Interview: Todd McCaffrey

interviewed by Carl Slaughter

Todd MacCtoddmccaffrey3affrey has no plans to stop writing Pern books. He plans to sanction a movie but he wants the screen version done right rather than done quickly.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: The Narnia series was 7. The Rings series was 3. The Shannara series was 3. The Potter series, 7. But the Pern series is at 22. What’s the explanation for such an enduring series?

TODD MCCAFFREY: Dragons. I think that Mum tapped on a hidden artery in the collective unconscious when she decided that dragons had had enough bad press. We also tend to write real characters who live and breathe, cry and laugh, in a way that makes us all yearn to spend more time with them.

 

CS: What instructions did you get from your mother about how to pursue the Pern series after she was gone?

TM: Nope. What she said was, “I trust you implicitly!”

I should add, however, that Mum in her Will said that it was her wish that only myself and my sister, Georgeanne, write on Pern. So I’m hoping that we’ll see a lot of stories from my very talented sister in the the not-too-distant future which will expand upon what Mum and I have done and add even more to the weft and weave that is Pern.

 

toddmccaffrey1CS: Do you have a longterm outline for the series or do the plots come one book at a time?

TM: For myself, I have a goal of writing the entire Third Pass. Mum never followed all the way through a Pass, so I think it’d be interesting. When it comes to Ninth Pass Pern, my sister and I will spend some time thinking out what we consider to be the best way forward.

 

CS: Is there a stopping point or will the series continue indefinitely?

TM: I think that as long as there are good stories and people who want to read them, we’ll continue.

 

CS: Any plans for a screen version?

TM: Plans? Always. But “there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip!” Pern’s been under option on and off since the mid-80s. I’d much prefer see it done *right* than done quickly.

 

CS: If you could revisit a character with more books, which character?

TM: Ah, that would be telling! 🙂

As I said, I’d certainly like to follow the characters of Third Pass through to the end. We see hints of what’s to come in Dragon’s Time but we’re only in the beginning of the Pass. Not only do I want to see these characters through but I’m curious to see how their children turn out.

 

CS: If you could revisit an era with more books, which one?

TM: I haven’t any particular era I want to revisit at the moment.

 

toddmccaffrey2CS: What kind of feedback have you gotten from the fans? What characters, eras, themes, plots do they like/dislike? What scenes or plot twists or ending do they strongly approve of or disapprove of? Have they asked you to revisit certain characters or certain eras?

TM: Everyone would like to see more Lessa and F’lar (or F’nor and Brekke).

I get all sorts of feedback from fans – some positive, some negative. Writing in someone else’s world will generate a lot of strong emotions from fans. People who love Pern have a sense of ownership and I totally understand that (don’t get *me* started on Harry Potter).

At the end of the day, a story is about change and it changes the writer most of all. I’ve learned a lot writing about the characters of the Third Pass on Pern.

I think some fans wish they could get that same sense of wonder they got when they first visited Pern. Unfortunately, a lot of that sense of wonder is simply because the world is *new* to them — and it can never be that new again.

 

CS: Do you work the convention circuit? Do fans show up dressed as Pern characters?

TM: I go to conventions. I wouldn’t call it “working the convention circuit”, however.

Some people do show up dressed in Pernese garb, many as their own Pern characters but fewer as characters from the books. One of the marvelous things about Pern is how many people are still actively MUSHing, MOOing, and Play-by-Mailing on the world.

People are also writing fan fiction on Pern. Initially that was a source of concern for Mum — would it break her copyright and make a film deal impossible? Fortunately, the kerfuffle over Harry Potter fans sites sorted out the legal issues in that regard and so, now, as long as fans follow Mum’s Fan Fiction Rules, we’re happy to let them enjoy themselves. We were thrilled to discover that Wen Spencer, who wrote the marvelous Alien Taste series started out writing Pern fan fiction.

 

CS: Is there a Pern fan club?

TM: There are *many* Pern fan clubs. A quick web search will reveal the most popular.

 

CS: Are there Pern conventions?

TM: No conventions on their own. For a long while Dragon*con hosted a Weyrfest which morphed into a Worlds of Anne McCaffrey track and which has now matured into the Fantasy Literature track.

 

CS: What have the reviewers said or do you pay attention to them?

TM: Some reviewers like the books, some don’t. I would expect no different. I was thrilled to have several starred reviews and Mum and I were delighted when Dragon’s Fire got on the New York Times Bestseller list.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

 

Interview: Mindee Arnett

interviewed by Carl Slaughter

marnett_authorphoto_small

Mindee Arnett has had 3 novels published in less than a year, plus a prequel novella ebook, and is on the verge of publishing a sequel. She specializes in YA, writes both sci fi and fantasy, and receives rave reviews from fellow speculative fiction authors. Her debut novel was nominated for the Young Adult Library Services Association top 10. She is a fan of Josh Whedon, Veronica Mars, Firefly, Doctor Who, and Mumford and Sons. Her license plate holder says, “Leaf on the Wind, Wash is my Co-Pilot”; and if you know what that means, she can definitely be friends.

 

16-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare. Literally. Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough, but when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder. The setting is Arkwell. And then his dream comes true. Now Dusty has to follow the clues,both within Eli’s dreams and out of them,to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: I seldom meet a premise/setup that intrigues me as much as The Nightmare Affair. How long did you kick around ideas and put together elements before it all gelled?

MINDEE ARNETT: Thanks, so nice to hear. The surprising truth is that The Nightmare Affair jelled pretty quickly, although I more or less stumbled over the idea. I was actually searching for a new monster to use in a short story I was working on at the time. I wrote a lot of horror short fiction before moving onto novels. In this search, I came across the painting “The Nightmare” by Henry Fuseli. I’d seen the painting before, of course, but for some reason when I saw it this time I began to wonder what it would be like if the image were reversed,if the woman in the painting was sitting on the demon’s chest. Then I wondered what it would be like to be a nightmare, to live a life where you have to spend your nights sitting on people’s chests. Very weird and a little bit funny, I decided. And just like that, Dusty Everhart was born. I wanted to explore the humor, awkwardness, and scariness of this type of creature.

 

CS: You’ve had 3 novels published in less than a year. Plus a prequel. And you’re on the verge of publishing a sequel. Being a wife and mother and having a day job, how do you crank out the volume, not to mention all that blogging and promotion you’ve been doing?

MA: My other car is a TARDIS. Kidding. The answer to that question is that I don’t really have an answer. What it comes down to is this: if you really want something, you go for it, no matter what. You make time. You sacrifice. The only advice I have to give is to get enough sleep. That sounds glib, I know, but I honestly mean it. I think the ability for having maximum output in your day starts with good sleep. You’ve got to take care of the body if you want the mind and imagination to have the fuel to work at its best. And, of course, you’ve got to learn how to turn away from the distractions and focus.

 

CS: The conventional wisdom in the writing community is that you have to write a million words before you have to right stuff to be a successful author. How many words did you type before you wrote a marketable story? How many stories?

MA: I don’t have an exact count, but I would say it’s probably close to that million word mark. I’ve written dozens and dozens of short stories, and before publishing The Nightmare Affair, I wrote 4 complete novels that ranged in length from 90,000 words to 160,000. That’s about half a million right there.

 

CS: Conventional wisdom also says build a strong resume of short fiction with pro paying magazines before breaking into novels. How did you leap frog that process?

MA: I didn’t, not entirely. No, I don’t have a lot of “pro” sales, but I did place several short stories in semi-pro and literary magazines. I learned how to submit, to write a query letter, and to handle rejection. And even more than that, I spent a good many years focusing entirely on short stories. While I don’t think you have to learn how to write short stories, I think doing so provides innumerable benefits for any writer. Short stories are where you get a feel for the language, how to be concise, how to write prose that has an emotional impact. These are useful skills to have when you move onto novels, especially because longer fiction requires a whole new set of skills to master.

 

CS: How did getting a Bachelor and Master’s in English literature with an emphasis on creative writing help/hinder your career as a speculative fiction novelist?

MA: It was definitely a help and not a hindrance. At a minimum, these degrees gave me a legitimate reason to pursue writing. So much of being an “aspiring” writer is like taking a long journey in the dark with only a flashlight to see by. There’s a lot of unknown, a lot of “why are you wasting your time” attitude from the outside world. But my degrees came with that built-in support that the idea of pursuing fiction is legitimate. It gave me permission. Also, most of my teachers wrote speculative fiction as well. So at no point was I made to feel less because I wanted to write horror or fantasy or sci-fi. I do think that’s an important point to make. At no time was I made to feel that genre fiction is somehow less worthy than literary.

 

CS: You said of Avalon and Nightmare Affair: “Basically, if you like one, you’ll probably like the other, despite their differences.” Avalon is sci fi space action. The Nightmare Affair is fantasy detective. Where’s the overlap in readership?

MA: Well, perhaps I’m just hoping there are people like me out there who love both sci-fi and fantasy. I’m a genre junkie in general. But seriously, I think the stories share a similar feel. They’re fast-paced, have lots of action, some snarky humor, some scary moments, and so on.

 

CS: The Nightmare Affair is about a being that feeds on dreams, a fairly exotic creature in fantasy literature. Why not vampire, werewolf, witch, etc, which are all the rage in print and on screen?

MA: Those stories have been done. A lot. And I didn’t have anything new to offer about those creatures, although all three you mentioned are present in The Nightmare Affair. But really, I’m a firm believer that the story chooses the writer and not the other way around.

 

CS: Do you present Dusty primarily as a teen, a student, a romantic, a nightmare, or a detective?

MA: All of the above. In the beginning Dusty is very much a teen and student. Both the romance and the detective elements build slowly through the first book and into the next one and so on.

 

CS: What character development do you use to convince readers that a 16 year old can whip a crew even younger than himself into a highly effective team of mercenary thieves that target the most highly valued and therefore most securely protected merchandise in the galaxy?

MA: The answer to that one is the teens in Avalon aren’t responsible for it. Instead they’ve been recruited, trained, and controlled by their crime lord boss, a ruthless guy with lots of resources at his disposal. Also, the fact that they’re teens plays a big part in what they’re able to do. People underestimate teenagers all the time. This oversight allows Jeth and his crew to be so effective.

 

CS: You said of reviews: “I have never read them and I have no regret.” Why boycott reviews?

