info dumps – One Thousand And One Parsecs

With the Lightnings by David Drake

Daniel Leary, Lieutenant in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, dreams of commanding a military starship one day. Unfortunately, as the estranged son of a corrupt senator, and with almost no money to his name, he has virtually no chance of ever seeing it happen.

While serving in an assignment on Kostrama, a neutral trade world between Cinnabar and her mortal enemies, the Alliance, he meets Adele Mundy, chief librarian of the Kostraman capitol. The title is virtual meaningless, however, as the uncultured Kostramans would give the position to anyone–even a political exile from Cinnibar such as Adele. Her whole family was assassinated by Leary’s father, and she has sworn to take revenge.

Little do they both know, the Alliance has other plans.

Ever since I met David Drake at World Fantasy 2009 in San Jose, I’ve been meaning to read one of his books. I must say, I picked a good one. With the Lightnings is the first book in his RCN Series, which is basically David Drake’s take on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels. Think Napoleon-era naval battles and political intrigue…in space.

Does it sound good already? Yeah, I thought so.

I was a little surprised at first, because the first chapter started with a bunch of info dumps. It took until about the halfway mark for the action to really start, but when it did, it was awesome. A bunch of navy guys marooned on a hostile planet behind enemy lines, trying to survive a planetwide coup and blowing all kinds of stuff up along the way–yeah, it was cool.

The thing I enjoyed most about this book, however, was the insight into the minds of the officers and the way the officers and soldiers interacted. You can tell that David Drake has experience in the military–lots of experience.

It was evident in the little things the main character noticed–the colors and patterns of soldiers’ uniforms, competency among his own men and incompetency in men not under his command, leadership style and how he dealt with crises–stuff like that. The language was colorful, but when the soldiers swore, their language had a bite to it that went beyond the actual words. The people felt gritty, but very real.

At World Fantasy, I mentioned to David Drake that I’d read some of Joe Haldeman’s works, and knew they were both Vietnam vets. He remarked that Haldeman’s works are very much different than his own: Haldeman’s characters are constantly stabbing each other in the back, whereas in Drake’s works, there is always a sense of teamwork and unity, even when the going gets messy.

I could definitely see that in With the Lightnings–it’s one of the things that made the book so fun to read. Yes, things get pretty tough and a lot of people die, but there’s always a sense of loyalty within the platoon (or whatever the unit is called).

With the Lightnings is a great space opera action/adventure story. After reading it, I really want to read more books in the RCN series. If you want a good, fun military sf adventure story, this is a great one to pick up.

“Why people read”

Dave Farland puts out this great e-newsletter called “Dave’s Daily Kick-in-the-Pants.” For the kick today, he suggested the following exercise:

You probably have a good idea about what you want to write—horror, mainstream, fantasy, historical, romance, westerns, religious fiction, and whatnot. Sit down for ten minutes and on the left-hand side of your paper, list five things that you feel you most like in the fiction you read. On the right-hand side of your paper, list the biggest potential danger that you see in trying to create that effect.

Doing this exercise will help you understand who your potential audience is, and some of the challenges that you may face in reaching that audience.

This was my response:

Why I read:

1) To meet interesting characters and get lost with them in an exciting fantastic world.

2) To think deeper about fundamental truths I see in my own life.

3) To feel like I understand another person and connect with them.

4) To be reassured that true heroism is real, alive, and within the realm of possibility.

5) To experience beauty in the language and metaphor, the imagery and tension.

Potential dangers:

1) Trying to write about a world without a story–all info dumps, exposition, lacking interesting characters with whom the reader can journey and experience the world. Story IS experience, and experience does not exist independent of the person doing the experiencing.

2) Waxing allegorical or didactic in the writing–trying to force the message instead of leaving it open for the reader to discover multiple layers of meaning.

3) Focusing so hard on the character that the plot lacks the structure and tension to keep the reader interesting. Characters do not exist separate from plot or setting; they change and grow in reaction to both.

4) Creating a hero whose struggle is so far removed from the real world or our real life experience that the reader feels that this type of person could only exist within the pages of a book. Or, trying so hard to follow the monomyth structure that the story falls flat (ie Star Wars I, II, III).

5) Thinking that poetic license frees you from basic rules of style and grammar. Creating metaphors that are so unusual that they are merely non sequiturs. Writing prose so thick and “literary” that it kicks the reader out of the book.

Ugh. Just ugh.

Man, it was hard to write. So hard, I only just finished, and it’s 1:30 am. Ugh.

