Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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xander

Re: 2nd person POV

For an instance of a successful (and powerful) use of the 2nd person POV, read Keith Roberts' science fiction novel <em>Molly Zero</em>, 1980 British Science Fiction Award nominee and #19 on the 1981 Locus Best Novel poll.
 

Fresie

Re: Found Out in Fantasy

Why are you friends with the people you know? How did you meet?

Here's advice -- put the book in a drawer for a month. Work on something else. Then read your story aloud, with a red pencil in your hand, to make notes in the margins.


Thank you! I think I've understood something
<img border=0 src="http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/ohwell.gif" />
 

sc211

Re: Found Out in Fantasy

About time on other planets, everything’s translated, of course, as meters to yards, but still… oh, I get it. I was getting technical, saying a Jovian year isn’t a year here, but we’re using the same word for it. But we aren’t – we’re translating a Jovian saying, “I’ve been married for a year” to our own language: “I haven't been sober for twelve friggin’ years."

Still, it’d be nice to see more planets have different cycles of time. Like in Michael Stackpole’s I, Jedi, the hero says, “Are we going to be using Coordinated Galactic Time here or are we going to just work with Yavin’s normal day? The moon’s rotation is slightly faster than that of Coruscant, so keeping on the galactic scale will put us out of sync with the planet.”

That I like – a sort of universal Greenwich Time. In fact, in searching for information, I found a website on calendars, webexhibits.org/calendars...ture.html, which not only gives the Star Wars calendar, but one for Mars, as well.

And not to be stickler (though I guess I am), but a character on another planet (with no contact with Earth) can’t really use “month,” which comes from the word “moon,” unless it refers to their own moon’s cycle. We even get the length of our week from the four 7-day quarters of our moon. This is a stumbling block for me since I’m thinking of not using a moon at all, and I’ll have to find another natural cycle. And with no moon, there’s no tides to use, either. Heck, maybe I’ll use two moons…

And hey, Fresie, I was kidding about the physicist thing. We take only affronts to universes personally. :D

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” - Douglas Adams
 

sc211

Re: Found Out in Fantasy

Uncle Jim -

Was just checking out your Mageworld books, as recommended, and was wondering which one you'd choose to start with.

It looks like Stars Asunder technically comes first, but was written after the others. And then there's Book Four, The Gathering Flame, which is another prequel.

Suggestions?
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Found Out in Fantasy

Heck, read 'em in the order they were written. That means start with The Price of the Stars (which is a dandy book, by the way, and went through I think seven printings before it finally went out of print). (It'll come back into print when the next Mageworlds book comes out, which will be about a year after I write it....)

You have a different experience depending on where you enter the series, of course.

(And -- for each book I found beta readers who'd never read any of the other books, so as to clear up questions that new readers might have along the way.)
 

Jules Hall

Re: Found Out in Fantasy

I make it a habit to always read series in the order they were written, these days. This is because I got Asimov's Foundation series out of order, and "Prelude to Foundation" (written last, but chronologically first) contains a spoiler for the major plot twist in "Foundation and Earth".

Incidentally, on the subject of timing systems, "Foundation and Earth" contains an interesting variation on that: unless my memory is deceiving me, one of the criteria the characters use for determining whether a world might be Earth is whether or not its rotation period is roughly "one standard day".
 

detante

Re: Found Out in Fantasy

And not to be stickler (though I guess I am), but a character on another planet (with no contact with Earth) can’t really use “month,” which comes from the word “moon,” unless it refers to their own moon’s cycle.

This is where world building comes into play. Earth time is based on agricultural and celestial standards. Jovian culture and environment would determine what standards they would use to judge time, if they judge time at all.

On the other hand, if various planets do have contact with one another then they will need to develop a universal standard, such as an atomic clock, to facilitate communication and trade.

Jen
 

SpankyMcJedi

NEWBIE!

Hello all! I just wanted to offer my own gushing thanks for this thread. I was pointed here by a fellow member of the Critters workshop and have found it to be immensley helpful. Being about 2/3rds of the way through the thread, it may be a bit before I post on any kind of regular basis. One question right off the bat though... I've been working on my novel (for an embarassing length of time) and I've got an outline for the plot that I like. I've done character sketches and backgrounds. I've written about 20k words so far as well. My problem is that I constantly feel the need to revise what I've already written and my progress is stagnating. Its my compulsion. :D Obviously I need to trudge forward somehow. Do I just accept that the first time I put something down much of it could be wrong or misplaced and keep going until THE END and then revise the WHOLE thing?
 

