Mon Oct 25, 2004
Weird and Twitchy [Whining and Complaining]
Ugh. What a lousey day. I got nothing done, besides clean the bathroom, which wasn't very exciting. And it's not even a large bathroom. That medication is making me all twitchy. The story I'm working on is making me weird. Weirder. Is that a word?
I can't really blame Writer Rick for this. He certainly didn't give a cold. All he did give me were a bunch of Issac Assimov magazines from the 80's that he won on ebay in a lot with some stuff he really wanted for his research. SF is not Rick's thing, but I've been known to indulge every now and then, a la Margaret Atwood.....
Now, we find our heroine ( that would be me) worrying about her business, her bosses business - the tile, The Hub's business, the gallery show and staying up all night writing "Small Town Girl".
The mistake a lot of SF writers make, I find, is making their technology or their world the main charecter of their work. No matter how way far out the concept, no matter how cool the technology, no matter how much of a cautionary tale we are being told, if the if the people in the story aren't beleivable, if you don't like them, or hate them, or feel something about them one way or the other,or understand their motivation, then the story is going nowhere. By contrast, readers can get over some alarming gaps in "exactly how does that work" for charecters we really care about. Sherri S. Tepper's much talked about The Gate to Women's Country comes to mind.
But, on the other hand, if you're writing "near future fiction" like "Small Town Girl" you can't get as way with as many gaps in your leaps through technology, or lack thereof. Setting something 30 years in the future is really hard, because everybody knows what life is like today, so what happens tomorrow, and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow has to be pretty darn believable. It's tied to today, it's rooted in current events. It's one outcome among many.
So what I've got is a simple story against a complex back drop. Star crossed lovers, unrequited love, all that which has been going on since the Bible hopefully made fresh and new in a border town in "The New Confederacy"- a break away Christian state. And, instantly I'm working out a ton of problems. What keeps a smart person in a technologically backward state? How do you present all sides an issue without condescending to anyone? How do you make the unthinkable mundane? After all, the charecters are living day to day in this world - what needs to seem absolutely crazy to my reader has to seem absolutely normal to them - and, yet, be explained clearly.
The poor Hub. He's downstairs working with wood. What else is he to do when I am off somewhere thirty years in the future with people he doesn't even know. No wonder when I stop writing and blink my eyes at 1:00 in the morning I'm all weird and twitchy. Maybe it has nothing to do with the medicine.
No wonder a lot of writers drank. They probably were trying to get some sleep.
Jeepers!
Some opinions:
"What keeps a smart person in a technologically backward state?" - This is going to be your key element of your story. This is a fundamental point, and as a technologically smart person, it would take something very profound, indeed, to keep me in association with a "backwards" society.
"How do you present all sides an issue without condescending to anyone?" - You don't. It's not (in my mind) a fiction writer's job to be objective. Good fiction arises when a writer can effectively incorporate their own thoughts, biases, point of view, and preconceptions into an intruiging story. Would "The Jungle" have had the same impact if Upton Sinclair had tried to balance the story of his imigrant slaughterhouse workers against the interests of the meat packers? Would Ellison's "Invisible Man" have meant the same if it was watered down with an exploration of the other side of the story?
"How do you make the unthinkable mundane?" - Don't worry about it. Fantasy and science-fiction readers come into the story ready to accept a lot and suspend truckloads of disbelief. So long as you state your premise and are consistent in the application of it, your readers will most likely accept it.
"...in a border town in 'The New Confederacy' - a break away Christian state." - Here's where you might get on dicey ground. You need to decide who you want your audience to be. If you write this story incorporating too much Christian ideal or sound "preachy", you're going to alienate a lot of the science-fiction audience. Books that are too heavy-handed on the God aspect tend to lose their appeal to the general public, who feel as if they're being sold a sermon. On the other hand, making the "New Confederacy" too far out sets them up to be an object of derision, which I'm sure is not your intent.
I'm a pretty literate guy, and a decent first-draft copy editor. You can send some rough cuts over for an eyeball, if you like. I always give honest critique, and don't get my feelings hurt if you think I should go get stuffed.
Posted by: Rob at October 25, 2004 9:00 PMThe New Confederacy? Ummmmmm.
Posted by: Will Burnham at October 26, 2004 8:29 AMRob wrote:
Actually, CS Lewis pulled this off quite admirably with his space trilogy. Also, with all due respect, I believe in writing from the heart and then seeing if there is an "audience" for it rather than setting out writing for the audience and allowing concerns over wehat the "audience" will or won't accept be a driving factor. (This may help explain why I have 2 rejection slips to show for my efforts so far).
In fact, I believe it is part of the writer's/artist's role to agitate, to go against the grain and tell people a truth whether they want to hear it or not. The alternative is giving the public what they want, which is usuallu pablum.
Posted by: Rick at October 29, 2004 6:01 PM