Friends

Thank you to everyone who weighed in on the name change question. I'm afraid some of you will be disappointed, though. I can't let Varis and Vargas appear multiple times on the same page (much as I couldn't handle Kieran and Kiril), but there will not be any cute in-text reasons for this. (Okay, I say that now, but I may think of one later.) I just have to change it. The first reader who actually notices will get a cookie.

The true lesson to be learned from this is: there's no such thing as a throwaway name. At least if one is writing a series, anyway. One never knows when Random Character Bob will show up again, and when he does, you may regret naming him Bob.

In other news, Agent F just passed out while watching Animal Planet an hour before her bedtime. This is an unlooked for windfall of writing time, if I can manage not to pass out.

I'm hearing from people who've found early copies of Casket of Souls, so I'm setting up the usual space for conversing, with the caveat that THERE WILL BE SPOILERS most likely, so if you haven't read the book, don't come in!

During Clarion, I coined the phrase “busking on the wrong corner” to describe the phenomenon of “entertaining writing that doesn’t serve the story.” It’s the reason writers have to  kill their darlings.  It’s the trap that stops a lot of good writers from making the transition to great.

“Busking” is the practice of playing in public spaces for donations – you know, that guy playing the guitar, his guitar case open before him, full of scattered singles and quarters.  Buskers are often some of the most talented musicians.  But the buskers’ art is also partially a knowledge of where the crowds are.

You can sing your fucking heart out on a corner where there’s no foot traffic.  If you’re really good, you might make a few bucks.  But if you’re really good and really smart, you’ll position yourself near the subway where people are pouring out by the hundreds as rush hour ends, a place where even a mediocre musician can clean up.  Part of your strength is not just the raw force of your musicianship, but knowing where to place that skill so it’s maximized with silver rains of spare change.

Writers (me included, oh so included) are often putting their talents to use on the wrong corner.  This chapter is brilliant writing, it’s got great characterization, it’s exciting.  But underneath, the scene is at odds with what the story is trying to do, and what you’ll wind up with is a great scene that advances the story in the wrong ways.

Lemme give you the real-life example: the lead character of the novel I’m plotting right now, Autumn Akeley, is a taxidermist.  In the beginning of the book, Autumn is deep in the woods on a rumor, searching for the Hulk.

Why the Hulk, you ask?  Because she’s not just any taxidermist – she makes wild viral videos online parodying recent movies in order to drive business to her online taxidermy shop.  Autumn’s latest planned video (“The Bearvengers”) needs a gigantic, light-skinned animal she can dye green to play the part of the Hulk.  Autumn does not kill animals for her entertainment (she takes the death of any creature very seriously), but she just got a tip from a hunter that there’s a decaying grizzly in the woods she might be able to use.  She tracks it down with her friend Karla and examines the corpse – it’s a little too moldy for her liking, but it has very light fur.  She thinks she can salvage it.

Then a shot rings out across the forest: there are poachers in the woods.  As someone who hates to see an animal killed senselessly, she does not take lightly to poachers.  She sets off to investigate, starting the chain of events that sets up the novel….

…Now, that’s a pretty good scene.  It’s got an interesting character doing something we’ve never seen done before in a book, it displays her odd compulsions, it allows us to watch her work (if you have a character with an odd profession, people love to see the fine details), and for a short intro it’ll do quite nicely.

And yet we are busking badly here.  Why?

Because this novel is about Autumn’s friendship with Karla.

Okay, unfair, I didn’t tell you that – but the whole point of the novel is that a new man in town with a shadowy past begins to romance Karla, causing a rift when Autumn discovers the man’s past as a serial killer.  And this scene, while good in a vacuum, utterly fails to set up the dynamics of Karla and Autumn and their friendship.  In fact, you’d be excused for forgetting the existence of Karla in this summary, because while we can put in some nice dialogue and characterization to set up Karla’s character, the underlying structure of the scene is not about her at all.

This is a great scene for a novel featuring bold Autumn Akeley, bold adventurer.  It’s a terrible scene for Autumn and Karla’s big fight – especially since the next scene involves Autumn tracking down poachers, which has even less to do with their friendship.  And if you’re not a careful writer, you’ll think this is an awesome scene because it’s got it all – humor, good characterization, a quick hook to action – without realizing that it’s an awesome scene that’s structurally at odds with what you want to do in the long run.  It doesn’t set up the things that need to be established.

It’s a good scene in isolation.  In context, it’s a darling that needs to be killed… Or at least dramatically changed so that Karla does something so interesting here that the scene metamorphosizes away from Autumn’s search for the Hulk and into an expression of how Autumn and Karla couldn’t get along without each other.

The point I’m making here is that had I written that chapter, I’d have been very proud.  It’d be a nice, 1,500 word opener that would grab the reader, full of lovely details and fun stuff.

And then I’d have to place it into my trash folder, because ultimately it doesn’t do what it needs to, then hunt for the right scene to write.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/214853.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

Somewhere in town nearby, somebody is grilling hamburgers. The scent of them comes in the open doorway on the breeze. Up the road a bit, the Mud Run -- where contestants race junker vehicles through a field of finest New England mud -- is currently ongoing. The scents of exhaust and gasoline and motor oil also come in on the breeze, when the wind shifts. Also, the air is full of birdsong, and engine noise, and the whup-whup-whup of the helicopter that is selling rides.