SpankyMcJedi

Re: Found Out in Fantasy

So, basically its 'do what works for you so long as you're making progress towards finishing it' ? I think thats as good an answer as any.
 

sc211

Joe Haldeman

Twenty years ago, when I was a high school junior, a friend of mine gave me a science fiction book for Christmas. I didn’t think much of the cover, and, having grown up on Star Wars, the words “Hugo” and “Nebula” were new to me, but I said thanks and told him I’d give it a shot.

The novel was Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, and my only memory of that Christmas season is of freezing in a car in a crowded mall parking lot so that I could read just one more chapter before it got too dark.

Now, as my own Christmas gift to everyone who's contributed to this thread, here’s the link to Haldeman’s website.

home.earthlink.net/~haldeman/index.html

His FAQ has great advice for writers, and his MIT science fiction writing course syllabus gives his course texts, writing exercises, and has a humorous bit at the bottom called “Grammar: High Crimes and Misdemeanors” which gives some great pointers.

The best piece, though, is his “Longer Autobiographical Sketch.” Print it out and you’ll have twenty pages of one of the best summaries of the life of a SF writer I’ve found.

It’s grittingly honest, it’s funny, it’s a virtual who’s-who of encounters with sci-fi legends, and it covers working with editors, haggling deals, the changes in the sci-fi market, making movies, drugs, and his writing schedule. There’s also his tour in Viet Nam, the Iowa Writer’s Workshop with John Cheever and Raymond Carver, SFLIS, and the time he insulted Steven Speilberg.

Merry Christmas.
 

reph

Re: NEWBIE!

Still, it’d be nice to see more planets have different cycles of time. Like in Michael Stackpole’s I, Jedi, the hero says, “Are we going to be using Coordinated Galactic Time here or are we going to just work with Yavin’s normal day? The moon’s rotation is slightly faster than that of Coruscant, so keeping on the galactic scale will put us out of sync with the planet.”

Is the character speaking to someone named Bob, by any chance?
 

James D Macdonald

Onward, ever onward

Do I just accept that the first time I put something down much of it could be wrong or misplaced and keep going until THE END and then revise the WHOLE thing?

Allow yourself to put down the not-quite-right word. Allow yourself to type [look this up] or [fix later].

You won't be submitting your first draft... so treat it like a first draft. Use it to block things out, and find out what the book is about.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Catching Up Part II

Continuing the discussion from <a href="http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm3.showMessageRange?topicID=257.topic&start=1941&stop=1960" target="_new">earlier in this thread</a>:

The first two pages of The Street Lawyer, by John Grisham:



===============================

One


The man with the rubber boots stepped into the elevator behind me, but I didn't see him at first. I smelled him though -- the pungent odor of smoke and cheap wine and life on the street without soap. We were alone as we moved upward, and when I finally glanced over I saw the boots, black and dirty and much too large. A frayed and tattered trench coat fell to his knees. Under it, layers of foul clothing bunched around his mid-section, so that he appeared stocky, almost fat. But it wasn't from being well fed; in the wintertime in D.C., the street people wear everything they own, or so it seems.

He was black and aging -- his beard and hair were half-gray and hadn't been washed or cut in years. He looked straight ahead through thick sunglasses, thoroughly ignoring me, and making me wonder for a second why, exactly, I was inspecting him.

He didn't belong. It was not his building, not his elevator, into a place he could afford. The lawyers on all eight floors worked for my firm at hourly rates that still seemed obscene to me even after seven years.

Just another street bum in from the cold. Happened all the time in downtown Washington. But we had security guards to deal with the riffraff.

We stopped at six, and I noticed for the first time that he had not pushed a button, had not selected a floor. He was following me. I made a quick exit, and as I stepped into the splendid marble foyer of Drake & Sweeney I glanced over my shoulder just long enough to see him standing in the elevator, looking at nothing, still ignoring me.

Madam Devier, one of your very resilient receptionists, greeted me with her typical look of disdain. "Watch the elevator," I said.

"Why?"

"Street bum. You may want to call security."

"Those people," she said in her affected French accent.

"Get some disinfectant too."

