Trilogies - Why Do We Finish Reading, or Not?

Image: Covers for The Coldfire Trilogy

As a fan, the answer to this question does not really matter to me.  After all, my reading time is limited, and if I'm not feeling compelled to continue a trilogy I won't.  I don't sit and analyze why I haven't gone out and picked up #2 or #3 yet, it simply does not happen.  There is a host of great speculative fiction out there and I read what grabs me.  I'm not the sort of person who feels compelled to read a third book because I've read the first two.

But as a writer, the answer to this question definitely matters to me.  What is it that keeps a person reading through a trilogy?  What is it that leads a person to stop, even after investing the time of reading the first one or two?

The trilogy that comes to mind as an example is one from a favorite author, C.S. Friedman.  I thought In Conquest Born was a great novel, and I list The Madness Season on my list of top ten sci-fi books.  I'll generally give anything she writes a try without looking at reviews, since I know that her style and content appeal to me. 

Now, every trilogy needs a great first book.  It won't go anywhere without a lead off that makes people want to come back for more.  The formulaic story-in-itself seems to remain powerful.  A book that can stand alone but that also leaves some curious loose ends usually makes for a solid first book.  This naturally creates a challenge for the second book, and again, the formula of 'darker and deeper' usually works.  This would be like The Empire Strikes Back, where the story has our heroes lose over and over yet it leaves the door wide open for a triumphant return.

I picked up Black Sun Rising without knowing it was to be the first part of The Coldfire Trilogy.  I liked it, even though one of the protagonists isn't very likable, himself.  It had an interesting premise, and a new twist on the intersection between fantasy and sci-fi, which is something the author does well.  It followed the pattern of a great novel that could stand alone, but that had some very intriguing loose ends.  I was motivated to get the second book.

There my interest waned.  I was surprised, since again the book followed the pattern of 'darker and deeper' with a character getting killed off and some unhappy events that make a reader desire to see a little justice.  But I never bought the third book.

Sitting back and looking at the reason why, after all this time, I realize that I was truly turned off by said bad-guy protagonist.  There is also a good-guy protagonist, and that was adequate balance in the first book, but not the second.  The bad-guy protagonist is the more interesting character of the two, which is not a surprise, but he is so loathesome in the second book that I could no longer relate to him nor care what happened to him.  Hints are given as to what conflicts will arise in book three, and perhaps even to a change of perspective for bad-guy, but I wasn't sufficiently interested to read and discover how it all turns out.

Now, given the success of the series, I'm assuming my opinion is in the minority.  This was years ago, of course.  Had I started the series recently, perhaps I would have kept on with it.  Still, it interests me as a writer that I chose to stop reading when I did.  I thought the world and premise were interesting.  The trilogy seems to follow established patterns.  It was something about the characters.  Perhaps I have a low tolerance for protagonists that are also antagonists.  One can't write a trilogy that will appeal to each and every reader, after all.

I note that this did not dissuade me from picking up other books by the author.  I will take a look at any new book she has - I recently bought the first of another series.  I'll let you know how it works out for me, in a second post that is 'darker and deeper' than this one.

Image Credit - Covers for the Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman, open source promotional image.

Trying to Tweet, and How That Changes Everything

Photo: Song Sparrow in Song

I've heard it so many places, now, that writers need to create a robust online platform.  It took some time to really understand what was meant by "platform" in this context, and what would make it "robust."  I was glad to see that a blog was included, since I enjoy reading and writing blogs.  I was less than thrilled to see that both Facebook and Twitter were considered essential.

I am on Facebook, but my presence is spotty and sporadic.  It is also purely social.  At this time, I do not see my using that as a major tool to connect with other readers and writers.  So I turned to the other medium to tackle it first.  Twitter.  Given my preference for writing longer, fewer blog posts instead of the sort of daily-two-paragraph approach, the idea of tweeting seems a bit non-intuitive.