MA: Very simply, reviews are not for authors; they’re for readers. But more specifically, as an author, I prefer to get my feedback and criticism from vetted sources, people I trust, respect, admire and so on, people who are there to help me do the best job I can like my agent, editors, and critique partners. With most reviews, aside from the professional ones, the reviewers could be anybody. Writing is a hard art and a hard business, both. For me, I have to protect both my sanity and my creative drive. This means filtering out the outside world so I can focus on the inner world of my stories.

 

CS: How much of your promotion time is solo, how much is tag teaming with other New Leaf authors, and how much is tag teaming with other Tor authors? Who do you tag team with? Are they all YA writers? Are they all speculative fiction writers?

MA: Honestly, most of my promotion is solo, at least the online stuff. But most of my in-person events are with other writers. So far they’ve all been other YA writers, some with Tor, some with New Leaf, and some just regional authors that live near me.

 

CS: Your agent is Suzie Townsend of New Leaf agency, who was recently interviewed here at Diabolical Plots. Describe your life as a writer if you had no agent. Describe your life as a writer if Suzie were not your agent.

MA: If I didn’t have an agent, I wouldn’t be able to do half of what I do in terms of writing. My agent takes care of the business side, which allows me time to focus primarily on the creative side. She also serves as a filter on all the craziness that comes with this business. She helps me keep things in perspective. My life before I had an agent was all pipe dreams and wishes. Agents hold a lot of the keys to the kingdom, as such, when it comes to publishing. They have the contacts and the know-how. They are essential for a writer’s career. I really can’t describe how my career would be with a different agent, and I don’t want to imagine it. Not all agents are created equal, and Suzie is by far one of the best. She’s professional, responsive, supportive, and super smart about the business. I wouldn’t trade her for a different agent ever, not by choice.

 

CS: Why Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Jennifer Roberson? Not familiar with Roald Dahl. Why is Joss Whedon the only screen writer on your list? Why Veronica Mars? Why Doctor Who?

MA: The short answer here is that these writers tell the kinds of stories that speak to me. With King, well, he’s such a great storyteller. His stories are so real and vivid. And they’re scary. I love horror, both to read and especially to write. I’ve always been fond of the supernatural and the macabre. With Tolkien it’s all about the world-building. I think he’s what every writer of fantasy and sci-fi aspires to when it comes to creating a fictional world. I mean, the guy wrote whole languages. He was beyond brilliant. For Lewis, I love the carefree fantasy and the sense of adventure. Jennifer Roberson was the first writer that made me want to be a writer. Her stories were the first adult fiction I ever read, and her prose is beautiful and romantic. To this day, I still go back and re-read her stuff. Roald Dahl was like a precursor to King. His stories are both gruesome and fun. I consumed them with a voracious appetite as a kid, and I still love them as a grownup.

The deal with Joss Whedon is the same as the others. He tells the kind of stories I want to experience. My favorite part about Joss is the mix of humor and tragedy. The man makes me cry,a lot,but never before he’s made me laughed. Really, I want all my stories to be like that.

Again, Veronica Mars is about amazing storytelling but also amazing characters. Veronica Mars is smart, funny, and tough. Also, Rob Bell, the writer and creator of Veronica Mars is really what makes it so amazing.

And for Doctor Who, I pretty much agree with everything you have to say on the subject. I think my favorite part is the show’s sense of fun. Anything can happen. It’s always surprising, often funny, often terrifying, and most importantly,emotionally moving. Doctor Who has more heart than any other show out there.

 

CS: Why Mumford and Sons, because of the tunes, the lyrics, or the band members?

MA: I love them because of the music and the lyrics. The combination of both speaks to my soul. I’m a huge fan of folk music, and the banjo in particular. Combine that with lyrics that are mind-blowing, literary, and emotionally gripping, and you’ve got something, magical. They are also amazing in concert. Seriously, the best I’ve ever seen.

 

CS: What does “Leaf on the Wind, Wash is My Co-Pilot” mean?

MA: This is a quote from the movie Serenity by Joss Whedon, the follow-up to the short-lived, tragically cancelled Firefly. I can’t say a lot more than that without spoilers. But this quote makes you laugh when you first hear it, and then boom,punch in the gut. Hard. It’s a classic Whedon moment. I still want to cry just thinking about it.

 

 

For Mindee’s writing advice, check out her blog below and look for these topics:

— The Myth of the Crappy First Draft
— The Elevator Pitch
— “and then” versus “therefore” and “but”
— World building
— Cover letters
— Sequels
— SUSPENSE
— “write deep.”
— Writer depression.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

 

Interview: J.A. White

interviewed by Carl Slaughter

jawhite1-300x209J.A. White defied conventional wisdom by selling his first novel – soon to be a trilogy – without selling one piece of short fiction to magazines. How did he do it? Also, how does he maintain page-turning tension without the reader suffering fatigue, how does he balance character development and world building, and how does he find time to write with so much else on his plate?

The first book in White’s “Thickety” trilogy will be on the shelves in May.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: You sold your first novel without selling any short fiction. How did you accomplish that feat?

J.A. WHITE: For many years I tried to get a short story published, but I was spectacularly unsuccessful. Pretty simple reason: I wasn’t good enough yet. Also, I don’t think the short form really suits me. While I love reading short stories,my favorites include Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, and Harlan Ellison,I tend to write big, twisting plots that take some time to unfold. I really cut my storytelling teeth on screenplays and short films. When I sent my novel around, no one asked if I had ever published any short stories, but I’m certain such publications would have helped my cover letter. In my case, I wrote about the various short films I’d written that had won competitions. Writing this answer makes me realize that at some point I’d love to take a stab at a short story again. It’s a wonderful, often unappreciated art form.

 

CS: Take us through the process of finding an agent. Did you know somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody? Did you have an old college buddy who was an agent? Did you have to query a zillion agencies?

JAW: I had been querying agents unsuccessfully for quite a few months when an editor at Katherine Tegen Books, Sarah Shumway, expressed interest in The Thickety. At that point I informed a few agents who had requested a full manuscript but had not yet gotten back to me. Luckily, I decided to sign with Alexandra Machinist of ICM, who’s wonderful.

 

CS: The Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus reviewers commented on how you maintained tension and surprise scene after scene. How do you create and maintain the tension/surprise and how to you keep up the tension/surprise for the entire book without the reader getting tension/surprise fatigue or technique fatigue?

JAW: The last thing you want to do is fatigue the reader, that’s for sure! I’ve read plenty of novels,especially YA books,where the slam-bang relentlessness of the plot eventually becomes tiring. It’s like a sugar rush, too much of a good thing. The way I try to avoid that is by spending a lot of time in the early chapters developing the characters and the world, so that by the time the surprises and action start the reader is completely invested. My main character, Kara, is very introspective, so I do tend to balance out scenes of suspense with her thoughts.

I think the main problem with books that suffer from “surprise fatigue”is that the reader is not sufficiently grounded in the characters’ lives, and without this connection any narrative tension,however well executed, eventually becomes monotonous and boring. It’s similar to watching many Hollywood blockbusters. Explosion, explosion, explosion,and none of it means anything because there’s no human element.

 

CS: Explain the 3 sentence description principle. Give us an example of how 2 sentences are too few and 4 sentences are too many. Is it a hard and fast principle? Aren’t some descriptions inherently better shorter/longer?

JAW: You’ve read my teaching blog! That lesson is for younger children just learning how to describe things. Of course, with professional writers there really isn’t any specific rule. The length of the description could vary based on its importance at that particular moment in the story, how the character views what is being described, whether or not you are foreshadowing something later in the novel, pacing,so many factors!

With children, however, I find it’s better to give them a very specific framework at the start. Master sentence, detail, detail. As they develop their skills, I encourage them to branch out and break this rule, but I feel that this gives them a good starting point, especially for those who are not naturally gifted writers.

 

CS: Why is show better than tell? Give us some examples of ways to show compared with ways to tell. Again, is show inherently better than tell? Shouldn’t the story determine the technique rather than vice versa?

JAW: Ah,you found another writing lesson on my blog! With children, they tend to tell the story from “outside,” as a summary. For example, “The boy and his brother are playing catch.” It makes sense that they tell stories in this way,it’s how they’ve been telling stories their entire lives! However, they need to make that leap toward choosing a perspective and writing from “inside” the story. To go back to that previous example, I’d rather they write something like, “Brian looked down in surprise and saw that the ball had landed in his mitt. ‘Nice job!’ his brother exclaimed.” Here we have more detail, a point-of-view,all those things that young writers should be developing. Forcing them to think about “showing” vs. “telling” helps them become aware of the major difference between summarizing a story and writing a story. It’s a big leap!

As far as publishable work, however, you’re of course correct,there are times when showing is better than telling and vice versa. It’s the pacing of the story,whether you want to speed time up or slow it down at that particular moment,that determines the best choice.

 

CS: Is there a universal formula for world building? How did you balance your fantasy premise with your character development? How did you integrate you characters and premise into the plot?

JAW: World building is like Legos for writers, isn’t it? So much fun.I don’t think there’s a universal formula, though probably every writer builds more than he or she actually uses. I try to include just enough details to plunge the reader into a fantasy world without it becoming overwhelming. The temptation, I think, is to include too much information,though as the author you have to know everything about your world, even if it doesn’t find its way into the final draft.

Also, De’Noran, the island setting of The Thickety,is not new to the book’s protagonist, Kara, so I always have to keep that in mind. There are things in her day-to-day experience that would seem totally normal to her, so I need to resist the urge to spend a lot of time describing it (even if it’s something really cool). The reader’s view of the world must at all times be grounded in Kara’s perspective. This can sometimes make it tricky to reveal necessary information, but it helps me to integrate character development into my plot/world building.

 

CS: Do you recommend workshops?

JAW: Of course! I think it’s a fair rule of thumb that, like most things in life, you’ll only get back as much as you put into it. Take the time to thoughtfully and honestly critique the stories of others, and expect the same diligence in return. Also, someone in your workshop may be an inferior writer but give absolutely incredible critiques,and vice versa. Don’t assume that writing talent and the ability to give brilliant feedback are connected.

 

CS: How much time expired from the first stroke of the keyboard til it lands in bookstore?

JAW: The Thickety started as a short film made in 2008, so it has been rattling around in my brain for a long, long time. I didn’t actually start working on the novel until 2010, which means it was about four years from the first stroke to publication!

 

CS: With a family, a full time occupation, a part time job, and all the nonwriting tasks that go with being an author, especially promotion, how do you find time to write?