(Himself: "I've ridden in enough damned helicopters. I don't need to pay someone money to do it again." Fortunately for the chopper's owner/pilot, there appear to be plenty of people in town who feel otherwise.)

Dinner tonight is beef stew; tomorrow I will probably make a roast chicken with a Really Big Bowl of Potato Salad to go alongside.

Such are the simple joys of a north country springtime.

I named a character once in The Bone Palace, an offhand reference that didn't warrant an entry in the dramatis personae but is still in print. Now I find myself needing to write more about that character and a) not liking his name much anymore, and b) finding it a bit too similar to someone else who shows up quite often. How many of you would be wildly irritated if I changed someone's name between books? (I doubt most people even remember that he was ever mentioned, but somewhere out there is the reader who will.)

Originally published at Ramblings from the Flip Side (Site under construction). You can comment here or there.

Today I’d like to talk about Legends and Heroes, an appropriate subject because my short story Legend of the Beemen is coming out on June 1st, and because the June issue of Penumbra (guest edited by me) is about Greco-Roman Mythology.

Legends are an important part of our society. We use the stories as justifications for society’s rules and morals. We uphold our heroes as paragons of virtue to which every child’s deeds are compared. Think about the firemen and police who ran into the Twin Towers on 9/11 to rescue people they didn’t know. Or about the “Band of Brothers,” the marines of Easy Company, who fought so hard to protect our liberties in World War II. Is there a single person here who doesn’t wish for that level of strength and bravery when it comes time for our own personal crisis?

This weekend, I’m going to take some time every day to review the real life legends in my life. Whether it is long-deceased members of my family of which stories are still told, or the men and women in all branches of service (civilian and military) who I know. I’m going to thank them and see if there is anything I can give back. Maybe I can’t. Then again, I do have a story coming out.

Here’s what I’d like to do. Give away 3 copies of Legend of the Beemen. The first copy is to the person who can recommend a good e-library lending program that services our overseas troops (please post the recommendation as a comment). The second copy will be given to the aforementioned lending program, my own little way of saying thanks. And here’s another. Thank you, soldiers, sailors, pilots, cops, fire & rescue people. Thank you all for all you do.

The third copy will be to the best bug story posted in the comments of this blog post. That’s right, folks. I want to hear your bug stories. Funny, scary, or just plain odd. This is your chance to get a free e-book.

There are plenty of opportunities for free e-books this weekend. The Musa Publishing Blog Hop (http://musapublishingbloghops.blogspot.com/) is chock full of authors offering freebies and contests. Please check it out.

And before I sign off: In honor of those who serve, Musa Publishing is offering is offering a free copy of Penumbra eMag to every service person in the States and overseas. The PDF can be downloaded from http://penumbraezine.blogspot.com/. Also, you get an opportunity to win a copy of the Love Notes anthology.

Enjoy your weekend! And may all our troops come home safe.

Author Michele Fogal did a remarkable interview with me recently. She asked questions no one has before!

http://michelefogal.com/blog/author-interview-lynn-flewelling

With a very nice retrospective by my wonderful editor, Anne Groell. You readers owe her a lot!

http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2012/05/50-page-fridays-lynn-flewelling.html

I’ve been quiet here as I’ve been slogging through the usual Seasonal Depression, but I did post two essays over at FetLife (TheFacebookforkinksters) that you may be curious about:  “Depression. Fucking. Depression.”, which deals with how depression affects my sex life, and “Ropeweasels,” which deals with the issue of me being tied up. (There’s also “Fireplay and Me,” an oddly poetic musing on setting women aflame, which I don’t think I linked here but maybe I did.)

In addition, my humor essay “So I’m Going To Become A Dom” may be my most popular essay ever, with 612 comments and 965 loves.  I guess it’s all about the specificity.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/214628.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

Back in The Day, when I had infinite people reading me on LiveJournal, I’d post an entry and the comments exploded.  I’d hit “post,” and five minutes later I’d have fifteen comments.

Now, I make a big ol’ important post and sometimes I don’t get a comment for half an hour.  That used to unnerve me – is this a bad entry? Did I say something wrong? – until I realized what was happening.  English LiveJournal is slowly dying.

What used to happen was that the LJ friends page was like Twitter or Facebook now – so constant a stream of data that you just refreshed your friends’ page and wham, new entries.  Maybe you didn’t check it twenty times a day like I did, but the friends page was a ritual where my latest entry popped up in real time.  I was a part of the info-stream.

As LJ use has declined, though, the traffic patterns have changed for me.  People no longer read my blog as part of a daily pulse; it’s in their RSS feeds, or bookmarked separately, or they wait for me to post the interesting links to Twitter (since I don’t Tweet-spam every post).  I still get roughly the same number of comments, but as opposed to arriving in one explosive comment-dump, they now arrive scattered over the course of two days, like late passengers departing a red-eye connection.  I’m read at their convenience, not the convenience of LJ.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is a little weird.  Some days I post a SRS ENTRY and then wait until I get one comment just to ensure someone’s listening.  By the time I get out of the tub, I have like three comments, which used to be the sign of an entry falling on its face.  Now, I’m patient; the user feedback will arrive in due course.

If you write it, they will come.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/214409.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.