GENREALITY

Blogs are a funny thing.  I feel like they’ve completely replaced the Dear Diary of generations gone by. Pretty much anyone over the age of has a blog of some sort, where they post their daily rambling about school, food, sports, sex, relationships, politics, religion, books, movies, music, cars, war, peace, rallies, government and business.  The list is really only limited to the imaginations of the blogger in question.

And sometimes, only that blogger has any idea what the hell they’re talking about.  I’ve read blogs that needed a secret decoder ring to understand the hidden meaning buried in the page after page of rambling text.  I’ve frequented blogs that are as short as a sentence per post and the meaning was much deeper than other who write volumes.

Blogging is an individual sport that, like most things, is completely and utterly a matter of taste.

My buddy Jay Lake can blog three thousand words a day on top of writing another twenty-five hundred words of prose, plus his regular email, day jobbery, etc.

I struggle to blog, frankly.  I’m an introvert who suffers from the notion that my daily goings on are probably too boring to be foisted upon the reading public.  I do blog, just infrequently and with great purpose.  I have to be moved by a topic on most cases, or I find myself bored with posting.

Funny thing is, when I’m guest blogging that totally flips for me.  I love guest blogging.  I feel like I’m funnier, more salient and generally enjoy the experience.  I have deadlines, I know when I’m supposed to write something and frequently I’ll have a topic or theme to work with.  This makes it oh, so much easier for me to blog.

On my own blog, I’m in charge of the content, I’m in charge of the deadline, and without that external driver, I just don’t blog frequently.  I’d love to have the drive of John Scalzi or Elizabeth Bear.  I’d love to be as funny as Jim Hines or gee whiz informational as IO9 or Boing Boing.

I’m a fiction writer.  I spend my days in the soup of story and character.  I think about Norse gods and giants, black smiths and social ramifications of killing dragons in a modern world.  Thinking about something to post on my blog rarely surfaces through the layer upon layer of story I carry around in my head.  So, thankfully, there are awesome blogs like Genreality, Tor.com, Grasping for the Wind, SF Signal, SFFWorld, Ranting Dragon, the Skiffy and Fanty Show (also a podcast) and a whole host of book bloggers, science bloggers, culture warriors, political wonks and generalists to keep me and the world entertained and informed.  Unfortunately they could also take every ounce of free time I have and keep me fascinated and engaged — but not writing.  I have to strike a balance between curiosity and obsession.

But the fiction comes first after the day job, the family and a modicum of sleep. Blogging is a lower priority for me, but once I’ve done it, I’m always relieved.  It’s a great feeling expressing oneself publicly. I just need to make sure my fly is buttoned and I have my sunscreen on before stepping into the limelight.

Went to see the movie John Carter Saturday with my good buddy, Jay Lake.  I loved the movie.  I’ve read some reviews where people were disappointed, but that’s okay.  I don’t go to the movies to look for critical approval or even correct grammar.  I go to the movies to be entertained.  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t Star Wars or anything, but I found echoes there.  I doubt a generation of new science fiction fans will count this movie as a life changing event.  But I think it is a damn fine way to spend a couple of hours.

What I don’t understand is why this huge pulp/space-opera is doing so poorly at the box office.  Some folks have mentioned a rather odd and awkward ad campaign, which I can sort of agree with.  Some blame it on Disney, and others seem to be apologetic for the fact it’s a huge, pulp/space-opera.

I find this amusing.  It’s got action, it’s got adventure and it’s got romance.  what more could you want?  We go to movies to be entertained, do we not?  I’m not in college anymore where I need to write a critical analysis and earn a grade.  My goal is to settle into a comfy seat, hunker down in the dark and let my mind be taken over by an amazing story.  John Carter did that for me.

When I was in the third grade my grandmother handed me the entire Burroughs John Carter of Mars series and promised me that it would change my life.

And she was correct.  I devoured those books, learning that sleep is for sissies when you have a great book to read.

I knew they had flaws, even at a young age, but I fell in love with the characters, the adventure and the story.  That’s what I’m in it for.

So when I watched John Carter I went in with the expectation of being entertained, wowed by the special affects and stunned by the beauty playing Dejah Thoris.

Afterwards I got to thinking about the value of success and critical acclaim.  As an author, I want nothing more than to connect with readers and sell a lot of books, maybe get a movie deal somewhere and become a full-time writer without losing my house or family along the way.

