Session Start: Sun Mar 05 12:03:42 2000
<JL> Let's try to keep the #talk log very clean of side-comments. Bonnee brought
notes, and wants to get through some material in this hour.
<patric> In that case, you take JL's writing course. Looks like tam is thinking as a
writer and not an editor?
<MargareTZ> But wouldn't you want to know what to suggest to the author?
<patric> Would love to.
<JL> But these are two opposite ways of THINKING you see -- analysis and synthesis.
<MargareTZ> And that would involve the stuff JL talked about -- going back to find
out where it fell off the conflict line
<JL> Precisely -- "interest" = ACTION. Action=RATE OF CHANGE OF SITUATION.
CHANGE OF SITUATION= PLOT
<patric> Noted, Margaret. But how many editors of the fabled slush pile ever take
the time to tell you as a writer where you fell off track?
<JL> But you see Patric, they don't know because they're not writers!
<MargareTZ> ezine editors have that opportunity.
<JL> If your editor loses interest on page 10, your mistake was on Page 1. ALWAYS.
If you peter out after a few pages after a dynamite beginning, you didn't start the story
at the beginning.
<patric> Understood, JL. That's a good point.
<GregA> Do you think it is characters, JL...or plot..conflict?
<JL> Greg - it's the INTEGRATION of those -- the weaving them all together into one
piece, and the glue that does that trick is THEME. What Bonnee is talking about
'characters who seem real', is just a character who is ABOUT something, whose life is
making a statement about which they have an opinion -- and that statement is your THEME.
<Jean> If you feel you have met your character instead of making him up, he will be
real.
<JL> Yes, Jean, and that FEELING of having met a person comes from understanding
what they're facing at this point in their life, and what resources they bring to this
life's battle they're into at the moment. That BATTLE and those resources are the elements
that make a theme.
<tamarion> Yep. Some characters are so 'wooden' you can't believe in them. It slows
the book down and sometimes don't even want to finish it if they aren't live.
<Jean> Most people don't think about theme until it happens. But characters should
be real to every writer.
<JL> Yes, Jean, and it's the theme in your subconscious that communicates to the
reader -- not the one you're consciously thinking about.
<Ann> Good point from Bonnie about what she wants in a cover letter
<GregA> Like an actor...do you become the characters you write...or do you visualize
them?
<Jean> Patric, I wrote a series in SAVAGE EMPIRE, although I started knowing only
the first two books.
<tamarion> We leave a part of ourselves in each character...and that is good, or
they aren't real to us.
<JL> "the character hadn't changed in the least" said Bonnee -- that's the
ESSENCE of theme -- the theme -- the issue the character is facing, battling -- interacts
with the character and TEACHES HIM A LESSON.
<Ann> Mine are all improv <grin>. Give them a conflict and let me run.
<JL> It's that LESSON that has the theme implicit within it.
<Jean> It turned out that all seven books that got written were foreshadowed in the
first.
<JL> If the main character doesn't change, you have a TV episode, not a NOVEL.
<patric> Understood Jean. I am just poking around the edges of "complete in
itself"...
<Jean> The protagonist's goal for that novel is achieved, but there is more to do
overall. In S~G, the problem of A Sime and A Gen learning to live together is resolved in
each book, but the entire situation is not.
<patric> Right. I was thinking of a SK book where there was such an abrupt cut-off
that the two books could have been printed as a single volume with virtually no editing.
<Jean> Well, that could have been something else.
<patric> Yeah. Fan outrage at having to wait longer.
<Jean> Sometimes a publisher actually cuts one book into two that the author meant
as one.
<MargareTZ> Finding what your real theme is can be difficult.
<Ann> Some books are printed that way ... Julian May's Pliocene exile was originally
two books printed as four.
<patric> Understood.
<Jean> Both S~G and Savage Empire were intended as ongoing series. The books in SE,
however, were written in chronological order, unlike S~G. SE is a much less complex
universe, too.
<patric> Oooh.. I hadn't thought about how something like a mystery would
necessitate a different sort of plot structure... You'd expect a strange thing popping up,
in a mystery.
<Ann> I still haven't managed to quite figure out how to do a mystery, but I keep
trying!
<Jean> Yes, but you have to be careful not to throw too many red herrings into a
mystery.
<tamarion> JL. Thanks for the tip from EOS. Somehow, I think I got in the wrong
class. I understand what is said...but maybe I'm not ready to analize in others what I
can't fix in my own books yet.
<patric> Ann. Considering my brain is largely a mystery, I just write it as I think
it!
<Jean> It's hard to get the right ratio of real clues to red herrings.
