Future Tense

This doesn’t actually have anything to do with tenses—it’s not Thursday, so it’s not word time. It’s just a title.

I believe I have the idea that will turn into the book I write this year. It takes place in the far future and, shockingly enough, there’s not an apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) thing about it.

I can sense your shock. After all, this is me we’re talking about here. The last four books I’ve written have been varying degrees of apocalyptic. But not this one. Could it be…that I’ve finally run out of apocalyptic scenarios? What a depressing thought.

Anyway, while my not writing an apocalyptic story is clearly a tragedy, it does give me the chance to explore something else. Really, my new project isn’t all that different from my other works. It’s an action story with a sci-fi bent, just like four of the previous five (the fifth being an action story with a paranormal bent). There’s a little more sci-fi this time around, what with it taking place about five hundred years from now, but it takes place on Earth and there are no aliens of any kind, so it’s a far cry from hard science fiction. Plus, the biggest shocker of all, it’s not YA.

I know. Let that sink in for a minute.

I’m really having a lot of fun with it—a bit too much, since I haven’t been keeping up with all the things I’m supposed to be doing for REMEMBER. But I’m using being stressed out by querying as an excuse. It’s a lot easier to get lost in a new project than an old one.

What have you guys been up to lately? Do you stick to one genre, or do you like to stretch your writing muscles in other ones, too?

Story Time

I always like to do something fun in my Saturday posts. Sometimes it’s just fun for me, like in one of my rants, but you guys have put up with that enough lately, so I decided on something that’s actually fun for everyone: short stories.

I love short stories. I love long stories, too, but this week’s about the short ones, namely those of the sci-fi genre. We’re lucky to live in a time after the explosion of sci-fi shorts left us with thousands of varying quality to choose from.

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

I actually mentioned this one before, but at the time was unable to find a copy of it online. The prolific Asimov calls it his best work. It’s certainly one of the smartest, most amusing ones.

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

If you prefer to be depressed by your sci-fi, look no further. It’s one of the most heart-wrenching, emotionally driven stories I’ve read period.

And He Built a Crooked House by Robert A. Heinlein

And He Built a Crooked House is par for the course time travel-y confusion. Seriously, you might need to write down detailed notes about what’s going on. Still fun though.

The Unreconstructed M by Philip K. Dick

It’s Philip K. Dick, so that right there should tell you it’s going to be cynical.

Ugh, I just realize there are all guys here. Lame. However, I’ve also been reading through MACHINE OF DEATH, a collection of short stories by various authors based on the premise set forth in one of Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics. And lucky for us there are plenty of females in there as well as males. So it’s proof that women can A), write science fiction, and B) be funny. Suck on that, SFWA.

Speculative

As I’m sure I mentioned, I started on a new project and instead of being apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic, it’s urban fantasy (gasp!) with an apocalyptic twist. Now, I’ve written urban fantasy before, but that was a long time ago, before I had a good grasp on writing. I’m still getting a feel for the story, but I like how it’s going. Plus I realized that it was still speculative fiction, which is most definitely my forte.

But “speculative fiction” is a funny title. Yes, what I’m writing is pretty close to what I usually do, but why are fantasy and apocalyptic under the same classification? If you look at something like LORD OF THE RINGS, you’re not going to mistake it for THE HUNGER GAMES. They’re nothing alike.

It happens that speculative fiction is basically the catch all term for any genre with things happening that don’t really happen. Or, as in the case of alternate history, didn’t really happen.

Then you can get into the subgenres and things get even more complicated. The family tree I posted up there hardly encompasses all the speculative offshoots. Science fantasy, dark fantasy (horror fantasy), and all the crosses with non-speculative genres. Suffice to say, it’s one incestuous family tree.

Really, as a name, speculative fiction doesn’t say much. Science fiction is speculative. Horror is speculative. But science fiction isn’t necessarily horror, nor vice versa. Unless the genres are deliberately joined, like the sci-fi horror movie Alien, they are separate creatures that for some reason share the share a genre.

Sometimes I wonder if speculative fiction is needed at all. The term, of course, not the books. I think we all know how important those are! But why such a broad classing? Is it necessary? Or useful? I’m not so sure. What do you think?

Short Story Appreciation

Even though I can’t write them (every idea I think up is just too “long”), I love short stories. I think it may take more skill to write a coherent short story than it does a long one, where you have time to get to know characters and reveal their personality. And to craft a story with beginning, middle and end in so few words! Talent, that’s what it is.

Well, here are some of the best ones I’ve found. Fair warning: here there be spoilers.

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

I’m sorry that I only just read this recently. Asimov thinks of it as his best story and considering how prolific he was, that’s saying something. It really is worthy of praise as intriguing, philosophical, and as per usual with him, with a believable glimpse at the distant future. There was once a website that had this story on it for free but it’s shut down now, possibly for legal reasons. I’m afraid your best bet for finding this is in a collection.

