Author: Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

Four-part structure and the writing process

Over the course of writing Gunslinger to the Stars, I’ve learned some interesting new things about my writing process, as well as being reminded of some of the basic lessons I learned back when I was getting started. These lessons have helped me to have some fantastic writing days, like today, where I hit 2200 WPH at one point and knocked off 1.7k words before lunch.

Just a week ago, though, I was struggling to write anything, which was strange considering how well the story had been coming along up to that point. The realization that helped me to get through that and get back to writing strong was that my difficulty was a function of story structure, and that different parts of the story require a different process.

What follows are my personal conclusions about my own writing process, which may or may not be similar to your own. Every writer is different, so what works for me may not work for you. At the same time, there are enough similarities that I hope my own process may provide some insight into your own.

Four-Part Story Structure

First of all, let’s talk about story structure. There are a lot of different possible structures, but the most common one in the West is the three-act structure. This often echoes the hero’s journey, which goes something like this:

heros_journeyFor purposes of this blog post, I’ll assume you’re already familiar with both the three-act structure and the hero’s journey. If not, there are plenty of other resources where you can learn about them in-depth.

I prefer to think in terms of four-part structure, however, where act two is divided into two halves. In typical three-act structure, the hero hits his lowest point at the midpoint of act two. This is also the midpoint of the story itself, where the hero reaches the nadir of the hero’s journey. In four-part structure, that midpoint is just treated like a plot point, dividing part two from part three. Everything else is the same.

Thus, when you frame a particular story in four-part structure, it looks like this:

  1. The Call to Adventure
  2. Tests, Allies, and Enemies
  3. The Darkest Hour
  4. The Final Battle

Part One: The Call to Adventure

The first part of the story typically starts in the ordinary world, until the inciting incident somewhere around the middle of part one calls the hero to adventure. He then either refuses the call (which usually leads to bad things because the call knows where you live), or he accepts it and has to fight off some threshold guardians to get into the realm of adventure (sometimes, he refuses it and has to fight the guardians). Typically around this point, he meets a mentor to help him on his way.

Prewriting: To get off to a good start, I have found that the key is to know (or at least have a good idea) how the story is going to end before I begin to write it. That way, I know that I’m starting in the right part and I have a general idea where I’m going. I don’t know how I’m going to get there yet, but that doesn’t really matter yet.

Writing: The hardest part about writing this part is the first scene. After that, it usually comes quite easily. It helps to do a bit of world building, or to outline the characters and their backstories, but it isn’t always necessary. Personally, I’ve found that I can discovery-write these things pretty well (and yes, if you haven’t guessed already, I’m a pantser).

Revising: This is usually the part that needs the most revising. It’s also the part that can get me into the most trouble if I don’t do it well. I’m a chronological writer, and if something in the story is seriously off, I have to go back and fix it before I can proceed to the end. I’ve forced myself to finish even when I knew that things were broken, and it only made the writing process worse. So for me, the beginning usually gets the most revision work, whether I plan on it or not.

Part Two: Tests, Allies, and Enemies

Part two is where the adventure really begins. The hero crosses the threshold into the unfamiliar world, and everything is new and exciting. This is also the part where things start to become truly dangerous. Not everyone is who they seem in this part, and the hero may fall into some traps. But the mentor is usually still there to help him get back up.

Prewriting: In my experience, this is the part that needs the least pre-writing. It’s almost always pure discovery. With the ending clearly in mind but still distant enough not to worry about, I can afford to let the story meander a little and take me to some unexpected places.

Writing: This is usually the easiest part of the story to write, for the same reasons as above. I can afford to do almost 100% discovery writing at this part, and it usually feels quite effortless. When the writing does get blocked, it’s usually because something in part one is totally broken.

Revising: Most of the revision process for part two consists of making sure that later events are properly foreshadowed. I usually don’t add enough foreshadowing when I write the first draft, so it’s essential to go back and add it later. Thankfully, this can usually be accomplished by a couple of tweaks, or adding a couple extra paragraphs to an already extant scene.

Part Three: The Darkest Hour

This is where the story gets real. The hero falls into a much larger trap than any of the others, and the mentor can no longer help him (usually because he’s dead). Alone, the hero has to find his own way out, usually hitting rock bottom along the way. Just when it looks like all is lost, some new twist sends the hero in a different direction, setting things up for the final act.

Prewriting: This is where prewriting goes from being unimportant to absolutely essential. Whereas in part two, I can afford to let the story meander a little bit, in part three I absolutely need direction. It’s not enough just to know how the story will ultimately end: at this point, I’ve found that I really need to map my way there.

Writing: This is also typically the most difficult part for me to write. However, when the prewriting is done well and the plot is set up properly, it’s actually not that bad. But it’s important to go really hard on your characters—to make life truly miserable for them. There can be no easy way outs for them, otherwise the entire story will suffer.

Revising: For part three, revising usually consists of putting scenes in the proper order, not in rewriting them completely from scratch. If the foundational elements of the previous two parts were set up correctly, then everything in part three will usually come out well too, but they’re almost always in the wrong order. Transitions then are the part that usually need the most cleanup.

