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ysabetwordsmith posted an interesting concept here in response to the “fixed point in time” time-travelling concept:
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Made me think about the troubles in plotting I sometimes (often!) have.
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So I’ve been thinking about doing a series of posts, looking up tips on specific areas of writing & gathering them here, commenting on them, and trying them.
Those of you who are writers, are there particular areas you’d like to see me cover?
I know one thing *I* need to work on is dialogue tags, for instance. When I reread conversations I’ve written, even I have trouble figuring out who said what.
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Today’s prompt is from @dahob – Why do you like apocalypses so much?
Heheheheheee.
So, I chewed on this a bit, and it came down to two major things: why I like dystopian settings, and why I like space colony stories.
I swear this is all related!
So, dystopian settings. I looove dystopian settings, although I have to admit that that’s 50% lazy writing. That is: if the setting is the bad guy, then it’s man vs. the environment, and the innate bad guys are mostly working within a bad setting.
Tír na Cali’s a perfect example of that: “Yes, I own you, but I can’t exactly free you. The Californian government will never let you go home, and, even if they did, the Americans would lock you up and pick your brain for every scrap of information about our country. So you’re stuck with me and my only options are keep you or sell you.”
Of course, in Addergoole, the reason for the uber-dystopia is right there, in the school, a living breathing person. Um. Poor thinking on my part there. O_o
“Man against his environment.” That’s my favorite style of story, of the classic three taught in English classes (Man v. self, other man, environment), and that really covers the “space colony” story part of this, too: I love the idea of carving out a new world, a new home, against massive odds. I love making something from scraps, from whatever’s left over. And with space colonies and post-apoc both, you walk into it with some “modern” tech, and some idea of how modern tech should work.
Except cargo cults, of course. But I still need to write one of those.
So why do I like apocalypses so much? Because I get to write people struggling against their environment, and persevering.
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lilfluff‘s topic was: Plotting methods that have worked for you, or that have intrigued you.
Plotting methods that have worked for you, or that have intrigued you.(12)
Okay, so you may have noticed my two favorite formats are “serial that just keeps going” and “500-words-or-less.” Neither one of these rely heavily on plotting, the flash fic even less so than the serial.
Needless to say, plotting is something I’m working on.
When I work on serials and long stories (that would mostly be Rin & Girey), I tend to outline chapters on four (Steno-book-sized) lines each, and then draw plot arcs along the side. “This is Shahin’s recovery.” “This is someone chasing Girey.” It works… okay. Writing to the outline is another skill I’m working on <.<
For “Monster Godmother,” I found that if I put the story in 100-to-500-word chunks, it made a lot more sense to me. So the outline looked like
[intro:250]
[flashback: 100]
[First scene:250]
and so on.
When I did Nano, inventrix had just introduced me to beat sheets: here. I’m still pondering them, but they don’t work well with my flow and tend to throw me off. “Wait, what, they’re supposed to be having a defining moment here? But I’ve got that scheduled as a dramatic pause!”
(I like dramatic pauses.)
And on the “intrigues:” I’m contemplating this: The Snowflake Method, recommended by clare_dragonfly.
So, what about everyone else? How do YOU plot?
Bonus link: 25 Ways To Plot, Plan And Prep Your Story
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Do you want to end a world?
Not this world; that would be messy. Not to mention, if you end the world, you don’t have anywhere to sell your stories. Or to buy coffee.
So let’s end some other world, shall we?
When I started writing Monster Godmother, I didn’t need to end the world; I already had the Faerie Apocalypse rather well set up. I already had lots of apocalypse settings, actually.
But say you need a tailor-made apocalypse for a story idea. Where do you start?
That’s a good question: where are you going to start? When is your story going to take place?
Some stories start before the apocalypse – think disaster movies. Day After Tomorrow. War of the Worlds. Some start in media res. 28 Days Later is the only one that comes to mind quickly. Some start just-afterwards, while you’re still reeling from the disaster. The book for Postman was like that. And some are so long afterwards that you’ve gotten new cultures. Waterworld.
Where are you going to start?
Faerie apocalypse, by the way, starts either 2000 years before the apocalypse or even further back, and, as of now, goes approximately 50 years into the future. Past is easier, what can I say?
If you’re going to start before or in media res, you’re going to need to know more about the apocalypse. If you’re starting long afterwards, you can fudge as much as you need to. And if you’re starting just after it, you’re going to need to think about the scope of your story.