The Picture in the House by H.P. Lovecraft

I don’t think I could mention short stories without bringing up Lovecraft. Most of his works are wordy for supposed shorts, with meandering yet vivid sentences that tend to bog down the reader. But if you want one that’s interesting and fairly concise, you could do worse than “The Picture in the House”. It starts out as eerie, builds to unsettling and stays there until the end where it spikes into OMFG!!! If you want a collection, there are several out there and they tend to flush out the weaker ones as well. Since he’s been dead for over seventy years, his work is in the public domain. There are several sites filled with his short stories.

The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe

Hey, Halloween is in just over a month. It’s time to get in the mood, and you probably can’t do better than Poe. Unlike most nineteenth century writers, I find his work engaging, even when the main character isn’t named and his circumstances mostly unknown, as in this story. We learn a man has been imprisoned during the Inquisition (and even that isn’t described accurately)—that’s all, and yet that’s all we need to know. None are better than at putting the reader into the body of the main character, making his stories intense and powerful. As he’s also been dead long enough for copyright to expire, many of his works are available.

Where Are You Going, Where Have YouBeen? by Joyce Carol Oates

See? It’s not all horror and sci-fi. I read it in college and it made a strong impression on me. Oates is absolutely eloquent with her words here. In a few sentences, the reader has a sense of the main character, Connie, her family, and how Connie views her family, something that becomes absolutely painful when you get to the end. In a word: haunting. It’s available for free on Joyce Carol Oates’s webpage at the University of San Francisco.

To Build a Fire by Jack London

And if that last story didn’t depress you, how about one about dying of exposure? You might think that spoils something, but I don’t. It doesn’t convey the desperation, the fear that the short story does. It’s available for free at several sources since, again, copyright has expired. Definitely worth a read.

Square Cube Law

Have you heard of it? If you haven’t, I wouldn’t be surprised. I hadn’t heard of it until it was mentioned in Atomic Robo (and if you haven’t heard of that you must start reading more awesome comics).

Basically, it says giant ants can’t exist because their bodies would never be able to support them. Considering that ants are already poised to take over the world with their little, tiny bodies, I think the fact that they can’t get any bigger is a big load off our minds. Anyway, the reason the creators of Them! were thankfully wrong is because as something gets bigger, it’s volume increases exponentially. Something that’s two times bigger has eight times as much volume.

To illustrate, I’m afraid I’ll have to use math:

The volume (V) of a cube is the length of one side (L) multiplied to the third power, so L­³. If L equals 4, V equals 64. If L equals 20 (5 times an L of 4) then V equals 8000 (125, or 5³, times a V of 64). This works for any formula volume, whether sphere, cone or anything else.

The same applies to anything. If an ant is made bigger by, say, gamma radiation, whatever its size is increased by (2, 5, or whatever number), the volume is the cube of that (8, 125, or whatever³). But the ant has its original body structure, because what is this? Some kind of magic radiation? And that body structure cannot sustain the increase in volume. It would be crushed by its own weight.

This same principle applies to any building, animal or ship your characters will use, so keep it in mind before creating any gigantic titans battling over the ruins of New York City. Or dinosaurs.

Back!

Although I was never really gone, my pretties. I am, however, officially twenty five years old. As I age, I solace myself by knowing that no matter how old I get…I’ll always be five and a half years younger than my sister.

It’s important to keep things in perspective.

Anyway, in writing news: I completed the first draft of my newest WIP, a YA/Dystopian with a sci-fi bent titled GLITCH. It took a lot longer than I planned, over four months. Not the book’s fault. Crappy life stuff got in the way and there were some days I sat down in front of the computer and couldn’t hammer out gibberish. It’s tough sometimes.

But draft one is done. Now it’s time to sit back, take a writing break, and plan how I’m going to edit this thing. During previous down time, I actually made a list of things to do:

Editing

---Perfunctory read through, grammar check.

---Outline, include continuity check.

---Read aloud.

---Highlight adverbs and –ing words.

---Color partition. Check for not enough action, too much information/backstory.

---Words: there, though, although, before, after, once, at least, then, while, almost, even, what, pretty, how, just, only, probably, that, since, as, like, so, some, when, seem, been, could, would, should, I, we, ’re, n’t, ’s, ’d, ’ve, be, is, are, am, I’m, was, were, we’re, keep, kept, got, get, had, has, felt, feel, think, thought, try, tried, tries, may, might, grew, grow, look, found, find, knew, know, become, became, smell, sense, hear, come, came, go, goes, went, taste, see, saw, watch, believe

---In depth grammar check.

---Beta reads.

If there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s making lists and organizing. There’s obviously going to be more rounds of editing after the beta reads, but that’s going to depend on what I hear. It’s probably going to be a while before to those anyway : ).

Now I’m going to throw it back to you guys: how do you edit? Am I missing anything important?