I walked away, wrestling my overcoat off my shoulders, forgetting the man with the rubber boots. I had nonstop meetings throughout the afternoon, important conferences with important people. I turned the corner and was about to say something to Polly, my secretary, when I heard the first shot.

Madam Devier was standing behind her desk, petrified, staring into the barrel of an awfully long handgun held by our pal the street bum. Since I was the first one to come to her aid, he politely aimed it at me, and I too became rigid.

"Don't shoot," I said, hands in the air. I'd seen enough movies to know precisely what to do.

"Shut up," he mumbled, with a great deal of composure.

There were voices in the hallway behind me. Someone yelled,

=================
Chapters are numbered in words, no epigrams, no chapter titles.

The man with the rubber boots stepped into the elevator behind me, but I didn't see him at first.
Two characters in the first sentence: the man with the rubber boots, and "me," the narrator. Setting: an elevator. Description: rubber boots. Off and running in sentence one. First person POV.

I smelled him though -- the pungent odor of smoke and cheap wine and life on the street without soap.
More description, both of the man in the rubber boots (someone who smells like a street person) and the narrator (someone who notices).

We were alone as we moved upward, and when I finally glanced over I saw the boots, black and dirty and much too large.

More description. This will be an important character. As the elevator moves upward through the building, the narrator's eyes move upward on the street person. This is the first time we see the boots, even though they were mentioned in the first sentence.


A frayed and tattered trench coat fell to his knees.

Up the street person's body. Building a picture. Still early enough in that if the reader has any misapprehensions about what the character looks like, they can be easily corrected.

Under it, layers of foul clothing bunched around his mid-section, so that he appeared stocky, almost fat.

Is 'almost fat' a mistake here? The use of the word 'almost' can be a sign of lazy writing: e.g. He looked almost happy. That's asking the reader to do the writer's job of finding the right word. But this, here, is using the phrase 'almost fat' to define the earlier term 'stocky.' This is clarification, not sloppiness.

But it wasn't from being well fed; in the wintertime in D.C., the street people wear everything they own, or so it seems.
Giving the location (Washington D.C.) and the season (winter). We're still in the elevator, but the outside world is being defined.
He was black and aging -- his beard and hair were half-gray and hadn't been washed or cut in years.
Black and aging. Notice the parallelism with the boots: black and dirty. We've gotten all the way up to the man's face. Nice progression, and mild suspense as we're wondering and being told what the man looks like. This falls in line with the principle that we answer the readers' questions a moment before they ask them.

He looked straight ahead through thick sunglasses, thoroughly ignoring me, and making me wonder for a second why, exactly, I was inspecting him.
Back to the narrator's character. Also a bit of mystery about the boot-man. Sunglasses inside an elevator? And his eyes are concealed.


He didn't belong.
Summarizing the previous paragraph, and bringing the point home for the deaf old lady in the back row.

It was not his building, not his elevator, into a place he could afford.

More countersinking.

The lawyers on all eight floors worked for my firm at hourly rates that still seemed obscene to me even after seven years.
Okay, we're going into a law office. More on the narrator's character -- he's making a lot of money, and he's uncomfortable with that. He's been there a while -- seven years. We presume that the narrator is a lawyer. Ambiguous whether he owns the firm.


Just another street bum in from the cold.

Reinforcing that it's winter. Reinforcing that this is a street person. Bringing up the possibility that this isn't the first time it's happened. "Just another..."?

Happened all the time in downtown Washington.

Answering the question. Happens all the time. Momentarily unpleasant, but nothing to remark about. But our narrator is remarking about it, so ... we're expecting something odd to happen. New source of suspense.

But we had security guards to deal with the riffraff.

More on the building, more on the characters, more on how this is a known problem with a known solution, but ... the hint that this time security guards won't work.
We stopped at six, and I noticed for the first time that he had not pushed a button, had not selected a floor.

Location is specified, and another odd detail is supplied.

He was following me.
Uh-oh. Very simple declarative sentence. Fast, short, lots of impact.
I made a quick exit, and as I stepped into the splendid marble foyer of Drake & Sweeney I glanced over my shoulder just long enough to see him standing in the elevator, looking at nothing, still ignoring me.
The longest sentence we've seen so far -- a bit of a rest for the reader after the shorter, choppier, more suspenseful opening bits. We're told the name of the law firm, and given more on the relationship that's been growing between tthese two people. (Still don't know if the narrator is male or female.)

