Story Telling Alternative History

"Like to a friar bold Robin Hood

disguised himself one day,

with beads, gown, hood and crucifix

he passed upon the way."

Ah! Well met, traveler! Welcome ye to Camlann. We be Bawdry and Bliss, mynstrels come at Lord Geoffry's gracious invitation to these jousts and festivities.  Why Bawdry and Bliss say you? For we sing each in near equal measure - ballads of courtly love and fine deeds - as well as tales clever maidens pitting their wits against the lecherous - all for your enjoyment and edification.

I wish I had the photos that are currently buried in the storage unit so I could prove that not so long ago, I lived a life as a medieval minstrel in an English village circa 1374. And though I was born a noble woman, and the sumptuary laws of the land required I dress as such, the lead minstrel, Roger of Glastonbury, had accepted my kinsmans' charge to escort me to Lord Geoffry's court where I would take my place as a companion to his own young wife. Though it was not at all proper for me to do something as common as perform with a group of minstrels, when Roger discovered I'd learned all the songs and could even carry a tune, I often sang  in places where no word would ever reach my father's court, even though, I wore the petticoats, fine silken coat and rich velvet surcoat of my station. When we arrived at Camlann, Lord Geoffry's lady was so pleased by the music, no fuss was made over the potential ruin of my virtue and reputation. A willing knight with a musical bent petitioned Lord Geoffry for my hand and in the midst of late summer festivals, we were wed. Roger of Glastonbury settled in Camlann and became hosteler of the Bors Hede Inne. Thomas and Michela vanished into the countryside, still singing, though they do return to Camlann come the feast days. And we do once again sing of Robin Hood's Golden Prize.

So there you go. Though it wasn't writing, per se, working at Camlann Medieval Village was keeping oral history. For that was a minstrel's main purpose during medieval times when precious few people could read or write. The songs, ballads, morality tales and recitations of brave and noble deeds were the libraries of the day. And for me, when I auditioned for the living history village outside of Seattle, getting hired into the cast sent me on a multiyear journey into making history live. I really *shouldn't* have been in a noble woman's clothes, but Roger (really the name of the man who runs the educational society that is Camlann) was short cast members and needed me to act as one of the noble ladies during the fights. We simply didn't have time for a costume change before I had to be on stage with Bawdry and Bliss to sing. So we concocted an elaborate story explaining it and worked it for years. 

The difference was that while I could make up whatever stories I wanted as an actor in the village, when we sang, we were performing other peoples' stories. It was still story telling. My noble woman's story took on enough of a life of its own that I even started writing it down at one point. Don't know that it will ever see the light of day. Mostly because I learned useless stuff like 'ye, thee, and thou' are singular - only referring to one person, while 'you' was plural - only referring to groups of people. Those rules are still in my head and I'd write that way. Plenty of critique partners have informed me that no one wants to have to read that. So maybe my noble minstrel will just stay in 1374.

Different Mediums of Writing: I Once Was A Playwright

So, my bio says "playwright" evening though I've not done much playwriting of late.  And most of my plays have been short ones, which is funny, because I don't think I'm very good at short stories, but I can do short plays pretty well.

For a long while, I regularly participated in the "Out of Ink" project, where we would receive a set of three "ingredients" for a play on Friday evening, and by Sunday afternoon we were supposed to have written a ten-minute play based on those ingredients, and then eight were chosen for a workshop production. Here's a smattering of my favorites from those plays.