Part Four: The Final Battle

At this point, the hero has a clear direction and a knowledge of how to get there. In climbing up from his lowest point, he finds the boon that will save the world, makes peace with the higher power, and comes back stronger than ever before. But the forces of evil have never been stronger either, and the clash marks the climax of the entire story. There may be a big damn hero moment, or a last minute rescue from the cavalry. There may also be a standoff with no apparent solution, or some truly complex power plays. Inevitably, though, there is a resolution, followed by a return (even if only to the world of adventure). The hero saves the world, gets the girl, and rides off into the sunset. Curtains, applause, and lights.

Prewriting: By this point, most of the prewriting has already been done. The important thing is to have the flexibility to change and adjust, because this is the point where the story often surprises me. It is also the point where discovery-writing is often the most satisfying.

Writing: At this point, I’m usually tearing it up in a white-hot heat of creative energy. It’s extremely rare that I’ll get blocked at this point, but if I do, the key is almost always to just write through it. Often, I’ll make notes of things to change in revision and just barrel ahead—and it works, because there’s no need to set anything up for later. This is the moment of truth, where everything comes together.

Revising: Most of the revision at this point of the story has to do with tying up loose ends. That’s usually not a problem for me, though, because I tend to write very clean. If there is a loose end, it’s usually something that I’ve made a note to fix earlier in the story. For me, the ending is usually the part that needs revising the least.

So there you have it. The biggest lesson I’ve learned just recently is how important it is not to neglect the prewriting aspect of the creative process, especially around part-three. When everything is in place, it makes the story flow so much better.

What are your thoughts? Any plotters or outliners out there with a different take on the process? Everyone is different, but we’re all basically trying to do the same thing, so it’s interesting to see what works for different people!

Still alive (though it may not seem like it)

Sorry for not posting to the blog in a while. I seem to be chronically disorganized, and updating the blog is unfortunately rather low on the priority list. But I’m still alive, and still writing.

Gunslinger to the Stars is coming along well, though it’s not been without its hiccups. I’m about halfway through right now, and while I’m probably not going to hit the original deadline, I should have no problem finishing the rough draft by the end of February.

I’m also happy to report that I’ve got the edits back for Captives in Obscurity (Sons of the Starfarers: Book V) and am working with the cover designer to get that part squared away soon. Once I have the cover, it’s a simple matter of writing up the metadata and formatting the ebook. So you can expect to see that go up for pre-order sometime in February.

Also in February, it looks like I’ll have a short story come out, possibly two! “The Gettysburg Paradox” is coming off of submission soon, and I recently wrote a J.M. Wight short titled “A Covenant of Hearts.” No idea where to submit that one, so I’ll probably just publish it myself. The J.M. Wight short needs a bit more work, but “The Gettysburg Paradox” is ready to go up almost right away. All I need to do is figure out a cover.

So even though things have been quiet, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes over here. Expect to see some more cool stuff really soon!

Gunslinger to the Stars: Sam introduces us to his guns

I was going to write another trope post for this Monday, but I got a little carried away with family history research (on the Texas Czech lines, no less), so instead I’m going to share another excerpt from my current WIP: Gunslinger to the Stars. I’m happy to report that it’s coming along fantastically well and the first draft should be finished early February.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Gunslinger, it’s basically Monster Hunter International meets Guardians of the Galaxy. I’m not as much of a gun nut as Larry Correia, but I hang out with a lot of friends who are, and they’re helping me out with that aspect of the story. The main character is Sam Kletchka of New Texas, one of the Gliese colonies in Earth-space, and his love of guns is as Texan as you can expect:

Before I continue, I should take a few moments to introduce you to my guns. I’ve acquired quite a variety in my travels, but when I started out from New Texas, I had only six. These weapons form the core of my arsenal, and have gotten me out of more hard spots than I can recount.

My father was never particularly religious, but my mother was a devout Christian, and she made me read the Bible cover to cover before I left home for the stars. In the quiet moments between adventures, I sometimes pull out my pocket KJV to read a passage or two. My favorite is the book of Psalms, and on the long voyage from New Texas to Aldebaran, I must have read it a dozen times. About midway through the voyage, I read the following passage in Psalm 36:

5 Thy Mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.

6 Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep; O Lord, thou preservest man and beast.

7 How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.

It was from this verse that my guns got their names.

MERCY is a supressed Ruger 22 Charger™ Rimfire Pistol. She’s fairly small and doesn’t pack much of a punch, but she’s as silent and stealthy as a Zan cloakship in deep space. Besides being perfect for cloak-and-dagger type stuff, Mercy is also quite excellent for hunting small game, on the few occasions where I’ve been stranded planetside without supplies.

The next two are AR-15 uppers that I can swap out depending on my needs. FAITHFULNESS is a suppressed 300 Blackout with a 9” barrel, perfect for boarding action. I use a homemade subsonic round with the ballistics tuned down just a notch, to allow for onboard fire that won’t accidentally puncture the ship’s hull. The suppressor is excellent for firing in confined spaces, and the standard 30 round magazine has plenty of capacity for most jobs.

