Time to fall over.

With Fate Conspire is revised and off to L’Editor.

***

Length of final draft: 157,000 words

Length of kill-file, containing material longer than a sentence or two cut during the process: 57,000 words

***

Dear Whichever God Rules Over Novelists,

What do I have to sacrifice to you in order to guarantee that my next novel will not require me to write thirty-six percent more material than I actually use? Lemme know, and I’ll get right on that.

Your obt. servt.,
A Very Tired Writer

and she can’t call him Frederic yet

Dear Mr. Myers why did your name have to begin with an M it makes all of these sentences unfortunately alliterative gah stupid actual historical people in my novel I’m never doing this again okay that last part’s probably a lie.

<goes back to fixing the book>

tonight’s random thought

I want to get a dog — a golden retriever, ideally; or a yellow lab would do — and name her Ramoth.

Then I want to get a kitten, and name her Lessa.

And then I want to teach the kitten to ride around on the back of the dog.

(Time-traveling capability a bonus, but not required.)

for my science friends

I’m not sure how to phrase this best, but — at what point in history did we start to develop actual, workable “detection” devices? I’m thinking of things along the lines of a Geiger counter, but it doesn’t have to be a radiation detector; just a device to measure anything not visible to the eye. Wikipedia claims Gauss invented an early magnetometer in 1833, but the claim consists of three not terribly informative sentences, and the article on Gauss himself just says he developed a “method” for measuring magnetism, without specifying what it was.

Basically, Fate may or may not end up including a device for the measuring of a particular substance/effect/force/whatever, and I’m trying to figure out how much the concept of such a thing existed by 1884. (The question of how this thing works can be dealt with separately, if I decide to include it.)

Any historians of science able to answer that one for me?

more than official

With the two new scenes I added in tonight, With Fate Conspire passed the 150,000 word mark. (150,975 words, to be precise.)

Nothing next to the bricks of epic fantasy, of course — but more than long enough for me. Unfortunately for that sentiment, I have four more scenes to add before this revision is done. Please, God, don’t let this book balloon all the way up to 160K . . . .

Writing Fight Scenes: The Question of Purpose

[This is a post in my series on how to write fight scenes. Other installments may be found under the tag.]

All right, enough vague philosophizing. Let’s start digging into the practicalities.

For my money, the most important question you should ask yourself in writing a fight scenes is, What is the purpose of this fight?

“Who is involved in this fight?” is also a critically important question, and we’ll get to that soon enough. But the who is a matter for inside the story, whereas the purpose is a matter for both within and without.

Inside the story, we’re asking why these characters are fighting. What’s their impetus for doing so, and what do they hope to accomplish? Outside, we’re asking what the fight is supposed to do for the story as a whole. As we discussed last time, there should ideally be more than one answer to that latter question.

For this, I will use the Inigo/Man in Black duel as my example.

Yuletide assignment

No, I can’t talk publicly about what I’m writing — as they said, anonymous Yuletiders are anonymous! — but I want the record to show that I totally called it.

(Okay, I called, like, three different possibilities, based on what I’d heard about the matching algorithm pairing the rarest things first. But I kept thinking I’d end up with this one, because there is potential for tasty irony in me writing it.)

Anyway, the extra-fun part is that once I get back from Thanksgiving and have the book off my desk, I get to revisit the source for my assignment! kurayami_hime, you should totally ping me for details. 🙂

three cool links for your Friday

Unless you’re on the other side of the planet from me, in which case I think it isn’t Friday for you anymore.

The Justice League of America, Magnificent Seven-style — Superman and Wonder Woman and so on translated into Japanese film idioms.

The most awesome Fallout LARP ever — played on an abandoned base near St. Petersburg, Russia, which makes a fabulous atmosphere for a post-apocalyptic game. The costumes are even more fabulous, and the lengths they went to for setting up challenges . . . jaw-dropping. Just page down to look at the pictures, and know that your own LARP group? Is not this cool. (Unless you’re a member of Albion.)

How cats drink — “‘Three and a half years ago, I was watching Cutta Cutta lap over breakfast,’ Dr. Stocker said. Naturally, he wondered what hydrodynamic problems the cat might be solving.” The answer is pretty amazing.

jeebus

Whoa. Apparently I’ve picked up something like thirty-plus new readers since I started the “fight scenes” sequence of posts.

Hi, all! And welcome! This has actually put me up over five hundred readers, which is a nice little landmark; I feel like I should do something to celebrate it. Like giving away prizes.

As near as I can tell, alpheratz, you’re Reader No. 500, so you win! And so does everywherestars, chosen by the highly scientific expedient of pulling up my profile, closing my eyes, and sticking the eraser end of a pencil randomly at my screen. E-mail me at marie [dot] brennan [at] gmail [dot] com, and I’ll give you a selection of prizes from my Box O’ Books And Other Things I’ve Written.

(I know that not all of the 517 readers I currently have are necessarily still reading LJ, so if I don’t hear back from everywherestars, I’ll pick another recipient.)