JAW: I set aside at least two hours a day,often more,as time to work on my latest novel. This is usually in the morning, when I’m freshest. That means no Internet, no social media, no other distractions. Anything else has to wait until later. I usually do my promotional stuff at night, though to be honest I’m not very good at it. It’s just not my personality,but it is a necessary part of being an author.

 

CS: Will there be a sequel to Thickety? A trilogy? A series?

JAW: Yes! A sequel to The Thickety will be released in March of 2015. That one is already completed, so it’s a bit odd promoting the first one,I have to make sure I don’t give anything away! The third book will be published in March of 2016.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

His training is in journalism, and he has an essay on culture printed in the Korea Times and Beijing Review. He has two science fiction novels in the works and is deep into research for an environmental short story project.

Carl currently teaches in China where electricity is an inconsistent commodity.

 

Interview: Christopher Priest

interviewed by Carl Slaughter


priestbannerThe Prestige
, a box office hit directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, and Scarlett Johannson, was based on a novel of the same name by Christopher Nolan. I seldom watch a movie more than once. The Prestige is an exception. Every time I watch it, I discover something new. Another science fiction movie hit was Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio and also directed by Christopher Nolan. Christopher Priest put the premise of Inception in print 3 decades earlier with his novel A Dream of Wessex. His latest novel, published in 2013, is The Adjacent. Christopher Priest talks to Diabolical Plots about the themes and elements of his novels, his definition of science fiction, and the influence H.G. Wells had on him.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: Why magicians?

CHRISTOPHER PRIEST: Because when you know what they’re really like, they are co-o-ol.

 

CS: Why war?

CP: Because it’s a constant force, even if you don’t happen to witness it every day. Since 1945, more than one hundred full-scale wars have been fought, many of them still ongoing now.

 

CS: Why WW1 and WW2?

CP: WW1 because of the poetry. WW2 because it isn’t over yet.

 

CS: Why airplanes?

CP: I’m still struggling to come to terms with the theory of flight, which as far as I am concerned remains only a theory.

 

CS: Why doppelgangers?

CP: Don’t you have an inner life? A shadow identity no one sees?

 

CS: Why the theme of what’s reality?

CP: When you discover what reality is, let me know. That search is largely what the books are about.

 

CS: What is the Dream Archipelago, what role does it play in your stories, and how often have you included it?

CP: The Dream Archipelago is a world with two continental masses, north and south. The north is complex, modern and industrialized, full of technologically advanced countries who have formed alliances and are at war. The south is a barren, frozen, uninhabited wilderness, where the armies of the north try to resolve their issues by violent means. Between the two continents is a vast ocean girdling the world. The ocean is crammed with uncountable islands. Culturally and racially their peoples are peacefully mixed, politically they are neutral, ideologically they are dreamers.

 

CS: Several reviewers have said that although they admired your stories and were impressed with your skills, they had to reread and re-reread your stories to put all the pieces together. Why not a more pedestrian approach?

CP: You want a pedestrian approach? Look elsewhere. (Plenty of it about.) I’m pleased to hear reviewers are re-reading my books. That’s music to my ears. After all, reviewers get paid to read books, which most people don’t.

 

CS: The characters in your books are victims or cogs. Why no heroes?

CP: How many genuine heroes have you ever met? Or even heard about? Most people do the best they can in the circumstances in which they find themselves, and some do better than others. The majority of people in the world are in one way or another victims: of financial greed, despotic governments, prejudice, cruelty, autocratic corporations, ignorance. Do you want every novel to be about Superman? I prefer to write about the world as I perceive it.

 

Adjacent_DJ.inddCS: The Prestige has a device that copies and transports people. Your latest novel, The Adjacent, has a device that transfers people to an alternate universe(?). You don’t delve into the science of these devices. No effort to make them seem plausible. They’re just invented and they just do what they do. Why no hard science in your stories?

CP: On the contrary, my novels always have hard science in them. What you and I call science is not the same thing. You’re thinking of the exact sciences, excluding others.

I have a broad, inclusive approach to the scientific method. There’s a science of society. A science of politics. Of demographics. Of interpersonal relationships. Of surveillance. Of criminology. A science of sex, fear, influence, people, culture, history, thinking. These are the sciences I write about, I research them thoroughly and consider that my approach to them, if not exactly hard, is certainly firm. “Science” means “Knowledge”.

As for what you call “not delving into the science” — when you use a photocopier do you tell everyone in the room how fascinating it is that inside the cabinet there is an electrostatically charged drum, which uses negatively charged paper exposed to a light source …? When you make a call on a mobile phone, do you tell the person you are talking to that all this is possible because your voice has been converted into an electrical signal which has been relayed through a series of hexagonal cells at a variety of radio frequencies …? When you drive a car …? Get the idea? That’s how my characters use matter transmitters.

 

CS: What’s the best way to describe your chosen genre? Science fiction? Speculative fiction? Defies categorization?

CP: The only exact definition I have ever come up with is: “Books by Christopher Priest.” However, I confess that isn’t much help to someone who hasn’t read any of them.

 

CS: The theme of “what is reality” was also in Philip K. Dick’s books. Were you influenced by him?

CP: I read Phil Dick’s stuff when I was a teenager, and really liked it. However, at that time I was reading and liking a lot of science fiction writers, so I can’t say Phil Dick’s work was a special influence.

As for the “what is reality” riff … As I recall much of that in Dick’s books was related to chemical substances, or some kind of physical interference with the mind. My own take on inner reality is much more to do with perception, with memory, with muddle, with forgetting, with imagining, with being mistaken.

 

CS: How did H.G. Wells influence you?

CP: He wrote “The War of the Worlds” and “The Time Machine,” and in particular a large number of wonderful short stories. He was the first writer I came across who made me feel he was speaking directly to me, on my wavelength, away from the world of teachers and parents and critics.

 

CS: What’s your role in the H.G. Wells Society?

CP: My role is a more or less honorary one of Vice President. I don’t have any official duties, but I do what I can, whenever I can, to “promote a widespread interest in the life, work and thought of Herbert George Wells.” He was a great man and a great writer.

Here’s an example of something I did last year.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

 

Interview: Suzie Townsend

interviewed by Carl Slaughter

Suzie NCL Agent Photo 1Meet literary agent Suzie Townsend of New Leaf agency. She’s keen on speculative fiction and she’s eager about aspiring writers.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: HOW DID YOU GET INTO AGENTING AND WHY DOES IT APPEAL TO YOU?

SUZIE TOWNSEND: I was a high school English teacher for six years and in the end I decided that while I enjoyed teaching, I just didn’t love it. I thought about getting into textbook publishing because I really enjoyed curriculum. It just so happened that when I started looking to switch jobs there wasn’t much out there. Instead, what I found was an unpaid internship at a literary agency. I decided to try it, mostly because I wanted to see what it was about and I had some savings and some time to step away from teaching and figure out what I wanted to do. Within a week at the agency, where my job was to read manuscripts, I realized this was what I wanted to do. I hadn’t realized that reading could also be a job. It was perfect for me.

I love being an agent. Reading and working with my clients on every step of their publishing journey is amazing. Now that I know this job is out there, I can’t picture myself doing anything else.

 

ARE YOU EAGER TO WORK WITH ASPIRING WRITERS?

Absolutely.

 

HOW DO YOU FIND NEW CLIENTS? CONVENTIONS? GOOGLE ADS? WRITER ASSOCIATION MAILING LISTS? WRITER MAGAZINE ADS? REFERRALS?

None of the above, actually. The majority of my clients I find through the good old fashioned slush pile. They query me and if the manuscript sounds good, I request it and read it and we go from there. I go to conferences and conventions, but it’s usually about networking or supporting current clients more than finding new writers there. With the rise of social media I can’t imagine ever needing to put out ads or get on a mailing list. I do have one client who was referred to me, but it was a pretty unusual case.

 

HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT DETERMINING WHETHER A POTENTIAL CLIENT IS A GOOD FIT FOR YOUR AGENCY AND A GOOD FIT FOR YOU?

It’s all about the writing and the story at first. After I request a manuscript, I start reading it. It has to really grab me and suck me in. When I finish reading the manuscript, if I can’t stop thinking about it, that’s a very good sign. From there, I share the story with my team and we discuss it. Then I’ll talk to the author on the phone and see if we have a similar vision for the book and for their career. If my team is on board and the author and I seem like we’d work well together, I’ll offer representation.

 

WHAT’S YOUR CRITERIA FOR DECIDING WHETHER A MANUSCRIPT IS MARKETABLE?

I don’t necessarily have specific criteria. I have pretty commercial tastes. If a book sucks me in and refuses to let me go until the end, it’s marketable.

 

WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON MISTAKES WRITERS MAKE WITH MANUSCRIPTS?

Pacing is one of the toughest things to nail in a manuscript. A writer who is familiar with their character and their world is so invested in them that sometimes it’s hard to see where too much detail or backstory might slow down the pace or not enough might leave the reader confused and uninvested. I read somewhere that Stephen King has his wife read his manuscripts when he finishes them and while she reads he makes a note every time she pauses to make lunch or do something else. This is a brilliant way to look at the pacing. Those moments where she stops, she must not be completely invested. I don’t know about you but I’ve read books late into the night when I should have gone to bed and I’ve postponed lunch and even missed a movie because I was too busy reading to the end of a book. That’s the sign of great storytelling — and great pacing.

 

ADVICE TO ASPIRING WRITERS:

1. Read a lot. Write a lot. The more you do both, the better at it you’ll be.

2. Write for yourself. Do it because you love it and because it’s your passion and the stories you want to tell need to be told. Don’t go into publishing thinking you’ll get wealth and fame because it really isn’tthat kind of business. And it is a business and there’s a lot that will be out of your control. The best way to stay sane is to remember why you’re doing it in the first place and to love your story.

3. Keep writing. When you finish a manuscript and you revise and start querying agents, start writing something else. It will make the waiting easier and the truth is that first book might not get you an agent, but your second or fifth or tenth book could be the one.

 

TALK ABOUT SOME OF THE SCI FI CLIENTS AND BOOKS YOU’VE REPRESENTED.

Avalon by Mindee Arnett was just released in January. It’s a space opera that I pitched as Firefly meets The Sopranos. Jeth’s parents were a few years back and his uncle lost their ship, Avalon, to a local crime lord. Now Jeth is watching out for his younger sister and working off that debt, stealing and running a crew. He’s trying to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. This next job is one that any sane guy would turn down. It’s too risky, too dangerous, but the payout is huge — enough that he could potentially get out of this life he didn’t choose. That is, if he can get out alive.

