I recently published Rogue Hunter (available here), a book written approximately 22 years ago. Like with all of my older books, and most of the newer ones, I'm seldom pleased with the total package, but this one I enjoyed returning to for its final edit, even if only because of the eerily correct predictions I made in what amounts to the prologue. (Here's to hoping I wasn't nearly as accurate overall.)
But this post isn't about my accuracy in predicting global financial crises (thank the gods I didn't specify cause in the book, because I would have been slightly wrong there). This post is about the evolution of storytelling, and how time may not be our friend.
I'm 46 as I write this, so I would have been about 24 years old when I wrote Rogue Hunter. I had no family to support: no wife, no child, no dogs, and no cats. I had a job that didn't demand so much of my focus. I had a wicked alcohol problem, but the metabolism of a young man to offset its most dire effects. In short, my life was far less complicated. These days I'm dealing with the fallout of choosing the wrong business partners to trust, heart trouble, dogs, cats, a kid, and the stress that envelops all middle-aged men (and women). So, while the world hasn't changed much, I have. My internal dialogue differs dramatically, and my interests are more focused than they used to be. I think that comes from recognizing that the path ahead is shorter and less hopeful than the one that lies behind us. It may be a pessimistic view, but life really doesn't get simpler as it unfolds. It doesn't necessarily get worse, but it does get more complex...and the effects of age are real. Our bodies are not as reliable as we age, even if we stave off the worst effects for a while.
When I wrote many of the older books I was already keenly conscious of the human race and its propensity for self-destruction, self-delusion, and self-aggrandizement. You see it every day, played out on a political stage, whether the environment be government, or corporate, or schoolyard. You see the substance of human society reflected in every bully, and in every act of self-motivation. It hasn't changed since the stone ages, and never will. It isn't because people are inherently bad, but because we are inherently weak. We live in a fragile state, and we all know it, even if it isn't a conscious consideration for many. We know how sudden the end can come, and so we try to maximize our moments. Altruism is a lie told by especially selfish weaklings to sate their consciences. But that doesn't make us bad, it makes us human.
I don't think I could have written Rogue Hunter now, which is really the reflective point of consideration I want to address. I won't spoil the book for anyone who reads this first, but I will say that anyone who reads it will, at the end of it, understand entirely why it was a book written with a younger, more hopeful mind. Dark though it may be it is laced through with a specific sort of hope, and a belief that even with all our most human flaws we are capable of rising above ourselves and accomplishing change. And here I will stray adrift just slightly to add I'm not even talking about "positive change." I'm just observing the ability to initiate change, for good or bad, is something that takes a courage that is almost universally lost these days.
As writers grow older I think a problem with our storytelling is that it becomes more highly informed. Some writers I know spend months researching topics in depth in an academic fashion so they can lay out excruciatingly correct manuscripts. Others research on the fly. But they all have a capacity for absorption, which is an ability to sponge in massive amounts of information before laying it back onto a page in story form. When you're young the process of writing is driven by passion more than skill, and that passion often comes across. I think we lose some of the drama necessary in a good story when we become enamoured of the peripheral elements.
But probably the most egregious problem of age, in context of storytelling, is that we have to guard against the natural human desire to be informative. I'm not dismissing value in descriptive writing here, but I will say that as writers we need to engage -- and when we engage it has to be a conversation of sorts. To over-describe everything, to leave nothing to a reader's imagination, seems a crime against the process. And it seems lazy and selfish, too. yet as we age we become so protective of the effort behind the writing we often short the reader by not just telling a story.
Maybe it is about ego, because age imparts a defensive stance where ego is concerned. Maybe most of us want to show "how smart" we are. (I wish I was half as smart as I think I am on days when I am half as smart as I am!) Maybe ego drives us to become gatekeepers of details rather than storytellers.
Whatever the cause of the changes that age imparts to the writing (and some of it is a rejection of strict technical writing) they are noticeable when you, as the writer, view two of your works that span decades. You realize that some part of you has changed, and that maybe you lost a little of the spark of hope that youth ensures. I don't know what the result of such a loss is, but I think it is inevitable, and I think you have to guard against age creating a punishing vacuum of "story."
