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Toy Story 3: Genre fiction writers take heed

Toy Story 3: Genre fiction writers take heed

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toy-story-3-lotso-huggin-bearWarning: This essay contains some spoilers.

If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults.

–J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf

I don’t get to the theatre too often these days, and with two young daughters in tow more often than not it’s to see a children’s film. But I’m not lamenting this fact, especially when the movies are of the quality of Toy Story 3.

Hey, I love Robert E. Howard, Bernard Cornwell, and the Viking novels of Poul Anderson as much as the next battle-mad fantasy fan, but I’m man enough to admit liking (most) Pixar films as well. And Toy Story 3 might be the best one I’ve seen. Critical consensus is not necessarily a hallmark of a good film (see Blade Runner, panned on its initial release by most critics, recognized as genius years later), but I think it’s telling that Toy Story 3 currently has a 99% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In this case, the critics are spot-on.

Toy Story 3 is a near-perfect children’s film. Like all children’s films, it possesses straightforward story lines, engaging visuals, and brisk action in order to keep young attention spans focused. (If these qualities sound like less than appealing, well, genre films can’t be all things to all people). So why sing its praises on Black Gate? Toy Story 3 serves as an instructive example of how to tell a great story within the confines of a given genre. Just like you can’t get too bogged down in dialogue or non-linear narrative techniques in a movie for kids, that story you submit to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly better contain some elements of sword play and sweeping action if you want to stand a chance of getting it published. If you disregard your audience you’re destined to fail.

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Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Ten Things I Know Now…

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Ten Things I Know Now…

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Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
— William Faulkner

CHINA TOWN, NAGASAKI, JAPAN by June OkaBecause this series about riding about the dragon called Publishing is geared at writers just starting out writing fantasy stories and novels, I thought I’d pull together another list (I love lists!) that include all the helpful stuff I wish I’d known back in 1995, when I was just starting out.

Ten Things I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known When I First Started

YOUR FAVORITE STORY OR NOVEL THAT YOU’VE EVER WRITTEN SHOULD BE THE ONE YOU’RE WORKING ON RIGHT NOW.  Enthusiasm for your current project is priceless, in my opinion, and you should never rest on your laurels.  Always try to improve yourself as a writer, just like an athlete or musician always works to get better for the next big game or performance.

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Robert E. Howard: The Sword Collector and His Poetry

Robert E. Howard: The Sword Collector and His Poetry

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broadsword3

Battles were fought and won based on the strength and keenness of blades as well as the ability to use them effectively. Bob Howard was not only interested in the various types of swords, he was also fascinated with the history they represented. In his poetry and his stories, he uses his knowledge of weapons, historical people, places and events to give us vivid images of those ages. 

In March 1933, Robert E. Howard wrote to H. P. Lovecraft about his interest in swords:

I envy you your access to the museums you mentioned. I’ve, naturally, never seen anything of the sort, though I remember some very good displays in the museums of New Orleans, especially Civil War relics. Weapons, especially edged weapons, axes, swords, and spears, hold my attention as nothing else can. Long ago I started collecting them, but found it a taste far too expensive for my means. I still have the things I did manage to get hold of – a few sabers, swords, bayonets and the like.  (The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, v. 3, p. 31)

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On Stories: Discovering a kindred spirit in C.S. Lewis

On Stories: Discovering a kindred spirit in C.S. Lewis

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cs-lewisThough he’s best known as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was also a prolific essayist and an ardent defender of fantasy literature. In addition to medieval studies (The Allegory of Love) and Christian apologetics (Mere Christianity), Lewis wrote several essays about the enduring appeal of mythopoeic stories, connecting fantasy’s remote, heroic past to its flowering in the early 20th century.

Lewis’ passion and erudition in the mythopoeic comes pouring through in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, a collection of essays and reviews loosely tied around fantasy literature. Lewis’ overarching theme in On Stories is that the best mythopoeic/romance literature (which includes works like E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and H. Rider Haggard’s She) stacks up with the best mainstream literature, and thus deserves to be not only enjoyed, but studied and preserved (I can sense a lot of nodding heads around here, but keep in mind that Lewis wrote these essays in an age when it was heresy to compare fantasy fiction to “real” lit).

