The Bitter Quill

From time to time, while working on the Exalted setting, I’ve incorporated real-world details into my writing. (For the record, Exalted is a high fantasy rpg that attempts to combine the best of high fantasy, anime, magitech, wuxia, low fantasy, and plenty of death-defying dramatic moves.) This brought home to me the difference between giving players the true version, the interesting version, and the version that they want.

The true version is obvious enough, and is often exemplified in GURPS sourcebooks. Here, the facts have been meticulously researched, the dates are correct, the bad points of the history and location and culture are stressed as well as the good points, and factors which might prove a disadvantage to specific types of PC are noted down without any attempt to soften them. (Such as the lower place of women or foreigners in certain cultures, for instance, or the fact that you can’t just buy a gun at the nearest shop in that particular country.) Sometimes
sourcebooks of this sort also provide guidelines for how to adjust the background or remove certain options if they are inappropriate for a particular campaign, but this is far from the rule.

Next we have what one might call the interesting version. This, like the Ars Magica books, involves starting off with the truth and… improving it a little. Usually these are also meticulously researched, in order to get the basic grounding correct and the “feel” right, but not all the research is necessarily used. Such a book may start off with the principle of “Rome in the Dark Ages” and then add the twist of “and magic works” in order to produce something which is grounded in reality but incorporates further material. Another example might be the Full Metal Alchemist universe (anime or manga), which is basically early twentieth century with alchemy included and different geography. The basic accurate grounding is indispensable; it provides a genuine feeling of reality to the setting that should not be discounted. Other notes are added, accentuated, or adjusted later. Perhaps a cultural facet is edited to allow participation by both genders, or to permit some sort of acceptance for other races. Maybe there are notes about how Dark Ages Christianity really can coexist with magic under exceptional circumstances — such as those which the players will be participating in. It’s reality, but it’s been edited to allow for more play.

Thirdly is the version that everyone really wants to play in. If it’s India, then there must be elephants, and rajahs, and tiger hunts, and thuggee cultists, and cross-jungle chases in the monsoon. If it’s a boarding school for would-be wizards, then there must be boarding houses, and spells, and potions classes, and threatening teachers. These settings start with reality and then move into all the things that players want to encounter. Inspiration may be drawn from reality, or from books, or movies, or casual inaccuracy. Very few people would let an appearance by Sherlock Holmes slip by without an, “Elementary, my dear Watson!” despite the fact that the character never actually used the phrase. Pulp demands dark masterminds, two-fisted librarians, car chases, gunfire, daring reporters, mad science, and all the other usual memes. Tibet requires lamas, yak butter tea, weird Buddhism, snow, avalanches, and green gloves. It’s about giving the players — and, to some extent, the GM — the toolbox they want to play with. Realism isn’t the point, and cultural balance is only relevant where it contributes to the plot.

All these three options really do require a high level of research — either because the writer wishes to remain accurate, or because they want to find interesting titbits to incorporate. However, it helps the writer if they have an idea of which basic concept they’re going with, and how far they want to take it.W

EDITOR’S NOTE: Another contribution from Catherynne M. Valente’s blog Goblin Market, syndicated here for your pleasure. Waitasec… giant squid? Sentient fungi? Where do I sign up?

A quick plug here and a promise to get to the meat of Goblin Market as soon as possible–deadlines have eaten my life and rock stars have kidnapped my son.

But I love this book so much that I just have to link to its final and triumphant wide release–in a new Bantam paperback. The story of how COSAM came to be is rather harrowing–not to be read by those just starting out in the literary world, as it will freeze your young blood right in your veins. Thus, all banners and trumpets to this final incarnation!

This is something like a review, but really, it’s a love letter to Vandermeer’s marvelous, frightening, beautiful creation: the great city of Ambergris. I pretend no objectivity. This book has a permanent place on my recommendation list.

Dear Ambergris:

Not only have you the greatest city-name since Truth-or-Consequences, New Mexico, but you are ruled by an abiding terror of squid and mushrooms, and that makes you dear.

Since I first ventured–hesitantly? Well, yes, there is, after all, the river-squid, and rarely in literature do giant squid bode well for nubile young maidens such as myself–into you, I have been confronted by marvels at every turn, not the least of which being the inversion, perversion, and glorification of history itself, and the deconstruction of deconstruction. Is there anything your streets and alleys cannot encompass? I think not. From Martin Lake’s paintings and his secret revealed, to the grey caps (yes, dear Reader, these are ravenous anthropomorphic mushrooms, and that should be enough right there to lure you past the tentacled river) and the horrifying Silence–whose secrets I am literally dying to know–to the truly delightful Hoegbotton Guide to your admittedly checkered past, which has few secrets besides the cause of its author’s indigestion, there is enough in Ambergris to exhaust a lifetime’s curiosity.