I also think that in many ways the older works of any writer, even if edited to suit a modern reader, tell you something about the writer beyond the changes in their technical style. They describe the truer human element; they describe the soul that thins with time.
I think the best an older writer can do for themselves is reject the propensity toward self-involvement and just try to tell stories, striping away the nonsense of age and laying out a story form that allows readers to imagine the world you place them in just as much as you delineate its parameters. When they close their eyes they ought to see your world in their mind, populated by characters you made for them. The story shouldn't ever really end for them if told right, and they ought to retell it in small scale again and again in their own life, in a different context.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Background Process - What Happens Off-Page Doesn't Stay Off-Page
There are different schools of thought about characters. I won't painstakingly reference them all here, because the point I'm interested in making isn't some esoteric observation about writing styles. I will mention what I consider the two extremes.
Some writers will argue the characters exist to serve the story, and that is the only reason for their existence. To some extent it's easy to understand that view, because, really, the characters are the central exposure for the story. Even if the writing is highly descriptive of inanimate elements, the hook for the readers lies in the characters. You can't engage people effectively if they have no point of reference, and few readers are so enamoured of rocks that describing one for 400 pages will engage them. This school of thought means that characters then become a function of the plot, or an avenue to convey the theme and plot in play.
At the other extreme are the writers who believe the story serves the characters, and is in itself irrelevant beyond that. Again, it's easy to understand that view, because the importance of the contact point is paramount to keep the reader interested. But to keep a reader engaged is almost as difficult at this extreme if the writing is so internal to a character that the viewpoint becomes exclusive. Deep first person narratives have always suffered the risks of creating a story that becomes inscrutable, because of the viewpoint tangle that develops if the protagonist can't know something that the plot hinges upon. That isn't to say such a mechanism is fatal, because a great mystery can develop from this sort of focus, but it is a risk and can put a writer in a bind. How do you close a plot loop if the narrator simply can't ever know the necessary detail? Sure, you don't always have to...but the fact is readers tend to prefer closure, however artificial.
Now, stripping away all the extras, what I'm really observing above is that there is a spectrum writers traverse when it comes to balancing their stories and characters. Experience generally imparts that balance, and you develop traits that assist you in maintenance of that balance. Each writer has their own method, ultimately, because the nuances of style that exist are broad; but there are also some common aspects. A writer with experience will basically get a sense of when their personal style is best served by focusing away from or toward the core of the characters.
This leads me to an observation I made several years ago when eBooks were becoming more common. Many of those writers were young (or at least inexperienced), and for practical purposes they were the vanguard indie authors whose passion was evident in every word. I noticed early that the central problem with most of their writing wasn't that they lacked ideas, and certainly not an absence of talent, but rather a lack of balance. It came home hard when I was reading a short that I would have called brilliant, except for one shattering problem -- in the third act the writer ran into a wall. They had to step out of the narrative form they chose to deliver a key plot point. Now, they could have tried to sneak it in with a wink (those of us who write a lot occasionally do that, and logic be damned), but their inexperience led them to instead violate their style. And it was jarring enough that a really fine story suffered a deadly blow, breaking the illusion of continuance.
Part of that reading experience led me to examine my process, reading some of my original works from 30 years ago. It confirmed for me that inexperience was only part of the problem. A greater part of it is background process. What I mean by that is illustrated by an example that is fairly simple to track. Imagine a scene between two characters. One is your central protagonist, and you've established them for the last 100 pages in your story. The other is a critical character, emerging at this juncture, who is purposefully about to engage the protagonist in a way that turns the plot sideways. Experience in writing is what makes you aware that this new character must be as firmly established in your (the writer's) mind as is your protagonist, or they are essentially a human analogue for exposition. So, you, as a writer, tend to create a back story, or otherwise develop the character off-page. It is what makes a reader feel that this character exists independent of the story, and therefore critical if you want to maintain the illusion of an indepdent and cohesive reality internal to the story.
Experience alone, then, isn't in itself the issue. What it does is helps a writer understand how their style reacts to pokes and prods. You can essentially say it helps you write a circle around the necessary degree of unreality that exists in any fiction.What really tells is the background process that helps you craft the reality that includes this emerging character in a way so that, even if they are briskly described, the reader comes away with a sense there is something fundamentally real behind their presentation.