RIGHTEOUSNESS is a .50 Beowulf upper that I can swap out for Faithfulness. This massive gun packs an enormous punch, enough to blow through a bulkhead and vent some atmo. I mix an oxidizer in the cartridges to allow it to fire in a vaccuum, making it an excellent weapon for EVA assaults. You just have to be careful to lock your magnetic boots firmly onto the ship’s hull, otherwise Newton’s third law will send you flying.

JUDGMENT is an M203 grenade launcher that attaches quite nicely onto Faithfulness and Righteousness. She makes the rifle a little heavier, but in zero gravity, that doesn’t really matter much. With the proper munitions, Judgment can light up a firefight like Christmas.

PRESERVATION is an 18” Mossberg 590A1™. She’s a tough little girl that can pack a serious punch. The best thing about shotguns, though, is that the ammunition is super easy to fabricate. That’s no small thing when you have to fab all your ammunition yourself. For that reason, if I were stranded on a desert planet and could take only one of my guns with me, it would be Preservation.

LOVE is my father’s trusty old 1911 9mm. She’s been in the family for quite a while, and when I left the Gliese colonies for the stars, he wanted me to take her. Besides being stupidly rugged, the 1911 is also quite easy to maintenance or to fabricate replacement parts. For that reason, it’s the handgun of choice for most offworld colonists.

KINDNESS is the Gliese Arms 2011 .45 ACP that you’ve already met. The 2011 is a lot like the 1911, but the 140mm double stack magazine allows for a capacity of 14+1, not bad for a .45. As you already saw from the gunfight at the Oasis, Kindness is a great gun for everyday carry, when you don’t know what you’re gonna need.

TRUST is a Himalayan Imports Chainpuri 15” Kukri: not a gun, but an excellent combat knife. The Nepalese Gurkhas were some of the most badass warriors of Earth, and the kukri is their signature weapon. I acquired Trust at the Earthfleet Academy on Luna, after winning a game of poker with my fellow cadets. She’s such a beauty, I wouldn’t dream of ever gambling her away.

Those are the weapons I started out with, and the main core of my personal arsenal. Over the course of my travels, I’ve picked up a few others, but I’ll introduce them to you later.

Tomorrow, I get to write about Sam’s other three guns: Faith, Hope, and Charity. These are alien weapons that he re-engineered for human use (he’s a fairly decent gunsmith—has to be, since he’s usually the only other human wherever he goes). True to its namesake, the greatest of these is Charity, for Charity never faileth, and whosoever is found possessed of it at the last day (or the end of the book), it shall be well with him.

Needless to say, Gunslinger to the Stars has a veritable arsenal of Chekhov’s guns. Before it’s over, I intend to fire them all. Repeatedly. If Sam had a theme song, this would probably be it:

On the way to 10k

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I plan to achieve my writing goal of hitting 10k words of fiction in a single day. The steps I laid out to getting there were:

  1. Write first thing every day.
  2. Write in timed, focused sessions.
  3. Strive to achieve 2k words per hour.
  4. Strive to hit at least 6 writing sessions.
  5. Pre-write each day for the next day.

I’m happy to report that the writing has been coming along very well! Ever since I started timing my sessions and keeping track of how much and how fast I write, it’s been as if someone turned on a switch inside my brain. The words are flowing, the story is coming along very well, and I’m a lot happier and more productive than I was only a month ago.

The main thing that does it is, ironically, forcing myself to stop every half hour or so. When I wake up in the morning and thing of how much I want to write that day, it can be a little daunting. By writing in short bursts, it helps to break the big goal down into parts. When you think too much about all the writing you want to achieve, it’s very easy to get caught up in the procrastination trap. But when you think of it as just a half-hour session of 400-600 words, it seems a lot more doable. And it is!

So things are coming along very well with Gunslinger to the Stars. My goal is to finish the first draft by February 6th and send it out to my first readers shortly thereafter. If things keep going the way they have been, I may actually finish it sooner.

As for reaching 10k words, I’m still a ways off but headed in the right direction. For now, I’m laying the foundation for it: building good habits and hitting a consistent stride. Once I’ve got that laid out, I’ll start to stretch myself, pushing the limits further and further until I’m ready to make the final approach to the summit. No sense in pushing too hard and burning out along the way.

In other news, I’ve sent Captives in Obscurity (Sons of the Starfarers: Book V) off to my editor, and should be getting it back in early February. The cover art should be ready around the same time. If all goes well, the book should be up for pre-order by the end of February, with a release date of May 15th.

I’m not sure when Patriots in Retreat (Book VI) will come out, since I’m still writing it, but as of right now I’m tentatively planning for a release sometime in August. After I’ve finished with Gunslinger to the Stars, I’ll move on to Patriots and see if I can’t knock that out before the end of February. If so, I might actually push the release date up to July.

As for other WIPs I intend to tackle, The Sword Keeper and Edenfall are on the top of the list. The free month for Genesis Earth went a lot better than I had expected, leading me to believe that there’s enough potential to make finishing the trilogy worthwhile. Besides, Edenfall is already plotted out, so if I can keep up the 10k pace it should be a cinch to write. Same with The Sword Keeper.