BTW, I mentioned this to alpheratz in comments, but if you’ve read the entirety of the Lymond Chronicles and want onto the filter wherein I’ve been book-blogging the series (mostly just The Game of Kings so far), leave a note here. That particular project is on hiatus, but I have no objection to comments on old posts, so new readers are always welcome.

I bring these things upon myself

For the amount I’m having to juggle who knows what about whom and when they know it (and when they don’t), I really ought to have a mystery novel to show for it.

Instead, I have an Onyx Court book that makes me want to tear my hair out.

Let this be a lesson to all concerned: never inflict amnesia on multiple characters at once. (No matter how good your reason for it may be.)

Ah well. L’Editor liked it — quite a bit — so there’s that stressor removed; I do still need to do a lot of work, but it’s entirely of my own making. Can’t really blame anybody but myself for that.

Oh, hey! The “l’editor” thing reminded me. If you’re a fluent French speaker and could spare me a few minutes of work checking a handful of lines from this story, please drop me a line, either in comments or by e-mail. It isn’t much, but I should probably fix it before this goes to the copy-editor.

Wheel of Time side post: On Women

I promised a while ago that I would make a post about the depiction of women in the Wheel of Time, and have had the result sitting around not quite finished for more than a month. Since I’m about to buckle down for the last push on revising With Fate Conspire, I might as well get this out of the way and off my mind.

Before I get to the complaints, though, let me say a few things about what Jordan does right. To begin with, he passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors. Even in the first book, Egwene, Nynaeve, and Moiraine are all significant characters, and once the story moves off to the White Tower in The Great Hunt, the importance of women to the plot is firmly assured. I can think of a distressing number of recent epic fantasies that don’t do half so well on that front.

Furthermore, the women aren’t there to be damsels in distress. They don’t get captured or tortured or raped, or killed off to upset the hero. Rand’s angst over the death of women aside, I’d have to go searching to find anyone stuffed into the refrigerator; no significant examples of that leap to mind. Heck, most of them aren’t even love interests: Egwene and Nynaeve both have their own romances, rather than being the object of someone else’s, and while Elayne may have been introduced in that role, it isn’t long before she’s doing far more important things.

That stuff is all good. So why do the women of the Wheel of Time get so badly up my nose?

Spoilers, of course. Also ranting.

two good causes

The Carl Brandon Society is fundraising for the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship, which helps send writers of color to the Clarion workshops. It’s a prize drawing; you can purchase tickets for the chance to win an e-reader (one of two Nooks, one of two Kobos, or an Alex eReader). This goes through midnight Eastern on November 22nd, so you’ve got just a few days left to enter.

Also, Pat Rothfuss is again running his Worldbuilders event, raising money for Heifer International. Among the items on offer are a whole lot of signed books, including a pair of In Ashes Lie and A Star Shall Fall, signed by yours truly. There are so many prizes, though, that Pat’s still in the process of posting them all; check out that first link for a list, and for information on how to participate.

Writing Fight Scenes: my philosophy

[This is a post in my series on how to write fight scenes. Other installments may be found under the tag.]

So you’re working on a story, and there comes a point where it really ought to have a fight scene. But you’re sitting there thinking, “I’m not a martial artist! I’m not an SCA member! I have no idea how to fight!” Or maybe you’re thinking, “Fight scenes are so boring. I’d rather just skip over this and get back to the actual story.” Or something else that makes you dread writing that scene, rather than looking forward to it with anticipation.

Don’t worry, dear reader. I’m from the Internet, and I’m here to help. <g>

To the first group, I say: the details of how to fight are possibly the least important component of a fight scene. The important components are the same ones you’re already grappling with in the rest of your writing, namely, description, pacing, characterization, and all that good stuff.

To the second group, I say: it’s only boring if the author does it wrong.

Cut for length.

Writing Fight Scenes: Introduction

This month’s SF Novelists post is a bit different, because it’s the launching point for a series I’ll be doing over here on LJ for the next indeterminate amount of time.

At Sirens this past month, I did a workshop on writing fight scenes, and promised those who weren’t able to attend that I’d be posting the material online. That begins today, and will be continuing for a while. Check out the aforementioned post for sort of an anecdote-cum-mission statement, then head behind the cut for a bit more about me and why I’m interested in this subject, plus an outline of how I’m going to approach this.

I’ve always loved fight scenes.

for those who haven’t seen it

I was mentioning James Frey’s latest atrocity to a few friends last night, and promised I would point them at the details, so here they are, by way of Scalzi’s blog.

Holy abusive contracts, Batman. It appears that Frey’s crass, opportunistic exploitation knows neither bounds nor shame. I can only hope the public outcry will go far enough to scare people away from signing up to be his factory drones — but sadly, I doubt it will.

don we now our gay apparel

So, I signed up for Yuletide.