Madam Devier, one of your very resilient receptionists, greeted me with her typical look of disdain.
A third character, with a bit of characterization.


"Watch the elevator," I said.
"Why?"
"Street bum. You may want to call security."

Dialog, power relationship, and still business as usual.
"Those people," she said in her affected French accent.
Characterization.

"Get some disinfectant too."
Characterization of the narrator.

I walked away, wrestling my overcoat off my shoulders, forgetting the man with the rubber boots.
Suspense builds, along with tiny action detail.
I had nonstop meetings throughout the afternoon, important conferences with important people.

Important people, as opposed to the unimportant bum. Yet the bum has had a lot of ink so far, and the important people have had none. The bum is important, and will be involved in nonstop meetings, betcha.

I turned the corner and was about to say something to Polly, my secretary, when I heard the first shot.

Woo hoo! The day has just gotten weird. The first shot implies a second shot. We've also met another character, Polly, and gotten a bit more of a hint about the narrator.

Madam Devier was standing behind her desk, petrified, staring into the barrel of an awfully long handgun held by our pal the street bum.
I wonder how he saw that? He's turned the corner, after all. His heading back isn't described; it's not important right now. We've gotten back to the main character (the bum). We've introduced something that makes the bum important. "God made men; Colonel Colt made them equal."

Since I was the first one to come to her aid, he politely aimed it at me, and I too became rigid.
Our narrator is either brave or foolish.
"Don't shoot," I said, hands in the air.
Dialog and action.
I'd seen enough movies to know precisely what to do.
Sense of unreality. Comparing this to a movie. (It would have been an error for the author to have said "I've read enough books." That would remind the reader that this is just a novel.)

"Shut up," he mumbled, with a great deal of composure.

I'll let him get away with using a 'said' word. More characterization.

There were voices in the hallway behind me. Someone yelled,

'There were' is a weak opening. This will contrast with the very strong bit with the handgun we just saw, and give the reader a break. 'Someone' is also indistinct.

Now... we're at the end of page two.

Show of hands, how many want to know what happens next?
 
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sc211

Re: Catching Up Part II

Great line-by-line commentary. A few months ago I visited a friend, and as he got ready, I picked up this book and started reading. I was curious, 'cause I'd never read Grisham before, and I liked how it went down - smooth and easy. And yeah, I did keep reading till it was time to go.

I didn't notice then how Grisham started with the boots and worked up. Is that an old trick, or does it come from cinema, where they focus on Eastwood's boots coming through the saloon door, or the Terminator's boot stepping off his motorcycle, and then slowly panning up?

I also liked how the lawyer himself wasn't too keen on his work or co-workers - that it allowed him some understanding of his adversary.

The only part that glitched for me was when he stepped out of the elevator, talked, walked away, and only then did the homeless person appear. Because the lawyer made "a quick exit," and no other button was pushed, maybe there was time, but I was surprised that the door held open that long.

This is where I often get bogged down myself, and I remember Eudora Welty saying the hardest thing was getting people in and out of rooms.

And yeah, that "first" shot is a dramatic punch. In fact, "when I heard the first shot" even sounds better than "when I heard a shot."

Finally, while it's not clear how he sees the guy once around the corner, isn't it a good shortcut that when someone hears a noise, you don't have to say that they turned to see it?

I was just inside the door, getting a drink, when the sound of hooves echoed down the street.
They were coming straight for us - Morgan in the lead.

or

I was just inside the door, getting a drink, when the sound of hooves echoed down the street.
I turned around and looked out the door.
They were coming straight for us - Morgan in the lead.

If the first version is better, maybe Grisham just extended that allowance, so that we know he turned around and walked back towards the main desk.
 

maestrowork

Re: NEWBIE!

I'm wondering though, if he weren't Grisham, would we have taken his prose/plot apart if it were posted in SYW...

;)

For example, our whole debate on "character descriptions."
 

Gala

Grisham

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The man with the rubber boots stepped into the elevator behind me, but I didn't see him at first<hr></blockquote>

I've used this sentence to demonstrate poor POV technique. The narrator says he didn't see the guy, yet he indicates he sees a man, and he sees boots.

Regardless, I read the book and enjoyed it.
 

maestrowork

Re: Catching Up Part II

Yup, if it were something in SYW, I bet I would have suggested it be changed to:

I didn't see him at first, but the man with the rubber boots stepped into the elevator behind me.