One of the key principles of what I have come to call the Writers' Universe project is that there are mechanics that underlay this sort of background process that can take an inexperienced writer and accelerate their experience, by reducing the time they spend managing off-page details. My memory palace functions as a repository for an array of very deep details about very minor characters, and I seldom mistake their details, not because I'm brilliant, but because I've trained my mind to hold onto those details. I believe that mechanical process trap can be taught, and modelled, and I truly believe that if a tool contained that mechanic the vast array of young writers out there with real talent would benefit from it.
What happens off-page doesn't stay off-page, but there is a right and wrong way to impart the depth of creation. Too many young authors recognize the enormous outlay of time spent on those unseen details and so overwrite to expose them, or lose track of them if they don't. A good tool captures not only that effort, but I believe it can curb the tendency to imbalance that comes from inexperience. No, it can never eliminate it; but it can alter the equation. And, no, it will never turn a bad writer into a good one -- but it will turn a good writer into a better one by redirecting the energy spent managing those details into creating the context that relies upon them.
I believe characters exist, even if their story is never told, but I also know that the stories we tell must operate in a consistent manner in context of their characters. To achieve that is to achieve balance, and balance comes with both experience and better process. Readers should get the sense that every person they meet in your story exists, maybe not in their world, but in the world represented in the story being told. That makes the fiction immersive, and the experience rewarding.
So, a large part of what I want to develop in the Writers' Universe is this supportive model for detail management to make characters easier to trace as they flow throughout the creation, freeing up the mechanics so that writers can write the tapestry they wish, rather than manage the threads that comprise it.
Some writers will argue the characters exist to serve the story, and that is the only reason for their existence. To some extent it's easy to understand that view, because, really, the characters are the central exposure for the story. Even if the writing is highly descriptive of inanimate elements, the hook for the readers lies in the characters. You can't engage people effectively if they have no point of reference, and few readers are so enamoured of rocks that describing one for 400 pages will engage them. This school of thought means that characters then become a function of the plot, or an avenue to convey the theme and plot in play.
At the other extreme are the writers who believe the story serves the characters, and is in itself irrelevant beyond that. Again, it's easy to understand that view, because the importance of the contact point is paramount to keep the reader interested. But to keep a reader engaged is almost as difficult at this extreme if the writing is so internal to a character that the viewpoint becomes exclusive. Deep first person narratives have always suffered the risks of creating a story that becomes inscrutable, because of the viewpoint tangle that develops if the protagonist can't know something that the plot hinges upon. That isn't to say such a mechanism is fatal, because a great mystery can develop from this sort of focus, but it is a risk and can put a writer in a bind. How do you close a plot loop if the narrator simply can't ever know the necessary detail? Sure, you don't always have to...but the fact is readers tend to prefer closure, however artificial.
Now, stripping away all the extras, what I'm really observing above is that there is a spectrum writers traverse when it comes to balancing their stories and characters. Experience generally imparts that balance, and you develop traits that assist you in maintenance of that balance. Each writer has their own method, ultimately, because the nuances of style that exist are broad; but there are also some common aspects. A writer with experience will basically get a sense of when their personal style is best served by focusing away from or toward the core of the characters.
This leads me to an observation I made several years ago when eBooks were becoming more common. Many of those writers were young (or at least inexperienced), and for practical purposes they were the vanguard indie authors whose passion was evident in every word. I noticed early that the central problem with most of their writing wasn't that they lacked ideas, and certainly not an absence of talent, but rather a lack of balance. It came home hard when I was reading a short that I would have called brilliant, except for one shattering problem -- in the third act the writer ran into a wall. They had to step out of the narrative form they chose to deliver a key plot point. Now, they could have tried to sneak it in with a wink (those of us who write a lot occasionally do that, and logic be damned), but their inexperience led them to instead violate their style. And it was jarring enough that a really fine story suffered a deadly blow, breaking the illusion of continuance.