In a few years, I have gone from “what’s this ‘Yuletide’ thing so-and-so posted about?” to “wtf, half my friends list is talking about this ‘Yuletide’ thing” to “now I’m the one posting about Yuletide.” If you’re like a me a few years ago, and have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a quick rundown: it’s a fanfic gift exchange, where participants list types of stories they’d really like to get (source, characters, and some non-binding suggestions as to the nature of the story) and types of stories they’d be willing to write. Everybody gets matched up, and on Christmas Day the stories go live, anonymously; on New Years’ Day the authors are revealed.

What makes this interesting to me is that Yuletide is specifically intended to be for “rare” fandoms — sources for which there isn’t a lot of fanfic already out there. In other words, not your Harry Potters and so on. Some participants take this notion of rarity and run with it, clear off the edge of the map: the list of nominated fandoms includes things like, oh, Plato’s Dialogues. Or the song “Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Or Polynesian mythology. There is a section for twelfth-century historical figures; also ones for 13th-14th, 14th-15th, the 15th century itself, 16th-17th, and the Reformation. Reading the list sends me cycling through bafflement and squee: “I’ve never heard of that” alternating with “I’m not the only person who’s seen K-20: The Fiend with Twenty Faces!”

I signed up because on the shuttle back from Sirens, I mentioned the Nightmare Before Christmas/Hogfather crossover fic I’m convinced the world really needs, and rachelmanija told me I should sign up for Yuletide and ask somebody to write it for me. I’d never really considered participating before then, because calling my involvement with the fanfic scene “minimal” would probably be overstating the case — but in a world where Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads can be listed as a fandom, why the hell not?

Aside from being curious to see what I receive, it’s going to be an interesting exercise from a writing standpoint. I haven’t often written to a prompt of any kind, and in this instance, I have very little notion what I’ll be asked to write. It isn’t completely an open field; I control what I’ve offered, in terms of fandoms and characters, and this year they added a functionality for additional tags, though that last one isn’t binding. The only requirement is that I produce a minimum of one thousand words about X people in Y setting. The recipient may ask for a particular kind of story, but I’m not obligated to produce it. I’ll probably try, though; the point is to make the reader happy, and that means giving them what they’re looking for, if I can. So this may be an enlightening challenge for me, depending on what my assignment turns out to be.

I have more to say on that front, actually, but we’re supposed to keep mum about what we’ve offered to write, so it will have to wait until Yuletide is over.

Anyway, lately my brain has been craving playtime with stories that cannot possibly be construed as any form of work. This fits the bill pretty well. I’m very curious to see what I’ll be assigned to write . . . .

why I love gaming

In the midst of summarizing tonight’s session to kurayami_hime, I typed the sentence “And then they went and burned down San Quentin Prison.”*

Gaming, my friends, lends itself to gonzo behavior I would never put into a novel. (Other writers might; I’m just not that sort.) Torching San Quentin ain’t no jet-ski down an elevator shaft, but it amused me anyway. Random destruction of public property for the win! Guess that historical preservation thing won’t be happening after all . . . .

*Before one of the players corrects me: the xiuhcoatl was the one that actually burned down the prison. But it was the PCs’ fault that happened, so.

TV Gift: Pushing Daisies

I don’t often get into sitcoms. (Or comedy movies, but that’s a separate matter.) Within the last six months, I tried two — Arrested Development and Better Off Ted — and both were funny, very cleverly written, certainly good examples of the genre . . .

. . . and I just didn’t care.

I would watch an episode, and enjoy it while I was watching, but when it ended I felt absolutely no impetus to go on. I didn’t crave more. I didn’t feel any curiosity as to what happened next — well, sitcoms are often highly episodic in their structure, and I’ve made no secret of the fact that I adore a good arc-plot. For me to get hooked on a show whose purpose is primarily comedic, I need something more.

Apparently that “something more” is “dead bodies.”

A friend gave us the first season of Pushing Daisies, and my friends, I have found my comedy show. Not my drama-with-funny-bits — those, I have plenty of — an honest-to-god sitcom about a pie-maker who raises people from the dead (and then puts them back . . . most of the time). His two companions are a private detective who uses him to question murder victims, and a childhood sweetheart he raised and then didn’t put back. Who he can’t ever touch, because if he does she’ll kick the bucket again, this time permanently.

It turns out I really can be bought that easily, by a fantasy component and a bit of gallows humour. Because most of what this show does, is also done by other shows; there’s silly names, implausible characters (the agoraphobic sister aunts who used to do synchronized swimming as the Darling Mermaid Darlings), plot twists out of left field, etc. All the stuff I don’t care about it when other shows do it. But throw in a few dead bodies, some drugged pies, and the matter-of-fact way in which Emerson and Chuck exploit Ned’s ability, and suddenly all that other stuff stops bouncing off my brain and starts sticking.

I still don’t adore it with the heat of a thousand adoring suns — well, not yet, anyway; we’re only four episodes in. My taste runs too much to the drama-tastic end of the spectrum for that, probably. But I suspect I’ll want to buy the second season, and that’s a remarkable achievement in itself.

(Confidential to akashiver — if memory serves, you were trying to push this show on me ages ago. I can only say two things: you were right, and mea culpa for not listening sooner.)