can publish whatever stories they want, I'm not going to argue with that at all.  Will I ever play the "only 1-2% of the world's population has red hair" card.  Personally, no, I don't feel that that's right.  I want to be judged by the strength of my prose, not the color of my hair.  However, hair color, as I mentioned, isn't a huge deal from the story side of things.  Should affirmative action extend to authors being published?  You tell me.

Word Wars

I'm signed up to war, a heated battle of words.  Or, at least, word counts.  This is a live-blogging event, so from now until the end of Friday I will be updating this post.  (This post is doubling as my Thursday writing post.)

This blog event is hosted by Katie Doyle of Writing, Reading, and Life and Sarah Chafin of Simply Sarah.

June 11th, 2014

10:18 A.M. - My troops are preparing for war, albeit slowly.  Come 3 P.M. they should be ready to tackle some sci-fi.

12:57 P.M. - Preparations are in line.  Once the troops finish their face-painting, they will be running some last minute drills before the 3 P.M. charge.

2:56 P.M. - My soldiers are lining up in formation.  The call to march shall come momentarily.

4:32 P.M. - 577 words have been delivered to the Word Count Pool in the sky.  I took minor casualties in this first push.  Graciously, the enemies are mostly of the "military sci-fi" variety, and not the "space opera" variety.

6:30 P.M. - A band of my spies returned from a covert research mission to the library of Lockstep, by the river Karl Shroeder.  They have returned with excellent intel.  I shall use some of that knowledge and inspiration in my next assault, to begin in just a few minutes.

8:05 P.M. - The number of words in the enemy horde is steadily increasing.  As soon as I send one to the WCP, another fills in behind it.  The total casualty count stands at 1,204 after two waves and around 150 total minutes of combat.  There may be as many as nine times that many words yet breathing on the battlefield.

11:11 P.M. - The enemy ambushed me under the guard of full darkness about an hour ago.  When the fighting ceased and I set up the necessary lamplight, the death toll for the words was increased to 1,691 total.  I will post some guards and let the rest of my soldiers rest for another day of warring on the morrow.

June 12th, 2014

11:53 A.M. - A temporary ceasefire is in place until somewhere around 2 P.M.

5:00 P.M. - The enemy has retreated to higher ground.  I am beginning flanking maneuvers, but the time of assault will likely be 8:00 P.M. or later.

9:07 P.M. - I've been fending off bands of mercenary allthethings since 8 A.M. this morning.  They weren't bad until they started to keep me from striking at the words.  This day has been lost, I fear.  My men have requested the night off in order to triumph tomorrow.

June 13th, 2014

9:03 P.M. - The allthethings have finally been eradicated after two days of brutal combat.  In a couple minutes I shall start a final effort in Word Wars.

10:22 P.M. - Final count: 1,954 words.  My troops are too exhausted from the last 70 hours to continue the fight for the day.  The campaign shall continue (unofficially) over the next week or two, if not longer.