But I agree. Grisham may not be a master in the technical things such at POV, but he's a master storyteller. He draws you in immediately. No wasted words. And he sure knows the thing about "do what works."
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Grisham

I've used this sentence to demonstrate poor POV technique.

I can't say that I agree. Do you have a problem with "The first time I saw Fred he was standing outside a bar, his hat pulled too low over his eyes, looking like a man with nowhere to go and in a hurry to get there."

Now the narrator there doesn't know Fred's name at that moment, but that doesn't stop him. In first person past tense, the narrator can use any name he wants for a character, provided it's something that he learns between the time the character is introduced and the point where he's telling the story to we the readers.

When the Knight with the Singing Sword walked through my door he wasn't yet a knight. He didn't have the Singing Sword, either. He was just a punk kid -- or so we all thought. Those of us who hadn't seen him move.
 

Gala

pov

Yeah I know.

Grisham could've ordered the sentence better for the same effect. The fact he leads off describing someone he can't see is confusing, imo.

I've come to accept his quirks as his style.
 

maestrowork

Re: Grisham

But isn't it confusing for newbies to begin with about POVs? Here, you have 1st person (or 3rd limited) when you're not supposed to report something the POV character shouldn't know at the time. However, since it's in past tense, does that mean the character can report on anything he wants because everything has already happened, provided that the narrator made it clear how he knew (afterwards)? In essence, something like:

Joe grinned behind me and high-fived with Bob, but I didn't see that at first, until Mary told me afterwards.

I remember a professor once told me (many years ago) that something like that is still considered a POV inconsistency -- it takes the narrative out of the current moment, even in past tense. His example was that in my WIP, I wrote something like:

"I watched the bird glide above me. The sun was warm on my bronzed face..."

He said, technically it's all right because the narrator knows what his skin color was. But practically it takes the sensory away from the moment, meaning that it requires an external reference at that moment to observe the narrator's face.

Anyhoo...

I still think it's somewhat a poor construction, and thus stand by my original suggestion to switch the sentence clauses in Grisham's case.
 

drgnlvrljh

Re: NEWBIE!

I'm wondering though, if he weren't Grisham, would we have taken his prose/plot apart if it were posted in SYW...

I wouldn't mind someone taking mine apart that way. I would know even better what worked, and what didn't ;)
 

Crusader

Re: Catching Up Part II

The man with the rubber boots stepped into the elevator behind me, but I didn't see him at first.

i'm not sure if the scrutiny being given to this sentence is misplaced or correctly placed... on the one hand, it's only one sentence. On the other hand, it IS the first sentence.

Either way, i note that the true problem is that the spatial orientation of the characters is way off: an elevator typically has one set of doors, so any occupants/new arrivals would be more than likely to see each other.

Yes, i can imagine that perhaps someone could stand behind the protagonist and follow them in, staying out of line-of-sight... maybe a very quiet 'someone' following a very distracted protagonist. But here, the someone is a man in rubber boots; the protagonist would have to be deaf not to hear the squeaking.

As such, i can only conclude that Mr. Grisham's editor was lax in his duty. Correct forms for the sentence might be as follows:

It was hard to avoid staring at the man with the rubber boots as i boarded the elevator.

or

The elevator doors opened, and a man with rubber boots stepped onboard, then moved to a spot in the back.

or

As i walked towards the elevator, i saw a man with rubber boots standing nearby; when i entered, he followed.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Catching Up Part II

I think that what Grisham was trying to do was make "The man in the rubber boots" the first five words of the novel.

The guy in the boots is a main, if not the main, character. (I'm not certain, from these first two pages, that he isn't the street lawyer of the title. He's certainly a street person.)

How does everyone feel about:

<Blockquote>The man with the rubber boots was standing in the elevator behind me, but I didn't notice him at first.</BLOCKQUOTE>

Better?

(Notice has about the same meaning as one meaning of see, but it has two syllables to see's one.)

"Was standing" is much less active than "stepped into."
 

Risseybug

Re: Grisham

But then you lose the effect of the man actually entering the elevator behind the narrator, which is what the first sentence was saying. I guess if you are picking up the story with both persons already in the elevator, it works.

But, if you want to have the narrator getting into the elevator being your first action, then no, I don't think it works as well. But that's just me.
 
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