Viable Paradise: A Travelogue (Part 3)

Tuesday morning started out the same way that Monday had, with a small group critique. Tuesday's was led by Teresa Nielsen-Hayden and Debra Doyle, and despite a mild hangover, once again I enjoyed it greatly (probably because I was not the writer on the hot seat). People really did give thoughtful, respectful comments, and it was such a pleasure being part of discussions about the craft of writing at such a high level. Interestingly, I found that I gained a far deeper appreciation of each of the stories (and each of the authors) after the critique. As a reader, I'm often impatient, and swallow big chunks of text at a time--so something either grabs me and pulls me in/through, or I get frustrated and put it down. But when forced to go slowly and consider the author's use of technique and craft to accomplish (or not) story flow, when I read with an eye towards the mechanics of every sentence and paragraph and the overarching questions of plot and character development, I have a lot more empathy for what the author was trying to do and therefore a better understanding of the story as a whole.

Anyway here are a few precious bits excavated from Tuesday morning's group critique (I didn't write down attributions, unfortunately, but chances are good that these are attributable either to Doyle or TNH):

"Whining and smirking are good ways to get a character killed--they make a character unsympathetic."

"The story starts when something irrevocable happens."

"Threshold crossings are points of great interest in fantasy, and are great opportunities for exposition."

"Two things never addressed enough in fantasy settings are heating and light sources."

After group critique we all trooped back to the main meeting room for that day's lectures by Doyle and Bear (for some reason both these instructors seemed to always be referred to by last name). Debra's lecture was on "This Sentence Goes Clunk, and Other Problems", which talked about, among other things, style and prose structure. A few selected points worth enshrining here:

-Know what your own style strengths are: know and refine your natural "voice". (TNH added: "Style is what you can't help doing")
-More details slow down the pace, fewer details speed it up.
-Paragraph and sentence structure affect pace as well (e.g. longer sentences with multiple connected clauses will slow a reader down)
-Cutting non-essential words will help gain momentum
-Know your habit words/phrases and make sure to change or excise them on the second draft
-Words contain within them buried history and buried text, so be careful in their use in a F/SF setting (e.g. "galvanized")
-Words have denotations and connotations; worldbuilding happens largely on connotations

Bear's lecture encompassed quite a bit of useful information--I'm not sure I could summarize what it was "all about" but again, here is a small selection of excellent advice on craft, both from Bear and from the comments of other instructors:

-Conflict is the engine that drives your plot; conflict can be internal (one person who wants two different things, often a difference between what a character wants and needs) or external (two people who want two different things, two people who want the same thing).
-Opposition and conflict can be moral/ethical; readers want characters to make moral decisions
-When a character wants something, and tries different ways to get it, the reader starts to root for that character
-Law of conservation of characters: use as few characters as you can to accomplish the acxtion
-"You have to keep tossing the reader cookies to get them to follow you off the cliff"
-The insistence on plots being original is a modern aberration (besides, don't worry, when you steal something you won't get it quite right anyway)

After lectures, it was lunchtime. On this day during lunch, Cory Doctorow (another individual for whom I have a minor case of hero worship after reading BoingBoing all these years) was giving a short talk on Blogging. Wild horses couldn't have drawn me away from that talk (not that there were any horses that I saw on the island, nor would they, being wild, have been very interested in coming down to the meeting room of the Island Inn, nor would they be able to drag anyone anywhere with just their teeth anyway…but I digress). Other than the very interesting history of BoingBoing itself, I didn't learn anything particularly new, but there were still a few points worth setting down here for posterity and as a reminder for myself when and if I ever get serious about blogging for a wider audience:

-Blog headlines are very important to pay attention to. They should be short, lucid, informative chunks that tell a reader instantly what the post is about and allow them to make a judgement as to whether or not they'd want to read your post (because most people will be looking at your posts on an RSS feed).
-Leads (the first sentence or so of your post) are crucial too, for the same reason
-Post frequently, but not too much
-We are in a historical moment that favors interaction with an audience, and that's why blogs work

After lunch, there was a collegium. Topics ranged from "dialogue" to "outlines and synopses" to "agents". It was getting hard to pay attention after so many hours of sitting in an underground room on uncomfortable chairs, but damn them if the instructors (and occasionally, the students) didn't keep saying fascinating and helpful things. Again, a small selection drawn from the smorgasbord of writerly advice:

-Idioms and levels of diction are a great way to indicate cultural background(s) of your characters
-If you take away the signifiers ("Joe said") from your dialogue, you should still be able to tell who's speaking
-Dialogue is an artificial convention--what it reads like is different than how it actually sounds
-Create a clean outline of a character with just enough clutter to make them believable (real humans are way too messy in real life)
-Don't over-describe--readers are really good at filling in details
-Character emotions are more effective when you show, not tell
-A synopsis is just an aerial snapshot of the book, that gives the reader a preview of what it will feel like to read the book, not the actual plot of the book
-A synopsis should NOT be marketing copy (or review copy)
-One way to write a synopsis: imagine you are writing an enthusiastic letter to a friend about why they should read this book--you can even zoom in and tell a couple of the really great bits, like you would tell a friend about a great movie they'll never see
-Less is more in a cover letter--only include details if they might help sell/market the book
-Do not include a giant catalog of sales to unimpressive markets (just a few selections is better)
-The number of really good agents is around a dozen or so specialists in F/SF, and about that many more non-specialists
-Most real/good agents will provide a client list
-Yog's Law: money flows toward the writer (not the agent or the publisher)

After collegium, there was a block of empty time before I had my next one-on-one. Did I spend it writing my homework assignment? Or even doing my critiques for the next day? I did not. I spent it chatting with my roomies and napping. And by God, I had a better attitude when I awoke. Imagine that.

Perhaps because of the better attitude (or perhaps because, having already been brillo'd, the new skin that had grown back was tougher and more flexible), I had a great one-one-one session with Elizabeth Bear. She was friendly and very entertaining to talk to, but also zeroed in on all the right issues and called me on them without beating around the bush. By the end of the session I'd gained even yet more respect for her craft savvy and found her a kindred soul, especially in her sense of humor.

Bear had lots of comments and gave me lots of homework: watch "The Usual Suspects" at least twice, read Guy Gavriel Kay's "Summer Tree" series (which in a stunning coincidence, I just had), Scott Lynch's "Lies of Lock Lamora" and Diana Wynne Jones' "Rough Guide to Fantasyland". She too wanted me to be less generic and find that style or subject twist that made me unique. ("Just looking at you, you clearly have flair and personal style," she said, "you ought to be able to put that into your work.") She too felt that my main characters were coming off as too perfect early on, and we talked about introducing their flaws sooner. She too noted that my infodumps were problematic, and in the case of the Whisper origin story, unnecessary. She pointed out that my characters needed to be more grounded in their physicality--the reader needs to know how things smell, sound, and feel to them, not just be given visual, cinematic information. She encouraged me to go to primary sources to get a good feel for things like politics (this was why Teresa had recommended Alan Clarke's diaries) and historically appropriate tech.

After the one-on-one, it was time for dinner in the main room, which I attended in a far happier space than the night before. I don't think I've said this yet, but the food they served us at VP was actually quite good--the staff there cooked a wide variety of creative and yummy things for us, not an easy feat considering they were cooking for approximately 40 people every time. After dinner it was time for our class field trip to the beach to go look at the jellyfish. Other people's accounts of VP had included many effusive descriptions of how great the luminescent jellyfish were, so there was no way I was going to miss out on this by staying in my townhouse and doing my homework. (As my roommate Dorothy "Doc" Winsor started saying about the homework assignment: "Make me!")

The jellyfish were awesome. I admit that I hadn't really known what to expect, even after reading other people's accounts. I've seen regular jellyfish, and I've seen some amazing luminescent jellyfish exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and in Hawaii, but this was in situ, not a result of clever black lighting. Most spectacular was the view from a bridge where we could stand and look down on the action. As the current flowed under the bridge, you could see several dozen greenish clouds of light the size of dessert plates blossoming in the water for a second or two, moving with the current and then fading away. Some light clouds were brighter than others, possibly because of the depth of the jelly in the water, possibly because of the particular type of jelly. Everything was very quiet, too, except for the exclamations (and explanations) of delighted writers. At one point I went down underneath the bridge with a couple other students and watched the jellies flow by from that view. It was there that Pam also discovered that running your hand through the water created a faint luminescence as well.

Truly it was a beautiful, alien sight that now can only be inadequately described in words. I wish I'd been able to record the experience somehow so I could show it to my family, but in the dark, there was no way a regular camera or video camera would be able to capture it. So it will just have to live in my memory.

I do believe that post-jellyfish there might have been some sort of attempt to work on critiques and homework assignments, but the rest of that night has vanished into memory along with the jellyfish, wavering slowly through the dark.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment of overly detailed, self-focused travelogue, in which our Heroine finally becomes the writer in the hot seat and even does some new writing!