"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.

KISSing, only with plots instead of mouths

Q: How do you keep your story from getting too complex?

A: Here, meet my critique partners. Aren’t they amazing?

See, as a writer, I’m still learning how to keep things simple, and by simple I mean being able to hold the whole story and all its moving pieces in my mind for that final quartile, so I can wrap up the whole yummy burrito. An overstuffed burrito is a ruined white shirt, and I have…well, let’s say I have a guacamole problem. However, that’s where my amazing crit partners come in.

My CPs are kind of alpha readers who also know SO much more than I do about craft. They margin-note anything that's confusing or well-that-came-outta-nowhere or interesting-but-never-mentioned-again. Those margin flags typically indicate I have a whole back story for that element and love it to bits and really, really want to use it to complicate matters, but it isn't useful to this story/character/moment, and so it needs to go. For instance, plot threads concerning Mari’s mom and Garrett’s super powers and the oblique, giggletastic Terminator fan-service references? Gone. Snipped. Fixed. Streamlined. Thank you, SuperCPs.

In sum, my advice to everyone attempting to KISS (we all know the acronym, yes?): get some alpha reader/crit partners who know their stuff and aren’t hesitant to call you on your over-complicated crud.

(Note: It's tricky but not really hard to build good CP relationships. I met one CP because we were both writing a lot of self-indulgent Tolkien fanfiction a million years ago, one through a romance-writing professional organization that gets together in person monthly, and one because we slept together at a local writing retreat, which isn't nearly as salacious as it sounds. If you gut-flinch at the thought of going face-to-face with other writers in person, Critters might be a nice place to meet SFF-minded folk online. If you're a member of the RWA FF&P chapter, they have a mudpuddle that kind of functions as a CP dating service for folks writing SFR and PNR. Make sure to trade sample chapters before you get hitched for the whole manuscript, and also try to hook up with someone who is just a little bit ahead of you in craft knowledge.)

Oh! And one addendum from the former-litcrit-student in my head: it also probably helps to focus on a tiny, tiny group of POV characters – one, if you can get away with it – and their goals, motivations, and conflicts. If a worldbuilding piece doesn’t affect your protag, ditch it. The only stakes a reader is going to care about are those that directly affect your POV character's internal journey.

Complex Storylines: Clarity is Key

How to keep your stories from being too complex?

~slaps knee~

Oh, dear reader, I am the least qualified to answer that. Reviews of my books have included such phrases as "little hard to follow" and "have to pay close attention"...and those are the kinder ways of saying, "Wait, WUT?"

I'm getting better. Honestly. Pretty sure. Somewhat.

I keep repeating the KISS mantra in the back of my mind, but at the fore are the multiple balls the protagonist is juggling that will eventually merge into one big road sign of "guilty party this way." Part of the ongoing process of honing my skills as a storyteller includes being more mindful of how many balls are in the air, being clearer about the connections, and allowing the beats to remind the reader of where we are and what we know without bludgeoning them.

So, my advice, for what it's worth, is to include a very clear statement at three points within each arc of your story:

1. The beginning: This is what we want.
2. The middle: This is what want, this is what we have, and this is what we need.
3. The end: This is what we wanted, this is what we've got, and this where we're going next.

Clarity, it's the best companion to complexity.