 

HOW DOES THE CURRENT AND NEAR FUTURE SCI FI LANDSCAPE LOOK?

There’s always room for a great story. The truth is that the market is really crowded. When I got into publishing, I was surprised at how many people write books — and how many published books are out there that I hadn’t heard about. With the rise in ebooks, there’s more options for writers now but there are also more books, which means the market is more crowded and it’s harder to stand out. But a great story with characters that feel real and tight pacing will make room for itself.

I read a lot of manuscripts. Most of them are decent. But decent or even good isn’t enough. It’s the great stories people remember.

I’d love to see a space opera with complex worldbuilding and a little bit of romance mixed in with the adventure. (I was a huge BSG fan) And I’d love to see an SF thriller that isn’t clones or aliens.

Suzie Townsend
New Leaf Literary and Media
110 West 40th Street, Suite 410
New York, NY 10018

Confessions Blog
Twitter

Check out New Leaf on:
Twitter
Tumblr
Facebook

COMING SOON (hopefully) AT DIABOLICAL PLOTS:
more profiles of relatively new agents (which means they are building their client list) who specialize in speculative fiction and welcome aspiring writers.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

Interview: James Patrick Kelly

interview by Carl Slaughter

jim_kelly_thumbSuccessful science fiction author and prolific workshop instructor James Patrick Kelly talks about his passion for mentoring new writers.

(BTW: JPK is an avid user of the Submissions Grinder, a new feature here at Diabolical Plots.)

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT GOT YOU INTO WORKSHOPPING AND WHY HAVE YOU STAYED WITH IT?

James Patrick Kelly: I think the thing that spooks most beginning writers is the lack of input. Or maybe we should call it “on the job training.” We lock ourselves in a closet and try to build worlds out of the thin air. How do successful people do it? More important, how do we do it? Alas, reading craft books about writing is like reading books about how to make love.

Workshopping is a way to measure your progress toward getting it right. You find out immediately what very smart readers have gleaned from what you wrote. The flaws you spot in other writers’ work are often the very same flaws that will distract from yours. Oh, and if you think that eventually you might not need workshops because you’ve learned everything they have to teach †¦ well, good luck to you. I still attend workshops and probably will until my fingers curl up and fall off.

I was going to adult education workshops in the Boston area when I first started sending stuff out. Then I went to Clarion. After Clarion I was so converted to the workshop method that I joined a workshop by mail. I would send a story out to the list and maybe six weeks later it would come back with comments. Later, I was thrilled to be asked to the final incarnation of Damon Knight’s Milford Workshop, then run by Ed Bryant. I went to the original Sycamore Hill workshop and many thereafter. I plan this year to go to Walter Jon William’s Rio Hondo workshop. Oh, and I’ve now taught at both Clarion and Clarion West , the Odyssey workshop, Viable Paradise, and the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA program. And I attend a bi-monthly local workshop, the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop.

Do I believe in the efficacy of workshops? Duh!

 

WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS WRITERS HAVE ABOUT HOW TO CRAFT A MARKETABLE STORY AND HOW DO YOU HELP THEM OVERCOME THOSE MISCONCEPTIONS?

The most common misconception is that of the editor as a fierce gatekeeper eager to turn away all newbies. The exact opposite is the case. Editors are in competition to discover new talent. Being the first to publish someone who goes on to have a long career is, and always has been, one of the badges of honor in the editorial community. I wrote a couple of columns that touched on this for Asimov’s: Part One and Part Two.

Where newbies go wrong, in general, is that they have failed to read their manuscript as an editor would. For example, they are not familiar with what the editor has already published and will send her something very much like the cover story of the March issue, or else they will merely file the serial numbers off the best seller that she published in 2012 and submit a generic rehash. All too often they will not read their manuscript with the care that an editor who is pondering a buy decision would. Are there typos? Are there obvious grammar mistakes? Does the first sentence/paragraph invite the reader into the story?

Having read slush, I will tell you that it is all too easy to make the decision to buy or reject having read just the first page of 80% of submissions.

 

WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON MANUSCRIPT MISTAKES WRITERS MAKE AND HOW DO YOU HELP THEM RECOGNIZE AND AVOID THOSE MISTAKES?

God, where to start? There are so many ways to go wrong, which is why this is a tough profession. Let me just give two:

Over/underpopulation. This depends on the length of the story, obviously, but if there is really only one character in your story, even if she is remembering other characters, then you probably suffer from underpopulation. Conversely, say you are writing a war story, or a family saga and you are going to mention eleven characters by name in a 5000 word story, then you are overburdening the reader and ought to consider culling the herd. Have you ever heard of the three character rule? A story should have three characters: two in some sort of relationship and one who disrupts that relationship.

Slow start, abrupt ending: If you can start with a line of dialogue, do. Nothing puts editors off faster than a writer who spends the first page clearing her throat with weather reports, lyrical nature writing or infodumps about backstory. Conversely, learn the difference between climax and denouement. Too many writers end the plot but fail to adequately end the story.

 

WHAT’S THE RIGHT WAY AND WRONG WAY TO MENTOR WRITERS?

You should really ask my students this. I tend to be blunt but supportive. I see writers who are at various stops on the road to success. Those near the start get more general (and gentle) comments. Those who are close but are clinging to some dysfunctional plot point or character interaction get more specific criticism.

I can be very persuasive when I get into my plot doctoring mode. It’s easy for me to say rewrite the ending, change the point of view or lose the grandma. But I try to remind my students that I am reading according to my own tastes and prejudices. There are many, many popular writers (and styles of writing) that I have no use for. And I don’t need anyone writing James Patrick Kelly stories , that’s my job. So I make the point that I’m not an editor, unless I am. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve urged my workshop colleagues and students to send stories to this editor or that, only to find out that they got rejected.

 

TIPS SPECIFICALLY FOR ASPIRING WRITERS?

Umm †¦ Get into a workshop? Read the stories/novels bought by the editors you want to sell to? Send stuff out? Don’t give up?

And it’s never too soon to start thinking about your Hugo acceptance speech.

 

Carl_eagle

Carl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

 

His training is in journalism, and he has an essay on culture printed in the Korea Times and Beijing Review. He has two science fiction novels in the works and is deep into research for an environmental short story project.

 

Carl currently teaches in China where electricity is an inconsistent commodity.

 

Interview: Brad Torgersen


interviewed by Carl Slaughter

Brad TorgersenHugo nominee, Nebula nominee, Campbell nominee, Writers of the Future winner, and Analog regular Brad Torgersen talks with Diabolical Plots about his journey as a writer, the blue chip veterans who mentored him, and his hopes for the Society Advancement of Speculative Storytelling.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: Did you write the proverbial one million words before you got published in Analog? Before you won Writers of the Future?

BRAD TORGERSEN: Just about. When I won the Writers of the Future Contest I sat down and added up everything I’d written to date, and all totaled it came out to be roughly 850,000 unpublished words. So in my case I feel the “first million words” really were an accurate gauge. I know this also goes by the 10,000 hour rule. And I think it’s true. Fledgling and/or aspiring writers need to understand that it can take a lot of work and time to reach what more or less passes for entry-level professional quality. That’s not a bad thing, really. Almost anyone desiring to do a thing professionally,especially an artistic thing,needs to put in his or her practice.

 

Lights in DeepCS: Do you have a first reader?

BT: No. I have in the past used an exclusive reader group. But for the last two years virtually everything I’ve written and sold has gone through one and only one first reader: my editor(s) at Analog magazine, Baen books, etc. I know some writers swear by their first readers. Me? I fly solo these days, and do so knowing that I have only myself to trust when I am sculpting the stories. It’s a little unsettling, until I get that next acceptance letter in my e-mail. Then I breathe a sigh of relief and remember something I like to tell new writers: the point of a writing group or a first reader is to not become dependent on the writing group or the first reader. Your objective should be to eventually get proficient enough to send directly to editors without fretting about whether or not the story has what it takes to impress an editor.

 

CS: Do you use workshops?

BT: I have used several different workshops over the last five years. The first one I ever did was called the “Kris and Dean Show” and it was a weekend event hosted by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith out in Lincoln City, Oregon. “The Kris and Dean Show” was a kind of two-day crash course in how publishing works, and it really knocked my socks off at a time when I was struggling a great deal, and wondering if I would ever become good enough to sell even one story, much less the many stories and book I’ve since sold. I liked the “Kris and Dean Show” so much, I went back (after I won Writers of the Future) to do Kris and Dean’s short story workshops, and a novel pitch/packaging workshop. I sold all of the stories I did for the short story workshops (two of which got covers, and one of which was nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula) and the novel pitch/package workshop was hugely valuable. Needless to say, I am not just a fan of the workshops in Lincoln City, I am a friend of Kris and Dean now too. Lovely, wonderful people.

Speaking of which, I’ve also done Dave Wolverton’s “Million Dollar Outlines” workshop. Which, combined with the Kris and Dean novel workshop, helped prepare me to sell to the book-buying world. Having cut my teeth and proven my worth at short fiction length, I really wanted to zero in on some stuff for my books. I knew the skillsets for writing at book length were different from writing short stories, and I really needed help putting my brain through the outlining process. Because I am a “seat of the pants” man for short fiction. But, having lost several older books to this method in the past, I didn’t want to lose any more books. So I appealed to Dave for help, and his week-long workshop was amazingly informative. Dave’s really got his pulse on the underlying emotional and “legendary” aspects of storytelling. Perhaps more than anyone I’ve ever seen, as writers like Brandon Sanderson (a student of Dave’s) might attest.

Mike ResnickAnd of course, there is the Writers of the Future workshop itself; which is free to all winners of the Contest, and puts a new writer through his or her professional paces. The best benefit I can think of from Writers of the Future was the networking: being able to meet and talk to all these very-successful and award-winning authors. In an intimate setting. Often for hours and hours. I not only left the workshop with numerous contacts in the industry, I eventually became good friends with many of the judges, such as Kevin J. Anderson, Eric Flint, and especially Mike Resnick; the last having become like a father to me in the business.

One thing about workshops: there are workshops for craft, and there are workshops for business. Be sure what you want to do (and where you need the emphasis most) before you sign up. Kevin J. Anderson (along with Dave Wolverton, Brandon Sanderson, Rebecca Moesta, Eric Flint, and several others) runs a stupendously useful and very fun professional business workshop called Superstars Writing Seminars. I took the three-day course at Kevin’s encouragement, following my stint in L.A. for Writers of the Future, and I found Superstars to be chock full of valuable writing business advice, anecdotes, cautionary tales, and encouraging news. A top-notch workshop if I do say so myself; excellent for those writers who, having published a bit, are wanting to bump up to the next level and really start making money.