The reason it was hard was because the character’s reactions in this scene needed to be totally revamped. That also necessitated a complete shift in the structure of the writing, because the rough draft consisted almost entirely of internal feelings and reflections. Indeed, the rough draft of this scene was about as close to an info dump as I will ever allow myself to come.

Or so I tell myself. The first rewrite tried to keep things internal, just with the new reactions and motivations, but…well, before I knew what I was doing, I was info dumping. Yes. Shame on me, I went and committed one of my greatest pet peeves. And I felt dirty afterwards, too.

Well, guess what happened? I just kept writing, dumping out the info that I , but it kept coming out slower and slower, like wringing the last few drops out of a washcloth. I didn’t know where to end, so I decided to cut it out somewhere in the middle…but then I got to the next scene from this character’s point of view, and realized that I was lacking the right transition to that part of the story.

Everything was falling apart.

So…I couldn’t just cut out all that stuff that I’d vomited onto the page. It was a butt ugly info dump, but I had to get it across somehow. I decided the only way to do it was to add in an extra scene.

Trouble was, for the sake of the flow of the chapter itself, I couldn’t just add all that stuff in another scene. For starters, the nature of the stuff I’d just dumped on the page necessitated two scenes, but I didn’t have another one to bring in to break them apart. I didn’t want to have three scenes all in a row from the same point of view–that would just be clumsy.

Ugh. Just ugh.

So, how to solve it? Take out a chainsaw and perform some delicate surgery. I threw out virtually the entire info dump that I’d spent a good part of my day writing, and made some fundamental changes to the world that I’m writing that totally negated all of that previous stuff (I can do that, you know. One of the perks of being a science fiction / fantasy writer–you can play god with the world you create). Then, with the new changes I’d made to the world, I came up with a totally different scene–one that actually worked–and inserted that after the very brief, almost prologue-ish opening scene of introspection.

And then, when I was working with something a little more concrete, I was back in that wonderful place where character shines through and suspense builds through a functional plot. No more info dumping–I felt so clean, so free of sin. Great.

It still took bloody forever to finish, though. All that wrangling from earlier in the day killed my momentum, so it was an uphill battle the whole way. Ugh.

Looking back, am I satisfied with what I wrote? Honestly, no. But the revisions it need are the kind that can wait until the 2.0 draft, not the kind that are preventing me from finishing the first draft.

Those problems, I’m afraid, are yet to come.

…and they all lived evily ever after.

Today we had a quark writing group party, and it was lots of fun! We all went up to drek‘s new house, up in Draper, and read some of our really old, really bad first attempts at writing stories. Good times!

Drek, Nick, lexish, slipperyjim, jakeson, gamila, aneeka, and one of my friends from the FLSR writing group all came up. Jakeson and his crew got lost on the way, but we had a good time hanging out, chatting, eating the pita bread and hummous that I’d cooked (I figured everyone else would bring sugar-heavy treats, so I cooked something a little more on the healthy side–still delicious, as evidenced by how much everyone ate!), and talking about how we’d gotten started writing.

I think a lot of us had similar stories–while we all wrote for different reasons, we all tried to do something big in high school, something that marked a turning point of some sort. The other common thread that ran through our stories was…how laughably bad they were! There were gradations, of course (Nick’s story that started with the word “Gandalf” and only got worse was pretty ridiculously crazy), but all of our stuff was pretty bad.

It can be both fun and painful to look back on past stuff, especially the stuff you wrote back in high school. It’s like, all the painful awkwardness of high school is not limited to your social life, it seeps into your writing as well, especially if that’s when you first try out your hand at the craft. So many cliches, so much bad grammar, so many viewpoint errors and info dumps…ARGH!!!

Of course, that is precisely what made it so entertaining. The awkward, emo, immature teenage grasp of the universe, combined with dozens of stale cliches and atrocious grammar–brilliant! I’m glad we were all at a point where we could look back on this stuff and laugh. It can do you good to air out your closet and let go of some of the old stuff you are sure would destroy you if you ever let it saw the light of day.

My first writing attempt was a novel that has since been entirely lost. I printed up a hard copy, once a long time ago, but I’ve lost that one and really have no desire to try and dreg it up. Of course, all the digital copies haven’t survived. My second novel attempt, however, I have in both digital and hard copy. That’s the one that I dipped back into for this writing party.

I actually sent out a copy of this to my aunt in Washington DC, who is/was an editor for a magazine. She read about the first twenty or thirty pages and sent me this letter, which I will use to finish off this post. The only places I’ve used ellipses are when my aunt described problems specific to certain passages and quoted them.