2000:  Last Train Out of Illinois  My first year with Scriptworks, the rules involved boots, a character directly addressing the audience, and someone performing an “aria”.  I had, at the time, had the vague idea of a Tom Waitsish Musical called “Last Train Out of Illinois”, but all I had was Atmosphere and an Ending. Which is just fine for a ten-minute piece.
2003: Danger Girl’s Night Off  The rules dictated 1. something involving superheroes and 2. a seduction, so I immediately thought of a grown-up sidekick who just wanted to have a date night.  This was a lot of fun. 
2007: Hourglass  I’m really pleased with this one.  The rules involved 1. A physical transformation on stage, 2. a secret and 3. a piece of music connecting to a memory.  This may have been, for me, the most synergous set of rules.  The discovery of an old hourglass reminds an old woman of the true paternity of her child.  Hannah Kenah did really lovely work on stage going from 107 to 20.
2008: Ten Minutes Ago   The play goes backwards!  That was the rule that had to define this one.  The idea I was struck with here was having an innocuous instigation (a woman answering her door) lead to events that had disastrous consequences (her husband and a stranger dead in her living room), and then show it Consequences-Events-Instigation.  This one was challenging to stage, but enjoyable.
2010: Entropy  “Time is Running Out”, “Use the Beginning and End of Finnegan’s Wake” and “A Ceremony of Forgetting”.  How does this NOT say “two people stuck in a time loop”?  OK, it does to me, because I’m a sci-fi geek.
2011: Slept the Whole Way Again, the rules sent me to an SF place: the play needed to span 3000 years and have 300 characters.  So a cryosleep ship that missed its target and kept everyone in stasis for 3000 years made perfect sense to me.
2013: The Observer Effect This grew out a strange idea of someone being labeled "history's greatest monster" due to a mistake-- and ultimately not even their own mistake.  It's deeply silly. 

So, here's the thing-- if you're in a play-producing mood?  You got a need or hankering to put on a ten-minute play?  Especially in a science-fictional venue, as most of these are sci-fi plays?  HAVE AT 'EM.  Seriously, you want to produce them, go for it. They're silly, they're fun, and they tend to be production-cost light.  Only rule I have is: let me know. That's it. 

I do kind of miss playwriting.  Someday I'll do another one, or pull out one of the ones I wrote and never produced and give it another polishing pass.  But right now, I've got enough things on my plate.  Back down to the word mines.

"You're grammar sux" and other universal writing truths

Mostly these days, I novel and social media (and make up verbs). In the past I have short-storied,

fanficc’d, blogged, edited/rewritten, developed technical manuals, produced academic books and papers, and taken the occasional stab at corporate marketingspeak. I’ve worked in APA, AP, Chicago, MLA, Microsoft, and a bunch of house styles. Across all these different kinds of written communication, here’s some stuff I’ve learned:

• There are reasons everyone except AP-style aficionados are devoted to serial commas. (Sorry, journalism students, the serial comma really does make things clearer.)
• The ability to create a compelling novel does not translate into a similar talent for composing back-cover copy, aka “blurbs.” That is a totally different kind of writing, and most of us novelists have no clue what we’re doing in marketingland.
• An English degree does not confer magical ability to use a semicolon. Probably best you don’t.
•  People who don’t know what a dangling participle is aren’t stupid. Sometimes they’re the brightest minds in their field, and they deserve respect. (And possibly a gentle suggestion for fixing the dangle.)
• Technical styles often restrict sentences to 20 to 30 words max. Even for novelists, it isn’t a bad idea to count words in a sentence that seems long. If you catch one with more than 35 words, it’s probably confusing to readers, no matter what you’re writing.
• I thought I was good at telling a story through dialogue. Then I took a screenwriting class. Whoa. Just because you can do one does not mean you can necessarily do the other. (See item on back-cover copy above.)
• Microsoft Word and other grammar/spelling checkers do not fix usage errors. Or, to quote The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” (Phenomenon also known as, Editors Are Our Friends.)
• If you write a thing and the reader understands the point you were trying to make and reacts in a way you wanted, you win. Full stop. End discussion. 

This list could go on forever, hyperbolically, but I’ll cut it off now. Any universal-to-all-media writing bits you’ve picked up and want to vent discuss?