 

CS: How many times do you revise the same story?

BT: I used to endlessly revise my stories to death. It was what I thought you had to do to become a pro. Dean Wesley Smith disabused me of that notion in 2008-2009 and it paid off: I won Writers of the Future, and have not looked back since. Now I give myself roughly three passes through a thing: the initial creative pass, a second pass to check for consistency problems and emotional impact, and a final pass for fine-tooth-comb stuff like spelling and grammar and occasional sentence or word changes. After that . . . I am done. I know the story or book is as good as I can possible make it (in that particular time and place) and I need to get the story out to the editors, and begin working on something new. If I let a story linger too long, and go for even more passes, I always have a bad time of it. Always. So I try to make sure I don’t get cold feet. I grow more as a writer working on new work than I ever do endlessly “fixing” old work. I think many writers are the same way, but we’ve all been taught this myth that exhaustive revision is the only way to be good. I think it’s not so.

 

CS: Do you write an outline, character profiles, etc?

For short fiction? Almost never. For books? I lost six books writing by the seat of my pants, and swore I’d never do it again. I went and sat at the feet of professionals with dozens and dozens of novels to their credit, and forced myself to learn how to outline. I used to think working with an outline was stifling and would kill the creative juice of the story. But I was wrong. An outline (for book length) is the only way I personally know how to do something that long, and not get lost in the sub-plots, let the small characters grow and take over the big characters, etc. Outlines can be anywhere from a few pages, up to as much as 50 pages. Depends on how much world building and character development I want to do before I actually begin writing the prose. And there is always a *lot* of that behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn’t wind up in the book verbatim. Because while I may need to know a character’s eight-paragraph bio in order for her to make sense to me in the overall plot, the reader may only need to know a few details dispersed here and there; as the action moves along.

 

Analog 2CS: Are most of your stories primarily premise-oriented, character-oriented, plot-oriented, or theme-oriented?

BT: All of the above. I have written stories based purely on a suggestive title, a nugget of a plot, a single interesting character premise, or a theme that’s rolling around in my head and which I want to explore. Usually I wait for two or three of these things to collide in my unconscious before I decide I have enough material to put together an interesting and engaging story. One of my best-known stories, a novelette called “Outbound,” actually began as a kludging-together of two previous stories which had, on their own, failed to gel. One of them had a good theme and a decent plot, but no compelling character or situation. The other had a compelling character and situation, but no theme or plot. Throwing these elements from these separate stories together, and making a brand new story from the bones of the old, made all the difference.

 

CS: Do you make major changes at an editor’s request or hold your ground?

BT: I am easy-going. Toni Weisskopf, Stan Schmidt, Edmund Schubert, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, Trevor Quachri, they all have valuable feedback, and there is almost never a time when I can’t improve a story with some experienced feedback from the editor. That’s what they’re there for, after all. And no editor, especially book-buyer like Toni, ever gets a book from a new author which cannot use at least some commentary and feedback. I look at it like a perpetual learning process, and as long as the editor seems to see the same (more or less) story that I am seeing (and this is almost always the case) then I am perfectly happy making whatever changes work best. Or which might be required to take a decent story, and make it into a good story. Or take a good story, and make it into a great story.

 

BradConCS: How many stories has Analog bought and how many have they rejected?

BT: Before Stan Schmidt bought “Outbound” in January 2010, he had rejected two or three dozen previous stories. Since then Stan (and his successor, Trevor Quachri) have bounced a tiny handful. All of which found their way to homes with other markets. One of the nice things about cracking the professional glass and gaining entry-level proficiency as a story teller, when a story gets rejected these days, it’s almost always a matter of taste for a given editor; someone else (with a different taste) will almost always like the story and pick it up. I often go to Analog with my stories first because Analog’s needs so closely match my particular style and content; of story subject, theme, protagonists, etc. But not always. Analog has taken things other editors could not use, and vice versa. Again, a perk of being pro level.

 

CS: Now that Analog has a new editor, will the magazine, or you, have a fundamental shift in MO?

BT: Nope. I’ve sold two big stories to Trevor Quachri (“The Chaplain’s Legacy” was a massive novella, and “Life Flight” was a substantial novelette) which I believe would have easily sold to Stan Schmidt when he was editing. In fact when Stan Schmidt did the intro for my short story collection LIGHTS IN THE DEEP he noted that his wife had already read “The Chaplain’s Legacy” in the magazine, and gave it very high marks. And he tends to trust her taste, so I think Analog and I will continue to have a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s a lot of fun being able to publish in such a well-known and venerable magazine. I am pleased that Analog’s readers have continued to respond so well to my work. I hope that’s always the case, and I endeavor with each story I send to Analog to match the bar I set for myself with the last Analog publication.

 


CS: How long is the “Unpublished But Hopeful Stories by Brad Torgersen” list?

BT: Difficult to gauge, as I generally have several dozen ideas rolling around in my head at any one moment. I have on occasion gone back to the “trunk” an unearthed an old story which got rejected at all the markets previously, then reworked the story from the ground up, and sold it contemporarily. In those cases it’s a total rebuild, almost always using the character or the idea as the skeleton around which the new, re-drafted (Dean Wesley Smith’s phrase) story takes shape.

 

DP: Do you anticipate ever breaking into novels? Anthologies? Editing? Full time sci fi work?

BT: Full-time writing would be great, but give the vagaries of the marketplace and the needs of my family, it remains to be seen if full-time ever becomes truly feasible. I have spoken to several of the elder statesmen in the Utah spec fic writing community, and among them is a fellow named L.E. Modesitt, Jr. who says full-time writing (pre-retirement) isn’t even a necessary goal, as long as I keep putting the hours in at night and can produce fresh work on a regular basis. So, for now, I live with late nights. Yes, I’ve sold my first novel, a “fix up book” (in the vernacular of Mike Resnick) called THE CHAPLAIN’S WAR to Baen Books. It’s based on my two Analog stories “The Chaplain’s Assistant” and “The Chaplain’s Legacy,” both of which appeared in print previously. I’ve had several stories reprinted, and have also put fresh work into anthologies on request from the editors. I am not sure I can afford the time to edit right now. Though if a choice editorial opportunity came along (and I felt it was my chance to really make a statement and/or affect the field) I might try to take it. But only provided that I could work it in with my other jobs: full-time healthcare nerd, part-time Army Reserve soldier, and night-time sci-fi writer.

 

CS: Give us the background on Society for the Advancement of Speculative Storytelling?

BT: Lou Antonelli came to me shortly after I broke into print, and he proposed the idea that the spec fic community needed a new organization that could not only focus on bona fide advocating for established authors, but which might also help foster the growth and development of aspirants as well. Now, I knew then as well as anyone the heartache of the aspirant, and I like a lot of what Lou had it mind, so I signed on. Unfortunately, because my three jobs still have to take precedent, I wasn’t able to do much more for SASS at the start, than serve as a hood ornament Vice President while Lou got the word out and tried to attract new members. I think SASS is definitely something that will gain speed and momentum over time, whether I am able to lend it much credibility or not. Right now I am a dues-paying member and I like (again) what Lou is trying to do with the organization. Spec fic really could use a group capable of bona fide professional advocacy, combined with grass-roots growing and fostering of new talent. Too often sometimes (at least in my perception) the existing bod(ies) get tangled up in personality disputes or political bickering that’s got nothing to do with anything important to me as a professional. Can SASS be the answer? I would certainly like to think so. I hope Lou continues to gain traction and that SASS moves forward.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

His training is in journalism, and he has an essay on culture printed in the Korea Times and Beijing Review. He has two science fiction novels in the works and is deep into research for an environmental short story project.

Carl currently teaches in China where electricity is an inconsistent commodity.

 

 

 

The Inside Scoop on Anthologies with Mike Resnick

interview by Carl Slaughter

In the 1990s, Mike Resnick launched more careers with his anthologies than Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF combined. He’s at it again with Stellar Guild. He gives Diabolical Plots the inside story on the nature and process of anthologies.

CARL SLAUGHTER: Which is a better/faster way to build a resume as a speculative fiction writer, anthologies or magazines?

MIKE RESNICK: The digest magazines. Then the print anthologies. Then the e-zines. But mass market novels are the quickest way of all.

 

CS: Which pays better?

MR: Depends on the market. Jim Baen’s Universe was paying a quarter a word when I was co-editing it with Eric Flint. Most of the print zines pay 7 to 9 cents, most of the SFWA-accepted e-zines pay 5 or 6 cents, though a few pay double that. The average anthology, at least the ones I’m acquainted with over the past half-dozen years, pay from 7 to 10 cents a word. Even when I was editing them twenty+ years ago, we never paid less than 6 cents. Which is to say, in sum, that it’s a crap shoot.

 

CS: Which involves surrendering fewer rights?

MR: Any legit magazine will buy first serial rights, and keep the option of buying it again for an anthology of stories from the magazine. Usually they want a six-month worldwide exclusive. Most anthologies will buy first serial rights, plus a worldwide non-exclusive (which means they can sell the anthology to other countries, giving you a pro rata split; but you can market the solo story anywhere you want.) That’s standard, but of course not all contracts are standard.

 

CS: From conception to publication, what’s the timeframe for a typical anthology?

MR: From conception, I assume you mean from the day the editor signs a contract with the publisher. If it’s an original anthology, figure twelve to sixteen months; if it’s reprint, maybe seven to twelve months.

 

CS: What’s the average number of stories per anthology?

MR: Varies wildly. Twenty is a nice safe average number.

 

CS: What’s the average word count per story?

MR: 5000 to 6500 usually. Which isn’t to say that flash fiction and novellas are totally absent from all anthologies.

 

CS: How well do anthologies sell?

MR: Not very. Most sales are made in the contracts, not the execution. And if a publisher is shelling out well under $10,000 for an anthology — and 95% of the anthologies go for four figures — then the only way he can get hurt is to spend $50,000 promoting it, or printing 300,000 copies, or hiring the equivalent of Frank Frazetta for the cover art…so he handles it like a $7,000 book…and lo and behold, it sells like a $7,000 book.

 

CS: Does every major speculative fiction publisher have an anthology division or are most anthology editors freelancers?

MR: Almost all anthologies are freelance edited.

 

CS: Where does a freelance anthology editor get capital for their next project?