As long as you bring your cryptographer’s manual, a bathing suit, and make sure to be in tow for the Festival–I hear it’s a hoot.

I love you, Ambergris. But please don’t touch me like that–I might not survive it if you loved me back.

Love,
CMV

I’ve been thinking about Cyn’s recent post about how she writes her life, on her blog and in her fiction. It seems like most of my life goes undocumented. Most of my life doesn’t seem to warrant documenting, however. Does the world really need to know about my compulsive visits to the grocery store or about my altercations with bookstore security personnel? (Don’t worry. Nothing was hurt but my ego.)

Perhaps it’s a lack of writerly confidence. To write fiction, or such types of nonfiction as memoir, seems to require a combination of narcissism and bravery. I think I have the narcissism part covered well enough. I find that I enjoy few people’s company as well as my own.

I also have some bravery. The thing some writers seem to fear the most is a rejection letter, and perhaps I do too. I admit I’ve sent very little material out, but that’s usually because I have none ready. Besides, rejection is better than no response at all. At least that way you know you’re not still sitting at the bottom of the slush pile.

There’s a second kind of bravery, though. The kind that’s willing to present one’s ruminations on the mundane details of life to an audience. Some writers, particularly humorists, have made lucrative careers off of daily minutia. However, it takes a certain kind of confidence to foist such rambles onto the public. I seem to lack that type of bravery (but perhaps it’s just in my closet next to the vacuum I never use).

Fortunately, I don’t believe my affliction is permanent. I’m sure one day the little details of life that have been hiding in the shadows will come forth. Until then, I have the details of biology to write about, and I doubt I will ever exhaust them.

Spring may be the time when a young man’s fancy turns to love…but marketing men and women the world over have bottom lines to look out for, and Big Business can’t be troubled to wait on a young man’s folly. This is why all around us shop windows look like Cupid stumbled into them to vomit paper heart and lace doilies after a long night drinking ouzo with his Roman twin, Eros, card box boxes filled with flavors chocolatiers can’t sell the rest of the year are dusted off and slapped onto drugstore shelves, and diamond companies are working overtime to make sure you know that affection should be purchased with compressed carbon and the sweat of exploited workers; sure signs that the commercially mandated celebration of romantic love, St. Valentine’s Day, is growing ever near.

Don’t get me wrong, as cynical as I am (and boy, am I): I enjoy the hype and hoopla around this sugary-sweet day of days. Why? Simply put, I’m a fan of love. I think it should be lauded and celebrated and, when applicable, wrapped in a shell of dark, luscious chocolate. Love, in its many forms, is what drives us. It has been credited with starting wars, performing medical miracles, inspiring great works of art and causing the human body to perform outstanding feats of strength. And, more importantly to those of you reading here, love sells. From Paris and Helen to Bridget Jones and her infamous diaries, the word has loved love stories and, Aphrodite bless ‘em; they’re willing to pay to read them (and possibly shell out even more moolah to secure the movie rights).

The trouble is - how does one write an effective love story? I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t write about being in love when you’re in love - because frankly, it’s hard enough for people who care about you and who are personally invested in your happiness to have to hear you wax lyrically rhapsodic about the electric thrill when your fingertips brush, or how you spend nights awake trying to determine the specific shades of gold that fleck the depths of your lover’s eyes; so you better believe that your readers aren’t going to have the patience for characters who do the same. Love, although many-splendored and all we need, is possibly the most difficult emotion to demonstrate in a way that is convincing, memorable and doesn’t read like the inside of a Hallmark card.

I think part of the challenge comes from the fact that although love can feel larger-than-life and all-encompassing, what it really comes down to is a series of individual moments in time - where a single act or decision has made all the difference. Right now, I am sitting at my desk, listening to a random selection of songs with the word “love” in the title, while I try to recall the literary moments where love was demonstrated in a single act or moment that have really stuck with me:

• The recognition of Odysseus by Argos (for me, infinitely more touching that the subsequent reunion between he and Penelope).
• Both Camille’s casting off of Armand and his impassioned public payment for her services
• Ever tender recrimination Heloise penned to Abelard
• The discovery of some cowboy couture (I admit, I’m cheating. I’m only familiar with the movie version, so I don’t know if this moment appears in Annie Proulx’s short story. All I know is that it darn near broke me).

