Writerly Ways
Mar. 17th, 2019 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessI was trying to figure out what I wanted to write about. It was going to be diversity in fiction but then I got too spun to think. I was spun by two things, one was a bad review that led to the idea we could talk about building a thicker skin and the other thing was learning that one entire building here at my apartment complex is completely empty and there is no plans to remodel and rent. It's just going to be left empty and filled with rodents (which is already is). It sucks. This apartment is actually big and nice but now it's just going to hell and no one cares (this is a tax write off for the people who own it, they don't give two shits). So IF I still have a job in June, I'm going to have to buy a house (there isn't much rental around here)
Then I read the first chapter of Slayer by Kiersten White and the idea of series continuity came up. Why? Because of this passage in chapter one "Magic is still broken, right?"...It's been two months without a drop of magical energy. For an organization built on magic it's not been an easy adjustment....
"Fresh out of batteries and no one can find the right size." Rhys scowls at his text as if insulted by the demon he's reading about. "When Buffy breaks something, she breaks it good."
I have to admit, this confused the hell out of me (and maybe I've not read far enough to figure it out but this is something of a stopper for me). I do know that the idea that Buffy and Willow broke the magic for the Slayer's power to be passed along was what they were after with the final season (leading up to Fray's world) But this makes it sound like all magic is broken. This makes no sense. Season Five of Angel comes after Buffy did this. There's plenty of magic. Spike getting his body back, Fred being turned into Illyria, the Orlon Window and restoring Connor's mind to him, the magics thrown about by Wes, Eve and Lindsey. This seems like a break in series continuity. (Has anyone else read the book)
And sometimes it happens that way. You think of something you should have done but didn't or did something you shouldn't have. I had to put a long author's note in Blood Red Roulette because I screwed up something in an earlier short story. In Hyperion's Son I've gone in and retconned something I changed my mind about 15 years later. But in the real world outside of an author's note (that does make you look a little stupid) you can't breach series continuity.
It helps of course to know you were working a series (Believe me sometimes you don't expect it, looking at you Soldiers of the Sun).
It will change depending on your genre. Mysteries are easier to do in one respect series-wise because you have completed stories every time and about the only thing that changes is the relationships the detective has. Sci-Fi and Fantasy on the other hand often have dozens of plot threads that span multiple books.
The best way to deal with that is to, if not outline, then make notes on what you want to have happen for each character, keep a story diary noting places, character sheets, things that have happened, things that need to happen.
And really Buffy and Angel are good places to look to see this working well and working badly. Angel's curse for example. Angel was never meant to be a recurring character (nor was Spike) and if you look at their histories or how the curse works, you can see the holes (and stupid crap, yes curse we're all looking at you.) Or Josh deciding one character will be gay but not knowing if it was Xander or Willow so it wasn't really built up to in any significant way.
Today we have J.K. Rowling pissing off everyone again with insisting (and basically retconning) Dumbledore and Grisewald were a couple. I think everyone is put up or shut up. Of course, we also have to remember that these books are 22 years old now and no one was going to publish a kid's book 20 years ago with a gay mentor (gay teachers will still being fired for being gay in the 90s and publishers had notations in their guidelines saying no gay characters period not here and if you wrote them elsewhere you're blackballed here, I know this because I SAW those guidelines. Hell I remember everyone shrieking about how Mercedes Lackey killing her career by daring to make Vanyel gay. Hint: she didn't) So yeah maybe there isn't the diversity we want now but trying to retcon it in is also problematic. So maybe we're better off not doing that or do as fans say, write the damn story with them as a couple if that truly was your intent since these days that won't be as much of a no-no as it was in the beginning of the Potterverse.
I even posted a link about handling a series last week or the week before.
I still haven't written enough to put up my word counts because it's been a terrible two weeks writing wise and I need to knock off the shit because I have deadlines, two of them this month!
And now some links from around the web
Your Checklist To Publishing Your Book in 2019
The Most Important Part Of Writing And Publishing A Book
When Is It Time To Consider Yourself A “Real Writer”?
Things I Wish I Had Known Before Self-Publishing My Book I think I might have shared this before.