<JL> STAR TREK was 'Wagontrain to the Stars' -- that's what Bonnee is talking about
-- the FLAW in Hollywood's attitude toward SF -- it's just a western in space. In real SF
-- the story could ONLY happen in the setting used, not anywhere else. Tamarion -- no, in
order to succeed in Essence of Story, students had to HONE their analytical skills FIRST
-- and that's what Bonnee is talking about - analysis. After you learn analysis, THEN you
learn synthesis. So listen carefully and study what she's saying.
<MargareTZ> It gave new meaning to 'keeping your nose to the grindstone'
<tamarion> I am trying. It is alot to digest...but very eye-opening.
<JL> People in EOS didn't BELIEVE Jean and me when we insisted that editors look for
character/plot first, everything else second. Oh, yes, it's a lot. That's why we're trying
to make these bite-size pieces.
<tamarion> I always looked at characters first in the books I read...if they are
boring what can a person do to fix it other than fix characters?
<JL> Bonnee just made an excellent point about RESEARCH. Never research a book
you're writing now. Research the book you'll write 5 or 10 years from now! The details
have to come from the subconscious -- not be contrived by the conscious mind. To fix
characters, you must inject INTERNAL CONFLICT -- see my comments on Greg's Assignments for
Essence of Story. No internal conflict is a BORING character -- a character without a
story and devoid of plot.
<Ann> Or, I've found, are things which are so much a part of your life, you can do
them in your sleep ... like for me, horses.
<JL> Yes, Ann -- the things you take for granted are good for writing about - but
also the hardest because you assume others know more than they don't, and you don't know
what to explain.
<MargareTZ> Like me and Jean over things happening in California schools!
<Jean> Tamarion--whether the blonde hair is real or out of a box is character.
<JL> Yes, Margaret! That was your problem with those stories!
<Ann> Perfect Jean!
<JL> It's a solvable problem. The blonde hair origin also depicts INTERNAL CONFLICT
in that character. There's a difference between self-perception and how others see the
person -- that's TENSION -- dynamic tension that bespeaks theme.
<tamarion> But isn't the inner struggle then more important than physical, you note
the outside but follow the inside as the book goes on.
<Ann> Bonnee is making a very good point about showing vs. telling in modern
fiction.
<MargareTZ> Actions reveal the internal conflict.
<Jean> Is the blonde hair cut short? Is it permed? Is it braided tightly back? If
the latter, is the character an athlete or a dancer? Or is she hiding her best feature?
It's all character. The mind writes in the body. The inner conflict shows in those slumped
shoulders. Depression shows in the choice of colorless clothing.
<JL> In writing S~G - I find people asking me questions about whether this or that
could happen in general. And my answer is always, tell your story and wrap the SETTING
around the STORY, not the other way around. Find out what must happen, then find a PLACE
on our time-line where it could happen.
<tamarion> I get it now...physical shows the effects of internal stuff...and adds to
character as long as not over done.
<JL> The reader has to be LED to DEDUCE the conflict -- if you tell they won't
believe you. What a person deduces for themselves, out-clevers the writer to deduce, they
will believe.
<Jean> Right--you don't have to add that someone is depressed if you have described
this slumped gray person in shapeless clothes.
<JL> You want a reader to BELIEVE your story -- make them figure it out. Make them
feel smarter than you.
<MargareTZ> Oh I like that definition she just gave!!!
<tamarion> How does one wrap the seeing around story...write story then add in
details of setting when rewriting?
<Jean> BTW, if you want impossible things to happen in S~G, try Gulf Territory.
Details of setting should happen while you are writing the story.
<Ann> If you do advance structuring of the plot ... write the outline, then set it,
tamarion. Russia is also pretty unlikely in S~G <grin>. In my own S~G stories, I
have a group of cat's paws who can act as the author sees fit as they can respond to plot
requirements by who and what they know.
<GregA> Does that POV apply to a book like 'The Mists of Avalon?'
<JL> Oh, yes Greg -- MZB was an absolute MASTER of theme!!! That's where I learned
all this.
<Ann> I think Bonnee is not talking about POV, but rather story direction ... even
omniscient third has a specific character focus.
<JL> Mists is a prime example -- lots of POV characters, but not a single
discontinuity or JUMP in POV -- everything is smooth because the whole composition says
the same thing. Bonnee is saying she prefers SINGLE MAIN CHARACTER stories -- not
multiples.
<tamarion> I don't see lots of folks who can do many character points of view
well...hard to do for me too.
<JL> And if you're reading slush, looking for a NEW WRITER to publish, you look for
absolute mastery of that single-pov story. Before a writer can do anything else, they MUST
master that form.
<tamarion> Thanks JL. I needed myself to know that.
<MargareTZ> And, of course, nine out of ten want to jump immediately into multiple.