After some thought, I decided to simply sign up and see what I needed to do to put myself out on Twitter as a means of making connections with other real fans of science and its fiction (and fantasy, the weird, etc.)  I was surprised to find that the attempt to write a 160 character bio had me thinking about the entire basis for why I write in the first place.  It shouldn't have been a surprise, since writing a good haiku makes you reassess your view of reality.  And yet, well, I was surprised.

There are a plethora of "how to write a good twitter bio" articles out there, so I read many of them.  That is my natural approach to a problem, being a scientist - do research.  In this case the research tells you how to write the bio great detail, but you of course have to step away from that and into yourself to find out what you really want to write, and why.  I wanted to create a pithy, good bio, that included the keywords that would allow me to connect with like-minded folk.

In order to do that I had to think about this blog, my stories, and why I write anything at all, either fact or fiction.  I've written novels, textbooks, articles, papers, proposals, poems, and other words that start with "p."  All of it is me, what drives me, and what makes me want to share with others.  For some reason, taking a good, in-depth look at this is hard.  After a few attempts to write it down in sentences, I started simply writing the keywords.  What were the words that would match me to a potential reader of my tweets, my blog, my books, and what would match me to others, so I could read their stuff?

The first string was easy, since I have it in my title here - astronomy, science, science-fiction, horror, speculative, fantasy, writer, reader.  Was that it?  Hmmm.  What was packed inside those words?  What were the aspects that really appealed?  So astronomy and science generated geology, biology, planets, universe, and cosmos.  Then adding science-fiction generated space, space travel, space exploration, and technology.  Horror interests me most when it is paranormal - about ghosts, vampires, and demons.  Fantasy is something that I like in almost any flavor, but gravitates to the sort of high fantasy that seems medieval with monsters, swords, and dragons.

At this point I felt I was getting much too specific.  After all, it isn't the swords that really matter, it is the story - story, myth, legend, tale.  What drives it all, what makes it work, is how we bring our understanding of this world, the real world (as we see it) into the fabricated worlds - history, culture, psychology, philosophy.  It is about character, life, humor and all other emotion.  How do we think, laugh, know?  What part does the writer play as an educator, a communicator, a translator, helping our readers jump the gap to a new way of thinking that entertains them, inspires them, but also helps them see the real world in a new way?

So as a list, it is merely a basic starting point, but it taught me something important about what I want to write, and why.  It comes down to that last sentence - seeing myself as a communicator, an educator, a story teller, and that desire to share that spark, the smallest glimmer of a new way of thinking.

And now to condense this into 160 characters, including spaces ...

Image Credit: Alan Vernon, Song Sparrow in Song, on Flikr via Creative Commons, CC 2.0.

Bookish Inspiration

The British Library in London has an amazing display of old, even ancient, classic books and texts.  The exhibit takes up only one room, but it is impressive anyway given what is in there.  I do not usually take notes when I am browsing a museum.  I like to feel as though I can do whatever my muse dictates, and not feel self-conscious about my meanderings.  But this time I felt compelled, since I knew I would not remember all the details of the fascinating works if I didn't record a few specifics.

One of the oldest items to catch my attention was a copy of the "Gem Hup Sutras" dated from the 3rd century AD.  I was drawn off at that point by a special room dedicated to the Magna Carta.  Four copies of the Magna Carta still survive; issued first in 1215 and revised a few times until 1297.  This was the document that presented the idea that the law was a power in its own right, and even the King was subject to it.  The library also exhibits an original copy of the 1410 Canterbury Tales, of which apparently 80 copies are in existence.  The illuminated text is definitely more impressive in person, as always seems to be the case.  (I remember seeing the Mona Lisa for the first time, wondering 'why is this so famous' and then getting up close.  It is, in fact, rather spectacular.)  One presentation case was dedicated to Leonardo di Vinci, and had a notebook and loose papers with dates from 1496 to 1508, including Notes on Arithmetic, Studies of Mechanics, and Notes on Architecture.  The collection included music, like the earliest known draft of Handel's Messiah, dated 1741.  It is fascinating to me to see such drafts, where notes are inked in, then crossed out and replaced with others.  Unlike a single word in a novel, we know each and every note of the melody of these pieces today.  And then there were some of Jane Austin's original notebooks and journals dating to around 1792, from when she was 12-17 years old.  Looking at these works is so inspiring - books are powerful.  As a group they represent so much human thought, history, and culture. 