Let us, for the moment, ignore the fact that the demonstrations of literary love that have stuck with me most strongly are those that focus on loss and sacrifice rather than flowers and sunshine (I can only assume its my psyche’s way of balancing out the fact I have a disturbing amount of Burt Bacharach in my music collection) and see what clues these vignettes might offer us about the powerful portrayal of love. One thing that strikes me particularly about this group is that - with the exception of Armand’s impassioned outburst - these are solitary moments; times when the lovers’ interaction, if it happens at all, happens indirectly. Does this mean love between two characters is better demonstrated through what they do when they are separated than by paragraphs describing the longing looks, sweet words and familiar caresses that pass between them when they are together? Or is it just a sign that I’m a bitter old maid who should stick to eating her dusty, after-season chocolates while the lucky-in-love write the great love stories? How do you get your characters to talk about the tender trap; and what love stories have had the greatest effect on you? (And please, nobody say Romeo and Juliet, or I may have to beat you with a copy of the Riverside Shakespeare. Tragic tale of the young, misguided, and foolish? Sure. Greatest love story of all time? No way.) I look forward to learning from your answers. Till then, I’ll be doing some in-home karaoke to Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain and Tennille.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As promised, here is the first post syndicated from Catherynne M. Valente’s writing blog, Goblin Market. If you’re not familiar with Cat or her work, you’re doing yourself a disservice. I urge you to visit her website and cool your heels a while. It’s well worth becoming acquainted with — and not coincidentally, so is she.

A little while back I spirited a copy of Lud-in-the-Mist away from a friend’s bookshelf, curiosity piqued by that by now very old meme about Neil Gaiman referring to it in his blurb for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I had no idea what to expect, beyond knowing some vague trivia about Ms. Mirrlees herself and that it was, assumedly, somehow quintessentially British, since Gaiman had disqualified The Lord of the Rings (there’s no real reason for me to link to that, is there?) as the “finest English novel of the fantastic” until Jonathan Strange, as it was not, strictly speaking, an English novel about England. Or something.1

All that meta-commentary aside, Lud is, in short, an extraordinary book. If Lord of the Rings is the big, bombastic Grandfather of modern fantasy, Lud is obviously the quiet, unassuming Grandma who showed everyone how to grow wild mint out back and jitterbug in the kitchen. In fact, given that Mirrlees published in 1926, some time before Dr. T’s opus, I would not be at all surprised if the Shire was full of Granny Hope’s patented mint.2. Look carefully at any work of fantasy in which urban worldbuilding, provincial farmlife, idyllic villages, or fanciful names figure largely, and you’ll see Mirrlees’ ghost peeping through the pages. She could even be called the mother of interstitial literature, since Lud combines the fantasy genre with horror and of all things, procedural crime drama and political philosophy.

It is, however, one of the most deeply strange and alien books I have ever read, and what’s more, it sucker-punches the reader with that Otherness right at the end, after a long, meandering narrative, that, much like the river Dapple, turns and wanders around the land of Lud without much hurry at all. The tidy, measured style is not at all dated, and the descriptions of the turn of the seasons, village life, and the flora and fauna of everyday are truly transcendant–even leaving aside the unsettling and eerie landscape of Fairyland itself. But for me, the novel, while charming, would have been a failure without its disturbing and marvelous conclusion.

(more…)

Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why? These are, of course, the basic foundations of traditional journalism, but this isn’t about the news. Anytime you want to tell a story, you need to know the answers to these six questions. More importantly, at least two — better three — of them need to be interesting and engaging.

Consider: Who? A British Lord raised by apes. Where? Darkest Africa. Boom. Instantly engaging. The other questions may have fascinating answers, but we don’t need them. Those first two are all it takes.

Consider: Why? Because they can’t live openly and without fear in a hostile world. And how? Painfully, over the course of many years, culminating in tragedy. Angst. Conflict. Drama! Who and What are strictly secondary, and Where and When don’t really matter at all. The story works just as well with interracial construction workers in Boston as it does with gay cowboys in Wyoming. The four questions that aren’t Why and How are important, but they aren’t central.

Consider: Where and When? The future, inside a massive computer network that computers use to simulate reality to dupe all of humankind. Why? To throw off the machines’ oppressive yoke. In this case, the characters don’t really matter. Neo, Morpheus, Trinity and the Agents were all ciphers and stock characters. You might as well have called them Arthur Pendragon, Obi-Wan, Batgirl and The Ringwraiths. The kung-fu and metaphysical mumbo-jumbo are all just window-dressing that only function as a result of Where and When and Why.

Who and What? Characters. When and Where? Setting. Why and How? Conflict and resolution. Answer at least two of those questions — and make the answers good — and you can build the rest of your story around them.

PS: Tarzan, Brokeback Mountain and The Matrix, respectively. In case you were wondering.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Well, what can I say about Michelle Klein? She is a roiling mass of intelligence, creativity and class, and her son is lucky to have her as a mother. Michelle has a couple of fantasy writing and gaming credits to her name, and she’s got an exciting comic book project in the works. Her strange attraction to Jaime Lannister (from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series) nonwithstanding, we’re very pleased to have her contributing to The Bitter Quill.

Once upon a time there was a handsome prince who lived in a castle with his mother, the Lady of the Ink-Stained Hands. She posted her tale upon the Bitter Quill, and so it follows.