Release Day: Lady Henterman's Wardrobe by Marshall Ryan Maresca

Today, we're celebrating our Thursday blogger's latest release in the fantastical world of Maradaine! Marshall brings us back to the Holver Alley Crew and their urban Robin Hood exploits. If you haven't visited the world of Maradaine, start with the Thorn of Dentonhill and be prepared to binge.

LADY HENTERMAN'S WARDROBE

The neighborhood of North Seleth has suffered--and not just the Holver Alley Fire. Poverty and marginalization are forcing people out of the neighborhood, and violence on the streets is getting worse. Only the Rynax brothers--Asti and Verci--and their Holver Alley Crew are fighting for the common people. They've taken care of the people who actually burned down Holver Alley, but they're still looking for the moneyed interests behind the fire.

The trail of breadcrumbs leads the crew to Lord Henterman, and they plan to infiltrate the noble's house on the other side of the city. While the crew tries to penetrate the heart of the house, the worst elements of North Seleth seem to be uniting under a mysterious new leader. With the crew's attention divided, Asti discovers that the secrets behind the fire, including ones from his past, might be found in Lady Henterman's wardrobe.

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Writing in Different Mediums: Try, Try, Try Again

Today at the SFF Seven we have a guest post from Kelly Robson - please welcome her!

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This week’s topic is writing in different mediums, and it’s a bit of a stumper. I don’t think of myself as writing in different mediums. I write science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories -- those are my jam, man.

But I’ve been writing blog posts since 2002, back in the grand old days of LiveJournal. Those old LJ entries were a terrific way of finding a voice. I produced more than three hundred thousand words there over the years -- informal, personal, and chatty. In 2007, I started a wine blog, which magically turned into a four-year dream gig as a wine columnist for Canada’s largest women’s magazine. Currently, I write three or four pieces a year on the writing life for the Another Word column at Clarkesworld. Those articles always take on a personal tone, and I love writing them.

So those are my two modes: Short, fairly serious fiction and chatty non-fiction. Both modes go much smoother if I’m clear about what I want to say -- by which I mean my intent, not necessarily the little details. A lot of the inspiration happens between the lines.

Within fiction, I’ve written as short at 4,800 words, and as long as 40,000 (my novella Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach hits on March 13, and it’s just about a hundred words shy of 40,000). So far, I haven’t managed to write a short-short or flash piece. I’ve been trying for a few months to put together a story in less than a thousand words, and it’s been murder.

Writing short is much harder than writing long. Flash is absolutely a foreign medium, and as far as I can tell, the skills that allow me to write a short story don’t apply to flash. After about five attempts, I haven’t even gotten close to a coherent story but I’ll keep trying.


http://kellyrobson.com/

Kelly Robson is an award-winning short fiction writer. In 2017, she was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her novella “Waters of Versailles” won the 2016 Aurora Award and was a finalist for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She has also been a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award and Sunburst Award. Her most recent major publication is Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach, a highly anticipated time travel adventure. After 22 years in Vancouver, she and her wife, fellow SF writer A.M. Dellamonica, now live in downtown Toronto.

Simplify or Complexify?

NOT the author. My house isn't that neat either! Depositphoto

(Scene: Author – who may or may not still be in her bathrobe and slippers but who is supervised closely by the cat -  reads topic for the week. Scratches head. Peruses excellent answers already given by other members of the blog. Sighs.)

Our topic this week is “How do you keep your story from being too complex?”

Since the way I write is that when I start a book I know the hero, the heroine, the opening scene and the closing scene, plus a few highlights along the way, I make no effort to either simplify or complexify (is that a word? I like it!) the plot. I just write. Period. End of story. I don’t trim plot elements and I don’t add them either. The book arrives however my Muse (or my subconscious) intends it to be. I will say I’m not much for a lot of threads. I’m pretty much telling adventure stories with a romance entwined around the danger and action so…sometimes maybe my developmental editor will suggest making more of a certain plot element and I might fall in with the idea or do something else or shake my head and say, nope, doesn’t fit my story the way I wanted to tell it.