While I don't imagine to produce something as profound as these works, seeing them still motivates me to write, and to dream.  I'd love to hold a hardback book in my hand, something I wrote, with intriguing space/fantasy art on the cover, great quality paper pages, and that distinct, exciting new-book smell.  I want to sign them, give them to my friends and family, and say, "Meet these people I care about and go on this adventure with them.  I hope you love it."

Image Credit:  Canterbury Tales, Public Domain

Mr. Hyde Claims His Name

Photo: Mary King's Close

My post is actually about reading Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, but I have to start with mentioning that I am in the process of phasing out my pen name, and using my birth name for my writing.  I had chosen a nice comfortable pen name to simplify my life into categories, but it has actually made things much more complicated in the long run.  So like Mr. Hyde, the time has come for me to let go of the created persona.  Bryce Ellicott will always be part of my mind's internal writing committee, but for the time being anyway, I've chosen to post and publish my speculative fiction under J.A. Grier.

Speaking of speculative fiction - I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that my education is lacking in the area of speculative classics.  I haven't read either Frankenstein or Dracula from cover to cover.  But I can at least say I've finally read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (J&H, hereafter).

Edinburgh celebrates its most famous authors with a museum dedicated to writers.  I was a little disappointed that it didn't highlight more of the writings themselves, but instead concentrated on biographical information.  I was, however, able to purchase a copy of Stevenson's famous novel and read it while I was in the country.  It felt like something of an obligation especially given that I've already admitted to reading very little Burns.  

Stevenson is perhaps best known for Treasure Island but all of his books have some aspect of adventure or the unknown in them.  I was expecting J&H to be more of a standard horror story, but instead it reminded me of other, more psychological works like the Metamorphosis or Crime and Punishment - books that examine good and evil in the human condition.  It paints a detailed picture of the relationship between the main characters, and the shock they experience at finding out that (spoiler here, if you happen to be living in a speculative-fiction-free-cave) J&H are one in the same person.

I've posted a bit recently about how a location or experience might inspire a writer.  Certainly a visit to this location inspired me as a reader.  Let me explain a bit more.  Earlier in the day, I had visited an Edinburgh attraction called "The Real Mary King's Close."  This attraction is a relatively new, 2002-ish, tour under the city of Edinburgh where there are still buried streets and dwellings from centuries past.  The researchers have done a good job of presenting both the factual and more sensational aspects of life in those times to maximize the entertainment value.  Given my own occasionally squeamish nature, I found the whole thing horrific, alarming, creepy, and thus good fodder for stories.

There are rooms in the Close where they know the names of specific people, and how they died of the plague.  There are other rooms where they point to the 17th century plaster and tell you it is made of horse hair and human ash (True or not, it's still creepy.  Do not lean on walls.)  How about the apartment they don't let visitors into anymore since they found the walls were treated with arsenic?  Let's keep going.  Apparently all human excrement, including the blood from animal slaughter, was tossed into the narrow streets to run down to the river.  This was a popular shopping avenue, too, so patrons apparently would stand around inches deep in ... well ... nasty stuff ... whilst buying their daily provisions.  OK, it is not as if I have not encountered descriptions of such life before.  I am a reasonably educated historian.  But it never had the same visceral impact until I toured the streets themselves - the narrow, dusty, dark, foreboding underground streets.  Very effective.

Fast forward about six hours, to my reading J&H in my dimly lit accommodations.  What might have been a mildly creepy story became a very alarming and horrific tale of science gone wrong.  The environment in which the story took place would have been far more like the old streets of the Close than the open streets of the Royal Mile where one now finds stores named "Real Scotland." 