<tamarion> I tried to do multiple pov in bk two and couldn't figure out why I was
confusing myself in writing it.
<JL> Theme is the reason, Tamarion
<tamarion> gulp... Margaret, I plead guilty.
<MargareTZ> just human nature, tamarion.
<Ann> I stall on single POV because I can't keep the pacing even without the shifts
... still working on it.
<tamarion> Thanks JL. I am piecing some of the answers together a bit now.
<JL> Oh, look what Bonnee just said! How we had to fight with the students in EOS to
convince them of that. We didn't just make it up -- we learned it from working editors.
<Jean> Being a dyed-in-the-wool Trekker, though, I almost never have antagonists.
<JL> They ALL talk like Bonnee!!!
<Jean> People may disagree, but in the end they find they have the same goal.
<Ann> Jean, that is what I try to do with my protags in my romances ... and they
have to get together to 'win'.
<Jean> That's the kind of story I like. The main characters start out opposed, but
discover that they can both win if they work together.
<Ann> Fun to write too!
<Jean> What Bonnee is saying about romance right now is important.
<JL> The questions Bonnee is up to now are about the real basics of style and
technique we did NOT teach in EOS. Yes, Jean -- if you want to SELL you have to give the
editor what they want.
<Jean> No--not what SHE wants, but what makes a good romance. The main character is
after something other than romance, and falls into the romance.
<JL> Presumably the editor knows what her readers think makes a good romance. Yes,
Bonnee likes romances where the romance is the internal complication to a life-goal of the
main character.
<Jean> If Lois and I succeed with Nessie, I want to try to convince my agent to give
Bonnee and Silke BLOOD WILL TELL.
<JL> That would be a good move, Jean.
<Jean> First things first, though.
<Ann> Good point Bonnee made about romance vs. erotica. I always end up clobbering
the grammar checker when I actually go that far into editing my stories.
<JL> I never use the grammar checker - it's concocted for OFFICE USE not fiction
use.
<Jean> Grammar checkers are OK for business letter, but don't work for fiction.
<JL> It has corporate dialect built in.
<MargareTZ> And can't handle irregular verbs!
<Ann> I have to use a checker of some kind. My own writing is so elaborate, I have
to have some kind of touchstone.
<MargareTZ> You can customize them to a certain extent.
<Ann> Actually WP's fiction style grammar checker isn't too bad. At least WP catches
Its, It's, all right, alright and so on.
<MargareTZ> Proof editors are human too.
<JL> Yes, and speed reading doesn't give you the ability to judge a mood piece.
<Ann> Ouch ... not even a coherent sentence? Painful.
<JL> I have a lecture or class to do some day on how to control your reader's
reading-speed, and why and when you must do so. There are writing techniques for slowing
down a speed reader, or speeding up a slow one.
<Ann> You mentioned it in reference to my assignments six and seven
<JL> Yes, I think I remember that, Ann.
<Ann> Been workin' on it too.
<JL> See? Now Bonnee is saying what I said earlier -- editors don't know what to
tell you to do to fix it -- only that it needs fixing. Even ones who TELL you what to do
to fix a novel shouldn't be listened to too carefully.
<Jean> That depends.
<JL> You can find out where they went off the track, but YOUR mistake will have been
20% to 30% of the page-count BEFORE that point.
<Jean> When I got the SAME critique from three editors, I shelved the book till I
can rewrite it. All three loved the subplot, hated the main plot! Will do something with
that subplot someday. Usually, though, different editors make up different reasons for
rejections.
<JL> Yes, even deadfiled material can be mined for gold.
<Jean> Usually, when they are all different they all mean, "not to my personal
taste."
<Ann> I still don't have the nerve to get my stuff professionally rejected yet.
<Jean> Ann, when you are ready to grit your teeth and revise to an editor's
requirements, then you should start submitting. You have great talent, but you need to
learn distance from your work.
<Ann> But it's so -bad-!
<Jean> If you know it's flawed (not bad, flawed), then why not fix it?
<Ann> Because I don't have the experience or the control yet to be able to do the
rewrite and have it come out integrated with the rest of the story.
<Jean> And will you learn by not trying?
<JL> Ann - you HAVE learned something! Keep slogging - it'll all come together soon.
Before you came here, you didn't know the name of what you didn't know. Now you know what
you must learn to do.
<Ann> I am trying ... getting towards that million word mark too. Having fun in the
process as well.
<JL> Ann - you may be practicing your mistakes and making it harder for yourself to
learn because you'll have to unlearn bad habits. If there's a problematic scene -- such as
a murder -- to show or not to show -- you write it in such a way that the EDITOR can ask
to have it removed, and it won't ruin the story to take it out.
Session Close: Sun Mar 05 14:02:25 2000
