Hello Internet. It’s me, Matt. I’ve been off for a while battling deadlines and other nasties.
Steph is in Spain and wearing a t-shirt. A t-shirt! Outside! The British weather has finally frozen my imagination. I find it almost impossible to imagine that there’s anything but ice, snow, and biting cold winds out there. But it must be true, because Steph’s Facebook pictures tell me so. I’ll get my revenge from California next month.
So you’ve got me on link duty this week.
To begin at the beginning. At Superhero Nation B. Mac looked at opening lines. My favorite first line remains: “It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen”. It drops you into a hard and immediate world, and then twists it right away.
1984 doesn’t end happily. At Paperback Writer, though, Lynn Veihl linked to a competition to write a post-apocalyptic story with a happy ending. Hey, how about 1984 The Sequel, let’s call it 1986, in which Winston and Julia pull themselves together and lead a desperate but ultimately successful insurgency? It would be double-plus good (I would have suggested 1985, but Anthony Burgess got there first with a not double-plus good book).
Speaking of bad writing, it was everywhere this week. Well it’s pretty all-pervasive at the best of times, I suppose, but this was all about defining, revelling in, and generally getting cross about bad writing. One major thread started with a provocative piece by Edward Docx in The Observer. He argued that genre fiction is necessarily limited on all sorts of levels — even the good stuff.
He quoted Isaac D’Israeli: “it seems to me a wretched national compulsion to be gratified by mediocrity when the excellent lies before us”. By choosing this quote, Docx was pointing in particular at Dan Brown and Stieg Larsson, but he was scarcely kinder to genre fiction as a whole.
Of course outrage ensued, as it will, and everyone had lots of fun name-calling and gesturing, and generally being tiresome. In Salon, though, Laura Miller posted a nice piece on the guilty pleasures of bad writing.
At Big Other Amber Sparks mourned the decline of proletarian literature. Apparently vampires aren’t enough. Sheesh.
At There Are No Rules, the Writers’ Digest blog, Jane Friedman discussed a new film called Bad Writing: The Movie in which a self-confessedly terrible (ex-)poet tracks down good writers and discusses bad writing with them.
Perhaps the most dispiriting quote from the trailer, which is also Jane’s post title, came from Margaret Atwood: “there’s no rule that says you get steadily better.” I find that terribly deflating, but my gut tells me she’s right. Of course, there is another truth you can set alongside that. You probably won’t get better if you don’t keep working at it.
Some genres offer opportunities for their own special kinds of bad writing. In io9 Annalee Newitz reviewed All Clear by Connie Willis. She had a problem with the bad science at the heart of the novel, and the fact that the deus ex machina, was a tad deus-y for her liking. It’s an interesting question — how good should the science be in SF? Personally as long as internal consistency is upheld I’m not too bothered, but I’m an arts graduate. Probably there are some physicists out there in a constant state of near apoplexy.
On the subject of SF, Stargate Universe was cancelled this week. Ever since Alien, I’ve loved a particular SF sub-genre I like to call spaceships that hum, and SGU was a pretty good instance of the form (despite the occasional Grays Anatomy-style indie-lite montage).
In io9, genre-hopping author Michael Marshall Smith tore down some walls. He pointed out that thrillers play out around conspiracies, and noir SF stories often have hidden realms at their heart. Really, he argues, these secret spaces play a similar fictional role.
The post is also worth reading for MMS’s weariness at being asked why he no longer writes the same kind of SF he did 15 years ago. It reminded me of Woody Allen’s annoyed running gag. “I love your movies. Especially the early funny ones”
In Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room, Robin Agnew described some of the features of a good cozy mystery. In terms of personal preference that sentence is somewhat oxymoronic, but then, as I’ve admitted, I like spaceships that hum, so what do I know?
If you’ve not decided that genre fiction is unsavably bad, it’s maybe as well to get the lie of the land. Kristen Lamb posted a useful guide to genres. I could maybe have done with some insight into the world of SF/F sub-genres, but otherwise this was a nice overview, especially since Kristen included word counts.