Does your story span the whole world? Several worlds? Is it two people in a cabin? Six people in what used to be a city? Each of these requires a different level of backstory – for two people in a cabin, you only need to know that civilization has fallen. For a world-spanning story, you’re going to need to know what cities fell, which survived, and how much destruction is still going on – at a very minimum.
Monster Godmother takes part in the middle of a battle. If I’d been building the apocalypse from scratch, I wouldn’t have needed much – a couple notes here and there about nearby destruction. If I continued her story further… then, I’d have needed to build more.
And you? Well, if you want to ruin a world, you’ve got to do a bit of homework. Where does your story start? How much of a span will it have?
Once you have that (next time) we can talk about how we’re going to end the world.
Monster Godmother is available, along with several other fine apocalypse stories, in What Follows, available in e-book on Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
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I’ve been trying to pay more attention lately.
I’m noticing when I stop playing an online game, why I do so (too much grinding; they were mean to a friend of mine), and if I go back, why I do so (new genes, friends talking about it & linking to it).
I’m noticing when I buy a book or read a book, why I do so:
I bought a John Scalzi book because he stood up for Micah during the Space Marine Problem.
I read a book @dahob lent me on Amazon.com, and then found another similar book by “similar books” and bought that (haven’t read it yet).
I stopped (years ago) reading an author I enjoyed, in part because she hit a wall of squick for me in the last book I read – and in part because she got politically vitriolic on her LJ.
And yet, despite the fact that another author disagrees with me on every political point I’ve read her blogging about – but she’s never hateful, and I’ve bought her books, wishlisted her books, driven 4 hours to go to a reading of her, and told her I wanted to be her when I grew up.
Pay attention to your own buying habits. They tell you something about other people’s habits – and they tell you something about marketing.
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I’ve always been a fan of the post-apoc genre. There’s something cool about rebuilding a world – being forced to rebuild a world – while having some knowledge and relics of the world before.
(There’s something even cooler about the concept of the post-apoc cargo cult, worshiping relics of a world you know longer know or remember. But that’s a story for another day.)
Add to that fascination a Cold-War childhood with the nebulous sense that the end is nigh, and a fondness for those comic takedowns that point out that damage done by super-human fights (Kingdom Come comes to mind), and you have the beginnings of the Faerie Apocalypse setting.
What happens when the monsters fighting to take over the world and the heroes fighting to save it are the same sort of being? What happens when their fights destroy as much property as the “bad guys” originally did on their own? What happens, in short, when hundreds of super-powered people suddenly start fighting over territory occupied by millions of humans?
What happens is an apocalypse, a faerie apocalypse. And it is in the middle of that mess that “Monster Godmother,” my short story, takes place.
“Monster Godmother” can be found in What Follows, here:
Amazon
Smashwords
Barnes & Noble
(We will be on Kobo shortly)
Goodreads
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There was a difference, Galina considered, between being immensely long-lived and being bulletproof,
or, as the case may be, bomb-proof. She had met people that were both; she, on the other hand, was
probably not.
This is not the beginning of the story I submitted for What Follows.
The armies were coming.
Grace had gotten lucky, up until now. Her villa was far from the cities and she herself was distant, this century, from business or politics or fame.
But now the city was gone, fallen into burning heaps and the heaps burned to ashes. The so-called gods and the self-proclaimed heroes who had fought over the city were dead, dying, run away, or hiding. And the armies marched on.
Neither is this. But, As is often the case, they are the shell from which the final story, “Monster Godmother,” emerged.
It went something like this:
Me: So, what are you working on?
Ross: Story for April’s anthology of “How do immortals deal with the apocalypse?”
Me: *Ears perk* Is it open to new authors? Because “immortals and the apoc” is totally my ball game.
Ross: well, you can check. It’s like two and a half weeks till deadline, though.
At this point, I was plotting Escape From Rochester (a serial of a semi-immortal dealing with an apocalypse), thinking about Live Blog the Apoc (which is pretty much what it sounds like), and, in other words, neck-deep in one of my apocalyptic settings. Immortals and the apoc was, indeed, totally my ball game.
…and then I turned around and started the story three times.
That happens, sometimes. The story won’t start, or it starts and then it fizzles after half a page. I do the online version of crumple up the paper and start again.
This time, with a little over twenty-four hours till the deadline, I looked at my 1,164 words and was dissatisfied. I could totally complete the story – but it wasn’t the story I wanted to tell.