Part of that reading experience led me to examine my process, reading some of my original works from 30 years ago. It confirmed for me that inexperience was only part of the problem. A greater part of it is background process. What I mean by that is illustrated by an example that is fairly simple to track. Imagine a scene between two characters. One is your central protagonist, and you've established them for the last 100 pages in your story. The other is a critical character, emerging at this juncture, who is purposefully about to engage the protagonist in a way that turns the plot sideways. Experience in writing is what makes you aware that this new character must be as firmly established in your (the writer's) mind as is your protagonist, or they are essentially a human analogue for exposition. So, you, as a writer, tend to create a back story, or otherwise develop the character off-page. It is what makes a reader feel that this character exists independent of the story, and therefore critical if you want to maintain the illusion of an indepdent and cohesive reality internal to the story.
Experience alone, then, isn't in itself the issue. What it does is helps a writer understand how their style reacts to pokes and prods. You can essentially say it helps you write a circle around the necessary degree of unreality that exists in any fiction.What really tells is the background process that helps you craft the reality that includes this emerging character in a way so that, even if they are briskly described, the reader comes away with a sense there is something fundamentally real behind their presentation.
One of the key principles of what I have come to call the Writers' Universe project is that there are mechanics that underlay this sort of background process that can take an inexperienced writer and accelerate their experience, by reducing the time they spend managing off-page details. My memory palace functions as a repository for an array of very deep details about very minor characters, and I seldom mistake their details, not because I'm brilliant, but because I've trained my mind to hold onto those details. I believe that mechanical process trap can be taught, and modelled, and I truly believe that if a tool contained that mechanic the vast array of young writers out there with real talent would benefit from it.
What happens off-page doesn't stay off-page, but there is a right and wrong way to impart the depth of creation. Too many young authors recognize the enormous outlay of time spent on those unseen details and so overwrite to expose them, or lose track of them if they don't. A good tool captures not only that effort, but I believe it can curb the tendency to imbalance that comes from inexperience. No, it can never eliminate it; but it can alter the equation. And, no, it will never turn a bad writer into a good one -- but it will turn a good writer into a better one by redirecting the energy spent managing those details into creating the context that relies upon them.
I believe characters exist, even if their story is never told, but I also know that the stories we tell must operate in a consistent manner in context of their characters. To achieve that is to achieve balance, and balance comes with both experience and better process. Readers should get the sense that every person they meet in your story exists, maybe not in their world, but in the world represented in the story being told. That makes the fiction immersive, and the experience rewarding.
So, a large part of what I want to develop in the Writers' Universe is this supportive model for detail management to make characters easier to trace as they flow throughout the creation, freeing up the mechanics so that writers can write the tapestry they wish, rather than manage the threads that comprise it.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Writers' Universe Peeks Out of the Darkness
Well, the campaign just went live.
With any luck some people will see it, share it, and I can show it the true light of day over the next few months. Rather than dwell on that, though, I have to say it's a relief just to have clicked the button that made it live. This idea has been in my head for years (literally, in fact, since it represents an external take on my internal memory palace), and whether it catches interest or not...at least the process has begun.
Now, if only someone motivated by madness and excess piles of cash chose to fun it all...that would be a simple solution indeed. ;-o
With any luck some people will see it, share it, and I can show it the true light of day over the next few months. Rather than dwell on that, though, I have to say it's a relief just to have clicked the button that made it live. This idea has been in my head for years (literally, in fact, since it represents an external take on my internal memory palace), and whether it catches interest or not...at least the process has begun.
Now, if only someone motivated by madness and excess piles of cash chose to fun it all...that would be a simple solution indeed. ;-o
Monday, September 9, 2013
What is the Writers' Universe?
The Writer's Universe project is about finding a way to use the special set of skills I've developed in the last 26 years (as a computer programmer) to codify the memory palace that has served me so well for at least 35 years (as a writer). And if that isn't a sentence full of itself...read it again! Or, read on and let's unwind the statement together.
First and foremost, let me say a few words about my two primary obsessions.
