Nicholas Bruner
Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Young Adult Author
Remembering Frederick Pohl
According to an obituary a few days ago in the Washington Post, science fiction author Frederick Pohl died on 2 September, aged 93.
In junior high and high school, I read science fiction voraciously, and Frederick Pohl was one of my favorite authors (another was Frank Herbert, whom I have previously written about). The Post obituary describes his works as “sociological science fiction,” and that seems right. Although his books were what I would call “hard” SF, meaning they were real science-based rather than space opera, they were more concerned with the effects of space travel and future technology on human society and individuals than on the gee-whiz aspects of the technology itself.
Again With the Importance of Writing Groups
So I was on vacation last week, and the week before that was just crazy, and maybe the week before that I’d been kind of lazy. But for whatever reason, I hadn’t written in my WiP for three weeks. I was really dreading getting back to it, too. After you haven’t worked on your project for a while, it’s hard to get back into the groove.
But on Monday I went to my Writers of Chantilly meeting, and I came away charged. Ready to return to my work. Maybe it was the positive comments I received on my latest chapter. Maybe it was being around other writers excited about their work. Maybe it was simply thinking about the writing process. Whatever the reason, last night I sat down at the computer and made a number of changes to my novel I’ve been meaning to for a while, and got in some actual writing as well. All in all, a solid night, and I’m still ready to write again tonight.
So here’s another reason we could add to the list of why you, a writer, should definitely be in a writer’s group: getting back on track when you’ve lost your way.
What I’m Reading: Children of Dune
When I was a teen-ager, I was a little obsessed with Frank Herbert’s Dune series. It’s a science fiction series with deep world-building and lots of political intrigue, and has become a cult favorite since the publication of the first book in the mid-1960s. Over the past year, I’ve been re-reading them to see how they hold up.
How Often Should You Write?
So after a week-long vacation, and several extremely busy days after getting back, I’ve finally returned to writing on a daily basis this week. The first couple days were tough, but now the words are flowing. I’m struck again, as I have been in the past, how important it is to write every day.
For the novelist, it’s critical. You simply can’t get any momentum going if you take days off between writing sessions. When you take a couple days off, you have to read over what you’ve previously written, re-calibrate, take a few paragraphs to warm up, and only then does real writing come out, maybe. You’ll never finish that way. But write daily, and each new session flows beautifully. Your mind has been working on the problems of the previous session and you start exactly where you left off previously, with new ideas and energy.
I’m not the only one who thinks this. Stephen King’s a big believer in writing every day. Raymond Chandler prescribed four hours a day for writing, and even if he couldn’t think of anything, he forced himself to sit in the chair and look out the window.
That’s novelists. Surely other types of writers are different? Well, maybe, but I’m not so sure. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe started writing a poem every day when he was a teen-ager, and continued the habit throughout his life. It worked out pretty well for him. I bet most successful writers make it to the writing desk daily, or nearly so.
If you miss a day here and there, it’s probably unavoidable. Don’t sweat it. But try to write at least six days every week. Avoid missing more than one day in a row. That’s how you keep your brain bubbling. Here’s a secret: Writing is not the product of inspiration; inspiration is the product of writing.
Words to leave out
Keeping to the theme of the last post, today I’m going to list some words you should leave out of your writing. After you finish a piece, go through with the word search function and see how many of the following you can remove.
Note: I will revisit this post from time to time as I think of new ones (i.e., come across them in my own writing).
very–A strange word in that it does the opposite of what you think it does. You think it amplifies or emphasizes, but it actually diminishes.
Dr. Brown’s new car was very shiny, very sleek, and very fast.
Dr. Brown’s new car was shiny, sleek, and fast.
See? All those verys slow the reader down. Take the advice of Depeche Mode: Very is very unnecessary; it can only do harm.
begin to, start to–Normally, people don’t begin to do something, they just do it.
The wolf approached me, drooling and snarling. I turned and started to run ran.
just–This is a problematic one for me. Nothing wrong with the word, I just seem to use it once or twice a page when I write. I think I just don’t realize I’m putting it in. I just have to use the word search when I’m done and I can eliminate three-quarters of the justs.
saw, look–Nothing wrong with these words. They’re good, solid words that will appear many times in your writing. However, they can be a little boring. See if you can’t replace a few of them with eye, focus, gape, gaze, glance, observe, ogle, regard, scan, spy, view, watch, etc. Don’t take this too far though–the goal isn’t to bedeck your manuscript like a royal crown! A little goes a long way.
actually–Thanks to Dana for a link to a similar post! From that I got the idea for actually. I checked my own WiP with this and found 8 actuallys. Four could be crossed out without changing or harming the sentences; actually, improving them. Two were in dialogue and could stay; two more were truly transitions between sentences. Whether because she hadn’t heard or was ignoring him, Sully wasn’t sure. Actually, it was all as new to him as to her.