I’m getting to the point in my life where I can combine my greatest loves – literature and my child. I have the opportunity to watch him learn not only to read others’ words, but to tell his own stories and to come up with creative ideas. It’s fascinating to experience the fruits of a developing mind. Children have no boundaries. They don’t know all of the ‘rules’ that adults know – they don’t know they can’t fly or won’t be able to fly someday. They don’t know that they all won’t be rock stars or astronauts or firemen or presidents or monster-slaying heroes. Children are the most creative speculative fiction authors you’ll ever find.

So, how does one raise a writer? How does one encourage a child to tell the stories that live in his or her heart and mind? The stories are in there, even if the child can barely verbalize them. My father did it by telling me stories constantly. “When Daddy was a little girl and Mommy was a little boy and we rode on dinosaurs …” he would begin. He generated two results that way – one, I was always making up stories and either writing them down or telling them to the people around me, and two, I never believed that anything he said was true. The moon is not made of Gouda cheese and Prince Charming’s real name is not Irving Schwartz. How do I know? Mom told me.

When I wasn’t verifying things with Mom, however, I was writing. Stories, songs, poems, plays, journals. Now I’m starting to get my stories out into the world, but also I am telling them at home to my three year old son. It started as a method of parenting – it’s easier to get a reluctant child to do just about anything if you make up a story about it. If shampooing his hair will give him the magical powers to kill a dragon, suddenly he’s all for it, even if he normally despises getting his head wet. The more verbal he got, however, the more he asked me for “the story about the …”. At first he asked for stories I’d already told, then he’d just think of random objects and ask me to tell stories about them. An insistent three-year old demanding stories on the spot is a great stimulus for the creative process.

One day he asked me for “the story about the candle”. “I don’t know that one,” I said. “You tell it.” So he did. I had to prompt him with “then what happened?” a number of times, but he told his own story at three years old. He started it with ‘Once upon a time’ and ended it with ‘and they lived happily ever after. The End’. As much as I would like to chalk it up to the amazing prodigy that is my son, the truth is that all kids have the ability to write fiction and the more you encourage storytelling, the more they’ll do it. All they need is a listening ear and a sense of what a story is, which they’ll get from having stories told to them and read to them.

Read to them, tell them stories, ask them for the stories in their heads - that is my advice on the raising of writers. My own writing process currently is a dual exploration – my own creativity and my son’s. We inspire each other. We checked it out with Grandmom, so we know the moon is not made of Gouda cheese … but we pretend that it is anyway.

And they lived happily ever after. The end.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I don’t know what exactly I can say about Cynthia Taylor, except that I urge you to visit www.pinkhairedgirl.com for more of everything Cyn-ful (Aha! I bet that’s the first time that pun has ever been made! Wokka wokka wokka!). Cyn is a full-time student and a part-time ranconteur, and yes, her hair really is that color.

The mythology of writing tells us that Emily Dickinson wrote her poetry while living as a creepy recluse and completely shunning an audience. She instructed her sisters to burn her poems upon her death, wanting to insure that no one else read them. She was an artist, a poet writing only for herself and the love of words.

There is no way in hell I could ever work like that. Unlike Ms. Dickinson, I don’t see the point in writing without readers. (You also can’t sing all of my writing to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas.) I’m a blogger, not a diarist. If a tree falls in a forest, who cares if it makes a sound? Modern scholarship suggests that the whole creepy recluse line may have been a load of hooey with regard to Emily, anyway.

When I was in college, getting a Creative Writing degree, making myself write was easy. I had assignments and deadlines and workshops to write for, and no job to stop me from sitting around in my dorm room and churning out short stories. (Not to mention an eighteen-year-old’s charmingly naive belief in the Importance of said short stories.) At Oberlin, there was a system designed to churn out writing and writers, and while there may be a lot of justified complaints about the workshop system, it did get words on the page.

I had big plans for my life post college. Computer programmer by day, fiction writer by night, I was going to take the world by storm. Instead, I sent out four or five short stories, received four or five rejection letters, and promptly stopped writing. It’s hard, this writing thing. Hard to make time for, hard to keep doing in the face of constant rejection, hard to believe in the importance of words arranged and rearranged on a page. It’s hard just to make a decent sentence. I don’t think the high incidence of alcoholism amongst writers is a coincidence.

(Ponder: The way some sentences spring forth fully fledged, full of truth and beauty, and others are doggedly and insistently awkward, fighting back against your efforts to rearrange them. One of my weaknesses is my inability to get rid of those first sentences, the beautiful ones. My short stories eddy around them, meandering at the expense of plot, because I cannot bear to cut something pretty. I am indulgent in this, and thus you must forgive me this paragraph.)

I have a question for you, my fellow writers. How the hell do you keep doing this? How does this reconcile with jobs, with careers? (I have another life in which I’m a computer science grad student, and I love it just as much.) How do you find the time, but more importantly, the will?