I am a writer, and I write obsessively. I create a myriad of realities in my mind, often editing entire stories that way, before I laboriously pour them into a word processor. Then I fuss about editing them, tweaking them, and preparing them to launch them into the universe. Like all writers I have my peccadillos, but amongst them is not a lack of attention to detail. Errors do creep in, though, no matter how much effort is made -- though I'm pleased to report that those errors are choices more often than otherwise. And any writer will attest the fact that dramatic license is about making those choices, as necessary, in service of the story -- the same as they will attest that making clumsy and unnecessary mistakes is a frustrating experience, simply because those are the errors that take a reader out of the universe we put them in and cast them into reality. No writer wants to lose their readers, and having them disengage because of some middling detail that doesn't matter to the arc of the story being told is almost a criminal.
Like any long-term obsessive writer, I spent decades developing a memory palace that encompasses the details that make my worlds function. It is super-critical to be aware of your characters, their placement, and their reality. It is vital that the awareness be accessible, almost instantly so, and that it somehow doesn't interfere with the creative urge that drives the process. No writer wants to divest time to keeping track of which character's tie was which colour, but those small details add the flavour that readers need, and those are the devilish details that almost always present a stumbling block when they go wrong. So, the memory palace not only functions as a repository of the knowledge we need to write, it acts as a defense against fumbling. And, sadly, a fallible one even at the best times, especially if, like most writers, you have an actual reality that intrudes on the realities you write about.
Some time ago when I began to read eBooks being written by what the world calls amateur writers (there is really no such a thing), I noticed that often the difference between a great story and a shrug-worthy one was engagement. I read many great ideas that were falling by the wayside, because the writer wasn't yet at that point of maturity where their memory palace had formed defenses against the mundane mistakes that sink so much fiction. And, unlike the "professionals," these writers lack the kind of support system that hides errors that need to be expunged. No editor is combing through their written words looking or the slip that misidentifies someone's eye colour, or changes the colour of their shirt -- details avid readers find jarring, and details that can harm even the best story.
This was when my other obsession stepped in, because as a computer programmer I deal in cold logic...despite the fact coding is a bit of a black art most of the time. I began to think about whether tools could help make those fledgling writers more confident, and help them form the memory constructs that help. I also began to wonder how much of what is in my head could be modeled in tooling that was accessible, useful and valuable. The answer? Well, to the latter question it was that nothing exists in the human mind that cannot be modeled. As to whether it manages to be useful...that is a matter for other judges.
It struck me that if someone created a repository system for actual writers, to store disparate details that are hard to track while reality interferes with process (when your cat barfs on your keyboard mid-paragraph, for example!), that repository had to be written by a writer for writers. Otherwise, it would be any of the many obtuse tools that get in the way of creative writing, rather than an aid. And so was born, out of a pair of conversations with friends, the idea of "The Writers' Universe," an encompassing tool that would be designed to model a memory palace, using the power of computers to track the obscure details that we otherwise have to track in our heads.
But how to do it? That reality factor -- having to feed the family, dogs and cats included -- poked the idea in the eyes pretty vigorously. To do it right, or even attempt to, means to fund its development. And if I was going to try it, I wanted to do it right. I wanted to have it well enough funded that I could guarantee a couple months work to really hash it out. And I also wanted it to be free. At the end of it all, I wanted it to be a tool-set that someone (anyone) could download and use to map their ideas, to store the realities in their stories, and to leverage as a support to make the creative part of writing the focus of their time.
Crowd-funding seemed to be the way to go. Will it work? That remains to be seen, but its advantages are obvious. People who have an interest in the outcome fund the development, either because they love writing or they love reading, and collectively those people have a lot of power. By exercising it, they gain a lot of potential, helping the tooling reach a nascent form that can begin to live on its own.
And this blog is the way I'll communicate as the effort unfolds, because knowing me I'll end up working on the project regardless. After all, it's creative, and cool, and...worthwhile.
So, if you feel a twitch of interest, bookmark this blog, toss a buck in the virtual pot, and let's stir it together. Or, just bookmark this blog and return to read the somewhat bent thoughts of a writer who is about to apply some logic and process to make the creative part of creative writing the paramount focus of this pursuit.
First and foremost, let me say a few words about my two primary obsessions.