It makes me wonder, how can I as a writer bring that "I am really there" sensation to my reader, especially when the setting is a fantastical one?  An author might take the Tolkien approach and dedicate whole chapters to describing the setting.  But that generally makes me want to keep skipping ahead until something actually happens.  There are schools of thought that suggest saying as little about the setting as possible - just sliding in a word here or there to imply the nature of the atmosphere.  But that also does not work for me, since I like to feel far more grounded when I read.

What is your approach?  How do you try to get the reader to really feel like they are present in the setting?  Well, aside from photos.  I don't think I could stomach that with this particular subject matter, literally.

Image credit: Mary King's Close, public domain, wikipedia

A Muggle in King's Cross Station

Image:  Chapel of the Thistle

As I mentioned in my last post, my mind has been on the topic of how environment and location can serve as writing inspiration for speculative fiction. I thought I might have spotted a bit of J.K. Rowling's inspiration when I visited Saint Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. Here one can find the Chapel of the Thistle, home to the Order of the Thistle. Faded light leaks through stained glass illuminating the intricate carved seats, each of which holds the coat of arms of its current owner. I can see how something like this might influence the overarching mood of the ruling structure of the magical world. It is easy to imagine the High Mugwump in the center seat, while grave conversations of magical import lie heavy in the air. There may also have been inspiration here for the Order of the Phoenix as an "heraldic order" of knights errant.

Our trip from Edinburgh to London ended at King's Cross Station. Pulling in on platform seven meant that looking for platform 9 3/4 was almost an obligation. We certainly love the idea of doors to another world. Walking through a wall, a mirror, or an old wooden wardrobe full of fur coats - it is basically all the same desire to be instantly transported someplace new, amazing, and full of adventures. We are captivated by the idea that it might happen so fast, that it might be just around the corner, if only we knew what to look for.

As it stands, the "entrance" to platform 9 3/4 is actually on platform 8, and is a mural painted on the wall with half a metal cart sticking out. This might be a result of all the construction going on, or the fact that platform 9 can't be reached without a valid ticket. But I was not disappointed - you and I as speculative writers are supposed to be of a strong imaginative bent, right?  And it was great fun to stand in a short line of other fans waiting for their turn to get captured on film, pushing half of an immovable cart against solid cement.

I left thinking this - that speculative fiction is the muggle version of magic. Our imaginations create something that is real for us, alone, and then our pens (or computers) make it real for someone else. The magic is that starting place, where one person sees a wall, and another sees a door. Casting the spell is what comes after, when the second person writes a story that lets that first person see the door, too. Even more magical is that no two readers who choose to walk through that door will end up in the same universe. Our spell books have a power we don't quite understand, ourselves.

Definitely magic.

Image Credit:  snigl3t on Flickr via Creative Commons, CC 2.0.

A Few Poetic Musings

Image: Scott Monument, Edinburgh

National Poetry Month continues unabated, as months will do. My posts, on the other hand, have something of a more stochastic nature. I am late in thanking poet Laura Stophan, of Author Amok, She has been posting a poem a day from Maryland writers, including one of mine called Shower Sprite on April 16, that originally appeared in The Newsletter Inago years ago. Her blog is a great place to find poetry that is accessible to readers of all ages.

I've had the good fortune to have lately visited the land of poet Robert Burns. I'll admit that his poetry has always been difficult for me, since parsing the dialect takes a dedication I've never applied. Visiting the country, however, does provide plenty of motivation. It's amazing to see how the Scots love their writers, particularly Scott, Stephenson, and Burns. You are probably aware that he has his own night of happy reading and revelry on January 25th. And it turns out his poetry is a bit easier to parse after a "wee dram" of whiskey.

Or two.

There is a wonderful, mournful sensibility to be found in the damp castles and misty cliffsides of Scotland. I wasn't expecting to find inspiration for my own horrific and fantastical poems, which seems obviously misguided in hindsight. Certainly on the train ride in, with the green hillsides full of young lambs and searingly bright yellow flowers, I wasn't thinking fantasy. And then you get the chance to walk through the narrow stone streets of Edinburgh, thick with fog, and your imagination starts to roll. (Even though many of those walks were a search either for afternoon tea or Indian food.)