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Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Battles Inside and Out

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Battles Inside and Out

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I love writing.  I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
— James Michener

So you’re ready to embark on writing your new fantasy story, hopefully one that the folks at Black Gate will want to snatch up as soon as you type the words “The End” on it.

You’ve got your story idea, sitting there like a lump of Play-Doh that still conforms to the shape of the plastic container you just shook it out of.  You know, that perfect cylinder shape that is exciting to absolutely no one.

Time to start squishing and pulling and twisting. But where to begin, you ask? It all starts, of course, with your main character.

As we discussed earlier, most people tend to start a story with a person, in some sort of situation. But let’s just say you haven’t even gotten that far. You just have an average person, sitting in a white room. Nothing’s happening.

Let’s start by getting inside that character’s head. Which you can do most effectively by asking questions:

  • What is the one thing he or she (or it — this is speculative fiction, you know) wants the most out of life?
  • What’s the one thing your protagonist will do nearly anything for?
  • Is it an object? Another person? A goal? An idea?

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Wolfe’s lost road: Discovering an author’s personal essay on J.R.R. Tolkien

Wolfe’s lost road: Discovering an author’s personal essay on J.R.R. Tolkien

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gene-wolfe-1Freedom, love of neighbour, and personal responsibility are steep slopes; he could not climb them for us—we must do that ourselves. But he has shown us the road and the reward.

–Gene Wolfe, “The Best Introduction to the Mountains”

J.R.R. Tolkien has so many readers, and his works have become so pervasive in the broader culture, that coming to his defense hardly seems necessary anymore. Haven’t we established Tolkien’s credentials by now? Magazines like Time have selected The Lord of the Rings as one of the top 100 novels ever written, according to Wikipedia it’s one of the top 10 best-selling books of all time with 150 million copies sold, and the movies upon which it’s based won several Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Tolkien has made it onto several college syllabi and there are academic journals and numerous critical studies devoted to his works, including Tom Shippey’s par excellence works Author of the Century and The Road to Middle-Earth.

But someone always comes along to attack Tolkien on the basis of his conservatism or religion, his perceived racism, and/or the perceived shallowness/non-literary nature of The Lord of the Rings, and I’m reminded of why we need to vigilant. For example, David Brin of Salon.com, Science fiction/fantasy author Richard Morgan (author of The Steel Remains), and Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials trilogy) have all taken shots at The Lord of the Rings and/or Tolkien himself in recent years, calling him outdated and dangerously conservative (Brin), a refuge for 12-year-olds and adults who have never grown up (Morgan), and shrunken and diminished by his Catholicism (Pullman).

Now I’m not saying Tolkien is above criticism, but critics like Brin and Morgan have essentially gutted The Lord of the Rings, attacking it on an existential basis and more or less claiming it should be placed in the dustbin of history. When people take aim at classics like Ulysses or Moby Dick you rarely see criticism elevated to the level of calling into question the very existence of these works. Yet Tolkien criticism for whatever reason frequently ascends to shrill peaks of outrage.

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Climbing Aboard the Dragon: 10 Tips to Better Productivity

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: 10 Tips to Better Productivity

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“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”
— Joseph Heller

Previously in this series about writing, we’ve talked about ways to get story ideas as well as different approaches you can take to writing your story, novel, comic script, screenplay, or other related screed, tome, or pamphlet.

Pen image by Michael ConnorsBut what about the single most important aspect of the writing process? Yes, I’m talking about butt-in-chair time. How do you get yourself into a good schedule and motivated to write?

Very good question.

My answer? Below I’ve listed my top-ten list of tricks and techniques I’ve used that help me get more productive (and less annoyed with myself for not having gotten and writing done):

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Robert Silverberg on “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?”