On a different note, I released my scifi rock star romance novella, Star Cruise: Songbird, this week. It was formerly published in the now-vanished Embrace the Romance: Pets In Space 2 anthology. I had so much FUN writing a rock star romance!

The story:

Grant Barton, a Security Officer on the Nebula Zephyr, is less than thrilled with his current assignment to guard an Interstellar singing sensation while she’s on board the ship. It doesn’t help that he and his military war bird Valkyr are dealing with their recent separation from the Sectors Special Forces and uncertainty over their future, with their own planet in ruins.

Karissa Dawnstar is on top of the charts and seemingly has it all – talent, fame, fortune and devoted fans, but behind her brave smile and upbeat lyrics she hides an aching heart. When a publicity stunt goes wrong, Karissa finds herself in the arms of the security officer assigned to protect her – and discovers a mutual attraction she can’t ignore.

Trouble continues to plague the pair, driving a wedge between them and leaving Grant certain that Karissa is in more danger than she realizes, from overzealous fans and her own management. Grant is determined to protect Karissa whether she wants his help or not. Can he discover the truth behind what’s going on before he loses Karissa or is there someone else plotting to keep them apart – permanently?

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I'm the One You Ask About Keeping a Plot Simple?

You come here, to my writing lair, to ask me how to keep a story from being too complicated? Me. You're asking me. K.  You realize that when the editor of my first book described the MS as 'a little everything but the kitchen sink', my agent replied, 'no, I'm pretty sure the kitchen sink was in there, too.'

I am the writer RIGHT NOW who hates herself and 2/3rds of her life because she has over 300k words for the MS she's working on. Yeppers. You read that number correctly. I've written this damned novel three times over already and here I am going for a fourth because the alpha readers came back with 'first half is great, second half is someone else's book'. 

So you want to know how to not get complicated?? Do not, under any circumstance, pick up a manuscript you started 7 years ago and then had to put aside. DON'T DO IT. Just start that story all over again from where you are now. Every single struggle I've had with this book stems 100% from reconciling who I was as a writer 7 years ago with who I am now. The themes are no longer germane. Had I bitten the bullet, discarded everything I thought I knew about these characters, and started from the ground up, I might be on to the next novel by now. Let that be a lesson to me. Oh look. Too late. At least don't follow my poor example, k?

That said. Plot your series arc. Have a solid notion of where a series is going. Bonus points if you know the main point of each upcoming book in the series. This helps me control the impulse to include every last thing in the current book. I can remind myself to leave space to breathe because I know we're dealing with issues y and z in the next two books. Doesn't mean I'm not laying the threads. I am. But they're mentions, not clubs. Series bibles, too, help me not have to reinvent the wheel in each book. 

But as far as Keeping It Simple, Stupid - I am still learning. I may end up taking this one with me to my grave to be completed in my next life. I just hope I don't also take this book with me to my grave.

Keeping Stories From Getting Too Complex

The question put forth this week: How do you keep your story from being too complex?

And I think-- you're asking me, the person with four interlocking series running concurrently?  You think I know how to keep things too complex?

Well, in a real way, the multi-series tactic is my way of keeping things from getting too complex. 

Rather than one, enormous sprawling story of epic epicness and a cast of a dozen protagonists, I have four relatively contained, discrete storylines in individual books.  That helps me keep my head clear of the different threads, and hopefully keeps readers from getting to bogged in the weeds, either.
Hopefully.

(Though one of my beta readers had a "who is this guy again?" moment with a key secondary character in the draft of A Parliament of Bodies, so that was a good note to reclarify his introduction...)

But I am writing something deeply complex, and it's crucial I keep it all straight.  That's why spreadsheets, timelines (let's hear it for Aeon Timeline!), outlines and other organizational tools are so crucial to me.  Part of the point is making that work seem invisible to the reader, so they just jump on the roller coaster and go.

Hopefully, that's what I'm doing.  Now back to it.