So on the drive home from work, I scribbled out an outline for a new story. (Don’t try this at home. For one, it’s really hard to read your handwriting when you’re writing while driving. For another, gah unsafe.) And over the following twenty-four hours, I wrote “Monster Godmother.”
I sat up on Rion’s bed for hours that night, doing word-sprints. And, while every other story had fought me every word of the way, this one flowed. It swam. The original concept, the bare bones, might have something to do with the first two stories I’d written, but this one had music. I wrote 4000-plus words in just over a calendar day. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that before (outside of NaNoWriMo), and I’m not sure I want to do it again, but it was fun. Sort of like the writing equivalent of extreme sports.
Then came the editing, pushing words around, making them fit. Speed-editing, begging for betas, second-guessing word choices. Do I say Ellehemaei (the in-setting word for the immortal-like beings)? It seems like a stretch when nobody outside of the tiny Fae Apoc fandom knows the word. So what, fae? gods-children? Both words fit, and yet neither word fits. In the end, I ended up using “gods-children” as the most evocative, and calling it good.
Then I sent it off to April, crossed my fingers, and waited.
And now here we are! Several months later, with a brand shiny new anthology in front of us, “Monster Godmother” nestled in there with Ross’s story, Rion’s story, and stories from M.J. King, Joyce Chng, Kate Larking, Nina Waters, E.V. O’Day, Crystal Sarakas, Sarah Lyn Eaton, and April Steenburgh. It’s a good cozy place for it, I think. Right in the middle of the apocalypses.
Totally my ball game. 🙂
Check out What Follows here:
Amazon
Smashwords
Barnes & Noble
(We will be on Kobo shortly)
Goodreads
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I have been tagged! That never happens…
The writer in my attic tagged me to do a Blog Hop. I’ve know Rion for a couple years (we met, more or less, because of Addergoole, like most of my current friends), and for the last year-plus, she’s been staying in our attic and occasionally rescuing our cats from themselves.
What am I working on?
Everything?
Let’s see!
I’m posting Edally Academy, a Steampunk Boarding School serial (Meta: I’m working on getting a webpage up and running). Tairiekie & her new teammates not only have to deal with classes & teachers at a new, prestigious, & challenging school, they also have to figure out what’s going on with the mysterious Instructor Talmizhaab’s device.
I’m both posting & writing Inner Circle, a potentially-kinky fantasy serial with gladiators and strange magic (& a webpage). Taslin and Valran have both bent knee in order to raise in rank. But getting to the inner circle can take a lifetime – or cost you your life.
I’m working on the re-write of Addergoole, my first web-serial. Right now, I’m getting everything ready to launch the kickstarter!
I’ve got a prompt call open, where I take your suggestions and write fic to them. I’m working on short story submissions to two different anthologies & a contest (let’s see: Steampunk Horror, Genre Fiction Gender-Funky, and “Property”), and working on edits for another anthology.
AND I’m beginning to plan my Nanowrimo novel and working – still – on my fantasy travel-across-the-land possible-love-story, Into Lannamer.
Focus? What’s that?
How does my work differ from others in its genre?
Oh, dear, what genre do I write in?…
If anything, I’d say that I enjoy dystopic fiction more than most. In almost everything I write, eventually, the setting is going to be the bad guy…
…or is it? Because I’m also inordinately fond of shades (but not 50 of ’em) grey.
Why do I write what I do?
I write the stories that people like, and I write the stories I like.
I grew up reading fantasy & scifi, and find a world without magic (or the stars) a little too boring to write in. So most of my stories are speculative in nature, and even those that appear to be in this world are a little bit off, just like me.
How does my writing process work?
Generally: I start from a spark – either a phrase or a prompt, something that pops into my head in the shower or something someone else suggests (I once wrote a short story based off of cooking directions). I write until the spark runs out, then I sit down with an outline and figure out what I need to do to turn that spark into a full story.
(Of course, with flash, I just stop when the spark runs out.)
Who’s Next?
I’m going to tag clare_dragonfly! Clare writes Chatoyant College, a fantasy web-serial set at the only institution in the United States that teaches magic, and has recently been working on fiction set in The Ursulan Cycle, a gender-bent version of the Arthurian Cycle.
And, speaking of the Ursulan Cycle, I’m also going to tag ysabetwordsmith. If you don’t know Ysabet from her monthly poetry fishbowls (in which she takes prompts on a theme and produces very moving poetry) or her soft-fic Love is for Children Avengers fanfic (or any of the other awesome work she’s done), go do some reading. Go ahead. I’ll be here when you’re back.
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