What to Leave Out and What to Put In
Now that I’m working on my third novel, I find that I’m willing to leave out a lot more stuff.
How did a character get from one place to another? Who cares? We know they have legs, they probably walked.
How did a character learn a piece of information? Unless it’s a secret, it’s probably general knowledge in their locale, or maybe they heard it through the rumor mill.
How did two characters become romantically involved? Sometimes it’s important to show this, other times it’s enough to show they’re interested in each other. Then, when we rejoin them at a later time, it’s natrual they should be a couple.
A lot of this boils down to this: Don’t belabor the obvious. Don’t bore the reader with details she can easily assume.
On the other hand, I’ve read books where some important piece of business takes place off stage while the narrative follows some character at a dinner party or driving a car or something. (This especially seems to afflict the soap opera strips on the newspaper comics page, where Judge Parker or Mary Worth are always arriving on the scene right after something interesting happened.)
Here are some general rules on when to leave it out or include a scene:
Leave in
– Important character development
– Fights, arguments, conflict
– Action that moves the story along
– Unusual, weird, don’t see that every day
Leave out
– Spatial movement. Just go to the scene where something is happening, and we’ll assume the characters know how to get there. The exception, of course, is where the travel itself is important to the plot.
– Logically necessary but obvious developments. It may be important that a character, say, has a fully-stocked refrigerator, but you don’t need to show us the shopping trip.
– Sex. For some reason sex is usually pretty boring to read in books. Maybe because it interrupts the plot action? Just give us a hint that it’s about to happen, and then move on.
– Boring things. Even if they’re necessary for the plot, try to find a way to cut a scene that feels boring. Maybe have the next scene start right after the necessary but boring scene took place, and have characters mention that it happened.
Here’s a rule of thumb: If it bores you when you’re writing it, it will bore the reader when she reads it.
What I’m Reading: The Graveyard Book
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, tells the story of Bod Owens, a boy who is raised in a graveyard. His entire family is killed when he’s a toddler and he himself escapes only by lucky accident. When he wanders into the local cemetery later that night, the resident ghosts take pity on the child and grant him the “freedom of the cemetery.” The Owenses, a kindly ghost couple from the 18th century, become his new parents, and a mysterious spectral being named Silas his guardian.
You might think a book about such a situation would be morbid but in it doesn’t feel that way at all, largely because Gaiman writes his characters with a lot of warmth and generosity. The ghosts are regular, pleasant people, for the most part, and treat Bod with more kindness than he ever finds in the world of the living. For his part, Bod helps the ghosts as well, giving the Owenses the chance to be parents that they never had in real life, finding a proper headstone for a witch burned at the stake in the 1600s, and providing a playmate to children who died young.
The main point of fascination in the book is just how the afterlife works, and Gaiman does not disappoint in either quotidian life or mythology. We meet an endless succession of graveyard denizens from different eras going about their business, each with his own archaic vocabulary and worldview, who together make up an insular but complete mini-town of the dead. Then there are ghouls who enter the cemetery through a particular unkempt grave, an ancient demon far beneath the hill who has guarded an ancient king’s treasure for 10,000 years, and all sorts of other mystical creatures and spirits operating in the next plane.
Eventually, Bod grows up and must venture out into the world of the living, where he discovers the man who killed his family is still on the hunt for him. I leave the why, and what Bod does about it, for the reader to find out, but I will mention that the things he learned to do from the dead in the cemetery–fading from the view of the living, entering dreams, and other exotic powers–give him a fighting chance against the sort of ruthless foe who has no qualms about killing a small child.
I would recommend this book to anybody with a taste for fantasy. The writing is beautiful without being ornate, the subject matter fascinating, the tone dignified. It is YA and thus aimed at teen-agers, but I see no reason an adult of any age wouldn’t enjoy it. For that matter, I think the material is safe enough for more mature younger readers as well, say an eight-year old who has made it through The Hobbit. Rather than being scary, the book really demystifies life after death, and may even be a comfort to an older child with a lot of questions about death and what comes after. I previously knew Gaiman only from his Sandman comics, and am happy to see his talent translate so readily to prose as well.