I'm curious to know what locations you have found the most inspiring for your speculative fiction writing. Any theme - horror, fantasy, sci-fi, the weird, whatever. A specific place? City? What venues do you find get your imagination flowing?

Pax,
Bryce

Image: My own picture of the Scott Monument in the heart of Edinburgh.

Some Science in the Writing: Elemental Poetry

Image: Gold as an Element

You may recall I conducted an interview with scientist Andrew Rivkin a little while back.  It turns out that this scientist, like many of us, has a not-so-secret artistic bent.  Certainly part of what motivates me to write science fiction is my interest and enthusiasm for the underlying science itself.  And at the same time, being a science fiction fan makes the science more interesting - it makes me wonder what really can or cannot be done, and in what time frame.  Will I live to see humans on Mars?  Workable fusion power?  And where are those flying cars, anyway?

I've strayed a bit off topic, here.  The topic is the intersection of science and art, and the specific example is Andrew Rivkin's music blog, Imperturbable Music.  A place where he usually posts his own music creations, but for the month of April each year is the place where he posts his poem-a-day.  This year he has chosen to write each poem about a chemical element.  Part of the fun is that after the first two poems, he's decided not to put the name of the element in the title, so there is a bit of a guessing game involved.

The rest of the fun is in the poems themselves.  Here is an excerpt from "Metal and Metaphor."

You may think it more metaphor than metal:
shades of blonde and best-sellers,
and high-limit credit cards,
but most of it ends up in junkyards
inside rusting-out beaters.

As I understand it, platinum is used in catalytic converters.  There isn't much of it in one converter, and the energy to remove it from old cars isn't worth the amount of platinum you would get out.  But over time, apparently quite a lot of the stuff is being reallocated from the Earth's crust in rocks to the surface of the Earth in junkyards.  It's quite possible that if and when we get our limitless fusion energy, people will go back and mine the rusting cars for platinum, since it will be easier to find it there than to go mining for it anew.  The idea of the future mining of ancient junkyards is certainly a great idea for a story.

The poet notes here how the word "platinum" is so overused that the first visions it brings up have nothing to do with the element itself.  Platinum albums, platinum blonde, platinum Visa.  Gold is apparently just so passe.  And platinum is headed in that direction - I think titanium is going to be the new cool metal to reference.  Perhaps this underscores part of the narrator's point, that eventually the once highly prized platinum is going to end up in tiny flakes, scattered through the trash of our society.

We are already drinking flakes of gold in our Goldschlager, and we know where that ends up.

Pax,
Bryce

Image Credit:  gold7 by Mrs. Pugliano on flickr via Creative Commons, CC2.0

What Makes a Good Writing Prompt - Interview with Writer and Poet Amy Grier

Image: Amy Grier and a wax Patrick Stuart at 
Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, Las Vegas, NV

Writing prompts have been on my mind. I find a good prompt to be a good tool, and that is part of the reason I am creating my own archive of general writing prompts on this blog. During April, many poets post lists of daily prompts to help keep writers on their "poem a day" schedule. I had a conversation with writer and poet Amy Grier on the subject, and gleaned some great ideas, and new insight, into what makes prompts effective for any kind of writing.

Amy possesses an eclectic background that informs her many styles and platforms of writing, from plays and memoirs to poems and textbooks. She has two MA's, one in Literature and Writing from Rivier College, and another in East Asian Studies from Washington University. Her BS is in Music Education from Clarion University. Her most recent publication was the poem "The Feeling of Autumn" in Poetry East, No. 60, 2010. She has also had a short story published in Dream International Quarterly, has produced content for a series of textbooks for teaching English to Chinese middle school students, and is a certified professional resume writer (among much else). She enjoys blogging, and is planning a revamp of her successful site "Living Poetry."

Bryce: "What do you think makes for a good writing prompt?"