I find the movie John Carter to be an excellent metaphor here.  I loved the movie, others didn’t.  The sales are not what the studio or the media pundits thought was good enough for the blockbuster budget this film had.  But I know several people who have already seen this movie in the theaters two or more times.  I plan to go see it again, paying the stupid price for the 3D and loving every minute of it.

I’ve seen many reviews that talk about how this movie was true to the books, and true to the Edgar Rice Burroughs vision of the characters, the world and the story.

So is it a  success or not?  I’m sure the film-maker is delighted with his product and perplexed why it isn’t being received better.  And here is a very important lesson for authors.  We cannot control what the audience does.  We cannot control sales, marketing and most of us don’t get a vote on the cover art of our novels.  We may truly love the work we’ve produced, have good art, great editorial support and still the books are not overnight sensations.

Hunger Games is in the theaters now.  I’m sure it is going to break some records, earn some amazing box office numbers –  similar to Harry Potter before it.  But we can’t all get struck by lightning.  We don’t all get to ride at the head of the parade with the prom queen and smile while adoring fans throw roses.

What we get to do is produce another work that shows our obvious love for what we do.  Then we can send it out into the world and hope that there will be people who will fall in love with those things we love.

I’ll buy John Carter on Blue Ray when it comes out.  I’ll also go back and buy another set of the Mars books to read again.  I’ll always love those stories as they formed the foundation of my own journey into becoming an author.

But when I start to worry about whether or not my books are selling well enough, or see a review by someone who didn’t care for my style, I’ll look back on the movie John Carter and remember that we don’t always love the same things.  Nor do we always meet the expectations of others.  In the end, we have to entertain ourselves, pour our heart and souls into our work, and trust that someday we’ll reach a reader and change their lives the way Mr. Burroughs changed mine.

Besides, what do critics know?

If you’re an artist, one of the key things you do is observe life around you.  It’s second nature.  With your eyes wide open, there should always be plenty of ideas and characters for your work.  As a writer, I observe some of the wackiest shit you can imagine.  People are illogical and inconsistent to the point of madness.  Just look at the folks running for president this year.  They pander to the moment, to the funders, to the specific crowd they are standing in front of at any particular moment.   Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see the fallacies and the out-right personality shifts.

Oh, you’ll find individuals who have a fairly strong narrative in their real lives, those who try to live by consistent values and appear logical from one moment to the next.  But I promise you, there are going to be moments when you see people do something so illogical that it will make your brain hurt.

As a writer, this is the stuff of dreams.  If you are writing comedy, then the election season is  your goldmine.  Or was that tragedy, I forget some days.  Regardless, you should never be short on characters, motivations or reactions when you write.  If you don’t believe me, take your favorite writing device and casually stroll through a department store or better yet, grab a beverage and sit in the food court of your local mall.  Within ten minutes you’ll see enough to fill a novel with secondary and perhaps, main characters.  It’s better than television most days.

Now, here’s the trick.

You can’t use that stuff as it happens.  No one will believe it.  We humans are just too whimsical and capricious to be used as is in a story.  See, unlike your day job, your dating life, or even a trip to the grocery; fiction has to make sense.

I can hear some of you out there gasping and examples of fairies and dragons are just popping to mind faster than you can write them down in the comments section of this post.  Yes, we write about stuff that doesn’t exist.  Sometimes we take things that exist and twist them around to be different than what they really are.  But the one thing we also do is proceed with internal consistency.   I don’t care what logic you use, but if you tell me the Bobby turns green on Tuesdays in the first paragraph.  When I see a green skin tone next, it damned well be Tuesday.

See, the characters in your books and stories can be wild men but no matter what their motivations, no  matter what their appetites or fears, they must behave with a level of logic that your readers can follow.

Every action must be aligned with the behavior this character has portrayed before, or ample justification must be shown as to why this individual would suddenly start behaving in a way that is different from what you as the author has shown.

It’s a balancing act.  I’ve critiqued a lot of stories over the years, shorts all the way to novels.  I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve had an author tell me, “but that’s the way it happened.  I wrote that based on real events.”

To which, I have to inform them that real life is too crazy for fiction.  Fiction must follow a logical thread if you want to keep your readers engaged and if you want them to finish reading the piece.

Don’t get me wrong.  Be gonzo, write some avant-garde story that would make your high school English teacher cringe in his cardigan.   But if you do not have the characters act with an internal logic that the reader can follow, you will lose them.