That just about does it for this post. I intended to write another Self-Sufficient Writer post responding to some of the craziness going on in the world right now, but that will have to hold off until next week. I’ve also got another trope post planned for Monday, so that should be interesting.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this video about how many twinkies it would take to power the Death Star. Take care!

George R.R. Martin may not be your bitch, but I am

Last week, George R.R. Martin surprised no one and disappointed everyone when he announced that The Winds of Winter would not come out before the next season of the Game of Thrones TV series that covers the events in that book. He apologized profusely to his fans, most of whom seemed to take it graciously, at least to his face. However, it spawned some heated discussions in the online communities that I frequent (most notably The Passive Voice) about the implicit contract between writers and reades.

This discussion is not new, even with regard to Mr. Martin. Way back in 2009, Neil Gaiman addressed this issue in a blog post where he stated quite memorably that “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch”:

People are not machines. Writers and artists aren’t machines.

You’re complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.

No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading, and I assume that you enjoyed it because you want to know what happens next.

So that’s one end of the spectrum: that writing is an art, that it can’t be forced, that trying to force it is wrong, and that writers have no obligation to their readers to force anything. Readers should not stalk their favorite writers or tell them what they should or should not be doing to produce the next book. As Mr. Martin said in his latest post:

Unfortunately, the writing did not go as fast or as well as I would have liked. You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and the Cocteau and whatever, but maybe all that had an impact… you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too…but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn’t, and that was true for me even when I was in my 20s.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Larry Correia. Two days after Mr. Martin announced that The Winds of Winter would not be finished in time for the TV series, Mr. Correia announced his own plans for the year: which of his books are coming out, which books he plans to write, which project he’s going to collaborate on, and which conventions and events he will (or more notably, will not) be attending.

I don’t know whether he meant this as a dig at Mr. Martin specifically, but he included the following statement:

To all those sensitive artist types who whine about how they can’t rush art, and can’t get any writing done, oh, BS. Quit your crying, put your big girl panties on, and treat it like your job. Because it is a REAL JOB. And like all real jobs, if you don’t work then you shouldn’t GET PAID. So shut up, quit screwing around, and get back to work.

The part that really stood out to me, though, was his announcement that he would not be at DragonCon or GenCon this year:

I’m skipping DragonCon and GenCon this year, which pains me because I love those, but again, I’m trying to up the novel production, and all those cons in a row over the summer kick my butt.

I found it interesting because George R.R. Martin is well-known as a frequent convention attendee, to the point that by his own admission attending these conventions is his “way of life.” Larry Correia knows that his writing productivity takes a hit when he attends too many conventions, but George R.R. Martin either doesn’t know or has chosen to prioritize attending fannish events over his own writing.

This made me curious about Mr. Martin’s writing productivity, so I did a little digging and found the following figures, calculated by his fans:

grrm_wordcount

Those numbers are rather stunning. He averaged only 200 words a day when writing A Dance with Dragons? Just for reference, this blog post is about seven hundred words so far, and I’m writing it while taking a break from my other writing (word count so far today: 1,100 words, and that’s a little low). Even if we allow for five drafts written at the same speed, five drafts still only comes to 1,000 words a day.

Now, I do think Mr. Gaiman makes a good point that it is neither healthy nor helpful to try and micromanage everything that a writer does. We can’t spend every waking hour working on the next book, and even if we did, it probably wouldn’t turn out as well, because refilling the creative well is an important part of the writing process. And I also have to admit that if you ran a similar calculation on my own books (especially the early ones), you would probably find some similarly embarrassing figures.

(Though to be fair to myself, I tend to have multiple irons in the fire at any given time, so a straight start date to publication date calculation doesn’t tell the whole story—and it probably doesn’t tell the whole story with George R.R. Martin as well. But still, even if those figures were twice as high, they would still be absurdly low for a working writer.)

When Mr. Gaiman and Mr. Martin say that the writing “comes when it comes” and there’s nothing they can do about it, I think they’re wrong. Dead wrong. Writing is an art, but it is also a craft. It can’t be forced, but it can be structured. Mr. Correia has evaluated how productively he writes and structured his convention-going plans accordingly. Has Mr. Martin?

I also think they’re dead wrong about the writer having no obligation to the reader. That’s total bunk. Reading is an act of collaboration between the writer and the reader: without readers, stories would never exist. They would just be markings on a page, or electrons on a drive, or at best ideas and daydreams in the writer’s head. If a tree falls in the forest, does it really make a sound? If a book is never opened, does it ever tell a story?

Part of this may be the difference in perspective between indie writers and traditionally published writers. In the traditional system, writers were paid an advance on royalties by their publishers. The contract also allowed for royalties, but those figures were set so low that most books never earned out their advance. Publishers made up for it by raising the advances for the writers they wanted to keep.