MR: You talk to “Names” that will make the book marketable, and when you get enough commitments, you take your anthology idea to the various publishing houses until someone likes it enough to sign a contract and pay you an advance. I should add that almost all advances are half on signing and half on delivery…and since you budget about 90% of the advance for stories, the editor is often a few thousand dollars out-of-pocket until he delivers. (And mass market publishing is historically a month or two late on the signature advance, and two to four months late on the delivery/acceptance payment.)

 

CS: Are most anthologies open to submission or by invitation only?

MR: Most are invitation only. For sound economic reasons. If I sell an anthology for $8,000, I’ll budget it at $7,000…and someone always has diarrhea of the keyboard, so it’ll cost me about $7,300…which means I’ll make about $700. Now, if I’m dealing with journeyman writers whose work I like well enough to invite them, I can usually do the editing in a few days…but if I open it to submissions, I’m going to get about 600 stories, maybe 500 all-but-unreadable, and it’ll take me a month to wade my way through them…and if I’m only earning $700 a month, I’m in the wrong business.

 

CS: For the ones that are invitation only, how does an aspiring writer get on the editor’s radar?

MR: He keeps his eyes and ears open, he networks, he talks to pros, to other beginners, he attends conventions. I know it seems like “invite only” means “no beginners wanted”…but I bought more first stories for my anthologies in the 1990s than Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF combined.

 

CS: For the ones that accept submissions, how do they spread the word? Post on Codex, WOTF, Hatrack, and Critters; advertise in the SFWA newsletter; if it’s a horror anthology, advertise in the Horror Writers Association newsletter; if the subgenre is vampire or zombie, do they notify the Vampire Writers Association or Zombie Writers Association (I’m joking, are there such associations?)?

MR: You can whisper, very softly, that you accept submissions, and you’ll be whelmed over with hundreds of them within a couple of weeks.

 

CS: Novel editors put stories through extensive revision. What about anthology editors. Do they request multiple rewrites? Do they do the rewrites themselves?

MR: If it’s a theme anthology, and 90% of them are, that means it’s a story that wouldn’t have been written if I hadn’t commissioned it…and that means I have a moral obligation to the writer. I will return any story for revisions if it needs them…and on those occasions that the author simply can’t give me what I want — and it’s only happened three times in over fortyanthologies, I’ll pay him a kill fee, since as I say he’d never have taken the time to write a story on that particular theme if I hadn’t assigned it.

 

CS: What percentage of stories in a typical anthology are by new writers?

MR: I can’t speak for any other editors. I’d say about 20-25% in my anthologies are by new or newer writers, or to be more blunt, by names we can’t put on the cover because they have absolutely no following or value at present. This, I should add, is not a permanent condition. 10 of the writers I have bought from made the Campbell ballot after I bought their stories.

 

CS: How often do we see anthologies with all new writers? Is it too much of a risk for publishers? Aren’t readers keen to check out new writers?

MR: My guess is: Never. I did one for SFWA, published by DAW, called NEW VOICES IN SCIENCE FICTION, a few years back, and it contained only writers who’d broken into print in the past five years…but even so it contained some bestsellers, a bunch of Campbell winners and nominees, etc.

 

CS: Who are/were the heavy hitters in the anthology industry and what is their greatest contribution?

MR: Anytime between 1980 and 2005 I’d have said there was Marty Greenberg and then there was Everyone Else. With Marty gone, no one has begun to dominate the field the way he did. John Joseph Adams is putting out some nice anthologies; so is the team of George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. And there’s something new afoot — the Kickstarter project. The best so far have come from Bryan Schmidt, Marty Halpern, Alex Shvartsman, and a few others…but it’s very early days in that field.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

His training is in journalism, and he has an essay on culture printed in the Korea Times and Beijing Review. He has two science fiction novels in the works and is deep into research for an environmental short story project.

Carl currently teaches in China where electricity is an inconsistent commodity.

Lou Anders Interview

interview by Carl Slaughter

LouBlueShirtLou Anders is the Hugo Award winning editorial director of the SF&F imprint Pyr Books, a Chesley Award winning art director, and the editor of nine anthologies. He has also been nominated for six additional Hugo Awards, five additional Chesley Awards, as well as the PKD, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and three World Fantasy Awards. His first novel, Frostborn, book one in a three-book middle grade fantasy adventure series called Thrones and Bones, will be published in August 2014 by Random House’s Crown Books for Young Readers.

 

ABOUT YOU

CARL SLAUGHTER: You’ve done stage, scriptwriting, magazine, journalism, ebook. How did each of these fields prepare you to be editorial director of a speculative fiction book imprint?

LOU ANDERS: In one form or another, I’ve been working in the science fiction and fantasy genre since the early 90s. If we carve off my (perhaps dubious) stage work, then I’ve been a professional in science fiction and fantasy entertainment since 1995, and I was in the ebook space in 2000 before there was such a thing! I think the diversity of my professional experience gives me well-rounded perspective on media, while keeping the focus on genre.

 

ABOUT YOU AND PYR:

CVG 2013 GoH Badge - Lou AndersCS: There were several speculative fiction imprints at the time Pyr was launched. Tor, Del Rey, Ace, DAW, Baen, Why another imprint? What void have you been filling? How is Pyr distinct from other imprints?

LA: My parent company, Prometheus Books, wanted to get into fiction and chose science fiction as an appropriate niche for a company founded on principles of humanism and science. When we were starting out, we very quickly dismissed the idea of specializing in a particular subgenre in favor of trying to provide high quality science fiction and fantasy in what Asimov’s once described as genre being “pitched down the middle of the field” but written at a higher level of prose quality. About three years into our run, we began to hear from the chain buyers and distributors that we had the “most consistent quality” of any publisher as well as the consistently best looking covers. So, I’d say that we are trying to be SFF “dialed to eleven.” One fan once told us that while they don’t always like every Pyr title, they know that every Pyr book will be an engrossing read, well executed.

 

CS: Pyr was launched in 2005. You were nominated for a Hugo for best editor in 2007 and have been nominated every year since. How did you come on so strong so early and how did you maintain that momentum?

LA: There were a lot of factors that came together at the right time around our debut. We’re very fortunate to have connected with the readership so strongly, and I’m grateful for all those nominations. All we can do is continue to do our best and be glad that people appreciate that.

 

CS: Imagine you’re assigned to write a three paragraph entry about Pyr for the next encyclopedia of speculative fiction. What do you say? Give us a peekat those three paragraphs.

LA: I can’t answer this. It’s up to the field to define who we are. We can only offer the best we can. How the readership responds to that offer isn’t up to us. So far they’ve liked what we do and we’ll work to ensure that continues as best we can.

 

CS: You’ve also been nominated several times for anthology editor. Give us a thumbnail sketch of your vision for anthologies, past, present, and future.

LA: Well, I don’t know if I’m going to do any more anthologies in the future. I’ve turned my attention to my own fiction, and given the copious amounts of free time I don’t have, any and all snatches of personal time I have that is not claimed by my family goes into my own creations. But when I did anthologies, my goal was to never simply present reprint collections of themed stories, but to ask questions of where I thought the genre was, where it was going next, and where it should be. Each of my nine anthologies are attempts to engage the dialogue of speculative fiction in a moment, whether that was my frustrations with the limits of post-cyberpunk fiction in Live Without a Net, or my desire to explore the intersection of sword and sorcery values with modern, “realistic” fantasy in Swords & Dark Magic (co-edited with Jonathan Strahan). Every anthology is a question put to the field and hopefully a collection of answers.

 

CS: You’ve won the Chesley Award for Best Art Direcotr. I confess,I’m not an art person. I confess further that most sci fi / fantasy art strikes me as, well, bizarre. Explain the why and how of cover art for the decidedly non-arts people.

LA: Well that makes me sad to hear. Our field is unique in that it has over a century of cooperation between visual artists and wordsmiths. It’s one of the most exciting and distinctive things about the SFF field. But you have to understand that a cover’s first function is to attract the attention of the one guy at Barnes and Noble who buys all genre books for the entire chain. Beyond that, it’s to get the distribution sales force excited about a book. Then it’s to catch the casual browser’s attention, to close that deal in the nanosecond you have when someone glances at a title before his or her eye slides on to the next one. Think of covers like flowers, signaling with their colors to the right insects they need for pollination. You have to match the right flower to the right bug , the right book to the right reader.

 

ABOUT PYR

CS: What percentage of fantasy versus science fiction versus, shall we say, works which defy category, have you published? How much hard science, space opera, alternate history, steam punk, horror, etc. How many serials, how many anthologies, how many reprints?

LA: We publish a great deal of epic fantasy and sword and sorcery fiction, a great deal of steampunk, some space opera and military science fiction. We don’t publish horror and very little of what you’d call slipstream. Our Vampire Empire trilogy may defy categorization as you say , being an alternate history, pulp fiction, paranormal romance, steampunk, vampire epic , but that’s not the same thing as the more literary “new wave fabulism” that I think you mean. I should point out that these days we publish a LOT more fantasy than science fiction, though when we do SF, we do it well (ahem, Ian McDonald). We also have some very hard hitting work coming out from Joel Shepherd.

 

CS: Is there a market niche you’re struggling to meet? Is there one with a glut of manuscripts?

LA: We are trying to publish the best stories we can and serve a wide variety of readers. That being said, the urban fantasy genre is certainly glutted and probably in retraction.

 

CS: Which subgenres are you drawn to and which subgenres do you avoid?

LA: I have a sweet spot for sword and sorcery, and for the modern fantasy epic.

 

CS: With fantasy, do you prefer original characters or classic creatures – dragon, vampire, werewolf, witch, ghost, mermaid.

LA: This depends entirely on execution. There’s been a backlash against classic fantasy characters like elves and dwarves for a while now. In the wake of George RR Martin’s success we’ve seen a lot of “humans only” fantasy. I think we’re actually due to come back from this.

 

CS: Vampires are all the rage. Sexy kickass heroines have been in vogue for some time. Alien invasion and alien encounter are staples. Do you go with the flow or do you resist the flow?

LA: Read Mark Hodder’s A Red Sun Also Rises and tell me what you think.

 

CS: Hypothetical question: You have 2 manuscripts on your desk, one sci fi, one fantasy, both by the same author, and you can publish only one. Which one, or does it just all depend? If the latter, depends on what?

LA: I publish the one that has me jumping out of my chair in excitement. Period. If I can’t get excited about it, how can I get you excited about it? That being said, you never have two manuscripts from the same author.