In Go Into The Story screenwriter Jonathan Nolan interviewed his brother Christopher. When I first saw Inception I thought that it was at least in part about making movies. Obviously the Bond homage in the final act is a movie/genre reference, but there’s a lot in there about craft too. I’m pleased to see from this interview that this was actually intentional and not just a facet of my tendency to overthink.
At the Self Editing Blog, John Robert Marlow conducted a fascinating interview with Terry Rossio, the screenwriting powerhouse responsible (with writing partners) for Pirates of the Carribean, Shrek, Godzilla and many more. This really is a must-read piece for the insight it offers into the craft and business of screenwriting. Here’s a quote:
“Since I fear working on something that isn’t great or compelling from the start, I want to stack the deck in our favor by taking the first inspiration and going past it, add to it with a second inspiration. This is hard to describe because it could be ‘adding’ or ‘merging’ the first concept with another concept from another movie idea, or it could be coming up with some twist that derives from the original idea and pushes it further. I guess at all times we keep thinking, ‘how can we push this’ more than what we have already. Can we do the entire concept in the first thirty pages, and then go from there, and really blow the audience away? Again, this is all fear-based … is it good enough? No, not yet, it can get better, we can do more …”
In Writer Unboxed Kim Hudson offered new take on the hero’s journey.. the virgin’s journey. No jokes about the climax of the voyage. Anyway, Hudson talks about that side of it too, only without getting all sniggery and stupid.
In the Observer a rather choppy questionnaire-style interview with Elmore Leonard offered some insights.
At The Literary Lab, Scott GF Bailey posted a nice piece on handling transitions without jarring the reader. I like the word ‘foreshadowing’ too.
Write Anything’s Annie Evett reposted a piece on developing short stories with twists.
While I was at Kristin Lamb’s blog, I also took in part 2 of a useful guide to blogging. Given my recent truancy, I should perhaps reread this quite carefully.
Last year I had a lot of fun writing a short story a day for a month, thanks to StoryADay.org. In fact, I cheated, and just outlined 30 odd (some very odd) stories. This week the site linked to a new challenge. Write1Sub1 – write one story and submit another for every week of 2011.
At Somewhere South of Heaven, Gemma Noon discussed rejection, of which there are a number of types. She’s recently had the ‘good’ kind. She kicks off her post with one of my favourite quotes: “Fail again, fail better. I guess it’s a lesson we all have to learn (and keep on learning, unfortunately). In the Paris Review, Tim Wu is very much an advocate of tough love. It was nice then that io9 was here to remind us that perseverance can pay off. Charlie Jane Anders reported that Cassie Alexander landed a book deal after being rejected by 50 agents.
In productivity corner this week SF author Juliette Wade advised setting small achievable goals, and being kind to yourself if you don’t make them. Also Darko at Write to Done discussed overcoming procrastination.
If there were a blog of the week award given out in this slot it would have to go to Scott Myers and Go Into The Story. I had slap a limit on links to this site to prevent it taking over. Anyway, he (and, quoted, Allen Palmer), offered a take on The Social Network. The post focused on conflict and character type as engines of the script’s success. I’m sure I’d love the movie if I could get over my monumental resistance to watching Zuckerburg for a minute longer than I have to, fictionalised or not.
Also this week, Edit Torrent compiled a useful list of online style guides. At The Other Side of the Story, Janice Hardy reminded us to clarify our pronouns then widened her focus to look at scene and character. Anna Staniszewski discussed world building through character
AL Kennedy is close to the end of her current work in progress, and, thanks to the editing process, close to the end of her tether. It doesn’t help that here in Britain both access to higher education and the right to protest are under assault.
Kennedy is not the only one angry with the British government (by any means, believe me). Kate Mosse wrote in the Guardian about growing outrage at the UK Government’s short-sighted attacks on libraries, education and culture in the name of economic prudence.
Right, that’s it. Go. Shop. Drink. Enjoy.