Robert Silverberg on “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?”

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silverbergIn a post on his blog last week, Canadian science fiction author Robert Sawyer asked “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?”

When I broke into the business 55 years ago you could count the number of full-time science fiction writers who could pay the rent and eat regular meals on the fingers of one oddly proportioned hand. Poul Anderson, Gordy Dickson, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, Robert Sheckley, maybe Jack Vance, and….well, who else? Jack Williamson? Perhaps he had begun teaching by then. Asimov was still a college professor who wrote s-f on the side. Ted Cogswell was a professor also. So was James Gunn. Phil Dick was a full-timer, but lived at the poverty level. Sturgeon didn’t do much better. Del Rey dabbled in editing and occasional agenting. Harry Harrison did editing work, wrote comics, whatnot. Leiber was an editor for Science Digest. Jim Blish wrote p-r stuff for the tobacco institute. Cyril Kornbluth worked for a wire service. Fred Pohl edited and agented. Alfred Bester wrote for the slicks and TV. I’m not sure what Phil Klass did for a living — he wasn’t teaching yet — but he couldn’t have lived on the proceeds of what he wrote. Kuttner and Moore — I don’t know; they did venture somewhat into television and mystery novels.Leigh Brackett was a part-time Hollywood writer and her husband Edmond Hamilton earned most of his living writing comic books. Mack Reynolds and Fred Brown had fled to Mexico, where a dime went as far as a dollar did here.

It just wasn’t a field for full-timers. I didn’t really know that, so I plunged right in and made a good living, but I did it by dint of writing and selling a couple of short stories a week, and even then the field vanished from under me by 1958 and I had to turn to all sorts of non-sf writing until things began to revive in the mid-1960s. The same happened to Harlan, and then he got drafted, and when he came out he went to Chicago to edit and on from there to Hollywood.

Now we are back to the same situation that obtained in the golden era of the Fifties — s-f is mainly a field for hobbyist writers, with just a few able to earn a living writing just the real stuff and nothing but. (It is different, of course, for those who write pseudo-Tolkien trilogies, vampire novels, zombie books, and other sorts of highly commercial fantasy.) For a while, in the late 70s and early 80s, the money flowed freely and all sorts of people set up in business as s-f writers full time. I remember Greg Bear, president of SFWA somewhere back in the mid-80s, warning the writers at the SFWA business session not to quit their day jobs, because the good times were just about over; and was he ever right!

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Three Paths To a Story

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Three Paths To a Story

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“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right.”
— Rudyard Kipling

Get out the map...Okay, writers. Let’s say you have a short story idea or two, but you don’t know the best way to write it. Some sage writers with some sales under their belts tell you that you Must Outline. Other wisened authors tell you to just, “Go where the story takes you,” that you shouldn’t outline at all.

So what’s a new writer to do? Who’s right?

Well, they all are, of course. They’re right about what works for them.

You have to figure out what works best for you.

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Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Homework Every Day

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Homework Every Day

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doorways

Being a writer is like having homework every day for the rest of your life.
— Lawrence Kasdan

When John from Black Gate suggested I do a guest blog about writing for short fiction markets, I had to check to make sure he hadn’t intended his email for someone else. Surely he meant to send that email to my co-writer for the story “Devil on the Wind,” from Black Gate 14. That would be Jay Lake, who has over 200 story publications and counting.

But nope, the email was correct.

And a quick look at my list of stories over on my website seems to confirm the fact that I may indeed have figured how to sell a short story — fifty story publications thus far. And I have thirty more stories out to various publishers (fingers crosssed!).

Here’s the thing, though. You never figure out the trick to this writing gig. Soon as you think you’ve got it understood, you’re sunk.

Because you can’t rest on your laurels. Trust me on this — even though I’ve sold stories to great places like Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Interzone, and to this fine magazine as well, I still get rejections aplenty. And while my focus has moved from short stories to novels, with the occasional comic script, I always have fun writing stories.

But I still have more to learn. Much more. And I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned along the way.

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