 

CS: Who do you have doing hard science, how do they approach hard science, and how is that approach distinguished from what else is on the market?

LA: Hard science fiction is very much a niche interest right now. When I publish hard science fiction, I lean away from transparent prose in favor of the literary end of that spectrum. I’d say all our hard SF is “literary award caliber.” I think our awards track record bears this out!

 

ABOUT ASPIRING WRITERS

CS: True or false: Every editor is eager to find new authors. It’s virtually impossible to sell a first novel manuscript without working your way up the short story magazine food chain til you’ve been published in SFWA markets a few times. A novel by a veteran sell better and are first novel sales sluggish, or is that also conventional wisdom? A big name author can sell you on a story with strictly the premise, but a rookie has to submit a full fledged outline.

LA: You have a number of false assumptions here. Plenty of first time novelists have never written/sold short stories. The two forms are very different and a lot of people find they excel at one and not the other. I myself am in that camp. I’ve only written a handful of short stories, none appearing in pro markets, and I’ve just sold a children’s book to Random House. And Pyr has published a lot of debut and new authors. Also, a novel by a veteran author may be constrained by his/her previous sales record, whereas a new author is an unknown quality, and that can be attractive. That being said, a “rookie” has to submit a full fledged NOVEL, not outline. No unproven writer can sell anything but a complete, polished manuscript. And most of my established authors are still giving me very, very detailed outlines if not whole manuscripts. (Ian McDonald’s outlines can run to around 60 pages.) Mike Resnick did sell me his Weird West quartet of steampunk Doc Holiday novels on a premise, but in that case it was because I called him up and said “Mike, how would you like to write Weird Western?”

 

CS: Hypothetical question: You have 2 manuscripts on your desk, one by an established author, one by an unestablished author, and you can publish only one. Which one, or does it just all depend? If the latter, depends on what?

LA: You seem to be implying that I’ve got this checklist of criteria or quota that I’m looking at when I select a manuscript. Need suburban werewolf space opera. Must fill niche. I publish the manuscript that has me jumping out of my chair. The one that has me gasping for breath. The one that has my heart racing. I publish the books I love. If a book is “interesting” but I can put it down, I pass. There is a great line in the film Ronin in which Robert De Niro says, “If there’s any doubt, there’s no doubt.” That’s my mandate when acquiring novels.

 

CS: Advice to an aspiring writer who is already working on a novel?

LA: Is this your first novel? Expect to write several more before you produce one of professional quality. Don’t be discouraged. Write a novel. Finish it. Write another. Writing is like any other profession. It takes long hours of hard work and practice to get good at it. I’m a big believer in Malcolm Gladwell’s
10,000 hours rule, the notion that 10,000 hours is the average time it takes to master a pursuit. I wouldn’t let a brain surgeon operate on me if he told me
he’d never been to med school but was “pretty sure he could perform a good operation.” So why would someone believe they could pound on a keyboard for the
very first time and produce a masterpiece? Write, write, write. That being said, it’s not my job to help aspiring writers. It’s my job to select the best
manuscripts I can possibly find for my publisher from the pool of those who have already mastered the craft. I’m serving the reader, not the writer. The
competition is fierce. There are much better ways to make a living. If anything can discourage you, you should listen to it and quit. If you can’t quit, you
might make it.

 

CS: Advice to an aspiring writer who is considering writing a novel?

LA: You have along road ahead of you. Get started. Or don’t.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

His training is in journalism, and he has an essay on culture printed in the Korea Times and Beijing Review. He has two science fiction novels in the works and is deep into research for an environmental short story project.

Carl currently teaches in China where electricity is an inconsistent commodity.

 

Jeanne Cavelos and the Odyssey Workshop

interview by Carl Slaughter

student_interaction1 Jeanne Cavelos is a writer, editor, scientist, and teacher. Her love of science fiction led her to earn her MFA in creative writing. She moved into a career in publishing, becoming a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she created and launched the Abyss imprint of innovative horror and the Cutting Edge imprint of noir literary fiction. She also ran the science fiction/fantasy publishing program. In addition, she edited a wide range of fiction and nonfiction. In her eight years in New York publishing, she edited numerous award-winning and best-selling authors and gained a reputation for discovering and nurturing new writers. Jeanne won the World Fantasy Award for her editing.

Jeanne has had seven books published by major publishers. Her last novel to hit the stores was Invoking Darkness, the third volume in her best-selling trilogy The Passing of the Techno-Mages (Del Rey), set in the Babylon 5 universe. The Sci-Fi Channel called the trilogy “A revelation for Babylon 5 fans. . . . Not ‘television episodic’ in look and feel. They are truly novels in their own right.” Her book The Science of Star Wars (St. Martin’s) was chosen by the New York Public Library for its recommended reading list, and CNN said, “Cavelos manages to make some of the most mind-boggling notions of contemporary science understandable, interesting and even entertaining.” The Science of The X-Files (Berkley) was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Publishers Weekly called it “Crisp, conversational, and intelligent.”

Jeanne has published short fiction and nonfiction in many magazines and anthologies. The Many Faces of Van Helsing, an anthology edited by Jeanne, was released by Berkley in 2004 and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. The editors at Barnes and Noble called it “brilliant. . . . Arguably the strongest collection of supernatural stories to be released in years.”

Jeanne created and serves as primary instructor at the Odyssey Writing Workshop. She is also an English lecturer at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, where she teaches writing and literature.

She talks to Diabolical Plots‘s Carl Slaughter about getting into the trenches with writers.

More information about her and the workshop:
www.jeannecavelos.com.
www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Cavelos Sawher
(Pictured here with author Robert J Sawyer.)

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHY ASPIRING WRITERS?

JEANNE CAVELOS: As a writer critiquing other writers while getting my MFA in creative writing, and then at Bantam Doubleday Dell, working my way up from editorial assistant to senior editor, I found that I loved working with writers, helping them to make their work the best it could be. Identifying the strengths and weaknesses in a piece, and coming up with possible ways to address those weaknesses, is a lot like
solving a puzzle. For me, this is extremely satisfying. And when the light bulb goes off for the writer, and he revises the piece with this new understanding and radically improves the work–I am so happy for his success. I love helping writers to improve. So when I left publishing to make more time for my own writing, I wanted to continue to be able to work with writers. That’s why I started Odyssey.

 

CARL: WHY A WORKSHOP?

JEANNE: A writer usually can’t make dramatic improvements to his work by writing on his own. You can improve, but progress tends to be slow. To make dramatic improvements, you generally needs three things: first, a greater understanding of the elements of fiction and the tools and techniques that allow you to manipulate them in a powerful way; second, practice using these techniques; and third, feedback to reveal whether you are successful in using the techniques.

The Odyssey Writing Workshop focuses on providing these three things. We spend about 2 1/2 hours each day in lecture and discussion, so over the six weeks, we cover all the elements of fiction, pitfalls to avoid, and techniques that can create powerful, memorable stories. Daily writing exercises, as well as writing your own stories, help you put these concepts and techniques into practice. Then the workshop provides feedback on how you are doing.

Often writers, working alone, will read books on writing, but that knowledge won’t be incorporated into their work. There is great power to devoting oneself solely to one’s writing for six weeks, hearing lectures on writing, writing, reading the work of others and providing feedback. Doing all of these at once helps to incorporate the concepts and techniques into one’s writing process.

 

CARL: WHY ON SITE INSTEAD OF ONLINE?

JEANNE: Odyssey does offer online classes each winter. They are focused on specific writing topics and aimed at writers of a particular skill level.
We hold live class sessions via Web conferencing software, to create the most immediate, interactive experience possible. Writers have found these very helpful.

But they aren’t the same as being in the “Odyssey bubble,” as the class of 2013 called it, an intense, private place filled with writers and
focused on writing, where the outside world does not intrude. Just getting away from “real” life is a huge help in putting all one’s energy toward improving one’s writing.

 

CARL: WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING THAT HELPS YOU AS A CRITIQUER?

JEANNE: I became much more aware of style and learned the different ways to manipulate words and sentences to create different effects. That was extremely valuable. Many genre writers don’t have style very high on their list of things to think about, so I try to make them more aware of their style, of the choices they’re making, and then offer them some other possibilities that may be more effective. For example, many developing writers use a similar sentence length throughout, when instead they should be manipulating sentence length to better support the action and emotion of each moment.

 

CARL: WHAT DID YOU LEARN AS AN EDITOR THAT HELPS YOU AS A CRITIQUER?

JEANNE: I learned a great deal as an editor. Reading submissions reveals many common weaknesses of developing writers, so I am very aware of them and can point them out in a critique, as well as warn writers away from them in advance. For example, starting with a character sitting and thinking about his life, or standing and thinking about his life, or driving and thinking about his life, indicates the writer has started in the wrong place and doesn’t understand the requirements of an opening, or how exposition (background information) should be incorporated into a work. Working with writers on manuscripts that we were going to publish taught me how much better a good piece can become with revision.

 

CARL: WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS WRITERS HAVE AND HOW TO YOU ADDRESS THOSE MISCONCEPTIONS?

JEANNE: Writers at different levels of development have different misconceptions. Many of those who attend the Odyssey workshop arrive thinking that they know almost everything about how to write and the techniques to use. They are mainly looking for feedback on how well they are incorporating that knowledge into their work. From what they’ve told me, within a few days, they realize that there is a huge amount they didn’t know. Then they get very excited and start soaking up as much as they can.

 

CARL: WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON WEAKNESSES WRITERS HAVE AND HOW DO YOU HELP THEM OVERCOME THOSE WEAKNESSES?

JEANNE: The most common is lack of a strong plot. This usually arises because a writer starts a story with no idea where it’s going, writes a draft, and then declares the story done. There’s nothing wrong with starting without knowing where you’re going. But if you start without knowing the end, chances are the story will lack unity, focus, a strong character arc, and a strong plot. So once you know the end, then you probably need to toss out everything else and figure out what the beginning and middle ought to be, to lead to that end. Most writers, on hearing this, become more open to planning ahead and trying to discover the ending before beginning the draft. I explore different techniques with writers to try to find the right one for them.

Another common problem is writers who don’t want to let anything bad happen to their protagonists. By discussing other stories that they enjoy, and the bad things that happen to those protagonists, I try to help them see the necessity of suffering. Something important needs to be at stake for the protagonist. He needs to struggle and be challenged by the events, and if he is lucky enough to have a happy ending, he needs to pay a price for it. Many writers have weak or flat characters in their stories. The characters have a couple of superficial characteristics, and that’s it. The main character lacks a feeling of depth, of hidden dimensions, of reality. There are some great techniques writers can use to add depth to a major character. One simple method is to use the Johari Window on your character.