So, be a people watcher.  Eaves drop on conversations and experience the drama of real people from time to time.  It’s where we get our juice.  But when you put that down on paper or pixels, make sure your darlings can follow the bread crumbs back to their first introduction and your readers will gladly follow you into the apocalypse, or the next general election, depends on your threshold of pain.

As a writer I make it my business to pay attention to details.  I’ve always done it.  Even as a little kid I would notice things the adults around me would miss.  I also have a crazy scary memory for minutia.  Like the time a friend of my mom’s, Lynn mentioned that she worked with a certain Gail who had a crooked nose.  Weeks later at the bowling alley, Carol and Kim, two women who bowled with my mom, were once again oblivious to my presence.  I was so much a regular to the Tuesday and Thursday bowling leagues that they forgot I was listening.

They were gossiping about how Gail was such a whore and how she probably did things with men, for money.  Kim commented that anyone who worked in “that kind of place” was probably a whore as well.  I had no idea what “that kind of place” was.  Those kinds of details are not important to the story yet.  I’ve learned that.  Those details will present themselves with time.  Even at eleven I knew they were being catty, but I filed the information away and went back to reading A Wrinkle in Time.

Four months later, I was sitting at my grandparents house flipping through the paper after my grandpa had finished reading it.  Deep into the entertainment section I saw series of head shots of young women.  They were strippers and advertising a specific club.  The first picture was a young woman with a crooked nose named Gail and my mother’s friend Lynn was the next picture over.

I looked up at my grandma and asked,  “So, is Lynn a whore as well as a stripper?”

Grandma walked over, took the paper away from me and said I’d have to discuss it with my mother.  I didn’t even know Gail.  I’d never met her.  But the way Carol and Kim had described her and Lynn’s picture next to hers, I was able to put things together.

Events like this have occurred all throughout my life.  It’s amazing to me how many connections you can make if you just pay attention to what’s going on around you.  Writers are voyeurs.  It is our business to collect things and string them together into stories that entertain, enlighten and possibly, earn a bit of coin.

Don’t think as a writer you need to give the reader every detail of a scene, an argument, or a moment of passion.  What the reader needs is a few specific details, the overall feel of the scene, and enough runway to get off the ground.  They can fill in a significant amount from their own imagination.  It’s a balancing act.  How many pieces of furniture do I need to describe to give you the idea the characters are sitting in a diner?  How many specific sensory inputs ground you in the tacky booth with the overflowing ashtray and half empty coffee cups?  Do you need to see the one lonely slice of lemon meringue pie in the class container on the counter?  How about the way the waitress has a stain on her uniform, or perhaps the pungent aroma that greets you as you first walk in the door — that grease and despair, old cigarette smoke and overcooked bacon.

You could describe every barstool and every patron, but how long do you really have before you lose the audience?  The last thing you ever want is for the reader to look away from the page.  Rolling their eyes at the overload of details is one cause for folks walking away from a story.  Flipping ahead to see if anything interesting happens is another fatal point.

So you need to come up with those important details that are critical for the story to connect.  A young woman named Gail with a crooked nose who is a stripper and possibly a whore.  Then later, when you see a picture of a Gail who is a stripper and she also has a crooked nose, your audience will start to put two and two together.  Seed clues along the way, little details and points of interest that will make your reader’s story brain start to click.  They are looking for road signs that will point them to a satisfying connection and a plausible conclusion.

It’s a tough skill to hone.  I know I struggle with it all the time.  Fortunately writing allows you to go back and weave in details as they unfurl in your writing brain.  Unlike the real world, where you may not have the luxury to go back and look for all the right clues; in fiction you not only have the ultimate control over space and time,  you also have the ability to rewrite history so it fits the story’s needs.

We are builders, we artists.  We create something from nothing.  It is a gift and a curse that will haunt us for our entire lives.  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t listen to half a conversation in the elevator at work and I fill in the blanks.  I saw two squirrels chasing each other round and round a tree one morning and I store that scene away for another time.  Someday I’ll have a story where the characters are walking through the woods and they’ll happen upon the strangest scene with two squirrels.

But you must keep your head up, your ears open and your mind engaged.  That’s the life of a writer.  We observe and report.   Just because the next story you see from me deals with aliens or elves don’t be surprised to find some mundane details that enrich the story and make it believable enough for you to follow along.

If you do the job well enough, you can turn something simple into something magical.  It’s all in how you put the puzzle pieces together.