In contrast, indie writers live and die by their royalty checks. Had a good month? Congratulations, you can afford to eat. Had a bad month? Tsk, tsk. Better hurry up with that WIP of yours, because the longer it takes to publish it, the longer it takes for you to get paid.

But even for the fantastically successful writers who never have to worry about how they’ll pay their bills, I still believe that they have as much of an obligation to their readers as the rest of us. Without readers, we would not be able to do what we do. Without readers, it would be impossible to pursue writing as a career. We all want to live the dream, and the only way to do that is by treating our readers well.

So George R.R. Martin may not be your bitch, but I most certainly am. Writing is not something that happens only sometimes: it’s my job, and I do it every day. And as for accountability, I absolutely feel that I’m accountable to my readers. They are the whole reason I am able to do this in the first place. If that makes me their bitch, then so be it.

WIP excerpt: Gunslinger to the Stars

Here’s the first thousand words from my current WIP, Gunslinger to the Stars. It’s a departure from my usual stuff: a shoot-em-up adventure in the vein of Firefly and Guardians of the Galaxy. TONS of fun to write, and the ending is going to be absolutely spectacular. This may turn out to be the most entertaining book I’ve written to date.

But enough of me blabbering about it. Here it is!

Stranded in the Armpit of the Galaxy

The Gorinal Star Cluster is, in every meaningful sense, the armpit of the galaxy. It was just my luck to get stranded there right as shit hit the fan.

I didn’t know that at the time, of course. My ship, the Star Runner, was in pretty bad shape after a botched-up mission that I’d rather not talk about, and since the only trading commodity I had was the fuel in my tank, I was getting rather desperate for work. The Gorinal Cluster wasn’t my first choice of venue, but it was the closest place with plenty of job opportunities for a man of fortune like me.

The name’s Sam, by the way. Sam Kletchka. I was born on Gliese 832c, othewise known as New Texas, but didn’t spend much time there. Shipped off to Earthfleet Academy when I was nineteen standard years and dropped out after my first year to seek my fortune among the stars.

You see, back in those days, Earthfleet consisted mostly of 20th century submarines, lifted into orbit and repurposed for space. Only thirty-five years had passed since we’d made contact with the galactics, and we were in a mad scramble to put as many colonies on the starmap as possible. The Immortals had promised not to build a jumpgate within fifty light-years of Sol, and tech trading had given us fission-powered FTL and cheap ground-to-orbit. All of this meant that Earthfleet’s resources were tied up in the Gliese colonies—no boldly going where no one has gone before, at least not for members of Earthfleet.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to seek out new life and new civilizations—they were more than happy to come to us. So after dropping out of the Earthfleet Academy, I signed up on a Hyadean star freighter and never looked back.

The voyage out to the jumpgate at Aldebaran was long and boring. Like most ships built by the galactic junior races, Hyadean starships aren’t designed for long-range FTL. The reason for this became apparent when we arrived. Imagine an ancient ring almost five kilometers in diameter, built out of virtually indestructible material. When you look through the ring, you’re looking at a whole other starscape, light-years away. It very literally is a doorway to the stars, and it’s always open, with no gatekeepers to stop anyone from coming through. The Aldebaran gate has been open for hundreds of thousands of years—more than a hundred times older than the pyramids—and it’s one of the younger ones.

From there, it was a simple matter to travel between stars. The Immortals built the jumpgate network more than a hundred million years ago, and it runs almost the whole length of the galaxy. They don’t levy fees for it, either: the gates are as much a feature of the galactic landscape as planets, or black holes, or nebulae. Anyone can use them, and no one wants to live in a galaxy without them.

Which is why it freaked the hell out of everyone when the Gorinal Prime jumpgate went dark.

I had just flown the Star Runner through not fifteen minutes before. My ship only had about a half-tank of deuterium left, thanks to some evasive maneuvers I’d been forced to pull, and I’d also dumped most of my cargo, so I was pretty much flat broke. To add injury to insult, my right sublight engine was shot all to hell and the cabin was venting atmo. Like I said, I’d rather not talk about it.

In any case, I was navigating my approach to G-Prime V when the jumpgate shut down. Went dead. Turned off. There wasn’t a flash or anything, just a very brief flicker across the portal membrane, and then it was nothing more than a giant floating ring.

The comms went haywire almost immediately. A massive Nidrexian freighter has been passing through (one of those insanely long jumpgate hopping ships) and had effectively been chopped in half. Emergency first responders from the nearby monitoring station were scrambling to help out, and all the other ships queued to leave were filling the airwaves with all sorts of chatter. No one knew what to do, because nothing like this had ever happened before.

Yes, I’ve heard all the theories. No, none of them are true. How do I know? You’re jumping ahead. Trust me, it’s worth it to hear the full story.

So there I was, staring slack-jawed at a screen that showed the impossible: a jumpgate that had just shut down. Realizing that I was broke and stranded, I did what any sensible man would do: I headed to the nearest bar to get a drink.