Often the protagonist is a stand-in for the author, and since most authors spend a lot of time sitting around, thinking, and writing, their stand-ins tend to be passive. Many writers just need to learn that the protagonist needs to have a goal that he is struggling to achieve. Even if the goal is sitting on the couch, there must be obstacles and other forces he must struggle against to stay on that couch.

 

CARL: HOW MUCH EMPHASIS DO YOU PLACE ON A WRITTEN CRITIQUE VERSUS NOTES ON THE MANUSCRIPT VERSUS ONE ON ONE SESSIONS?

JEANNE: All of these are important components for learning and improving. One-on-one meetings are invaluable, because they allow us to discuss larger issues that haven’t come up in critique, to address questions, to chart progress and remaining challenges, and to discuss how changes to the student’s writing process have worked and explore new changes to make. It’s also important for me to connect personally with each writer, to understand his needs and do what I can to help him.

 

CARL: HOW MUCH EMPHASIS DO YOU PLACE ON PRODUCTIVITY VERSUS QUALITY, HOW MUCH ON REVISION, HOW MUCH ON CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, PLOT STRUCTURE, STYLE/VOICE, ETC?

JEANNE: Students at the workshop need to submit six pieces of fiction over the six weeks (and two before the workshop begins). This requires a greater level of productivity than most students have achieved. But they rise to the occasion and produce some amazing work. I think it’s very important to be writing each evening, after hearing the information in the lectures that morning. This helps the concepts to be incorporated into the student’s writing process. Writing multiple pieces allows the students to try and try again to incorporate a particular technique or make progress with a certain element. And that’s exactly what they need to do. Quality sometimes suffers as students become exhausted–you will never work harder in your life than you work at Odyssey–but sometimes the greatest breakthroughs occur at a 3 AM writing session.

I strongly encourage revision, since in my experience most writers don’t revise nearly enough. Students can submit revisions of pieces they previously had critiqued. I encourage them to submit a revision to a different audience. For example, if they had the initial version critiqued by the entire class, they could have the revision critiqued privately by a guest lecturer, or vice versa.

As for character development, plot structure, style/voice, all of the elements of fiction are important to a powerful, unified story. I would say I stress plot and character a bit more than the rest, since they are the building blocks, and if they’re not working, it’s hard to have a successful story.

 

CARL: DO YOU RECOMMEND AN OUTLINE AND CHARACTER PROFILES FOR EVERY STORY, ESPECIALLY NOVELS?

JEANNE: Every writer is different, so I would have different answers for different writers. But unless you are a genius at instinctive plotting, it would be unwise to write a novel without some sort of outline, even if the outline has just four lines, specifying the beginning of the novel and the end of each of your three acts. Still, some writers are unable or unwilling to work with an outline, and that’s okay; it just means they need to be willing to do *lots* of revision. A useful tool in these cases is to outline as you go. Write a scene and then add a line describing what happened in it to your outline. Then you will have an outline when you finish your draft, and you can examine it and see how to strengthen your plot.

I find character profiles overrated. They are helpful for some writers, but in most cases, writers create elaborate profiles and then they start writing and the character behaves in an entirely different way. I think you need a basic, core sense of who the character is, what he wants, and why he wants it, before you start writing. Beyond that, I think the most helpful thing for many writers is to note different traits or facts about the character as they are writing the story.

 

CARL: DO YOU EVER REWRITE A PASSAGE FOR A WORKSHOP STUDENT? IF SO, IS THIS STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE OR LAST RESORT?

JEANNE: I will rewrite a sentence, but not a passage. Rewriting a passage would feel like telling the author what the story should be. That’s not my job. My job is to try to figure out what the author wants the story to be, and then offer feedback and suggestions to help him make that story as strong as possible.

 

CARL: WHY ALLOW OTHER WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS TO CRITIQUE STORIES? IS SOMEONE QUALIFIED TO CRITIQUE IF THEY HAVE NO EDITING EXPERIENCE, DON’T HAVE A DEGREE IN CREATIVE WRITING, AREN’T FULL TIME, CAREER WRITERS?

JEANNE: Most Odyssey students these days have critiqued a fair amount before arriving at Odyssey. But whether they have or not, it is a key skill they need to develop to improve their own writing. Many authors think that critiquing someone else’s work is a favor they do for the other writer, so that the other writer will critique their work. Nothing could be further from the truth. Critiquing someone else’s work helps you to develop your critical writer’s eye. It helps you to analyze a story and figure out what is working and what isn’t working. It allows you to come up with possible solutions to improve the weaknesses. Once you do this for long enough, you can begin to apply this critical writer’s eye to your own work, seeing the strengths and weaknesses as if it’s a piece written by someone else, and coming up with solutions to solve your problems.

Critiquing is also a great help in that it forces students to apply the theories and concepts discussed in class to actual stories. For example, when they realize that a story isn’t holding their attention and that they don’t care what happens, they are forced to step back and try to understand why. Then they see that the protagonist isn’t struggling to achieve a goal, and they realize–in a way much more powerful than me just telling them this in class–how important it is for the protagonist to have a goal and to be struggling toward it.

Going back to your question, I don’t think people need any particular qualification to critique. They need to know and follow the guidelines of the particular workshop. And the more they know about writing, the more specific and helpful their critiques will probably be. But most anyone off the street can read a story and say whether he likes it or not, and that’s valid criticism. It’s not terribly helpful, in that it provides no specific direction for the author to take to improve the story, but it is honest.

 

CARL: IS SHOW INHERENTLY BETTER THAN TELL, IS ACTIVITY INHERENTLY BETTER THAN DIALOG, ARE ACTIVITY AND DIALOG INHERENTLY BETTER THAN NARRATIVE, ARE FIRST, SECOND, OR THIRD PERSON INHERENTLY BETTER THAN THE OTHER TWO, DO YOU HAVE TO OPEN WITH THE MOST DRAMATIC SCENE AND THEN REWIND, DO YOU HAVE TO LIST THE CONTENTS OF A ROOM OR DESCRIBE A CHARACTER’S PHYSIQUE OR CLOTHING, DOES THE STORY HAVE TO ORGANIZED LIKE A 3 ACT PLAY, ARE DREAM SEQUENCES AND INFO DUMPS INHERENTLY WEAK TOOLS, ETC?

JEANNE: Wow–that’s a lot to cover. You’re listing a bunch of writing principles that some people assert, so let me talk about principles in general. There are many principles by which stories work. A protagonist should struggle to achieve a goal. A protagonist should have an internal conflict and an external conflict, and the internal conflict should be resolved before the external conflict. The story should lead to a permanent change in the protagonist. And so on. Many successful stories follow these principles. But there are also many successful stories that break one or more of these principles. So saying that you must do something, or that one thing is better than something else, is needlessly restrictive. Sometimes to serve the story, you need to break one of these principles. You can do whatever you can get away with. What is most important is that you know the principles and mindfully make the choice to break one of them, because it is necessary for the good of the story. Breaking a principle usually means you take away some pleasure that the reader expects to have when reading a story. That means you need to offer the reader a pleasure of equal or greater value to make up for the one you’re taking away.

So if a story is entirely dialogue, for example, and you are taking away the pleasure we would normally have of feeling like we’re in a particular place and experiencing vivid sensory impressions of it and of the characters, then you must offer us something else in exchange, such as incredibly tense dialogue and layered characters, and dialogue that perhaps evokes sensory impressions, so we have something to picture as we’re reading.

As for what the specific principles are that writers should usually follow, I disagree with many of those in the question. Showing is important and should usually be used much more than telling, but each has its place and purpose, and you need to use each when it serves the story. Similarly, action, dialogue, and narrative all have their purpose and should be used where necessary to serve the story. Each POV has its strengths and weaknesses (and first person is horribly overused by developing writers), but you need to choose the best POV for the story. The most dramatic scene should almost always be the climax, not the opening. Starting with the most dramatic scene and then rewinding tells me that the rest of the story is probably boring. Descriptions need to be used when they serve the story. Three-act structure is great for many stories, but not for all of them. Dream sequences and infodumps are usually not good ideas and I discourage them, though some writers can make them work.

 

CARL: HERE’S ONE I HEAR A LOT: THOU SHALT NOT CHANGE THE POV IN THE MIDDLE OF A SCENE. IS IT REALLY CONFUSING TO THE READER TO CHANGE THE POV IN THE MIDDLE OF A SCENE?

JEANNE: Yes, it usually is. If you have established at the beginning that you are writing in an omniscient viewpoint and dipping into the heads of different characters, then it’s fine to continue to do so throughout the story. The problem is that it’s difficult to do this gracefully. You need to establish the voice of your omniscient narrator, establish the location of the POV “camera,” and then move the camera so smoothly and effortlessly that the reader doesn’t notice what you’re doing. You would approach the character, move into the character’s head, spend however long you want there, then slowly move out, move toward another character, and so on. C. S. Lewis generally does this well in THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. But you’ll find many more examples of it being done poorly, which leads to the reader being confused or not feeling settled in the scene.

 

CARL: ANY NEW PROJECTS OR SERVICES AT ODYSSEY? ANYTHING ON THE HORIZON?

JEANNE: We’re working on a couple of things that I can’t talk about yet, but I hope will offer some great help to writers. Right now, in addition to our summer workshop, we offer winter online classes (which will be announced in October with application deadlines in December), a critique service so you can get professional feedback on your manuscripts, and many free resources, including monthly podcasts, blog posts, writing and publishing tips, a newsletter, and more. You can access all of these through our website.

We also were able to provide three scholarships to Odyssey workshop students this past summer, due to the generosity of an Odyssey graduate, and it looks like we’ll be offering those scholarships for future workshops.

 

CARL: WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND FOR WRITERS WHO CAN’T AFFORD A WORKSHOP, CAN’T GET LEAVE FROM WORK, CAN’T TRAVEL, ETC?

For many people, attending a six-week in-person workshop is just not possible. I used to get many emails from writers in the situations you mention, asking Odyssey to offer them something to help them improve their work. That’s why we started the critique service in 2006 and the online classes in 2010.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

His training is in journalism, and he has an essay on culture printed in the Korea Times and Beijing Review. He has two science fiction novels in the works and is deep into research for an environmental short story project.

Carl currently teaches in China where electricity is an inconsistent commodity.