And from Betty
Article Writing
Hey this is half the reason I try doing the writerly ways
Five Ways Your Characters Can Acquire Magic Ha, this reminded me of a book I loved when I was young by Hickman and Weis where everyone DOES have magic and our protagonist, Joram was born without (and okay brain you can remember a name from a book you read once in 1987 but you don't know how to work a cruise control you do every day....) Luckily knowing that name got me to the books here Forging the Darksword I'm not sure I remembered it was a trilogy and if I did know it once, I'm not sure I read it or else didn't like the other two books. Looking at the cover, 2 doesn't spark at all but 3 does so maybe I had book one and three but never read the latter because for some reason I didn't have 2...the reason being I was in med school with no time for jack.
25 Ideas for Your Author Blog okay using these for Jana's.
Speaking of her, for another two days DSP is having a Pi day sale, everything 31.4% off so if you ever wanted to sample the pro stuff find it
here
Then I read the first chapter of Slayer by Kiersten White and the idea of series continuity came up. Why? Because of this passage in chapter one "Magic is still broken, right?"...It's been two months without a drop of magical energy. For an organization built on magic it's not been an easy adjustment....
"Fresh out of batteries and no one can find the right size." Rhys scowls at his text as if insulted by the demon he's reading about. "When Buffy breaks something, she breaks it good."
I have to admit, this confused the hell out of me (and maybe I've not read far enough to figure it out but this is something of a stopper for me). I do know that the idea that Buffy and Willow broke the magic for the Slayer's power to be passed along was what they were after with the final season (leading up to Fray's world) But this makes it sound like all magic is broken. This makes no sense. Season Five of Angel comes after Buffy did this. There's plenty of magic. Spike getting his body back, Fred being turned into Illyria, the Orlon Window and restoring Connor's mind to him, the magics thrown about by Wes, Eve and Lindsey. This seems like a break in series continuity. (Has anyone else read the book)
And sometimes it happens that way. You think of something you should have done but didn't or did something you shouldn't have. I had to put a long author's note in Blood Red Roulette because I screwed up something in an earlier short story. In Hyperion's Son I've gone in and retconned something I changed my mind about 15 years later. But in the real world outside of an author's note (that does make you look a little stupid) you can't breach series continuity.
It helps of course to know you were working a series (Believe me sometimes you don't expect it, looking at you Soldiers of the Sun).
It will change depending on your genre. Mysteries are easier to do in one respect series-wise because you have completed stories every time and about the only thing that changes is the relationships the detective has. Sci-Fi and Fantasy on the other hand often have dozens of plot threads that span multiple books.
The best way to deal with that is to, if not outline, then make notes on what you want to have happen for each character, keep a story diary noting places, character sheets, things that have happened, things that need to happen.
And really Buffy and Angel are good places to look to see this working well and working badly. Angel's curse for example. Angel was never meant to be a recurring character (nor was Spike) and if you look at their histories or how the curse works, you can see the holes (and stupid crap, yes curse we're all looking at you.) Or Josh deciding one character will be gay but not knowing if it was Xander or Willow so it wasn't really built up to in any significant way.
Today we have J.K. Rowling pissing off everyone again with insisting (and basically retconning) Dumbledore and Grisewald were a couple. I think everyone is put up or shut up. Of course, we also have to remember that these books are 22 years old now and no one was going to publish a kid's book 20 years ago with a gay mentor (gay teachers will still being fired for being gay in the 90s and publishers had notations in their guidelines saying no gay characters period not here and if you wrote them elsewhere you're blackballed here, I know this because I SAW those guidelines. Hell I remember everyone shrieking about how Mercedes Lackey killing her career by daring to make Vanyel gay. Hint: she didn't) So yeah maybe there isn't the diversity we want now but trying to retcon it in is also problematic. So maybe we're better off not doing that or do as fans say, write the damn story with them as a couple if that truly was your intent since these days that won't be as much of a no-no as it was in the beginning of the Potterverse.
I even posted a link about handling a series last week or the week before.
I still haven't written enough to put up my word counts because it's been a terrible two weeks writing wise and I need to knock off the shit because I have deadlines, two of them this month!
And now some links from around the web
Your Checklist To Publishing Your Book in 2019
The Most Important Part Of Writing And Publishing A Book
When Is It Time To Consider Yourself A “Real Writer”?
Things I Wish I Had Known Before Self-Publishing My Book I think I might have shared this before.
