Neil Gaiman – We could go out for tea (authentic British tea that doesn’t suck like American tea, or so he says) and real sushi (which I never get because my wife is afraid of raw food, so I have to get the kind from the supermarket). I could ask him about all the cool stuff he’s done, like movies and have a panda on his lap. And how he did his writing with his kids around and what it’s like living a public life as a writer and private life as a parent. I want to talk about how he plots, because he has a talent for making every…
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Why I Don’t Care For Short Stories
Let’s talk about Stephen King short stories. Sherwood Smith linked to an interesting video about where Stephen King attempts to explain why the world has “fallen out of love with the short story”. First, I’m not entirely sure the world has been in love with the short story for a long time, except for maybe the 1950s with the rise of science fiction. It seems to me that novels have dominated since they first came on the scene. But I’m not a historian, and I’m not here to talk about the past. One of the big problems with King’s argument is that he says humans are feeding at the trough…
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Star Dragon: I Hope There’s No Midterm
Today was a reading day, and boy are my eyes tired. I finished Star Dragon, which seems to echo a lot of what Mr. Scalzi has been saying about the state of Sci-Fi lit. He says that it involves a lot of science and physics and astronomy, and all that takes away from making a good story, and from encouraging newcomers to read it. In short, “it’s math”. Now clearly, Mr. Star Dragon did a butt load of research on his topic. It involves a space ship which generates acceleation through creating two singularities on each side and wobbling back and forth, then going to a binary star system where…
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Dream about Stephen King
Sunday night I had a dream that I was on a cruise ship (I have a lot of cruise ship dreams. I must want to go back there). I think it might have been some kind of writing convention on the ship, because these are the parts I remember. I remember reading a blackboard list of all the people who were there. I don’t know if they were writers or not, but the only name I recognized was Stephen King, so clearly I was excited. He doesn’t make too many public appearances any more, and except for his heinous vandalism 🙂, hasn’t been in the media except for book releases.…
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Pardon me, I have nothing to say
I have nothing to say. On my own blog. For shame. Except that I know how to get the ending now. I know how it resolves. But unfortunately, as Stephen King says, “Resolution demands a sacrifice.”
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Research: fact or fiction?
For reference today, please see a John Scalzi’s article here about a article by Brit music critic Ben Meyers. Short version: Meyers criticized the way the Internet makes research too easy for would-be writers, so you don’t get the ‘real’ experience or facts. Scalzi says he’s using the Internet as an excuse for his own laziness. Now despite that Meyers is a hideous arse candle, and Scalzi serves him a heaping bowl of Snarkies for breakfast, this brings up a question: Say you’re inspired to write a story that takes place in ancient Rome. You know nothing of ancient Rome, but that’s where the story takes place. That’s where it…
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Writing Advice #8
Writing is telepathy. It is trying to communicate a message or image (both, really) from your mind to another person’s mind. No person will see exactly what your mind sees. It is the job of the writer to communicate as much as what is necessary, while leaving enough left out for the reader to have fun filling the gaps. The writer cannot be fully detailed, or the work becomes an instruction manual. This King’s first piece of advice in his book On Writing (after forty pages of biography). Therefore, we can presume that this is his most important message. I almagamated this from his three page introduction to ‘how to…
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The Top of the Tower
I’ve finished reading The Dark Tower septology. It was a lot of work to avoid the spoilers, but I’m glad I did. The journey was long and strange. Not everything was filled in, not all the prophecies were fulfilled. Some events exceeded my expectations, some ended unsatisfied. But the important thing I think is how it ended. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS FOR THE DARK TOWER. At the end we wrap up the whole metafiction theme. Stephen King has been introduced, his near-fatal accident has been made an integral part of the plot, and if we haven’t realized by now that this is a story about a story, we’ve been smoking…
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The Concept of Dread
Stephen King uses the concept of telling what’s going to happen to his characters (e.g., that they’re gonna die) before the event actually happens. This is a bold move by an author. Risky, in that you alienate the reader automatically by telling them that their favorite character is gonna die, leaving them with no motivation to go on. I know this happens, because I saw it when my wife was reading The Time Traveler’s Wife. But it left me wondering, when King writes this way, does he know how he’s gonna die, or does he just write it in, knowing no more than that fact, and setting himself up for…
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He Writes the Right Stories.
In the midst of the Dark Tower now. 65% done. The most amazing thing about the book (and book 6), is that it’s self-referential. King puts himself in the book as a character, kind of in a Never-Ending Story way. And as we discover, every book he’s written (or most of them) have references to the Dark Tower, like these seven books are the spine that make up his body at work. And of course, King isn’t without poking some fun at himself. One of the minor women characters says she didn’t like King, read four or five of his books, and found them good stories, but horrible with the…
