Long time has gone by and there's been too little good blogging from my end. But here's something, now! Here's just a few thoughts on an issue that I really don't want to put much thought into.
I wish to state emphatically one thing: Until I have an editor to tell me otherwise, my stories currently use, and shall use in the future, the official spelling standard called Weird Mutated Foreign Spelling.
Yesterday, I reorganised the page with the already published Avarthrel stories. It kind of inspired me to look at some of the past work I’ve done, and it seems… quite curious so far, indeed.
These stories are the first thing that I’ve written as any kind of a serious writing. As such, they are a bit rough, but each story shows some signs of new things I’ve learned. So, I think it’s good time to analyse what I’ve learned so far, and, in turn, look at what I’m doing right in the new stories. Read on for the full story!
Over the last week or two, I've been working on another story. It's basically an expansion of the very last Flash-fiction-a-day 1 entry; the story on how Facyr and Cassandra met.
I've also been trying to read some of my old stories - just a few glances - for really critical flaws. And oh boy, did I ever find them.
I hope I could avoid the big problem, a little bit, in this new story. Of course, fixing it up retroactively is a bit difficult - but I hope I lessened the damage.
There's one big problem I found with some of my character designs. It was actually serious enough that I had to scrawl some thoughts on the edges of my printouts, just to further define what's wrong...
For me, the problem is not the character development; I think I can make the characters interesting outside of the stories. The bigger problem is what I do with the characters in the stories. Here's my rambling, from the last page of my second review printout of the story (2007-07-15):
"Things we've learned today, is there such thing? YES, THERE IS. A good character in a story interacts with its environment: causes other characters to react, reacts to other characters. Facyr is an interesting character in this story; Cassandra is an information dumper who isn't interesting."
From the third printout (2007-07-17):
"The character shouldn't be like Sun; radiant, warming, yet something that you forget is there at all..."
So my problem is that the characters tend to be observers. I have learned a bit; I think the characters interact a little bit better in the upcoming story.
Another thing I learned is that I really need to weed out the Boring Explanations. Something was "much improved over the days". Yeah - how improved? "...just greeted him like they always did". Yeah - but the reader doesn't know how. Also, there's improvement that needs to be done with the character interactions outside of the spoken comments; I had to add a ton of stuff; I rely too much on the dialogue!
I noted that if I would rewrite Shadows over Nothross right now, it would get quite different weighting, and quite different phasing. My first gut instinct when I reread the story was that one should never make stuff up as they go, but the empirical evidence from this story is more like "you can make stuff up as you go, but you will probably find plot holes the size of your fist; don't get scared if you need a truckload of concrete to fill them up, and don't be lazy about plugging them. Don't be afraid about rewrites."
The last part is what I really needed with the new story. A few huge chunks were rejected... the funny thing is, I crossed out a whole big chunk of the story and somehow, in the next revision, the word count had jumped up by 1000. So if anyone's reading this: Don't be afraid to throw stuff out if something better shows up. I put the junked bits on hold; perhaps I'll use them later.
At least I've now gone through the First Unpublished Story (1UPS) myself - that is, scrawled some comments on the printed out text. The Second (2UPS) is halfway through.
Boy, was there ever a lot to comment on in 1UPS. I did find another big problem in the text. I just read someone rambling about how much one writer's stories sucked when they had omniscient narrators. Well, here in my story we have fact-throwing narrators and fact-throwing characters. It's not quite the same thing and not quite as annoying, but I noted one of my problems maybe that the characters - or the narrator, very rarely - starts explaining stuff. It's appropriate when it's appropriate - Gnedrnygr is supposed to know a lot of things, but he doesn't know everything either. But if any character goes rambling on about some background detail, it doesn't turn out very interesting. The story has one part where two characters talk on nature of magic - current version is rather weak, and basically the characters are just extensions of the Rambling Narrator. If there's any good examples of this, I kind of revere how Raymond E. Feist did boring-background-revealing in Magician: Apprentice - Two characters engaging in debate. The current dialogue in my story doesn't sound very much like a dialogue - it's two characters stating facts. Ugh. Boring.
Anyway, the 1UPS is progressing. It's been quite an educational experience: One of my big problems with writing was that I thought "hey, I can write, now can I? I've been doing this all of my life" and when my stories turned out okay but not great, I got disappointed. When I printed the stories, grabbed the pen, and started scrawling "this stinks" all over the copy, I remembered the real formula on how to make great art: You don't make great art by just spitting it out, you make something and then you refine it over and over until it's perfect. And I feel writing may be an art form where I actually can do the refining until it's perfect - I have less patience with other art forms, but I have infinite patience with words.
Now I have one very very scrawled-over printout here. Initially, I thought the story sucks because of the small bugs, and that I'm not a good writer afterall. Now, I have a profound realisation: I don't suck in general, because with good examination I actually know where I suck, and I can correct my suckage. Okay, my philosophy sucks if I think this is profound. After I fix the dozens of small errors (and the few really damn big ones) I found, I have a much more solid story and more tolerable language. I think, anyway.
And the reason why 2UPS has needed much less scrawlings so far is that I've actually read it a couple of times before I printed it - as I write earlier. I wonder how I fix the really big problems in this; I need to think about that...
[Note, 2008-04-29: I've tried to update the blog tags to mention which published stories I'm really talking about, but I regrettably can't remember exactly what "2UPS" is. It's either "Requiem for the Smashed Legs" or "Bidding for a Good Day" - probably the first one, because I printed it out and added notes, unlike the latter story.]Today at the university, I put the photocopier card to the machine. 97 credits left. Whoopee.
Stuck a printout in it. Chomp chomp chomp.
45 credits left.
So far, there's 52 pages of Avarthrel stories. That's pretty much for something that started in the summer and to what I haven't had much time to devote to.
The thing is now on paper. And when it's paper, I can really read it. And when I can really read it, I can spot errors easier.
Holy cow, does the writing on my new stories ever stink.
But hey, the difference between a beginner and a serious person is that the serious person tunes the thing until it doesn't stink. And that's what I'm doing. The only bad thing is that I'm subjecting my beta readers to suffer the same anguish. Maybe I should put disclaimers to this. (Then again, if the other beta reader got past the first few pages, maybe he does have nerves of steel.)
And I particularly value the fact that I now know exactly how I stink.
Here's one major bad thing I've noticed about my stories. It's the "things happen" syndrome. Pirates in the Morning Mist has basically this set-up: The Protagonists go to one place. They find out things. "Hmm, looks like things are happening." They go back home. "Oh wow, things have happened." The second of the new stories has this sort of problem: "Wow, we sure could use some MacGuffins. Why? Well, uh, we have a lame reason." They nearly effortlessly get the MacGuffins from the Obvious MacGuffin Factory, while the other kind of MacGuffins automatically materialise. "Now we have both kinds of MacGuffins! The day is saved!"
I need to think about this. Seriously. I think it's just that in PitMM's case, I thought of a good way to wrap up the plot. Then, all of sudden, the characters just started following along those rails. "Let's wrap up the author's story! Mmm, fascinating things planned along the way!" In the new story's case, it's probably just that I figured out a good plot, but haven't yet figured out where to really find the muscles to attach to the bones.
I also need to focus more on little details.
And I definitely, definitely need to read the story over and over before I publish it. The newest story improved a lot with two read-throughs with speech synthesizer; I can't possibly imagine what possibilities will open with a paper copy and pen.
One of the things I've noted in Wikipedia is that I'm afraid of making small edits, even when I'm good at small edits. I have lately learned to fix small problems immediately as I spot it, because otherwise I forget, and no one will do it; now would be a good idea to apply the principle to my own writings.