I am a writer, and I write obsessively. I create a myriad of realities in my mind, often editing entire stories that way, before I laboriously pour them into a word processor. Then I fuss about editing them, tweaking them, and preparing them to launch them into the universe. Like all writers I have my peccadillos, but amongst them is not a lack of attention to detail. Errors do creep in, though, no matter how much effort is made -- though I'm pleased to report that those errors are choices more often than otherwise. And any writer will attest the fact that dramatic license is about making those choices, as necessary, in service of the story -- the same as they will attest that making clumsy and unnecessary mistakes is a frustrating experience, simply because those are the errors that take a reader out of the universe we put them in and cast them into reality. No writer wants to lose their readers, and having them disengage because of some middling detail that doesn't matter to the arc of the story being told is almost a criminal.
Like any long-term obsessive writer, I spent decades developing a memory palace that encompasses the details that make my worlds function. It is super-critical to be aware of your characters, their placement, and their reality. It is vital that the awareness be accessible, almost instantly so, and that it somehow doesn't interfere with the creative urge that drives the process. No writer wants to divest time to keeping track of which character's tie was which colour, but those small details add the flavour that readers need, and those are the devilish details that almost always present a stumbling block when they go wrong. So, the memory palace not only functions as a repository of the knowledge we need to write, it acts as a defense against fumbling. And, sadly, a fallible one even at the best times, especially if, like most writers, you have an actual reality that intrudes on the realities you write about.
Some time ago when I began to read eBooks being written by what the world calls amateur writers (there is really no such a thing), I noticed that often the difference between a great story and a shrug-worthy one was engagement. I read many great ideas that were falling by the wayside, because the writer wasn't yet at that point of maturity where their memory palace had formed defenses against the mundane mistakes that sink so much fiction. And, unlike the "professionals," these writers lack the kind of support system that hides errors that need to be expunged. No editor is combing through their written words looking or the slip that misidentifies someone's eye colour, or changes the colour of their shirt -- details avid readers find jarring, and details that can harm even the best story.
This was when my other obsession stepped in, because as a computer programmer I deal in cold logic...despite the fact coding is a bit of a black art most of the time. I began to think about whether tools could help make those fledgling writers more confident, and help them form the memory constructs that help. I also began to wonder how much of what is in my head could be modeled in tooling that was accessible, useful and valuable. The answer? Well, to the latter question it was that nothing exists in the human mind that cannot be modeled. As to whether it manages to be useful...that is a matter for other judges.
It struck me that if someone created a repository system for actual writers, to store disparate details that are hard to track while reality interferes with process (when your cat barfs on your keyboard mid-paragraph, for example!), that repository had to be written by a writer for writers. Otherwise, it would be any of the many obtuse tools that get in the way of creative writing, rather than an aid. And so was born, out of a pair of conversations with friends, the idea of "The Writers' Universe," an encompassing tool that would be designed to model a memory palace, using the power of computers to track the obscure details that we otherwise have to track in our heads.
But how to do it? That reality factor -- having to feed the family, dogs and cats included -- poked the idea in the eyes pretty vigorously. To do it right, or even attempt to, means to fund its development. And if I was going to try it, I wanted to do it right. I wanted to have it well enough funded that I could guarantee a couple months work to really hash it out. And I also wanted it to be free. At the end of it all, I wanted it to be a tool-set that someone (anyone) could download and use to map their ideas, to store the realities in their stories, and to leverage as a support to make the creative part of writing the focus of their time.
Crowd-funding seemed to be the way to go. Will it work? That remains to be seen, but its advantages are obvious. People who have an interest in the outcome fund the development, either because they love writing or they love reading, and collectively those people have a lot of power. By exercising it, they gain a lot of potential, helping the tooling reach a nascent form that can begin to live on its own.
And this blog is the way I'll communicate as the effort unfolds, because knowing me I'll end up working on the project regardless. After all, it's creative, and cool, and...worthwhile.
So, if you feel a twitch of interest, bookmark this blog, toss a buck in the virtual pot, and let's stir it together. Or, just bookmark this blog and return to read the somewhat bent thoughts of a writer who is about to apply some logic and process to make the creative part of creative writing the paramount focus of this pursuit.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
The Writers' Universe
Welcome to what I hope will be an ongoing blog about not only the Indegogo project I'm trying to fun (to create friendly tools for writers) and to ramble about writing in general, as an art and adventure. I'm going to end this introductory post right there.
Have a great read.
Have a great read.
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