And from Betty
Article Writing
Hey this is half the reason I try doing the writerly ways
Five Ways Your Characters Can Acquire Magic Ha, this reminded me of a book I loved when I was young by Hickman and Weis where everyone DOES have magic and our protagonist, Joram was born without (and okay brain you can remember a name from a book you read once in 1987 but you don't know how to work a cruise control you do every day....) Luckily knowing that name got me to the books here Forging the Darksword I'm not sure I remembered it was a trilogy and if I did know it once, I'm not sure I read it or else didn't like the other two books. Looking at the cover, 2 doesn't spark at all but 3 does so maybe I had book one and three but never read the latter because for some reason I didn't have 2...the reason being I was in med school with no time for jack.
25 Ideas for Your Author Blog okay using these for Jana's.
Speaking of her, for another two days DSP is having a Pi day sale, everything 31.4% off so if you ever wanted to sample the pro stuff find it
here
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no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 11:19 am (UTC)When Is It Time To Consider Yourself A “Real Writer”?
Date: 2019-03-18 11:22 am (UTC)I write fanfic and bullsh*t stories for my own enjoyment. I always thought a "real" writer is someone with an actual published work to their name. What is your opinion on that? Do you consider fanfic writers, writers? What about people that have word documents of Nano novels that they never intend to get published?
no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 01:41 pm (UTC)It was groundbreaking to get Willow/Tara as actual lesbian representation. It was a fight to get even a single closed-mouth kiss on-screen at the time it aired. It was a fight to get a love scene. (I won't talk about the bury your gays moment. I'm still mad about that.) That relationship, in the context of the time it was on the air, was one of several that opened the way for a lot of the canon LGBTQ representation that we have onscreen now.
Willow/Tara wasn't a cheap experience at the time it was happening and it wasn't disingenuous. Yes, it was retconned in, and yes, there were flaws, but given that a queer relationship was planned, and also what it ended up both blossoming into and becoming for further representation, I'll take it.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 02:11 pm (UTC)Seeing as how we both have valid opinions and have now shared them with each other, we can agree to disagree and unhappily go our separate ways.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 02:14 pm (UTC)Re: When Is It Time To Consider Yourself A “Real Writer”?
Date: 2019-03-18 02:18 pm (UTC)Even if we have a drawer filled with stories, half finished and never shared we still wrote them and loved them. Maybe that's all we wanted. Maybe some of us need to find the drive and help we need to get them out there in the world if that's what we want.
Because not going to lie, publishing is hard. You have to get used to rejection. And then once it's out there you have to know that people are going to stomp on your stuff. For every one person who loved it, there are two that think it sucks and now with social media and Amazon/Goodreads reviews they can share how much you sucked (I shared an article recently about people roping the authors in on Twitter to be SURE they see how much they hated the book, which is such a troll thing to do)
Re: When Is It Time To Consider Yourself A “Real Writer”?
Date: 2019-03-18 02:23 pm (UTC)I really wanted to publish something we wrote together but she is so hesitant. I guess at this point I'll have to let that one just sit between the two of us and work on something else solo. lol
no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 02:24 pm (UTC)I think, being the 90s, Joss was hesitant to even hint that a character was gay. Okay fine, so then you have to work it more realistically once you get the go-ahead to show the relationship and that's where they failed
no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 02:25 pm (UTC)Re: When Is It Time To Consider Yourself A “Real Writer”?
Date: 2019-03-18 02:35 pm (UTC)And sadly your friend's story is all too common. Between overly harsh writing critique groups (which ruined my ability to describe. I STILL struggle with it), getting rejected or having a bad experience with an editor can absolutely shake you. In getting Blood Red Roulette published, my first editor was beautiful. He got the story. He loved it. Editor number two couldn't conceive of a non-Dracula styled vampire (I literally had to write in there how taking blood worked in mammals that drank blood because of some of the comments she made that pissed me off) and then the final editor wanted to destroy the book, literally ripping out everything and shitting on things the other two editors wanted in there and that threw me hard (well both two and three did). I almost p ulled the book at that point. In the end I DID speak to the head editor, showed some examples of things he said like where he called me lazy and unimaginative and told her never again with this guy, never give a single story of mine to him again. She agreed.
You can run into a world of harshness out there and you can't win every battle and that's hard to accept sometimes. Yesterday I was ready to quit again. Today I'm over it.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 02:39 pm (UTC)I was glad to see positive representation on the air. I was furious when once again the gay character got murdered for no reason (but then again the villains in that whole season sucked it and having to accept Andrew as a hero later pissed me off to the point it was one of the reasons I stopped watching).
I just think they could have worked it in better and now the bi-erasure in the comic reboot is really pissing off a lot of people.