October 14, 1999

Dear onelowerlight [name, obviously, has been changed 😛 ]

The manuscript your mom sent home with Evan has proven to be an interesting read in many ways. It is wonderful to see people take an interest in writing. This pastime has given me many hours of satisfaction. I find that the joy is in the journey and that the process is as important to me as the finished job. However, it is always satisfying to have a finished product that I feel good about.

What it looks like you have is a wonderful outline for a novel. Your language is colorful and descriptive. The battle scene held my interest and made me want to know what was going to happen next. My intent was to read the manuscript from beginning to end purely for the joy of reading it. The urge to edit, an urge that often gets in my way as I write a first draft, got in my way as I read. Hence I was not able to follow through. I have written on some of the pages. What follows are a few other observations.

A really good writer named John Gardner said that a piece of fiction opens up a dream to the reader. Anything that causes the reader to become aware of the author or that jolts him out of the fictive dream does not belong. It is always helpful to let a manuscript cool for several days and then begin to read it. This will help you be more objective. Sometimes the things that seem marvelous turn out to be less enchanting than one thought during the rapture of creation.

Titles are difficult. Would anyone have read Catch 22 by another name? Some people don’t think so. It has been postulated that the reason the story about The Man Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain didn’t do better as a movie–and presumable a book–was because of the length of the title. For many authors the title is the last thing to be written.

Your first two or three pages contain a good deal of “throat clearing.” An opening needs to grab the reader so he will continue. There needs to be a problem, action and change. It should be action that is vital to the story. Someone is going on a trip. Someone is going into battle. someone is getting married. Someone is being born. Unless you want to write erotic literature it would be better not to start with conception. Work the background in later. In The Gospel of John the first few verses talk about the Word. Immediately the Word is identified with the Son of God and the story of his baptism. The problem of establishing himself as a teacher is presented. In episode IV of Star Wars the force is not explained to us at the beginning, rather we see what it can do. It isn’t until Solo talks about fools who believe in an ancient religion that we begin to have some idea th at the force is more than magic. The characters give all this information to us.

Point of view is the perspective that the story is told from. T he most difficult and therefore least used these days is the omniscient narrator. A good rule of thumb is to see the story through the eyes of the person with the problem. Many authors write in first person. One can also use second or third person. Third person is similar to first person except the pronoun I isn’t used as much. (Actually it is more complicated than that, but that will suffice for now.) Sometimes a narrator who doesn’t see into anyone’s mind tells a story. Most fiction that looks like omniscient narrator is actually being told from the point of view of one of the characters. The narrator can then see into the mind of one person and all the other action is viewed through his eyes. Sometimes a novel will contain oone person’s point of view in one chapter and that of another character in another. This seems to work. It is confusing when shifts occur without warning.

Psychic distance has to do with how close you want your reader to be to the story. Stephen King wants to inspire terror. He gets his readers as close as he can. You hear breathing, feel sweat, hearts race. Jane Austin keeps her readers at a great distance. You see the lights, you hear the conversation, it is all very proper–no sweat, no breathing, no racing hearts. Just as with the point of view, the important thing is that the narrative remains consistent. It must not switch in the middle of a sentence, paragraph, or chapter.

Write in active voice as much as possible. Your English teacher will tell you all about this. Be aware that verbs ending in “ing” do not help your story. (Running up the hill after Jill and tripping over a rock Jack stumbled.) This slows the action of the story down but when used sparingly can add emphasis. The following construction works better (Jack ran up the hill after Jill. He tripped over a rock and stumbled. “D___!” he grumbled. Jill took water from her bucket and soap from her pocket and washed his mouth out.)…

…You have many long sentences. Your writing will be tighter and stronger with shorter sentences and fewer prepositional phrases…

…There are lots of ways to deal with dialogue. You can put the dialogue first and description second…you can put the dialogue at the end…you can break it up the way you have in your manuscript or you can put description on either sie of it…Like every other element of your story, you don’t want it to call attention to itself.

I believe you changed fonts to show a change in viewpoint or in who is speaking. For me this is very distracting. There are other good ways that work. Also it is easier for me to read when it is double-spaced.

Two books that I have found most helpful are John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. It is out in paperback. John Gardner also wrote a wonderful fantasy called Grendal. It is not very long. It is told from the point of view of the monster. The other book is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

Thank you for sharing your manuscript with me. It takes great courage to share one’s work. I admire you for starting out early. Remember free advice is worth what you pay for and don’t let anybody discourage you. You learn to write by writinig. You have a good start.

Your’s truly,

Aunt Yvonne