Amy: "A good writing prompt must spark imagination, emotion, and intellect. The prompt should make you go “Oh!” and immediately deliver an imaginative focus. It needs to prod you to start thinking organically and naturally, not something that feels like homework. Not every prompt will do that for everybody, but a good prompt should attempt it."

Bryce: "What sorts of prompts can spark that kind of engagement? What needs to be present or be avoided?"

Amy: "Prompts must be specific, not vague. A prompt that is too vague won't help you go someplace that allows you to explore where you are psychologically in this moment.  For example, the prompt "write a poem with a profession as the title" is not as helpful as the prompt "write a poem about your first experience with nursing." This immediately sparks ideas. Some people will think of breastfeeding, others about their own time as a nurse, while some people will think about their first surgery and a specific nurse that was there. This creates the opportunity to prod imagination, draw on emotion, and engage the intellect. The word "nursing" is both comfortable and threatening. The intellect might generate thoughts of caretaking, being elderly, parenthood, illness, medical procedures, and more. The word “Nursing” activates your brain in all these ways."

Bryce:  "Tell me a little more about engaging the intellect."

Amy: "Always use a word or words in the prompt with power, a word that has many associations. The prompt "write a poem about an experience you have had with a needle" might seem to border on vague, but the word "needle" is very powerful.  It generates thoughts of sewing, drug use, vaccinations, even needles of minerals in gemstones. The mind will consider the definition of "needle" as well as the historical and cultural implications. You can get an untold number of poems from that prompt, or short stories, material for a novel, or whatever."

Bryce: "Can you leave us with a few specific examples of poetry prompts that you like?"

Amy: "Write a poem with a line in a foreign language. Write a poem that starts and ends with a line of dialog. Write a poem about a nightmare you had as a child. Include a cartoon character’s catch phrase in your poem. A common prompt is to take your favorite poem and use its last line as your first line. This sounds lazy, but it can work, because it gives you a concrete place to start. It gives you something to build around. Ultimately, if that line is dropped when you edit the poem, that’s fine.

Bryce: "Thanks!"

Did you like this little interview?  Useful?  I would be happy to do an interview, guest writer, or other type of blog swap on a topic of mutual interest, just drop me a note in the comment line.

Pax, Bryce

Alive Like Grass That's On Fire, Even

Image:  Life In Me Book Cover

National Poetry Month is upon us, and I am once again hoping to join in the madness.  I have a few different schemes in mind to get involved.  The first actually started last year - I mentioned in earlier posts that I had a poem selected to be part of a poetry anthology.  The book is now out and available as of the first day of April.  I am so very pleased and honored to be included in this project.

The book is entitled Life in Me Like Grass On Fire: Love Poems.  It was produced by the Maryland Writers Association (MWA), and edited by Laura Shovan.  More than fifty poets are represented, with over 90 poems, so there is a wonderful range of style, subject, and voice.  I have always enjoyed reading anthologies.  I know (or imagine) a concerned editor has cherry-picked a diverse collection of powerful poems, and that the odds are good I will find one that will become enmeshed inside me forever.  I had the great fortune to hear several of my fellow "Life in Me" authors give readings today, and it was the best poetry reading I have attended in some time.  There is some great poetry coming out of the state of Maryland these days.

Love poetry (without some kind of strange speculative quirk) hasn't been the top of my list for projects.  But just at the moment I was becoming aware of the MWA, they were looking for poems for this book.  And I also happened to have several poems I wrote within the last few years that were right on topic and had yet to find homes.  My poem "Officemate" has now found its permanent place of residence.

But I have no intention of straying far from my speculative genres of choice.  Last year for National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo - A Poem A Day In April), I chose to write in the theme of "the horrors of childhood."  I gleaned ten workable poems from that experience, and am two days into the same plan for this year.  Poetry seems to be a very effective platform for the subject - direct and with a strong emotional punch.

What are your plans for writing in April?  Any poetry reading or writing in the lineup?  I'm planning to push through with my poem a day plan, but also keep working on my current fiction writing project.  With that and the blogging, I'd say it was shaping up to be a very full month.

Bryce