The fifth planet in the Gorinal Prime system is the only one that’s habitable, for a given value of “habitable.” The world is essentially a giant desert, with oceans of sand instead of water. Fortunately, the spaceport that served as the main hub for the system was on the planet’s north pole. The weather was cool enough there to have clouds, rain, and even a couple of salty seas. Figuring it was the best I could do on a half-empty fuel tank, I decided to go down and try what was left of my rapidly deteriorating luck.

The first thing I learned after leaving Earth-space was that every jumpgate hub has a seedy cantina somewhere nearby. Sure enough, the place I was looking for was just a couple hundred yards outside the main spaceport entrance.

The second thing I learned was to get used to being the only human everywhere I went. Oh, it’s not so bad in the Orion Arm, where you can usually find a small expat community if you look hard enough. Xenopoligists, merchanters, vagabonds, and men of fortune like myself are all pretty common in that corner of the galaxy. But the Gorinal Cluster is in the Scutum-Crux Arm, on the far side of the galactic core. In that part of the galaxy, humans are as rare as ice on a neutron star.

So you can imagine my reaction when I saw a twenty-something blonde at the bar—one who was definitely not happy to see me.

Gunslinger to the Stars
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Playing with Tropes: Pragmatic Villainy

So as part of my effort to blog more often, I’ve decided to bring back the trope posts. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, perhaps you remember the Trope Tuesday series that I used to do. Those were mostly just a rehashing of each trope’s tvtropes page, with a bit of commentary at the end. For this new series, though, I’m going to assume you’ve already read the page and are familiar with the trope, and focus on the commentary. I’m calling this series Playing with Tropes, and I’ll do a new post on the first and third Monday of each month.

To start off this new series, I’d like to take a look at Pragmatic Villainy. There’s something especially chilling about a villain who not only possesses power, but knows how to wield it too. In fact, one of the scariest villains is the guy who rises up the ranks through sheer ruthlessness and ambition, starting as an underling and rising to the top. These villains know how to inspire and manipulate their followers, how to use their limited resources efficiently, how to form secret alliances and backstab their enemies, and how to keep a strategic perspective while making brilliant tactical plays. It doesn’t matter whether they command an empire or whether all they’ve got is a cargo-cult following on some far-off backwater. No matter where you put them, these are the guys who are truly dangerous.

It’s worth pointing out that there are a lot of figures from history who fit this trope. A badass colonel when the French Revolution began, he took advantage of the chaos to rise to power, declaring himself emperor and restoring order to his broken country. He then took his armies and conquered nearly the whole of Europe and the Mediterranean, destroying the Holy Roman Empire, invading as far as Egypt and the Nile, and leading his troops through the gates of Moscow before suffering defeat before the Russian Winter. Ever the pragmatist, he developed the modern canning process in order to supply his troops with food. And even after the European powers crushed his armies and exiled him to the island of Elba, he still found a way to escape and very nearly did it all again.

And Napoleon is by no means the most prominent historical example. Hitler was extremely pragmatic, and probably would have won the war if he’d actually listened to his generals and not interfered with their ability to do their jobs. Stalin was also quite pragmatic, identifying and removing his rivals and ruling with an iron fist. Today, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are some of the best examples of this trope.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell whether a pragmatic villain is really a villain at all. This is because pragmatic villains often see evil as a means, not an end. You won’t see a lot of gratuitous puppy-kicking with these guys—in fact, you may even see them pet the puppy for the cameras… before quietly taking it out back to skin it.

That’s not to say that pragmatic villains are more redeemable than your average big bad. Far from it, in fact. As Darth Vader put it, “if only you knew the power of the dark side!” In the clash between good and evil, evil often has the upper hand right until the middle of the third act. Even when evil doesn’t have the upper hand, the old poem often applies:

Might and Right are always fighting
In our youth it seems exciting.
Right is always nearly winning.
Might can hardly keep from grinning.

—Clarence Day, “Might and Right”

To really pull off a pragmatic villain, it’s important to make sure that your villain is truly evil. Grand Admiral Thrawn from the old Star Wars Expanded Universe was a great example of this, as was Admiral Ysanne Isard. Even with limited resources, they pulled off some brilliant moves: Thrawn by placing a cloaked warship beneath a planetary shield, to make it appear that he had shield-busting weapons, and Isard by spreading a lethal pandemic that, while curable, was extremely expensive to treat, thus spreading panic and instability as everyone fought over the cure. Yet in spite of their pragmatism, it was clear that neither of them would stop at nothing in their rise to power.

What’s really awesome is when a pragmatic villain manages to pull off a Xanatos Gambit. In fact, pragmatic villains are the only kinds of villains who can pull that kind of gambit, simply because of all the planning and foresight that must necessarily go into it. For the same reason, there tends to be a lot of overlap between this trope and the Chessmaster.

When a villain falls short, it’s often because they were lacking in this trope. A huge example of this for me was The Hunger Games. When the villains in that book backpedaled after Peta and Katniss threatened to kill each other, I pretty much threw the book at the wall. The kind of people who can be manipulated by angsty lovestruck teenagers are not the kind of people who rise to power in a totalitarian dictatorship. And while there’s certainly a place for B movie villains, the Evil Overlord List exists for a reason.

 

Resolution: 10k in 2016

Back in 2012, I set a resolution to write 10k words of fiction in a single day. I had read Rachel Aaron’s semi-famous blog post about it, and decided to give it a shot myself. The most I managed, however, was a handful of 5k writing days—impressive, but still far short.

In the years since, my writing pace has slowed down a lot more than I would like—not because of writing-related reasons, but because of things like procrastination, poor time management, and general disorganization. Well, it’s time for a change, and the new year seems like the best time to shake things up.

Rather than set a goal like “write every day” or “write X,XXX words per week,” I think this goal will do a lot more to put me in the right direction. It’s the difference between setting a goal to go to the moon vs. put something new in orbit every few months. When NASA set the moon as their primary goal, it not only provided them with the single-minded focus that they needed to get stuff done, but it led to a tremendous amount of scientific and engineering breakthroughs in the process. I’m hoping that something similar will happen with me.

So here’s the deal:

I can type at a maximum speed of about 100 WPM. Logistically, that means that the absolute minimum time needed to physically hit 10k words is 100 minutes, or 1:40 hours. That’s typing at top speed with no breaks, no mistakes, and no time to slow down and think.

I’ve measured my writing in the past, and found that my typical fiction writing speed is between 800 and 1,000 words per hour. To hit 10k words at that rate, I would have to work for an excruciating 10 to 12 hours a day—and that’s pure writing time. It doesn’t include things like breaks, water cooler chats, dinking around on social media, or any of the numerous other ways that regular employees waste time while on the clock.

Clearly, if I’m ever going to hit 10k words in a single day, I need to increase the speed at which I write. But how?

writingrate_by_starttimeWell, I know from my writing log experiment that the time of day doesn’t really affect my writing speed. That means I can start as early as I need to, and the earlier I can start the better. So that pretty much sets up the first step to achieving this 10k goal:

Step 1: Start off each day by writing as soon as possible.

writingrate_by_durationFrom the writing log, it looks like I tend to write fastest in short sprints that are less than one hour. That makes sense: the longer the writing session, the easier it is to get distracted and fall into the procrastination trap.

I have a hunch that the best way to increase my writing speed is to write in short, focused bursts. I’ve never actually tried to limit my writing time before, but it seems that I could really achieve a lot more focus by doing so. It will take some experimentation to figure out the optimal session length, but judging from the data it will probably be less than one hour.

Step 2: Increase speed by writing in short, focused sessions.

Obviously 10 to 12 hours of pure writing time is unreasonable. Even without a day job or other time obligations, burn-out would be a major issue. A much more reasonable amount of time to plan for would be 4-6 hours of pure writing time per day.

At 6 hours, to reach 10k words I would have to write at about 1.6k words per hour, which is reasonable. At 4 hours, I would have to write 2.5k words per hour, which is a lot tougher but still well below the 6k WPH physical limit, especially if I’m writing in short, focused bursts. From this, it’s not difficult to derive the next couple of steps.

Step 3: Increase average writing speed to 2,000 words per hour.

Step 4: Structure each day to achieve 6+ writing sessions.

The real trick to achieving this, as Rachel Aaron and numerous others have pointed out, is to take care of all the non-writing things that make the writing possible. This involves having an outline of some sort, or at least some idea of what is going to go on the page.

I’m a pantser, so I don’t write detailed outlines. However, I’ve found that it can help a lot to sketch out the next few scenes before I write them, and to browse tvtropes like a menu. In addition, long walks really help me to flesh out the story in my head. Without these pre-writing activities, the blank page can be really oppressive.

In more specific terms, I think it’s reasonable to allot 1-2 hours each day to pre-writing activities. Anything more than that would encroach on my actual writing time. Fortunately, I can usually hit two birds with one stone: for example, using my time on tvtropes to find material for blog posts, or outline the next few scenes in my head while hiking or exercising. But it’s important to make time for these things.

Step 5: Spend time each day in pre-writing activities for the next day.

These five steps seem like a good place to start. I’ll post them on my wall and revisit them in a month or so to see how they’re working out.

Ten thousand words in a single day is going to be tough, but if I can hit it at least once this year, I think it will remove a major block in my head and allow the words to really flow. It’s not just about writing faster, it’s about proving to myself that this is something I can do, and to use that as motivation to accomplish much more.

Best of luck with your own resolutions in 2016!

Response to Steve Davidson on Reconciling with the Puppies

So my last blog post about the Sad Puppies has turned into a kerfluffle of its own, which has been very interesting to watch as it unfolds. Mike Glyer of File 770 linked to it, Lou Antonelli’s File 666 picked it up, and Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories wrote a lengthy response to it, which I think is deserving of a response on my part.

Mr. Davidson’s post is interesting, and worth reading. We obviously don’t see eye to eye on a number of things, but it would be rather petty to go through our disagreements line by line. Instead, the part that I want to respond to is his call to action at the end:

Want to reconcile?  Here’s what puppies must do.

1: Stop scamming the system.  If you want to recommend works that you think are worthy of the award, go ahead and do so.  But drop the political agenda (you’re dragons are imaginary) and eliminate the hateful, snarky commentary

If you’re looking for “hateful, snarky commentary,” I’m sure that you’ll be able to find it. On the fringes of both sides, there are a lot of people with blogs and strong opinions. I’d count myself as one of them—while I align with the Sad Puppies, I’m not a leader or organizer by any stretch, just another guy with opinions and a blog. Don’t be so quick to look for ammunition, because there’s a lot of it lying around.

Kate Paulk, one of the Sad Puppy organizers, has pointed out that Sad Puppies 4 is open to nomination suggestions from anyone, which appears to be what you’re calling for. And honestly, I think a lot of us don’t want to see conservative writers edge out everyone else so much as to see them go head to head with more liberal writers on a more equal playing field. It’s not about slaying imaginary dragons so much as breaking down walls.

So on this first point, Mr. Davidson and I tend to be in agreement. This seems like a reasonable step for reconciliation, and it’s one that the Sad Puppies 4 already appear to be taking.

2: Stop attacking the very people who are offering you a bridge

If a bridge is being offered, I’m willing to take it. If people are just trying to get the last word in edgewise, which was the vibe I personally got from Mr. Martin’s original post, then it will probably just lead to more kerfluffles. Then again, if everyone’s fighting to get in the last word, the squabbling will never end, and while that may make for good sport, it makes for poor reconciliation. So again, fair point.

3: Please learn a little bit about the history of Worldcon and the Hugo Awards

I’m not entirely convinced that the Hugo Awards will continue to hold the same influential place in fandom in the next few years. Even with last year’s massive turnout, there were less than 6,000 ballots cast. With those low numbers, it wouldn’t take much for a rival convention to organize their own awards and eclipse the Hugos in short order—especially if a large contingent of fandom becomes disaffected.

This is why I think it’s important to distinguish between the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies. A useful analogy can be drawn from Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters:

These are the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za. They want to make the galaxy safe by enslaving all intelligent life, either by encasing their home worlds in impenetrable slave shields, or by enlisting them as Heirarchy battle thralls to conquer and enslave other species.

These are the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah. They want to make the galaxy safe by “cleansing,” or exterminating, all intelligent life. They are totally without mercy and cannot be pacified.

The Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah are locked in a civil war over control of the Sa-Matra, an ancient precursor weapon that will enable the victor to conquer the galaxy. If you don’t find a way to stop them in time, then the Kohr-Ah will win the civil war and use the Sa-Matra to exterminate everyone.

The Sad Puppies are like the Kzer-Za, the Rabid Puppies are like the Kohr-Ah, and the Hugo Awards are like the Sa-Matra. The Rabid Puppies want to use the Hugo Awards to burn down the fan community, whereas the Sad Puppies want to reform the Hugo Awards to make Science Fiction less about political correctness and more about telling good stories.

Now, I am not a Sad Puppy spokesperson, so this may not be the most accurate or flattering analogy. Fellow puppies, please correct me if I’m wrong. But it’s worth pointing out that in the Star Control series, the Ur-Quan ultimately become pacified and join the New Alliance of Free Stars. This only happens after the Kohr-Ah have been defeated.

I think that’s what most of the Sad Puppies ultimately want: to have a place with the rest of fandom, where even if we sometimes have heated disagreements (has there ever been a time when all of fandom was in agreement about anything?), we aren’t cast out as “racists,” “Nazis,” or “misogynists,” as happened with Puppygate 2015.

The Rabid Puppies, on the other hand, just want to watch the world burn. And the more vociferous the rhetoric becomes, the more that it plays into their hands. Speaking as a Sad Puppy sympathizer who watched the 2015 Hugos from the sidelines, after all the abuse that I saw my friends receive, it kind of made me want to burn down the Hugos too.

You want to defeat the Rabids? Then reach out to the Sad Puppies, find commonalities with us, and make an alliance. If we can show the world that Science Fiction and Fantasy brings us all together in spite of our ideological differences, then all of fandom will win.

And so regarding Mr. Davidson’s third point, I don’t think it’s about respecting the prestige of the awards so much as listening to and understanding the other side of fandom. And I’ll admit, I can do a better job listening to the side of fandom that sees the puppies (sad or rabid) as the enemy. If they can return the favor, I think that will go a long way.

4: If you want to be counted as Fans, then be Fans.  Fans who care attend Worldcon, nominate their conscience and attend the business meeting to effect change they think is needed.  They work WITH and within fandom – they do not set themselves up as a cabal that engages in fear and hate.

If that’s a challenge to be more involved in the Hugo Awards, then it’s one that I can accept. In 2015, I largely watched from the sidelines, and if I do the same this year then my opinion is pretty empty. I do count myself as a part of fandom, and I can respect the call to put my money where my mouth is.

I’m not entirely convinced that “no one controls [the Hugos].” Overtly, of course not, but there are indirect ways to accomplish the same thing, through whisper campaigns and the manipulation of cliques. But as Mr. Davidson points out, it’s hypocritical to criticize that without also trying to get involved. And if that’s the invitation he’s extending, I am willing to accept—no hate required.